Norma Lavin stood up and said, “I’m going to get my brother sprung before they start switching him around the precincts again.” Her voice was leaden. “I suppose this is the end of the road, Mundin. But if you still want to consider taking our case, here’s the address. Unfortunately there’s no phone.” She hesitated.
She began, “I hope you’ll——” It was almost a cry for help. She bit off the words, dropped a coin and a card on the table and strode from the coffee shop. The Ay-rabs looked icily through her as she went.
Mundin managed to see Dworcas for a minute. “Del,” he
•aid, “what’s with these Lavin people? What do you know
about them?” Dworcas’s face was open and friendly—Mundin knew how
ittte that could be relied on. “Not much, Charlie. They
wanted a lawyer. We’ve worked together; I thought of you.” “Right after you thought of Willie Choate?” Dworcas was patient. “What the hell, Charlie? Choate
wouldn’t touch it, I knew that. But they wanted to talk to
•omebody big.”
“Sure.” Mundin hesitated, but already Dworcas was beginning to pick at papers on his desk. “Del, one thing. Some cop
•uned Jimmy Lyons picked the boy up in Hussein’s, no rea-
•oo that I could see. The—the boy was conditioned, I think.” “Urn. Jimmy Lyons? He’s the captain’s man. I’ll call.” Dworcas called, while Mundin thought about the complications of life on the firing-line of the’law. There had not been,
•t John Marshall, a course in How to Get Along with Ward-fceders. But there should have been, thought Mundin, there
should have been. Let us put you up to take a fall in the year when we aren’t going to win the Council, and your name turns up on the slate of poll-watchers. Give us a hand at speeches, and when a case drops in our lap, we’ll think of you. . . . Dworcas came up smiling.
“The sister bailed him out. They just wanted to cool him off—the kid gave Lyons some lip, evidently, and Lyons got sore. What the hell, cops are human.”
“Del, the kid didn’t give Lyons any lip. Lyons was looking for it.”
“Sure, Charlie, sure.” Del’s eyes were beginning to rove. Mundin let him go.
He plucked the girl’s card out of his pocket and turned it over, bemused. G.M.L. Homes, he thought. Corporate practice. A shrewd, hard cop looking for trouble. It’s not generally known that the “L” stands for Lavin.
And a cry for help.
The card said Norma Lavih, with an address hi Coshocton, Ohio, and a phone number. These were scratched out, and written in was 37595 Willowdale Crescent.
An address in Belly Rave!
Mundin shook his head slowly and worriedly. But there had been a cry for help.
Chapter Four
it had been a trying evening for Norvie Bligh. When he walked in on Virginia and the girl they had been perfectly normal—sullen. His news about the lawyer, Mundin, and the prospects of adopting Alexandra had produced the natural effect: “You forgot to ask about the inheritance. Leave it to Norvie! He’d forget his Social Security number if it wasn’t tattooed on him.”
Before he finished dinner he was driven to the point of getting up and stalking out.
It wasn’t anything they said. It was just that neither of them said anything to him. Not even when, pushed past the thresh-
old of control, he had shrieked at his wife and slapped the child.
But there was always Arnie.
He killed time for half an hour—Arnie didn’t like it if you got there too early; hell, you couldn’t blame him for that—and then hurried. He was almost out of breath as he got to Dwor-cas’s door.
And Arnie was warmly friendly. Norvell began at last to relax.
It wasn’t just a matter of plenty of beer and the friendly feeling of being with someone you liked. Arnie was going out of his way, Norvell saw at once, to get at the roots of Norvell’s problems. As soon as they had had a couple of beers he turned the conversation to Norvell’s work. “They must be really beginning to roll on the Field Day,” he speculated.