“Hate to admit it, ol’ buddy,” Alston said. “But you just might be right”

“Of course I am.” Fletch settled into a Morris chair by the phone. “About what?”

“As best I could, without my fingers getting caught in the files, I’ve been able to dig up a few things for you: Habeck’s latest big case; his current big case; and—this is where you may be right—what old client of his just got out of the pen with, maybe, an irrepressible urge to send a bullet through Habeek’s skull.”

“There is one?”

“First, his last and current big cases. Doubtlessly you have comprehensive newspaper files on both.”

“Yes. I got them this afternoon.”

“So you know the current big case concerns the chairman of the State House Ways and Means Committee being charged with a kickback scheme. Bribery.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s charged specifically with having accepted fifty-three thousand, five hundred dollars from an architectural firm contracted to design a new wing on the State Penitentiary at Wilton.”

“Hope the state senator had them design a nice cell with a southern view for himself.”

“Doubt he’ll ever see it, if he did. The maneuvers here are too sophisticated for me to understand. I don’t mean legal maneuvers, I mean political maneuvers. Habeck has filed all kinds of motions and petitions I don’t understand. He’s doing the most amazing fox-trot through the courts with this case. I don’t understand why the courts put up with this kind of wriggling.”

“Habeck was just trying to let the case get to be old news as far as the public is concerned, wasn’t he? After a while the public, and the courts, too, I suppose, lose their anger over a case like this. We become tired of reading about it. Indifferent to what happens. Right?”

“Right. It would help if you journalistic types blew the whistle on this kind of maneuvering once in a while. Reported in depth the history of such a case. Demand that the courts make final disposition of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you’d be interested in Habeck’s personal notations on the records of this case?”

“You bet.”

“The first notation says, Get this before Judge Carroll Swank.”

“Ah. The idea being that Judge Swank owes something from the deep, dark, shadowy past to Senator Schoenbaum.”

“One assumes so. Some indebtedness safely hidden. You boys would never be able to find it.”

“Or, Senator Schoenbaum holds something in the blackmail line over the aforesaid Judge Swank.”

“Judges may deliberate like self-righteous prigs, but they must live as pragmatists.”

“I’ll write that down.”

“A second note on the file in Habeck’s own writing might also interest you. It reads, Actual kickbacks Schoenbaum admits to over eight hundred thousand dollars. Tax-free, note. Plan fee in five-hundred-thousand-dollar range. Both these notes are near the beginning of the file. The rest of the file is just a record of Habeck’s jerking the courts around.”

“Until he gets the case in front of Judge Swank.”

“And that’s when he really jerks the court around.”

“Meanwhile, Senator Schoenbaum is vacationing in Hawaii.”

“Yes. Poor jerk thinks he’s going to come out of this a rich and free man.”

“Well, he’s half right.”

“I don’t see Schoenbaum as anybody who wants to ventilate Habeck’s head.”

“No.”

“The other cases Habeck is pleading, and there are more than twenty, are all being worked up by underlings, poor beavers like me. Several cases of embezzlement, two vehicular homicides, a half-dozen cases of insurance fraud, as many as ten cases of parental kidnappings—you know, when a member of a divorced couple loses the custody battle and arranges to have his own kid kidnapped?”

“That many?”

“It’s a big business. If I ever decide to leave Habeck, Harrison and Haller, I might decide to go into it. I’d feel more useful.”

“Gives one pause to think.”

“Plus one rather funny case about a milkman.”

“I met a witty milkman once.”

“This one is real witty. Listen. First, he rented a sable coat for his wife, for a month, on credit.”

“Loving husband.”

“Then he walked his sable-adorned wife into a Rolls-Royce showroom, and leased a Rolls-Royce for a month, on credit.”

“Liked good cars, too.”

“With his wife in the sable coat, both of them in the Rolls-Royce, he was able to rent a small mansion in Palm Springs.”

“Why shouldn’t a milkman live well?”

“With the coat, the Rolls, and the house, he then went, to a local bank, and wangled a five-hundred-thousand-dollar cash loan.”

“Wow.”

“And gave up his job as a milkman.”

“Yeah. Why should he need to work with all he’s got?”

“He returned the coat, the car, and canceled the lease on the house. And skipped to Nebraska.”

“You can buy a lot of cows in Nebraska for five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Even the bank didn’t care, for three years, because the guy kept paying them interest out of the principal he had borrowed.”

“Don’t tell me. He was charged with Understanding America Too Well.”

“Eventually, the well ran dry, of course, and the bank went after the retired milkman.”

“Why would Habeck take on a case like that? I don’t see how the milkman can pay him much.”

“Okay. Habeck took on the milkman’s case. As soon as the bank heard that, they began to shake in their collective boots. Habeck, Harrison and Haller bought a few shares in the bank, and then threatened the bank with full exposure. Charged loan-forcing, incompetent administration, and a loan policy so inept that clearly the bank’s charter should be revoked. After all, Fletch, they made a half-a-million-dollar loan to a milkman!”

“Oh, boy. So the bank is going to swallow the five-hundred-thousand-dollar loss, or whatever part of it the milkman didn’t pay back out of principal?”

“Not only that, two of the partners in the bank, who also happen to be bank officers, are buying back the few shares of stock Habeck, Harrison and Haller own at what you may describe as well above market value.”

“Phew. What I’m learning about the law. Tell me, Alston, is that called ‘settling out of court’?”

“I think it’s called having a bank by the short hairs, and tugging.”

“I think it’s called blackmail. Of course, I never went to law school.”

“At law school, it’s called blackmail.”

“So far today, I’ve learned Habeck, Harrison and Haller, as a law firm, is actively in the burglary business, the blackmail business, judge fixing… what else do you guys do for a living?”

“Don’t ask.”

“You sure all law firms aren’t this way?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What happened to the milkman?”

“He moved to New York State, where he’s employed as—”

“A milkman!”

“No. As some kind of a psychotherapist. During his three years in Nebraska, he qualified for some kind of a degree, got a professional certification which permits him to earn a living being understanding.”

“I’ll bet he’s good at it.”

“I’ll bet he is.”

“Upward mobility, Alston.”

“The American dream.”

“Through judicious use of credit.”

“The name of the game.”

“The creation of another debt-free professional.”

“Warms my heart.”

“The legal system works, Alston.”

“Don’t you ever forget it.”

“And a bank had to sharpen its loan policy, from which we all benefit.”

“Habeck’s last case that reached the newspapers was about a year ago.”

“The case of the Fallen Doctor.”

“Yeah, the doctor who organized a certain number of his patients into drug pushers. The doctor was a wreck himself.”

“And Habeck got him off by charging the Narcotics Bureau with entrapment.”

“Ultimately, yes. First he went through a lot of dazzling footwork regarding the sanctity of the patient-slash-doctor relationship. To wit, doctors are not to be entrapped by the confidences of patients who turn out to be narcs.”

“And, tell me, Alston, how did Habeck, Harrison and Haller get paid for that job?”

“There was a million dollars of cocaine never found by the authorities.”

“Good God. Burglary, blackmail, drug pushing… why doesn’t someone bring charges against Habeck, Harrison and Haller?”

“Who’d dare? In fact, talking to you right now, I feel my pants slipping down around my ankles.”

“I appreciate that, Alston.”

“Where you may be right is that a Habeck client got out of jail last Tuesday. And he’s not a very nice person. He served eleven years the hard way. And I don’t understand why Habeck took on the case in the first place.”

“No personal notes?”

“All the files, except for a microfilm record of the case, are in the warehouse in Nevada and I can’t get to them.”

“He must have had a reason.”

“A child molester. A real sweetheart. He had two trained German shepherds. Apparently he’d enter a housing project, first attract little kids with his dogs. Then the trained dogs would herd and hold the little kids in a corner of the building, or the play yard, and this son of a bitch would then make free with them.”

“Jesus.”

“Say one for me. Takes all types, uh?”

“Jesus!”

“Lots of little kids gave evidence. There were lots of witnesses to the event with which he was finally charged. I guess he had been getting away with it for a long time. He counted on the dogs to help him make his escape. What he didn’t count on were a couple of black brothers who weren’t intimidated by German shepherds and kicked their heads in.”

“And he got only eleven years?”

“Habeck must have done something for him.”

“Eleven years!”

“I’m sure they were eleven hard years, Fletch. Child molesters are not popular in prison. They get very few invitations to the cellblock cocktail parties.”

“What’s his name?”

“Felix Gabais. Employed at various jobs, bus driver, school-bus driver, taxi driver. Lived with a crippled sister in the Saint Ignatius area. Would be about forty-one, forty-two years old now.”

“If Habeck got him out of prison in eleven years on that kind of charge, I can’t see why he’d go gunning for Habeck.”

“He’s crazy, Fletch. I mean, a guy who works all that out with trained dogs has to be crazy. Talk about premeditation.”

“I guess so.”

“In this case, he’s had eleven years to premeditate.”

“Alston, I have another thought. Supposing someone killed or maimed one of your loved ones. And Habeck got him off scot-free, or something meaningless, a suspended sentence, or something. Wouldn’t that incline you to go after Habeck?”

“Come again?”

“I heard of a case today in which Habeck was involved. Drunken teenager stole a car and killed someone with it. Habeck got him off with just a sentence of probation. What about the victim’s family? Wouldn’t they have reason to be pretty mad at Habeck?”

“I can see them wanting to harm the drunken kid.”

“But not Habeck?”

“That would take too much thinking. First, in anger, I think people want to see people get the punishment they deserve. When the courts don’t give perpetrators the punishment they clearly deserve, yeah, I think even the most decent people feel the temptation to go out and beat the perpetrator over the head themselves.”

“But, if they think twice…”

“If they think twice, they’re angry at something vague, you know, like the legal system, or justice, or the courts.”

“You don’t think anyone ever focuses on the defense attorney who twists the legal system to get genuine bad guys off free?”

“It’s possible. Someone bright, maybe.”

“Someone bright who sees a pattern in what Habeck is doing.”

“And, maybe, has a personal grudge.”

“And knows there is no way of ever bringing Habeck to justice.”

“Yeah. Such a person might be able to justify shooting Habeck in the head. But, Fletch, think of the numbers. Over Habeck’s thirty-five-year career, the numbers of victims’ loved ones and families who have watched Habeck send the perpetrator to the beach instead of to jail must number in the hundreds, the thousands.”

“I suppose so.” Fletch took The Knife, The Blood from the table beside the telephone. “Anyway, I already know who killed Habeck.”

“Bright boy.” Alston sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Instead of spending all this long time talking to you, I could have gone jogging.”

“You can still go jogging,” Fletch said, turning the pages.

“I don’t want to get mugged by a milkman.”

“Listen to this.” Fletch read:

“Jeez!” Alston breathed. “What’s that?”

“A poem called The Warrior in Perfection.”

“You and I know a little better than that, don’t we, buddy.”

“Do we?”

“That dancing beauty just isn’t there.”

“It isn’t?”

“That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. It makes me angry.”

“If I’m right, and I’m not sure that I am, it was written by Donald Edwin Habeck’s son-in-law.”

“Oh. Anybody who’d write that would do anything for kicks.”

“I read one to Barbara called Knife, Blood and suddenly she decided she had to come off the beach to get dinner.”

“I think you-’re right. You needn’t look any further for the murderer of Habeck than the snake who wrote that poem.”

“I think he’s worth talking to.”

“So, the newspaper wants you on this story?”

“No, Alston, they don’t.”

“Trying to prove yourself, boy?”

“If I come up with something good, do you think the newspaper will turn it down?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’m getting married. I’ve got to get going in life. So far, I’m playing dumb jokes on the newspaper. And the newspaper is playing dumb jokes on me.”

“You’re taking a risk.”

“What risk? If I don’t come up with anything, no one will ever know it.”