by Sol Stein
When she came back, she sat down beside him on the floor. Be grateful for small improvements, he told himself.
“When I was twelve,” she said, “I once asked my mother if Daddy worked at two jobs. When she asked me to explain I said that he always seemed to be doing a little something for the government. I didn’t know exactly what it was. Neither did she. But we both knew that whatever it was—a few phone calls, an occasional trip to Washington on some pretext—gave him the same kind of kick other fathers got from golf. It was his thing. He didn’t parachute behind enemy lines, but on his scale of adventure, it was obviously rewarding. However busy he was, he always had time when Perry asked him to do a little something that mother and I weren’t supposed to know beans about. I remember how upset he was when Christopher Boyce escaped from jail. He doesn’t show upset easily.”
“Who is Christopher Boyce?”
“The kid from California who stole our satellite secrets from TRW and passed them, through a friend, to the Soviets in Mexico. Don’t you read the papers?”
He remembered the case vaguely. Then less vaguely as Francine filled him in.
Suddenly he said, “I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
“Because it reminds you of what kind of person you might be defending now?”
“Nobody has proved anything.”
“I love your absolute loyalty to your client. Who is your client loyal to?”
“You lied to me about tonight,” he shouted.
“I thought you were trying to learn not to shout.”
“You betrayed me. You set me up!”
“George, George, this was the first time my father included us in. He didn’t tell me what it was about, just that it would be of immense help in something important if I could get you to come to the house. I told him we were on hold, that it was a bad time, but he said it couldn’t wait, so mother cooperated by letting the cook off, fixing dinner herself, and going off to eat hers with a friend and I cooperated by inviting you to a party I wasn’t part of. Was it bad?”
Funny, he thought, how he felt the need for a lined yellow pad. In the courtroom he’d trained himself to jot down pointers for countermoves while listening.
“Why’d you come back?” he asked.
“I was coming here before this dinner thing. I said I wanted three days. I took three days.”
“Did you know,” he said, “that they showed me photographs of a scene in a UN lobby that included guess who?”
“Who?”
“You.”
Francine blanched involuntarily like any witness he’d ever surprised.
“Who photographed me?”
“They weren’t photographing you. They’ve been taking pictures of a man called Semyonov—that mean anything to you?”
“Of course.”
“And there was another one, Trushenko. That mean anything?”
Francine nodded. A flicker of memory.
“Why did you stop?” Thomassy asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone in that lobby was walking in one direction or other except Semyonov stopped and Trushenko stopped and then you stopped.”
“I saw someone come up to them and they reacted weirdly. Semyonov turned around and walked back fast in the direction he’d come from, Trushenko kept going. The young man who’d come up to them went after Trushenko, which is odd.”
“Why?”
“Because Semyonov’s the senior man. He left for Moscow the next day. My boss was surprised. He’d expected to have a sidebar with Semyonov later that week.”
“Did you recognize the young man who stopped them?”
“He didn’t stop them. Semyonov just turned and went back the way he’d come. The fellow went chasing after Trushenko.”
“You’re avoiding my question. Did you recognize him? Stop looking at your hands, look at me. Francine, please don’t lie to me. You’ve seen his picture in the papers. You’ve seen him standing next to me on television. You saw him in my office. If the DA subpoenas you to testify to where you saw Porter and the circumstances, what do I do, cross-examine to destroy your testimony or take myself off the case? You remember how I got this case, don’t you? You nudged me because your father nudged you because Perry didn’t want to see the Porter case explode because he was defended by some schmuck!”
He was letting the anger mount again. Sit on it, he told himself, hang it on the wall so you can look at it instead of just feeling it.
She said, “I can see why you would be upset.”
She stretched out on the carpet, face up, her hands behind her head. Would he ever leave himself so vulnerable to another person?
“I don’t want to get those photos as an exhibit in the record,” Thomassy said. I don’t want you on exhibit. I don’t want you on the stand. He took her hands. “Once you testify, or those photos get printed somewhere, some newsman will dig out the link between you and me. How we met.” Your rape case. “We avoided the papers when it happened. Now every goddamn camera in the world is focused on us.”
“Why did they show you those pictures?”
“It’s the line on which they can reel me in. They want me to dig some stuff out of Porter and pass it on to them.”
“Will you?”
“In violation of my lawyer-client confidentiality? Like hell I will. What I want to know is when you’ll finish filling me in—completely, everything—on Ludmilla Tarasova?”
Francine sipped at her wine. She said, “If I smoked, this is the time for me to light a cigarette.”
“What’s rattling you?”
“You, Dirty George. You want to get out of their dirty hands by making mine dirty. I’d feel like a thief ransacking government files for you to use against the government.”
“I wouldn’t be in this if it weren’t for you!”
“I didn’t push.”
“You don’t have to when it comes to me.”
“And now you’re telling me that to keep their dirt from rubbing off on me, all you want is for me to rub some dirt on myself. What the hell are you up to, George?”
“I’m planning to get my client acquitted.”
“How?”
“If I don’t tell you, you won’t be able to tell your father.”
“My father may never speak to me again if you blow this thing up.”
“Has he ever?”
“Ever what?”
“Spoken to you the way you do to me?”
“No.”
“I’m glad to hear that you have a different relationship to me than you do to him.”
“George, I can see your brain whirring. You’re going to do something that will get the government very upset.”
Thomassy smiled. “I consider that a prime objective. My flag says Don’t tread on me.”
He was standing over her, and she said, “Don’t tread on me, George,” and they laughed together for the first time that evening.
“I’ll bet you haven’t eaten dinner,” she said.
“Have you?”
“No. I don’t need to. I like to skip eating once in a while. It’s a way of proving to food who’s boss, it or me.”
“Can I offer you an after-dinner drink?” he asked. “I have,” he said, inspecting his bottles, “Grand Marnier, a little Kahlua left, and some Armagnac, if you can take the strong stuff.”
“I can take,” she said.
“I can give.”
With deft hands, he undressed her, setting her clothes aside carefully so as not to wrinkle them. Only when he removed her skimpy panties did he roll them into a ball and as if he were playing basketball made believe that he was aiming at the backboard behind a hoop and threw them against the wall.
“You should have played for the Celtics,” Francine said.
“I’m much too young.”
She caught his stare, crossed her legs, and supported her head on an elbow, a nude odalisque.
“I want to touch you,” he said.
“You waitin
g for permission?” she asked.
He said nothing.
“Permission granted.”
He bent over her. He watched her breast move with her breathing. Then, with the tip of his index finger, he touched her right toe.
“You’re a model of restraint,” she said, feeling the cavernous longing.
“I’ll get the Armagnac,” he said, rising.
She looked at him across the room looking at her.
“You are overdressed for this climate,” she said.
“That can be remedied.”
She watched him take his clothes off, not the way most men did, hurriedly, but one careful movement at a time, like in a ballet. Who said only women undressing could be erotic in their effect?
When he slipped his shorts off, she said, “Hello.”
“At your service,” he said, pulled the cork out of the Armagnac bottle with his teeth, then with great deliberation came over to her and tipped the bottle, letting the viscous liquid flow over her breasts and past her naval, down. He set the bottle down on the coffee table, then let the cork fall from his lips so they would be free as, like a huge tomcat flicking his tongue, he fell to his knees and then bent his head to her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jenny Sturbridge had given the servants an unexpected evening off because, like all servants, they lived part of their lives vicariously, and she did not choose to have them overhear what might transpire when Franklin Harlow visited. Even if they didn’t hear a thing, just the presence of the family lawyer was enough to feed their appetites for gossip. It was bad enough they had to read about the case in the newspapers.
She answered the door herself. “He’s in that study of his,” she said. “I’ll lead the way.”
Between the large kitchen and the pantry a door led down steps to the cellar. “We must be careful not to startle Malcolm,” she said.
Past the door to the boiler room Harlow could see the long cool corridor in which hundreds of bottles of wine were racked in bins against the walls. Seldom-worn jewels, he thought, collecting in a jewel box.
Jenny Sturbridge was a few steps ahead of him. “He’s aging me faster than the wine,” she said.
Harlow’s wife Elizabeth had been a magnificent eccentric in his view, a lady who cared for injured birds till they no longer need fear cats, a lady who told idling policemen how to direct traffic better. But one day he had watched Elizabeth folding towels, putting them in the linen cupboard, then removing them and refolding them in a slightly different manner. Was that the first time he had realized her eccentricity had slid over the line? She was in an institution now and that presented him with a congeries of problems, including the shape of Jenny Sturbridge’s body as she walked in front of him, a man deprived.
A long time ago Malcolm Sturbridge had had a wall built across the far end of his wine cellar and behind it had created a small room with paneled walls, a desk, a chair, a locked filing cabinet. He called it his second study. Unlike his upstairs study, there was no phone. Jenny suspected that the papers in that filing cabinet were ones she would not want to go through if Malcolm died. He didn’t like to be interrupted in this room, and so Jenny knew the risk when she rapped her knuckles against the walnut door.
“What is it?” came the annoyed voice from within.
“Franklin is here,” she said.
After a moment, Sturbridge opened the door. He glanced at his intruding wife, and then smiled, extending his hand to Harlow. “Franklin,” he said, “how unusual of you to pay an unexpected visit. Have you been cozying my wife while I’ve been working away in the depths?”
“Hello, Malcolm.”
“What brings you here?” Sturbridge said, shutting the door of the room behind him.
“I asked him,” Jenny said quickly.
“I volunteered to come,” Harlow said quickly, “when Jenny told me you were troubled about the possibility of being accosted by reporters at the trial.”
Sturbridge said, “It’s cold down here. Why don’t we all make ourselves comfortable upstairs.”
Franklin Harlow said the only thing he could say. “Of course,” and gained the advantage of walking back through the wine cellar behind the graceful body of Jenny Sturbridge, thinking what a waste of love that a client’s wife was beyond the pale.
*
In front of the fireplace, a third armchair pulled close for Harlow, Sturbridge said, “It’s a pity you haven’t been attending the trial.”
“You know what my schedule’s like, Malcolm. Do you want me to abandon supervision of the SEC case?”
“Of course you can’t. But your lawyer’s eye could tell me more than mine do. I sit there, trying to listen as a juror might. Jenny thinks things are going against Edward despite that talented lawyer.”
“Jenny,” Harlow said, “is a pessimist.”
“I wish Malcolm would listen to the doctor,” Jenny said.
“Rachlin thinks all those flare-ups in the courtroom are going to outpace my little mechanical implant. My only concern, Harlow, is the newsmen.”
“Have they detected you yet?”
“Jenny and I sit all the way in the back. It’s just that Edward cranes around once in a while until he’s certain where we’re sitting. I’m not sure he finds our presence a comfort. Jenny has to steel herself to keep from going up to Edward during the breaks. If the newsmen identify me, what do I say? What will they ask me?”
“Malcolm,” Harlow said, “I guarantee the first question would be ‘How does it feel to have your only son being tried for murder?’”
“I could say ‘no comment,’ couldn’t I?”
“That’s the trap. Industrialist says no comment when asked how it feels to be the father of an accused murderer. Newspapers hang you for not answering as well as for answering. Avoid them. Just walk away if they come after you.”
Jenny said, “You’re both being very self-centered. What about Eddie? Look at the agony he’s being put through day after day. He’s not that kind of boy.”
“What kind?” Malcolm said, staring at Jenny as if she had just trespassed on his moral code.
Harlow said, “I don’t like it when you get that flush in your face, Malcolm. Rachlin wouldn’t either.”
Malcolm Sturbridge smiled, pharaoh in his tomb looking at the living. “Are you giving me medical, moral, or legal advice this evening?”
Harlow glanced at Jenny. “I thought I might put out a statement from my office to the effect that you have a profound faith in your son’s innocence.”
“Jenny put you up to that.”
“Not really.”
“Don’t start shading the truth with me now. We’ve known each other too long. I am not going to usurp the function of the jury.”
Jenny Sturbridge said, “You were his jury for the longest time.”
Malcolm ignored her. “Franklin,” he said, “you’ve been infinitely valuable to me over the years. I’ve listened to your advice not only as the company’s advocate but as mine. The decisions, however, you will recall, are finally my prerogative. No statement to the press. That’s final. Sherry, or something stronger?”
Harlow asked for whiskey with a splash.
“Jenny?” Sturbridge asked.
“Not for me.”
“Well, the doctor says a bit is good for the ticker,” Sturbridge said, as he poured some whiskey into a second glass. He handed the first glass to Harlow, then clinked his own against it.
“To our friendship,” Sturbridge said. “May it never end.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thomassy was just coming into the courtroom when he saw the couple taking their seats in the back again. On the first day he had suspected who they were because Ed had inherited enough of the features of each for the kinship to show. Ed had confirmed his guess. And now that they were just a few feet away, Thomassy thought he’d go over and shake the hand of the man who was, after all, paying the bill.
As he came near, the man he thought was Malcol
m Sturbridge turned his head away. It was the woman who faced him. She motioned him close enough so she could whisper, “He’s not being rude. He doesn’t want the reporters to identify him. It’s better they leave him alone. Because of his heart condition.”
“I understand,” Thomassy said.
She couldn’t help touching his sleeve. “Good luck,” she said.
Thomassy continued down the aisle. He hated the idea of luck. Fools counted on it.
The guard standing near the court reporter saw Thomassy and nodded. Guards, Thomassy had learned, didn’t bet on the outcome of trials. As far as they were concerned, a defendant got this far, he was guilty. The question was would his lawyer get him off?
“Hello,” said Ed with a smile.
Without responding, Thomassy sat down next to Ed at the defense table. He suddenly felt as if he and not Ed were the defendant. What was this trial becoming?
Ed stared straight ahead as if he felt that eye contact would ignite whatever seemed to be boiling in Thomassy’s brain.
“It’s your job,” Thomassy had told the students, “to use every legal means to give your client the best defense you can.” “What about tricks?” someone had asked. “You mean tactics,” Thomassy had said, getting a laugh.
You are becoming unfit to practice criminal law, he said to himself as he got up and walked back out of the courtroom to the surprise of the guard and Ed and anybody else who might have been watching.
*
The court attendant found him in the washroom, putting cold water to his face with cupped hands.
“Okay,” Thomassy said, “I’ll be right there.”
*
Thomassy was finding it hard to pay attention as Roberts continued his examination of Detective Cooper. He hadn’t interrupted for five minutes.
“Detective Cooper,” Roberts was saying, “on the day of Professor Fuller’s death, did you examine the contents of the Fuller garage?”
“I did.”
“Did you do that personally, or did one of your men do it?”
“Personally.”
“Tell us what you found in the garage.”
“In addition to the automobiles, there were a number of floats and other pool items stored in the rafters, and on one side, some mechanical equipment.”
