There are no rings of fatigue under Laurel’s eyes. She talks of the impending trial as if it is something to savor, like whatever doesn’t kill you only serves to make you stronger. A lot of bravado now that her kids are beyond Jack’s reach. What a good vendetta will do for the spirit.
This is the story that I am to sell to a jury as to Laurel’s whereabouts on the night of the murder — the image of a woman trekking over the mountains to obtain plane tickets to spirit her children away from their father while the question of custody is pending before a court. That she sees nothing wrong in this illustrates the poverty of judgment that settles like ground fog in a bitter divorce. Morgan Cassidy would no doubt remind the jury that it is inspired by the same venom that leads to murder.
‘We weren’t going to win the custody case,’ she says. ‘I had to do something. I won’t say where they are.’ She is adamant on this. I don’t tell her, but I have no desire to know, particularly after my last curtain call from Jack and his lawyer. For the moment I am off the hook while Harry and Westaby brief points and authorities on the law of attorney-client privilege.
‘They are safe and well cared for.’ Laurel giving me assurances about her kids.
‘I’ll tell the judge. He’ll be relieved.’
This has never been my concern. Knowing Laurel, it would have been the first item on her agenda, that her children be taken care of.
‘Why didn’t you just buy two plane tickets in Capital City?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, at a thousand dollars a pop,’ she says. ‘What was I supposed to do, go to Jack and ask for the money? Try getting two tickets at anything approaching fair price without a fourteen-day wait,’ she says.
‘You could have waited.’
She looks but doesn’t respond.
‘What were you afraid of?’
‘I wanted them out of that house. Just leave it at that,’ she says.
I have the thought that crosses every mind. But while Jack may be many things, I have never pegged him as a pedophile.
‘So you went to Reno?’
‘I had a friend. She works at one of the casinos. She has access to tickets on charter flights.’
Laurel makes a face, a little embarrassment. ‘Freebies,’ she says. ‘People fly into town to gamble, they drink, they get carried away, and they miss their flight out. It happens almost every time,’ she says. ‘So there’s open seats.’ What’s more important, she tells me, there’s no record of the names for the substitute passengers, no flight list that Jack’s lawyers or a PI can scrutinize to find the name Danny or Julie Vega. The woman is not stupid.
‘They’re probably going to subpoena you to answer questions in the custody case.’
‘I’ll take the Fifth,’ she says.
I try to explain to her that unless we can convince the judge that in some way the custody issues are related to the criminal charges, the privilege against self-incrimination does not apply.
‘What can he do if I refuse to talk, put me in jail?’ She takes in the concrete walls around her and gives me one of her better smiles.
‘The first time in my life I’ve felt completely invulnerable,’ she says.
It is as if she is drawing strength from her circumstances, nothing to lose, the kids out of harm’s way, toe to toe with Jack and the fates. At this moment when I look at Laurel I am moved by the fact that she is consumed with the fervor of the battle, in the way Joan of Arc led the troops before being fried at the stake.
‘To hell with him,’ she says. She’s talking about Jack.
She gives me a look, something that says: ‘And to hell with you too for not helping me with my children.’ This last I read whether from my own guilt or the demon look in her eye.
I’m afraid Laurel at this moment is not considering the consequences if we lose.
But she is right about one thing. Jack is running out of options for finding the kids. As for myself, the judge seemed satisfied that I had no personal knowledge regarding the whereabouts of the Vega children. He seemed reluctant to allow Westaby to explore what might be privileged communications with a defendant facing capital charges. He has sent the lawyers off to do what judges always do when they can’t make a decision — churn more paper. All in all, Jack has hit a stone wall when it comes to finding his children. No doubt he will play this, too, for sympathy when it comes time for sentencing on the charges.
I don’t tell her about Jack’s fall from grace, his sealed indictment, or plea of guilty to dirty politics. This would no doubt buoy her spirits. It might also lead her to talk, tales of jubilation. Jails have ears. At this moment Jack’s travails and the fact that a curtain has been thrown over them by the federal court is like my card facedown in a game of blackjack — something that, if the gods are with me, Morgan Cassidy does not know.
‘Tell me about Jack’s operation.’ I’m talking about the vasectomy.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Why did he do it?’
‘To clear the decks for action.’ She gives me a little laugh, as if to say, ‘Why else?’
‘You know Jack. He never saw a skirt he wouldn’t chase. And he didn’t like condoms. Jack had a saying, usually reserved for the cronies he ran with, but I heard him more than once. Jack used to say that rolling latex was for housepainters. That was back before AIDS was part of the lexicon,’ she says. ‘Jack had a special talent for rubbing my nose in his affairs.’
‘How did you feel? About the operation, I mean.’
She laughs. ‘You think he consulted me? He went off and had it done, an hour in the doctor’s office. He didn’t tell me until later, months later.
‘By that time it probably didn’t matter,’ she says. ‘We were married in name only. He’d leave me and the kids all night and go off with his friends, lobbyists with a license to take their limit of trollop.’
I remember these nights, Laurel and the kids, Julie younger than Sarah is now, coming over to visit with Nikki and me, Laurel on a constant search for social interaction, confirmation that she could still relate in an adult world. Jack would come home with the morning paper, smelling like a brewery, wrinkled clothes, his underwear inside out, telling Laurel that he’d been at a meeting. Vega was always transparent. To him, being a legislator meant that people had to believe your lies.
And Jack could get in trouble. For a man with a wandering eye, he was intensely jealous. Twice he’d gotten into fights over women he had not seen before that night.
To Jack, commitment was always geared to the cut of the tush and the size of the bra — double D stood for dueling. Sniff in the wrong place and Jack could rack horns like a moose in heat. When it came to women, Vega had a herd instinct. Possession was always nine-tenths. I’d seen his nose bloodied and his eye blackened after one of these brawls.
‘Do you know who the physician was who did the vasectomy?’
‘I’d have to look in a phone book, but I think I could find it. If he’s still in practice,’ she says.
‘And he’d have the medical records?’
‘I suppose. I could call it to your office tomorrow,’ she says.
‘No. I’ll have Harry come by in the afternoon with a notepad.’ I don’t trust the telephones in this place. Conversations have a way of getting to prosecutors.
‘One other thing, then I’ve got to go,’ I tell her. ‘Do you remember the gun that Jack had? The chrome pistol in the walnut box?’
‘That was a long time ago,’ she says.
‘But you remember it?’
‘How can I forget? He spent more time with that thing than he did with me. Until the novelty wore off.’
What she means is like everything else in Jack’s life.
‘Do you know what happened to it?’
‘Last time I saw it Jack had it. Made a big deal out of it in the property settlement agreement.’
This would be like Jack. Give up half his retirement benefits for a shiny gun.