Chapter 6
Eddie
The justice game is strange.
I’d gotten used to almost every aspect of it in my time, but one thing I never adjusted to were the variations in pace.
You could spend months with very little happening on a case, and then it suddenly explodes and you’re running around trying to put out fires, the pressure insane and everything on the line.
This is the game.
The fact that it is played with people’s lives doesn’t seem to matter to most.
It matters to me.
It had been two weeks since I’d agreed to take on Vanessa Vanderpool as a client.
She’d signed a retainer agreement and deposited fifty grand on account.
A much larger retainer than I normally accept.
Hell, I was still representing guys who paid me in boxes of tomatoes, laptops, TVs and whatever else fell off the back of a truck on the Jersey turnpike.
My cell phone vibrated. The display said – Princess.
I picked up. ‘Hi, Amy.’
My daughter was turning sixteen soon, as my ex-wife Christine liked to remind me.
When I say soon, I mean in around four months, but with the level and extent of my ex-wife’s planning that meant very soon.
A party had been scheduled in a downtown hotel restaurant for family and friends, a limo booked for a ride around Manhattan for Amy and her friends and an after-party in a private room below the restaurant also confirmed.
No alcohol, of course. I got daily updates on who had accepted invites on a group chat entitled Amy’s Sweet 16.
I was bad at planning, of course, and nobody knew that like my ex-wife. My involvement in the preparation was to hassle people into returning their RSVPs and paying for everything. In the grand scheme of things, I got off lightly.
‘Dad, Keisha is having her sixteenth in the city in a couple of weeks, and Mom says it’s okay if I stay at your place afterwards as long as you drop me at the party and pick me up.’
‘Sure, glad to have you. When and where?’
‘I’ll text you the details. Keisha’s parents will be there so I don’t need a chaperone, I won’t drink any champagne and I’ll be ready to be picked up at midnight.’
‘Okay, well, maybe we could grab some dinner before I drop you off . . .’
‘I won’t have time, Dad. Plus, there will be food at the party. I’ll text you. Love you.’
She hung up before I could say anything back.
It would be good to see her, even if I was just a glorified Uber driver for the night. I could still take her for breakfast – the pancake place we both like.
I got up to fetch some coffee. Denise, the office secretary, was peeling the cellophane off the box of a brand-new laptop.
‘You want some coffee?’ I asked.
‘Sure. Slab O’Neill paid his bill, by the way,’ she said.
‘I take it he didn’t give you a receipt for that?’ I asked, nodding at the laptop while pouring two coffees from the bun flask.
‘Nope, but I needed a new computer. I told you last week, Q key stopped working on mine. I’ve been re-writing Harry’s legal briefs to avoid words with the letter Q in them.’
‘You got a nail file?’ I asked.
‘Yep, I know. Get rid of the serial number on the battery.’
The phone rang on her desk. She picked up.
‘Eddie, it’s Detective Lorraine Carey for you. She’s calling about Vanessa Vanderpool.’
‘I’ll take it here,’ I said, and handed Denise one of the coffees.
‘Detective Carey, Eddie Flynn. How are you?’ I said.
‘We’d like your client, Vanessa Vanderpool, to come down to the precinct and answer some questions. I’m calling to make those arrangements,’ said Carey.
I hadn’t come across Carey before, and she sounded authoritative. No hint of nerves. She was used to dealing with defense attorneys, yet she sounded quite young on the phone.
‘No small talk? No pleasantries? Just straight to business – is that how this works now?’ I asked.
‘I thought you were a busy man, Flynn. Didn’t think you’d have time. Don’t you bill by the hour?’
‘I was just trying to be friendly. Do you have new information you want to share in the Molly Green case?’
‘I’m not discussing the case on the phone. We want your client to come downtown and answer some questions.’
‘I know most of the detectives in your precinct, but I don’t believe we’ve met.’
‘I made detective a year ago.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, you’re how old?’
‘Twenty-six.’
‘Then you’re one of the youngest detectives in the NYPD. Congratulations, that’s a real achievement. How do your colleagues feel about—’
‘We need your client to come in and answer some questions,’ she said, cutting me off.
‘Is she under arrest?’
Silence. Then . . .
‘No, not at this time.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk about the weather? Because if you keep me on this call for another ten minutes, I can charge my client for a full half-hour.’
A sigh on the other end of the line.
‘So she’s not coming in?’ she asked.
‘Now I understand how you made detective so young.’
There was a loud CLICK, which you only hear these days from people in offices slamming a phone handset into its cradle.
Damn, I missed that sound.
‘Is she mad at you?’ asked Denise.
‘I have that effect on certain people,’ I said, looking around the office. Only Harry and Clarence were in.
‘Where’s Bloch?’
‘She’s in Chinatown on a private assignment.’
‘What’s she doing there?’
‘She’s trying to get robbed.’
‘You said that like it’s something that should make sense to me.’
‘What can I say – that’s our Bloch.’