Read Online Put a Lid on It by Donald E. Westlake - Free Book Online

I'm a New Yorker.”
    Elaine Goldfarb said, “It doesn't seem to me you have an adequate procedure to make good on your representations to my client.”
    “Make a suggestion,” Benjamin offered.
    “A presidential pardon.”
    Jeffords began to bob around, saying, “No no no, that would raise far too many questions.”
    “I'm afraid Pat's right,” Benjamin said, looking sad.
    “Then a governor's pardon, State of New York.”
    “Similar problem.”
    Everybody was stuck. Meehan saw it and heard the silence and, remembering a stunt he'd heard about, a friend of a friend, in a different context, used it to get out from under a falling safe, said, “Switch it to juvenile court.”
    They all looked at him. Jeffords said, “For one thing, your voice has changed.”
    “I bet you could do it,” Meehan said. “It's all in the bureaucracy, right? Switch me to juvenile court, closed session, I plead guilty, time served.”
    Elaine Goldfarb said, “Which is how long?”
    “If we count today,” Meehan said, “twelve days.”
    Jeffords said, “Why would we count today?”
    Meehan looked at him. “What am I, free to go?”
    Elaine Goldfarb said to Benjamin, “What have you done about the paperwork at this point, his whereabouts?”
    “Pat knows that,” Benjamin said, and Jeffords said, “The MCC thinks he's in Otisville, and Otisville thinks he's in the MCC.”
    “So he's still serving time,” she said. “And if you could transfer his case to juvenile court, to a judge who wouldn't make difficulties, he could first release Meehan into my custody, I undertake to assure his presence at a hearing in chambers, probably early next week, he pleads guilty, he's remanded into my custody again in lieu of parole, and we could very easily make the paperwork look kosher.” Smiling at Meehan, she said, “Good thinking.”
    “Already,” Meehan said, “I feel like a kid again.”

17
    M EEHAN AWOKE WITH a smile on his lips. He didn't even mind the
bzzt-bzzt
of the phone, nor the chirpy voice telling him it was oh eight hundred hours. Life, which only two days ago had looked like a horror story, in which the MCC had only been the preview to someplace even worse, like Leavenworth, now seemed sweet.
    Elaine Goldfarb had come through like a champ. She was going to get him out from under that lousy federal hijacking rap, she was making it possible for him to return to the world a free man, and she'd even managed to negotiate him a thousand bucks in walking-around money, which he was to receive in cash this very morning, when they would leave for the flight back from Norfolk to LaGuardia, in New York City. All he'd have to do then, other than keep an appointment some time soon in juvenile court, was put together a string of guys he knew—he was already thinking of some likely possibilities—and go visit an antique firearms collection. Jeffords had given him phone numbers so he could arrange to drop off the incriminating package once he got hold of it, and then he was completely and totally out from under. Not bad.
    Humming, which he did badly because he had very little practice at it, Meehan got out of bed and went over to raise the venetian blind and look out at a sunny day. Of course it was a sunny day, they were all going to be sunny days from now on. Soon he would shower and have his breakfast and be on his way, loose as a goose.
    Gazing out at the clipped lawns of this Park Service enclave, little people in olive drab uniforms moving this way and that like an animated model for the real thing, Meehan made himself slow down, slow down, and forced himself to think. Didn't one of the ten thousand rules cover this situation?
    Yeah; don't count your chickens.
    After breakfast in the cafeteria, Jeffords took Meehan away for what he called a “briefing,” telling Elaine Goldfarb, “We'll just be a few minutes, and then we'll head for the airport.”
    “Fine,” she said. “I'll have another coffee.”
    Bruce Benjamin wasn't