“Uh-oh, she’s got the rag on,” said Ariadne Stupenagel. “No, it can’t be, you’re knocked up, aren’t you? You’re supposed to have a peaceful glow, unless that’s a lie too.”
“What do you want, Stupe?”
“We need to talk, girl. Can I come over?”
“Not today. I’m not receiving visitors.”
“Oh?”
“I’m washing my hair. Those split ends? There’s a new conditioner I want to try.”
“Mmm, yes,” said Stupenagel after the briefest pause, “and I might have believed that, and I might have been hurt, thinking that you thought so little of me as to use such a moronic excuse to shine me on, had I not drifted by the old courthouse this morning and had a chat with Ray Guma …”
“Oh, shit!” said Marlene, with feeling.
“… and Guma filled my ear with a strange tale- my little housewife friend with her face rearranged coming into the complaint room in the small hours to swear out a complaint against a nutcase who was stalking another woman. Sisterhood is powerful.”
“Everybody knows about this now, right?”
“They will after I finish writing the story, which I will after you give me the details, which is why I’m coming over. I’m at Foley Square-I’ll be there in ten minutes. Shall I bring you some nice soup?”
“How about a nice quart of bourbon?” said Marlene gloomily, and hung up the phone.
She checked the messages. They were all from metro reporters or TV stations asking for an interview, except for one from Carrie Lanin and one from someone named Suzy Poole, a name that rang a bell but distantly. Marlene could not quite recall where she had heard it. She called Carrie and got her machine, and left a message, and called the Poole person, and got an answering service with a crisp British accent, which assured her that her message would be passed on to Miss Poole.
Shortly after she hung up, the front doorbell rang, and there was Stupenagel, grinning and waving a quart of Ancient Age.
“I can’t drink any of that,” Marlene said. “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, you can have a little drink,” said Stupenagel, entering the loft and focusing on Marlene. “Oh, God, look at your face! At last I’m more beautiful than you! I ought to send this bum a box of candy.”
“Thanks for your support, Ariadne. You always know how to say the right thing.”
“Oh, come on, it was just a joke.” She waved her bottle again. “Get a couple of mugs and we’ll forget our troubles.”
“Sorry. I meant it. You go right ahead, though.” Marlene turned away and walked toward the living room.
“You know, Marlene,” said Stupenagel, following, “I hope you’re not turning into one of those health fascists. Good God! My dear mother used to tell me she never passed a sober day during the whole time she was preggers with me.”
Marlene gave her a baleful look and said, “No further questions, Your Honor.”
Stupenagel snorted a laugh. “I guess I waltzed into that.” She strode into the living room, flung her greatcoat onto the couch, sat down, and placed the bottle on the coffee table. “Well, shall we get started, then?”
Marlene fetched a tumbler and sat down in the bentwood rocker. “What are we starting, Stupe?”
“The story I’m going to write about you, of course.” She reached into her canvas bag and drew out a steno book and a pencil.
“There’s no story, Stupe. I helped out a friend is all,” said Marlene wearily, and looked with longing at the bottle.
“Don’t tell me my business, girl. You’re news. Okay, let’s start with when this Lanin character first told you she was being stalked.”
Marlene looked at her friend, at the sharpened pencil poised quivering over the pad, at the bright and merciless gleam in her eye. The thought entered Marlene’s mind that it was like having a pal who became a gynecologist: whatever the prior relationship, it inevitably became different when you were up on the table with your legs spread, watching her approach with the shiny instruments of the profession.
“What’s funny?” Stupenagel asked, seeing the expression that now crossed Marlene’s face.
“Oh, nothing,” said Marlene, putting her mug into neutral. Then she began the tale of Carrie and Rob, the official version, of course, and hoped that Stupenagel was not as perceptive as Karp.
Someone had once told Karp that clients were to the law what the serpent was to the Garden of Eden. Heretofore the truth of this had not been pressed upon him, as he had spent virtually all of his professional career as a prosecutor, for whom the client is the People, a pleasant abstraction having no propensity to deviousness or complaint. It was different now that he had a real client breathing, complaining, and being devious in his office. He did not much like it.
“Murray,” said Karp in a soothing voice, “it won’t matter. We’ll get by.”
“Yeah, you say that,” replied Selig. “How’re you going to do all the things you need to do for this trial without support from your firm? It’d be like trying to do a solo on a coronary bypass.”
“Right, and if I needed a coronary bypass, I’d take your advice. You need this trial, so take mine!”
A moment of glaring, and then Selig shook his chunky frame and grinned sheepishly. “Oh, crap, Butch-look, I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. I just hate this.”
Karp smiled back. “That’s because you’re a decent human being involved in a lawsuit. You’re supposed to hate it. If you liked it, I wouldn’t have anything to do with you. Anyway, as I was about to point out, we can hire support on the outside. I have a freelance paralegal lined up, and a steno who’s going to come in a little while and take the Mayor’s deposition. That’s part of what’s happening now, at this stage of the proceedings. I’ll be deposing the defendants-”
“Just the Mayor?”
“No. Fuerza too. And the D.A.”
“What’s the point of him? I didn’t work for the D.A.”
“No,” said Karp smoothly, “but his defamation helped form the basis of the firing, and added to the stigma you’re suffering now.” This partial truth was accepted without demur, and Karp continued. “We’ll also depose all the people who supplied information in the two letters that formed the basis of the decision to fire you.”
“The lies.”
“As we will prove,” said Karp. “Also, the defendants will get a crack at you and all of our witnesses, and they’re obviously going to concentrate especially on you.”
“That’s okay,” said Selig lightly. “I have nothing to hide.”
Karp shot a stern look across his desk. “Wrong thinking, Murray. Everybody has something to hide-Mother Teresa, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, I don’t care-everybody. The issue here is, you want to win this case, you don’t hide it from me.”
Selig nodded soberly. “I understand.”
“Okay, let me make sure that you do. This case is about reputation. They said you’re a sleazeball, you say you’re not. It is to their very great advantage to blacken you even more than they have already. Now, they’ve restricted the calumny to your professional behavior as C.M.E., but at this point any sleaze will do, because they’re trying to paint a picture for the jury and they want to make it the portrait of Dorian Gray. Look, let’s say for the sake of argument that you enjoy fucking chickadees in the privacy of your own home …”
Selig guffawed.
“… okay, you’re a little embarrassed, you don’t tell me. So at deposition, they got this, oh, say, some secretary up there on what looks like some minor paper trail matter and they ask her, did you bring those papers to Dr. Selig? Yes. And what was he doing when you got there? Oh, he was fucking this chickadee out by the birdhouse. Now, at that point I object, of course, but it’s now part of the public record, and unless I can get it thrown out by the judge via a motion in limine, the jury will hear about it, and that’s what they’re going to see when they look at you, a guy with a vice he’s ashamed to admit, and they’re going to inevitably think, if he’s covered this up, what else is there, and even if we destroy all their charges one by one, they’re still going to think, hey, where there’s smoke … You follow the logic?”