"I hate to have to tell you all this, Jessica. Ian was sick about it. But obviously you have to know what went on. It isn't very pretty, though, and I must say you're taking it remarkably well."
But the tears welled up again at that, and she wanted to beg him not to be nice to her, not to congratulate her on how well she was taking it. She could handle the rough stuff, but she knew that if anyone put his arms around her, sympathized, cared ... or if Ian should walk in the door just then ... she would sob until she died.
"Thank you, Philip." He thought her voice sounded oddly cold, as though she were warding him off. "At least it's obviously not rape, and that's bound to be made clear in court. If Martin Schwartz is any good."
"Yes, but ..." Jessie, it's going to be ugly. You have to be prepared for that. "His eyes sought hers and she nodded.
"I understand that" But she didn't. Not really. It hadn't even begun to sink in yet. How could it? Nothing had sunk in since eleven o'clock that morning. She was in shock. She only knew two things, and she didn't even understand those two things: that Ian was gone, that she couldn't see him, feel him, hear him, touch him; that he had slept with another woman. She had to face that now too. Publicly. The rest would sink in later.
There wasn't much more Philip could do, and he didn't know Jessica well enough to offer her any comfort. Only Ian knew Jessica that well. And Jessie made Philip nervous. She remained so calm. He was grateful that she was subdued, but it made him feel cold toward her, and confused. He found himself wondering what she was really thinking. He thought of his own wife and how she might react to something like this, or his sister, any of the women he knew. Jessie was a different breed of cat entirely. Too poised for his taste--and yet there was something shattering about her eyes. Like two broken windows. They were the only hint that all was not well within.
"Is there any chance he can call me? I thought you had a right to make one phone call from jail." He had before, when they had busted him for his tickets.
"Yes. But I gather that he didn't want to call you, Jessica."
"He didn't?" She seemed to recede still further into her own reserve.
"No. He said he wasn't sure how you'd feel. Said something about maybe this would be the last straw."
"Asshole." Philip looked away, and in a few moments took his leave. It had been an excessively unpleasant day. He found himself feeling grateful that he didn't practice criminal law. He couldn't stomach it. He didn't envy Martin Schwartz this case, however much money he made on it.
Jessie sat in the living room long after Philip had left. She was waiting for the sound of the phone ... or of Ian's key in the door. This couldn't be happening. Not really. He would come home. He always did. She tried to pretend that the house wasn't quiet. She sang little songs and talked to herself. He couldn't leave her alone ... no! ... she sometimes heard her mother's voice late in the night ... and Jake's ... and Daddy's ... but never Ian's ... never Ian ... never ... He would call, he had to. He couldn't leave her alone, scared like that, he wouldn't do that to her, he had promised he never would, and Ian never broke his promises ... but he had. He had broken a promise now. She remembered it as she sat on the floor in the hall, in the dark, late into the night. That way she would hear his key sooner when he came home. He would come home, but he had broken a promise. He had slept with another woman, and now he was making her face it. She coldn't ignore it anymore. She hated her ... hated her ... hated ... her, but not him. Oh God ... maybe Ian didn't love her anymore ... maybe he was in love with the other woman ... maybe ... why didn't he call, dammit? Why didn't he ... why had he ... the tears ran down her face like hot summer rain as she lay on the smooth wood floor in the hall and waited for Ian. She lay on the floor until morning. The phone never rang.
Chapter 5
The offices of Schwartz, Drewes, and Jonas were located in the Bank of America Building on California Street, an excellent address. Jessica rode to the forty-fourth floor looking prim, sleek, and tired. She wore a large pair of dark glasses and a somber navy blue suit. It was an outfit reserved for business meetings and funerals. This was a little bit of both. It was ten-twenty-five. She was five minutes early, but Martin Schwartz was waiting.
A secretary led her down a long carpeted corridor with a sweeping view of the bay. His offices took up one corner on the north side of the building. It was evidently a large, prosperous firm.
Martin Schwartz's office boasted two walls of glass, but the decor was Spartan and chill. He rose from behind his desk, a man of medium height with a full head of gray hair. He wore glasses, and he was frowning.
"Mrs. Clarke?" The secretary had announced her, but he would have known her anyway. She looked the way he had expected her to--wealthy, elegant. But she was younger than he had expected, and more composed than he had dared to hope.
"Yes. How do you do?" She held out a hand, and he took in her full height. She was a striking young woman. He mentally made a pair of her and the unshaven, tired, but still handsome young man he had seen in the city prison that morning. They must look quite something together. They would also look good in court. Maybe too good--too beautiful, too young. He didn't like the looks of this case.
"Won't you sit down?" She nodded, slid into a chair across from his desk, and declined his offer of coffee.
"You've seen Ian?"
"I have. And Sergeant Houghton. And the assistant district attorney assigned to the case. And I spoke to Philip Wald for over an hour last night. Now I want to talk to you, and then we'll see what kind of a case we really have here." He attempted a smile and shuffled some papers on his desk. "Mrs. Clarke, have you ever been into drugs?"
"No. And neither has Ian. Nothing more than a few joints once in a while. But I don't think we've smoked any grass in over a year. Neither of us ever liked it much. And we don't drink anything more exotic than wine."
"Let's not jump ahead of ourselves. I want to get back to drugs. Are any of your friends in that scene?"
"Not that I know of."
"Would anything of that nature be likely to turn up in an investigation of you or Mr. Clarke?"
"No, I'm sure that nothing would."
"Good." He looked only slightly relieved.
"What makes you ask?"
"Oh, some of the angles that I sense Houghton might be working on. He made some disagreeable remarks about your shop. Some girl in there who looks like a belly dancer, apparently, and an 'exotic' Oriental he mentioned. Also the fact that your husband is a writer, and you know the kind of fantasies people have about that. Houghton is a man with a vivid imagination, a typical lower-middle-class mind, and a strong dislike for anything that comes from your part of town."
"I suspected as much. He came to talk to me at the shop before he arrested Ian. And the 'bellydancer' he's having fantasies about is a young lady who has the misfortune to wear a size 38 bra with a D cup. She happenes to go to church twice a week." Jessica was not smiling. But Martin Schwartz was.
"She sounds delightful." He forced a smile out of her, with some effort.
"And if Sergeant Houghton thinks we look like we have too much money, he happens to be mistaken about that too. But what he does see can be explained by the fact that my parents and my brother died several years ago. I inherited what they had. My brother had no wife and children to leave anything to, and there were no other brothers or sisters."
"I see." And then after a brief pause he looked up at her again. "It must be lonely with no family." She nodded silently and kept her eyes on the view.
"I have Ian."
"Any children?" She shook her head, and he began to understand something. The reason she was not angry, why she so desperately wanted her husband home, without a single word of criticism about the charges. The reason for the almost frightening urgency he had sensed in her voice on the phone, and again now in his office. The "I have Ian" said it all. He suddenly knew that as far as Jessica Clarke was concerned, that was all she had.
"I take it there's no
chance they might drop the charges?"
"None. Politically, they can't. The victim in this case is making such a stink. She wants his ass, if you'll pardon the expression. And I think it's reasonable to expect that they'll be prying fairly heavily into your lives. Can you weather it?" She nodded, and he didn't tell her that Ian was afraid she couldn't stand the pressure. "Is there anything I should know? Any indiscretions on your part? Problems with the marriage? Sexual ... well, 'exoticisms,' shall we say, orgies you may have gone to, whatever?"
She shook her head again, looking annoyed.
"I'm sorry I have to ask but it'll all come out anyway. It's best to be candid now. And of course we'll want our own investigation of the girl. I have a very good man. Mrs. Clarke, we're going to do our damnedest for Ian."
He smiled at her again, and for a moment she felt as though she were living a dream. This man was not real, he wasn't asking her if she'd ever gone to orgies, or been into drugs ... Ian wasn't really in jail ... this man was a friend of her father's and it was all a big game. She felt him staring at her then, and she had to return to the pretense that this was reality. Worse yet, to the reality that Ian was in jail.
"Can we get Ian out of jail before the trial?"
"I hope so. But that will most likely depend on you. If the charges were a little less severe, we might have been able to get him released on his own recognizance--in other words, with no bail to pay. But on charges of this nature, I'm almost certain the judge will insist on bail being posted, despite the fact that Ian has no previous record. And his getting out will depend on whether or not you can put up the bail. They're talking about setting it at twenty-five thousand dollars. That's pretty steep, and it means you'd either have to put twenty-five thousand dollars in cash in the keeping of the court until the trial is over, or pay twenty-five hundred to a bail-bondsman and give him collateral to cover his bond. Either way, it's a stiff fee. But we'll see about getting it down to something more reasonable."
Jessica heaved a deep sigh and absentmindedly took off her dark glasses. What he saw then shocked him. Two deep purple trenches lay beneath her eyes, which were bloodshot and swollen and filled with terror. He was looking at a woman with the eyes of a child. The poise was all a front. He had been so sure she was the balls in the outfit, but maybe not, maybe not. Maybe she was only the bucks, and Ian was her lifeline. It made him feel better, somehow, about Ian. He was in better shape than she was, that was for sure.
Schwartz forced his mind back to the question of bail as Jessica's eyes continued to watch him. She seemed unaware of how much she had just shown him.
"Do you think you'll be able to meet the bail, Mrs. Clarke?" She looked tiredly into his eyes and shrugged slightly.
"I suppose I can put up my business." But she knew that she couldn't pay the bailbondsman's fee if she handed Schwartz the two-thousand-dollar check in her bag. And she had no choice. They needed a lawyer before they could even begin to worry about a bailbondsman. She'd have to get a loan on the car. Or on ... something. What the hell. It didn't matter now. Nothing did. She'd even put up the house if she had to. But what if ... she had to know. "What if we can't quite meet the bail right away?"
"There's no credit there, Mrs. Clarke. You pay the full bailbondsman's fee and put up satisfactory collateral or they simply don't let Ian out of jail."
"Until when?"
"After the trial."
"God. Then I don't have much choice, do I?"
"In what sense?"
"We'll just put up whatever we have to."
He nodded, sorry for her. It was rare that he felt anything stir in his heart for a client, and had she ranted and whined and cried, she would have annoyed him. Instead she had won his respect--and his pity. Neither of them deserved this kind of trouble. It made him wonder again what the real story was with the rape charges. He felt in his gut that it had not been a rape. But the question was, could that be proven?
He spent another ten minutes explaining the arraignment procedures: a simple appearance in court to put the charges on record, establish the bail, and set a date for Ian's next appearance in court, at a preliminary hearing. The victim would not be at the arraignment. Jessica was relieved.
"Is there a number, Mrs. Clarke, where I can reach you today if I need you?" She nodded and scribbled the number of the boutique. It was the first time she'd thought of going in.
"I'll be there after I see Ian. I'm going over to see him now. And Mr. Schwartz, please call me Jessica, or Jessie. It sounds like we're going to be seeing a lot of each other."
"Yes, we will. And I want you back in my office on Friday. Both of you, if you've managed to get Ian out on bail. The "if" sent a shiver down her spine. "No, actually, make it Monday. In case you do get him out, you two will deserve a little time off. And then we'll get down to work in earnest. We don't have much time."
"How much time?" It was like asking a doctor how long you had to live.
"We'll have a better idea of that after the arraignment. But the trial will probably come up in about two months."
"Before Christmas?" She reminded him again of an overgrown child as she asked.
"Before Christmas. Unless we get a continuance for some reason. But your husband told me this morning that he wants to get this over with as quickly as possible, so you could put it behind you and forget it."
Forget it? she thought. Who would ever forget it?
He stood up and held out a hand, removing his glasses for a moment. "Jessica, try to relax. Leave the worrying to me for a while."
"I'll do my best." She stood up too, shook his hand, and he was once again taken aback by her height. "Thank you, Martin, for everything. Any message for Ian?" She paused in the doorway.
"Tell him I said he's a lucky man." His eyes warmed her and she smiled at the compliment and slipped out the door.
Martin Schwartz sat down, swiveled his chair to face the view, chewed on his glasses, and shook his head. This was going to be a bitch of a case. He was sure Ian hadn't done it, but they both would be a real problem in court. Young, happy, beautiful, and rich. The jury would resent his screwing around on a woman like Jessie; the women in court would hate Jessie; the men in court would dislike Ian because they wouldn't believe that writing was work. And they looked as if they had too much money, no matter how sensible the explanation of Jessie's inheritance was. He just didn't like the looks of this case. And the victim was obviously a strange woman, maybe a sick one. His only hope was that they'd find out enough on her to destroy her. It was an ugly game to play, but it was Ian's only chance.
Chapter 6
Jessica stopped in the lobby to call the boutique. Zina's voice was concerned when she heard her.
"Jessie, are you all right?" They had finally tried her at home at ten-thirty that morning, but she had already gone out.
"I'm fine." But Zina didn't like the sound of her voice. "Everything okay at your end?"
"Sure, we're okay. Are you coming in?"
"After lunch. See ya later." She hung up before Zina could ask more questions and went to reclaim the Morgan from the garage. She was off to the Hall of Justice to see Ian.
She was two thousand dollars poorer, but now she felt better. She had left the check in a blue envelope with the secretary at the front desk. The first part of Martin Schwartz's fee. She had been as good as her word. Now there were a hundred and eighty-one dollars left in their joint savings account, but Ian had an attorney. What a price they were going to pay for one piece of ass!
She tried not to let herself think as she drove across town. She wasn't so much angry as confused. What had happened? Who was this woman? Why was she doing this to them? What did she have against Ian? After speaking to Martin, Jessie was more certain than ever that Ian had done nothing wrong--except pick the wrong woman for an afternoon of delight. Oh Jesus, had he picked the wrong woman!
She found a parking space on Bryant Street, across from a long strip of neon-lit bailbondsmen's offices. She found hersel
f wondering which one she'd be haggling with by the next afternoon. They all looked so sleazy; she wouldn't have wanted to enter any of those places to get in out of the cold, let alone to do business. She walked quickly into the Hall of Justice, where a metal detector checked her out while a guard rifled through her handbag. She had to stop for a pass for the jail, show her driver's license, and identify herself as Ian's wife. There was a crowd of people standing in line, but the line moved forward quickly.
It was a shaggy, disheveled-looking lot of humanity, and she was strikingly out of place. Her height set her apart from the rest of the women and most of the men, and the navy blue suit looked absurd. There were white women in imitation leather pants wearing fake leopard jackets, beehive hairstyles, and floppy white sandals. Black men in puce satin, and black girls in what looked like cheap satin nightgowns or pajamas. It was an interesting crowd, but for a movie, not for a life. She couldn't help wondering if the woman Ian had slept with looked like one of these. She hoped not--not that it mattered at this point. Her knees were already quaking, and she didn't know what she'd say to him. What could she say?
Her hand trembled as she pressed the elevator button for the sixth floor. There was an alternating sensation of sinking and rising in her stomach as she wondered what the jail would be like. She had seen it briefly the one time she had bailed him out, but there had never been time for a visit, thank God. She'd just gone down and gotten him. This time it was all so different.
Now and Forever (1978) Page 5