Guido, a chunky, little man with a great mop of silver hair and a permanent smile, led Vail to the corner table. While still the state's most feared defence advocate, Vail had established the booth as his own. There he could eat, read, or talk business in relative seclusion. A few barflies hugged the long oak and marble bar and a half-dozen tables were occupied. Conversation was a low rumble.
Vail ordered a glass of red wine and settled down to read what the Trib had to say about Yancey and the bodies in the city dump, both of which were prominently displayed on page one. He didn't see Jane Venable until she appeared beside him at the table. He was genuinely surprised when he looked up and saw her and it was a moment before he reacted. He stood up, throwing the paper aside.
'I don't know what I'm doing here. I must be crazy! I guess I'm as tired of that bunch of hucksters as you are and…'
She was babbling to cover her embarrassment, obviously having second thoughts about following the man she had ignored - and who had ignored her - for a decade. Vail held a chair for her.
'You don't have to apologize to me for anything,' he said quietly. 'Ever.'
'I'm not apologizing, I'm…'
'Glad to be here?' he suggested.
She glared at him for a moment and then her consternation dissolved into a sheepish grin as she sat down opposite him.
'It has been ten years,' she said sheepishly.
'Well, we've been busy,' he said casually. 'What are you drinking?'
'I'll have a glass of champagne. If I switch to something else, I'll end up on my nose.'
'Eddie,' Vail called to a nearby waiter. 'Champagne for the lady and I'll have the same. Why don't you just bring us a bottle? Taittinger '73 would be nice.'
They sat without speaking for half a minute, then both started speaking at the same time and then stopped and laughed.
'Hell, Janie, it's time we started acting like grown-ups.
'Why not? You've been divorced for what, two years? I'm free as a bird.'
She seemed surprised that he knew anything about her personal life. 'Been keeping track of me, have you, Lawyer Vail?' she asked.
He did not answer. He was looking across the table, his eyes directly on hers. Their gazes locked for several seconds and she finally broke the stare.
'The one that got away, huh,' she said, reaching for a cigarette.
'If I thought about all the ones that got away I wouldn't have time to do anything else.'
She laughed. 'I suppose we have been acting juvenile, haven't we?'
'Maybe it's just the right time and the right place, Janie.'
'I've told you before, Martin, nobody calls me Janie.'
'Except me,' he said, taunting her. 'What're you gonna do, get me arrested? I'm the friggin' DA.'
'Somewhat reluctantly, I assume,' she answered.
'Want a job?'
'Why, are you quitting?'
He whistled softly through his teeth. 'You haven't lost your edge, I see. So why do you suppose we're sitting here, Janie?'
She shrugged. 'We're both forty…? she suggested.
'Plus,' he added ruefully.
'We both hate cocktail parties?'
'We both hate lawyers?'
'Good one,' she said.
'Or maybe we're both just lonelier than hell.'
'I can only speak for myself,' he said. 'I've missed you. Me and every other male who ever saw you in a courtroom. You really turned it all on. You were a real dazzler - the Hope diamond of the Cook County Courthouse. Don't you miss it? The roar of the courtroom, the smell of the crowd?'
'I still have my days in court.'
'Not like the old days. Defending polluters in civil cases really ain't the same.'
'Come on, Vail, I did one.'
'And won, unfortunately.'
'Hey…' she started, anger creeping into her tone.
'Sorry,' he said hurriedly. 'I'll get off the soapbox.'
She shrugged. 'Maybe I'm a little too touchy on the subject. I've always been curious about something I heard. Did they really clean your tank back when you were starting out? Is that true?'
'Oh, yeah,' he said, 'they whipped my ass good. The Chamber of Commerce sold everyone down the river, the newspaper lied to them, the bigshots bought off the judges, they brought in the heaviest, ball-busting lawyers they could find from the big town, and they turned a paradise into a killing ground. All I got out of it was a good lesson.'
'What was that?'
'It's dangerous to be blinded by idealism. The minute the hyenas find out you have integrity, they bring on their assassins in silk suits.'
'You haven't done badly. Blowing off one of the most respected banks in the city for money laundering, shutting down two chemical companies, busting half the city council for being on the sleeve. I call that getting even.'
'It's a start,' he said, and changed the subject, focusing the conversation back on them. 'What I miss are our old skirmishes, even after ten years.'
'There's something to be said for good, old-fashioned cutthroat competition.'
'You ought to know.'
'Look who's talking.'
She raised her glass and offered a toast to cutthroat competition. Their eyes locked again and this time she didn't break the stare.
'Janie,' he said, 'just how hungry are you?'
She slouched back in the booth and looked at the ceiling and closed her eyes and shook her head ever so slightly, sighed, and peered down her long nose at him.
'Cocktail parties always did ruin my appetite,' she said.
She was seeing a side of Vail he had never revealed to her before, a vulnerability, a romantic flair. He had brought home the bottle of chilled Taittinger after informing Guido that they had changed their mind about dinner. She had always been attracted to Vail, even in the old days, but had never admitted it to herself, dispelling her feelings as a combination of admiration and fear of his talent. Now, standing in his living room, watching him light the fire, she realized how much she wanted him and began to wonder if she had made a mistake. Was she rushing into something? A one-night stand? Would it turn into one of those awkward mistakes where she would awaken in the morning with a sexual hangover? But when he stood up and faced her, her fears vanished, washed away in another rush of desire. He took off her coat and tossed it over the sofa and went into the kitchen to get wineglasses.
She looked around the apartment. It was a large two-bedroom, high enough to have a nice view of the city but not ostentatious. One of the bedrooms had been converted into an office, a cluttered room of books filled with paper place markers, files stacked in the corners, magazines piled up, most of them with their wrappers still on them, scraps of notes, and newspaper clippings. A blue light glowed from the bathroom and she peered in.
It had been converted into a minigreenhouse. A six-foot-long zinc-lined sink ran along one wall, with taps and tubes running from the bathroom sink. Pots of flowers crowded the bathtub. A row of grow lights plugged into an automatic timer created the illusion of daylight twelve hours a day. Beneath the lights were bunches of small, delicate blue flowers surrounded by fernlike leaves. On the other side of the narrow room was a small plastic-covered cubicle, its sides misty with manmade dew. Through its opaque sides, she could see splashes of colour from other flowers.