The Ditto List (36 page)

Several other cars were parked nearby, all of them expensive. The other houses on the street were as coldly aristocratic as the club. He wondered who lived in them, and whether they knew what was going on behind the spiked pickets of the gate he watched. Did they care? Should they care? Was there any point in caring about anything any more? He cared, sometimes, and what had it gotten him?

Malpractice.

A taxi pulled to the curb and discharged a passenger. Male. Wealthy. Past fifty. Furtive. A while later a car parked on the other side of the street and another man got out and unlocked the gate and went into the house. Then two men came out and drove away together. Then another one, young, trendy, on foot, went in. D.T. watched them all, hoping one of them would be Chas Stone, knowing that even sin was not that simple. After an hour he drove home.

He undressed and turned out the light and got into bed. He tossed and turned, seeing legal words and Lucinda Finders in his mind. He turned on the light and picked up the phone.

“Bobby? D.T. I'm making this a habit, aren't I?”

“It's all right.”

“I need something.”

“What?”

“A whore.”

“But you …”

“Not for me. A guy. A gay.”

Bobby E. Lee was silent.

“I want to set Stone up. I want him to meet Stone at the club, seduce him, then take him someplace where I can photograph Stone doing things that will make Judge Buchanan apoplectic. I'll pay two hundred bucks. But it has to be a pro. No amateurs. You know anyone? Come on, Bobby, goddamnit. Do you?”

“Maybe.”

“Ask around. Let me know as soon as you can.”

“I assume if I don't find someone for you you'll look elsewhere.”

“You're damned right.”

“I'll let you know.”

“I could have done it without telling you, you know. I could have just done it.”

“I know.”

“Well, thanks for your help.”

“I don't want your thanks, Mr. J. I just want the money you owe me. Or I report you to the state.”

SIXTEEN

He couldn't breathe. Something covered his mouth, something wet, heavy, soft. He struggled, twisting his head, straining to speak, fighting for air. When he raised a hand to his face other fingers forced it back. The weight of another body imprisoned him beneath his sheet.

Although his eyes were open, the room—blackened by the thick drape across his window—allowed only a guess at the shape and danger looming over him. Del? Had Delbert Finders downed the twelve-pack and come to wreak a vengeance that Lucinda had rendered pointless? Would he die only comically, his entire threat to Del previously dissolved by the capitulation of his wife? D.T. twisted his head again, and finally freed his mouth.

“I'm not her fucking lawyer anymore,” he shouted. “She fired me, goddamnit.”

Hot breath brushed his face. The scents of things familiar—toothpaste, mouthwash, soap—made him want to scratch his nose. He sneezed. The shadowy form that crushed him pulled back and then rolled off, granting freedom.

“Someone actually fired you? How cruel.” The voice was not Del's, not a man's.

“Barbara?”

“You were expecting someone else?”

“What time is it?”

“Nine. Sleepyhead. You're hard to wake up.”

“Jesus.” He struggled to a sitting position. “I thought you were trying to kill me.”

Barbara crossed her legs and faced him like a sporty Buddha from the foot of the bed. As always, her full face was flushed with life. “Don't be so paranoid, D.T. I'm on my way to Visalia. Want to change your mind and come?”

He shook his head. “I promised Heather.”

“We could be back tomorrow.”

“Sorry. Next year.”

She reached over and patted his cock, which was more alert than the rest of him. “Want me to crawl under there and give you something to be thankful for?”

His head still sloshed with sleep, her words had little meaning to anything except the elastic cells she was massaging. “You know how I am in the mornings,” was all he said.

“D.T.?”

“What?”

“You aren't sleeping with Michele, are you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Truth?”

“Truth. Why?”

“I don't know. You seem a little less …”

“Ardent?”

“Right. Ardent. A little less ardent lately.”

“I'm getting old, Barbara. It's not that I
feel
less ardent, it's just that by the time we get around to it, my ardent machine has already shut down for the day. It only works late about twice a month, for some reason. It doesn't have anything to do with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure.”

“You're out of shape, D.T. Twenty miles a week would make a new man of you.”

D.T. refused the bait.

Barbara smiled and released him. “I wish you were going home with me. You know how my mother and I get. We could use a referee.”

He knew how they got, all right. Barbara blamed her mother for everything that was less than sterling in her life. Beyond that, Barbara faulted her mother for achieving nothing more notable than wife-and-motherhood; for wasting her life inside a bite-sized bungalow in the suburbs of a town that didn't even have suburbs. More than once, D.T. had sat across a cocktail table from Barbara, and listened to bar chatter while she had railed for hours against her absent mother. In the process she would characterize what seemed to D.T. a rather normal childhood as a spectacle that would have intrigued Dickens and delighted de Sade. And all evening D.T. would struggle mightily to refrain from pointing out that if Barbara had the right to blame
her
mother for her own shortcomings, then her mother in turn had every right to blame
her
mother for
her
own deficiencies, and so on back to Eve, whose only recourse was presumably to have it out with God.

“I may go on up to Grizzly Ridge on Friday,” Barbara was saying. “Cross-country skiing. Want to meet me there?”

D.T. shook his head.

“I'll teach you how. I'll have the equipment all ready, so you won't have to wait in line.”

She knew him well. “It's not my bag,” he said.

“And golf is?” She mentioned the sport with her usual vaudevillian hoot.

D.T. replied in kind. “Finesse and carefully calibrated physical movement. None of this brute strength and witless reflex. It's why I'm such a wonderful lover.”

Barbara climbed off the bed and loomed over him like a spectre in a sweatsuit. “Not before noon you're not.”

She bent and kissed him, waved, and left.

Barbara. What was he going to do about her? Over the years he had compiled a long list of things no couple should ever attempt if they wanted to preserve their alliance. Camping together more than one night. Wallpapering. Ice-skating. Playing chess. Those and more were often fatal, as were any activities requiring courage on the part of either participant and any sports in which one of the couple was truly expert and the other a beginner. Client after client had traced the initial tremor of divorce to blunders of this type. Yet these were exactly the things that Barbara insisted, time after time, that she and he engage in. To the point where he dreaded hearing her plans for the weekend more than he dreaded the Fiasco.

What he suspected was that Barbara saw him primarily as a reclamation project, a vessel in need of filling with improvement in everything from his intake of polyunsaturates to the timing of his ejaculations. He in turn had begun to view Barbara as a professional resource. If he could figure out Barbara then he could figure out his clients—was the theory; but its converse must therefore have been true as well—if he failed to fathom Barbara then he must have been failing, day after clouded day, to fathom the women who trooped in and out of his office in the belief that he was qualified to help them. Their relationship was more the stuff of sociology than romance, the atmosphere of teacher-pupil rather than of friend or lover. So he guessed he was prepared to see it end with Barbara, but not for it to be his doing.

He got out of bed, showered, dressed, read the paper. Thanksgiving. Cute features about turkeys and Pilgrims, and pious homilies from politicians thankful only for their own election and the continued secrecy of their slush fund. Outside, the downpour matched his mood.

He was due at Michele's at noon. The meal wouldn't be served till five. Much dead time, one of Michele's best weapons. He wondered what time George was coming. What on earth would he say to the man? Should he offer tips? Would they end up comparing notes about Michele's comportment in the bedroom, like frat brothers after the second mixer? No. George was a better man then that, and he hoped he was himself.

He poured a second cup of coffee and went out on the deck, but the rain and the cold air and the immaculately enervating view quickly drove him back indoors. He turned on the radio and listened to Larry Gatlin and his siblings sing about Beverly Hills. He wondered if a year from now he would be giving thanks that no malpractice judgment had been entered against him. Or would he be scrambling through his scraggly assets, trying to figure out how to satisfy a judgment without going bankrupt. He wondered about Lucinda Finders, if she was with Del, if they were having turkey, if they had somehow managed to become happy. Not a chance. Big Macs and beer and an inevitable clash. He wondered about Mareth Stone. She had kids, and holidays were usually endurable if kids were around. Except maybe Christmas. Christmas was a predestined anticlimax, even if you got everything on your list. He remembered the year he had wanted an electric train. He never got one. Not that year, not ever. Maybe he should buy one now. Run it around the office. A whole train of tank cars filled with Baileys Irish Cream. He wondered about Esther Preston and Rita Holloway for so long that he telephoned the little red house.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

“Same to you, D.T.”

“How's Mrs. Preston?”

“Fine. I'm about to serve her some cranberry sauce. She's a fiend for cranberry sauce.”

“We filed the complaint.”

Rita Holloway paused. “At one time I would have jumped for joy. Now, it terrifies me. If anything happens to Esther it'll be my fault.”

“No, it won't. It'll be the fault of whoever makes it happen.” And more than a little bit mine for not putting a stop to it, he thought but didn't say. “Any sign of someone snooping around?”

“No. Not while I've been here.”

“You have my number, right?”

“Right.”

“I'll be at this one from noon till about seven. Then I'll be home.” He gave her Michele's number. “Do you have someplace to go?”

“My boyfriend's taking me to Antoine's.”

“Nice place.”

“Yes.”

He waited for more about the boyfriend but it didn't come.

“Remember how I told you to mark the door, to see if anyone got in while you were gone?”

“I remember.”

Pause. “Your family live here in the city?” he asked, reluctant to cut the connection.

“No. They're dead.”

“I'm sorry. Brothers or sisters?”

“No. You?”

“Only a mother. In the Midwest. In a rest home. She's dying, the last I heard.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah. You think I'm a lousy lawyer you should see how bad I am at being a son.”

“I don't think you're a lousy lawyer, D.T. I think you're quite the opposite. You're one of the things I'm most thankful for today, in fact.”

“I guess I'd better quit while I'm ahead,” he mumbled. “You have a nice day, Miss Holloway. I enjoyed breakfast.”

“So did I.”

“Do we need to talk about it?”

“Not now.”

“Good. Call me if anything comes up.”

“I will. Don't worry. Brave is something I'm not.”

“Nonsense. Nurses are the bravest of us all.”

“I …”

“Bye, Rita.”

D.T. hung up and fixed a bowl of shredded wheat to tide him over, then turned on the TV and watched the football game. He had a big bet against both the Lions and the spread. Too big. A loss would wipe out the small surplus he had accumulated over the past few months by virtue of a few paying clients and a few successful wagers. Before he was comfortable in his chair the Lions scored. But Sims was out at least temporarily, his bell rung by a linebacker who had anticipated a swing pass and had gotten there before either the ball or Billy. D.T. cracked a beer and checked his watch.

The phone rang. He let it cry unattended, a baby with the colic, as he imagined every person who could possibly be calling and decided he didn't want to hear anything any of them might tell him. They could stew in their own juice, like the turkey at Michele's. If somebody died, somebody like Lucinda Finders, say, well so what? Society worried too much about death, stretched too far to prevent it, emasculated itself to eliminate risk. It had made cowards of us all, shiftless squid who knew no real danger and so found danger in everything, who knew no real triumph and so found worth in the worthless, success in the insignificant, achievement in the trivial. Nothing noble occurred any longer, in a nation where nobility had once been the everyday measure of man. It was so bad that lawyers like himself could amass wealth and fame for doing nothing more than advancing the collapse of civilization by sundering its most basic institution. The Lions intercepted and ran it back for six. Jesus. In a sneak attack, age had rendered him reactionary. The Steelers fumbled the ensuing kickoff.

He wondered if his gambling was a subconscious evasion of success, a deliberate impoverishing of himself so that he could not be accused of profiting from something so ignoble as divorce law. If that was really and truly the reason he bet, then gambling might be the best and not the worst of his activities.