"That doesn't mean you can't land on your feet."
He leaned forward, anger in his eyes. "Look around, asshole. I'm practicing law out of the trunk of my car." "Who knows? I may be joining you someday."
"Go right ahead. Make jokes."
He wasn't joking, but there was no point in explaining. He changed his tone. "Is this why you wanted to meet in person? You want to chew my ass out because you can't find a job? Well, let me tell you something. Two weeks ago I would have been the last guy to say this, but there are worse things in life than losing a stupid job. So if we don't start talking about Shirley Borge in the next thirty seconds, I'm walking right out that door. I don't have time for this."
Toombs leaned back smugly, as if it pleased him to irk a man of Gus's stature. "You want to talk about Shirley Borge? No problem. I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Thank you."
"All I need is a check."
"A check?"
"Yeah. My time is money."
"You want me to pay you for information about Shirley Borge?"
He shook his head, grimacing. "That has such an unseemly connotation, the way you put it. Let's just say I want to be compensated for my time and inconvenience."
Gus didn't have time to lecture the kid on ethics. He laid his checkbook on the desk and started writing. "Fine. I'll pay you for an hour of your time."
"Sounds reasonable. Make it five thousand dollars." His hand froze. He stopped writing. "You're joking." "Do I sound like I'm joking?"
`This is robbery."
"That'sprobably what your clients say when they see your bills. Payback sucks, doesn't it, Mr. Wheatley?"
Gus hated togive it to him, but he thought of Beth on the other end of the phone, unable to speak, maybe even tied up and gagged. He thought of Shirley slamming the door on him, taking her secrets about Beth back to her cell. This was no time to stand on a five-thousand-dollar principle. He wrote the check and signed it.
Kirby reached for it. Gus snatched it back.
"First, you answer my questions."
Kirby clearly wanted the check first, but the harsh tone made him back away. "All right. What has Shirley told you so far?"
"Not much. Most of what I know is from my own research, newspaper accounts of the trial and such. I know she was convicted of conspiracy to commit a murder that was planned but never carried out."
"That's the bare bones of it."
"Then fill me in."
"Supposedly, Shirley and some friends saw some movie on television where homeless people started getting whacked, so they decided that might be a fun way to liven up their weekend."
"They were just going to kill a homeless person at random?"
"That's the story."
"How did they get caught?"
"Well, they didn't just rush out and do it. They started planning it. They got hold of a gun. And then Shirley started bragging at bars and places that they had this plan." "So that's who turned them in? Someone from the bar?" "No, actually it was Shirley's mother."
Gus suddenly recalled the polygraph exam, where Shirley had said she didn't know if her mother was dead or alive. "Why?"
"Shirley had always been a problem kid. So when her mom heard she was getting mixed up in some plan to kill a homeless person, that was the last straw. She decided to put a little scare in her daughter. She went to the police. Turns out the police had more in mind that just scaring her.
They put a wiretap on the home phones and recorded Shirley talking about her scheme. The conversations were pretty explicit. Not an easy case to defend. They talked about the time of the hit. The weapon they would use. How they'd dispose of the gun. What they would do with the body."
"So they arrested Shirley before the murder."
"Yeah."
"Why didn't they arrest her friends?"
"It was only one friend, actually. At least that's all they had on the tape. No one knew who he was. Both he and Shirley were very careful never to mention his name on the phone. Whenever he called Shirley, he always called from a pay phone, so there was no way to trace it."
"That's the guy the police wanted Shirley to identify?" asked Gus.
"Right. We could have gotten Shirley off pretty easy if she had given up the guy's name. But she wouldn't. So she's living at WCCW."
"She did mention how she refused to rat out her friend. She seemed proud of that."
"I don't know if it was pride so much as fear that kept her quiet."
"Why do you say that?"
"Good reasons."
"Let's hear them."
"Let's have the check."
Gus reluctantly laid it on the table. Kirby grabbed it, stuffed it in his coat pocket, and said, "You didn't hear this from me, okay?"
"Whatever."
"Everything I just told you is the story that came out in trial. But that's not the real story."
"That's what I'm here for. What's real?"
"Shirley was mixed up with something weird. This wasn't just some friends who watched television and decided it might be fun to kill a homeless person."
"What was it?"