Assault with a Deadly Lie

by Lev Raphael

  The doorbell rang. I made an effort not to curse or sigh, and went out to the door. Happily, it was Vanessa, brandishing a bottle of red wine. “Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2007,” she said. “I had a lot of this last summer in Tuscany. They’ll tell you in wine stores it needs another year or two, but I think it’s ready now.”

  “I’m ready now,” I said. “Thanks!”

  Vanessa was looking sleek and cool in a black leather skirt and matching sleeveless silk top. She had the arms of Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies; I don’t know why, but I found that as reassuring as her Brooklyn toughness.

  I brought the bottle in to Stefan like a kid showing off his A for homework, “Look what Vanessa brought us.”

  Stefan grinned. “One of my favorites. Our favorites,” he corrected.

  Vanessa glanced from me to Stefan and back. “Good,” she said. “You’re still talking to each other.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I warned you. Legal trouble drives couples apart,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen a lot. The stress and humiliation, the burden just gets to be too much.”

  I closed my mind to those possibilities of chaos infecting my relationship with Stefan. I brought out big wine glasses and opened the bottle. I didn’t wait for the wine to breathe; instead, I poured us all generous portions and we toasted silently, clinking glasses by the kitchen island.

  “Wow,” I said. “This wine is big.” It was round and full-bodied, with a terrific long finish. I thanked Vanessa again, and we invited her to join us for dinner and a strategy session.

  “You’re having goulash?” she said. “I love goulash! I’m only half-Italian, the other half is Hungarian.”

  “Like Stephanie Plum!” I said.

  Vanessa frowned. “Who’s that?”

  “You know, the heroine in Janet Evanovich’s mysteries?”

  She shrugged, but then said, “Wait—the funny ones set in New Jersey? I’ve heard about them, but I don’t typically read books like that. I’m more into biography and history.” She turned to Stefan and asked, “Does he always see things in terms of books?”

  “I think we both do. Occupational hazard.” Stefan set another place at the table. It might have been too hot a day for any kind of stew, but the air conditioning kept the house pleasant, and I found just the idea of goulash very comforting. The wine didn’t hurt, either. But before we started, Stefan handed Vanessa a check I didn’t know he had written.

  “We haven’t had any time to talk about a retainer—is five thousand okay, or do you need more?” He looked at me, and I nodded my approval, wondering how I hadn’t even thought of raising this question with Vanessa. She was a lawyer after all, not a social worker.

  She nodded, and put the check in her skirt pocket. “I wanted to give you time to recover. And yes, five thousand is just fine for now.” She spoke about money without embarrassment; I liked that. Marco liked her; he had fallen asleep under Vanessa’s chair after finishing his kibble.

  We ate and talked about the news in Michigan, climate change, the price of gas, and the culture shock of moving to Michiganapolis from the East Coast. We marveled at how people in-state tended to claim they had no accent, and how Michiganders didn’t seem to travel much, even in the Midwest. It was a pleasant, stress-free conversation, and Vanessa deftly kept it that way until we had espresso.

  “Now, fill me in,” she said, crossing her arms, but the gesture wasn’t like Juno’s, cold and forbidding. Somehow it seemed to invite intimacy.

  I complied with ease, and I could feel her taking mental notes as I walked her through the days since the night our home was invaded. She was clearly not the kind of person who interrupted her concentration by writing things down when she was focused and listening. That, too, reassured me.

  When I was done, she asked for specifics about the parking lot incident in Ludington. “You have some exposure there,” she said, “if he decides to sue you or involve the police, but the longer it goes, the better your chances. I’m guessing from how you described him that he wants to keep you off-balance, so he isn’t going to report the encounter.”

  I thought that was a great choice of words, better than “incident” or anything else that suggested violence. I didn’t mind the rhetorical camouflage.

  “Did his car have a Michigan license plate?” she asked.

  I felt like an idiot admitting that I didn’t remember, but Vanessa wasn’t perturbed. She probably had lots of clients come up short on more important details.

  Stefan asked, “Do you think he’s the one who’s after us? Stone?”

  Vanessa sighed, uncrossing her arms and folding her French-manicured nails. “I like both of them for your stalker, him and that Bitterman guy. But we need something more than suspicion.”

  “Can Lucky have me arrested for stalking?”

  Vanessa laughed. “You drove by his house a coupla times? Puh-leeze. I’d like to see him try.”

  “Is there a way we can find out what kind of car Lucky drives? And check where Stone’s car was rented or if it really was a rental?”

  Vanessa leaned back and crossed her long legs. She was wearing glittery black Jimmy Choo pumps I’d seen in Vanity Fair not so long ago. “That’s pretty simple,” she said. “My firm employs a husband-and-wife PI team. I can have them find out in probably a day or two at most. They’ll check with the secretary of state’s office and the courts if they need to. Both of them used to be cops, and people do them favors all the time. It’ll just go on your tab. Oh, and if you want, they can check on that white van you saw on campus, too, if you got the plate number. No? Okay, another time for that.”

  Before she could go on, I told her about the two threatening phone calls, and she mused, “Okay, maybe it’s time to have your lines monitored. Let me think about it. Now, what about your department chair, that June—”

  “Juno. Juno Dromgoole.”

  “Christ, what a name,” Vanessa murmured.

  “Why are you asking about her?”

  Vanessa studied her nails for a moment, then looked back up at me. “She sounds pretty vengeful and determined.”

  “But we used to be friends, or something like friends.” Then I added. “Before she was the chair.”

  “There you go—used to be. But now she’s got power and she’s abusing it. What if she’s out to get you? I’m just thinking out loud here. I have friends in academia in New York and Boston. I know jobs are very tight now. What if she wants to get rid of one or both of you because she has friends she’d like to have hired in your place?”

  Stefan and I exchanged a long, anxious look. Vanessa’s chilling scenario was all too possible.

  Vanessa went on: “She doesn’t sound mentally stable to me, but she’s functional, right? Maybe she and your dean could be in on this together … or she’s just going rogue.”

  “There’s something else,” I said. “The administration isn’t happy with us, well, with Stefan because of his new book. It’s about a student of his who committed suicide.”

  “The one who hanged himself on campus?” she asked. “I was in Rome when that happened, but I did hear something about it.”

  “That’s the guy,” Stefan said quietly. “They want me to drop the book.”

  “Why? Are you blaming the school for his death? No? So there’s nothing actionable in your book. And aren’t you allowed to publish whatever you like?”

  “Nobody at SUM is worried about infringing on academic freedom—they’re as paranoid about bad PR as North Korea.”

  Vanessa nodded several times as if absorbing all the new information. “You aren’t the most popular guys at SUM, are you? Right now, anyway. Do you know what she drives?”

  “You mean Juno? It’s a black Chrysler 300. She buys a new one every other year. She brags about it.”

  Vanessa closed her eyes as if picturing the car. “Doesn’t that have a fat grill, kind of like the Cadillac XTS?”

  “The Caddy has that littl
e shield of theirs on the center of the grill.”

  “Right, but think about it. Is it possible you mixed up the two cars because you were distracted? Are you absolutely positive it wasn’t a Chrysler following you in town?”

  I wanted to say I was sure, but with everything that had been happening this past week, nothing seemed certain, especially since I now had to worry that the chair of my own department might have launched a vicious campaign to drive me from my job and my home.

  14

  We had espresso in the living room and it heartened me that Marco leapt onto the couch where Vanessa was sitting, cuddling against her as she stroked his back and head. Maybe I was naïve, but when he liked someone, I always trusted his instincts.

  “Do you have dogs?” I asked.

  “Not now, my hours are too crazy, but I grew up with them.” It occurred to me that aside from having noted that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, I knew nothing about her private life.

  Vanessa set her cup down on the coffee table. “I need to ask some other questions that might feel awkward, and I want to remind you that everything you say to me is privileged, okay?”

  We nodded, and I felt apprehensive. What more could she possibly need to know?

  “Okay. Do you have any pending lawsuits or criminal charges? Are there any restraining orders against either of you? Any arrests of any kind?”

  We both shook our heads.

  “Good. Now, I’m your lawyer, I represent you, I defend you in court if need be, and I’m not here to judge. Everyone’s human, lawyers know that best. So—is there anyone in your department you haven’t mentioned who might be after you? Somebody you had an affair with, or made a pass at, for instance. You’ve been here, what, fifteen years? That’s a long time. Or maybe someone made a pass at you and you turned them down, and now we’re dealing with their frustration and revenge.”

  We both said “No” at the same time, and I added, “Absolutely not.”

  “Great. One more question. Is there anything you haven’t told me that could have a bearing on what’s been going on, anything at all? Think about it.”

  After a moment, I shook my head, and Stefan followed suit, but without even looking at him, I could tell from his hesitation and the slightly altered tone of his voice that he was lying, and it astonished me.

  When I did glance his way I saw that he had uncrossed his legs, which was his “tell.” Lying, he unconsciously tried to make himself seem more open and relaxed, but I’d seen this before. I made an effort to suppress what I was feeling, and hoped that if Vanessa did notice my distress, she would assume it was the general situation that was hitting me hard, not the specific question.

  She wasn’t done. “You told me you don’t have a gun in the house, right? Well, you might want to think about getting one.”

  I was dumbfounded. “Why?”

  “Honestly, I’m concerned for your safety. Too much has happened in less than a week, and it’s escalating. Someone threatened to run you down, the break-in, the roadkill in your bed, the threatening phone calls …” She left the sentence unfinished as if she expected more, and soon.

  “But we’d have to take a gun safety course, and you can’t get a permit overnight.”

  Vanessa corrected me. “You can apply for a permit to purchase a handgun and get the background check done in twenty-four hours. And gun safety training is recommended, of course, but it’s not required unless you’re applying to carry a concealed weapon.”

  “Wow,” I said, “they’ve sped it up since last time—” I stopped, but it was too late. I don’t know why, but I had not wanted Vanessa to know I’d even thought of owning a gun a decade ago when I got assaulted at SUM.

  Vanessa waited for my explanation.

  “Back when Juno and I were friends, or whatever we were, we went gun shopping because of crazy stuff happening at the university. I don’t want to go into detail. Juno already had a handgun and she was encouraging me to get one, too. I filled out some kind of form at the police station, and took a quiz, but they said it would be five days before I got my permit.”

  “Well, lucky you,” she said. “The law’s changed. Just out of curiosity, what did Juno carry?”

  I thought a moment. “Some kind of a Glock nine-millimeter. She said it was fairly light, and safe, and it had—I think—sixteen or seventeen rounds.”

  “Good memory,” Vanessa said wryly, and rose to leave. Marco grumbled a little but rolled onto his back, which he only did when he was sound asleep. At the door, she said, “Get a gun—and a gun safe!—or get an alarm system, maybe both. But whatever you do, be very careful. I’ll let you know what my PIs tell me about the cars.”

  Stefan was already in the kitchen washing out the espresso cups and stacking them with their saucers in the dish drain. Just as I was about to press him on what he’d been hiding when Vanessa asked if there was anything we hadn’t told her, he said almost absentmindedly, “You still have those gun catalogues, don’t you?”

  “I’d have to look for them. But are you serious, you really think we should have a gun?”

  He turned to me, and shook his head, looking both angry and despairing. “No, I just wondered. After raiding our house, you think the Michiganapolis police would give either of us a gun permit? That’s nuts.”

  There was some wine left, and I poured it out into a new glass, slugged some down the way you’re supposed to drink Beaujolais Nouveau, not a fine wine, but I didn’t care. I remembered enough about applying for a gun to say, “We don’t have criminal records, so there’s no reason for them to turn either of us down.”

  “I don’t trust the cops, they’ll come up with something. If you or I went in now and applied for a permit, you don’t think that’ll look suspicious? They’d assume we were planning something, that we were dangerous. I’ll call tomorrow about estimates for an alarm system, but that’s all we can do.”

  “Well, that’s not all I can do. I think I will go get a permit.”

  “They’ll never issue you one.” I don’t know if he was envious or hurt or what, but he was sounding more and more furious, and I did not want to get into a pointless argument. There was no way of knowing if either of us could get a gun permit, but I was sure as hell going to try.

  I stayed up late reading online about Michigan’s gun laws and I dug out all the catalogues I’d gotten years ago and filed away, thinking I’d never need them. Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Browning, Beretta, Walther. The colored brochures were as thick and glossy and seductive as anything you’d ever seen for a new car. There were also photocopied sheets and tri-fold brochures with listings of local gunnery ranges and The Ten Commandments of Gun Safety.

  Tuesday morning, while Stefan was at the gym, I headed to the gun shop whose elderly owner years ago had treated me like a grandson coming to afternoon tea.

  The shop was called Aux Armes, in a wry tribute to the French national anthem, I recalled, and looked even more out of place than before in a bland strip mall with a pizza joint and a bank, because several other storefronts were empty, victims of the recession. An old-fashioned bell still hung over the door and jangled as I stepped inside. Tiny Mrs. Fennebresque, a former nurse who’d opened the store as a second career, hadn’t changed. She was still dressed in conservative pastels and her cheerful “Good Morning!” was energetic and sweet. She presided over her lovely little shop as if it were a Hummel collection. “Wait—don’t tell me—I know you’ve been here before …”

  I looked around while she tried to remember. The low-ceilinged space still looked like a cross between a Hallmark store and a hardware store. The shelves were packed with ammunition and cans and boxes, but decorated with silk tulips and hydrangeas in colorful pots. Rifles and shotguns were displayed as reverently as golf clubs along the far wall, with plastic ivy framing them top and bottom. The overhead lighting was bright, but it was softened by pink-shaded lamps in strategic locations, and there were still pots of freesia potpourri scattered about. Clearly the sto
re’s appeal was for people like me who wanted a gun, but who also wanted to purge their purchase of anything they might perceive as sordid and lower class.

  “I remember now, you’re Nick Hoffman,” she practically warbled with excitement. “You’re the college professor who got in so much trouble. You were a newbie to guns,” she added gently, fingering the large fake pearls at her neck.

  She wasn’t kidding. Back then she’d had to explain the difference between a revolver and a semi-automatic to me, explained safeties, the cost of ammo, everything, until I felt dizzied by all the details about calibers and stopping power and gun weight and recoil and raking and Michigan’s gun laws. I’d felt almost paralyzed to be in a gun shop at all, and everything had seemed even stranger because her voice was so sweet, her hair so white, her manner so gentle.

  “We talked about a .357 Magnum versus a .22.”

  “Yes we did!” She was thrilled. “And you brought a very colorful friend back one time. She was a Glock fan, I seem to recall. I saw you one more time after that, and you were not in a good state.”

  “Yes, someone attacked me on campus.”

  “Poor boy. I can tell it still upsets you all these years later.” She shook her finger at me. “Teddy Roosevelt said that history taught us that the one certain way to invite disaster is to be unarmed. If people knew you had a gun, they would leave you alone,” she said.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Lovely! I just brewed some jasmine tea, would you like to join me?”

  Once again I was drinking tea with her in ivory-colored cups with tiny shamrocks across them, but I couldn’t remember the name of the china pattern.

  “Belleek,” she said, leaning companionably on the counter as we drank tea and I gazed down into her velvet-lined display case where everything today looked inviting. My eyes kept getting drawn back to a Glock 19. It looked simple, clean, deadly. Even the name felt powerful to me.

  “Lovely gun,” she said. “Reliable, safe, fast. And of course, it’s a law enforcement favorite.”