The Long Fall

by Daniel Quentin Steele

  It had started to rain so I heaved myself off the bench and started toward my Escalade.

  “Maybe, but I won’t be around and available by that time.”

  There was a longer silence. As I approached the Escalade in the parking lot, she finally said, “You don’t love her enough to hang on?”

  “Cathy, what if it was Roy that came to you one day and said he’d met somebody and he wanted a divorce and he moved out and started having sex with her and you knew it was just a fling. Would you hang on?”

  I got into the Escalade and watched the rain drops hit and run down the windshield. I realized she was crying.

  “I’m gonna miss you, Bill. You have been a good man, and a good son-in-law and a good father, even if you could have spent more time with the kids. I’m crying for myself, and for Debbie. The day will come when she’ll realize what she threw away, and then she’ll be the one crying. Trust me on that.”

  “I’d have to be a better man than I am not to tell you that that thought makes me smile. I hope she hurts like hell, one day, because I sure as hell am hurting now.”

  “Don’t forget us, Bill. Even if you drop out of Debbie’s life, you’ve been a part of our life for 20 years. You’re not divorcing us.”

  “I know. Bye.”

  I drove to the River and plugged in my laptop and started looking at rentals. Money wasn’t really an issue, but I wanted to be somewhere closer to downtown. I had a feeling my job was going to be an even bigger part of my life than it had been and being downtown would be convenient.

  After I’d made notes on some prospects, decided I didn’t want to hear how the world was going to hell and it had become obvious that my wife and kids had left me for dead, I started looking up porn video sites. I found a couple of good ones with short to a few full length videos. I clicked on one featuring a big breasted blonde who apparently had run into a couple of very well endowed pool cleaners. Nothing. I couldn’t get a hint of an erection.

  I realized that was probably not the best idea on how to get some relief so I hunted until I found one about a wife cheating with her husband’s two best friends, both guys in their 40s or 50s from appearances. She was brunette, short and slender. Still nothing. I looked down at my recalcitrant dick and couldn’t help chiding it with a “you fucking traitor.”

  But it was obvious he wasn’t going to come out to play and then I began to get a little more depressed. Not only had Debbie broken my heart, it looked like she had killed my sex drive as well.

  I turned the lights off and stared at the ceiling while a kaleidoscope of memories and pictures from my past life swirled through my head. I know I must have slept sometime, but I honestly don’t remember falling asleep or waking to the sunrise.

  The Fourth Day of My Freedom

  When I came to work that morning it felt like everybody was staring at me, and trying to keep me from catching them doing it. Cheryl walked around me on eggshells. I finally had to tell her to get the hell over it and forget about what happened Friday. We had work to do.

  I probably did a good job, although I could never remember exactly what I did that day. I called a few real estate agents and got commitments to see a few places. I was out of the office by 4:30 and had seen five places by 7:30 that night. When I stepped out of the fifth place, a two-bedroom condo two miles from the courthouse complex on Liberty Street, I told the agent “That’s the place.”

  He looked surprised.

  “You don’t want to see any other sites? It’s kind of small.”

  “It’s big enough for me. I don’t expect to be spending a lot of time here. The kitchen is small but I’ll probably eat out, it has DSL and satellite connections, and the second bedroom is just for any times when I might have my kids. I can sleep on the couch those nights. I want to move in by this weekend. Is that doable?”

  “With enough money anything is doable.”

  The rest of the week and the following week went fast and glacially slow at the same time. I moved into the Liberty two bedroom. Work was work. The Thompson Brothers (the scum bag drug dealer murder case) that I’d thought would like down easier than an oyster at a beach party turned into a cluster fuck as it turned out that the brothers and their friends had planted a friend on the jury and were stupid enough to threaten another juror to see things the right way.

  What had been a simple legal execution turned into a dogfight. When it was over a case that should have taken three or four days tops took nearly three weeks to get close to final arguments.

  I had finally made myself go by my former house with a deputy accompanying me. Debbie found a reason to be elsewhere so it was just Kelly there. As I separated the balance of my life from what had been my home Kelly hovered nearby. We said a few words.

  As I got ready to walk out I went over to her and took her in my arms. She resisted for just a moment and then she hugged me back.

  “I’m sorry baby.”

  “I’m sorry too, daddy.”

  I turned the Liberty two-bedroom condo into a storage unit with just enough room to turn around, eat in the kitchen, and go to bed. Every night I went out and as I had almost every night since my visit to The Last Call, I got shit faced at a bar.

  As usual, the owners called the cops who deposited me in my bed. I knew they had to be getting pissed, but as long as I had a tight grasp on the balls of deputy sheriff who had killed his girlfriend’s husband and two brothers, they were going to be very nice to me.

  I spent Thursday putting the finishing touches on what should be the close for the Thompson kid-killing drug dealer case. At work people should have been getting used to my being a casualty in the divorce wars, but everybody still walked warily around me. I don’t think two people had said anything to me about my personal life. Maybe they were being considerate, or maybe I just gave off vibes of “get the hell away from me” so strongly that no one wanted to venture into dangerous waters.

  After work, past 8 p.m., I grabbed Chinese on the way to Liberty Street, worked on case prep until nearly midnight without ever turning on the television, and finally checked my email at midnight. It was all trash except one from Debbie.

  “Bill, I’ve retained Joyce Linder of Linder and Howe to handle the divorce. Have whoever you hire contact her.”

  There were no hearts or smiley faces on the e-mail, which didn’t surprise me.

  I could have waited until later the next day, but the message galvanized me. I looked up a cell number and punched it in.

  “Yes, this better be very important to be calling me at midnight. Otherwise I’m jacking up the fee to double my normal.”

  I knew Lew Walters had caller ID and he knew my number, so that was for my benefit.

  “I expect you to work for free or I’ll be telling Mona in great detail about those two hostesses, you know the ones you were entertaining at that UF Law School meet and greet about six years ago.”

  “Mutual Assured Destruction, Mr. Assistant State Attorney. You narc on me and I tell the beautiful Debbie about that District Attorney from, where was it, Oakland, that you were playing with at that conference two years ago in Chicago. You know, the one who could tie two cherry stems together with her tongue?”

  It was obvious he was out of town and being as much of a jumping bean as he was, he hadn’t been in town in a few weeks and hadn’t heard the gossip. I wondered why his wife Mona hadn’t told him, and then I realized I’d heard that she was in Africa on some “Save the Wildlife” crusade with a woman’s group.

  “Right now it wouldn’t matter anymore, even if it was true, Lew.”

  “Oh, what’s going on Bill?”

  “She filed for divorce Friday a couple of weeks ago. She’s hired Joyce Linder. I’d like you to represent me.”

  There was a silence on the other end, which was unusual because Lew Walters could spew as many words as any attorney I’d ever met. I had liked him anyway ever since we’d met while I was a practicing attorney alum talking to law students at UF more tha
n five years before. Lew didn’t really do divorce cases, but he was a jack of all trades and he was my friend. I trusted him.

  “You’re serious. Goddamn, Bill, I’m sorry. How the hell did that happen? You been screwing around? And if you were, I probably ought to tell you I’m going to let her burn your ass. She is too hot, and good a woman, for you to treat that way.”

  “The other way around.”

  “No. My God. I never would have – Wait, please tell me that it wasn’t Norman,” he asked. Norman was his alley cat partner who had probably screwed half the women working in and around the courthouse over the past few years. “He didn’t bed her?”

  “No, it wasn’t Norman. She met some hotshot kid professor at UNF and now she thinks she’s in love with him.”

  “God, I’m glad to hear that. I mean, I hate it for you, but if it had been Norman, I would have had to kill him, or at least beat the shit out of him. He’s got the morals of a damned goat. I wish to God I didn’t like him as much as I do. Anyway, what’s your call? You want me to gum up the works and drag it out? Give her a chance to get her head out of her ass?”

  “No. It’s done. When your wife tells you she doesn’t love you anymore and she starts bringing the bastard around to meet your kids and her parents while our bed is still warm, it’s too late. All I want you to do, and you have to do this, is arrange for reasonable child support. She makes good money but I’ll do my part.

  “What I WILL NOT DO is give her one stinking penny of alimony. I’m not going to pay her to fuck that bastard. I’d quit the office and bail this town before I pay her one cent. We were married for 17 years, but she doesn’t get anything for screwing around on me. Can you do that?”

  “Can a bear crap in the woods? Now, how rough do you want me to get? I know adultery doesn’t carry any legal weight, but I can find a judge who hates cheaters and we’ll get in the dirt some way, enough to give you what you want. What do you have on her?”

  “I can’t tell you, Lew, and don’t push it. I don’t even know she’s…..I know she thinks she’s in love with him and I know if she hasn’t fucked him, it’s going to happen any minute.”

  “You know you’re tying my hands, but…I’ll get it done for you. Bill….shit man, I am so sorry. Is there anything that Mona or I can do for you. I’m in Omaha this minute, but I’ll be back in Jax in a few days.”

  “Just get this legal shit done, and kiss Mona for me when you see her. You’re a lucky man. I never realized how lucky until a few days ago.”

  “Oh….yeah…and what about the kids? You want any particular visitation or custody? You want to fight her for custody?”

  “No, she’s a good mother, just a shitty wife. She’s raised them. I’ve just been visiting. I want to have some contact with them that she can’t screw around with, but she can have primary.”

  “Consider it done. But, man, don’t let this screw you up with the kids. Even if things get weird, and they usually do in bitter divorces, they’re still yours. No matter what happens between Debbie and you, don’t let this mess things up between you and them. I’ll call you when I get back to Jax, OK?”

  I knew how desperately he and his wife Mona were trying to conceive. Neither one of them could quite conceal the envy and pain the sight of our two rambunctious teenagers brought to them on the few occasions they’d been to our home. But, everybody has problems. Right now I felt like I would have swapped mine for theirs.

  I lay back, feeling better but worse at the same time. Lew was good. He’d handle the legal end of it. The “worse” came with the realization that now that it had gotten into the hands of the litigators, there was no going back.

  The next morning I had to run the gauntlet of stares and whispers as I went into work and prepared for the close of the Thompson Brothers’ first case. This one was Nigel. The actual trial – apart from the witness and jury tampering fireworks - was so damned open and shut that it was like shooting fish in a barrel or bagging a buck chained in the middle of a clearing. I didn’t take any pride in it, but I took the case from Gordon Carlisle and Jessica Stephens because I needed it.

  I made my closing, fried Thompson’s ass and wasn’t surprised an hour after the jury went away at mid-day that they came back with a guilty of first degree murder verdict.

  I let Stephens sit at the prosecution table because she’d been a good sport about my grabbing the case out from under her.

  She was a tall frosted blonde. Not really built, but nice up and down. Not really pretty, but there was something about her. She was one of those women who looked plain when you looked at her from one angle, like a classic beauty if you looked at her from another angle. She’d worked at the State Attorney’s Office before I came on and was a fixture. She was a good attorney. I was never quite sure why she’d been satisfied to remain at a lower level.

  Right now, those shifting good looks were overshadowed by darkness. I didn’t know what, and I didn’t need to be an expert at reading people, to know that she was hurting. I knew that expression well.

  Carlisle had not taken my grabbing the case well and although he tried to hide it, I knew he was pissed. It would have been a conviction in a high profile murder case and I knew it would have looked good on his resume, but he was young. He’d have plenty more chances.

  As I walked out of the courtroom I could see Carlisle huddled with two other younger ASAs. I walked slowly toward them.

  “…son of a bitch…it was my case. Jessica was just window dressing. I did the heavy lifting and then he comes along and steals it. Jesus, if he’d just spent a little more time bedding that big tittied whore of his, he wouldn’t be wandering around ruining everybody’s life. Damned dickless wonder….”

  The two SAs with him alerted him with their eyes as I walked up and he turned slowly, like something from a vaudeville routine.

  He was silent, waiting for the axe to fall.

  “First off, I’d suggest you apologize for calling my still-wife a whore.”

  He met my gaze and said, “I apologize. I didn’t mean that. I just – I worked my ass off on that case. I got mad.”

  “Secondly, anybody stupid enough to badmouth someone as high over him as I am over you where he can be overheard, is probably too stupid to hope for promotions.”

  He didn’t say anything so I added, “What do you know about my marriage and how many other people around here know about it.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “They say your wife is divorcing you for some young guy from UNF. That she went for a stud. Everybody knows your wife. She’s the hottest pi-woman I’ve ever seen. And - everybody knows about it. Attorneys, cops, the cleaning crew. Everybody.”

  I just shook my head.

  “You’re a stupid fuck, but fortunately being stupid isn’t a capital offense. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

  I watched them walk away and wondered how many different stories were going the rounds about me and Debbie.

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned and saw Jessica Stephens looking at me.

  “He’s an asshole, Mr. Maitland. People aren’t laughing at you. You got screwed. People know the kind of man you are. They’re not laughing.”

  She was as tall, if not taller, than Debbie. I looked up into her eyes and shrugged.

  “They’re laughing, Jessica. I know that. But it doesn’t matter.”

  I turned to walk away from her when she said, “Do you have any place you need to go after work?”

  I stood looking at her. What the hell? Did getting dumped suddenly make you attractive to the opposite sex?

  After a long moment I said, “No, no plans and nowhere to go.”

  “I feel like shit and you feel like shit. I’d like to go out and have a few drinks with you before I go home? We can feel sorry for each other. You want to?”

  She came by my office just before I closed the doors at 6 p.m. Cheryl was there and gave me a funny look as she saw Jessica walk into my office.

  “
I live on the Westside, over near Park at 17. You ever been to O’Brien’s?”

  I had. It was a big, old fashioned bar on the border between old downtown Avondale and the wild Westside.

  “Yeah. That where you want to go?”

  “I only live two blocks from there. I can park at home and walk to the bar and walk home. Don’t need to worry about DUIs.”

  “Makes sense. I’ll see you there.”

  It was near 7 p.m. when I pulled up in front of O’Brien’s. It’s a huge bar on a divided median roadway just off U.S. 17 that runs up and down the east coast of the U.S. and straight through the heart of Jacksonville.

  I parked on the divided median and walked into O'Brien's. It had a huge horseshoe bar, a pretty big cleared dance floor, pool tables and an area with tables and chairs just off the bar. It served sandwiches and hot wings and light food items to go along with the booze. It was the classic neighborhood bar. It was, in other words, an American pub.

  I walked over to one of the tables and sat down. A waitress came by in a moment and I ordered a Bloody Mary, heavy on the Vodka, Tabasco and pepper. I was about to pay when a guy about my height, dark haired and limping and with the classic cauliflower ear and battered nose of a fighter limped up and told the waitress, “Mr. Maitland’s money is no good in here.”

  “Hi, O’Brien,” I told him. “You still alive and kicking?”

  “As hard as I can. What brings you here, Mr. M?”

  “Just came by for a drink. Meeting somebody.”

  He gave me a look I couldn’t place.

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “You’re not out with the Missus?”

  “No more, O’Brien. Never again.”

  “Oh, damn. How long?”

  “Month ago, more or less.”

  He shook his head and then said, “It’ll get better, Mr. M. I’ve gone through it four times. Get plastered often and laid more often. You’ll be alright.”