Grayson squinted, no smile. "My dad lived in a big place on the Cumberland River. They brought stonemasons all the way over from Italy to build it. Your people, Raphael."
"Hey, Mikey, I was just joking around. Relax, dude."
"I was joking, too. The big place my dad lived in was a prison."
"For real?"
"Arson." Micah nodded. "I wanted to get the hell away from my hometown and make something of myself. Do some good unlike the old man."
Raphael mouthed, 'Holy shit' at Elliott, and the trio drank another round.
"So I started that defamation research in the Mavros case," Micah said. "What was the gossip about our client?"
"Oh yeah… Carlos." Raphael gulped a beer. "He's got a reputation for being a pussyhound in his college days. I also heard he used to run up lines of credit he couldn't cover at casinos in Atlantic City. Typical S&A rumors about clients, dude."
"Seriously? You don't believe that, do you?" Micah asked. "The guy's got a shelter and a charity, and, from what I've read, he seems like a pretty devout guy."
"Do I believe the shit about our client? No. But that's not because he's religious. Everyone's got flaws. Religious people just pretend they don't."
"Hold on, you think people who have faith and a code to live by are fake-"
Elliott cut them off. "I think religion and politics are never great topics over drinks. Let's talk about something else, can we?"
Micah tipped his beer, nodded. "He's right. So tell me what Gabe Weiss is really like. He's the main reason I accepted an offer at Sullivan & Adler. He seems really cool."
"Honestly?" Raphael said, looked at Elliott. "He's the best lawyer I've ever worked with. The guy has amazing presence. He walks in the room and everyone is friggin' magnetized to him. And when he argues, it's like he's a hypnotist." Raphael chugged the rest of his beer, waved the bartender over. "On the flip side, Vader works inhuman hours and doesn't tolerate fuck-ups. Wait 'til you work for him. This vein pops out of his forehead and he just fucking erupts. Ba-da-boom!" The bartender came over with raised eyebrows. "Three Molotov shots."
"I can't do a shot," Micah said.
"Yes you can." Raphael watched the bartender fill three shot glasses, flick a Zippo open, touch the lighter's flame to the layer of alcohol on top. Raphael passed around the burning shots. They clinked glasses, blue flames vanishing up like phantoms, and Raphael toasted gleefully.
"To Lord Vader and to his wife! A MILF with great tits that melt in your mouth not in your hands." Raphael poured his shot down, fighting back a cough.
Elliott blew out the flame, sipped his shot like an old lady taking sherry.
"Mikey, you're lucky you're not working for him. He'll strangle you if he finds your lack of faith disturbing."
"My what?"
"You're lack of faith. In the Force. Come on, dude."
"Right, I keep forgetting." Grayson was still holding his flaming shot. "When I interviewed, he was cool. Even said I could do pro bono cases to get court room experience."
Raphael spat out, "Yeah, and maybe the Easter Bunny will bring us a nice big basket of pretty pink eggs."
Elliott tried not to laugh and patted Micah's shoulder. "Pro bono cases are a good way to get experience. The Firm encourages that."
"Dude, that's a fairy tale," Raphael said. "Don't listen to Elliott. Vader wants you to bill hours to paying clients not friggin' pro bono cases."
"Whatever." Micah put his full shot glass down on the bar. "Maybe you don't know Gabe Weiss as well as you think."
"Oh, I know him too fucking well. I even know his hot wife. Should I tell him the story, Elliott?" Elliott bobbed his head at Raphael. "You wanna hear the story, Mikey?"
"Sure."
"This was when I was a Fourth Year, I think. Anyway, Gabe was out of town working on some case in Texas. His return flight was delayed, but he wanted to see a file of 'hot docs' I had found, which we were supposed to turn over in the case. 'Hot docs' are files that are really bad for our client, usually admissions of wrongdoing or cover-ups. Anyway, he called me from the airport and told me to send a paralegal with the file to his house in a car. My legal assistant took off on me, and I couldn't get any of the dickless losers from night staff."
"Why didn't you just have a car service deliver it?" Micah asked. "Or scan them?"
"Dude, you don't know Vader. He's old school, and he wants one of his minions to make sure it gets done. Believe me, I didn't wanna hop in a car and carry a friggin' file folder to Jersey at ten o'clock at night, but I didn't want Vader to castrate me either. So…"
"Listen to this part." Elliott nudged Micah.
"So…I call for a car service and go out to his house, it's about eleven o'clock maybe and guess who answers the door? Drunk, wearing a silk robe and La Perla lingerie with her beautiful milk pillows popping out? Ma-ma, ma-ma!" Raphael made puckering noises like a nursing baby. "Yeah, that's right, his wife. Gabe-fucking-Weiss's hot-ass wife. I'd met her before, but I just stood there in the doorway trying not to stare, and she pretended to be embarrassed. But then she told me to come in for a second and leave the file on the desk in his den."
"This is bullcrap," Micah said, shaking his head.
"So she follows me into the den and I'm thinking she's just making sure I'm not stealing anything, right? But then she stands next to me and rubs up against my ass while I'm trying to write Gabe a note."
"This is my favorite part," Elliott said. "Tell him about 'the debate.'"
"I'm like scribbling, you can't even read my handwriting because my brain and my dick are having a fully televised debate. So I turn around to get the fuck out of there, and she just grabs hold of my cock. I'm just standing there and she unzips my pants, and I'll never forget this. She just looks at me with these crazy eyes. Sucked it like the ricotta from a canoli-"
"No way, you all are jerkin' my chain. Is this some bullshit you tell rookies?"
Raphael could see Micah was starting to believe, and this made his buzz even better. He slugged more beer and relished in the story, pumping his hips. "The driver from the car service is still waiting in the driveway, and I'm fucking her right on top of Gabe's desk. Almost came on the fucking file, too."
Raphael and Elliott laughed.
Micah snorted. "You all are so full of it."
"You think so, Mikey? You sure?" Raphael took the shot the kid left on the bar, sucked the blue flame through a straw, numb to the singeing of his tongue. "Either way, keep that little story to yourself. I'm up for partner next year, know what I mean?"
10 Thursday
* * *
The garage door was opened by hand to avoid the loud buzzing noise of the automatic machine. He put the Taurus in neutral and pushed it to the end of the driveway. In his carpenter jeans and his worn, gray Fordham Law t-shirt, he jogged back into the house and brought another garbage bag. He had to get rid of everything now. What else could he do? Confess? Hire some criminal defense attorney who would represent the devil himself for a few hundred grand? Like that lowlife shyster for Rabbi Malkin who killed his wife in Canarsie because a divorce was too embarrassing? Or maybe he should call in a favor from Ani Panosian?
Inside the car, he wanted to scream against the stupidity of it all. All these decades he spent building up his career, his reputation, his life, and everything was crumbling away like a toddler's sand castle in high tide. He was a wreck behind the wheel, wending through the safest neighborhood in suburban New Jersey, a bundle of clothes under the passenger seat. A gutted corpse in the trunk of his daughter's car. He searched his thoughts for a way out and pounded the steering wheel.
He drove aimlessly, slowing near a construction site for a new house. It reminded him of their house. Rachel had always wanted to stay in the city. They had a nice two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, but it was the 1980s and Gabe had just made partner. In the decade of greed, he wanted more of everything. But what he really wanted most was a child. No, not just one child, children
. He had told Rachel that he wanted two boys and a girl, but that their apartment was big enough only for her cat and maybe a French poodle. Rachel laughed at his joke, but she dug her heels in and fought the idea every step of the way. She worked part-time in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she gave tours to schoolchildren and helped curate educational exhibits. She had gotten used to her walks in Central Park, the delis on the Upper West Side, the tickets they had for the New York City Ballet, the fundraisers she volunteered for at Lincoln Center, and the ultra-liberal synagogue where she had met most of her friends. She was even on the council at the synagogue, always coming up with ideas to do good. Her heart was almost pure in many ways. She raised money to feed the hungry in New York and to plant trees in Israel, and she wanted to help the temple build a daycare. But how would she do that if they moved to New Jersey?
"Rachel, listen to me," Gabe had said, "Isaac and Sarah and Samuel will need a lot of space." He had gotten her to smile because they had no kids at the time. She wasn't even pregnant, but he had the names already picked out. "And this is no place to raise three kids, temple or not. Besides, there are plenty of temples and schools in the suburbs and all kinds of places for you and our kids." And that's when she admitted her biggest reservation of all. "I don't know if I'm ready to have kids yet, Gabe. There are so many things I want to do, and now that you're a partner, we could spend more time together, you know? We could spend a month in Europe or visit a kibbutz in Israel or even build a daycare together right here in the city. I need something to do, too, Gabe. If we have kids, sooner or later we won't even be able to go out to dinner anymore. I'd only have time to be a baby-making machine."
At Binghamton, Rachel had always talked about having a family, and Gabe had taken it for granted. A decade later when he had made partner, it was the equivalent of being "made" in the mafia, and he wasn't going to work on a farm in Israel or hike through Europe like a college kid. He was going to build his legacy. He had become an untouchable man with the limitless power and infinite resources of a firm representing corporate raiders who devoured anything in their paths. They were chewing up and spitting out the gristle of expendable companies and workers in the name of free trade, and Gabe couldn't help but absorb the avarice of his clients. He had wanted a big house and a family, and he wanted everything immediately at any price.
Rachel wasn't immediate though. She was strong. He had to slowly win her over, romancing her with thoughtful cards and gifts. He bought beautiful hand-knitted baby booties and blankets embroidered with his future children's names. Tiffany's sent Rachel silver combs and rattles with the names "Isaac" and "Samuel" engraved on them. Gabe restored some of Rachel's old baby pictures and put them in silver frames with notes like, "This is what Sarah would look like."
Nothing worked until Valentine's Day, when they took a drive across the river to New Jersey. They were driving in this same neighborhood, though there were less houses and stores, and some of the roads weren't even paved. But there were skeletel frames of wood beams and two-by-fours on construction sites, holes in the ground really, that Gabe took her to see. They stopped at one lot, and Gabe pulled her out of the car. He took her to the frame of the front door and handed her a key. She held it, wide-eyed and looked through the doorway's rectangle of void, at the enormous plot of land with the frame jutting out from the ground. He showed her the architect's plans, pointing out where the children's rooms would be and standing on the spots in the dirt for the backyard and the tree house and the swing. The huge swimming pool he had insisted on. Rachel began crying, and he knew then that she was finally ready to have a family. They opened a bottle of champagne and walked through their house, kissing and talking enthusiastically about their new home and the family they would become. They never moved from the jewel box home he had built for her, the home where she had just cuckolded him.
Maybe she was crying for another reason back then, he thought now as he drove into the night, driving pointlessly with the body packed in the trunk.
Other cars passed by while he wondered if he could bury the body somewhere like the construction site he had just passed. The headlights kept reflecting off of his rear view mirror, beaming through his windshield, turning his pupils inside out. The car's A/C vents were on full blast, pointed at his face, turning it clammy. But he still couldn't think straight and he turned edgy. A construction site wouldn't work. Some worker would pull a backhoe right over the spot and dig a basement only to find the body.
"It's too risky," he said to himself in the mirror.
But maybe it was good enough to burn the bloody clothes. Gabe separated his spotted clothes from the man's clean ones. He put the clean clothes in another garbage bag. There was a metal bin where the construction workers dumped trash and unusable scrap wood. Gabe got out of the car, walked slowly to the bin, his blood-stained clothes in the dirty garbage bag. He looked around, emptied the bag into the bin, squirted lighter fluid on the clothes, and set them on fire. He went back to his car, watching the orange flames die out and the ashes stop floating in the humid air. Life smouldering.
They'll think nothing of it, he told himself. Some pyro kids just burning trash.
He drove away and eventually stopped at a twenty-four hour gas station. He slipped out, looked around, and quickly tossed the man's clean clothes in a metal dumpster. He didn't know why, but he thought it best to separate those clothes from the ones he had burned, to save them for some bum who scavenged through trash.
Some bum who deserved them more, Gabe decided.
He smelled the sour aroma of rotten milk and rancid fast food and saw the scurry of pink tails over the clothes he had tossed inside. He fought the urge to vomit and got back in the car.
For what seemed like hours, he drove around in a trance while the body was still in the trunk. A ghost with no resting place but his mind. "We're both in fucking purgatory now," Gabe said. He drove cautiously, signaling at every turn, flashing his high beams at approaching cars. He wouldn't be pulled over, he would make sure of that.
When he got home, he thought about putting ice in the trunk. The heat would make the body stink soon, he was certain. He sat in the Taurus, inside the garage, his eyes dull and glazed over. Black plumes of exhaust billowed in front of the windshield, wavering S curls and hypnotic pleas. He pushed the button on the remote, and the garage door slowly closed. The wall clicking down along the mechanical chain, panel by panel, a ticking metronome, finally thudding on the ground.
"Goddamn it."
A long pause punctuated each breath. He forgot about the sound of the garage door machine. What if Rachel had heard it?
The car was still running, and Gabe's eyes seemed slower than ever, wading through the darkening smoke in the garage. He turned off the car. He got out, crouched next to the bumper, and waited for an eternity, listening for the sound of anyone who might be awake in the house. He began silently coughing into his fist until the exhaust fumes cleared. He took the pine-scented air freshener from the car's rear view mirror and tossed it into the trunk.
He placed his hand on the trunk and made sure it was locked.
When he dragged himself inside, he had remembered Rachel's constant scolding. "Don't forget the mezuzah, Gabriel. Don't forget home." That's what she liked to say. She was so proud of their scroll, of their happy little home. Only it wasn't little and it hadn't been happy for a long time. Not since that Valentine's Day, really, when he showed her the foundation of the house. That wasn't true. There were the births of their children. The first words, "ma-ma, da-da." Gabe was starting to wonder if it had really been that long ago. He was only just beginning to accept that fact now. He didn't want to believe it, but how could he lie to himself anymore? Not after what he'd done. It made him sick to think that he was capable of doing such things. He looked up and whispered, "I'm not like this. This isn't me." But he knew that it was him. That he had become this way. He kissed his fingertips and touched the mezuzah.
He took the car keys, locked t
hem in his briefcase. His fingertips were still pink with bloodstains, and he was convinced that he smelled like sweat and death. A shower was a cure for now, but eventually he would need to do more than cleanse his skin.
He crept upstairs, careful not to make any noise. Sarah still wasn't home. His daughter never told him what she did or where she went anymore. The only things he knew of her now were traces of her presence. A pair of tennis shoes on the living room floor, half-eaten dinners on the table, a pile of dirty underwear in her bathroom. He stepped over one of those piles now and showered in her bath to avoid waking his wife. Scrubbing the guilty stains with his daughter's perfumed soap.
He leaned against the ceramic tile and inhaled the steam, sighing and trying to breathe deeply, a relaxation technique he had learned from his personal trainer in the Firm's fitness center. His heart felt like jelly in his chest as he forced himself to think of mundane topics. Talk to Sarah in the morning. Fix the light in the kitchen. Go to temple. Pray. For what? He started to wonder if he would wake up soon. If it were only a terrifyingly realistic nightmare.
Toweled dry, he looked at himself one last time in the mirror, the ruddiness fading, and he tip-toed down the hallway to the master bedroom.
He gingerly slipped into bed next to her. He listened to the snoring stutter to a stop and watched Rachel roll over, open bleary eyes. Eyes he used to stare into all the time.
"Bubula, is that you?"
"Yes, Rachel, it's me."
His gaze fell across her breasts as she twisted to the alarm clock. He marveled at how beautiful she was. It was almost two in the morning, but he felt as if days had passed. Silent and lost in the dark, he traced her bare silhouette.
She said, "Thanks for coming to the show."
Gabe couldn't say anything. Fatigue began to overcome his anxieties. The muscles in his back and shoulders were bloated with lactic acid from cleaning the kitchen floor and carrying the body and desperately gripping the steering wheel of his daughter's car.
PLUMMET: A Novel Page 7
