Well, that was one benefit that might just have to be curtailed. But what a shame.
That night, in the privacy of his own place, Jaywalker thought things over. Unlike Amanda Carter’s four-bedroom triplex just off Fifth Avenue, Jaywalker’s apartment wasn’t much more than a furnished room. What it was, was a fourth-floor walk-up studio in what real estate agents tend to write off as a developing neighborhood, much the same way economists might refer to a developing nation. Implicit in both terms is the suggestion that the entity being described still has a long way to go before qualifying for actually being developed. So as he pondered the advisability of getting involved in Carter Drake’s case, Jaywalker stretched out on his sofa, which doubled as his bed, and also served from time to time as his laundry sorter, work surface and exercise mat.
A criminal case begins, as Jaywalker well knew, with an investigation, followed by an arrest. Or sometimes it’s the other way around, an arrest followed by an investigation. By the time a defense lawyer gets contacted, selected, and either hired by the family or appointed by the court, that lawyer already finds himself playing catch-up. It had already been three weeks since Carter Drake’s arrest, and based upon the little that Jaywalker remembered from the newspaper accounts, the only representation Drake had had in that time was from the business lawyer who’d surrendered him, followed by some local guy who’d stood up for him when he got to court. It would be another seven or eight months before Jaywalker would be allowed to practice again. That would mean an eight-month head start for the prosecution, an all but insurmountable advantage.
So what was Jaywalker to do in the meantime? He couldn’t contact the D.A.’s office or the state police, or risk calling either of the lawyers who’d been representing Drake; any one of them could turn him in for doing so. Yet he couldn’t just sit on his hands and watch his future client languish in the hands of a couple of incompetents while the prosecution perfected its case, could he?
He found a half-smoked joint, fired it up and inhaled deeply. Ever since he’d given up drinking, Jaywalker had resorted to the old devil weed for occasional inspiration. It soothed him, relaxed him, helped him see things a bit more clearly, and brought on a moderate case of the “munchies”—an indispensable aid to a man who, to the envy of most men and every woman he knew, had serious trouble keeping his weight up. With no known adverse side effects and no possibility of a lethal overdose, it was, as Martha Stewart might have put it, a good thing. Little wonder, thought Jaywalker, that the government had criminalized it, or that the last administration had chosen to make it the primary target of its war against drugs.
It didn’t take long for Jaywalker to hatch a plan. What he’d do would be to have Amanda hire him as a private investigator for her husband. That would allow Jaywalker to go into jail and talk with Drake, gather police reports and other documents, locate and interview witnesses, and generally snoop around. His DEA background more than prepared him for the job, and his law degree qualified him, much the same way it permitted lawyers to act as real estate brokers and notary publics without having to undergo additional training or licensing. It was all part of the genius behind the scheme of having laws that are written by lawyers, enforced by lawyers who’ve become judges, for the benefit and protection of lawyers.
Now, did the little matter of Jaywalker’s suspension disqualify him from availing himself of those benefits and protections? No, he decided; that would be overthinking it. He was still a lawyer, albeit one who was temporarily incapacitated. Kind of like how a baseball player who was on the disabled list was still a baseball player, no? A perfect analogy. So as long as Jaywalker were to stick to investigating, he wouldn’t really be practicing law, would he be?
He allowed himself another hit of the joint.
Yeah, investigating would be just fine.
He broke the news to Amanda two days later. They met at the same luncheonette they’d gone to from the library. She looked every bit as stunning as he’d remembered her, and he found himself powerless to keep his eyes off her. He managed somewhat better when it came to his hands, but it was hard. Keeping his hands off her, that is.
This time they had lunch instead of just coffee, she a fancy wrap of some sort, he a tuna-fish sandwich. As they ate, he outlined his plan, and Amanda was quick to approve it. And that was pretty much it. Unlike the events of two days earlier, they didn’t follow things up with a cab ride to Amanda’s apartment. And if Jaywalker was disappointed in that nonde-velopment, and surely he was, he was at least consoled by the fact that he came away from the meeting with a check in the pocket of his jeans in the amount of five thousand dollars, exactly twice what he’d asked Amanda for. He’d instructed her to make it out to “Harrison Jay Walker, Private Investigator,” and had made her fill in the Memo blank with the words “Not for legal services.”
You could never be too careful.
But even if he was only an investigator for the time being, Jaywalker knew better. He was back in the game.
Chapter Three
Five Tiny Fingers
The very first thing Jaywalker did the following morning was to pay a visit to his bank. There he endorsed and deposited the five-thousand-dollar check Amanda Drake had given him. As soon as the teller had completed the transaction, he asked her for his current balance. She tapped some keys on her computer and handed him a slip of paper. There were a bunch of numbers on it, showing which funds were available, which weren’t, and when they would be. But he chose to ignore the qualifiers, and went right to the bottom line, which included Amanda’s check: $5,176.24
It had been that close.
After that, Jaywalker the Investigator got to work. He started off by making a visit to the scene. Not the scene of the crime—or accident, as he preferred to call it—where the van had been run off the road. That would come, but for now it could wait. Instead, he returned to the scene of his first meeting with Amanda, the Forty-second Street branch of the New York Public Library. There he went to the newspaper archives room and pulled up on a microfiche screen all the articles he could find on the crash, the surrender and arrest of Carter Drake, and the developments that had occurred since. Had he been a better navigator of the Internet, he probably could have found them on his computer. But he was stubbornly old-fashioned at times, Jaywalker was, and besides, he loved the archives room. He figured it was as good a place as any to get an overview of things, a starting point before he began to dig for details and tried to get first-person accounts.
As overviews go, it turned out to be pretty devastating stuff for the home team.
The photos of the burned van, and of the immediate area where it had come to rest, were hard to look at. Jaywalker could only guess at the ones that had been kept out of the papers, that the editors had deemed too graphic to print. He’d see those later, no doubt, with the police reports. There’d be charred bodies, charred tiny bodies. He shuddered at the thought, shuddered again at the jurors’ reactions to the carnage.
Several of the papers had run with the early rumors of a terrorist cell and the premature detonation of an explosive device, or of a van overcrowded with undocumented migrant apple pickers. Only with the following day’s editions had the truth come out, that eight of the nine dead were young children enrolled at one of New City’s several yeshivas, or Jewish religious schools. There were interviews with the driver of the pickup truck who’d stopped to offer assistance, including his account of the car that had run the van off the road. Looking for the public’s help, the police had released the partial license plate ending in 724 and were imploring other witnesses to come forward. Then, in the next day’s accounts, there was the surrender of Carter Drake and his arrest, as well as some brief comments by his “business attorney.” Jaywalker paused to smile at the phrase. There were business attorneys, patent attorneys, corporate attorneys, trust and estate attorneys, even admiralty attorneys. But when things got truly nasty, you were well advised to go out and get yourself a criminal lawyer. All of a sudden, it was a lawyer you needed. Down in the trenches, there was no room for attorneys.