The street outside my building was dark and wet. I helped him up the stairs to my apartment and sat him on the couch. I turned the lights out except for the lamp by his head, which bathed his trembling body in a narrow cone of light. I gave him a beer. He tried again to tell me what had happened but I shushed him quiet.
I let him sit alone on the couch while I changed the sheets of my bed, the pillowcases, laid out a fresh towel for him, a new toothbrush still in its wrapping, an old pair of flannel pajamas in case he wanted to be cozy. Atop my bureau I placed the gym bag with his change of clothes.
On the table, by my bed, lay a book I had just started rereading, a potboiler to take my mind off the trials of my day. I had bought it for a buck from a street vendor. The story started with a murder, it ended with a confession, there was a cunning investigator, a lecherous old cardsharp, a prostitute with a heart of gold. I stared at the volume, the blue binding and lurid gold letters of the title. Crime and Punishment. The words seemed just then like a moral compulsion. I considered for a moment putting it away so as not to trouble my guest and then thought better of it, placing a bookmark in the final page before the epilogue and setting the book beside the reading lamp next to the bed. Before I left the room I switched on the lamp.
With the bedroom taken care of, I stood in the shadows and watched Guy as he finished his beer. I went to the fridge and got him another. I pulled a chair close to the couch, but not close enough to be within the cone of light, and sat down. Once more he tried to speak, and once more I wouldn’t let him. The silence acted as a comforter, blanketing us both in calm. My raincoat, still wet, pocket bulging, was draped over the back of a chair. I glanced at it every so often and then looked back at my friend, my friend, as he slumped on the couch.
I cared for him as best I could and I waited until he couldn’t help himself and when he started again to say something, this time I let him.
“What am I going to do?”
I didn’t answer. He had a sharp voice, the words seemed to gallop out of his mouth with a certainty that turned every question rhetorical. Guy had never been one for self-doubt and it was hard for him to play the role of the confused and humbled man, even if that was exactly what he had become.
“I loved her so much,” he said. “She was everything to me. What am I going to do?” The words, which could have been full of pathos coming out of another man, were now like the words of a business executive analyzing a deal that had gone south and asking his lawyer for advice.
“I don’t know.”
“Why? Tell me why? Why? I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, Guy?” I said, leaning forward. “She’s dead. She’s been murdered. And you’re the one who killed her.”
He looked up at me, a puzzled horror creasing his face. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. You’re wrong. What are you thinking? Victor, no. I didn’t.”
“That’s how it looks.”
“I don’t care how it looks. I didn’t do it. You need to make them believe it. She’s gone, my life is ruined, and I didn’t do it. How can I make it right?”
“See a priest.”
“I need a lawyer. You’ll be my lawyer. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Make terrible things right again.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his face straining for an expression of pained sincerity, which might have worked except for the raw fear leaking out his eyes.
I leaned back. “Not me. You need someone else. I’ll recommend somebody good. Goldberg, maybe, or Howard. He’s at Talbott, Kittredge, so he’s expensive, but whoever you get, it’s going to cost. A case like this will absolutely go to trial, and a trial is going to cost.”
“I don’t care. What’s money? Money’s not a problem.”
“No?” I said, surprised and interested at the same time. Guy had left his wife and left his job and in so doing seemed to have left all his money behind.
“No. Not at all.” He shook his head and a shiver ran through him. “What happened? I don’t understand. Who did this to me?”
“To you?”
“Who did this?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“I got home from work late. Hailey was in bed already, asleep. I greeted her, tried to kiss her. She wouldn’t get up. Instead she murmured something back and pulled the comforter over her, and that was it, the last we spoke. I filled the Jacuzzi, climbed in, put on the headphones, jacked the Walkman loud, turned the timer to start the jets, lay back in the tub.”
“What about the reefer?”
“It was already out, so I rolled myself a joint. We used to smoke some, together. Everything was like we were kids again. I might have fallen asleep in the tub, I don’t know. The music was loud, the Jacuzzi also, and I don’t know if I heard anything, but I did startle awake for some reason. Maybe just something in the music. I took off the headphones, turned off the whirlpool, called out for Hailey. Nothing. I put in some more hot water, lay back, listened to the rest of the disc. When it was over, I got out, dried off, brushed my teeth. That’s when I found her.”
I tried not to react too strongly, tried to keep it simple, conversational. “What were you listening to?”
“A Louis Armstrong thing.”
“What happened when you saw her?”
“I panicked, I went crazy. I looked around, and there, on the floor, I found the gun.”
“Had you ever seen the gun before?”
“Yes. Of course. It’s mine.”
“Yours? Guy, what the hell were you doing with a gun?”
“You think it was easy what I did, leaving everything for Hailey? You think it just went smoothly? My wife went nuts, and her father. Her father, Jesus, he’s a scary bastard, a heart of stone. There were threats, Victor, some shady private eye giving me the number. You’ll never know what I went through for love, never. I was scared. I had a gun before, when I was out west, and knew how to use it. So I bought one, kept in the closet downstairs. Never touched it, never even took it to a shooting range to bone up. But when I found her dead, there it was, on the floor. I picked it up. It stank of gunpowder. I thought the guy who used it might still be in the house. I went downstairs looking for him. Nothing. I threw open the door. Nothing. I ran back upstairs and saw her there, still, and I fell apart. When I was able to crawl, I crawled to the side table, picked up the phone, and called you.”
“Why me?”
“I don’t know. It was the first thing I thought about. Hailey had mentioned something.”
“Hailey?” I fought to keep the startle out of my voice.
“A couple days ago she had asked me a strange question. Who I would call if I was in serious trouble. I said I didn’t know, hadn’t really thought about it. She asked about you and I told her, yeah, Victor would be a good one to call. Aren’t all your clients in trouble when they call?”
“That’s right.”
“So I had it in my mind to get you.”
“Why not the police? Why not an ambulance?”
“She was dead, an ambulance wasn’t going to help. Victor, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was in trouble and I called you. You were the only one I could count on, the only who would understand.”
I stared at him.
“You’re all I have left.”
If I was all Guy had left, he was totally bereft.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear any more. Why don’t we go to bed, get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll get you an attorney, and together you’ll figure out what to tell the police. I set you up with a towel and new sheets.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No, you need your sleep. I’ll stay out here.”
“Victor, how much trouble am I really in?”
“More than you could imagine.”
“It’s hard to believe it could be worse than I imagine.” Pause. “Hailey’s gone. And I didn’t do any
thing. It’s not fair.”
“Fairness has nothing to do with it. They found her murdered on your shared bed. From what I could tell, there were no signs of forced entry. They’ll check fingerprints, but my guess is they’ll discover yours and Hailey’s, that’s it. By now they’ve found the money in the bureau, so they’ll rule out robbery. And then they’ll dig into your lives and find a motive. Had you been fighting?”
“No. God, no, we were in love.”
“No trouble in the relationship?”
He looked away as he said no.
“They’ll find a motive, Guy. There’s always a motive between a man and a woman: jealousy, passion, heat-of-the-moment anger. It doesn’t take much to convince a jury that one lover killed another. How were you and Hailey really?”
“Fine. Great.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“We were great.”
“Was there anyone else?”
“No. I had given up everything for her. We had been planning our future together just the other night. We were going to Costa Rica for two weeks. Why would I screw around with anyone else? Everything was rosy.”
I stared at him. He stared back.
“Rosy,” I said.
“That’s right. And then this nightmare. That’s what it is, a nightmare. And it’s only just beginning, isn’t it? Jesus.”
“Let’s get some sleep.”
“What am I going to say to them tomorrow?”
“You’re either going to tell the truth or you’re going to say nothing. Those are the options.”
“Which one am I going to follow?”
“It’s not up to me,” I said. “We’ll get you a lawyer tomorrow, and the two of you will figure it out.”
I helped him up off the couch, took him into the bedroom.
“Thanks, Victor,” he said as I stood in the doorway. “Thanks for everything.”
I nodded and closed the bedroom door behind me. Then I sat in the living room, outside the cone of light, and waited. The toilet flushed, the faucet turned on and off, the toothbrush scrubbed, the faucet turned on and off once again. I wondered if he would glance at the page in the novel I had left marked for him, but the light under the crack disappeared too quickly for that. I waited a while longer and then, when I heard no sound for a quarter of an hour, I stood and went to my raincoat, still hanging over the chair.
I took out the portable phone, the expired license, and the key and placed them in a kitchen drawer. I took out the marihuana and ran it, wad by wad, through the garbage disposal until there was nothing left of it. Then, with my handkerchief, I lifted the gun out of the raincoat pocket.
I lifted the gun out of the raincoat pocket.
The gun.
I took it to the kitchen, wiped the trigger guard where my fingers had touched it when I picked it off the step, and dropped it into a plastic sandwich bag.
It was a revolver, thick and silvery, a King Cobra .357 Magnum, so said the markings on the barrel. It felt heavy, solid. It felt just then like a serious instrument of justice. Even in its plastic sheath it was a comfort in my hand.
I brought the bagged gun with me back to the couch. I turned off the light, lay down with my head on the armrest, placed the gun on my lap. I had never much liked guns before, never even wanted to fire one, but, I had to admit, it gave one options. I lay down on my couch with the gun and tried to figure what to do about my old friend Guy Forrest. What to do about Guy. Because, you see, I had listened very carefully to everything he had to say about Hailey Prouix and her murder, listened to his whole sad story, and, at the end, I knew, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt at all, that dear old Guy was lying.
4
GUY FORREST and I attended law school together. Two kids from poor, dysfunctional families looking to reinvent themselves, we took to each other right away. I used to crack wise to him about everyone else in the class, laughing at all their elevated aspirations even when my aspirations were just as inflated, only more so, and he would smile tolerantly. I was in law school because I saw it as a way to make some real money in the future, something that had always been denied my father. Guy saw it as a lifeline out of a misspent youth. Through college and beyond he had lived wild; drugs, women, a scam out west that had gone bad, the details of which he never quite laid out for me but which had left him with a tattooed skull on his left breast and a crushing desire to go straighter than straight. To that end he strangled his wild inclinations with a grim seriousness that he thought appropriate for his new profession and never let go of his grip.
Guy worked harder than I did, he had a true grinder’s mentality—we all made outlines; he outlined his outlines—but I was the sharper student. In our first year, when they try to teach you a new way to think, I adapted pretty quickly, but Guy had troubles. He found it impossible to pull out the crucial differences in fact patterns that distinguished one case from another. Something in the way his brain worked made it difficult for him to prioritize. I think one reason Guy hung with me was that I could see order in what to him was a blizzard of meaninglessness. I hung with Guy because, in the bars where the law students scarfed wings and sucked beers, he was a chick magnet and I hoped to the catch the runoff.
Guy actually ended with better grades than mine, hard work does pay, but neither of us did well enough to guarantee our careers. At Harvard, middling grades will get you a freshly minted job at some hotshot Wall Street firm. Where we went to law school, middling grades leave you scrambling to find any kind of work. I applied to the best firms in the city, was rejected by each and every one, and was forced to hang my own shingle. I asked Guy if he wanted in on my fledgling enterprise but he turned me down, so I partnered instead with a sharp night-school graduate in a similar predicament, Beth Derringer. Guy was determined to find a respectable job, and he did, at a nasty little sweatshop called Dawson, Cricket and Peale.
Dawson, Cricket was one of the defense factories that burned out scores of young lawyers as it churned each year through thousands of cases representing insurance companies against a myriad of both worthy and unworthy claims. At Dawson, Cricket you were on the side of the doctor against the patient butchered by incompetence, on the side of the insurance company against the sick and the injured, on the side of money. It was not a place for lawyers with much social consciousness or joie de vivre. Up and out was their motto, and most of the young associates were sent packing after their youthful enthusiasm was torched by the brutal workloads and less-than-thrilling pay, but not Guy. The usual tenure for young lawyers at Dawson, Cricket and Peale was eighteen months; Guy stayed for eight years and was teetering on the verge of partnership. It helped that his billable hours were far and away the most at the firm. It also helped that he met, wooed, impregnated, and married Leila Peale, daughter of one of the firm’s founding partners. Guy had seen what he wanted, reached out to grab hold, and there it was, seemingly within his grasp.
Then he left it all, the job, the family, the wife, the life, left it all to shack up with Hailey Prouix.
Ain’t love grand?
Oh, it was love. Probably not at first sight, at first sight it was probably lust, Hailey had that effect, that mouth, the way it twitched into a smile, God, but lust surely turned into love for Guy Forrest. Lust will make a fool of any man, but it is only love that can truly ruin him.
What are we looking at when we are looking at love? Eskimos have like six billion different words for snow because they understand snow. Don’t ever try to snow an Eskimo. But for six billion different permutations of emotional attachment we have just one word. Why? Because we don’t have a clue.
Guy said he loved Hailey Prouix, and he did, I had no doubt, but where on the emotional matrix his particular brand of love fell, I couldn’t for certain have told you. Was it selfless and devotional? Not likely. Was it platonic? Viagra, lambskin condoms, the way Hailey could turn even the most innocuous remark into something blatantly erotic, please. Was it a romantic dream, a mutual commingl
ing of souls to last through all eternity? I guessed not. Was it a false projection of all his hopes and aspirations on a person ill equipped, no matter how lovely, to make those hopes and aspirations come true? There lay my bet. Whenever we look in our lover’s eyes, we see a reflection of the person we hope to become and that, I believed, was what Guy fell in love with. It wasn’t pure narcissism, the reflection in her eyes was different from the reflection in his morning mirror. The mirror showed a man trapped by the dreary burdens of a certain kind of success, Hailey showed to him all the freedom for which his soul pined. To Guy Forrest, Hailey was more than a woman, more than a lover—she was a way out.
He despised his work at Dawson, Cricket and Peale. Only his perverse desire to make partner there outweighed his hatred for the place. He was tired of his wife. She was a warm, funny woman who talked too much of too many things about which he didn’t care. They seemed to be a good match on the surface, his seriousness countered by her light touch, but he had never shared her interests in literature and culture and had lost whatever sexual desire he might have felt for her from the start. Night after night, lying awake by her side as she clutched him close, he felt the trap growing ever tighter. His house was too large and took too much work to maintain, his children were draining and unresponsive.
Most of us have those moments when nothing seems right and we are in desperate need of a savior. Some suck it up and soldier on, some take up painting, some take up golf, some actually make drastic changes in their lives, more consult a chiropractor. But the truly lost among us often see their savior in someone else, someone like Hailey Prouix. When Guy gazed into Hailey’s lovely blues, he saw not a woman with her own desperate needs and complex motivations, a woman with impenetrable barriers forged in a past that haunted her right through to her death, but instead the reflection of a man suddenly free of the shackles he himself had forged about his limbs, someone who could smoke reefer in the bathtub, listen to Louis Armstrong sing “Mack the Knife,” make sweaty love on a mattress on the floor. Someone who lived like he had a tattoo of a skull on his breast.
Fatal Flaw Page 3