“I see,’” Kelly said.
“What’s the matter?” Steve said. “You don’t look happy.”
Kelly Blaine blinked. “I don’t know. It’s just … I guess I’m just a little stunned.”
She took one more look at the check, then folded it, jammed it into her purse and pulled the drawstring shut.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. It was terrific work. Unbelievable. I don’t know how you did it. But if you’ll excuse me, I gotta get home, relax, get this out of my mind.”
She smiled at Steve, nodded to Tracy, then turned hurriedly and let herself out the door.
Steve Winslow and Tracy Garvin watched her go, then turned and looked at each other in puzzlement.
Considering she had gotten everything she came here for and more, Kelly Blaine did not look one bit happy.
5
Mark Taylor couldn’t stop laughing. “I love it. What a concept. ‘Miss Coosbaine, take a letter.’ I mean, Jesus Christ.”
“It’s not funny, Mark.”
Mark Taylor shifted his bulk in Steve Winslow’s clients’ chair and took a sip from the paper cup of coffee he was holding. “Sure, sure. It’s not funny at all. Perfectly routine. I get a naked client once or twice a week. Tell me, what did she look like?”
“She looked good.”
“I’ll bet. Taylor chuckled. “I wonder if that would work in my office. Except that girl I got on the switchboard”-Taylor shook his head-“I’d pay to keep her clothes on.” Taylor grinned. “I don’t suppose you thought of tryin’ it.”
“You’d better watch out, Mark. You let Tracy hear you talk like that, you’ll be in deep trouble.”
Taylor shrugged. “I’m always in trouble with Tracy one way or another. First place, she won’t date me. Second place, she fancies herself a private detective-she’s always trying to one-up me. I don’t see her as a private detective somehow. I see her more as a typist.”
“Jesus, Mark.”
“Okay, okay,” Taylor said. “But you gotta admit it’s funny. Anyway, if you got a settlement, I got a bill.”
“What do you mean, if I got a settlement? I ever ask you to work on a contingency basis?”
“No, but we’re friends, and I’m not gonna stick you. This Castleton phone number thing-getting his unlisted number- well, that’s a service and I can charge you for it. But as it happens, I’ve had occasion to look it up before and we had it in the rolodex. If you got a settlement and can afford to pay me for passing on the information, fine. If you didn’t, I’d feel bad charging you for telling you something I already knew.”
“The point is moot, since I made the settlement. What do you usually charge for an unlisted number trace?”
“Two hundred bucks.”
“Fine. I’ll have Tracy make you out a check.”
Taylor’s eyes gleamed. “She gonna type it?”
“Fuck you, Mark.”
“Hey, lighten up. You gotta admit the whole thing’s funny.”
“It is and it isn’t. You never met my client. This is a nice young woman. Someone this shouldn’t have happened to. It’s funny in the abstract, but when you start thinking of her as a person, it’s not funny at all.”
“Right. And it’s not funny when someone dies, but somehow, eventually it always is.”
“I know. On the other hand, you never met Castleton. Or did you?”
Taylor shook his head. “No. The case I got his number for, some attorney just wanted it for a negligence claim. I never even knew what the case was.”
“But you know who Castleton is? I mean, you knew before I told you?”
“Yeah. Big-shot businessman, old and retired.”
“Right. And he happens to like to look at naked women.”
“I can’t blame him.”
“Yeah, well I can. See, Mark, that’s the whole bit. You can say he’s a rich eccentric, he likes to look at naked women, who doesn’t, what’s the big deal?”
“But there’s more to it than that. If this guy just wanted to look at strippers, nude models, girls who do that kind of thing, yeah, what’s the big deal? But he doesn’t. That’s not his bag. He doesn’t want some girl who makes a living showing off her body. He wants some nice, decent, respectable secretary who wouldn’t do that sort of thing in a million years. He wants to take her and offer her enough money to get her to do it. It’s not just sex that gets the guy off. It’s power, domination, humiliation. He wants to take a respectable girl and make her do what he wants. It’s like the old joke about the guy in the casino goes up to the girl and says, ‘I just hit it big at roulette and I wanna celebrate, would you come up to my room with me for a thousand bucks?’ She says, ‘Sure.’ He says, ‘Would you do it for five?’ She says, ‘What kind of a girl do you think I am?’ He says, ‘We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over price.’”
“Yeah, I heard it.”
“Fine, well, that’s Castleton. Money buys everything, money is power. He may be an old man, he may be sexually impotent, but he still has power. That’s why he’s a slime and a scum, and that’s why I stuck him for every cent I could.”
“Then I don’t feel bad sticking him for two hundred bucks,” Taylor said. He heaved himself out of the chair. “Well, I gotta get back to work. I’ll send you a bill, you can send me a check.”
“I can have Tracy make it out now,” Steve said.
Taylor shook his head. “Cash flow’s not that tight. I’ll just send it along.”
“Okay. Ask Tracy to step in on your way out, willya?”
“Sure,” Taylor said. He jerked open the door to the outer office. “Hey, Tracy. Steve wants you.”
Mark Taylor stood there as Tracy Garvin came in. As she went by he said mischievously, “I think he wants you to do some typing.”
As Tracy turned to give him a look, Taylor grinned and ducked out the door.
Tracy turned back to Steve. She took off her glasses, folded them up. “You told him, didn’t you?” she said accusingly.
“I had to tell him about the case. He worked on it.”
“That’s not the point. You told him about her working naked. You two have been sitting in here having a good laugh at your client’s expense.”
Steve sighed. He wasn’t about to point out that Mark Taylor had been the one doing all the laughing. “Tracy,” Steve said, “I don’t want to go off on a big feminist thing here. The fact is, the girl was working nude.”
“Woman.”
“What?”
“She’s not a girl. She’s twenty-something years old. She’s a woman.”
“And if she was working with her clothes on, it wouldn’t occur to you to get upset if I called her a girl. Because she was naked, the whole thing’s about sex and you’re ready to spring to her defense at the slightest provocation.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“What subject?”
“The fact is, she’s a client, and you and Mark Taylor were making fun at her expense.”
“What do you mean, at her expense? Mark Taylor never met her. He doesn’t even know who she is.”
“You know her.”
“Yeah. So?”
“You didn’t have to tell Mark Taylor. You tell him about the case, fine, but did you have to tell him she was naked?”
“Tracy,” Steve said. “Mark Taylor’s more than a business associate. He’s my best friend. We were roommates at college, for Christ’s sake.”
“Exactly,” Tracy said. “And that’s how you treated it. Two college kids talking dirty about the coeds.”
Steve threw up his hands. “Fine. Guilty as charged. Tracy, look. Yes, I told him she was typing naked. Maybe that was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m a human being. It’s not every day a lawyer gets a naked client. You expect me not to talk about it? To my best friend?
“And, as far as this Castleton business goes, it’s the whole story. Aside from her being naked, this was probably the dullest, most boring, most straightforward, conservative case I’ve ever handled. A simple civil suit, to be settled out of court. A boring business negotiation. You know and I know if she hadn’t been naked, I wouldn’t have handled it.”