A Long Line of Dead Men
Page 20

"You were talking about Kalish's death."
"It didn't scare me. That's what we're talking about, isn't it? Fear, fear of dying. They say man's the only animal that knows he's going to die. He's also the only animal that drinks."
"You think there's a connection?"
"I'm not even sure I buy the first part. I've had cats, and I always had the feeling they were as aware of their mortality as I've ever been of mine. The difference is they're fearless. Maybe they don't give a shit."
"I can't even tell how people feel about things," I said. "Let alone cats."
"I know what you mean. You know why I felt no fear when Phil died? It couldn't be simpler. I didn't own a car."
"So you couldn't-"
"Die the way he did. Right. I had the same reaction years later when Steve Kostakos crashed his plane. Do I fly a plane? No. So do I have to worry about it? Certainly not."
"And when James Severance died in Vietnam?"
"You know," he said, "that wasn't even a shock. One year he didn't show up for the dinner and we learned he was in the service. The next year we learned he was dead. I think I expected it."
"Because he was in combat?"
"That must have been part of it. That fucking war. Whenever somebody went over there, you figured he wasn't coming back. It was easy to feel that way about Severance. I don't know how much of this is hindsight, but it seems to me that there was something about him. An aura, an energy, whatever you want to call it. I'm sure there's a New Age way of putting it, but my wife's not here to tell us what it is. Have you ever met anyone and somehow just sensed he was doomed?"
"Yes."
"You got that feeling with Severance. I don't want to imply I had premonitions of an early grave for him, just that he was… well, doomed. I can't think of another word for it." He tilted his head back, squinting at a memory. "You said you thought I was an odd choice for that group. I wasn't, not really. I was more like the rest of those guys than you'd imagine now. Most of the courtroom armor, a lot of the media image, it all came later. It may have grown naturally out of the person who attended that first dinner in '61, but it wasn't in place then. I was like the rest of the members, older than most but just as earnest, every bit as intent on playing the game of life and getting a decent score. I fit in just fine." He drained his glass. "If there was a good choice for odd man out, it was Severance."
"Why?"
He thought for a moment before speaking. "You know," he said, "I didn't really know the man. I try to picture him now and I can't bring the image into focus. But it seems to me that he was on a different level from the rest of us."
"How?"
"A lower link on the food chain. But that's just an impression, founded on three meetings three decades ago, and maybe it would have changed if he'd lived long enough to grow into himself and shed some of the emotional puppy fat. He didn't have the chance." He drew a breath. "But no, his death held no fear for me. I wasn't slogging through rice paddies getting shot at by little guys in black pajamas. I was busy helping other young men stay out of the army." He put his glass on the table. "Then Homer Champney died," he said, "and in a sense the party was over."
"Because you thought he was going to live forever?"
"Hardly that. I knew he was mortal, like everybody else. And I knew he was failing. So I had no reason to be shocked. When a man in his nineties dies in his sleep, it's not a tragedy and it can't come as a great surprise. But you have to understand that he was a remarkably dynamic human being."
"So I gather."
"And he was the end of an era, the last of his line. Phil and Jim were accidents, they might as well have been struck by lightning. A bolt from the blue, zap, kerblooey. Once Homer was gone, though, it was our turn in the barrel."
"Your turn?"
"To do our own dying," he said.
We talked about coincidence and probability, about natural and unnatural death. "The easiest thing in the world," he said, "would be to hand this off to the media and let them run with it. Of course it would be the end of the club. And it would subject us all to more police and press attention than anyone should have to put up with. If this is all a coincidence, a cosmic thumb in the eye for the actuarial tables, we all get our world turned upside-down for nothing."
"And if there's a killer out there?"
"You tell me."
"If he's one of you fourteen," I said, "a full-scale investigation might tag him. With enough cops asking questions and cross-checking alibis, he'd have a tough time staying in the dark. There might not be enough evidence to go to trial with, but there's a difference between clearing a case and winning it in court."
"And if he's an outsider?"
"Then it's a little less likely they'd get him. I would think the investigation and the attendant publicity would scare him off, though, and keep him from killing anyone else."
"For the time being, you mean."
"Well, yes."
"But the bastard's in no hurry, is he?" He leaned forward, gesturing expansively with his long-fingered hands. "My God, the son of a bitch has the patience of a glacier. He's been doing this for decades if he's been doing it at all. Scare him off and what happens? He goes home, pops a tape in the VCR, brews up a pot of coffee, and waits a year or two. The media has the attention span of a fruit fly. Once the story's died down, it's time for him to arrange another accident, or stage a street crime or a suicide."
"If the cops got on to him," I said, "he might be scared off permanently, even if they never had enough to bring charges against him. But if he never even got scooped up in the net, I'd say you're right. He'd just bide his time and start in again."
"And even if he didn't, he wins."
"How do you mean?"
"Because the club's over. The newspaper stories would be enough to kill it, don't you think? It's anachronistic enough, fourteen grown men assembling annually to see who's still alive. I don't think we'd be able to find the heart for it after a little attention from our friends in the press."
He got up and fixed himself a fresh drink, just pouring the whiskey straight into the glass, sipping a little of it on his way back to the couch. The Chinese food had cleared his head. He wasn't slurring words now, or showing any effect of the alcohol.
He said, "It can't be one of the fourteen. Are we agreed on that?"
"I can't go all the way with you. I'll say it's unlikely."
"Well, I have an edge. I know them all and you don't." A rope of gray curls had fallen across his forehead. He brushed it back with his hand and said, "I think the club ought to convene. And I don't think we can afford to wait until next May. I'm going to make some calls, get as many of us here as I can."
"Now?"
"No, of course not. Monday? No, I may not be able to reach some of them until Monday. This time of year people get away for the weekend. Tuesday, say Tuesday afternoon. If I have appointments I can clear them. How about you? Can you be here Tuesday afternoon, let's see, say three o'clock?"
"Here?"
"Why not? It's better than my office. Plenty of room for fifteen people, and we'll be lucky to get half that number here on such short notice. But even if you just have five or six of us all here in one room-"
"Yes," I said. "It would be useful from my perspective."
"And from ours," he said. "All of us ought to know just what's going on. If we're in danger, if somebody's stalking us, we damn well ought to be aware of it."
"Is there a phone I can use? Let me see if I can sell this to my client."
"In the kitchen. On the wall, you'll see it. And Matt? Let me talk to him when you're done."
"Hildebrand went for it," I told Elaine. "He seemed relieved."
"So you've still got a client."
"I did as of a couple of hours ago."
"What did you think of Gruliow?"
"I liked him," I said.
"You didn't expect to."
"No, I brought the usual cop prejudices into his house with me. But he's a very disarming guy. He's manipulative, and he's got an ego the size of Texas, and his client list adds up to a powerful argument for capital punishment."
"But you liked him anyhow."
"Uh-huh. I thought he might turn ugly with drink, but it never happened."
"Did his drinking bother you?"
"He asked me that himself. I told him my best friend drinks the same brand of whiskey he does, and drinks a lot more of it. And when it comes to killing people, I said, his score is somewhere between Warren Madison and the Black Death."
"That's a good line," she said, "but it doesn't really answer the question."
"You're right, it doesn't. If I was going to take his inventory-"
"Which of course you're far too spiritually advanced to do."
"- I'd have to say he's a drunk. I'd say he knows it, too. He controls it, and obviously he can keep it together enough so that his life still works. He gets the big cases and he wins them. Incidentally, I learned something. I always wondered how he made a living representing clients who haven't got any money."
"And?"
"The money's in the books and lectures. The defense work's almost entirely pro bono. But there's a lot of self-interest operating, because by getting the hot cases he's hyping the book sales and goosing the fees for his public appearances."
"That's interesting."
"Isn't it? I asked him if there was anyone he wouldn't represent. Mafia dons, he said. White-collar sharpies, like the Wall Street insider-trading guys and the savings-and-loan swindlers. Not that they were necessarily the worst human beings in the world, but he had no affinity for them. I asked him if he'd represent a Ku Kluxer."
"What did he say?"
"He said probably not, if it was your basic Dixie segregationist or some White Power type from the Midwest. Then he said it might be interesting defending those skinheads they arrested in Los Angeles, the ones who wanted to start a race war by killing Rodney King and shooting up the AME church. I forget how he got there, but he had them all established as disenfranchised outsiders. 'But,' he said, 'they probably wouldn't want a lawyer named Gruliow.' I still haven't answered your question, have I? No, his drinking didn't bother me. He didn't get sloppy or nasty, and once we'd eaten he didn't even show the effects of the booze. On the other hand, I'd been planning to drop in on Mick at Grogan's tonight, and I think I'll put that off until tomorrow or Saturday."
"Because you've been around enough booze for one day."
"Right."
"I never met him myself," she said thoughtfully, "but I could have."
"Oh?"
"He's a big john, or at least he used to be. All that New Left rhetoric, well, he was certainly a staunch supporter of the working girl. You know who had a whole string of dates with him? Connie Cooperman."
"Of blessed memory."