Carolyn took her time, as if studying him before she said, “You saw him?”
“No.”
“How many people, do you think, you’re directly responsible for sending to prison? In round numbers.”
“I don’t know-five hundred?”
“Then count their friends, relatives-”
“Lot of people.”
“You have the gun whoever it was used?”
Raymond shook his head.
“Do you have the gun that killed Guy and the woman?”
Raymond almost smiled. He said, “Why?”
“You know you’re not going to get Mansell unless you can produce the murder weapon and prove it’s his and even then you’re going to have a tough time. On this new allegation, a suspicion of an attempt-what have you got? Did anyone see him? At 6:30 it’s already dark. Where are you going to even look for a witness?”
“Carolyn,” Raymond said, getting used to saying the name. “Clement wasn’t here.”
“What I said to you on the phone,” Carolyn said, with a hint of irritation now, in eye movement more than tone, “is not something you can enter as evidence, even if you recorded the conversation. You know that, don’t you?”
“You lied,” Raymond said.
“God damn it-” She seemed to come up from the cushion, but in the next moment she was composed again. “If I don’t care to admit I made a statement, whether to protect my client or because of the particular interpretation I believe you might give the statement, then I’ll rephrase it to the best of my ability and memory.”
“Why did you lie?” Raymond said.
“Jesus Christ, are you dense or something?” Finally with a bite to her tone, “If you intend to use whatever I said then I’ll flatly deny it.”
Raymond got up, giving her a chance to breathe, maybe bring her guard down a little. He went over to the tea-table bar, found a cordial glass and concentrated on pouring aquavit into it, up past a crisscross design in the crystal.
“I’m not threatening to use what you said in court. I’m not threatening, period.” He sipped the clear liqueur from the rim of the glass and came back to the hassock, watching the glass carefully as he sat down again. “All I’m trying to do”-looking at her now-“see, I have a feeling that Clement, that time in your office, scared you to death… holding something over your head. He called you this evening and did it again. Scared you to the point of covering for him. Then you have a couple of these and calm down and you’re the lawyer again and you start using words on me, try and dazzle me with your footwork. But it doesn’t change Clement, does it?”
She said quietly, “I can handle Clement.”
He wanted to grab her by the arms and shake her and tell her to wake up. Fucking lawyers and judges who used words and a certain irritating tone and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it…
Holding the cordial glass helped. He took a sip and placed it on the table next to hers. It was hard, but he was going to play this with her. He said, “A man by the name of Champ who packed a Walther P .38 thought he could handle Clement and Clement took him out. Remember? Three years ago. I’ll bet Judge Guy, calling the nine-eleven in his car, the judge thought he could handle him too. Clement’s holding something over your head, he’s threatening you or extorting you and you’re letting him do it.”
Carolyn picked up her glass and he knew she was going to dodge him.
“He did tell me something interesting,” Carolyn said. “That you want to meet him somewhere and have it out. Just the two of you.”
“He said that?”
“How else would I know?”
“There are stories,” Raymond said, “the cop takes off his badge and they settle it man to man in the alley. If you think it’s like that-no, this is Clement’s idea. You look at my living room window you’ll see he’s already started.”
“You’re saying, what, he challenged you to-what amounts to a duel?”
“He didn’t give me his card or slap my face or anything, or give me a choice of weapons; but it looks like he leans toward automatic rifles. This is your client I’m talking about. The one you can handle.”
Carolyn said, “What’re you going to do about it?” Quietly but with new interest.
“I’m gonna keep looking over my shoulder, for one thing,” Raymond said. “I’m not gonna turn a light on with the shades up.”
“What does the department say about it?”
“The police department?”
“Your inspector, commander, whoever you report to.”
“I haven’t told anybody yet. It just happened.”
“Are you going to?”
“I’m gonna report the shooting, yes.”
“You know what I mean. Are you going to tell them Clement challenged you?”
Raymond paused. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“What’s the difference in the way you look at Clement Mansell and the way I do?” Carolyn said. “I tell you I can handle him. You imply to me, in effect, the same thing, that it’s a personal matter.”
“There’s one big difference,” Raymond said. “I’ve got a gun.”
“I know. That’s why I think the idea appeals to you,” Carolyn said. “Mano a mano. No-more like High Noon. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. You have to go back a hundred years and out west to find an analogy. But there it is.”
He thought of the girl from the News.
He said, “I don’t know-” and paused. In his mind the allusion to a western scene, the street, men with guns approaching, dissolved and now he saw kids playing guns in a vacant lot near Holy Trinity, before the places where they played disappeared beneath a freeway, seeing the same kids in school then, a little blond-haired girl named Carmel something, on a dismal fall afternoon in the fifth grade, dropping a note on his desk that said I Love You on ruled paper, like an exercise in Palmer Method-kids sharing secrets-a long time ago but still clear in his mind, part of him now as he sat in dimmed light with someone else who had a secret. He wondered if she had close friends or someone she spoke to intimately.
She said, “What don’t you know?”
“I thought of that, it’s strange, what you said. When I was talking to Clement he kept making the point that I wasn’t any more interested in upholding the law than he was in breaking it-”
“He said that?”
“Yes, that it was a personal thing between us that didn’t have anything to do with other people.”
“Did you agree?”
“I said, ‘A long time ago we might’ve settled this between us.’ And he said… ‘Or if we thought it might be fun.’ ”
Staring intently she said, “You haven’t told this to the people you work with. But you’ve told me.”
She came up from the silky cushion, close to him now but closed in on herself, arms against her body, hands clasped on her knees.
“You said the other night in my office, ‘Can I help you?’ You said it twice. Both times, the way you said it, I came so close to telling you, I wanted to-”
Her eyes were brown, the pupils dilated in the dim light, making her eyes appear dark and clearly defined, like eyes in a drawing that were accentuated, inked in except for a small pale square to indicate reflected light, a soft sparkle.
“Everybody,” Raymond said, “has to have somebody to tell secrets to.” He liked the delicate line of her nose, the shape of her mouth and saw where he would go in and take part of her lower lip, biting it very gently.
She said, “I make assumptions-I think I know you, but I don’t. You say, ‘fine art.’ You say, ‘if he’s into bilocation… ‘ “
Raymond said, “But he isn’t, is he?”
She didn’t answer.
“Let me help you.”
She continued to look into his eyes, into the deep end of a pool, gathering courage-