his knuckles, and informed Mr. Muldanno that Mr. Clifford had left the office around 9 A.M. and had not been heard from since.
The Blade slammed the phone down and stormed through the hallway, then caught himself and began the strut as he neared the tables and the faces. The restaurant was beginning to fill. It was almost five.
He just wanted a few drinks and then a nice dinner with his lawyer so they could talk about his mess. Just drinks and dinner, that’s all. The feds were watching, and listening. Jerome was paranoid and just last week told Barry he thought they had wired his law office. So they would meet here and have a nice meal without worrying about eavesdroppers and bugging devices.
They needed to talk. Jerome Clifford had been defending prominent New Orleans thugs for fifteen years—gangsters, pushers, politicians—and his record was impressive. He was cunning and corrupt, completely willing to buy people who could be bought. He drank with the judges and slept with their girlfriends. He bribed the cops and threatened the jurors. He schmoozed with the politicians and contributed when asked. Jerome knew what made the system tick, and when a sleazy defendant with money needed help in New Orleans he invariably found his way to the law offices of W. Jerome Clifford, Attorney and Coun-selor-at-Law. And in that office he found a friend who thrived on the dirt and was loyal to the end.
Barry’s case, however, was something different. It was huge, and growing by the moment. The trial was a month away and loomed like an execution. It would be his second murder trial. His first had come at the tender age of eighteen when a local prosecutor attempted to prove, with only one most unreliable witness, that Barry had cut the fingers off a rival thug and slit his throat. Barry’s uncle, a well-respected and seasoned mobster, dropped some money here and there, and young Barry’s jury could not agree on a verdict and thus simply hung itself.
Barry later served two years in a pleasant federal joint on racketeering charges. His uncle could’ve saved him again, but he was twenty-five at the time and ready for a brief imprisonment. It looked good on his resume. The family was proud of him. Jerome Clifford had handled the plea bargain, and they’d been friends ever since.
A fresh club soda with lime awaited Barry as he swaggered to the bar and assumed his position. The alcohol could •wait a few hours. He needed steady hands.
He squeezed the lime and watched himself in the mirror. He caught a few stares; after all, at this moment he was perhaps the most famous murder defendant in the country. Four weeks from trial, and people were looking. His face was all over the papers.
This trial was much different. The victim was a senator, the first ever to be murdered, they alleged, while in office. United States of America versus Barry Mul-danno. Of course, there was no body, and this presented tremendous problems for the United States of America. No corpse, no pathology reports, no ballistics, no
bloody photographs to wave around the courtroom and display for the jury.
But Jerome Clifford was cracking up. He was acting strange—disappearing like this, staying away from the office, not returning calls, always late for court, always mumbling under his breath and drinking too much. He’d always been mean and tenacious, but now he was detached and people were talking. Frankly, Barry wanted a new lawyer.
Just four short weeks, and Barry needed time. A delay, a continuance, something. Why does justice move so quickly when you don’t want it to? His life had been lived on the fringes of the law, and he’d seen cases drag on for years. His uncle had once been indicted, but after three years of exhaustive warfare the government finally quit. Barry had been indicted six months ago, and bam!, here’s the trial. It wasn’t fair. Romey wasn’t working. He had to be replaced.
Of course, the feds had a hole or two in their case. No one saw the killing. There would be a decent circumstantial case against him, with motive, perhaps. But no one actually saw him do it. There was an informant who was unstable and unreliable and expected to be chewed up on cross-examination, if he indeed made it to trial. The feds were hiding him. And, Barry had his one marvelous advantage—the body, the diminutive, wiry corpse of Boyd Boyette rotting slowly away in concrete. Without