By the time Jay makes it back to his office, Sam’s black Cadillac is parked out front. Sam and Neal are already inside. They’ve been served coffee with sugar and cream, and offered what little resides in a kitchen that hasn’t served a client in a year: rye crackers and some of Eddie Mae’s leftover beans. She meets Jay at the front door. “There something you want to tell me?”
“Come on,” he says. “Let me introduce you to our new client.”
“Good lord.” She reaches to touch up her hair.
Once formal introductions are made, she stays up front while Jay walks Neal and Sam back to his office. “I understand we have a deal,” Sam says, not bothering to take off his overcoat. Jay tells him to have a seat, but Sam ignores him. Neal stands too. “Axel’s meeting with the League of Women Voters this morning, else he’d be here too. The timing is brutal, but it’d look a lot worse if he canceled. But as you know, he’s behind this, one hundred percent.”
“Neal and I made a deal,” Jay says, making clear the boundary that exists around a lawyer and his client.
Sam nods, reaching into his coat pocket for his cigarettes, getting one all the way between his thin lips before he remembers Jay’s rule about smoking.
“What about the injunction?” he says.
“Let’s consider that the nuclear option. I think there are a couple of steps between here and there,” Jay says, glancing at Neal, who is still wearing the jeans from last night and has his hands in his pockets. Jay hasn’t mentioned a word about Neal’s father. That was also a part of the deal. “I’ve got a plan in place.”
“Okay,” Sam says, looking at his grandson, reaching for the young man’s shoulder, almost turning to hug the boy, he’s so relieved. “I’m going to put the best team behind you,” he tells Jay. “Andrew Hastings out of Dallas is interested in second chair. I’ll get you the best investigators, the best experts I can find.”
Jay shakes his head.
He already put his team together, he says, late last night. After Ellie showed him how to make a three-way call, he put Lonnie on the line and then his old friend Rolly. Lon, the former Post reporter, agreed to work her police contacts and plumb the depths of her notes and knowledge of the Duchon and Wells cases, and Jay asked if she could get her hands on an early copy of the autopsy report for Alicia Nowell from the coroner. “Medical examiner,” Lonnie had to tell him. “In Harris County, it’s the medical examiner.” And Jay nodded and said, Right, his inexperience already showing. Rolly, the former private investigator, would do pretty much anything Jay asked, whatever the case needs, starting with pinning down the whereabouts of the onetime suspect, Alonzo Hollis, last Tuesday. “If I’m doing this,” Jay tells Sam, “I’m doing it my way.”
“With my money?”
“You want me, you take them,” Jay says, adding that Lonnie Phillips and Rolly Snow have something he’s not likely to find anywhere else on short notice. “My trust.”
“I don’t know about this.”
“I think Neal has made his choice.”
“I want Jay, Pop.”
“It’s not just about you, Neal. Your uncle’s campaign, everything this family’s worked for, it could all go up in smoke if this thing is handled wrong.”
“This was your idea, Pop.”
Sam rounds his shoulders, trying to loosen them, testing the feel of a situation that’s out of his control. He reaches for his cigarettes and then again remembers: Jay’s house, Jay’s rules. “So what now?”
“You let me do my job,” Jay says. He lays out a few guidelines. “Publicly, I’d put no distance between Axe and Neal, don’t send the message there’s anything wrong, anything to hide, anything you should be ashamed of. And no cops, no press, don’t talk to anyone, no matter how tempted you are, Axel too. Understand?”
Sam nods, sliding his gray fedora on his head.
“I’ll messenger a check for the retainer,” he says.
He looks once more at his grandson, who crosses the room and throws his arms around Sam. The two hold each other tightly, their foreheads pressed together, Sam whispering words that Jay pretends not to hear, as Neal starts to cry softly. “It’s okay, son, it’s okay,” Sam says. “We’ll make it right.” He kisses his grandson’s forehead before stepping back, forcing distance between them. Glancing at Jay one last time, Sam offers a curt nod and walks out.
“Why didn’t you tell him?” Jay says.
“I thought that was between me and you.”
“For now.” He leans his head into the hall, checking to see that Eddie Mae has seen Sam out of the building. “But if you were with your father on Tuesday night, then he’s your alibi, the man who’s going to save your ass.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I don’t know that you have much of a choice.” Jay leans against the front edge of his desk. “Why don’t you want Sam to know?” He dips his head, trying to meet his client’s eyes. “Whatever you’re hiding, it’s going to come out, and in court if this thing goes to trial.”
“He hates him,” Neal says finally. “No, worse than that actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“To Sam, I don’t have a father. He doesn’t exist.”
“Why’d they fall out?”
Neal shrugs. “I was born too late to know.”
“Sam never mentions it?”
“He never mentions him. Sam Hathorne has only one son.”
“Does Axel know what happened?”
“I never asked him. It’s off-limits in the family, the whole subject.”