Free Undue Influence by Steve Martini

disappeared. It’s a dozen blocks from my office to the Capital Gymnasium and Athletic Club. At twelve-fifteen I get an urgent message delivered on the squash court. I take my leave, to one of the white telephones lined in cloistered booths in the foyer. “Hello.”
    “Paul.” She is breathless.
    When I hear the voice I have a single question: “Where the hell are you?”
    “I don’t have much time. Where’s Julie and Danny?” Laurel’s voice is strained and tired. What I would expect from someone who has been on the lam for nearly two days now. “Half the county is looking for you.”
    “I know,” she says. “But I didn’t do it.”
    “Then where are you? Why did you run?”
    “I can’t talk.”
    “Come in, give yourself up,” I tell her. “They’re calling you armed and dangerous.” She laughs at this. A nervous titter.
    “It’s no joke. Cops with an adrenaline rush have a habit of shooting,” I tell her. “I’ll be okay. Do you have the kids?” Laurel’s mind at this moment is a monorail, single track and rolling with her children on board. “I did until yesterday. Jack had ‘em picked up from school by one of his AA’s.” These are gofers who do menial tasks for legislators lackeys-in-waiting. “Damn it.” Silence on the phone while she thinks. I can smell it like burning neoprene coming over the line, the machinations of panic on the run. Still, Laurel has not completely lost her mind. She has found me in the one place where Lama is not likely to be eavesdropping. With Jimmy you can’t take much comfort in the formalities of magistrates and judicially ordered wiretaps. I’ve suspected for days now that my phone has suddenly become a party line.
    “Can you get a message to them?” she says. Her kids.
    “Why?”
    “I want them out of there.”
    I think her brain is scrambled. “You want them on the run with you?”
    “No. No. A friend,” she says. “In Michigan.”
    “That’s not my biggest concern at this moment,” I say.
    “Oh, shit,” and she’s gone from the phone a receding voice, sound vanishing like fog on a warming day. “Hello. Are you there?” I get mental images Laurel swinging around some corner, enough tension on the phone cord to break it. Then I hear her breathing closer again. “What happened?”
    “Police just swung by in the parking lot,” she says. “It’s okay.
    They’re gone now. Probably just a coffee break,” she tells me. “My picture is everywhere,” she says. “Even up here.” I could get a map and play with little pins, my twenty best guesses on where “up” is. “Use your head,” I tell her. “You’re no good to your kids dead or in prison.
    Come in and we’ll deal with it.” I try to engage her in conversation. I ask her where she was the night of Melanie’s death, hoping for an alibi, something I can bootstrap into an argument for our side, to induce her in. “Can you get a message to them?” she says. She’s back to her children.
    “They’re fine. You’re the one in trouble,” I tell her. “Come in, I’ll meet you, pick you up. I’ll make arrangements with the DA to surrender,” I say. “It’ll go much better at trial. We’ll have a shot at bail,” I tell her. I’ve got more closers than a used-car salesman. None of them working. “Not till the kids are gone,” she says. “Out-of-town. Then I’ll surrender. “Listen,” she says. “I have a friend in Michigan. Went to college together. She’s willing to take the kids, keep them there quietly until this is over.”
    “Your kids can handle it,” I tell her.
    “I’ll take care of them, keep them out of it.”
    “No.” Her tone tells me she’s maybe half an inch from hanging up. I take another tack to keep her talking. “This friend,” I say. “Does she know your situation?”
    “I told her. It makes no difference. Like I said, she’s a friend.”
    The way Laurel says this it makes me think perhaps at this moment I am not qualifying for