Of course, she knew, Mario’s profanity wasn’t going to lose him his job, but it might lower the judge in the eyes of even one citizen, and Pat Giotti, bred to the culture of the Ninth Circuit, would not abide that. She, too, had made great sacrifices to further her husband’s career – her own friendships, her fun, the intimacy of their four children, her youth. Sometimes, she thought in her dark moments, her very life.
But these thoughts passed. They couldn’t be allowed. It had all been worth it. Mario Giotti was a federal judge now. He was someday, with luck, going to the Supreme Court, perhaps as its chief justice, the culmination of their every dream, the goal for which they had never ceased laboring. Together.
The couple had come back and the man was blathering on. ‘I’m just so sorry,’ Joe was saying. ‘I get too competitive. I shouldn’t have-’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Pat interrupted. ‘Spirit of the game. You don’t play if you don’t want to win, isn’t that right, Mario?’
The judge pulled the towel down from the bridge of his nose. His eyes were mild, the smile benign. ‘It’s one of the absolute truths, Joe.’ He took a long sip of the bottled water. Then, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Could’ve happened to anybody.’
Helen Taylor reclined in the oversized marble bathtub, soaking in scented oils. The disastrous meeting with Graham on Friday night had exhausted the family. After her children had gone, she and Leland went out to a late supper at the Ritz-Carlton and afterward, keeping the unpleasantness at bay, they’d danced at the Top of the Mark. The rest of the weekend had been given over to society events. They’d had no private time to talk. Until now. Leland knocked at the bathroom door and she told him to come in, which he did, taking a seat in the brocaded wing chair that graced the wall opposite the bath. Crossing one leg over the other, he leaned back, enjoying the sight of his wife in the water. He was wearing the pants to one of his Savile Row suits, a white shirt and dark blue tie, black shoes, black socks with garters.
Inhaling through his nose, he seemed to have suddenly encountered an off scent. His voice had a reedy tone, highly pitched and phlegmy. ‘I suppose we’re going to have to pay for Graham’s defense, aren’t we?’
Helen took a moment before answering. ‘I keep hoping they’re not going to arrest him again.’
‘No.’ Leland was certain. ‘It’s a matter of time, but they will. I wouldn’t squander my hope there.’
His wife sighed and moved. The water lapped gently once or twice. ‘Then I suppose we must. Pay his attorneys, I mean. I know he can’t.’
The phantom scent wasn’t getting any better. Leland held his chin high, turning his head from one side to the other, as if trying to place it. ‘We’ll have to keep it from George.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps it should be a loan this time. A real loan.’
‘Through the bank? If it’s through the bank, it would be impossible to keep from George.’
Her husband was shaking his head no. ‘I was thinking of a personal loan. We could-’
But another thought had crowded in, and Helen interrupted. ‘You don’t really think he’ll go to jail, do you?’
‘I don’t know, Helen. If he did kill his father for the money-’
‘Graham couldn’t have done that, Leland. It’s impossible. That’s not who he is. He might have helped him die, but it wasn’t for money.’
Her husband raised his eyebrows, a parlor trick of impressive eloquence. He lived in a world entirely circumscribed by money, and believed that to a substantial degree everything was connected to it. But there was no need to make this point to his wife, and he moved along. ‘I’m thinking, though – back to the loan now – that if he doesn’t get convicted, we might be able to get some reasonable behavior out of the boy, at least until the debt was retired.’
‘But if he does? Get convicted, I mean.’
‘I suppose then he’ll have rather a more difficult time paying us back.’ Leland seemed to savor the thought. ‘But that isn’t really the issue. When we paid for his law school – a mistake, as it turns out-’
‘Maybe it won’t turn out to be eventually.’
But there was no sign he heard her. ‘Law school, if you recall, supposedly wasn’t the money either.’ He held a palm up to forestall any interruption. ‘I’m only saying that if it had been a loan instead of a gift with no strings, if he’d felt the monthly burden of paying off a debt, he might have thought twice about quitting his job.’
‘No, he wouldn’t have. He thought he’d be stepping up, playing in the major leagues, making multiples of his clerk’s salary at the court. That was the whole problem. He probably wouldn’t take a loan anyway, knowing he couldn’t guarantee paying it back.’
‘So what’s this attorney of his working for?’
Helen shifted again, sitting up. Slipping the net from her hair, she shook it out and it fell gleaming – dyed, but gleaming – to her shoulders. Her breasts were buoyant at the water’s surface. ‘I don’t know. Advertising, maybe. I imagine there’ll be a lot of publicity.’
‘Of course. There always is.’ From Leland’s expression the bad smell was back. ‘Well, there’ll be time to decide. This assisted-suicide angle looks promising. Perhaps a jury will clear him on that score.’
‘But that would still ruin him,’ his mother said. ‘He couldn’t ever work in the law again, and I do think that eventually he intended to do just that.’
‘Don’t entertain these false hopes, Helen. He’s out of the law – that’s already come to pass.’ He uncrossed his legs and came forward in the chair, a great deal more urgency in his body language. He cleared his throat, his voice taking on a deeper pitch. ‘Now, I must tell you, I am worried about George.’
‘Yes,’ she said simply. Her younger son’s reaction to Graham had been wildly disproportionate as well as out of character. If George had any trademark, it was generally his lack of emotion, not his susceptibility to it. ‘That really wasn’t like him.’
‘I wondered if he’d talked to you.’
Her pretty face held a thoughtful frown. ‘About what?’
‘That Friday. Anything that might have happened that Friday.’
She shook her head. ‘No. Not to me.’
‘Because, you know, he wasn’t at the bank.’
Her eyes narrowed; apparently this was news to her. She slid back down, slightly, into the comforting water. ‘When wasn’t he at the bank?’
Leland stroked his upper lip. ‘I don’t have it precisely fixed, but it seems between about eleven and two.’
‘Did you ask him?’
‘I did. But you know George. He said he must have been at a client’s, he couldn’t remember exactly. If it was important, he’d double-check. But he hasn’t gotten back to me. I wondered if he’d mentioned anything to you.’
‘No. Nothing, Leland. Honestly, nothing.’ She let out a sigh, watching as her husband resumed his old posture, his back rigid against the wing chair, one leg crossed over the other. ‘You don’t think he went to see his father?’
‘I’m afraid I think it’s quite possible. I don’t like to think it, but it’s almost as though I see it happening.’
Helen shook her head. ‘We shouldn’t have had him come over when Sal was here. That last time.’
But Leland brushed that off. ‘Well, what we should or shouldn’t have done is beside the point now. He did come. And in this one area, protecting you from Sal-’
‘I know. I think it was just he never got over the hurt. He continued to believe that anyone who could inflict such pain couldn’t be harmless.’
‘Maybe, at base, Sal wasn’t harmless after all.’
‘No.’ She was certain. ‘He was.’ She reached a hand out over the marble, and her husband took it. ‘He wasn’t like you, Leland. He really was a simple person. He wouldn’t ever have hurt me. He was sick and confused, that’s all.’