Putting Lipstick on a Pig

by Michael Bowen

  He entered the bar and grill under a sign that promised FISH FRY EVERY FRIDAY. He saw only six other patrons on this weekday afternoon, and none of them looked like they’d worn a tie outside of church in a long time. He heard the first flatlander joke before he had his menu open. Something about cannibals and stabbing yourself repeatedly with a fork. The risible possibilities struck Rep as limited, but the punch line drew guffaws. He assumed that the joke was for his benefit, and that telling the three guys at the table ten feet away that he was not, in fact, a flatlander would just spoil the fun.

  Though he wasn’t sure how, Rep could tell that the solidly built blonde in her mid-forties who came to take his order was the owner rather than just a hired waitress. She gave him a good-sport half-smile when she approached him at the bar with her pad. Rep studied the menu for an extra five seconds, wondering what “lutefisk” was.

  Well, as long as I’m here anyway, how am I going to get these taciturn locals to open their mouths for me?

  “Cheeseburger and a Leinenkugel,” he said. “And some lutefisk.”

  Her eyebrows rose at the last word, but then she nodded and walked away, returning promptly with an open bottle of Leine’s.

  Twelve-by-eighteen photographs above the bar depicted Lake Delton’s four seasons: fishing and swimming in spring, boating and water skiing in summer, canoeing and fishing again in fall, and ice-skaters and hockey players sharing the ice with scattered wooden huts and—Rep blinked, but there it was—pickup trucks in winter. Instead of being charmed by the bucolic idyll, the lawyer in Rep saw torts waiting to happen. Looking at the photographs, it was easy to imagine lots of ways to die under the water. Or the ice.

  The next flatlander joke echoed through the room with considerable volume, but as with the first one Rep caught only the punchline: “So the ref says to the flatlander, ‘On further review, the Bears still suck.’”

  Rep swiveled in his chair and raised the Leine’s.

  “We feel the same way in Milwaukee,” he said. “Go, Pack.” He figured the Indianapolis Colts could take care of themselves.

  Predictable murmurs of approval gave way to expectant silence as the lutefisk arrived. It looked like brownish-white Jell-O. When Rep dug in he found that it tasted like boiled cod that had been air-dried, soaked in lye, and then skinned and boned before cooking. This wasn’t surprising, because that’s what it was. By choking down four bites, Rep had apparently won the grudging tolerance of the other patrons. And of Sally, if that’s who she was, who delivered the cheeseburger.

  “I saw some kids ice-skating on the way in,” Rep said to her. “I’m surprised that it’s started already.”

  “We had a good, hard freeze last week,” she said, as if a good, hard freeze was just the thing any sensible person would want. “Even so, those kids today are just on skating ponds with water two or three feet deep. I don’t let mine go out on any lake until after December first, and not even then if we’ve had too many days above freezing. They say three inches for skating, four inches for snowmobiling, and six inches for trucks and cars, but I’m not taking any chances.”

  Rep worked a bit harder on a healthy bite of his burger while he tried to think of some clever follow-up that would keep Sally talking. No need. She resumed speaking before he could swallow, much less say anything himself.

  “The big resorts, they actually drill cores out of the ice to see how thick it is,” she said. “Their insurance companies make them, that’s why they do it. They have to. It’s right in their policies.”

  “Seems wise,” Rep managed while Sally caught her breath.

  “You can’t go by that, though. No sir.”

  She rested both elbows on the bar and leaned toward Rep, reverential seriousness on her face and lutefisk on her breath.

  “A lake is a living thing,” she said with insistent intensity. “Especially spring-fed. The real heat isn’t above the ice, it’s below. That water is coming up from underneath the earth’s crust, and it’s not the same all over the lake. No sir. There are currents and eddies and flows that no one can see. There might be places where the ice is a foot thick, and places three hundred yards away where it’s only a couple of inches. You can’t tell. You just can’t.”

  “No sir,” Rep agreed. “Er, ma’am.”

  “They can have their rules of thumb, but I play it safe.”

  “Yeah. Actually, I thought I read a while back that someone at one of the big resorts on Lake Delton had gone through the ice and died.”

  “I know exactly what happened there,” Sally said, with an emphatic forward head-snap. “Like I saw it myself. Guy got a snootful. Well, that happens. You know?”

  “Yes,” Rep said.

  “And he goes out on the snowmobile. Happens all the time.”

  “Right.”

  “Now, this is in December, and I’ll bet the cores they drilled that morning showed half a foot of ice if they showed an inch. But this guy who’s three sheets to the wind, he zooms his Ski-Doo out there, you see?”

  “Sure,” Rep said.

  “I know this is the way it happened. Had to. He gets out there four hundred, five hundred yards from shore.” Sally’s voice suddenly grew very quiet. “And guess what happens?”

  Rep had no idea and was about to say so, but Sally didn’t wait. She leaned forward and spoke slowly, giving deadly emphasis to each word.

  “He hears the ice begin to crack.”

  Rep’s belly dropped and he felt himself pale a bit at the sinister image.

  “He panics,” Sally said, speaking quickly now. “If he’d just turned the Ski-Doo around and headed back to shore, he’d have been all right. The hole they found wasn’t all that big. But he panics, gets off the snowmobile and starts running in dress shoes across the ice. Slipping and falling down. Getting up. Getting more and more scared. That’s when he went through. I’ll betcha anything. That’s when he went through.”

  “I may not be too smart,” Rep said, panting a bit, “but I’m not dumb enough to bet against you.”

  Sally smiled at this gallant compliment. The local comedian rose from his table and bellied up to the bar next to Rep.

  “You’re smooth, boy,” he said. “You Scandihoovian?”

  “I don’t have that honor,” Rep said.

  “‘Don’t have that honor.’ You’re all right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You ever hear the one about the three flatlanders who wanted to go ice-fishing? You and Sally talking about the ice reminded me.”

  “Can’t say I have.” Rep began to wonder if these loquacious locals were ever going to shut up. And he suddenly realized what the huts in the winter scene were all about.

  “Okay, there’s these three flatlanders, see, and they decide they wanna come up to Wisconsin and give ice-fishing a try. So they drive up and go to Charlie’s Bait and Tackle to get their kit. Course, Charlie tells ’em they’ll need a saw to cut through the ice, so they buy one.”

  “Makes sense,” Rep said.

  “An hour later they’re back. They’ve worn the saw down and the hole isn’t big enough. Charlie says he can’t understand that, but he sells them three more saws. Three hours later they’re back again, and this time they’re mad. They say, ‘What’s goin’ on here? We’ve worn out four saws and we still can’t get that boat in the water.”

  “That’s good,” Rep said, laughing. “I’ll give you credit when I tell that one back in Milwaukee.”

  “Remember Charlie’s Bait and Tackle,” the guy said.

  “Will do.”

  Rep put a ten on the bar and gestured to Sally to keep the change.

  ***

  “Hello, beloved,” Rep said to Melissa about five hours later, when he finally got back to their apartment. “Anything new?”

  “Well, I got the deposition transcript to Detective Washington,” Melissa said. “I hope he finds it more enlightening than I have. I’ve never waded through anythin
g more tedious in my life.”

  “Yeah, as a general rule we have to pay people to read them.”

  “Well, I doubt that you pay them enough.”

  “Anything at all in there?” Rep asked.

  “Nothing that I’d break a window for. Roger Leopold worked in Wisconsin for Orlofsky Publications, which had offices in Ohio.”

  “What was the lawsuit about?”

  “Something boring about computers,” Melissa said. “Specialized file maintenance software wasn’t working properly, so the buyer was cross with the seller. The buyer wasn’t paying, so the seller was cross with the buyer. That seemed to be the gist.”

  “Did either the buyer or the seller have anything to do with Cold Coast Productions?”

  “Orlofsky and Cold Coast are owned by the same company, and they each used the other’s employees now and then.”

  “So, much ado about money, as usual, but no smoking gun?”

  “Not that I could see. One part wasn’t just tedious but very odd. Maybe you can make more sense out of it. Fifth Post-It note.”

  Melissa tossed a hard copy of the emailed transcript to Rep, who flipped to the indicated page and began reading.

  CONTINUED EXAMINATION BY MR. HAYES

  Q: Showing you the document the reporter has marked exhibit seven for this deposition, do you recognize it?

  A: Looks like a print-out of an email.

  Q: Dated August 14, 2003, less than three months ago, is that correct?

  A: That’s what it says.

  Q: Addressed to rleopold, is that you?

  A: Yes.

  Q: From someone called cincyfileuser. Who’s that?

  A: That was just the staff desktop computer at headquarters. Anyone who was there that day and knew the password could have sent the message.

  Q: Do you have any recollection of receiving it?

  A: Nope.

  Q: Can you read the text of this email?

  A: No. What’s on this page is gibberish.

  Q: Can you just read what’s there into the record?

  MR. SMITH: Objection. That’s going to take all day. It speaks for itself. Just have the reporter type it out.

  MR. HAYES: As long as she does it right now.

  [TEXT OF EMAIL DEP EX 7]

  Okat tge .gaek card uf tiy wabtm byt keave ne iyt if ut, /abd bever asj ne fir abttgubg agaub,

  MR. HAYES:

  Q: And your testimony under oath, Mr. Leopold, is that you have no idea what this message was intended to communicate?

  A: No idea.

  Q: And no recollection of getting this very odd message?

  A: I assume this was picked up by my spam filter. I got a dozen of these a day, at least, talking about cheap pills and horny housewives and all that stuff. A lot of times they stuck garbage like this in to try to fool the spam filter and get you to click on a link.

  Q: That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, huh?

  MR. SMITH: Objection. Asked and answered and argumentative. You’re harassing the witness now. Move to another topic or this deposition is over.

  “Mean anything?” Melissa asked when Rep glanced up.

  “Well, attorney Smith had a point about having a witness read a printed document into a deposition record. You don’t do that unless you’ve got a very specific reason.”

  “So Hayes was up to something?”

  “Yes, but he was apparently a better lawyer than I am because I can’t tell you what it was.”

  “And now that Vance Hayes is dead,” Melissa said reflectively, “Neither can he.”

  Chapter 14

  “The pun has to be intentional, don’t you think?” MacKenzie Stewart said, nodding at the title of an oil painting in the foyer of the Yale Club in Washington, D.C.

  Rep dutifully examined the canvas. It depicted a charming lass, sixteen or seventeen years old, in nineteenth-century country dress, carrying a basket brimming with peaches. Her ample straw hat emphasized candid and ingenuous features that, however, a slyly knowing look in her eyes and a rakish cock of her eyebrows subtly contradicted.

  “Filette aux Peches,” Rep said, reading the title. “‘Young woman with peaches,’ I think, although my French is so rusty I’m getting that mostly from the painting itself. I’m afraid the pun eludes me.”

  “They’ve left the diacritical marks out,” Stewart said. “Put a circumflex accent over the first e, making it pêches, and the title is indeed ‘Young woman with peaches.’ With an acute accent over both e’s, though, the word is péchés and the title becomes, ‘Young woman with sins.’ Too good to be accidental. Doesn’t that gleam in her eye suggest that she might have had a little romp in the orchard while she was filling her basket?”

  “She might be on her way to confession, at that,” Rep agreed.

  They entered the dining room to find Gael Cunningham-Stewart behind a glass of chardonnay in the far corner. The rich, French blue wallpaper might have been chosen expressly to set off generous silver strands that delicately filigreed her otherwise brown hair. She looked up from what Rep guessed was a bench memo, used a fingertip to scoot half-moon glasses from the tip to the bridge of her nose, and then smiled broadly and waved to them.

  With the wave and the smile a glow of pure adoration lit Ken Stewart’s face. His own hair matched his crisp, light gray mustache. Parted near the middle and combined with the puckish twinkle that normally lit his blue eyes, the gray paradoxically underscored a youthful élan. Female heads turned as he strode with effortlessly athletic grace through the room. His eyes, though, never left Gael, and his smile broadened as he and Rep approached. Rep hung back while Ken and Gael embraced. He noticed a happy flush on Ken’s face when they broke the clinch.

  “How is life as Your Honor?” Rep asked after they had seated themselves and ordered wine and appetizers.

  “Better than life as ‘shysterette,’ which is how the last group vice-president I worked with referred to me when I was out of earshot.”

  “In this day and age? I thought male chauvinism that blatant went out around the time Dynasty was cancelled.”

  “It wasn’t male chauvinism,” Gael said. “The group v-p was a she who’d come up through marketing. In her view, there are three separate and unequal classes in corporate life: sales; engineering; and scum.”

  “Lawyers fall into the third group, in case you’re wondering,” Ken said.

  “I’ve been putting up with that kind of attitude since 1978,” Gael said. “Inside counsel have to swallow it at a lot of companies—especially the kind you can work your way up to with degrees from third-tier universities. There weren’t any Wall Street firms pestering me for my resumé during my last year at Drake. You can imagine the appeal of a judgeship—even though Pritzger Medical paid me a lot more than the taxpayers are.”

  “Well, naturally,” Ken said. “If you don’t have to take a pay cut to be a judge, you’re not qualified for the job.”

  “It took a solid ten years of Ken’s life to make that judicial nomination happen,” Gael said, brushing her knuckles tenderly against her husband’s hand. “Sitting through party meetings, laughing at national committeemen’s jokes, hustling tickets to thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raisers. It was more than heroic—it was chivalric.”

  “Oh, it was tons of fun, really,” Ken said with a dismissive finger-wave. “The year I was elected congressional district party chair, our fiercely leftist oldest son emailed me, ‘Congratulations on becoming Obergruppenfuhrer.’ I thanked him but suggested that it was illiberal of him to omit the umlaut over the final u in Obergruppenführer. That was worth the aggravation all by itself.”

  “Goodness, dear,” Gael said in a mildly joshing tone, “how many foreign languages do you speak?”

  “I’m not fluent in any,” Ken said, “but I can be pretentious in three or four.”

  “Sometimes,” Rep said, “I think it’s incredible that any qualified candidate would
be willing to go after a judicial position, given the pitiless scrutiny you have to endure.”

  “You got that exactly right,” Ken said, with rare vehemence. “The interrogations seemed endless. Had we been paying nannies or pool men off the books? Hiring maids without green cards? Exceeding limits on campaign contributions? Buying laptops over the Internet without paying Indiana use tax? Belonging to private clubs that didn’t have the requisite quota of lesbian midgets? They put our entire lives under a microscope.”

  “In a funny way,” Gael said, “the most embarrassing question was whether I’d ever smoked marijuana. The handlers told me it was okay to just say ‘of course’ to that one, because everyone did some pot in college in the seventies. But I hadn’t. I was too much of a grade-grubbing little nerd, scrambling after my chemical engineering major and then the law degree. You should have seen the fresh-faced young FBI agent’s expression. He was like, This is incredible—even I’M hipper than you are!”

  “All kidding aside,” Ken added, “it was a very challenging experience psychologically. The partisan bitterness was bottomless. The staffers on the other side would have seized on any pretext they could find to shoot Gael down, just so they could get some face-time for their bosses on CNN and score a point against the White House.”

  Rep raised his glass.

  “Here’s to votes that come out the right way,” he said.

  “Here, here,” Ken said, grinning jovially.

  A waiter came over and they ordered. Rep felt that the pitch was going rather well. The easiest way to be charming is to let other people talk about themselves, and he was managing that just fine. Even so, more than a few butterflies fluttered in his stomach. A big Wisconsin company generating regular billings could by itself justify a real Milwaukee office with his firm’s own name on the door and his own secretary working there. He decided to go for a little more charm.