Joel Goldman - Final judgment

There was a dead body in the trunk of Avery Fishs Fleetwood Cadillac. Not that he didnt have enough problems already. He was late for a meeting with his lawyer, Lou Mason, and the assistant U.S. attorney, Pete Samuelson. They were negotiating a deal for Fishs body and soul like they were haggling over a used car, both sides selling him as is.

Fish knew how it would go. Mason had briefed him the day before, telling him hed better be on time.

Why not just strip me down to my shorts and check my teeth like I was a horse being sold by the pound? Fish asked.

Because youre too old and ugly, Mason answered, grinning. The feds wouldnt buy and Id be stuck with you.

Fish waved his hand at Masons joke. So what kind of deal am I going to get?

Youre charged with mail fraud. Ill offer twelve months suspended with probation, which is a downward deviation from federal sentencing guidelines, and a hundred thousand dollars in restitution for the people the government says you swindled.

Like Ive got that kind of money.

He didnt deny his guilt. He just wanted to know what he owed, figuring he was negotiating with his lawyer as well as the Justice Department. Mason ignored Fishs complaint, knowing that Fish had the money or could get it, just as he had gotten the money to pay Masons fee.

This is your first conviction. Youre not a young man. Samuelson will want eighteen months of real time and more money, maybe two hundred and fifty grand, plus a fine. Probably the same amount, maybe a little less.

What are the chances Ill get probation?

Not good unless youve got something else to offer besides money and remorse.

Like what?

Someone you could give to them. Someone who has bigger problems than mail fraud.

You mean inform on someone? Id rather go to jail, Fish said.

The government calls it cooperation. Judges are very impressed by it and nobody would rather go to jail.

Such a future. Fish rubbed the top of his bulging stomach. His heartburn could eat through sheet metal. He appreciated Masons precise explanation. First conviction. Not first indictment. He shouldnt complain. Not at his age. But he couldnt help it. Spending my golden years as a bankrupt federal snitch. Acch! What a life.

Beats the hell out of stripping to your shorts and having your teeth checked by some Aryan Brotherhood inmate who thinks you remind him of the uncle that molested him when he was a kid, Mason had told him.

Now this, Fish thought to himself, as he stood in the parking lot of his synagogue in south Kansas City, the weekday morning service just finished. The air was damp and cold, the day raw and typical for February. The pavement and the sky were the same flat gray, just like the body in the trunk. He should have gone to Scottsdale for the winter like everybody else.

The dead man was naked and wrapped in a sheet of clear plastic that made him look like a prehistoric hunter left frozen in ice a thousand years ago. The limbs were tight against the torso, their skin unblemished by any visible wounds.

Fishs briefcase was in the trunk. He didnt need it for the meeting with the lawyers. In fact, there was nothing in it besides the latest issue of Fast Company with an article he wanted to read, especially now, titled How to Make Your Own Luck. But, carrying the briefcase gave him a more substantial look. Like he was a businessman, not some gonif caught with his nuts in the wringer.

Which he was. Gonif, Yiddish for thief, was a word that defined itself as much by its pronunciation as its meaning. He liked the guttural way it rolled off his tongue, straight from the back of his mouth like he was throwing it at someone.

His briefcase was tucked underneath the dead man. Fish worried that the poor bastard had bled onto it even though the body was wrapped in plastic. He didnt want to walk into the meeting with the U.S. attorney carrying a briefcase with a bloodstain painted on it like a bulls-eye. He left it where it was and closed the trunk.

He was seventy-three years old. He had a wife who referred to herself as his ex-wife on the slight technicality that theyd been divorced for twenty-five years. Like that mattered. He had two daughters who didnt talk to him unless they had to and four grandchildren who never stopped.

He was thirty-five pounds overweight. He had plantar fascitis in both feet and chronic pain in both hips. He had a lumbar disc at the base of his spine that bulged like a teenage boys dick at his first skin flick and chest pain that woke him at night like the devil was slipping a blade between his ribs. But he didnt complain. That was life. The odds favored a man like him having problems like these.

But a dead body in the trunk of his car on the day he was to bargain his life away in a comfortable conference room at the Federal Courthouse-that didnt defy the odds. It beat the living daylights out of them.

Fish didnt realize he was sweating until he slid into his car. And he was sweating and breathing as hard as a racehorse on the backstretch. Certain of what hed seen, he still didnt want to believe it. It was too awful to be true, but it was. In spite of the cold, he turned on the air-conditioning, gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel until he cooled down and could breathe normally.

What are the odds? A dead body in his trunk. Blinking the sweat from his eyes, he squinted, remembering when hed last opened the trunk. It was the night before when hed gotten home from meeting with Mason. The briefcase had been on the front seat of the car, the magazine already in it. His dry cleaning had been in the trunk. Hed taken the laundry out and left the briefcase in its place.

Hed stayed home the rest of the night. Gone to bed early. Slept all night except for the three times hed gotten up to go to the bathroom. His car had been parked in front of his house, the garage crammed full of junk hed been meaning to throw away since his divorce.

Had to have been during the night. He lived on a quiet street. Hell, it was a historic district! Thats how quiet it was. Most of the neighbors were old like him, the houses even older. No young kids coming home late to interrupt some killer who had turned Fishs car into a drive-by drop-off for dead bodies. If the killer had bothered to ask, Fish would have told him that there was a twenty-four-hour Goodwill drop-off a mile away.

During the night was a better bet than while he was in the synagogue, even if there were only a handful of cars in the parking lot belonging to the ten people who showed up for the morning service. It was still dark when he arrived a few minutes before seven that morning. The service lasted forty-five minutes. The rabbi had buttonholed him for another fifteen minutes afterwards, making him late for his meeting with the attorneys, asking him how things were going with his case. His legal problems werent a secret. The media and a city full of gossips had taken care of that.

He set aside the odds against a dead body showing up in the trunk of his car. It had happened. The odds had gone from astronomical against to one hundred percent in favor. Fishs next bet was on when it happened. The odds favored last night while Fish slept. He didnt have time to figure the odds on the harder questions. Who was the dead man? Who killed him? Why did the killer pick the trunk of his car?

Fish didnt want to know the answers to any of these questions, certain that he was better off not knowing. It had nothing to do with him anyway. The body in the trunk was his bad luck. Thats all.

He had to be downtown in fifteen minutes and he was thirty minutes away. He couldnt leave his car in the parking lot without arousing suspicions at the synagogue. He couldnt leave his car at home and take the bus downtown because he didnt know where to catch the bus or even which bus to take if he did.