He still wasn’t certain of his capacities. Hard as he tried to deny it, blackmail was a step beyond the tricks and stratagems he had used before, a step across the edge of felony, the stuff of detective novels and TV. Still, the choice between premeditated crime and ignominious defeat was not an easy one. He thought his scruples had been suppressed over a night of rationalization. He thought he was prepared, in other words, to do what had to be done. But, amazingly enough, he was apparently to be blessed. He could continue to face both the mirror and Bobby E. Lee of a morning because it looked very much as though he wouldn’t need the extortionate emulsions after all.
The trial was going well. Freed from the monotony of the Friday Fiasco, Judge Hoskins was tolerably civil, which was all D.T. asked and more than he had figured to receive. Dick Gardner was as good as D.T. had expected him to be, but he was nothing miraculous, nothing otherworldly, nothing that could not be whipped, given a few breaks. And D.T. himself—albeit weary, ill-prepared, and penitent—he himself had been supreme.
Chas Stone had floated to the witness stand like an angel and rested there serenely, an object to be worshipped, on a par with God. D.T. had allowed Dick Gardner to elicit Stone’s testimony without interference by way of legal objection, so that by the end of the direct examination Chas Stone had become a star of straitlaced rectitude, beyond the reach of mortal man or even lawyers.
Then, after lunch, the cross-examination. And at its end, just before lunch the following day, Stone had slithered from the stand like a slandered slug, battered, beaten, burdened by a view of himself that would fester like a pustule at the exact center of his soul. As Stone had passed his table on his way out of the courtroom, D.T. had barely suppressed a jeer.
He had made his points one by one, methodically and relentlessly, his tone suggesting, implying, doubting, accusing; his gestures scornful, dismissive, curt. Yes, Stone worked very hard at his job, spent many nights and weekends working or entertaining clients. Yes, he played golf every Sunday. Yes, he played racquet ball every Wednesday after work. Yes, he was a member of a men’s club, an athletic club, a business club, and an alumni club and attended their functions regularly. Yes, he traveled at least six times a month, to conventions, or to securities analysts’ meetings, or to visit companies whose stock he found attractive. No, he had never attended a PTA meeting or been a scout leader, a Little League coach, a Campfire counselor. No, he had never changed a diaper, mixed a formula, fixed a lunch, made a bandage, sewed a hem, mopped a spill, framed a picture, papered a wall, built a treehouse, constructed a fort, batted a ball, made a costume, pedalled a bike, assembled a dollhouse, or played doctor, cowboys, Indians, Monopoly, Clue, G.I. Joe, or Space Invaders. He thought he had helped David with some quadratic equations, and he knew he had once played in a father-daughter tennis tournament with Cristine. They’d lost their first match. No, she hadn’t played much after that, she preferred music to sports. No, he didn’t play an instrument himself. No, he had never taken her to a music lesson or his son to ball practice. Yes, he’d been to some baseball games. A few. Three last year. Out of ten or twenty, he wasn’t sure. No, he didn’t know the name of Cristine’s piano teacher or David’s coach or the school principal or the math teacher or the guidance counselor. He wasn’t sure what book they’d read last, what their favorite music was, which movie star they liked. Cristine had a picture of a singer on her wall once, but it wasn’t up there any more, he was pretty sure. Michael Jackson maybe? Was that somebody?
So it had gone, until the climactic incident, disclosed to D.T. by his client during recess called so Judge Hoskins could relieve himself. Yes, David had once taken his father’s favorite putter to play with in the yard and had forgotten to return it to the bag. Yes, Stone had only discovered it on the first green while playing with his Sunday foursome. Yes, he had been upset, and had punished David. How? Well, he had made David clean his golf clubs. And wash his golf balls with his toothbrush. And shag practice shots for two hours the next Saturday instead of playing in his Little League game. Yes, there was one more thing. He had beaten David with the putter, just the shaft, across his thighs. Yes, there had been a bruise. Yes, David had run away from home that night, but only for a couple of hours: they’d found him at the mall at midnight, caught by an usher while trying to hide inside a movie house so he could spend the night there. No, the police hadn’t been called. No, he didn’t think David had been mistreated. Yes, he had spanked David on other occasions. Yes, he believed in discipline and occasional corporal punishment. Yes, when he spanked David he generally used a quirt.
When D.T. had finished, Mareth Stone had thanked him in a whisper and squeezed his hand, her eyes matched bowls of grateful tears. Her pleasure in his work had almost been enough for him to forget the photographs he carried in his jacket pocket like a passport to perdition, though not quite.
The rest of Gardner’s witnesses had fared little better. Neighbors, acquaintances, busybodies, they had all seen the Stone family in one stage or another of stress and distress, had all seen Mareth Stone do something improper with her children or something unseemly with herself. One man had seen her retrieve the morning paper wearing only a bra and panties. The neighbor woman had heard her use language that would shame a trucker, had often heard the children crying, though for what reason she really couldn’t say, it couldn’t have been anything good, not the way they were screaming, she’d never heard anything like it in her life. A woman had seen Mareth get sick at a party that featured Boom Boom punch. A man remembered her saying that she envied him because he was childless and single. All nonsense, all trivial, most of it in a jury case irrelevant. But as the sole trier of fact Judge Hoskins had let it all come in to soil the record, as any jurist would.
The big problems were the booze and the sex, and the only one who could explain them away was Mareth Stone herself. The time had come. Purged of his pique, determined now to win despite his client’s rash imprudence, he cleared his throat and called her to the stand, patting her shoulder as she left his side, crossing his fingers as he watched her take the oath to tell the truth, knowing he had no idea if she intended to obey it. He had never begun an examination with more foreboding, not an examination of his very own client. For a moment his voice fluttered and betrayed his fears, then he settled down, as interested as an observer in what she had to say.
He took her through the preliminaries slowly and calmly, cracked a few jokes, smiled a few smiles, loosened her up, made the judge like her or come as close as he could come. He covered the marriage breakup briefly, establishing that she was not the initiator of the action, that she was without rage or rancor, that she was agreeable to liberal visitation rights being accorded her husband despite their past wrangles, that she had recovered from whatever heartbreak the separation had originally caused. Then he took her from being wife to being what she wanted to remain.
Using details she had supplied or he had merely guessed at, he brought out her involvement with her children, reviewed her daily contribution to their welfare, elicited a frank confession of the frustrations and irritants of child-rearing before Dick Gardner could introduce the subject from a different tack, anticipating his opponent’s thrusts. All the things her husband didn’t know she knew, what he had never done had been done by her, what he believed, she doubted, and vice versa. By the time his initial gambit was concluded he had cast Mareth Stone as Earth Mother, nurse, chauffeur, coach, instructor, pastor, pal. But he knew Judge Hoskins remained to be convinced, was waiting to hear about the affair and about the booze. In spite of the relativistic statutes and decisions and attitudes now littering the law, they remained two vices that could end her reign as Mom.
He went first to the booze, unaware of what she was going to say about it, aware that imprecision and arrogance were the major mistakes of one in her position. Gardner would exploit the slightest opening, magnify the smallest slip, exaggerate the merest frailty. She was as vulnerable as a babe, but Mareth Stone had chosen the course h
erself. Her fate was where she wanted it—entirely in her hands. D.T. began his questions. Judge Hoskins was, for the first time since Chas Stone had left the witness stand, giving the case his full attention.
She had had her first drink the night after the last day of her freshman year in college, a store-bought Tom Collins mixer heavily laced with rum, a long night of revelry followed by a longer morning of nausea and remorse. She had been able to taste the concoction for years afterward, whenever she came near a potion that hinted of the blend of lemon-lime. She had never drunk rum again, but she had continued to drink socially, before her marriage and after, never regularly, never to forget or anything, only to relax, to feel comfortable and funny and free to laugh and joke and enjoy herself outside the joyless atmosphere her husband imposed upon their home. The pattern changed only when her marriage began to sour as bitterly as that first mixer.
She had drunk excessively for a period of perhaps six months. She admitted it. She regretted it, but it was no longer a problem because she had abandoned the habit of excess because it hadn’t worked and because now that her marriage had definitely ended there was no longer a need for whatever it was that liquor had given her. What was that? Oh, a certain anesthetic condition, an insensitivity to her deteriorating marital environment, an ability to delude herself into thinking that all the things that were happening might be sad, and horribly depressing, but they were inflicting no lasting pain.
No, she no longer believed that. There had been much pain, almost blinding at times, and it continued to this day. She had loved Chas once, had wanted to keep her marriage alive, had not wanted to become like all the others out there—the twice-or-thrice-divorced, minstrels of love, wandering from man to man until all men were equally acceptable or not, indistinguishable, tools. She had wanted to succeed, but now that it was clear that she and Chas were through, she could accept it. And make a new life for herself and her children, a process she had already begun.
No, she had never been arrested while drinking, or for being intoxicated in public, or for any other reason. No, she had never been hospitalized or forced to dry out. No, the children had never suffered as a result of her problem. Yes, the problem had been eliminated; no, she had not had to seek professional help to accomplish it; yes, she was fully in control of the situation now. It was simply not a problem. Yes, at about the time she had begun drinking too much she had begun a love affair with another man.
It was not something she had planned or wanted. The need had just materialized, magically, insidiously, like a virus. Like the drinking, she felt the affair was a result of an expanding desperation about her marriage and her life, of her sense that everything she valued had taken a step back, was just beyond her reach. Basically, the affair was part of her effort to get through an entire week without crying. Over the way she felt, over the way her life was going, over her effort to avoid the conclusion that she had failed at every single thing that mattered.
They had met several times, ten maybe, at first only to talk, to share mutual disappointments and dissatisfactions, to learn enough about each other to decide if they wanted to go to places neither of them had been before. He was a nice man, kind, considerate, patient, sympathetic, understanding. He seemed, for those few days, to be everything her husband was not, though she now knew that was an illusion, a perfection she had seen because she had so badly yearned to see it.
Yes, the affair had eventually culminated in a sexual relationship. But only twice. It had not been what she needed or wanted. It had in fact added to her burden, not eased it, and after the two times she had ended the relationship. Yes, completely. She had never seen the man alone again. That had been almost two years ago now. No, there had been no other affairs during the time she and Chas were living together. Yes, there had been a sexual experience since he had left her. With one man. No, the children had not been in the house at the time. Of course they had not seen the act, good grief, what kind of woman would make love in front of children that age? Yes, she intended to marry again if she found the right man, but she wasn’t in a hurry, wasn’t desperate.
She loved her children, and wanted them with her, and would be able to support them with an award of three thousand dollars per month in child support from her ex-husband. She was certain the children wanted to stay with her. There had been no serious problems since their father had left home, nothing she couldn’t handle. They were all getting along just fine. In some ways, she thought life at home was actually better, now that the discords of marriage had been removed. Was there anything else she wanted to say? Only that she was a good mother, that being a mother was the most important thing in her life, that she wanted to continue loving and caring for and sharing in the lives of David and Cristine for the rest of her life. She begged the court not to take them from her.
“Your witness, Mr. Gardner.”
D.T. sat down and Dick Gardner stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Jones. Mrs. Stone?”
Gardner paused, focusing all minds in the room toward him, gearing them for a shift in attitude, for a wrenching of their sentiments. Standing there, slim, tall, the slightest, kindest smile on his lips, even inanimate objects—the flags behind the judge’s bench, the long lights overhead, the long benches bearing spectators—seemed subservient to his will, awaiting with pleasure his assault upon the woman who twitched nervously in the chair before him.
“I listened very closely to your direct testimony, Mrs. Stone,” Gardner began. “It was quite enlightening. Somewhat contrary to what I had been led to believe were the true facts, however. So …”
“Objection. Counsel is testifying.”
“Sustained.”
“Excuse me, Your Honor,” Dick Gardner said. “Mrs. Stone, I’m going to have to go over some of the points you brought up, I’m afraid, to get things clear in my mind. First, during the time you were living with Mr. Stone, that’s Chas Stone, the petitioner seated here before me, during that time did you ever have a love affair other than the one with Richard Weaver you described already, Mrs. Stone? An affair that culminated in sexual congress?”
“No. I did not. Only the one.”
“Are you quite certain of that?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I suppose you would know, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s not the type of thing you’d be likely to forget, is it?” Gardner’s smile would have charmed an asp.
“No. It is not.”
“Very well. Where do you buy your booze, Mrs. Stone? I mean your hard liquor.”
“Why, the store on Calumet, usually. In the shopping center.”
“Quality Liquors?”
“I believe that’s it. Yes.”
“What type of hard liquor do you usually buy?”
“Bourbon. Once in a while.”
“What brand?”
“I … Early Times.”
“Do you ever buy liquor for anyone else? Friends? Neighbors?”
“No.”
“Do you buy wine at that store?”
“No.”
“Beer?”
“No. Only liquor.”
“How much Early Times did you buy last month, Mrs. Stone? In January. Do you have any idea?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you carry an account at Quality Liquors, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How much was last month’s bill?”
“I don’t recall.”
“I see. You did pay it, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I’m sure I did.”
“Then perhaps I can help you as to the amount. It was ninety-nine dollars, was it not? Ninety-nine dollars and eleven cents, to be exact.”
“If you say so.”
“How much do you pay for a fifth of Early Times, Mrs. Stone?”
“I’m not sure. Nine dollars, I think.”
“I think that’s about it. Nine thirty-five, is the current price, is it not?”
“That sounds right.”
“So, assuming those
two figures for the moment, a little arithmetic reveals that you purchased exactly ten fifths of Early Times last month, isn’t that right? Allowing for sales tax of six percent? Ten fifths of bourbon over a period of thirty days. This is correct, is it not?”
“I suppose it is. But …”
“Thank you, Mrs. Stone. Do you have any idea how many individual highballs there are in a fifth of liquor?”
“No.”
“A good stiff drink has an ounce and a half of liquor in it, right?”
“I guess.”
“And a fifth has twenty-four ounces?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Well, assume for a moment that it does. That makes sixteen drinks, times ten fifths equals over one hundred and sixty drinks a month. More than five a day. Right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if you don’t know I’m sure there are others in the room who do.”
Gardner consulted his notes. Mareth Stone shrank inside her clothes. “But I’ve had guests. And I …”
“Move to strike, Your Honor,” Dick Gardner said.
“Sustained. Please limit yourself to answering the questions put to you, Mrs. Stone,” Judge Hoskins admonished.
“But there are explanations. I’m not a …”
“Mrs. Stone. Silence. Please.”
She bowed her head and bit her lip. When she glanced at him, D.T. made a sign to calm her down. It didn’t seem to take. Dick Gardner stood up.
“Now. You mentioned guests, Mrs. Stone. How many different men have you entertained in your home since your husband moved out of the house some six months ago?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” D.T. said. “Irrelevant.”
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