mid-sentence. I could see Thorson received a genuine sense of accomplishment from pushing the little lawyer around.
“Make the call, Krasner, and I’ll tell the locals you helped out. Make the call or the next person to die is on you. Because now you do know who and what we’re talking about here.”
Krasner slowly nodded and began opening his briefcase.
“That’s it, Counselor,” Thorson said. “Now you see the light.”
As Krasner called his receptionist and issued the order in a shaky voice, Thorson stood silently watching. I had never seen or heard of anyone using the bad cop routine without the good cop counterpart and still so expertly finesse the information needed from a source. I wasn’t sure if I admired Thorson’s skill or was appalled by it. But he had turned the posturing bluff artist into a shaking mess. As Krasner was folding the phone closed, Thorson asked what the amount of the wire transfer had been.
“Six thousand dollars even.”
“Five for bail and one for you. How come you didn’t squeeze him?”
“He said it was all he could afford. I believed him. May I go now?”
There was a resigned and defeated look on Krasner’s face. Before Thorson answered his question the door to the courtroom opened and a bailiff leaned out.
“Artie, you’re up.”
“Okay, Jerry.”
Without waiting for further comment from Thorson, Krasner began moving toward the door again. And once again Thorson stopped him with a hand on the chest. This time Krasner made no protest about being touched. He simply stopped, leaving his eyes staring dead ahead.
“Artie—can I call you Artie?—you better do some soul-searching. That is if you have one. You know more than you’ve said here. A lot more. And the more time you waste, the more there’s a chance that a life will be wasted. Think about that and give me a call.”
He reached over and slid a business card into the handkerchief pocket of Krasner’s suit coat, then patted it gently.
“My local number is written on the back. Call me. If I get what I need from somewhere else and find out you had the same information, I will be merciless, Counselor. Fucking merciless.”
Thorson then stepped back so the lawyer could slowly make his way back into the courtroom.
We were back out on the sidewalk before Thorson spoke to me.
“Think he got the message?”
“Yeah, he got it. I’d stay by the phone. He’s gonna call.”
“We’ll see.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Did you really check him out with the locals?”
Thorson smiled by way of an answer.
“The part about him being a pedophile. How do you know that?”
“Just takin’ a shot. Pedophiles are networkers. They like to surround themselves with their own kind. They have phone nets, computer nets, a whole support system. They view it as them against society. The misunderstood minority, that kind of bullshit. So I figured maybe he got Krasner’s name on a referral list somewhere. It was worth the shot. The way I read Krasner, I think it hit him. He wouldn’t have given up the wire records if it didn’t.”
“Maybe. Maybe he was telling the truth about not knowing who Gladden was. Maybe he just has a conscience and doesn’t want to see anybody else hurt.”
“I take it you don’t know that many lawyers.”
Ten minutes later we were waiting for the elevator outside the Krasner & Peacock law offices, Thorson looking at the wire transfer receipt for the sum of $6,000.
“It’s a bank out of Jacksonville,” he said without looking up. “We’ll have to get Rach on it.”
I noticed his use of the diminutive of her name. There was something intimate about it.
“Why her?” I asked.
“ ’Cause she’s in Florida.”
He looked up from the receipt at me. He was smiling.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No, you didn’t tell me.”
“Yeah, Backus sent her out this morning. She went to see Horace the Hypnotist and work with the Florida team. Tell you what, let’s stop in the lobby and use the phone, see if I can get somebody to get this account number to her.”
38
Very little was said between us on the way out from downtown to Santa Monica. I was thinking about Rachel in Florida. I couldn’t understand why Backus would send her when the front line seemed to be out here. There were two possibilities, I decided. One was that Rachel was being disciplined for some reason, possibly me, and taken off the front line. The other was that there was some new break in the case I didn’t know about and was purposely not being