“You’re dreaming.”
“Yes I am. I’m dreaming the American dream.”
“It probably was a suicide.”
“Of course it was.”
“And if it was a murder, it probably wasn’t the brother who did it.”
“Of course not.”
“It was probably some judgment-proof derelict.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
“There’s nothing there. You’re just chasing a fool’s dream.”
“And yet when the pot was sixty-six million you bought ten lottery tickets.”
“So I did,” she said, nodding her head. “Twenty million. It’s too gaudy a number to even consider.”
“I’ve dreamed bigger,” I said, and I had. That was one of the curses of wanting so much, whatever you get can never top your dreams. “How are you on the meaning of life?”
“Pretty weak.”
“Are you willing to learn?”
“Like you have the answers,” she snorted. “Don’t you think karmic questions about life and meaning are a little beyond your depth?”
“You’re calling me shallow?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Well, sure, yes, but there’s no need to rub it in.”
“Oh, Victor, one thing I always admired about you was your cheerful shallowness. Nothing’s more boring than Mr. Sincere droning on about his life’s search for spiritual meaning in that ashram in Connecticut. Just shut up and get me a beer.”
“Well, maybe I don’t have any answers, but the Church of the New Life says it does. Novice meetings are held every Wednesday night in the basement of some house in Mount Airy. From what her fiancé told me, this was the same place where Jacqueline Shaw meditated the day she died. Somehow, it seems, their connection to her didn’t end with her death. They wanted me to come, but I think I’ll stay away for obvious health reasons. Maybe you can learn something.”
“Why don’t you just have Morris give them a look?”
“I don’t think this is quite right for Morris, do you?” I said, handing her the card.
She studied it. “Maybe not. Who’s Oleanna?”
I shrugged my ignorance.
“Sounds like a margarine. Maybe that’s the secret, low cholesterol as the way to spiritual salvation.”
“You never know, Beth. That something you’ve been looking for your whole life, maybe it’s been hiding out all this time in a rat-infested basement in Mount Airy.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, and then she looked at the card some more. She flicked it twice on her chin before saying, “Sure. Anything for a few laughs.”
Good, that was taken care of, and now I had something even more important to do. What I had was a hope and plan and the sweet lift of pure possibility. What I still needed was Caroline Shaw’s signature on a contingency fee agreement before I could begin the delicate process of spinning the tragedy of Jacqueline Shaw’s death into gold.
13
I CLEARED OFF MY DESK before she came, threw out the trash, filed the loose papers whose files I could find, shoved the rest into an already too full desk drawer. Only one manila folder sat neatly upon the desktop. I straightened the photographs on my office wall, arranged the client chairs at perfect obtuse angles one to another, took a plant from Beth’s office and placed it atop my crippled filing cabinet. I had on my finest suit, a little blue worsted wool number from Today’s Man, and a non-Woolworth real silk tie. I had spent a few moments that morning in my apartment, globbing polish onto my shoes and then buffing them to a sharp pasty black. I buttoned my jacket and stood formally at the door and then unbuttoned it and sat on the edge of my desk and then buttoned it again and stood behind my desk, leaning over with one hand outstretched, saying out loud, in rounded oval tones, “Pleased to see you again, Ms. Shaw.”
It was so important to get this right, to make the exactly correct impression. There is a moment in every grand venture when the enterprise teeters on the brink, and I was at that moment. I needed Caroline’s signature, and I needed it today, I believed. With it I had a chance, without it I held as much hope as a lottery ticket flushed down the toilet. That was why I was practicing my greeting like a high school freshman gearing himself to ask the pretty new girl from California to the hop.
“Thank you for coming, Ms. Shaw.”
“I hope this wasn’t too inconvenient, Ms. Shaw.”
“Have a seat, Ms. Shaw.”
“I’m glad you could make it this morning, Ms. Shaw.”
“God, I need a cigarette,” she said, giving me a wry look as she sat, no doubt commenting on my tone of voice, which sounded artificial even to me. She drew a pack from her bag and tapped out a cigarette and lit up without asking if I minded, but I didn’t mind. Anything she wanted. From out of my drawer I pulled an ashtray I had picked up from a bric-a-brac shop on Pine Street specifically for the occasion. Welcome to Kentucky, it read. She flicked a line of ashes atop the red of the state bird.
She was wearing her leather jacket and tight black pants and combat boots. On the side of her neck was the tattoo of a butterfly I hadn’t noticed before. She looked more formidable than I remembered from that morning outside the Roundhouse when she pulled her gun on me and then collapsed to the ground. Even the stud piercing her nose seemed no longer a mark of desperation but instead an insignia of power and brutal self-possession. I felt, despite my finest suit and newly polished shoes, at a distinct disadvantage. It was interesting how things between us had changed. When she first came to me she was the one begging for help, but I guess a hundred million dollars or so can shift the power in any conversation.
“Couldn’t we have done this over the phone?” she asked, exhaling her words in stream of white smoke. “It’s a little early for me.”
“Well then, I appreciate your punctuality. I thought it best we meet in person.” I didn’t explain that it was impossible to get a signature over the phone. “You’ve disposed of your gun, I hope.”
She gave me her sly smile. “I flushed it down the toilet. Some alligator’s probably shooting rats in the sewers as we speak.” She took a long drag and looked around nervously.
“That butterfly on your neck,” I said. “Is that new? I didn’t notice it before.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, suddenly brightening. “It’s from a designer collection, available only at the finest parlors. DK Tattoo. Do you like it?”
I nodded and looked at her more carefully. She said in our prior meeting that she was in fear of her life and so the first thing she did after hiring me was to go out and get herself tattooed. If not exactly an appropriate response it was certainly telling, though I couldn’t quite figure telling of what. As I was looking at her she took out another cigarette.
“Do you always smoke like this?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Like a New Jersey refinery.”
“Just in the morning. By the afternoon I’m hacking too much. So what have you learned about my sister’s death, Mr. Carl?”
“I learned that you haven’t been entirely candid with me.”
“Oh, haven’t I?”
I stared at her for a moment, waiting for her to squirm a bit under the power of my gaze, but it didn’t seem to affect her. She stared back calmly. So what I did then was reach into my desk drawer and pull out a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills and slap them onto the desktop with a most satisfying thwack. Caroline flinched at the sound. Ben Franklin stared up at me with surprise on his face.
“Ten thousand dollars,” I said. “The full amount of your retainer check. Take it.”
“What are you talking about?” she said, flustered and suddenly devoid of her slyness.