Nathan whirls. "Isabel, why is the door-?" He stops himself. The reception desk, cheap plastic veneer, sits unmanned. But the waiting room, as quiet as the hall, crawls with life. Ruth and Schreck, changed since last night into blue-black court attire; the traffic lawyer wearing below his droopy mustache a gray leisure suit and loafers, ready to field his 1-800 calls about fender benders and lawsuits for untimely deaths; and slippery Chang in his double-breasted Armani and wing tips, surrounded like a pop star by his four young secretaries, a small mercenary army. Before them stand four New York County sheriffs, like troopers in their Smokey the Bear hats and striped trousers; as if, having taken the wrong exit off the thruway, here they are to ask directions. The guests hold their breath. A sheriff steps forward, parting the claws of his handcuffs: "Nathan Stein?"
Nathan recognizes the voice from the movies; the formality that authority seems to require of itself. Then he recalls the dozens of scenes from the films of his clients' lives. How many times has he himself stood beside a lone, doomed figure before the bench, always on the right, always the right.
Nathan shuffles to the right. Maddeningly, black dots do-si-do before his eyes. "Isn't it a little early?" he asks. He feels a giddy drunk coming on.
The three other sheriffs step forward.
"Don't say a thing," Ruth instructs from the rear.
Nathan looks at her, slightly amused. Then at Schreck, grimly, and says, as to Judas: "Do what you're here to do." One arm then the other is seized and pinned behind him. "I told Errol Santos everything I know."
Ruth is gripping his arm. "No, Nathan-"
"My father?"
"He's on his way."
Nathan faces the sheriffs: "Don't you know who my lawyer is? Don't you know who my father is?"
One of the sheriffs addresses the silent crowd: "This is Stein?"
"That's him," Schreck says quickly.
Nathan nods his appreciation. "Thank you, Oliver."
"He doesn't feel well," Ruth warns them.
Schreck looks at his watch and mumbles, "Milton said he'd be in at ten."
Pimples of sweat pop to the surface of Nathan's face. "Then he's not on his way?"
"Hang in there," Schreck says. He makes a consoling fist indicating some vague fraternal bond.
"Oliver, I saw the damned billboard. And Maria's will. Were you going to tell me-?"
"You have the right to remain silent-"
"I know this part. Somebody, Baron is in the car. He'll be hungry.
"We'll take care of the dog," Schreck says, a comment vaguely menacing.
The traffic lawyer, hiding his eyes, walks away shaking his head, his loafers zipping across the gray industrial carpet.
Nathan staggers forward, but the doorway fills, blocking the way. Already with the handkerchief blotting the back of his neck, the crescents of hair around the ears dark with damp. "Well well," Krivit says.
Ruth points at him. "Not a word."
An ironic smirk crosses Krivit's face. "What did he do?"
It is a good question. It hasn't crossed Nathan's mind to ask. Though these are sheriffs, not police officers; that limits the possibilities. This can't be about Isabel. Nathan looks up with genuine interest. "What did I-?"
"Nothing," Ruth blurts before Nathan can finish asking. "You pissed on a judge. It was the tax returns."
Nathan wants to laugh. "This is for that? Judge Acevedo actually called my bluff?" He'd like to say, Good for her, but thinks it imprudent.
Krivit eyes Nathan. "Contempt of court?" he says archly. "Now that's rich."
Contrite, Nathan shrugs, "Ask my lawyer," and raises his head to the room full of them, of which, suddenly, he is no member.
Krivit lowers a brow. "Did you finish?"
"Did he finish what?" Schreck asks.
"Be quiet," Ruth snaps.
Krivit squints at Schreck. "What do you mean what? You know what. Where the hell is it?"
Nathan nods at the little drama unfolding before him. Schreck knows about the writ; he said so. Of course Ruth knows that Schreck knows. They all know everything. Even the little rat, Krivit.
He hears in his ears again the pledge he'd made to himself early this morning that despite Claire he would have Amparo's cousin released. A slam dunk at redemption if there ever was one: call the A.D.A., finesse the girl's charges, tug lightly on the string or two still left him, pay the $500 himself if he has to. He can still work a deal. Consider the baby, he'd have begun, as with everything, he would have begun so well-
"I hope this won't take long. I have to be in court," he says, then spins, remembering Regina Nunez's file. "I need something in my office."
The sheriffs murmur and look uncertain, then stand aside and follow Nathan toward the back of the suite, past the mahogany-lined rooms, Milton's with the cases of law books and journals and diplomas fixed haphazardly, like fieldstones over the walls, and the glass-topped desk with the view of rolling sky, into which Milton and Nathan separately stared while seeding secretaries and clients' wives and their girlfriends past and present and their sisters and selected members-females, all but one-of the building maintenance crew. And the time when Milton kept an office full of clients waiting for an hour and a half. One impatient client stood and marched toward the door and flung it open, revealing for all to see a woman spread among the depositions and pen sets on Milton's desk, her skirt hiked, her legs splayed, Milton kneeling below and between, his head nodding-
Nathan stands at the threshold to his own office. The sheriffs are behind him and Ruth and Schreck behind them, all wondering, Nathan is sure, what it is he could possibly need.
"What is the charge?" he asks again, trying to narrow his search: himself or Regina Nunez, he's already forgotten who he's supposed to help. But he answers before they can, with a nod, "Contempt," and steps in.
Negotiating the crowded floor, he looks about. No credentials here. His diplomas peek out from behind cracked glass amid towers of paper and newsprint climbing the walls to the ceiling. CDs in staggered columns, collapsed like his mail across the bookless shelves. A clearing in the woods for the gleaming stereo. Nathan's desk is buried beneath the scatter of books and year-old magazines and styrofoam cups. Atop it all a laptop, still on, possibly for days, seems to be in charge. Piled in the office's corners the empty boxes for the stereo, the computer, the new phone, old phone, coffeemaker, other appliances long gone, and just empty boxes whose duty-coming/going, in/out?-remains a mystery. The overwhelmed file cabinet and its three tiers of manila folders hangs open. A room with no chronology. No order. No language. Only the now, the tick of time occupied by this moment's breath, gone already with the exhalation into a container of everything before. A blind distant past housed here in this mausoleum of lives tried and pled, of briefs and writs begun past deadline, set down for the morning paper and forgotten and left unfiled to mulch beneath the compost of new paper, new briefs, obsolete news.
"Mr. Stein-?"
He looks about. As he had, standing last week at the open door to the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Fordham Road. Serena had begged him to come to mass. Purge and be purified. Be cured. Inside, the acrid sweetness of incense hung in the air. Pausing by a plastic seashell filled with foggy water, he peered down the long aislle through the halfdark where a chipped and sallow Christ hung spotlit and suspended from invisible wires over the altar, not unlike a trapeze artist. Oblivious beneath his spiked crown. Pierced palms and extruded ribs drained by the wounds freshly repainted with lipstick. Ankles crossed and riveted, the toes curled in, which Nathan thought a nice touch, feminine. Mater Dolorosa hanging stage left. Serena eased Nathan-it was not one of his best days-into a pew halfway down. Four figures slumped against the dimness of the nave, the light upon their shoulders and heads making of them silhouettes, targets, contestants, saints. Before him a wooden container missing the Bible it once offered up. A long felt bench stretching aisle to aisle, bleached and dimpled in evenly spaced pairs, as if the nexus of the spirit were the connection between knee joint and floor. Feeling the thousand hours he'd spent in his synagogue in Ozone Park, the sin-riven and unrepentant target of Rabbi Jupiter's pearls of wisdom, the virtues of a virgin's pregnancy were not lost on him.