“Okay,” I sigh.
“What did you teach Bernard Junior?”
Jason drums his fingers on Clay’s midsection and Clay’s lips recede from his teeth. I could swear he is grinning.
“Acceptance of his lot in life,” Jason says without hesitation.
“Imagine having his physique and jaws and never once being allowed to rip off the head of a cat. He’s as bored as a lion in a zoo. He kept nodding off, but I understand that. If I had to live with Mrs.
Chestnut, I couldn’t stay awake either. How do I teach a class? Lectures, music therapy, lots of individual attention I know what you’re thinking. Giddy Page. They don’t understand. How naive of you! Do your muscles understand a back rub? Does your mind understand Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Of course not! But even as coarse and self-absorbed as the mind of a lawyer is, you surely and without a doubt get the message. As Marsh McLuhan preached decades ago, ‘the medium is the message,” and I, Jason Von Jason, am the medium.”
Jason Von Jason? Why not? I look enviously at Clay, whose teeth are twice as white as my own. I concede I’ve never looked so happy. If Jason could get on TV and pitch Slim Whitman records, he probably would make a fortune. No judge will have the patience to listen to this case for more than thirty seconds. Besides, Jason is the type to counterclaim for a million dollars.
And win. I stand up.
“If mrs. Chestnut hasn’t gotten a Ben Franklin from you in three days,” I bluster, “she won’t have any recourse but to sue.”
Jason looks up at me and says scornfully, “Sue.
Betty. Jane. Martha. You lawyers are the least imaginative species on the planet. Go bore a cockroach to death, Giddy Page. What kind of dog are you torturing?” I think of how bored Woogie must get during the day. He seems as if he accepts himself though. I don’t dare answer Jason. He’d crucify me.
“Some kind of poor mutt,” he guesses, “who looks like a giraffe.”
A chill runs down my back. Considering Woogie’s legs, Jason isn’t far off. Maybe I ought to ask Jason if Leigh killed Art. As I leave through the front of the building, Harvey, smiling beatifically, says, “Bring your dog for a visit. I’m sure Jason would love to enroll him.”
I wave but keep silent. I’ve learned my lesson.
“Chet bracken’s waiting for you in your office,” Julia says in hushed tones as I come up to her desk from the outside door. Uncharacteristically, she is speaking as if someone had died.
“What have you been doing? You smell like a puppy farm.”
I look at my watch. It is just after four. Leigh didn’t waste any time calling him. My stomach begins to bubble with anxiety. He is going to be furious that I went out to see Leigh on my own. Last night, when I got in from San Francisco, I left a message on his answering machine that I would call him as soon as my custody trial was over. Now my plan to see Leigh and then confront him doesn’t seem like such a good idea.
“How long has he been here?” I ask, looking at my shoes, I might have stepped in something in the schoolyard.
“About ten minutes,” she says, now a little nervous.
“I took him on back. After the money he gave you, I kind of felt it was okay. He asked.”
Julia obviously is a graduate of the take-no-prisoners secretarial school and makes it a point of honor never to apologize. This is as close as she will come, and so I accept.
“No problem. How did he seem?”
Julia squints at me as if she is trying to understand something.
“A little hostile. Is he well?”
I wave her off and try to keep from running to my office. What all did Leigh tell him? Shit, this is as good a time as any to lay my cards on the table. He is sitting at my desk with the light off, his head resting against his arms on top of the desk-top calendar. The expression on his face when I hit the switch does not reassure me.
“Are you trying to blow this case?” he demands as I take a seat across from my desk like some scared client.
Pulpy, plum-colored circles under his eyes make him look as if he were in his fifties, but his voice rushes toward me like a freight train.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
All the frustration I have been feeling on this case finally boils over. I smack my desk with the palm of my right hand.
“As far as I’m concerned, the odds are at least even that Shane Norman is involved in this murder, and if he’s not, he sure as hell looks like it. Though she won’t admit it, Leigh suspects it herself. She told me that Art believed that Shane had him investigated before they got married and tried to persuade her to wait.”
Chet shakes his head and gets up to shut my door. I am practically yelling at him. Chet’s neck is swallowed by a pink Oxford shirt and a green tie with penguins on it. If he weren’t dying, I’d laugh. Julia sneers that he dresses worse than I do. He leans back heavily in my chair and says, “That doesn’t prove shit!”
I rest my elbows against the corner of the desk, realizing how utterly passive I’ve been in this case.
“Norman hated the man. Don’t you get it? Wallace was stealing his last daughter from him and turning her into an atheist who would make fun of him. Leigh had been Shane’s favorite since she was five years old. Art was a bastard, and nobody knew it better than Norman. For all we know, he may have even found out about the child porno deal.”
“None of this makes him a murderer!” Chet thunders.
“Look, I know this man. There is absolutely no way he killed Art Wallace. Do you hear me?”
I hear him all right, but his words ring with all the authority of a carnival barker. His curiously blank expression and outraged tone don’t match. I wonder if he may be concentrating on controlling the pain he may be feeling.
“All you know is that Shane Norman saved your soul, and that has blinded you to the fact that the man was, is, and shall remain until the day he dies a human being who had areal reason to want his son-in-law dead. Damn it, will you at least check his alibi?”
Chet stares at me as if he is seeing me for the first time. I think I am about to get fired. So much for inheriting his cases and being known as his heir apparent.
“That won’t satisfy you,” he says, his voice cold and mechanical.
“If he can prove he was at the church, next you’ll claim he hired somebody to kill Art.”
I seize the tiny opening he gives me.
“No, I won’t.
There’s no evidence to support it. If it had been a hit man. Art wouldn’t have been sitting behind his desk.
Like you’ve already said, it wouldn’t have been a twenty-two pistol. At least check it out,” I beg.
“Nor man told me himself that he thought Leigh would have left the state with Art in another six months. In the same conversation he admitted he could be thought of as Art’s enemy.”
Chet slumps in his chair. He says morosely, “Shane would think the cancer has gone to my brain once he got over being insulted.”
I can’t believe my ears.
“When have you ever worried about insulting anyone? Leigh is our client, not Norman. Let me check it out,” I insist.
“I’ll just pretend I’m trying to nail down Leigh’s story.”
Chet loosens his tie, a needless act if there ever was one.
“You’re not dealing with an idiot. He’ll know what you’re up to as soon as you start poking around.” He hesitates but promises, “I’ll handle this.”
I don’t believe him. Norman has become like a god to him.
“You’re going to have to,” I say firmly, “or I’m quitting the case. We have no business representing Leigh if we can’t give her our undivided loyalty. It’s a clear conflict of interest.”
Chet flinches as if he is in pain. Probably no one has ever talked to him this way. Most likely no one has ever needed to.
“You’re right,” he says finally.
“I’ll do it.”