There was a demand for them all to rise, which they did. The judge was a woman, a round-faced, motherly person. As the appellant Giles rose at once to outline Ellen’s application, but almost at once Pallister got to his feet, announcing that his client sought for the alimony—although not the child support—to be reduced on the grounds of hardship and that it was excessive.
O’Farrell gazed directly at Patrick, who studiously ignored the attention, and thought at that moment, despite all his training, he did not know if he could have kept his hands off the man if they had been in different surroundings.
A lot of the early part of the hearing came down to legal technicalities, the two lawyers close to the bench arguing procedural points, so it was some time before Ellen was called to give evidence. O’Farrell was impressed at how well she did. She was clearly nervous, but there was no tearful collapse. She gave her answers in a firm, respectful voice, following Giles through the questioning on unmade payments and unkept promises. O’Farrell was aware of Pallister frequently looking to Patrick, as if seeking clarification or confirmation, and O’Farrell wondered what bullshit story Patrick had fed his attorney before the hearing.
Ellen stood up well under examination from Pallister. The lawyer challenged her about payments she said had not been made that Patrick was insisting had, but Giles had anticipated that. Forewarned, Ellen produced her bank statements covering the disputed period, which clearly showed no deposits of either the alimony or child-support figures. The further attempt, after a hurried, head-bent consultation with Patrick, to insist that the payments had been made in cash, clearly did not impress the judge. Pallister tried several different ways to get Ellen to admit she could manage to keep herself and Billy on a reduced income and O’Farrell sat hot with concern that Ellen would misunderstand and agree, but Ellen didn’t, and when she returned to sit with them. O’Farrell squeezed his daughter’s hand and whispered. “Well done.”
Patrick tried hard in the witness stand, and O’Farrell couldn’t make up his mind at first whether the man was impressing the judge. Patrick admitted not paying some—but not all—of the arrears and pleaded remarriage and the commitments of a new family. It was not that he was unwilling to pay: it was that the lowness of his uncertain, commission-based income made it impossible for him to pay. If his income improved, he was willing, in fact, to advise his former wife, return to court, and have any new order increased. He was not intentionally neglectful. He sought to honor his responsibilities, as best he could.
Giles was absolutely brilliant, although not immediately so, and O’Farrell looked up worriedly at the man’s questioning. Giles’s stumbling, hesitant queries and practically servile demeanor at the beginning bewildered and shocked O’Farrell, because it was so alien to what he knew of the man.
Patrick, a bully, immediately discerned an imagined weakness. He seemed to grow in stature, as if he were being inflated, and the replies snapped back, sometimes before Giles had completed his wavering inquiry. There were times, once or twice, when Patrick actually smiled, an artificial expression like a clip-on bow tie. He was smiling when the trap opened and shut, engulfing him. The hesitancy and servility went as Giles repeated word for word an early answer from Patrick, comparing it as an obvious lie against some later response. He challenged the income figures produced by the man, and when Patrick argued that he had been telling the truth, Giles produced salary information from the car firm for which Patrick worked. Pallister made a token protest at Giles’s approach to Patrick’s employer, but it was only token, and O’Farrell suspected the burly lawyer was annoyed and displeased at having been so obviously lied to by his client.
Giles even asked about the gold watch and bracelet and got an admission from the supposedly impoverished and now groping Patrick that he’d bought both during the time he’d told the court he could not afford to keep up the payments.
By the time Giles finished, Ellen was shown to be a struggling devoted mother, Patrick the callous former husband, careless of her and of their child.
The court ruled that Patrick should pay off the full arrears that Ellen claimed at fifty dollars a month—through the court—and made an order that all future alimony and child-support payments should also be made through the court. The ruling was accompanied by the warning that the court would take a very critical view of any failure on Patrick’s part to meet his obligations.
Giles came to O’Farrell and said. “He was damned lucky he didn’t get hit with perjury.”
“So Pallister wasn’t so good after all?”
“I felt sorry for him,” Giles said. “You get a client who bullshits, there’s no way you can win.”
O’Farrell hurried from the courtroom ahead of Jill and Ellen, wanting to catch Patrick, which he did at the door leading out into the street. Patrick pretended not to hear the first shout, only stopping when O’Farrell overtook him and stood in front of him.
“You get all that, shithead!” O’Farrell demanded.
“Get out of the way, for Christ’s sake,” said Patrick, trying to push by.
O’Farrell didn’t move. He said, “But that’s just the point, shithead. Getting out of your way is something I am not going to do. I’m going to be in your way all the time, from now on. You be so much as an hour late, just once, in looking after my daughter and Billy. I’m going to have you back in court so fast there’ll be skid marks. There won’t be a moment when I’m not watching and waiting for you to fuck up. You hear me!”
On the way back to the apartment, Jill said, “I never imagined it would be possible to show Patrick up quite so clearly for what he is.”
“You were right, both of you. He is a bastard, isn’t he?” said Ellen. O’Farrell hoped that at last she believed it.
When they got back, the blips on the answering machine indicated there had been some calls without messages being left. O’Farrell had made the drinks, handed them around, and was saying. “I think we can celebrate,” when the telephone sounded again. He answered it with his glass in his hand, thinking it might be something or someone to do with the hearing, Giles for instance.
“I’ve been trying to get you all day,” said Petty. ‘There’s something I’d like us to talk about fairly urgently. You can get away, can’t you?”
It was a brief conversation. O’Farrell agreed, without any questions.
As he replaced the receiver, Petty said to the man with him, “You absolutely sure about giving him the position?”
“Of course I’m sure,” McCarthy said. “O’Farrell s a loyal operative, proved over a number of years, isn’t he? What could be more fitting than promotion?”
THIRTY
“IT IS an emergency,” Erickson stressed, in immediate support of the division chief’s proposal. “You can understand that, can’t you?”
There were black scuff marks on the wall by the radiator, as if the deputy sat there a lot, swinging his leg back and forth like he was doing now. O’Farrell said, “I wouldn’t have used the word ‘emergency.’”
“Come on!” Petty said from behind the desk of the Lafayette Square office, his voice that of a reasonable man being misunderstood. He went on, “We wouldn’t be putting it to you if there were any alternative! But there isn’t. You’re the only one who’s studied completely the Rivera file, who knows and believes the assignment should be carried out—”
“There’s no time to prepare anyone else.…” Erickson picked up.
“The Madrid conference starts in a week,” Petty said. “It can’t be anyone else.…”