The Second Secret

by Alan Lee

  “Hey,” Calvin said. “So he’s seeing someone. The fuck do we care? Close your mouth.”

  “When would you like me to start?” I asked either of them.

  “Yesterday. I want this guy burned. How busy are you at the moment?”

  “Two open cases, other than yours. I have time. Where can I get the names and addresses of your employees?”

  “My attorney will provide them.”

  “Would you prefer your employees not know that the enterprise is being investigated?” I asked.

  “If possible, yes.”

  Ronnie asked, “What is your hourly rate?”

  I told her.

  “Good hell.” Mr. Summers chuckled to himself. “Everyone believes they’ve got a medical degree these days.”

  “What’s her name?” Ronnie asked.

  “The woman I’m dating?”

  “I’m simply being cautious.”

  Ahh jealousy. I luxuriated in it.

  Mr. Summers glared at her again. “The hell’s the matter with you? I don’t care who he fucks. Jesus, got’damn lawyers.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “Her name is Hester Prynne.”

  Ronnie wrote down the name. Frowned at it. Then turned her sparkling, impish eyes back to me. She knew the name, knew the character, got the joke. Her father didn’t.

  She tried to hide her smile with businesslike frustration but she failed.

  Calvin stood. “When you visit my idiot fucking lawyer’s office, her receptionist will cut you a check for the retainer. We have a deal? You find the guy who alerted the authorities?”

  I did not like him calling his daughter an idiot fucking lawyer. He’d barely looked at her during our meeting. Hadn’t admitted the family ties. I took a moment to debate the merits of throwing him around the room.

  “We have a deal,” I said.

  Why?

  Because I hated him.

  Because I wanted to be near Ronnie.

  Because I wanted to remove him from his money.

  Because I wanted to “find the guy who alerted the authorities” and shake his hand.

  Very unprofessional. It went against my code of conduct.

  What fools we mortals be.

  “I’ll start tomorrow,” I said.

  He nodded and left without another word.

  On the way out, Ronnie stopped and her hand alighted on the doorknob. “Mackenzie. Now you know my second secret. My father is a convicted felon with an ongoing criminal enterprise. And I’m an accomplice.”

  I nodded and asked, “Are you a willing accomplice?”

  “The jury will say I am, if they find out.”

  “What would you say?”

  She shrugged, which looked good. “I do the work. So…”

  “Do you do it willingly?”

  She didn’t respond for a moment. I watched her face, and missed being able to look into those blue eyes more often. A tear spilled down her cheek. “I miss you, Mackenzie.”

  She closed the door.

  Chapter Three

  My trusty Honda had been treated unfairly and maliciously by a pack of evildoers last fall. Rendered unrecognizable out of sheer spite and perhaps out of revenge for me costing the evildoers millions of dollars. Sheriff Stackhouse arranged for some policy akin to worker’s compensation to coordinate with my insurance to provide a new trusty Honda. An Accord with less than ten thousand miles. I felt like the top one percent.

  I parked my gleaming ride off Stoutamire Drive and knocked on the flimsy screen door of a rented home, belonging to a man who had zero dollars allocated to home and yard maintenance. An old Nerf basketball hoop stood luridly askew in the knee-high brown grass.

  Jake White answered the third knock. He looked swollen and exhausted. Wore ancient board shorts and a white T-shirt. “What, dude,” he said and he glanced at a watch on his wrist, a watch which did not exist. “What time is it…”

  “Nine in the morning and I’m afraid all the worms are gone. I’m Investigator August, working on behalf of Brad Thompson.”

  “Who? Damn, it’s early.”

  “Brad Thompson is an attorney,” I reminded him helpfully. “You’re the primary witness at a jury trial scheduled next month.”

  “So?”

  “So you claim Timmy Diaz shot your friend, man named Rodney.”

  “Fuck yeah, Timmy shot Rodney. So? Jesus, you’re a big fucker.”

  “Me or Jesus?”

  “What?” He blinked. Stupidly.

  “I bet I’m bigger than him. Jews were short two thousand years ago.”

  “What? Do you care if I sit down?”

  I entered. He sat on a couch which looked as though it’d spent two months on the curb and he closed his eyes.

  “Run me through the events of that night one more time,” I said. “Please.”

  “Why.”

  “I said please.”

  “Timmy shot Rodney. Blaow, blaow. Right in the fucking hip. Now Timmy goes to jail. Because Timmy is a prick.”

  I opened a file and pretended to read from it. “You’re friends with Rodney.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Timmy and Rodney were arguing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Timmy The Prick pulled a gun.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Police still can’t find Timmy’s gun. But all three of you agree it was the revolver which belonged to Timmy’s father. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “A Ruger Blackhawk,” I offered.

  “Whatever.”

  “Timmy’s father said it was a Ruger Blackhawk. He has the paperwork.”

  “Cool, shit, whatever, man.”

  I pressed on, despite his daunting intellect. “You said Timmy shot Rodney because of revenge. Timmy claims it was self-defense.”

  “Right. Revenge. Not self-defense. Timmy lies. Remember? Timmy’s a prick.”

  I said, “Timmy said it was self-defense.”

  “Timmy’s bullshitting. He’s a bullshitter, you know?”

  “If it was self-defense, which Timmy says it was, I bet Timmy would have cocked the gun first,” I said. “Know what I mean? Pulled the hammer back, like ‘You guys better back up or I’ll shoot.’ Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Did Timmy cock the hammer first?”

  “No way man.”

  “Timmy just started shooting?”

  “Just started shooting,” Jake said.

  “So no warning? Just bang bang?”

  “Exactly. You got it, man.”

  “How many shots?” I asked.

  “Two.”

  “First one missed. That’s what Rodney says.”

  “Right. Two shots. First one missed. Timmy can’t hit shit.”

  I pretended to write things down in my file. “Two shots. And Timmy cocked the hammer first? As a warning?”

  “No, man, what’d I just fucking say? He didn’t warn. Just started yanking the got’damn trigger.”

  “But Timmy cocked the hammer before the second shot?” I offered. “To threaten you?”

  “No. No Timmy didn’t ever cock no hammer. No warning. No threatening.”

  “Timmy said he did.”

  “Who the fuck are you, again?”

  “I work with Brad Thompson Law and he—”

  “I don’t care. Timmy’s lying. Never cocked the damn gun. Because it wasn’t in self-defense. Get it? Now get out.”

  I snapped the file closed. “Thank you for your time, Mr. White.”

  The screen door slammed weakly behind me and I got back into my sparkly new Honda spaceship. After I’d driven two blocks away, Brad Thompson raised up from his reclined position in the backseat.

  “Hiding in the back is a bit dramatic.”

  “I know.” Brad grinned. “But I always wanted to do it.” Brad was a good-looking guy from Detroit, blessed with a natural scowl. He was still in his twenties, young to be operating his own law firm. “What’d you find out?”

&
nbsp; “Jake White is lying. He has no idea how a single-action revolver works. Claims Timmy never cocked the gun, which is impossible with the Ruger Blackhawk.”

  “Huh?”

  “Trust me. That gun has to be cocked. Jake says he never did,” I said. “Which is false.”

  “So Jake is lying. To help his buddy Rodney”.

  “Yes.”

  “His testimony won’t hold up if I press him about the gun.”

  “Precisely. Under the conditions he set forth, that gun wouldn’t fire. Hammer has to be pulled back first.”

  “I think I might demonstrate that in front of the jury. It’ll be gorgeous,” Brad said. “Discredit the witness.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You’re the best, Mack.”

  “I know this.”

  “Are you working on anything else?”

  “Ronnie Summers sent something interesting my way,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?” he said. We paused for a moment of silence, during which we each quietly marveled at how absolutely uncompromisingly attractive Ronnie was. This was necessary whenever her name came up. Lesser men did this audibly with sexist and objectifying comments, but Brad had class and morals and a cute wife.

  I broke our reverie. “What do you know about her father?”

  “Not much. Rich. Busted for tax evasion, I think? Couldn’t get him on the big stuff, so both sides settled.”

  “Big stuff?” I asked.

  “I only know rumors. Money laundering, maybe drugs. Are you and Ronnie an item?”

  “She’s engaged to a man in Washington.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said.

  “Neither did I. There’s much I don’t know. Like, who was the prosecutor on Calvin Summer’s case?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “Many thanks,” I said.

  * * *

  I picked my son up from Roxanne’s house at five. Some days I got him at eleven in the morning, some days as late as eight. He called me, “Daaa,” with great enthusiasm and graced me with open arms.

  That still hadn’t gotten old. And it never would.

  “Good day?”

  “Very. He’s always good,” Roxanne replied. Brown hair, glasses, sweatshirt, no makeup. “Kristin said your date went well.”

  “It did. Your stock has risen, in my eyes.”

  “Kristin said she threw herself at you but you refused.”

  “The things girls share with one another, in my educated opinion, are weird.”

  She frowned and cocked her hip to the side. “Did you not notice her abs?”

  “I noticed. And admired.”

  “I don’t get you, Mack. I’m trying to help.”

  “My hot water heater has a leak. Could you fix that?”

  “Are you dating someone else?” she asked.

  “Not technically.”

  “But…”

  “But.”

  “Will you ask Kristin out again?”

  “Almost certainly. You’d like a videotape of the encounter, I surmise?”

  “No.” She laughed. Because I’m clever. “A juicy summary will suffice.”

  I drove home through the quaint Grandin neighborhood. Today was the first day of spring. Daffodils bloomed in full glory and the dogwoods were budding. Not lemonade and lawn mower weather yet but we were close.

  A woman bedecked neck to ankle in athletic wear was stretching on the sidewalk in front of our house. I’d seen her before about this time; she competed with two other local joggers, circuiting into view over and over and over, hoping to be seen by my roommate, guy named Manny. I was straight and even I could see Manny was worth the effort. I pulled into our driveway and did my best not to leer.

  Unfortunately for the Spandex-ed and nubile athlete, Manny was on the back deck grilling and still wore his blue marshal shirt. He saluted me with his Michelob Ultra and gave Kix a high five.

  “Hola. What’s for dinner?”

  “You see the chicken strips,” he said.

  “Sí.”

  “You see the steak strips.”

  “Sí.”

  “You see the peppers and onions?”

  “I do.”

  “But you cannot figure out what is for dinner?” he asked.

  “Would have saved a lot of time, you said fajitas.”

  “I teach you to think, Mack, instead of giving you rote answers.”

  “Much appreciated. But my white privilege would prefer not to think.”

  “How you people made it across the Atlantic is a mystery.”

  I said, “There’s a girl on the front sidewalk, hoping you’ll notice her.”

  “Qué? Who?”

  “Short brown hair. Spandex.”

  “Shorts? Green stripe?” he asked.

  I carried Kix in the crook of my left arm and he was dangerously close to falling asleep, a disaster of nuclear proportions at this time of the evening. “Pants, not shorts. Pink stripe.”

  “No, gracias. She drives a Prius.”

  “What if it’d been a green stripe?” I asked.

  “No, gracias. That one has cats.”

  “You’re a hard guy to please, Manny.”

  “No, amigo, I’m simply looking for a girl with no faults.”

  We ate dinner in the living room at the front of the house with the television on. Windows open, pleasant spring cross breeze. We watched the NCAA tournament while Kix nursed his bananas, bits of chicken, and juice, and Manny bemoaned the dearth of Hispanic basketball players.

  Timothy August, my father, came in late from a dinner date still wearing his blue sports jacket. I’d quit inquiring after his dates because they often involved Sheriff Stackhouse, an arrangement I found especially jarring because, if permanent, I would have a mild Oedipus complex. Local magazines had run out of reasons to put her on the cover.

  He poured a vodka soda and joined us. Kix soon nodded off on the couch beside me. There we stayed until midnight, enjoying the soft sound of squeaking sneakers, the cheering of March Madness crowds, and the unspoken familial bonhomie.

  Chapter Four

  Ronnie’s office was off Salem Avenue in a renovated brick building. Easy parking, great view of the railroad, second story. Unlike other offices in her building, hers did not have an opaque glass door. It was heavy wood reinforced with metal and had three redundant locks. Impressive alarm system too. Daunting door but charming interior, cream walls, polished hardwood floors, and a circulating scent of expensive perfume.

  I entered, a man in full possession of himself. On a mission. Incapable of being sidetracked by pretty lawyers with brilliant smiles. Her receptionist, identified as Natasha Gordon by the nameplate, looked up from her expansive desk. She was pretty, in a young, brown-haired, hardworking, paralegal sort of way. A bluetooth headset was in her ear. “Welcome to Summers Law Firm, how can I help you?”

  “That’s quite a desk,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you tried landing model airplanes on it?”

  She blinked. “I’m sorry? Beg your pardon?”

  “You know, pretend like it’s an aircraft carrier.”

  The reception area had four points of egress — the door I’d walked through, a bathroom, a conference room, and Ronnie’s inner office, which did have an opaque glass window, a sure sign of a competent lawyer.

  Ronnie threw open that door and appeared.

  Enter the goddess.

  She said, “Only you would walk through and make such atypical observations about her desk.”

  “Poor Natasha has too much territory to cover, like she’s playing center field.”

  “Hello Mackenzie.”

  “Hello Ronnie.”

  Natasha looked concerned.

  “Let’s chat.” Ronnie beckoned me into her office and closed the door after. I sat in one of the two client chairs. She sat in the other and crossed her legs.

  “Is that a skirt?” I
asked. “Or a napkin?”

  “I knew you were coming by today. I debated wearing a shirt only.”

  “I have time, if you’d like to change.”

  She asked, “How have you been?”

  “My cholesterol inched up a few points. So.”

  “And your perfect angel baby, Kix?”

  “He misses you,” I said.

  “Not nearly as much as I miss him. I promise you. Is he walking and talking yet?”

  “He’s a hero. Heroes don’t age.”

  She smiled and shook her head. Her blonde hair was up in a messy bun, the kind with chopsticks thrust through. The strands framing her face swayed slightly, an effect I deemed purposeful and effective.

  “I’d forgotten how fascinating your answers are.”

  “Why me, Ronnie?”

  She took a deep breath, which looked good on her, and released it. “I’ve asked myself that too.”

  “Calvin Summers could hire any number of guys to roust the informant.”

  “I think the simplest explanation is, I want to be near you.” Her neck and cheeks colored with a pink patina.

  “Why.”

  “Basic mating instincts.”

  My pulse thundered.

  I mastered myself. A man in full possession.

  “Are you still engaged?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah-hah.”

  “Ah-hah?”

  “Esoteric investigator jargon. I just uncovered your lurid background.”

  “You knew I was engaged,” she said. “It’s not a romantic arrangement. He fools around, I know. So…”

  “So…”

  “There’s a couch.” She indicated the leather chaise lounge couch behind me with an innocuous tilt of her head. “Right there. Begging for use.”

  “You’re seducing me.”

  Her right leg was draped over her left knee, and it pumped up and down with excitement. “Attempting to seduce you. Thus far, I’ve been embarrassingly inept at it.”

  “If I let you then you’d no longer want to be near me, to borrow your phrase.”

  “What evidence leads you to this verdict?”

  “Because I’d no longer be worth it,” I said.

  “That’s not true.”

  “The regard with which I view myself would drop. And that would be the beginning of the end.”

  “Because I’m willing to be attained, does that make me less worthy?” she asked.