Swindlers (17 page)

I tried to sort it all out. If you looked
only at the facts and ignored what people feel, the way the mind
can snap with sufficient provocation, there was no question but
that Danielle was guilty. She had not been in any physical danger
when she killed her husband. She could have walked away; there had
not been any necessity for violence. But if you had any regard for
a woman’s self-respect, her right to be treated as a person with
feelings of her own, and not just the muffled object of her
husband’s temporary lust, then what she had done was defensible at
least in a moral sense. Or was I only trying to make myself feel
better, invent an excuse for the lawyer’s tricks I was playing in
court? Danielle had killed her husband because she did not like his
look, because she ‘could not stand it anymore.’ If she had felt
humiliated, why not humiliate him in return instead of killing him?
She did not have to let him have his divorce; she could have taken
him to court and, precisely because he was rich and famous - and
not just that: notorious, with who knew how many secrets to hide –
made his life a living hell. But it was an impulse, there had not
been time to think; it happened before she knew it. That is what
she told me, but then she had told me a lot of things that did not
always fit together.

I was almost at the end of the corridor. The
glass doors at the entrance were just ahead. It was after five, and
except for the uniformed guard at his desk, the only other person
around was someone standing off to the side, leaning against the
wall reading a newspaper.

“So, are you screwing her yet?” he said as I
passed by him.

I spun around, ready to dare him to repeat
it, and then I started to laugh. It was Tommy, Tommy Lane, looking
at me with a cocky grin, daring me to deny it.

“No, I’m – What are you doing here?” I asked
as we gave one another a hug. I forgot all about the trial, forgot
about everything, except how glad I was to see him. “When did you
get here – just now?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been here all day,
watching you work.”

I could not believe that he had come all the
way up from southern California and had not called me first. He
explained that he had come to see the game.

“What game?”

“USC, Southern Cal. Who else? They’re playing
Berkeley on Saturday. You didn’t know?” he remarked, shaking his
head as we headed out the door and down the courthouse steps to the
street. He moved with that same smooth suppressed power, his head
up, his eyes darting all around: the graceful remnant of the great
athlete he once had been. Watching him I felt better, younger, than
I had felt in a long time.

“You didn’t know?” he laughed. “That sounds
like you. So wrapped up in what you’re doing, you don’t know what’s
going on. Southern Cal – remember? We went to school there once,
played football, chased girls... is it coming back to you now?” he
chided.

He stopped so quickly I had to take a step
back to where he was standing. The sidewalk was crowded, the street
full of noise, and while the sky was dark the lights from all the
busy stores and the passing cars made it almost seem like day. “You
were great in there – did I tell you that? Best I’ve ever seen.
That other guy – Franklin – he’s not bad; but, Christ, no match for
you! You’re good, not bad at all; almost made me think she might
not have done it. Almost,” he added significantly before he turned
on his heel and started down the street again.

“Where are we going?” he asked a moment
later. “Let’s have dinner somewhere. You have time, don’t you? I
mean, even during a trial you remember sometimes to eat, don’t
you?”

“Ever occur to you I might have a date?”

“Great! I’d love to meet her,” he said
without breaking stride. “You have a date, night of a trial - what
a laugh! Unless - ?” He grabbed my arm and made me face him, eager
to make me try to lie about it. “With her?”

“If I’m screwing her, don’t you think the
least I can do is buy her dinner once in a while?”

“You’re not screwing her.” He searched my
eyes just to be sure. “I’d be screwing her,” he added with the
proud exaggeration of remembered triumphs. “But you – no, you’re
too caught up in the trial. It’s just like before, all you could
think about was the game. We’d run into the stadium the crowd going
nuts, and I’d check out all the cheerleaders, but you wouldn’t even
notice.” He started laughing, and without any idea why he was doing
it, I started laughing too, knowing that, whatever it was, as soon
as he told me I would be laughing even harder.

“That last year, the last game, regular game,
before the Rose Bowl game. We were playing UCLA – and let’s face
it, they always had the best looking cheerleaders – I took the
second half kickoff back for a touchdown. All the blocking was set
up down the left side, and I started that way, but then went the
other way instead. Everyone thought it was a brilliant decision,
something I saw in the coverage – What a joke! There was this great
looking blonde – a cheerleader, one of theirs – standing on the
sideline on about the thirty. I wanted to run right by her, and I
did, and when I got there, knew I was going all the way, I yelled
at her, told her to give me her number after the game.”

“Did she?”

“Did she what?”

“Leave you her number?”

Tommy threw me a blank look of
incomprehension, as if it were the dumbest question he had ever
heard, and then first his shoulders, and then his chest, began to
rumble.

“Of course! Why do you think I ran all that
way?- So she couldn’t say no!”

“You’re lucky your dick didn’t fall off, with
all the girls you had.”

He did not miss a beat; he almost never
did.

“It did, but that’s all right, it grew back
twice as big. Where the hell we going for dinner? I’m getting tired
of walking.” Before I could answer, he thought of something else,
another way to taunt me about the different way we had led our
lives, and, doing it, remind me how much we had in common. “Listen,
it wasn’t my fault, all those women. Look at it this way: they all
wanted to sleep with me, but they all wanted to marry you.”

I gave him a look that questioned both his
veracity and his sense of proportion.

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

It went on like this, back and forth, half
said sentences and words heavy with our own peculiar meaning,
phrases that made no sense but launched long paragraphs about our
remembered and no doubt embellished past, paragraphs that were even
more outrageous when they told the whole, unvarnished truth. We
were half a block past the restaurant before I realized it was the
place we were looking for.

It was a small Italian restaurant, started by
an old Sicilian while was he was still young and staffed by two
aging waiters who, because of some ancient quarrel, the cause of
which they had both forgotten, would only speak when necessary and
only through a third party. Generally this was the owner, who would
stand between them and, like a good translator, listen carefully
before he rendered word for word an exact repetition of what was
said. The menu was as old as the owner and just as reliable. I had
been coming here for years and, no matter how many times I told
him, he could not remember my name, but he always greeted me with
open arms.

“Mr…., how long has it been? Too long, too
long!”

“I was here last night.”

“Yes, I know,” he lied, the
grin on his face cutting deeper until he managed to make it look
like sorrow; “but even a day is too long. You weren’t here for
lunch. I think you never come for lunch,” he added with downcast
eyes. “You can imagine the grief we feel.” He gestured for one of
the waiters and then whispered, “One of these silent assassins I
employ will take care of you. The ravioli is quite good tonight.
Almost edible. Someday I’ll find a cook!”

“You come here a lot?” asked Tommy after we
ordered.

“All the time. I like the anonymity of the
place. Tourists don’t know about it, and the locals mind their own
business. And despite what the owner said, it’s some of the best
food in the city.”

Tommy was hungry, and so was I. We ate French
bread and drank red wine and as we felt better, more comfortable
and relaxed, we began to talk more about the present.

“I was not going to come at first. It’s a
free trip - the alumni association pays for everything – but I
don’t like living in the past the way a lot of these guys do. It
was the best time of my life, but what’s the point? – You can’t go
back and do it again. I wasn’t going to come, but then you had this
trial and we had talked about St. James before; and so I said I
would, but only if I could come up a day or so early, instead of
flying up with everyone else Friday afternoon.” He wrinkled his
nose in disgust. “You know what those things are like: camp out at
the hotel night before a game, everybody gets drunk and tells a lot
of lies, and then, because we used to be great, we stand out there
on the sidelines and some idiot television reporter comes up and
asks you what you’re doing now that your great career is over. Last
time that happened, I looked into the camera and said I was an
attorney with the government and we were looking into corruption in
the television industry. They didn’t ask me anything after that.
So, as I say, it was a free trip, and I figured at that price you
were worth it.”

He took another piece of bread and finished
off his glass. Glancing around to make sure no one at the tables
near us could hear, he asked me about the case, or rather, asked
about Danielle.

“She’s really Jean’s sister? I met her,
couple of times,” he added when I seemed surprised that he
remembered. “I liked her. She was great looking, in a different
kind of way. I liked her a lot. Maybe too outgoing for you, too
interested in what was going on. Was that it? She was a little like
my wife that way, wasn’t she? They both liked having a good time,
being around other people.”

I did not say anything; I did not need to. We
both knew he was right. With a marvelous talent for summation, he
cut right to the heart of the matter.

“But this one, the sister – she’s the kind
that makes you think she only wants to be around you. Even when
she’s with other people, the center of attention, she lets you
know, she has that look that says she’d run off with you in a
minute, if only she had the chance.”

I tried to dismiss it with a laugh, but the
laughter died on my lips and I gave him what might be called a
second look, a closer scrutiny that admitted that what he said was
nearer to the truth than I might have wanted.

“That’s the real reason I came up. Don’t
misunderstand,” he added immediately. “I wanted to see you; I
wanted to watch how you handled yourself in court. But I wanted to
warn you: she’s dangerous. Hell, any woman that looks like that is
dangerous. That’s not what I mean.”

Before he could tell me precisely what he did
mean, the silent waiter brought our order. He wore the same
expression of doubt and disappointment he always did when you had
not bothered to ask him what he recommended, a lifted eyebrow, the
mocking certainty that if you had only listened to him you would
have ordered something else.

“It’s even worse,” I explained to Tommy as he
tried the ravioli, “if you ask him what he thinks and decide on
something else. I did that once. Next time I came in, he wouldn’t
serve me. He stood off in the corner like I wasn’t here. Wouldn’t
move.”

“And you like this place?”

I glanced around, as if I were seeing it for
the first time, a small, unpromising place, without any obvious
attractions: tarnished silverware and threadbare tablecloths, a
worn carpet and dull lighting, and a clientele that for the most
part came only out of habit.

“Like it? I’m used to it. I come here, I
don’t have to think. It’s like court: everything works, once you
learn the rules.

“And you’re right about the food,” said Tommy
with enthusiasm as he lapped up another helping.

“After a while,” I confessed, “you don’t even
notice that – until you go somewhere else. Then you realize that
it’s better here.”

Tommy put down his fork and with a faded
linen napkin wiped his mouth.

“That’s all you do, isn’t it? – Practice law,
try cases, and eat dinner here. Did you ever think you might want
to have a life?”

“I have a life,” I protested mildly, and a
little defensively. “I like what I do.”

“What about women? After Jean – that was
years ago. You ever think about…?”

“You’re divorced – Do you?”

“Marriage? Again – hell, I don’t know.
Depends. Never know, I might. But you!” he cried, ready to taunt me
with what he knew about me. “You won’t – not unless….No, that won’t
happen. But someone like her, someone that perfect….”

“What are you talking about?”

“Danielle St. James. Lot of guys would like
to go to bed with her, but you’d fall in love with her. It’s like
everything you’ve ever done.” His eyes glittered with the
achievement of his own discovery, what he had finally figured out,
though he had really always known it. “Nothing was ever good enough
because you could always see how it could be better. Used to make
me a little nuts, to tell you the God’s honest truth,” he laughed.
“Good thing I loved you like a brother, because, Christ, you could
be annoying! Remember the game against Stanford? I broke one off
for eight yards just before half, and what did you tell me as we
walked off the field? – That if I had kept my head up when I hit
the hole, I could have cut faster to the right!”

I remembered, and it was true, and I felt
like a fool because of it; but it was a long time ago and so now I
could laugh and admit that I might have taken things a little too
seriously. Tommy shook his head, but with affection, the way you do
for someone you like who tries hard to do something at which he is
not very good, and then he reached across the table and took my
wrist and told me that none of that mattered.