Winner Take All

by T. Davis Bunn

  “Why is that?”

  “Because Dale Steadman is a shyster and a flimflam artist. You can’t believe a word the man says.”

  This time Marcus felt forced to say, “Objection.”

  “Withdrawn.” Hamper Caisse did not bother hiding his satisfaction. “What can you say about his home life?”

  “Lady found out he was a crook and a cheat. She left him. Word is, he beat her something awful.”

  “Objection.”

  Hamper did not wait for the judge to sustain. “There has also been mention made of his drinking.”

  “All the time.”

  “Were there drugs?”

  “Lot of it going around.” Dermont used both hands to adjust his belt, girding himself for the main assault. “Not long after he started his little textile company, Steadman got himself into a serious financial tangle. He’d maxed out at the bank. Went hat in hand around the local community, begging for a handout. Nobody wanted to help him, of course. Why get involved in a company that’s going under? Just be throwing good money after bad. So we were all watching and waiting for the ax to fall, when suddenly the guy is flush again. There was some rumor of an old buddy from England bailing him out, but Dale never bothered to explain it to a soul. Which makes you wonder if it wasn’t another source, if you see what I mean. Man had to have gotten his money from someplace.”

  Hamper’s return to his table was a triumphal march. “Your witness.”

  Marcus lingered over the cage he was drawing upon his legal pad. To not respond was to declare himself uninvolved. Which was tempting. But that would leave Dale Steadman unsupported and defenseless. Which was something Marcus would not do to a panhandler. Much less a father, no matter how poor a father he might be.

  Judge Sears broke into his reverie with the warning “Mr. Glenwood, I see no reason at this point not to proceed with a custody ruling.”

  Marcus rose to his feet, certain now he was hooked, hauled in, gutted, and descaled. “Your honor, as I stated in the beginning, I merely intended to apply for an ex partae order.”

  “Do you have any questions for this witness?”

  “How am I supposed to, your honor, when this character assassination has hit me utterly out of the blue?”

  She turned to the witness. “You may step down, sir.”

  Hamper waited until the Wilmington official had stepped through the barrier and seated himself in the front row to declare, “Your honor, Marcus Glenwood is not the star of this show, much as he would like us all to believe otherwise. This is about protecting a child.”

  “The child your client abducted,” Marcus pointed out.

  “She had no choice,” Hamper shot back. “None.”

  “The same child,” Marcus continued, “Ms. Brandt previously abandoned.”

  “She did not abandon the child, your honor. That is a misconception fostered by her ex-husband. The custody agreement proves this. The person who deviated from the plan was the husband.”

  “My client denies this, your honor.”

  “Let me get this straight. This is the same client who denies ever abusing her?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Or the baby?”

  “Your honor, I object to these baseless accusations.”

  “Oh. Wait now.” Hamper paused long enough to cast Marcus a malicious glint. “This objection is being made by a man who couldn’t even protect his own children in their hour of direst need?”

  The judge revealed a serrated edge to her Southern cadence. “You will apologize to counsel, or you will be censured by this court.”

  “Of course I apologize, your honor.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Marcus, excuse me. I simply got carried away by the concerns of this moment.”

  “Mr. Glenwood, do you have a motion that you wish to place before this court?”

  Marcus recognized the offer of an out. “Only that this matter be carried forward until next week so that I might have time to prepare.”

  “So ruled. I am away Monday. I expect you both to be here first thing Tuesday with answers to questions I haven’t dreamed up yet.” Judge Sears applied her gavel. “Next case.”

  Marcus’ intention to waylay Hamper Caisse outside the courtroom was stymied twice over. The attorney was instantly snagged by a frantic client. Then Marcus found himself confronting a very excited Omar Dell. Which was not altogether a bad thing, he decided. There were certain risks to assaulting another member of the bar in the district courthouse lobby.

  The court reporter said, “That man just tried a smash and grab.”

  “I still can’t see why you’re so interested in a custody dispute.”

  “I told you before, Mr. Glenwood. You’re nothing but fireworks and fame in the making.” The man’s eyes held a joy too fresh for this courtroom. “Give me something. There’s bound to be some lead you can pass on that won’t breach your client’s confidentiality.”

  Marcus nodded a grim commitment to the case. “In time.”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  6

  IN ATHENS, THE YOUNG WOMAN starts to make a formal complaint to the police. But she walks away when the looks they give her and the questions they keep repeating filter through the lingering fog of drug and pain. She leaves Athens the day her passport and traveler’s checks are replaced, both of which the Dutch backpackers have stolen.

  She spends almost two months running from herself. Then she wakes up in a Barcelona hotel with a vicious sangria hangover, and she can’t even say what country she is in, or how long she has been there, or why she continues to leak tears even in her sleep.

  When she arrives in Switzerland, late September rains have transformed the highland roads into rivulets of fading autumn colors. She finds a waitressing job in Zermatt’s top hotel. That lasts until the maître d’ makes it plain there is only one way she will be allowed to stay.

  She moves to a bar at the base of the Valais glacier, the local hangout for ski instructors and Matterhorn guides. She meets the Swiss version of a cowboy, a rancher from the Ticino province, with smooth Italian ways and eyes like electric night. She lets him get her drunk and do whatever he wants. But he does it only once, and he leaves immediately after. There are a couple of others who try, and she no longer sees any reason to put up a fuss. But something they find in her leaves them unable to stay the night, or return, or even speak to her the same way afterward. What it is exactly, she can’t say. From her side, the moment they begin their moves, the Dutch backpackers’ drug seeps out of some secret recess deep at the center of her being, and turns her utterly numb. The only sensation she can recall afterward is watching the smoke rise and stain the eternal night.

  By the start of the high season, she has been adopted as an unofficial mascot by the local ski troop. They all compete to teach her, all save the ones who have been with her for a night or an hour. They name her Schwisterli, little sister in Swiss German, and they find her absolutely fearless. They take her down the most difficult black slopes long before she is ready. She learns by falling and rising and falling again. They share with her the thrills of following the international slalom circuit, of racing supercharged bikes on snowbound Alpine roads, and of drinking thimblefuls of espresso spiked with Pomme, the fiery Valais apple brandy. And they protect her from any outsider who might otherwise try their wiles on the lovely white-blond apparition with no past and few words and a gaze like shattered sapphires.

  Toward the end of the season she sends a letter off to Georgetown University, requesting that they postpone her place and scholarship for a further year. She makes a halfhearted attempt to describe her European experiences in a positive light, then halts when the effort to look back makes her sick to her stomach. Georgetown responds so swiftly it almost seems as though they have been expecting her letter, saying the place is still hers, but not the money.

  The next step is the easiest of all.

  When the month of spring mud announces the
end of the winter season, she packs her bags and accepts a ride to London. Some of the instructors are headed for the international nightclubbing circuit. Once the high snows melt and the skies clear, they will return as mountaineering guides. Until then, they are tall, muscled, young, and rippling with good Swiss cheer.

  Their first night in a new club off Piccadilly, they introduce her to the international elite. The talk follows a tragically familiar path along beaches with clubs—Majorca, Sardinia, Rhodes, Lanzarote. This time, she enters the scene with eyes wide open.

  The next night she returns on her own. And the night after. She accepts an ecstasy tab from someone, then follows him up to the dance floor. A while later he realizes she is neither dancing with him nor hearing his shouted comments. She does not even notice his departure. In fact, she is not dancing to the music at all. She is too busy writhing to the thoughts that glide about her brain like eager snakes.

  Maybe she is inherently bad. This fact would certainly make sense of what otherwise is just a set of random events that direct her life. Maybe there is a dark and tainted portion of herself that rules supreme. All she can say for certain is, looking inside means confronting a colossal bleakness. Depression and a vague self-fury hover just beyond her vision, always eager to clutch and smother. She opens her eyes, surveys the flashing lights and the thunderous din, and reflects that maybe this is where she has always belonged.

  By the time she returns to the group, she has decided it is time to stop fighting the inevitable, and give herself over to the game.

  She spends four months doing whatever comes her way. Her looks and availability draw the attention of the flash crowd. The fact that nothing seems to impress her only makes them want to shower her with more. An older man gives her champagne and coke and diamonds and a ride to Capri in his private jet. He lasts eleven days. The diamonds are sold and the funds placed in her account. Why she saves the money at all, she has no idea. Georgetown becomes just another myth somewhere beyond the game.

  Another player draws her into a modeling agency. Her blond beauty and utterly detached air perfectly suit the current mode. She spends the next three months allowing herself to be flown and painted and dressed and positioned and photographed. The girls and boys in this arm of the game are the same, only more elegantly so. They speak the empty chatter. They make swift little liaisons they pretend are important, at least for the moment. She becomes part of a crowd that hails one another in airports and clubs and studios with excited greetings and a desperate need to find the familiar wherever they go.

  In early December she returns to Zermatt. Things are the same, yet different. Calls from modeling agencies keep coming in, taken at the café because she does not bother to connect her apartment’s phone. The Alpine guides pretend that she is still one of them, yet they are all preparing for a departure she refuses to accept.

  Finally she leaves for a modeling gig in Geneva, just one day. But that leads to a studio in Zurich, then the runways in Milan and Paris and Brussels. And before she knows it, April is dawning, and a million miles away the highland snows are gone.

  Over the next five months Kirsten Stansted travels twice around the globe.

  One night in early September, the agency puts nine of them into a suite. Kirsten can’t care enough to recall either the clothing line or the magazine, even the city. They go to some club. A handsome young man and a beautiful young woman resume a romance they have started somewhere else. Only in the limo taking them home, the woman discovers that the young man has been with another. And the young man discovers the woman is taking this far worse than expected.

  The next morning Kirsten is awakened by a chorus of screams and the sight of the young woman sprawled dead in her bathroom.

  After the police finally depart and the agency’s lawyer makes them sign forms nobody bothers to read and the hotel expels them and they are off to another day’s gig, one of the other women consoles the handsome young man by saying, “Don’t blame yourself. She forgot the first rule of this game, is all.”

  The next morning, Kirsten leaves for Washington.

  AFTER HER CONFRONTATION with Sephus Jones, Kirsten brought in her gym bag with the change of office clothes and showered in the upstairs guestroom. Marcus had said nothing when she had deposited her makeup in the big home’s unused bath. But his silent pleasure had been so vast she had grappled for days with a renewed urge to flee. How could she tell Marcus that he was someone else’s perfect catch? Especially when she remained so viciously at war with her own desires.

  She returned downstairs to be confronted by the crumpled envelope resting on the front hall table. She could still feel the man’s lightning jab into her pocket, the roughness of his fingers on her thigh. She debated calling Marcus at the Raleigh courthouse to tell him … What? That New Horizons remained an enemy? That she had finally decided it was best to return to Washington? She sighed her way into her desk at the rear of Netty’s office.

  Research on Dale Steadman took no time at all. The man had left a trail of headlines. The local Wilmington paper called Dale Steadman the epitome of a self-made man, the product of two university lecturers who were both mortified to discover they had sired a behemoth who loved to do battle. He had been an all-state fullback, then played one season of pro ball before injury permanently sidelined him. He had gone on to earn a real degree at Duke, in accounting of all things. He had then returned to Wilmington and established a textile company specializing in high-end sports fashion.

  Fay Wilbur chose that moment to come thumping through the office’s rear door. Deacon’s wife was a rail-thin woman who never stopped moving. Kirsten could feel the woman’s glare on her back, an acidic torch that just begged for battle. Fay banged the dust mop around the room, striking every available surface and glaring constantly at Kirsten.

  Netty was heads-down at her own computer, her desk at the office’s far end. When Fay finally harrumphed her disgust and departed, Netty said, “That woman is dead set on giving me hives this morning.”

  “It’s not you.”

  “You know what’s going on here?”

  Kirsten did not reply.

  “Well, the woman’s in a state, is all I can say.”

  Kirsten returned to the research. Three years later, New Horizons had bought Dale out. He started spending more time in New York. He sat on boards and did some consulting for U.S. textile companies seeking to avoid moving their operations overseas. He met Erin Brandt. They pursued an international romance, they married. The Steadmans built a home in Wilmington and subsequently divorced. One child, a daughter.

  The phone rang. Netty answered with “Marcus Glenwood’s office. Just a moment please.” She cupped the phone and called, “Fay, it’s for you.”

  The thunking halted. “Who’s that calling?”

  “Your daughter. Line three.”

  The mop was dropped with a clatter. The two women exchanged a glance as Fay picked up the conference room phone and snapped, “What is it now?” She was silent a long moment, then, “I can’t tell you any more than I did the last time. I get to it soon as the man walks in the door.”

  Fay slammed down the phone, picked up her mop, and started up the front stairs trailing smoky epitaphs.

  Netty rose from her desk with her mug in hand. “Never thought I’d need to run a gauntlet just to freshen my coffee.”

  As she was leaving the office the phone rang. Netty snagged the phone on Kirsten’s desk. “Marcus Glenwood’s office. I’m sorry, Mr. Glenwood is in court this morning.” She listened a moment. “Who may I say is calling?”

  Netty gave Kirsten a curious glance. “What is this in regard to, please?”

  Netty listened a moment further, then pressed the mute button and said, “Senator Jacobs’ office wants to talk with you about the Steadman case.”

  “Me?”

  “He even knew your name. Should I say you’re not available?”

  “This is growing worse by the minute.”

 
“What is?”

  Kirsten reached for her receiver. “Kirsten Stansted.”

  “Brent Daniels, Ms. Stansted. I run the senator’s local operations. We understand your office is about to become involved in an international custody dispute.”

  “That is for Mr. Glenwood to say.”

  “Then our sources have it wrong?”

  “How did you get my name?”

  “Ms. Stansted, I don’t know if you’re aware, but there are over six hundred cases where American courts have assigned custody to one parent, only to have the child abducted by the other and shielded from being returned by the German court system.”

  “Sir, I asked you a question.”

  “This is a direct violation of the Hague Convention on Children. It has become a matter of concern to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We have been looking for a landmark case to force the German government’s hand.” There was the rustle of pages. “The senator is hoping to be in Raleigh this weekend. Could you ask Mr. Glenwood to stop by the senator’s local office and let us discuss the matter?”

  “I will pass on your message.”

  “Something your office might not be aware of, Ms. Stansted. Erin Brandt will be leaving for London sometime late Sunday evening. She’s been contracted to perform at Covent Garden, which is the way the Royal Opera House is usually referred to. It’s her only scheduled visit outside Germany this summer. Just a little something to establish our bona fides, give your boss a reason to stop by. Shall we say Sunday afternoon around five?”

  As she hung up the phone, Fay banged her way down the stairs, quarreling with the railing and the front hall mirror before heading back into the kitchen. Netty said, “Deacon should get a place at heaven’s front table for putting up with that woman.”

  Kirsten rose, picked up her cup, and headed for the rear doors. Netty watched her with astonishment. “You can’t possibly be needing caffeine that bad.”

  Kirsten found Fay peering angrily into the refrigerator and muttering to herself. “Can I help you with something?”

  Fay reached in and snagged a plate with cautious disapproval. “What is this mess here?”