“They’re showing it again,” Paul said. “Can you believe it? The same goddamn tape over and over. My family, for God’s sake.”
I looked at the TV and caught the film of Paul, Fiske, Kate, and me, trooping across the front lawn under umbrellas. We’d left the restaurant in a homecoming I’d orchestrated, so I couldn’t help objectifying the scene. Fiske, vital and self-assured, didn’t look the part of a murderer, and projected like Blake Carrington with bona fide business acumen. When the reporters shouted questions at him from the sidewalk, he declined comment with a Windsor wave and the smile of a majority shareholder.
“People walking into a house is news?” Paul said. “I give up.” He sank to the foot of the bed and lowered the volume. “My poor mother.”
I squinted at Kate’s image on the TV screen, but I didn’t see his mother the way he did. Kate didn’t look poor, in close-up. On the contrary, she looked wealthy and haughty, with cheekbones that could cut hard cheese. The kind of wife you would cheat on with your pretty young secretary, whose soft, windswept photo came on next. I looked at Paul’s back as he watched TV. Beads of water glistened on his shoulders. His tan line peeked out from under the towel.
“Rita, look,” he said. “It’s you again.”
A picture of me came on. Brown eyes with smudgy eye pencil, a strong nose that needed powdering, crow’s-feet only surgery could improve, and a mound of long, dark hair exploding in the humidity. “Another bad hair year.”
“Silly. You’re beautiful.”
Bullshit. I watched him watch me as I said from the screen, “We are all very sorry about the death of Miss Sullivan, and our thoughts are with her family at this difficult time. We have no further comment.”
“You were great,” Paul said to the TV. “You were wonderful, Rita. You’ve been wonderful. None of us could get through this without you.” He turned suddenly toward me, and I didn’t know whether he’d caught me looking at his tan line.
“Sure you could.”
“Can’t you just take the compliment? I’m trying to tell you how much I appreciate you.” He edged closer to me on the bed and rubbed my instep, but I didn’t want his touch or his words to warm me.
“Hey, stop.”
“No, I’m going to compliment you. You ready?”
“Come off it, Paul.”
“No. Hold still. This will only hurt a minute. I think you’re a great woman and a great lawyer.”
“Paul, stop. You just like the fee.” I shifted away, but his hand chased my ankle and caught it.
“Oh, really? You think you’re cheap?”
“Say what? I think I’m free.”
“You, free? Just look around this room.” He clicked off the TV as Patricia’s attorney, Stan Julicher, came on, crying crocodile tears in front of his firm’s large nameplate. Now that Patricia was dead, the harassment case was over. Julicher would miss his contingency more than he would miss his client.
“Hey, I wanted to see that,” I said.
“How about this bed, huh? You think that came cheap?” Paul pointed at our four-poster, whose turned spindles stretched to a delicate arched canopy.
“This bed didn’t cost anything. You built it.”
“It still costs, honey. It’s all cherrywood. The labor I threw in for free, because I liked you so much.”
“What a guy.” The bed was a birthday present Paul had built in his father’s garage. I’d loved it the instant he’d taken me to see it, then I’d brought him wine and wrenches while he disassembled the contraption to get it out the door. He was never as good a planner as his father, which was part of his charm.
“And how about that armoire, huh?” He jerked his head at the cherry cabinet across the room. “Made to order, all by yours truly. With big drawers for my best girl’s shirts and little drawers for her lovely undies. Just like you asked, right?”
I didn’t say anything. I remembered him refinishing the armoire, hand-rubbing it with a chamois. I tried not to think about how good his fingertips felt on my leg.
“Wasn’t it just like you asked? Wasn’t it exactly how you wanted it? With the pull-out drawer for your extra decks of cards?”
I wanted to smile, but it caught in my throat. “Not for cards, you.”
“For poker chips then. Poker chips to your heart’s content.”
“Not for chips, either.”
“But it’s a pull-out drawer, is it not?”
“Paul—”
“Your Honor, please direct the witness to answer the question.” He caressed my leg. “My Honor says you have to answer. Yes or no.” He liked to play lawyer and was good at it, from a lifetime of hanging around judges, lawyers, and courthouses.
“Yes.”
“I rest my case. Call your next witness.”
“Give me a break.”
The light from the bedside lamp gave his amused expression a soft glow, and he rolled onto his side and played with my knee. “Do you still like this?” he asked softly.
I tried not to pay attention to the sensation of his touch or to his chest, twisted across the white bedspread toward me. I kept thinking of the doctor’s letter.
“Huh? Do you like this, Rita? You used to like it when I did this.”
I knew where he was going. I had a dim memory of it, growing more vivid with each stroke of his hand, like ember to flame. “I used to like a lot of things, Paul.”
“I know. I remember them all.” His hand traveled up to my thigh. “It wasn’t so long ago, you know.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“It was very long ago. When you liked me and I liked you.” I heard bitterness in my voice.
He drew a line up from my knee with his forefinger. “I never stopped liking you. I like you still. But you stopped liking me, and I’m trying to get you back.” He hoisted himself toward me, and his towel slipped down.
I averted my eyes as if he were a stranger. “You can’t get me back.”
He kissed my knee before I could object. “You wanted me on the first date, remember? I made you a salad for dinner and you were smitten, you said, and you wanted to make love. The first date, the very first date. A fast Italian girl, I thought.”
I laughed, the memory was so unexpected. It dawned bright as daybreak, and as undeniable.
“Do you remember what I told you when you asked me, flat-out?”
I closed my eyes and remembered. His kiss traveled to the inside of my knee, slower this time, slightly wet.
“Miss Morrone, are you going to answer the question or do I have to ask My Honor to put you in jail?” His mouth moved along the inside of my leg, kissing me like he had that night in his apartment. The lights had been off. I’d turned them off, the way I liked it.
“No,” I said. “Paul—”
“I told you you had the most beautiful legs I’d ever seen, and as much as I wanted to know more about them, I liked you altogether too much to do that on the first date.”
I kept my eyes closed, remembering. His kisses passed my knee and made a trail on the inside of my thigh. I felt myself easing back into the pillow while he kissed me, this first date that had so much promise. He had thrilled me. An architect with a pedigree and an open heart.
“I told you I thought I was falling in love with you, do you remember? That I was in it for the long run.” I felt his kiss move up my thigh, under my robe. The notepad slipped from my lap and the sound it made as it fell to the carpet came from some other time and place. “I had to put you out that night, like a cat.”
He always said that, Like a cat. I used to laugh. I felt myself warming.
“I love you,” he said, and I let myself hear it. Let myself believe it for just a moment. It pushed my problems away, swept aside Fiske and Patricia, my managing partner, and my new HPV virus. I wanted to forget it all, get lost for a while. Slip away. No one had to know, no one had to see. Not even me. I reached up and switched off the light.
“Do you reme
mber what else I told you that night?” he asked, his voice soft in the darkness. Familiar. Like his sigh, and the throatier sound that would come later. “That it wasn’t one night, it was forever.” His mouth reached the top of my thighs, and he kissed them until my legs parted.
I remembered. It was the first date, then the first time we made love. Then the time after that and the time after that, too. All the times, all of the same piece, seamless. When the loving was still there and so palpable you could feel it like the bones on his back when he was on you. You could hear it in the sounds you made, and in his, too, deeper. You could feel it in the slickness between you, belly-level, in summer, and the way it warmed your feet in winter, no matter how cold it was.
That’s what I remembered, all of it came flooding back, and in a minute it was inside me, filling me up, suffusing me with good feeling.
He was right about one thing. I loved him still.
If I could think back.
And the lights were off.
9
The office wall was crowded with diplomas and certificates and the slick desktop reflected the squat and omnipotent silhouette of a unique breed of high roller: the managing partner of a law firm. I’d first met Ed “Mack” Macklin when I was a young associate and he had kissed off the last firm that wouldn’t ante up every time he sneezed. Mack became my mentor, although I never realized before this moment how much he resembled Edward G. Robinson. But maybe that was because I was feeling like the Cincinnati Kid.
“Why are you getting out of the Sullivan case?” Mack said, relaxed in his cushy leather chair. His office was the largest in the firm, and well-appointed. An expensive leather couch and chairs clustered around a glass coffee table; a wall-length English credenza held some neat files and an expensive, albeit untouched, laptop computer. The virgin laptop was the hottest power prop, signifying that Mack had the juice to make the firm buy him a toy and also that he was too important to play with it. You had no power if you actually used your PowerBook.
“The Sullivan case is over. The plaintiff is dead.”
“The judge called me last night, Rita. He was very disappointed. Said he expects us to stand behind him if he’s charged with murder.”
“Judge Hamilton called you at home?” Fiske was making all the right moves, and I was the sacrificial pawn. “What time did he call?”
“What’s the difference? He’s a friend.”
“Of yours? Since when?”
“Since last night.” Mack laughed abruptly. “Judge Hamilton is one of the most prominent members of the federal bench. He wasn’t happy that our firm would leave him in the lurch.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“I’m not happy when he’s not happy. I’m not happy when any federal judge is unhappy, especially in our district. Don’t you want to make me happy?” He spoke in the subdued tone of someone who expected an affirmative answer.
“No.”
“You wound me.”
“You’ll get over it, too.”
Mack gazed past me through one of three large, smoked-glass windows, which overlooked the offices of the law firm he had just left. He’d demanded this view because he wanted his old firm to see him making money for someone else. “So,” he said, “I told the judge that he could rest assured that Averback, Shore & Macklin was his counsel at the beginning and we were going to remain his counsel to the end. Got it?”
“What’s this? Muscle?”
He smiled, not unpleasantly. “I’m flexing. You like?”
“Be still my heart.”
“Good. Then it’s settled.” He grinned like he wasn’t kidding. I felt my temper rise.
“Not exactly, Mack. It’s my practice. I’ll run it the way I want.”
“The judge is a client of this firm.”
“No, the judge is a client of mine. He didn’t hire the firm, he hired me. I was his lawyer, now I’m not. As of today.”
He eased back into his desk chair. The gesture looked like resignation, but I knew better. Mack always recoiled before he struck, like a cobra. “You’re right, Rita. It’s your practice. You can run it any way you like. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you know the Committee was delighted when the Hamilton matter came to you.”
“I remember.” A collective rubbing of soft, pasty hands.
“I don’t have to tell you how disappointed they’d be if I had to report on your withdrawal.”
I was breaking hearts everywhere. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“You know, the Committee has been discussing the possibility of a midcourse correction in the partnership contracts. Were you aware of that?”
Firm politics was not my strong suit. The courtroom was where the action was, not the conference room. “Midcourse correction?”
“A couple of us have noted that the current distributions aren’t adequately reflecting our contributions.”
“You mean you’re not making enough money, Mack?”
“In a word? Absofuckinglutely.”
We both laughed, without mirth.
“It would affect all of our contracts,” he said. “But your name was the only one from your class that came up for an increase. I could make it happen, Rita. You stand to skip two classes. Serious money.”
A lawyer’s trick; whenever possible, wave a check. Since I grew up without money, I was almost impervious to this temptation. Almost. “You mean if I drop Judge Hamilton, I can kiss my raise good-bye?”
“In a word?”
Prick. “Very funny.”
“Look, Rita, this whole situation is in your control. As I said, I can’t make you do anything.”
“Fine. No raise. I’m happy with my draw now.”
Mack made a sturdy tent with his fingers. “Well, then, consider that your partnership draw may not stay as high as it is. If there’s a midcourse correction, some of us will go up. But some will go down.”
My mouth tasted bitter. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. If I don’t represent the judge, my draw will go down? In a word?”
He opened his hands. “I don’t control the Committee.”
“Who are you kidding, Mack? They don’t take a dump without asking you.”
“Rita—”
It pissed me off. “What you’re saying is if I give up the representation, the Committee will recut the pie. And after they get done with my piece, I’ll have to put the ice cream on the side. Think I’ll be able to balance even a spoonful on my sliver?”
“You’re overreacting. The whole thing is in your control.”
“Then why am I feeling so controlled?”
“I have no idea. Big piece or little piece? The choice is up to you.”
I folded my arms, looking no tougher than a petulant teenager. “Okay, I’m dieting.”
He rocked back in his chair and stared at the ceiling lights, discreetly recessed. After a minute he said, “You’re being stubborn about this and I’m entitled to know why.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Look, this isn’t a game. This is serious.”
“Games are serious, Mack. You know that.” Mack played big-time blackjack in Atlantic City and Vegas, to stay in shape for managing my law firm.
“Rita, this is a terrible decision you’re making. The judge is your client, he needs you now. You’re a terrific lawyer, a creative lawyer. That result last week at City Hall—”
“Oh, are you kissing my ass now? Because I like it a little to the left.”
A buzzer sounded on the phone and Mack snatched up the receiver. “What? Send him in.” The receiver clattered to the hook and he eased back again. “I called in reinforcements.”
“Who?”
The door opened and in came a gray Armani suit, a silk paisley tie that ended in a knifepoint, and blue-black hair pulled back into a short ponytail, of all things. It was Jake Tobin, firm womanizer. His dark eyes looked faintly amused.
“You know Jake, don’t you?” Mack sa
id.
“Only by reputation.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Tobin said with an easy laugh, then closed the door behind him.
Mack said, “I asked Jake to join us because he’s done extensive criminal work. He was a public defender before he joined us. Right, Jake?”
“For fifteen years,” Tobin said. He leaned against the credenza and glanced enviously at the PowerBook. I was guessing he knew how to use it.
Mack said, “Jake, I was just telling Rita here that you’ve tried a lot of murder cases.”
“About fifty jury trials, give or take some major scum. Most of them got out of jail free.”
A career to be proud of. “I’m impressed. You want to represent Judge Hamilton? I hear he needs somebody like you.”
Mack shook his head. “No, Rita. Wrong. My idea was that Jake could backstop you on the case. Judge Hamilton told me it’s you or he goes to Goldberg’s firm.”
Tobin nodded. “Now I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be, I quit,” I said.
Mack sighed. “Rita, I’ve had reporters calling from the American Lawyer and the National Law Journal. Joanne told me there were almost forty calls yesterday. And that plaintiffs lawyer, Julicher, he’s all over the news.”
“Julicher?” Tobin asked. “I never heard of him.”
“I had his bio checked, wait a minute.” Mack thumbed through a neat stack of papers to the side of his desk, pulled a sheet out, and skimmed it. “He’s from New York, but not from any of the top-tier firms. A nobody. Graduated from a state university, then Fordham Law School, Class of ‘77, blah, blah, blah, blah. He’s a slip-and-fall guy, does workmen’s comp cases. A scrapper, a nothing, and he’s on the tube all night last night.”
“He’s hustling referral business, Mack.”
“Is he a good lawyer?” Tobin asked, looking at me.
“He’s no scholar, but he’s a fighter. If he still had a harassment case, he would’ve given me a run for my money.”
Mack tossed the bio aside and stood up. “But it’s a murder case now, it’s getting everybody’s attention. Everybody’s watching. If you withdraw now, they’ll all know about it. It’ll make Judge Hamilton look guilty.”