New York Dead

driving away, waving.

Chapter
43

    Late in the evening, as Stone was drifting off to sleep, the telephone rang. He fumbled for it. “Hello?”
    “Mr. Barrington?” The voice was vaguely familiar.
    “Yes?”
    “This is Herbert Van Fleet.”
    Stone looked at the clock. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “What is it?”
    “I know I must have awakened you. I’m very sorry.”
    “What do you want, Mr. Van Fleet?”
    “I want to retain you.”
    “Retain me?”
    “I understand that you are practicing law now.”
    “Yes, that’s right, but why do we need to talk about this at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night? Can you call my office number tomorrow morning?”
    “I’m afraid it’s more urgent than that. I’ve been arrested.”
    Stone sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What were you arrested for, Mr. Van Fleet?”
    “Please call me Herb.”
    Annoyed. “What were you arrested for,
Herb
?”
    “They’re calling it attempted rape. They want to arraign me in a couple of hours, in night court.”
    “Where are you now?”
    “I’m in a place called the Tombs. They let me make this one call.”
    “You’re going to need to raise bail, Herb. Can you lay your hands on some money?”
    “How much money?”
    “I should think that, with no previous arrests, the judge might want as much as twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, or you can put up ten percent and some property to a bail bondsman. You won’t get the ten percent back.” “I’ve got about forty thousand dollars in a money market account,” Van Fleet said.
    “That should do it,” Stone said. “All right, Herb, I’ll represent you at the arraignment. My fee for that will be a thousand dollars. If you want me to represent you after that, we can talk about a further retainer.” “All right, that’s acceptable.”
    “I’ll meet you at night court.” Stone hung up, oddly elated. Herbert Van Fleet was a strange person, but this was the first time somebody had asked Stone to represent him, his first client outside Woodman & Weld. It promised to be a fairly lucrative representation too. He began to get dressed.

    Night court was a zoo. Every prostitute, vagrant, and petty criminal arrested during the past few hours would be arraigned there, and the crowd was colorful and noisy. From the back of the huge courtroom, Stone could barely hear the judge, who was shouting.
    Stone counted. Standing before the bench, looking at the floor and shifting their weight from one foot to the other, were twenty-four Chinese men, all neatly dressed in business suits. He took a seat down front and listened, curious. The men had been gambling in the basement of a restaurant in Chinatown, only a few blocks away, and an old lady next door had turned them in. Their Anglo lawyer, in unctuous tones, was explaining to the somewhat amused judge that his clients were all respected members of the community, businessmen out for an evening of diversion. They were not criminals, not really, and were very sorry to have disturbed the old woman’s sleep. The judge released the men on their own recognizance.
    Stone got up, introduced himself to the bailiff at the door to the holding cells, and, shortly, Herbert Van Fleet appeared, in handcuffs. Stone sat him down in one of the little rooms set aside for consultation with attorneys. “All right, Herb, tell me exactly what happened.” Van Fleet sighed. “I was at the Tribeca Grill, having a drink, and I got to talking to this girl. I offered her a ride home — she said she lived in the West Village — and, on the way, we were getting sort of friendly, and—” “Exactly what do you mean by ‘getting sort of friendly’?”
    “We were holding hands, and she was sitting close to me. We stopped at a traffic light on Sixth Avenue, and we kissed.”
    “Did you put your hands between her legs or on her breasts?”
    “Yes, on her breasts, and she seemed to like that. It was when I put my hand down the front of her dress that she became difficult.”
    “Difficult?”
    “She started screaming at me. I didn’t realize how drunk she was until that moment. She started to get out of the van, and I tried to persuade her to calm down, and then she started screaming for help.” “Were you fighting?”
    “I had hold of her wrists and was talking to her, trying to get her to calm down, when a police car pulled up alongside us at the light, and she jumped out of the van and started screaming