“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Excuse me a moment while I call the police. You must have stolen it along with the files.”
He winked. “I’ll messenger it over tomorrow if you want.”
“I want. Along with the files.”
“If only I could, Vic. Truthfully, they’ve been more headache than anything else. I’d love to dump them. But the clients all wanted to stick with me. Hell, there’s more than enough work here to keep me busy.”
“What about the Saltz case?”
“I asked Lou what he wanted to do and he said he thought I was a prick for leaving and to let you have it.”
“He said that?”
“What did I care, it was a dog. But I heard you got a settlement anyway. You guys ever find that accountant?”
“No.”
“And a settlement even so. I should get a part of it, don’t you think? After all, I brought it in. A referral fee?”
“Sue me.”
“I don’t sue friends, Vic.”
“No, you just screw them in the ass.”
“Still sore, huh?”
“What gives you that idea?” I asked while looking out the window.
“Maybe I can make it up to you?”
“I never figured you for a suicide, Guthrie.”
“So hostile, Vic? Have you considered therapy?”
“I’d rather buy a gun.”
“It was only business. I understand Lizzie is finally hooking up with Community Legal Services.”
Word traveled fast, especially when the word was bad and it was about me. I didn’t want to go into the whole sorry mess, especially not with Guthrie. “It’s a consentual thing,” I explained. “I’ve been doing more criminal and investment work than she felt comfortable with. When she found they had an opening she decided she would take it.”
“That’s terrific for her,” said Guthrie. “It’s where Lizzie belonged all along. And it makes what I wanted to meet with you about easier for everyone. The reason I wanted to get together is that Tom Bismark was asking about you. You know Tom? The managing partner here?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, though I did. Not personally, the Tom Bismarks of the city didn’t waste their time with second-raters like me, but I had seen him in one of the bars with Jimmy. He had been out with his wife, cheating on his mistress, or so Jimmy had said.
“Tom caught you on the news with this trial of yours, the Jimmy Moore case. How did you get that, anyway?”
“They scoured the city for the most desperate shyster they could find and my name naturally came up.”
“No, really.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want him to know that what I had said was the absolute truth.
“Well, he saw you on the news and asked me about you. It seems they’re trying to build up their white-collar crime department here and are looking for some laterals with trial experience. I told Tom you’d be terrific.”
“You said that? Why?”
“’Cause you’re a friend, a buddy.”
“Skip it.”
“It’s the truth, Vic, nothing but. I gave him a glowing report and he wants to talk to you about joining the firm.”
“This firm?”
“Of course. After the trial.”
“Why would this firm be interested in me?”
“Frankly, I don’t know, Vic. I thought they’d have more sense. But you’re in a high-profile case, I lied about your ability, things are just breaking right. Don’t let this opportunity slip through your fingers.”
“I’m doing pretty well by myself right now,” I said. “It wouldn’t be so easy to just up and join here. Leases and stuff.”
“Hey, Vic. No pressure. Forget it if you want.” He leaned back at his desk and smiled at me. “But I know you. You’re just like me. This is something you’ve always wanted, and when it’s offered to you you’re going to jump for it. Like a show dog. Look at this office, look at the paneling on the lobby walls, paneling an inch thick. Look at what you can be a part of. You’re just like me, Vic. You want it. Set up a meeting with Tom after the trial.”
God, how I had hated Guthrie. I had hated his clothes and his shoes and his handsome twisted face and his supercilious manner and his slicked hair and his ability to absorb insults as if they were compliments. The idea of ever again becoming his partner was unthinkable, but now here I was about to be offered a job at his new firm, the job of my dreams. When he said it was something I had always wanted he was right. When he said I would jump at it he was right again. And when he said I was just like him I hated the very idea of it, but I guess, dammit, he was right about that too. Beth could have convinced me otherwise, maybe, but she had gone off to serve the poor and so I was left with becoming Guthrie. God help me.
Although he didn’t know it, by reminding me how very alike we were Guthrie was confirming all the more my suspicions about him and Bissonette. I knew how angry I would have become if everything I had gained in a marriage to an Amber was falling from me in an affair between my wife and some broken-down ballplayer, I knew how desperate, how irrationally ruthless, how murderous. And I knew something else, something I had learned with great gusto from my own carnal knowledge of his wife before she was his wife and which was confirmed by Slocum after consulting with Bissonette’s little black book. Lauren Amber Guthrie was a five-star in bed, someone almost worth dying for.
“What’s really going on between you and Lauren?” I said, steering the subject to where I wanted it. “I was really saddened to hear about the problems.” I lied, yes, but with sincerity.
“They’re only temporary, trust me,” he said, but the way his face fell into a strange, sad cast I knew he was lying too.
“Were you playing around on her, Sam?”
“Jesus, no,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“Then what?”
He swiveled in his chair to look out the window. “It just happened. Come on, Vic, you of all people know what she’s like.”
“Which is what?”
He took in a breath of frustration. “Flighty. Maddeningly independent. With the attention span of a mosquito.”
“So she was cheating on you, was that it?”
“I don’t think I want to talk about it, Vic.”
“You don’t think your problems with her will affect you here at your firm, do you?”
He didn’t answer right off, but I had suspected the answer. Married to an Amber, the partnership decision on him, two or three years hence, was assured. If he was just a Guthrie, with no name, no contacts, nothing but ability, he would be out on his butt within six months. “We’ll work it out,” he said. “I know we will.”
“Well, at least Bissonette’s out of the way, right?”
It was the way he turned and looked at me that said everything I wanted to know. His head swiveled and his eyes were so full of pain and fear. His jaw quivered, his face paled, the sweat on his forehead glistened with an oily sheen. It was on his face as clear as an affidavit. His wife had been screwing Zack Bissonette and he knew it, he knew it, he knew all about it, and the knowledge was killing him. I was ready to bet then and there that it had killed Bissonette, too.
I walked into the courtroom the next morning deeply distracted. It wasn’t just that I suspected my former partner of being a murderer. That was almost a pleasant thought. I had no idea of how to prove it, of course, except by talking it over with Lauren, with whom I had already set up a dinner at a far too expensive restaurant, but I figured that when I found out enough I’d simply put Lauren on the stand, have her identify the picture, have her tell about her husband’s violent rages, and then stand back and let the jury draw its own conclusions. Afterwards, I’d turn whatever I had over to Slocum and let him do the legwork to clear up the murder charges. But that wasn’t all that was on my mind. My distracted air that day arose from the offer that had been magically bestowed upon me.