That was as far as Cully read. He threw the letter on the floor. “Belasco never paid me.”
“I know. I asked him not to, and he agreed.”
“What’d you do a crazy thing like that for?”
“The money is being kept for you. That way you can, more or less legitimately, claim to have no assets. If you have no assets, a public defender will be appointed for you in case something happens to prevent me from continuing your defense. If or when you get out, you should have enough to tide you over while you pick up the pieces of your life.”
“I don’t want to pick up any pieces. Nobody wants me out anyway.”
“A lot of people do.”
“Not for my sake they don’t. Louise wants me out so I can go on supporting her and that louse of a brother of hers. Pherson wants me out so he’ll have a chance to kill me. Eva Foster probably has some crazy idea like wanting to marry me. Oh, sure, they all want me to get out.”
“So do I.”
“With you it’s because you’d hate to lose the case.”
“No. It’s because I’d hate to lose you.”
It took a minute for Cully to understand. When he did, his whole body tightened as if preparing to strike.
“Think about it,” Donnelly said.
“You’re crazy.”
“No. I’ve been planning for some time to quit this business and go up to my ranch in Idaho. I’m sick of the law, the victims and the victimizers. I’d like to be surrounded by nice, normal creatures, horses, dogs, cattle. I doubt there is a God, but if there is, these must be His creatures, not us. They accept the world and each other. They’re not always planning, scheming, fighting to get to the top where there’s no place left to go but down. A river flows through the ranch, loud and ferocious in the spring when the ice pack starts to melt in the mountains. In the fall it flows gently. But no matter what season, each drop of water is different. It’s not like the sea, where every wave seems to be the same, monotonous as death. A river is alive, fresh, vital. I must have felt that way when I was a child, but I can’t remember, I can’t remember.”
“I don’t have to sit here and listen to this crap.”
“Yes, you do. You have no choice. You are an accused murderer, which considerably limits your choices.”
“Everyone has rights.”
“The rights of an accused murderer exist mainly on paper and in the lofty minds of idealists. You are sitting here quietly listening to your attorney. If you make any move to protest, if you get loud or contentious, the bailiff will come over, then a deputy, two deputies, and you’re in handcuffs and irons. Accused murderers aren’t free to do what they want to do. They sit and listen to their attorneys, whether that attorney is reading the weather report or making a reasonable proposition. That’s what this is, a reasonable proposition.”
“Not to me.”
“You said you didn’t want to pick up the pieces of your life. Well, neither do I. I have to walk away from the past. Walk with me, Cully.”
The bailiff yawned, shifted his weight from one foot to another, checked his wristwatch with the clock on the wall and thought of a Reuben sandwich with cold beer and hot apple pie.
“Consider it carefully,” Donnelly said.
“There’s nothing to consider, you hear? Nothing.”
“You’ll be looked after the rest of your life.”
“Some life, stuck on a ranch in the middle of nowhere with a queer and a bunch of cows and a river instead of the sea. That’s not for me. I want to be a free man or a dead one.”
“Surely I deserve some return on my investment. Face the facts, Cully. The odds against you right now are about ten to one. If I can turn them around, you’ll owe me your life. And remember, I didn’t get you into this mess. You did it all yourself.”
“I didn’t. It was her fault. I think she planned the whole thing. She intended to jump overboard, and she did. And like you made the doctor admit on the stand, she could have possibly been unconscious and something in the ocean made those marks on her throat.”
“Bullshit,” Donnelly said. “They’re your marks. You choked her.”
“What for?”
“The jewels.”
“I only got five hundred dollars for the earrings.”
“The other jewels, the ones in the green leather case.”
“I don’t know anything about that case, I swear it.”
“You lie as naturally as you breathe, so I won’t ask you what you did with it or how you expect to dispose of jewels, whose description will be known to every gem dealer and pawnshop owner in the country.”
A suffusion of blood gave Cully’s face a purplish hue. “I can’t dispose of what I ain’t got.”
“What you ain’t got,” Donnelly said, “is anyone who believes you.”
“It’s your job to make them believe me.”
“Most lawyers would expect big bucks for a job like that. All I expect is gratitude.”
“I’m fresh out of gratitude.”
“Think about it, the way your future looks from here. Even if you’re found not guilty, you can never wash off the smell of this trial. You won’t be considered an innocent man; you’ll be considered a murderer who got away with it. Naturally you’ll never get another job in your field. What yachtsman would entrust his boat to a man with your reputation? When you choked Mrs. Pherson, you killed two people, you and her. You’re through, Cully. What you think is just a curve in the road ahead is the end of the line.”
Donnelly drove home feeling light-headed and weak, like a man recovering from a long illness.
His life had always been a series of blueprints, carefully planned, precisely drawn. Now, in one brief interlude, a door had been opened, and the blueprints scattered all over the room. There was no way to retrieve them and put them back in order.
He parked in the garage. Both of Zan’s cars were in their usual place, but there was a smell of exhaust fumes in the air and the hood of Zan’s Jaguar was still warm.
He went into the house by the back door. The housekeeper, Mrs. Killeen, was on the telephone in the kitchen. She hung up as soon as she saw him and got to her feet, straightening the prim white collar of her pink uniform.
“Are you home for lunch, Mr. Donnelly?”
“If it isn’t any trouble.”
“I like to be informed in advance. However, I can always toss something together in an emergency.”
“Simply coming home to one’s own house can hardly be described as an emergency.”
“I plan ahead.”
“So do I,” Donnelly said. This was true until an hour ago. Now everything had blown up and away, and the flight both scared and elated him.
“Your wife is upstairs in her sitting room,” Mrs. Killeen said. “She’s in a good mood, by the way, so don’t wreck it.”
“Is that an order, Mrs. Killeen?”
“Merely excellent advice. But then lawyers are more inclined to give advice than to take it, so I might as well keep my mouth shut.”
“A very good idea.”
The door of Zan’s sitting room was open, but he knocked anyway so he wouldn’t startle her. She sat at her small bird’s-eye-maple desk, writing a letter. She was dressed for a fall day in town, in a tweedy beige suit almost the color of her hair. The bulkiness of the suit gave her added weight and fresh makeup concealed her pallor.
“Why, Charles, what a nice surprise.”
“For me, too. You look very well.”
The steadiness of her voice and hands made him wonder what kinds of pills she’d taken that morning and which doctor she had conned into prescribing them.
“I’m just writing to my brother, Michael, to tell him my news. Or rather, our news.”