“A model for us all.”
She startled for a moment, as if awaking from a reverie. “God, I hope not. But he does have a fine set of teeth. Rashard Porter, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“His application is complete?”
“So the registrar has told me.”
“I’ll need to speak to him personally.”
“I can have him here at an hour’s notice.”
“You understand, I can promise nothing. Everything must be decided in committee, and any decision will, of course, depend almost entirely on his portfolio.”
“So I always assumed.”
“We need to see more than just routine adolescent scribbles. You said he was an artist. Do you know much about art, Mr. Carl?”
“Some. Who’s that guy? Say what? Say what?”
“Cézanne?”
“That’s the one. I like him, and I’m also a sucker for pictures of dogs playing poker.”
She laughed. “I’ve always liked them too. We have a committee meeting tomorrow night. I will consider discussing your situation with the committee. That’s all I can promise.”
“Thank you.”
“Give my regards to Philip, please.”
“Oh, I will.”
“You slept with her, didn’t you?” I said.
Skink, sitting beside me in the car at the Alden Park parking lot, across from a blue LeBaron convertible, crossed his arms and said, “Get your mind out of the gutter, why don’t you?”
“You’re the one always talking about his ethical responsibilities and then you go and pull something like that.”
Skink merely looked away.
“Have you no shame?” I said. I was enjoying this.
“It ain’t shame what I got. It’s called discretion, mate. I don’t talk about my personal life one way or the ’nother. When’s your cowboy coming?”
“He’s coming.”
“You know, the car, it hasn’t been moved since first time I spotted it.”
“Really,” I said, starting to wonder. “Has he visited the girlfriend during that time?”
“Not that I’ve seen. Our boy, he’s disappeared.”
I thought about the insurance and the kid in New Jersey and Manley’s sad slump of resignation. I didn’t want to tell Skink, but I suspected we’d never see Manley again. “We were talking,” I said, to change the subject, “about the dean.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“I just want to get it straight.”
“All right, this is the straight of it. She was sinking fast, her marriage on the rocks, the very idea of herself plummeting. It was a dangerous time, but she made the right move and gave me a call. She was shaking when she told me her situation. But I sensed the story right off and it didn’t take long. Her husband was an artist too, an instructor at that very same joint. A remote-controlled camera set in a bust of some naked twist got me all I needed. Snap snap. Caught the arse-hole cavorting, yes I did, with a model atop a table set with two apples, a book, an overturned jug. A real work of art, it was. I entitled it: Still Life with Two Cocks. A good patch of work if I say so myself. She was a nice lady and she got herself out of a bad situation, and she gained a new understanding of her own needs in the process.”
“You sound like Dr. Phil.”
“Yeah, well, in a way we’s in the same business, ain’t we? Helping our clients confront the truth. Only difference is I do it with pictures. So I was glad to be able to help. And the penthouse apartment on Rittenhouse Square she got in the settlement after showing my work of art at the deposition, well that didn’t hurt any neither.”
“Such a sweet story.”
“I do my best.”
“So you slept with her, didn’t you?”
Before he could respond, my phone rang. It was Ellie, my secretary, informing me that one R.T. Pritchett from the sheriff’s office was on the phone. I asked her to put him through to my cell.
“Where the hell are you?” I said.
“Something came up,” said R.T., his voice strangely empty of its western twang. “I’m gonna be late.”
“How late?”
“You got a calendar?”
“Come on, R.T. What’s going on up there?”
“We’re busy.”
“Not that busy.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand? That your boss needs to unload a few more bushels of crab fries and he’s putting another hand in my pocket? There’s only so many crab fries a man can eat.”
“It’s got nothing to do with that.”
“Really? Then why don’t you tell me the hell what it has got to do with.”
“We’re just busy, is all. The word’s come down. We’re simply too busy at the moment to help out when it comes to you.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“What did I do?”
“You tell me, Victor. You must have pissed off someone, someone the size of a gorilla. The squeeze has been put on my boss and so the squeeze has been put on me and so I got no choice but to squeeze you out.”
“No choice?”
“None.”
“After all we been through together?”
“Don’t get weepy-eyed on me, Victor, it’s the way it is.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Not a thing, buckaroo.”
“You’re screwing me here, R.T.”
“Someone’s screwing you, Victor, that’s for sure. I just hope you’re enjoying it.”
I hung up the phone, thought about it for a moment. “Let’s go,” I said finally.
“He ain’t coming?” said Skink.
“Nope.”
“He give a reason?”
“Someone is mad at me.”
“Who?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“Someone heavy?”
“Morbidly obese, and mad enough that I’m not getting that car today. Or tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Which I figure is just as well.”
“You want me to disable it so it don’t go nowhere?”
“No. But I would like to know if he moves it.”
“I could mark them tires, check on them every so often.”
“Good.”
“So who is it, Vic, the heavy out to shut you off? He high up politically?”
“Yeah.”
“Councilman?”
“Higher.”
“Mayor?”
“Higher.”
“Jesus.”
“Higher.”
Skink laughed, a rough, sarcastic laugh, the laughter you loose at a clown in a barrel when he pratfalls.
“Yeah,” I said.
Chapter 35
SHE WAS WAITING for me in my office when I returned from my unsuccessful seizure of Manley’s LeBaron. She had made herself at home, sitting in my chair, leaning over my desk, scribbling so intently in some notebook that she didn’t notice me standing in my own door frame. I figured she’d show up, I just didn’t figure it would be so soon.
Alura Straczynski.
I watched her for a moment. She was engrossed, totally, in her work, slim eyeglasses perched on her nose, bracelets jangling as her wrist moved swiftly across the page. She was dressed stylishly, if a little bit too, in a red silk shirt, a green bandanna around her neck, long golden earrings. There was in her manner and her seeming indifference to her surroundings the intensity of an artist at the easel and she nodded, yes, yes, yes, as if each word was a dab of paint on a brilliant canvas. The tension in the edges of her mouth as her pen flew and the bangles jangled was surprisingly sexy. A woman at work, Rosie the Riveter.
She glanced up, over the top of her glasses, and spied me spying. “So,” she said as she put down her pen, closed the notebook, took off her glasses. “You’ve returned. From some great legal victory, I hope.”
“Nothing so dashing,” I said. “Something about a car.”
“But still it went well, I am sure.”
“Not really.”
“You don’t mind my using your desk, do you? Your secretary said you would only be a moment.”
“And she brought you in here?”
“She asked me to wait in the waiting room, but really. What’s the point in that? The seats are uncomfortable and your magazines are months old. Just sitting there made my teeth ache. When she stepped out for a moment I stepped in here.”