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I took the weekend off. Saturday afternoon I spelled Elaine while she scouted out thrift shops in Chelsea and a flea market in a school yard on Greenwich Avenue. I made a couple of small sales, and in the middle of the afternoon Ray Galindez dropped by with two containers of coffee, and we sat and talked for a while. He's a police artist with an unca
Saturday night we saw a play at one of the little houses way west on Forty-second Street. Sunday afternoon I watched three baseball games at once, flipping from cha
Monday I was back at the library.
Monday night I stopped by my hotel and picked up a message from Wally at Reliable, the agency that has some work for me now and then. I called in the next morning. They wanted me to give them a couple of days, scouting out witnesses in a product-liability case. I said I'd do it. The job I was doing for Hildebrand wasn't that urgent that I couldn't fit in other assignments along the way.
The plaintiff in the product-liability case contended that his deck chair had collapsed, with painful results and dire long-term consequences. We were working for the company that had manufactured the chair. "The chair's a piece of crap," Wally told me, "but that don't mean the guy's on the up-and-up. An' he's got this personal-injury lawyer, Anthony Cerutti, scumbag goes around reporting damaged sidewalks on Thursday, putting the city on notice so his clients can trip over them on Friday and bring suit. Our client would love to stick this one straight up Cerutti's ass, so whyntcha see what you can do."
The injured party had driven a UPS truck before the accident and hadn't worked since. I found out that he never left his house much before two in the afternoon, so I arranged my own schedule accordingly, putting in a few hours in the library each morning, then catching the F train to the Parsons Boulevard stop. I generally managed to be nursing a Coke in McA
"Hey, Charlie," the bartender told him each and every time. "You know somethin'? I think you're walkin' better."
I would slip out for a while and find people to talk to, and before I headed for home I would stop back at McA
"Shit," he said. "You think he's legit?"
"No, I think the limp's bogus. Let me put in another day or two."
The following Monday I showed up around noon at Reliable's offices in the Flatiron Building. "I had a hunch," I told Wally. "Saturday night I took Elaine to Jackson Heights for curry, and afterward we went looking for Charlie."
"You took her to McA
"Charlie wasn't there," I said, "but the bartender thought he might be at Wallbanger's. 'A bunch of 'em went over there,' he said. 'They got that Velcro shit.' "
"What Velcro shit?"
"The kind where they've got a patch of it on the wall, and you attach some to yourself, and you take a ru
"Jesus Christ," he said. "Why, for God's sake?"
"That's not the question you're supposed to ask."
"It's not?" He thought about it, and his face lit up. He looked like a kid confronting a gaily wrapped birthday present. "Oh, boy," he said. "This is the son of a bitch never takes a step without both canes, right? Did he do it, Matt? Did he wrap up in fucking Velcro an' take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut? Tell me he did it."
"He came in second."
"Come on."
"They were egging him on," I said. " 'C'mon, Charlie boy, you gotta try it!' He kept telling them to be serious, he couldn't even walk, how could he go stick himself on the wall. Finally somebody brought over a glass with four or five ounces of clear liquor in it. Vodka, I suppose, or maybe Aquavit. They told him it was holy water straight from Lourdes. 'Drink it down and you're cured, Charlie. Miracle time.' He said, well, maybe, as long as we all understood it was just a temporary cure. A five-minute cure, like Cinderella, and then we're all pumpkins again."
"Pumpkins, for chrissake."
"He's a tall, ski
"Ah, Matty, you're beautiful. You actually saw this, right? And what about Elaine? Can she give a deposition, or testify in court if it comes to that?"
I dropped an envelope on his desk.
"What the hell is this?" He opened it. "I don't believe this."
"I'd have been here earlier," I said, "but I stopped at the one-hour photo place first. The light wasn't great, and it was no time to start popping flashbulbs, so it's no prizewi
"I call it a prizewi
"He figured he was safe. He knew everybody in the joint except me and Elaine, and he'd gotten used to seeing me at McA
"I still can't believe you got a picture. I'm surprised you even had a camera along, never mind you got a chance to use it." He held the photo to the light. "This isn't so bad," he said. "When I take pictures of my grandkids I have the light positioned just right, I pose 'em, and the shots don't come out any better than this. The kids always manage to move just as I'm clicking the shutter."
"You should try Velcro."
"Now you're talking. Glue the little bastards to the wall." He dropped the photo on his desk. "Well, that's one in the eye for Phony Tony. He can call his client, tell him to see if he can get his job back at UPS, because his days as a professional invalid are over. Good job, Matt."
"I think I should get a bonus."
He thought about it. "You know," he said, "you fucking well ought to. That's up to the client, but I can certainly recommend it. This isn't just a case of digging up some eyewitness, some neighbor lady with a resentment who's willing to swear she saw him walk down to the corner without the canes. This is the kind of thing where all you really have to do is show Tony Cerutti what you've got and he drops the case like a hot rock."
"Imagine what Cerutti would pay for the picture."