Now and Forever

by Danielle Steel

“No, he didn’t pick her up. He left the restaurant to go home and work on his book, but he drove past Enrico’s again on his way, and she just happened to be standing at the corner when he stopped for a light. And just for the hell of it, he offered her a lift. She didn’t look like much when she got in, she was quite a bit older than he had thought. She claims thirty on the police report, but he says she’s at least thirty-seven or -eight. She gave him the address of a hotel on Market where she claimed she lived, and Ian says he felt sorry for her when she invited him up for a drink. So he went up with her, had a drink—there was half a bottle of bourbon in her room—and he says it went to his head, and he … they had intercourse.” Wald cleared his throat, looked away, and went on. Jessica’s face showed no expression; the cigarette filter was still in her hand. “And he says that was it. To put it bluntly, he put on his pants and went home. He had a shower, took a nap, made a sandwich, and came out to meet your plane. That’s the whole story. Ian’s story.” But she could hear in his voice that there was more.

  “It sounds fairly tawdry, Philip. But it does not sound like rape. What are they basing the charges on?”

  “Her story. And you’ve got to remember, Jessica, how sensitive an issue rape is these days. For years women cried rape, and men made damaging statements about those women in court. Private investigators uncovered the supposedly startling fact that the plaintiff was not a virgin, and instantly the men were exonerated, the cases dismissed, and the women disgraced. For many reasons, it doesn’t work like that anymore. No matter what really happened. Now the police and the courts are more cautious, more inclined to believe the women, and give the victim a much fairer deal. It’s a damn good thing too, and about time … except once in a while, some woman comes along with an axe to grind, tells a lie, and some decent guy takes a bad fall. Just like some decent women used to get hurt the way things were before, now some decent guys get it in the … ahem … where it hurts.”

  Jessica couldn’t suppress a smile. Philip was so utterly, totally proper. She was sure he made love to his wife with his Brooks Brothers boxer shorts on.

  “Frankly, Jessica, I think that what happened here is that Ian fell into the hands of a sick, unhappy woman. She slept with him, and then called it rape. Ian says she was seductive in her manner and claimed to be a waitress in a topless bar, which is not the case. But she could have been playing a very sick psychological game with him. And God knows how often she’s done this before, in subtle ways, with threats, accusations. Apparently, though, she’s never gone to the police before. I think you’re going to have a hell of a time proving she’s lying. Certainly not without a trial. Rape is hard to prove, but it’s also hard to prove that it wasn’t rape. If she’s insisting it was, then the district attorney has to prosecute. And apparently the inspector on the case believes this woman’s story. So we’re stuck. If they’ve decided they want Ian’s head, for whatever reasons, it’ll have to go to a jury.”

  They were both silent for a long time, and then Philip sighed and spoke again.

  “I read the police reports, and the woman claims that he picked her up and she asked him to take her back to her office. She’s a secretary at a hotel on Van Ness. Instead, he took her to this hotel on Market where they … where they had that last drink. Given that part of the story, he’s damn lucky they didn’t hit him with a charge of kidnap as well. In any case, he allegedly forced her into both normal intercourse, and … unnatural acts. That’s where the second and third counts of rape come in, and the one charge of assault. Though I assume they’ll drop the assault—there’s no medical proof of it.” Somehow Philip sounded horrifyingly matter-of-fact about the details, and Jessica was beginning to feel sick. She felt as though she were swimming in molasses, as though everything around her was slow and thick and unreal. She wanted to scrape the words off her skin with a knife. “Unnatural acts.” What unnatural acts?

  “For Chrissake, Philip, what do you mean by ‘unnatural’? Ian is perfectly normal in bed.” Philip blushed. Jessie didn’t. This was no time to be prim.

  “Oral copulation, and sodomy. They are felonies, you know.” Jessica pursed her lips and looked fierce. Oral copulation hardly seemed unnatural.

  “There was no clear evidence of the sodomy, but I don’t think they’ll drop it. Again, it’s her word against his, and they’re listening, and unfortunately, before I got down there, Ian admitted to the inspector on the case that he had had intercourse with the woman. He didn’t confess to the oral copulation or the sodomy, but he shouldn’t have admitted to intercourse at all. Damn shame that he did.”

  “Will it hurt the case?”

  “Probably not. We can, have the tape withheld in court on the grounds that he was distraught at the time. Martin will take care of it.”

  Jessica sat with her eyes closed for a moment, not believing the weight of it all.

  “Why is she doing this to us, Philip? What can she possibly want from him? Money? Hell, if that’s what she wants, I’ll give it to her, whatever she wants. I just can’t believe this is really happening.” She opened her eyes and looked at him again, feeling the now familiar wave of confusion and unreality sweep over her again.

  “I know this is very hard on you, Jessica. But you have an excellent attorney now. Put your faith in him; he’ll do a good job for you. One thing you absolutely must not do, though, under any circumstances, is offer this woman money. The police won’t drop the case now, even if she does, and you’ll be compounding a felony and God knows what else if you try to bribe her. And I’m serious—the police seem to be taking a special interest in this. It isn’t often that they get their hands on a Pacific Heights rape case, and I get the feeling that some of them think it’s about time the upper class got theirs. Sergeant Houghton, the inspector on this case, made some very nasty cracks about ‘certain kinds of people who think they can get away with anything they want at the expense of certain other people of lesser means.’ It isn’t a pretty inference, but if that’s how he’s thinking, he ought to be treated with kid gloves. I got the feeling that he doesn’t like how Ian looks, or what he saw of you. I almost wonder if he doesn’t think you’re a couple of sickoes doing whatever amuses you for kicks. Who knows what he thinks—I’m just giving you my impression—but I want you to be very careful, Jessica. And whatever you do, don’t pay this woman off. You’ll be hurting Ian, and yourself, if you try to do that. If she wants money, if she calls you … let her talk. You can testify to it later. But don’t give her a dime!” He was emphatic on the last point, and then ran a hand through his hair.

  “I hate to have to tell you all this, Jessica. Ian was sick about it. But obviously you have to know what went on. It isn’t very pretty, though, and I must say you’re taking it remarkably well.”

  But the tears welled up again at that, and she wanted to beg him not to be nice to her, not to congratulate her on how well she was taking it. She could handle the rough stuff, but she knew that if anyone put his arms around her, sympathized, cared … or if Ian should walk in the door just then … she would sob until she died.

  “Thank you, Philip.” He thought her voice sounded oddly cold, as though she were warding him off. “At least it’s obviously not rape, and that’s bound to be made clear in court. If Martin Schwartz is any good.”

  “Yes, but … Jessie, it’s going to be ugly. You have to be prepared for that.” His eyes sought hers and she nodded.

  “I understand that.” But she didn’t. Not really. It hadn’t even begun to sink in yet. How could it? Nothing had sunk in since eleven o’clock that morning. She was in shock. She only knew two things, and she didn’t even understand those two things: that Ian was gone, that she couldn’t see him, feel him, hear him, touch him; that he had slept with another woman. She had to face that now too. Publicly. The rest would sink in later.

  There wasn’t much more Philip could do, and he didn’t know Jessica well enough to offer her any comfort. Only Ian knew Jessica that well. And Jessie made Philip nervou
s. She remained so calm. He was grateful that she was subdued, but it made him feel cold toward her, and confused. He found himself wondering what she was really thinking. He thought of his own wife and how she might react to something like this, or his sister, any of the women he knew. Jessie was a different breed of cat entirely. Too poised for his taste—and yet there was something shattering about her eyes. Like two broken windows. They were the only hint that all was not well within.

  “Is there any chance he can call me? I thought you had a right to make one phone call from jail.” He had before, when they had busted him for his tickets.

  “Yes. But I gather that he didn’t want to call you, Jessica.”

  “He didn’t?” She seemed to recede still further into her own reserve.

  “No. He said he wasn’t sure how you’d feel. Said something about maybe this would be the last straw.”

  “Asshole.” Philip looked away, and in a few moments took his leave. It had been an excessively unpleasant day. He found himself feeling grateful that he didn’t practice criminal law. He couldn’t stomach it. He didn’t envy Martin Schwartz this case, however much money he made on it.

  Jessie sat in the living room long after Philip had left. She was waiting for the sound of the phone … or of Ian’s key in the door. This couldn’t be happening. Not really. He would come home. He always did. She tried to pretend that the house wasn’t quiet. She sang little songs and talked to herself. He couldn’t leave her alone … no! … she sometimes heard her mother’s voice late in the night … and Jake’s … and Daddy’s … but never Ian’s … never Ian … never … He would call, he had to. He couldn’t leave her alone, scared like that, he wouldn’t do that to her, he had promised he never would, and Ian never broke his promises … but he had. He had broken a promise now. She remembered it as she sat on the floor in the hall, in the dark, late into the night. That way she would hear his key sooner when he came home. He would come home, but he had broken a promise. He had slept with another woman, and now he was making her face it. She couldn’t ignore it anymore. She hated her … hated her … hated … her, but not him. Oh God … maybe Ian didn’t love her anymore … maybe he was in love with the other woman … maybe … why didn’t he call, dammit? Why didn’t he … why had he … the tears ran down her face like hot summer rain as she lay on the smooth wood floor in the hall and waited for Ian. She lay on the floor until morning. The phone never rang.

  Chapter 5

  The offices of Schwartz, Drewes, and Jonas were located in the Bank of America Building on California Street, an excellent address. Jessica rode to the forty-fourth floor looking prim, sleek, and tired. She wore a large pair of dark glasses and a somber navy blue suit. It was an outfit reserved for business meetings and funerals. This was a little bit of both. It was ten-twenty-five. She was five minutes early, but Martin Schwartz was waiting.

  A secretary led her down a long carpeted corridor with a sweeping view of the bay. His offices took up one corner on the north side of the building. It was evidently a large, prosperous firm.

  Martin Schwartz’s office boasted two walls of glass, but the decor was Spartan and chill. He rose from behind his desk, a man of medium height with a full head of gray hair. He wore glasses, and he was frowning.

  “Mrs. Clarke?” The secretary had announced her, but he would have known her anyway. She looked the way he had expected her to—wealthy, elegant. But she was younger than he had expected, and more composed than he had dared to hope.

  “Yes. How do you do?” She held out a hand, and he took in her full height. She was a striking young woman. He mentally made a pair of her and the unshaven, tired, but still handsome young man he had seen in the city prison that morning. They must look quite something together. They would also look good in court. Maybe too good—too beautiful, too young. He didn’t like the looks of this case.

  “Won’t you sit down?” She nodded, slid into a chair across from his desk, and declined his offer of coffee.

  “You’ve seen Ian?”

  “I have. And Sergeant Houghton. And the assistant district attorney assigned to the case. And I spoke to Philip Wald for over an hour last night. Now I want to talk to you, and then we’ll see what kind of a case we really have here.” He attempted a smile and shuffled some papers on his desk. “Mrs. Clarke, have you ever been into drugs?”

  “No. And neither has Ian. Nothing more than a few joints once in a while. But I don’t think we’ve smoked any grass in over a year. Neither of us ever liked it much. And we don’t drink anything more exotic than wine.”

  “Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. I want to get back to drugs. Are any of your friends in that scene?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Would anything of that nature be likely to turn up in an investigation of you or Mr. Clarke?”

  “No, I’m sure that nothing would.”

  “Good.” He looked only slightly relieved.

  “What makes you ask?”

  “Oh, some of the angles that I sense Houghton might be working on. He made some disagreeable remarks about your shop. Some girl in there who looks like a belly dancer, apparently, and an ‘exotic’ Oriental he mentioned. Also the fact that your husband is a writer, and you know the kind of fantasies people have about that. Houghton is a man with a vivid imagination, a typical lower-middle-class mind, and a strong dislike for anything that comes from your part of town.”

  “I suspected as much. He came to talk to me at the shop before he arrested Ian. And the ‘belly dancer’ he’s having fantasies about is a young lady who has the misfortune to wear a size 38 bra with a D cup. She happenes to go to church twice a week.” Jessica was not smiling. But Martin Schwartz was.

  “She sounds delightful.” He forced a smile out of her, with some effort.

  “And if Sergeant Houghton thinks we look like we have too much money, he happens to be mistaken about that too. But what he does see can be explained by the fact that my parents and my brother died several years ago. I inherited what they had. My brother had no wife and children to leave anything to, and there were no other brothers or sisters.”

  “I see.” And then after a brief pause he looked up at her again. “It must be lonely with no family.” She nodded silently and kept her eyes on the view.

  “I have Ian.”

  “Any children?” She shook her head, and he began to understand something. The reason she was not angry, why she so desperately wanted her husband home, without a single word of criticism about the charges. The reason for the almost frightening urgency he had sensed in her voice on the phone, and again now in his office. The “I have Ian” said it all. He suddenly knew that as far as Jessica Clarke was concerned, that was all she had.

  “I take it there’s no chance they might drop the charges?”

  “None. Politically, they can’t. The victim in this case is making such a stink. She wants his ass, if you’ll pardon the expression. And I think it’s reasonable to expect that they’ll be prying fairly heavily into your lives. Can you weather it?” She nodded, and he didn’t tell her that Ian was afraid she couldn’t stand the pressure. “Is there anything I should know? Any indiscretions on your part? Problems with the marriage? Sexual … well, ‘exoticisms,’ shall we say, orgies you may have gone to, whatever?”

  She shook her head again, looking annoyed.

  “I’m sorry I have to ask but it’ll all come out anyway. It’s best to be candid now. And of course we’ll want our own investigation of the girl. I have a very good man. Mrs. Clarke, we’re going to do our damnedest for Ian.”

  He smiled at her again, and for a moment she felt as though she were living a dream. This man was not real, he wasn’t asking her if she’d ever gone to orgies, or been into drugs … Ian wasn’t really in jail … this man was a friend of her father’s and it was all a big game. She felt him staring at her then, and she had to return to the pretense that this was reality. Worse yet, to the reality that Ian was in jail.

 
“Can we get Ian out of jail before the trial?”

  “I hope so. But that will most likely depend on you. If the charges were a little less severe, we might have been able to get him released on his own recognizance—in other words, with no bail to pay. But on charges of this nature, I’m almost certain the judge will insist on bail being posted, despite the fact that Ian has no previous record. And his getting out will depend on whether or not you can put up the bail. They’re talking about setting it at twenty-five thousand dollars. That’s pretty steep, and it means you’d either have to put twenty-five thousand dollars in cash in the keeping of the court until the trial is over, or pay twenty-five hundred to a bailbondsman and give him collateral to cover his bond. Either way, it’s a stiff fee. But we’ll see about getting it down to something more reasonable.”

  Jessica heaved a deep sigh and absentmindedly took off her dark glasses. What he saw then shocked him. Two deep purple trenches lay beneath her eyes, which were bloodshot and swollen and filled with terror. He was looking at a woman with the eyes of a child. The poise was all a front. He had been so sure she was the balls in the outfit, but maybe not, maybe not. Maybe she was only the bucks, and Ian was her lifeline. It made him feel better, somehow, about Ian. He was in better shape than she was, that was for sure.

  Schwartz forced his mind back to the question of bail as Jessica’s eyes continued to watch him. She seemed unaware of how much she had just shown him.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to meet the bail, Mrs. Clarke?” She looked tiredly into his eyes and shrugged slightly.

  “I suppose I can put up my business.” But she knew that she couldn’t pay the bailbondsman’s fee if she handed Schwartz the two-thousand-dollar check in her bag. And she had no choice. They needed a lawyer before they could even begin to worry about a bailbondsman. She’d have to get a loan on the car. Or on … something. What the hell. It didn’t matter now. Nothing did. She’d even put up the house if she had to. But what if … she had to know. “What if we can’t quite meet the bail right away?”