“Mr. Nobili!” she called. “Could I talk to you for a moment?”
The man, a shortish, swarthy fellow with a heavy Nixonian beard shadow on his jowls, wearing yellow oilskins and a red hard hat on backward, stopped and looked over at her.
“She wants you, Arnie,” said one of his companions.
“Yo, Arnie, after you,” said another. There were a number of whistles: good, clean construction-worker fun.
Arnie Nobili smiled and approached her. She smiled back, opened the passenger door of the VW, and gestured him in. More whistles and shouts. Marlene got in the driver’s side and cranked the engine, which refused to start for a long minute and then came sulkily to life.
“Sounds like the alternator,” said Nobili. “So what is this?”
She let the engine idle, producing heat for the blower, and handed him one of her cards.
“I’m Marlene Ciampi,” she said. “Tamara Monro has retained us. I’ve helped her take out a protective order, which I understand you’ve already violated.”
Nobili’s smile vanished and was replaced by an unpleasant belligerent expression. “What, are you some kind of cop?” She noticed there was alcohol on his breath.
“No. I’m a lawyer and a private detective. I wanted to have a talk with you so that we’d understand each other.”
“She hired you? She hired you to protect her from me?”
“That’s correct, Mr. Nobili.”
“Well, you can fucking unhire yourself, lady. Tamara don’t need no protection.” He gestured at her with a dirty finger the size of a center punch.
“You have to stop trying to see her, Mr. Nobili. You have to understand that the relationship is over.”
Nobili moved his face closer to hers, jabbing with his finger. “Hey, it’s over when I say it’s over, understand? You fuckin’ tell her that! No, I’ll fuckin’ tell her. She’ll never fuckin’ forget it, I get through with her.” He jacked the door handle. “And fuck your order and fuck you!” he said, and, as an afterthought, “Bitch!”
Marlene called out, “Sweety, l’affirati!”
Nobili paused with the door open and looked at her. “What did you say?” he snarled.
The mastiff came out of the baggage space under the hatchback in a black blur, grabbed a mouthful of Nobili’s oilskin, and yanked him back into his seat. His hard hat came down over his face as he flailed and cried out. The car door swung closed with a slight click. Sweety, meanwhile, was doing its impression of the Hound of Hell, baring fangs, growling like distant lions, splashing hot slaver down the man’s collar.
“This interview is over when I say it is, understand?” said Marlene.
Nobili’s hat fell off in the shaking he was getting. “Make it stop! Make it stop!” he quavered.
“Sweety, chiu gentilmenti,” said Marlene. The dog stopped shaking Nobili, but retained its grip. “Yes, ‘make it stop.’ That’s just what Ms. Morno said to me in reference to your attentions.”
“You-you’re not allowed to do this,” said the man, gasping.
“No, I’m not, you’re right. This is a sort of kidnap. It’s a felony. I’m breaking the law, which I hate to do, but I don’t think you’ll complain, because a couple of nights ago you went by Tamara’s place and pounded on her door for an hour, and when she wouldn’t open up for you, you pulled the valves out of her tires. That’s against the law too. Now, I tried to have a civilized conversation with you so that you’d understand that the situation has changed, and you insulted me and suggested that despite the protective order, you were going to see her and harm her. So here we are. Let me restate the case. If you go near Tamara Morno again, you will be the one that gets hurt, not her. Do you understand? Say you understand!” The dog caught Marlene’s tone and snarled wetly.
Nobili shuddered and mumbled, “Yeah, yeah, I understand.”
“Good. Now, if I were you, I’d do some work on that booze problem too.”
“I don’t got a problem,” replied Nobili in a sullen voice.
“Yeah, you do. You start in brooding about why you’re all alone, and that makes you sad and you drink, and when you got your load, you start feeling pretty good and you start thinking that you could fix things up with Tamara, and you go looking for her and when she doesn’t want to see you, because you’re drunk, you start thinking, hey, I put myself out, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, what the hell does this bitch want? You start feeling sorry for yourself. You blame her for things going wrong. Then you drink some more, and you start to break things and beat up on her. Then when you sober up, you forget what you did, and you can’t figure out why she doesn’t love you. And every time it’s a little bit worse, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And you know, ordinarily something like this would end with her dead and you in jail, feeling real sorry about it. This time, however, you keep on with this horseshit, it’s going to end with you dead, and her free, and not feeling sorry at all. Like they say in A.A., your life’s out of control. Get some help, Arnold.”
The man said nothing, but sat there cringing from the dog and glaring at Marlene. She sighed and said, “Sweety, lu rilassi!” The dog gave up its mouthful of jacket. To Nobili she said, “Okay, scram! For your sake, I hope I never have to see you again.”
“What did you do today?” Karp asked at dinner that evening.
Marlene said, “I got screamed at by a rich junkie, and I terrorized a drunk. Those were the high points, I think.”
“How did you terrorize him, Mom?” asked Lucy.
“I threatened to spank him on his bare heinie. It never fails.” She cupped a hand to her ear. “Remind me again why I’m not a highly paid attorney at a white-shoe law firm.”
“Because you’re a self-destructive nutcase?” Karp ventured.
“Mmm. That doesn’t sound quite right.”
“I think it’s because you’re real brave, and you don’t want women to get hurt,” said Lucy, the literalist, the loyalist. Marlene’s heart overflowed.
“Thank you, darling,” she said, beaming. “First long division, now the inmost secrets of the psyche. Truly, there is no end to your excellence!”
NINE
Terrell Collins knocked twice on Karp’s door and, hearing a vague grunt, walked in. He found his boss amid stacks of Xeroxed pages from law books, some actual law books, teetering in green- or red-and-ochre-bound piles, and a scatter of crumpled yellow legal bond. The two men looked at each other and smiled the smile of acknowledged exhaustion. They were working on responses to Waley’s motions in Rohbling. It was not a trivial task.
“You get it?” asked Karp.
Collins deposited a short stack of Xeroxes on one of the desk’s few bare zones. “White’s dissent in Massiah, with commentaries on same. I don’t see how it’s relevant, though; it relates to counsel after indictment. The motion is to suppress a confession obtained in violation of Miranda. Massiah is about Sixth Amendment right to counsel being violated by the cops sticking a secret informant on a defendant out on bail after indictment.”
“Yeah, I know that, but Waley mentions the dissent in his points and authorities, so we have to look at it. Why he mentioned it, I have no idea. It’s a dissent, Whizzer White sticking up for the prosecution as usual, and getting creamed, but Waley uses it to make a general point about the use of interpersonal confidence to draw out a confession. It’s all part of the weave here; he’s spreading a net to catch the attention of the judge, tilt him his way.” Karp tapped his teeth with a pencil, a habitual gesture. Then he looked up at Collins and said, “You ever read a pair of motions like this?” He indicated the actual motion documents, sitting alone on one side of his desk, festooned like barbaric brides with torn strips of yellow bond indicating legal references.