Sweet Liar (Montgomery/Taggert 18) - Page 95

“If you like cows!” Samantha said through clenched teeth, jerking her arm away and walking ahead of him.

When they were ushered into Walden’s office, Samantha was angry and Mike was chuckling. Mr. Walden, who was exactly as he’d been described, took one look at the two of them as they sat down and said, “I don’t handle divorce cases.”

With a laugh, Mike reached for Sam’s hand resting on the arm of the chair in front of Mr. Walden’s desk, but she snatched it away. “Actually, we’ve come here on another matter. Your name was given to us indirectly through Jubilee Johnson.”

For just a second the expression of jo

viality on Walden’s face changed. It was odd to think of this man as a defender of criminals, because put a white wig and beard on him and a red suit and he’d be every child’s picture of Santa Claus. “Ah, yes, Jubilee. I hope he’s well and his family is doing all right.”

It was at that moment that Samantha saw Walden’s left hand. When she’d entered the room, she’d been so upset with Mike that she hadn’t really looked at Mr. Walden or noticed much of anything about him except that he was such a pleasant-looking man that she immediately thought that he could know nothing about Maxie.

Now she was staring at his left hand. His hand had been tattooed a solid black from his wrist upward, covering his smallest finger and the one next to it, and those two fingernails were polished with black enamel.

“Half Hand,” she whispered, because at first glance his hand looked as though half of it were missing. “Half Hand,” she said louder, interrupting whatever Mike and the man were saying.

Stepping around the desk, Walden smiled at her, then held out his hand, palm down, and she took it in her own, looking at it. Releasing his hand, she looked up at him. “Who are you and what do you know about Maxie?”

Mr. Walden chuckled, sounding like the man he resembled. “I was born with the name of Joseph Elmer Gruenwald 3d. Since my father was called Joe, I was called Elmer. Ugly name. It’s difficult to get ahead in this world with a name like that because you spend a lot of your life hearing jokes about Elmer Fudd. To counteract the name I think I spent a lot of time thinking about my gangster grandfather.”

It was Mike’s turn to speak. “Half Hand.”

“Yes,” Mr. Walden said. “Half Hand Joe was my grandfather. My father was nine when Half Hand was killed and I think he glorified him. Rather than facing the facts that his father was nothing more than a hired killer, my father tried to make him into a hero, so I grew up hearing about how great Half Hand was.” He hesitated. “When Half Hand died, my father was given some money, but my grandmother went through it within six months.”

Holding his left hand up, Walden studied it. “When I was sixteen, I got drunk for the first time in my life, and when I woke up I found that I had gone to a tattoo parlor and had this done to my hand in memory of my grandfather. When I was sober I wanted to have it removed, but my father said it was an omen.”

When both Samantha and Mike looked puzzled at that, Mr. Walden chuckled. “My dad had a rich fantasy life. He got married when he was little more than a kid and I was soon on the way, so he never had a chance to go to school. After he saw my hand, he said I was destined to become an attorney and save men like my grandfather. I don’t know how a sixteen-year-old with a hellacious hangover and a tattooed hand equaled attorney to my father, but the whole scheme sounded good to me. I went to law school thinking that I was going to be spending my life saving misunderstood men and women, but I find that I defend the dregs of humanity.”

His words and his expression were at odds with each other, for he looked well pleased with himself.

“Why?” Samantha asked.

“Money, my dear. The scum-of-the-earth wouldn’t do scummy deeds if it didn’t make them a lot of money, and defending them has made me a rich man. My parents lived in a two-room apartment with five kids. I have a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and an estate in Westchester. I’ve sent my four daughters to Ivy League schools, and my wife has her clothes made for her in Paris.”

He smiled at the innocence of the two handsome young people before him, for their faces were readable, telling him that they would never sell their souls for money. But, then, from the looks of the way they were dressed and from the way they carried themselves, neither of them knew what it meant to be hungry or cold or have the landlord evict them in the middle of the night for nonpayment of rent. His daughters were like this pretty little Samantha, well groomed, well fed, not haunted by memories of poverty. Inadvertently, the garbage he defended had done this good deed and helped put something clean and good on earth.

“When I was twenty-one, I changed my name to H. H. Walden, a nice WASP name that I used all through law school. It helped me with the blond tennis players, and later, I could tell the bums I defended that the H. H. stood for Half Hand, so it helped me there too.”

“Because they had heard of Half Hand’s lost three million,” Mike said, making Walden smile.

“You’ve done some searching, haven’t you?”

Mike told him about the biography he was writing and about Maxie being Sam’s grandmother. “What can you tell us about her?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Mr. Walden said, his eyes locked with Mike’s and never flinching.

A practiced liar, Mike thought. “Not even the name of the nursing home she’s in?” Mike asked. “Do you have any idea who’s paying her bills?”

At that Walden put his head back and laughed uproariously. “Caught me, did you? Yes, I know where Maxie is, but I’m not paying her bills. If you want to know that, you should ask her where the money comes from.”

“She pretends she’s someone named Abby and won’t even admit she’s Maxie.”

“Ah, well, that’s understandable. She’s probably afraid for the young lady here, afraid Doc will do something to her, or if not Doc, then someone else. The legend of Half Hand’s money is still alive in some circles. Of course, you do know that her name really is Abby, don’t you? No? It’s Mary Abigail Dexter. When she signed on with Jubilee to sing in his club, she initialed the contract, but instead of using her initials of M.A.D., she wrote M.A.X. Jubilee’s bookkeeper, who needed glasses, thought her name was Maxie and the name stuck.”

Mike gave Walden a hard look, for he had a feeling the man was withholding information, information that he had no intention of telling them. “Someone broke into an upper floor of my house and tried to kill Samantha.”

Walden didn’t so much as blink, but then he lived with death and murder and mayhem on a daily basis. “Did they now? You catch him?”

“No,” Mike said tightly. “You have any idea who it could have been? Someone you know?”

Tags: Jude Deveraux Montgomery/Taggert Historical
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