Till the Butchers Cut Him Down by Marcia Muller Page A

“Jesus, it’s been a long time since anybody called him that. Remember the suitcase? What a piece
     of shit. Yeah, Suits was one of our customers. Used to make a run up there every month or so. Liked to hang around, get stoned
     with Ger. One night they were solving the world’s problems like usual, and Ger starts telling Suits about
his
problem—namely, no profit. And Suits says, ‘Hey, what’ll you give me if I fix that?’ And Ger—he’s really stoned by now—Ger
     goes, ‘A million dollars, cash.’ And Suits tells him, ‘Done deal.’ And they shake on it.”
    “So how did he fix it?”
    “Same way he has ever since. Fired everybody, including me. Posted armed guards to keep us off the land. Sent Ger on a long
     vacation. Brought in people who needed the work and didn’t blow weed. The problem was simple, see: everybody from Ger on down
     had been smoking the profit.”
    “Did Suits get his million?”
    “Yeah. Ger turned it over to him in four installments—each time in the rottenest old suitcases he could find. First thing
     Suits did was bail my Cessna out of hock—I’d gotten behind on the payments—and hire me as his pilot. Plane belonged to him
     after that, but I still got to fly it. Then Ger sent him to one of his doper customers in L.A. who owned a film-equipment
     company that was in trouble. That guy sent him to Colorado, and then we went to Texas, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. And the aircraft
     just kept getting better.”
    “So all this time you’ve been pretty close to Suits—”
    A beeping sound came from Josh’s windbreaker. He reached into its pocket, grimaced. “That means T.J.’s getting seriously impatient.”
    * * *
    Suits was waiting for us on the roof of the office building, uninjured arm semaphoring wildly, as if he thought Josh couldn’t
     set the JetRanger down without his help. When we landed, he rushed forward so heedlessly that I feared for his head. Josh
     opened the door, gave him a hand up, and he slumped beside me, panting.
    Josh glanced back for instructions. I motioned for him to shut the copter down. Suits, struggling with his headset, overruled
     me by pointing toward the sky. I helped him adjust the earphones, then said into my mouthpiece, “Let’s not go anyplace till
     we’ve talked.”
    “No.” Again he pointed upward. “Just fly, Josh.”
    “Suits, you’re wasting money—”
    “It’s my money, dammit! Some people take tranquilizers or drink when they’re stressed. Others work out or run to their shrinks.
     I fly.”
    Expensive stress-management technique, I thought. But he had a point: it was his money. “So,” I said, watching the building
     grow smaller beneath us, “what’s happened now?”
    He sank lower in his seat, cradling his cast with his good hand. “Noah and I took a run over to the Port of Stockton. Noah
     … what’d you think of him?”
    “I didn’t get a chance to form an impression, other than that he looks ill.”
    “He is—heart trouble. Could pop off any minute.” Suits’s mouth curled disapprovingly; he seemed to take Romanchek’s illness
     as a sign of weak character. “Looks like the perfect corporate lawyer, doesn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    He laughed. “Not with his checkered past. Used to be a drug lawyer, defended some of the biggest names in the business—successfully.
     Proves appearances can deceive even you.”
    “I’ve been fooled a time or two. You said you and he went to Stockton?”
    Suits’s smile faded. “Yeah. Noah’d prepared the final contract for the guy who was going to be my terminal manager. All I
     needed was his signature. I wanted to bring him on board right away; this terminal’s going to be state-of-the-art, and I need
     its manager to work with the architects and contractors from the first. But the guy backed out on me.”
    “Why?”
    “He said word had gotten out about our deal, and his present employer had gone me one better. Bullshit. I know the operation
     he works for;