Housebreaking

by Dan Pope

  “I know that, Andrew. I’ve got doctors’ appointments scheduled next week. I’m worried it might be Lyme.”

  “Lyme,” he murmured.

  Audrey had gotten the disease herself in her thirties and was vigilant about ticks ever since.

  Sheba appeared at his side. He rubbed her along her flank and the dog panted. “Aren’t you going to take the dog out?” he asked. “You haven’t left the house in three days.”

  “You do it. I’m on a break.”

  On Monday morning he went into the office early, anxious to get back to work. Thanksgiving, as always, had thrown him out of whack; it wasn’t long enough for a real vacation, but too long for a weekend, and it just made him conscious of all the work waiting for him. The floor was nearly deserted so early, not yet 8:00 A.M. Whenever the elevator dinged, he perked up, noticing the lawyers and secretaries as they marched by his office with their coffee cups and muffins. A few peered in, offered greetings. He realized he knew only about half of them by name. Fuck them, he decided. It wasn’t his job to learn their names like some grade-school teacher.

  By nine the place had filled up, but he hadn’t seen Sampson go past. He went down the hall and knocked on Sampson’s door, but it was locked. His secretary was not at her station. He posted a sticky note on the door: Come see me. For Christ’s sake, was he still sick? Or playing possum? Andrew tried his cell phone again; there was no answer and his mailbox was full. Where was Sampson? And why the hell hadn’t he gotten back to him, the prick?

  Around noon Hannahan appeared in his doorway. “Got a minute?”

  Hannahan, the last thing he needed. “Actually, Jack,” he said, trying to sound cheerful, “I’m playing catch-up today.”

  “Just a word.” He gestured for Andrew to follow.

  Andrew rose, annoyed. Couldn’t Hannahan take a hint? And why not just sit down in Andrew’s office? Because the scotch was in Hannahan’s desk. Drinkers didn’t like to drink alone; it would be an admission of sorts, to sit alone behind a closed door in the afternoon with a bottle, like a disgraced priest.

  Hannahan shut the door behind him and pulled out the Glenfiddich from the bottom drawer. “Join me?”

  Not a bad idea, Andrew decided. “Sure. What’s on your mind, Jack?”

  “A delicate matter.” Hannahan poured the booze and took a slow sip, letting the words hang in the air.

  Andrew waited for him to continue. But the old man couldn’t be rushed. Drunk or sober, in or out of the courtroom, Hannahan picked his words carefully, releasing them like pigeons. A good habit for a lawyer, of course. He never gave anything away, never offered his opponent an advantage. But today Andrew didn’t have the patience for the act. He scratched behind his ear.

  “I’ve just come from a meeting with the partners—” Hannahan offered at last.

  “I didn’t know one was scheduled.”

  “An emergency session.”

  A glaring sun splashed against the floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, he could see only blue air, a cloudless sky thirty stories high. “Well, fill me in.”

  “There’s been a complaint from within the firm. It involves you, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, Christ. Whose feelings have I hurt now?” Andrew had a gruff management style, he knew. Over the past fifteen years, three or four secretaries had complained about him, had asked for a new assignment. One of them had called him a bully—as if this were a school yard, not a place of business. Did he have to say pretty please every time he wanted a photocopy or a cup of coffee? Apparently so, or you risked putting someone’s panties in a bunch. “Which secretary is it?”

  “It’s no secretary. It’s John Sampson. He resigned from the firm last Friday and filed a sexual harassment complaint with the superior court the same day.”

  Andrew felt a lurching sensation, like the earth falling away beneath him. His voice came out hollow-sounding. “Against whom?”

  “Against you individually and the law firm as principal. I’m surprised you haven’t received the complaint.”

  Andrew recalled the registered letter he’d received over the weekend, unopened at home. “Let me see it.”

  “I don’t have the document in front of me,” said Hannahan.

  “Well, ask your sec——”

  “Let’s take a minute, Andy, before we talk to the partnership. I wanted to have a word with you as a friend, first and foremost, to figure out the best way to address this thing.”

  “The partnership.”

  “We’ll be meeting again at one-thirty.”

  “Jack, this is absurd.”

  “I have no doubt of that. But we have to treat it seriously. He’s alleging sexual misconduct against the head of our employment litigation division. You can anticipate how that might attract attention.”

  “Consider the source. You yourself said he’d been reprimanded for improprieties with coemployees in the past.”

  Hannahan nodded. “And that’s fully documented in his personnel file.”

  I don’t need a morality lesson from homophobic seventy-year-olds. I intend to make my displeasure known at some point. Andrew said, “This is retaliatory. This is about him getting even with the firm.”

  “We’ve considered that motive.” Hannahan leaned forward, bringing his hands together. “What I’m asking you now is to weigh our exposure. Does he possess anything that could compromise our position?”

  “Of course not,” Andrew said.

  “Think on it for a moment. Anything at all.”

  “As I said, Jack, it’s frivolous. He’s after a quick buck. It’s outrageous. After all I’ve done for him.”

  Hannahan nodded slowly. “He purports to have photographic and video exhibits.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s alleged in his complaint. So, of course, we have the right to production of those exhibits.”

  Andrew heard it in Hannahan’s voice, what he didn’t want to say aloud. And he realized with a shock, suddenly and irrevocably, that the whole thing had already been decided. The partners had met, deliberated, voted, adjourned for lunch. They’d wiped their hands of him. Now he and Hannahan were merely going through the motions. Hannahan was the messenger, delivering the grim news.

  “What are you saying, Jack?”

  “Look, Andy. You came to Hartford for a change of pace. But maybe you need more than that. Maybe this is a chance to take some time for yourself. After all you’ve been through, no one could think poorly of you for doing so.”

  Did that mean he’d already seen the exhibits? Photographic and video exhibits. Andrew recalled all the times Sampson had pulled out his cell phone. Jesus Christ. A camera phone, of course. He’d recorded everything. They hadn’t even offered camera or video phones when Andrew bought his mobile a few years earlier. Leave it to a guy like Sampson to keep up with the latest technology. You’re the smart guy, he had told him. You figure it out. How had he not realized until now?

  “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there were something. What then?”

  “That would complicate the matter, of course,” said Hannahan.

  Complicate. Andrew grimaced. He saw fully how it would play out. There could be no halfway, no leave of absence. The firm would have to cut its ties, and quickly. That was what Hannahan was telling him now with his severe silences. There was no way they could let this suit go to trial. They couldn’t risk it. They couldn’t have the name of Carrington Farr on the news, his picture splashed in the newspaper, the sordid allegations of homosexual acts in the park, in a strip joint. It might take a year or longer to settle the suit, but the decision had been made. He was out. Andrew saw it all in an instant. His resigning, packing boxes, handing over his key card, taking the elevator down to the parking garage. And the aftermath too. What firm would take a chance on him with this indiscretion in his past? He’d have
to seek out clients anew, at forty-six. All those years of accomplishment, falling away like pebbles down a mountainside.

  “You’re telling me the firm wants to settle. Avoid complications.”

  “There was discussion toward that end.” Hannahan cleared his throat. “And your resignation as well.”

  “I wouldn’t disagree. I’d advise the same.”

  “They’ll want a covenant not to compete. A guarantee that you won’t take clients with you.”

  “The file will be sealed, I take it.”

  Hannahan nodded. “That could be part of the settlement terms.”

  Andrew got up. His legs felt unsteady.

  “Wait a minute now. This is all hypothetical. I have some ideas we can present to the partnership. Buyout terms. You should keep a percentage—”

  “Not now.” Andrew emptied the glass and set it on the desk.

  Hannahan raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, Andy. I did everything I could.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. It’s the only choice you had.”

  “It’s a damn shame.”

  In the hallway Andrew was suddenly aware of gawkers, the heads looking up as he passed their offices and cubicles. The word had already spread. He’d been doing this walk of shame all day and hadn’t even known it.

  Worse, Sampson had played him from the start. He’d seen an opportunity and he’d taken it. Now he would move on to some other firm, maybe some other city, a hundred grand or more in his pocket. From the very beginning there had been only calculation and forethought. All of it, a ploy.

  Odd, he didn’t even know where Sampson lived. Before leaving that afternoon, he logged on the company network and looked up Sampson’s home address.

  * * *

  HE SHOULD HAVE gone home, destroyed the registered letter, figured out what he was going to tell Audrey, but instead he spent most of the day at the hotel bar in the lobby. Tequila, again. He nursed a slow rage at Sampson and at himself for his own stupidity. At 5:00 P.M., he got into his car and drove to a package store and bought a twelve-pack of Anchor Steam. He wheeled past Sampson’s house, the fruit loop, the restaurants where they’d dined, but found no sign of Sampson or his convertible. He stopped at a few bars, drinking until he felt a numbness coming on.

  At ten o’clock, he parked on the street across from Sampson’s house and sat, waiting. Sampson lived in the far west end of Hartford, a half block from the park, only a hundred yards from the Wintonbury town line. The house was a three-story Victorian with a sloped turret and a wraparound porch. A dim light shone from a second-floor room, but otherwise the windows were dark, the driveway unlit. Andrew could hear traffic a mile away on Farmington Avenue, one of the main arteries into the city, but this side of the west end was quiet, most of the houses locked down for the night.

  Where was the little shit?

  Well, wherever he was, he had to come home sometime, and Andrew would be waiting. He squinted up at the turret on the third floor. That would be Sampson’s den, he imagined, where he could look down upon his fiefdom, the little prince. Perhaps he practiced his violin with the window open, letting the music drift out toward lucky passersby.

  Andrew grabbed a bottle out of the backseat. The beer was warm. After he took a sip, the suds bubbled onto his lap. He drank the beer quickly, because it tasted better that way, then clinked the bottle atop the pile scattered on the floor behind the passenger seat. He was wasting his time, he told himself. He should go home and get some sleep. But there was no reason to sleep, no reason to get up at 7:00 A.M. He was fucked. He didn’t want to face Audrey, didn’t want to make up some bullshit story to tell her. His house was only three or four miles to the northwest, but it felt like a different country.

  After a few minutes he had to piss. He considered driving down to the gas station on the corner, but that would have required too much effort. He got out of the car and veered drunkenly across the street. He went up the stone path and stepped onto Sampson’s porch. Two skinny cats jumped off the railing, startling him. They came toward him in tandem, tails raised high. He shooed them away, and one of the cats hissed at him.

  Andrew peered through a darkened first-floor window, cupping his hands against the glass. Inside, in the large empty room, there appeared to be only a single piece of furniture, a couch angled against the far wall. A few boxes were piled on top of each other with balls of newspaper scattered across the floor.

  He crept along the porch to the next window, nearly halfway around the house, but the blinds were drawn. In the darkness he tripped against a potted plant, nearly falling. It was a rubber plant, the large broad leaves glazed with cold. He unzipped and pissed into the base of the plant, the urine puddling noisily.

  Did Sampson live alone in this enormous house or did he rent the upper floors? It appeared to be a single-family dwelling, with only one mailbox. Did Sampson own the house? Did he have roommates? Andrew realized how little he knew about Sampson, how little he had revealed about himself. He had never invited Andrew to his home, had never volunteered any information about his past. The few facts Andrew knew, he’d learned from Sampson’s résumé. And where was he now, on this late Monday night? Had he remained in Washington, D.C.? Had he even gone to D.C.? Had he ever been sick? There was no telling. The prick had lied to him from the start. Andrew had known it on some level too. The way he’d given him points in tennis. His sycophantic laugh. His rapt attention when Andrew spoke. All of it bullshit, but Andrew had allowed himself to be taken in. He’d wanted to be taken in.

  He recalled something his father had taught him when he was young, something every kid knew: There’s nothing worse than a stool pigeon.

  Somewhere nearby a door slammed. Farther off, a few streets away, a motorcycle roared, briefly obscuring all other sounds. Andrew walked back to his car and got inside. In the silence that followed, he became aware of the low, rhythmic hum of an unseen generator. It lulled him, and he caught himself dozing once, then again, his head falling back against the headrest.

  Sometime later he woke with a shiver. The car windows were fogged, blanketing his view of the night. He blinked a few times and realized that his phone was ringing. He dug into his pocket and checked the display. Well, there he was.

  “Murray?”

  “Yeah.” Andrew glanced at his watch. He’d slept only twenty minutes, but he felt cold and hungover. His voice was hoarse.

  “How are you, buddy? I heard you had a rough day.”

  “Tell me something. Did you plan to screw me from the start? Or did the idea come to you as you went along?”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t be a spoilsport.”

  “A spoilsport?”

  “All’s fair in love and war, right?”

  “I’m serious. When did it occur to you to ruin my career? My livelihood?”

  “Look on the bright side, Murray. If you stay at that place, you’ll end up like Hannahan. Do you want that? To be like Jack? Hell, you’re halfway there already. Now you got a chance to change trajectory.”

  “Fuck you, Sampson.”

  “Honestly, I did you a favor. Someday you’ll thank me.”

  “Where are you? Are you in D.C.? Scared to answer your phone?”

  “That’s the reason I’m calling, actually. You have to cut down on the drunk dialing. You’re filling my mailbox.”

  “Fuck your mailbox. Where are you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Well, buddy, you’ve got to come home sometime and guess where I am? Right across the street. Hell, I might even pull into your driveway.”

  “You probably should. There’s no street parking after midnight.”

  “And guess what I got in the backseat? Not that I need it to kick your ass, but—it’s a bat. Not regulation size. It’s a mini-bat, they give them out for free at Fenway. I got it right here, to break your fucking teeth.” />
  “That’s a collector’s item. You should put that on eBay.”

  Andrew rubbed the condensation off the window and squinted across the street. On the third floor, he thought he saw the outline of a man in the turret window. But, no. There was no one there. Just a shadow from a tree’s top branches. And, in fact, the house now appeared wholly deserted, the bushes overgrown, the potted plant left out in the cold.

  “You moved out, didn’t you? You don’t even live here anymore, do you?”

  “Seriously, Murray. Go home. Go home to your wife.”

  “Answer my question. When did you decide to wreck my career?”

  “It was either you or me, pal. They were never going to make me partner at that place. They pretty much told me so. You were the only one there willing to let me try a couple of dog-shit cases, and I had to suck your cock to get that, even. I had to get out of there some way, didn’t I?”

  “So you came up with this trumped-up lawsuit?”

  “You’ll get over it. You’ll move on. You’ll have bigger and better adventures.”

  Andrew shook his head, feeling the anger beginning to turn into something else, something more painful. “After all I did for you, this is how you pay me back. I had your career in mind.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m serious. I was grooming you.”

  “Grooming, like a dog? That sort of grooming?”

  Andrew tried to summon the words for what was welling up in him. “Tell me where you are. Let’s talk this over in person. If it’s money you want, we can talk about money. Just drop this stupid suit. We can work it out.”

  “That’s blackmail, Murray. No thanks.”

  “I’m serious, Sampson. I can—”

  “There’s nothing more to talk about. We had a few laughs in the park. Maybe we can play again someday.”

  “It was more than that and you know it.”

  “Look, Murray, I gotta go.”

  “Don’t hang up.” He heard his voice crack, and he felt a wave of emotion coming on him, self-pity and hopelessness and drunken longing.