Dana and I take seats at a round table, like Arthur’s knights. I shake hands, and we extend a few greetings with three other couples already there, none of whom I recognize from school, a place where we can talk, uninterrupted.
My only reason for being here this evening is the price of a favor from Olsen, though I haven’t told Dana this.
Lately she has taken a few hits from Morgan Cassidy for her presence in the courtroom during motions. I have heard tales of some quiet backstabbing, palace intrigues in the darker corners of the fairer kingdom, Cassidy moving in the shadows to get the Queen’s Bench to pull its judicial endorsement from Dana. Morgan no doubt views her presence on our side of the aisle as a mortal breach of fealty in the guild of cops and prosecutors. Though Cassidy’s efforts would appear to be in vain. From all accounts, when it comes to the appointment, Dana seems to have already pulled this sword from the stone. According to reports, her name alone is headed for Washington.
Tonight she is shimmering in a black evening dress, hair up, spiked high heels of patent leather. The ever-enigmatic smile on her lips. Two of the other women at our table are looking at her as if they might like to corral their husbands’ eyes to keep them from roving.
We exchange a little small talk, people settle back into their chairs, and Dana looks over.
‘How did the jury go?’ she asks. Dressed to kill, and she’s into shop talk. It seems lately that we are either in the sack or talking trials, hers or mine. We have yet to find that middle ground of intimacy, though there is enough growth to the relationship that we are both still looking, chopping our own paths through the jungle of lust.
I have finished eight days of jury selection in Laurel’s trial. Eight women and four men, with another guy and three more women as alternates. I am happy with the gender gap. I tell Dana this.
With a victim and a defendant who are women, men on the panel are an enigma. A bad marriage and they could hate their ex, taking it out on Laurel. And guys in a stable marriage would not feel threatened by Melanie as a sexual predator in the same way as women.
The fairer sex will either love Laurel or hate her, see her as the avenging angel in a bad marriage or as a vengeful shrew, depending on their own life situation. The jurors I have gone for are in their late thirties and older. Three are divorced, like Laurel, raising families alone, people who know there’s a ragged edge to real life, who will form a chain of empathy with my client.
Pitching a theory at trial is not unlike the pursuit of marketing leads in the world of commerce. You pick your pigeon and fling your seeds. My particular bag of popcorn has Jack as a man with an ego, familiar with the exercise of power and the perks of privilege. If he’s on his way out, maybe looking at a term in the joint made more modest by his cooperation with Dana and her friends, his psyche would be stretched to the limit. You have to wonder what a man like this would do under these circumstances if, apart from his other travails, he suddenly discovered that his younger wife had another lover.
My candidate of the week for Lothario at this moment is the late George Merlow, the man feeding fish. I think maybe Melanie had warned George that Jack was on to them. If he was keeping a watch when Melanie took the dive in her bathtub, and saw the killer, my guess is Merlow decided he’d rather not play family feud.
‘It would help,’ I tell Dana, ‘if your people could come up with the informant.’ I’m talking of the man Dana told me about, the one who saw Jack in the bar across the river doing business with the courier, over beers.
‘They’re looking,’ she says. ‘It takes time.’
‘If he’s on vacation, he ought to be coming back soon.’
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ she tells me. It seems this man they are looking for is facing some time of his own, on an unrelated state charge. He may have reasons for an extended holiday.
‘You’re telling me he’s a fugitive?’
‘No. Not yet anyway,’ she says. ‘We’ll find him.’
‘Let’s hope it’s before the trial’s over.’
The band is striking up, strains from the sixties. I go to get us some drinks, tickets in hand. It’s a mob scene at the bar.
Some gal sashays by, dark hair to the shoulders like Cleopatra, first name Sharon, but it’s all I can pull from the recesses of pubescent recall. It’s what sticks in the memory of the fifteen-year-old male — big chest and a first name. She’s wearing a black crochet dress that with a candle from behind you can see through, and from the view I am getting, not much else. The way it hugs her body would be enough to stop most grandmothers from knitting. She pretends she doesn’t notice all the gawking from the bar, until some guy, three sheets up and blowing, gives her a catcall, something wild from the northern woods that for an instant suppresses all the chatter at the bar. Then it picks up slowly, snickering laughter and the drone of voices. Not nine o’clock and it’s already getting rowdy.
I squeeze my way in and order two drinks. Some kid with pimples who doesn’t look old enough to be handling the bottles is pouring.
‘Hey — those are mine!’
I turn and it’s Clem, a hand on my shoulder.
‘Put ’em on my ticket,’ he says.
The kid makes a note on a napkin.
Leave it to Clem to open a ticket at a no-host bar. He turns for a second and is busy making introductions with the other hand, two guys who want to meet the woman in black. As if by royal command, night of nights, he reaches out, sticks his own hook into a loop of crochet. Got an itch and wanna scratch, Clem as facilitator.
Just as quickly he is back to me.
‘Great night, uh? Good crowd.’ Clem pats his stomach through the cummerbund, a satisfied smile, while he looks around taking in all that is his, like he invented the species.
‘Havin’ a good time?’
The way he says this makes me think that if I say no, Clem would add another day to the creation, one devoted entirely to the making of merriment.
‘Wonderful,’ I tell him.
‘Good to see the old crowd, isn’t it?’ he says.
‘Yeah. Couldn’t wait,’ I tell him.
‘Nice threads,’ he says. He’s feeling the lapel of my suitcoat. ‘Musta set you back.’
‘Thanks.’ I don’t tell him that I’m on my way from work and haven’t changed.
The drinks are on the bar.
‘I know you’re busy,’ I say, ‘but I got a couple of favors.’
‘Heyyy, anything for a pal.’ He’s looking around. I think he’s wondering who I want to hit on, and, given the dazzling looks of Dana, why.
I reach into my inside coat pocket and take out an envelope, open it, and remove the little picture, the DMV shot of the courier from the post office that Dana had given to me the other night.
‘I need you to run a make,’ I tell him. ‘On this guy.’
A look on Clem’s face. ‘If I didn’t know you better I’d think ulterior motives,’ he says.
‘Hey — you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’
‘I hope this can wait,’ he says.
‘Well, you don’t have to do it right now.’
‘That’s good of you,’ he says. ‘I thought I was going to have to get my cape and find a phone booth.’
‘You can wait till Monday,’ I tell him.
‘And this is all you got, I suppose?’ He’s looking at the picture.
‘That and a name. Try Lyle Simmons, alias Frank Jordan, aka James Hays. There may be others. I don’t know. The guy’s got more faces than Eve,’ I tell him.
‘What about a birth date, social security number?’
‘Try DMV,’ I tell him. ‘That’s where the picture came from.’
‘What is it ya wanna know?’ He’s making microscopic notes with a ballpoint pen, light ink-squiggles on the back of the picture.
‘Any addresses. Whether the guy did time, either here or in another state, when and where. Anything you can tell me about his background, military, civilian. Whether he’s got any family.’