For the first time, Warshaw looked directly at Seeley. Perspiration had created a damp V at the neck of his cardinal sweatshirt. “That's why I hired you. Your brother and Ed Barnum told me you specialize in hard cases. I want you to do anything you have to- anything — to win this case.”
“Is that what you tell your team?”
Warshaw looked away, his gaze taking in the stadium. “They've got fifty thousand people watching. They have to play fair. You don't.”
Seeley remembered his exchange with Warshaw outside the auction tent. Here was a man who thought that slicing an infant in half was a solution, not a threat.
“You know,” Warshaw said, tossing the football from one hand to the other, “if you lose, it's going to wipe out your brother.”
Before Seeley could ask what he meant, Warshaw was on his way down the sideline, throwing the football to another man in chinos and Stanford sweatshirt.
In the third quarter, Stanford scored its first touchdown, but Washington was making fewer on-field mistakes and, if Seeley's instincts were right, was gathering physical momentum just as Stanford was losing it. The sun was going down and Renata pulled on a wind-breaker. She'd gone onto the field two more times with her crew, and when she wasn't on the field, she was busy with one player or another or with the coaches. Seeley noticed that, unlike the first half, her jaw was tight and her hands balled into fists.
Early in the final quarter, Washington made another touchdown, and then Renata was on the field again, this time attending to the downed quarterback. His helmet was off and he had propped himself up on his elbows. Renata's hand was on his leg, her assistants and the trainer looking on. For a moment she turned from the youth to look across the field to the sidelines, and her gaze, when it found Seeley, was so filled with longing that he had to turn away. When he looked again, Renata had the quarterback's hands in hers and, like playmates on a seesaw, the armored giant rose as Renata, slight but determined, pulled back.
When she returned to the sidelines, Renata said, “Why do I get stuck on these guys? Leonard says I should stick with the winners.”
That was the kind of thought that Leonard would call a philosophy. Seeley said, “Winning isn't all it's cracked up to be.”
In the last minute, Washington scored another touchdown and won the game.
Renata said, “I could use a glass of wine.”
Renata was in the shower at the other end of the house. In the dining room, Seeley opened the bottle of Bordeaux that she had set out earlier with two glasses. When he went into the kitchen to fill a glass with water from the tap, a salver on the countertop was piled with crab legs cracked open to reveal pink-and-white meat.
Seeley asked himself what he was doing in his brother's house alone with his brother's wife. He dismissed the obvious reason-Lily was the only woman he wanted a relationship with right now-but could think of no others.
The sensual figures in Renata's painting gave out no more secrets about the artist than they did on Seeley's first visit. Logs and kindling waited in the fireplace, and striking a match against the rough brick-work, it occurred to Seeley that he was re-creating that last visit and, in doing so, invoking his brother's disquieting presence. He thought of how just the other day he could have clubbed Leonard in the corridor outside the courtroom.
Since he stopped drinking a year ago, Seeley had fallen into the habit of counting other people's drinks. No one, he concluded, drank as much as he did, and no one he'd met since coming to California drank the way Renata did. It occurred to him that this was why he had come home with her. Like probing an old but still-sensitive wound, he was revisiting the one great romance of his life, alcohol, to see if a spark of feeling remained. He had no desire to drink; he just missed the companionship of his old friend. Sometimes the notions that came into his head astonished Seeley. My mind, he thought, should have a warning label glued to it: for entertainment use only.
Renata came in, a glass of wine in her hand. She had put on a blouse, skirt, and heels, and either the wine or the shower had given her pale skin a gentle flush.
She glanced at the fire as she took the chair across from him. “There's a cracked crab in the kitchen if you're hungry.”
“I saw.”
She noticed the water in his glass. “No wine? We have beer, too. Gin, vodka.”
“I've already had more than my share.” He tilted the glass in a mock toast. “To Stanford's next win.”
“What was it like being a college football player? I bet the girls never left you alone.”
“Between part-time jobs and football and baseball practice, there wasn't much time for girls.” Seeley didn't like talking about that time in his life. “What about you?”
“My parents didn't approve of the crowd I hung out with in high school. I always seemed to wind up with the guys who were on suspension. So they sent me to a small Methodist school in Ohio. All the preachers sent their sons there.” She laughed. “My freshman year, Playboy rated it one of the top-ten party schools in the country.”
Renata talked more about her time in college, the flickering firelight softening the delicate planes of her face. After a while, when the silences grew longer, she drained her glass and crossed the room to refill it. When she returned, she took a place on the couch next to Seeley, crossing her legs beneath her. “When you came here for dinner the other night, did you have any idea how hard I was shaking?” She touched the back of his hand.
The touch saddened him; Seeley felt cheated, but of what, he couldn't say. A fantasy escaped from a corner of his memory that Renata's whispered message to him at her wedding was that she had chosen the wrong brother.
A log snapped in the fireplace and there was a hiss and the sharp fragrance of resin.
Seeley said, “I need to be going.”
“What are you afraid of?” Her voice trembled.
“This isn't right.”
“Because of Leonard?”
“Yes.” It was a lie, but there was nothing else he could say.
“So, now we know.” Her voice was bitter.
“What's that?”
“The question I asked you at dinner. You're someone who'd rather be admired than loved.”
“You're my brother's wife, Renata.”
“And I'm a flirt. You don't think I'd go through with it, do you?”
“I guess we'll never know.”
She lifted the wineglass from the table, put it to her lips, and emptied it. “You think I drink too much.”
“It's none of my business how much you drink.”
“You judge people.”
“Somebody has to.”
“Who gets to judge you?”
“Believe me, I'm hardest on myself.”
“Do you have any idea how important your approval is to Leonard?”
“Look, Renata, I have to go. I'm in the middle of trial.”
“From the day I met him, all Leonard could talk about was his big brother. “Mike did this' or ‘Mike did that.’ Mr. Perfect.”
No tears with this woman, Seeley observed, only fury burning in her too-clear eyes.
“Leonard could never live up to your standards. Now that I've seen what you're like, I don't think anyone can.”
Seeley rose to go.
“Do you want to know why he begged you to come out here?”
Seeley had the feeling that he hadn't even begun to penetrate the layers of Leonard's motives.
“So you could see how well he's done. What a success he's been.”
“Warshaw told me it's going to wipe you out if I lose the case.”
“He's right. Every dime we have is in Vaxtek. We sold everything, all our stocks and bonds. We took a second mortgage on the house.
Leonard said it was our one chance to make some real money, Silicon Valley money. He told Joel that Michael Seeley doesn't lose cases.”
“That doesn't sound like Leonard.”
“Then you don't know your brother.”
“The problem is, I do.”
“You are going to win, aren't you?”