Aftershock

by Andrew Vachss

  “Program?”

  “Softball program. Coach Taylor said if I was convicted of anything it wouldn’t matter so long as going to school could be part of my probation, or whatever. And,” she said, clearly communicating that she wished Franklin wasn’t there, but making the best of it, “she also said I’d have to have an evaluation. You know.”

  “I do. And I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not. But I’m not sure what one of those is.”

  “I’m bringing someone here—actually Dolly is—who’ll explain everything to you.”

  “MaryLou,” Franklin said, anxious to get back in the conversation, “do you have everything you need? In here, I mean. I have a job. A job where I get paid. So I’ve got plenty of—”

  “No, sweetie,” MaryLou said, putting her hand on Franklin’s forearm. “I’m fine.”

  “Did you get a chance to look over that material I sent you?” I said to MaryLou, deliberately watching her hand. And making sure she saw me doing it.

  “Yeah.”

  “It always comes down to a question of trust, doesn’t it? There’s strategy, too, though. We wouldn’t want the other side to hear something they shouldn’t.”

  MaryLou nodded, patting Franklin’s forearm. Her gesture was almost absentminded, but I pitied the guard who would even think about telling her to cut it out. Inside my head, I listened to the same two portions of Danielle’s tape that I knew MaryLou had played for herself. Over and over and over.

  MaryLou was this star softball player, but she looks like a lumberjack. And she’s gay. So we’d never talk about anything to do with boys. The only one she liked was this retard, Bluto.

  and …

  Well … she wasn’t going to kill me. And she sure couldn’t boss Cameron around. She told me that she was going to break us up—me and Cameron—one way or the other. And … and she did just that, didn’t she?

  I looked down at that picture, thinking that the only way MaryLou’s hand would look petite was on a forearm like Franklin’s. But there was no way to make her look young and vulnerable for court, not with her size and that “You want some of this?” look she kept on her face.

  Franklin turned beet-red. “Uh, okay. Just … I mean, can you make calls from here?”

  “Collect calls,” MaryLou said, her voice heavy with disgust for a system that profits from poverty and increases it in the process.

  “You could call me.… I mean, if you wanted …”

  “Franklin, do you have any idea what it costs just to say ‘hello’ on those pay phones? Even for a local call?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I know you don’t. But I’m not playing their game. They can go—” MaryLou halted herself. I had the sense that she never cursed around Franklin. “But there’s another reason, a much more important one—they listen in on all the calls. It’s just like Mr. Dell told me,” she said, sliding into Franklin’s name for me as naturally as she would blow a strike past a hapless batter.

  Another one they underestimated, I thought. And had the thought confirmed when she told Franklin, “Sweetie, you trust me, don’t you?”

  “Sure!”

  “Then listen. Please listen, okay? I don’t want you to talk to my sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yes, Danielle. I don’t want you to say a single word to her, no matter what she says to you. Okay, Franklin? This is really, really important.”

  “I don’t know her—”

  “I know, but—”

  “—but I’ll never say a single word to anybody who even says they’re your sister. Or anyone whose name is Danielle,” he said, smushing her interruption like he must have pancaked any defensive lineman trying to get at his quarterback.

  MaryLou kissed his cheek. “That’s my boy! Besides, isn’t a visit better than a call? Then there’s no chance of the wrong people hearing us.”

  “Sure! But Mr. Dell can’t always be coming here.”

  “Neither can you,” I said to Franklin. “You think Spyros is going to put up with you getting off early every day?”

  “Oh, jeez, no! You can’t be late if you work for Mr. Spyros. It’s funny, though. I’m always on time, and I always have to wait for him. He’s probably thinking of a plan. For what we have to do that day. That’s why I always get there early—I just do what he tells me to do.”

  “For now,” I said.

  “What? Is he going to fire—”

  “Franklin, listen, okay? What I was trying to say is that Spyros thinks highly of you. One of these days, you’ll be going on jobs by yourself.”

  “You really think so?”

  “He told me himself. But he told me not to tell you; he wanted it to be a surprise. You won’t give it away, will you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If Franklin says it, he means it,” MaryLou vouched for the huge, damaged man who was probably the only creature on earth who truly loved her.

  “Thirty-nine girls,” Dolly said, bitterly, “and we got a grand total of seven willing to get on the stand and tell the truth.”

  “That’s actually a high percentage,” Debbie told her.

  “You probably couldn’t put on any more than that no matter how many you had,” I said. “The judge would cut it off.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Dolly said, more sharply than I expected from her. But before I could tell her what Swift said, I heard the back door open.

  “He’s right.” I whirled at the man’s voice, pulling the left side of my jacket forward to cover the pistol from the girls’ sight. How could anyone just walk in here without Rascal’s so much as barking? Especially when the stupid mutt’s sitting right next to Dolly?

  “Whoa, hoss! I come in peace,” the man said, smiling.

  “Dr. Joel!” Debbie half-shouted, she was so excited.

  I moved my hand off the pistol to take a look at the man I’d been ready to exterminate a few seconds ago. He was a medium-height, well-built guy about my age. I don’t know why, but he reminded me of someone.

  “Richard Dreyfuss,” he said.

  “You’re a mind-reader, too?”

  “Everybody does that. Usually in airports. I don’t know why—I look a hell of a lot more like Richard Gere.”

  I felt a smile coming to my face, and had to work to keep it from showing up. Maybe he fucking charms his way past alarms, I thought, slightly ticked at Dolly’s giving him one of her dazzle-smiles.

  “My name is T.D.,” he said to me, holding out his hand. “T. D. Joel, at your service. I don’t know why, but I never spook dogs. I don’t have a dog—couldn’t do it with my schedule—but it’s always been like that with me.”

  “Couldn’t your wife—?” Debbie started to say, then stopped, as if she realized she had just set a new high-bar record for blushing.

  “You’re not married,” Dolly stepped in for her friend. “No wife would let you walk around looking like you slept in your clothes.”

  “I surrender,” he said, shaking my hand and helping himself to a seat so that he was facing Debbie, with me on one side and Dolly on his other.

  “How did you know how many witnesses the judge would allow?” I asked him.

  “Four hundred and eighty-some trials and still counting, hoss. If they’re all going to give the same version of the same thing, the judge is going to stop the parade as soon as the other side claims the evidence is duplicative.”

  “Oh,” I said. My own trial experience was zero. Then he drove another stake in:

  “I teach law school, too. The better law schools are all doing that now—offering targeted courses. Most kids leave law school without a clue about trying a case, never mind how to use a psychologist if he’s on your side and how to stick him if he’s not. And it’s not just my field. There’s a law school down in Louisiana that offers an L.L.M.—like a graduate degree on top of law—in legislative drafting. Only one in the country so far, but it’s got a three-year waiting list, so it wo
n’t be long before some others follow suit. It’s a shame that—”

  “Okay,” I said, deliberately cutting him off. The guy was obviously a master narrator. Debbie was already swooning, and Dolly hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Save it for the fucking jury was my thought, but what I said was “Could I look at your car?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  I gave Dolly a look that said, “Not you!” and walked around to the side of the house. Rascal followed me. I didn’t much like that. “Guard!” I snapped at him. He spun in his tracks and went back to Dolly and Debbie.

  “Damn, that’s a beauty,” I blurted out. “What does something like that cost?”

  “Well, the dealer offers this easy payment plan. Four hundred grand down, no payments, no interest.”

  “For a car?”

  “I know. But what the hell? I make more money than I can spend. My kids are grown, both with graduate degrees and in professions they chose. I’ve got no mortgage on my condo, and I don’t pay alimony … at least, not anymore.”

  “I get it.” And I kind of did. I felt flooded with something a thousand times more powerful than “happiness.” This guy was smarter than me. Better-looking, better educated. Respected all throughout his field. Wealthy, but he’d had to work for it.

  But me, I had Dolly. I wouldn’t trade him if he threw in a billion in platinum, a high-skill harem, and … I stopped then, not wanting to think about the one thing I did want, no matter how much I tried to never do that.

  “I asked you out here so I could tell you a few things. But, mostly, to warn you that those women inside, their hopes are high, and it may take the heaviest weight of your skills to pull them down to reality.”

  “We’ll see,” he said, his voice as noncommittal as his expression. “And you don’t need the rest of the warnings.”

  “The rest?”

  “That if I hurt your woman—even her feelings—I’m a dead man.”

  “Ah, that was just for—”

  “Spare me, hoss. I’ve seen men handle guns way too many times. You’re a pro. You’re way too natural with that piece for you to be anything else.”

  “Okay,” I said, knowing I was caught between two bulldozers: he could out-talk me in his sleep, and he was telling the truth, too.

  “Fill me in,” he said.

  “I have to see some people, make sure they did something they promised to do. How about I tell you on the way over?”

  “Done,” he said, vaulting over the sill of his roadster like that was his usual way of getting in. Me, I opened the door on my side like a normal person.

  I knew Dolly wouldn’t worry if I just took off without telling her—she knows I don’t talk about my business in front of strangers.

  It was like this guy was on a personal campaign to make me jealous. Rascal trusted him on smell—he’d pick up a new scent way before he could see whatever carried it. He was better than me in all the good things. And now he was showing me he could have been a rally driver, too. Not the silly crap they have over here—the hard-core Scandinavian style, where you hit blind corners at speeds that would give a NASCAR ace a heart attack.

  Not that he drove all that fast, just so … smooth. I found myself playing navigator, like, “About a half-mile down, you’ll see a roadside stand selling produce. Maybe a hundred yards past that, a huge tree stump on your left, a Douglas fir that was hit by lightning, so they had to cut it down. Immediately after that there’s a hook turn—sharper than ninety degrees—and then you’ll be on dirt for another two, three miles before the next move.”

  He’d just say “Roger!” each time. Drove that car like it didn’t have a brake pedal, watching the road, not the instruments—that would have been my job, if this had been a real rally—kicking the rear end out instead of steering when that got him around a corner faster, using the paddles that stalked their way off the steering column to downshift. And when I told him we’d be hitting a clear stretch of asphalt in another minute, he shifted position just slightly. Once we got on that smooth pavement, he shot the car up to way over a hundred before I could get a breath.

  He kept his hands at nine and three, not the ten and two they teach kids. By the time we blasted sideways into Martin and Johnny’s driveway, the paint job on his car would need a lot of touch-up work to return it to its original shade, which was some kind of gunmetal silver mixed with carbon-fiber black.

  Martin and Johnny were both on the porch of their house. With that quarter-mile driveway of theirs, they’d probably heard us coming.

  I made the introductions.

  “This is a friend of mine, Dr. T. D. Joel.”

  “T.D.?” Martin said. “What does that stand for?”

  “Stands for T.D., hoss. I was born and raised in Kentucky. Whole lot of folks from there don’t bother with any more first name than one like I got handed.”

  I made a little twitch of my cheek to remind him we weren’t there to hang out. True, there was no reason for secrecy. But that wasn’t why I came.

  “Let’s see the Lexus,” I said.

  “You’re no candidate for the most trusting man I’ve ever met,” Johnny said waspishly.

  “Dolly’s always telling me that,” I said, smiling to show him I hadn’t taken offense.

  “Nice!” Joel said, walking around the Lexus, which was standing in the shade outside the garage area, now wearing a coat of what looked like dark green. But the color wasn’t stable—it kept shifting as you walked around it, from a kind of black to some sort of blue with a reddish haze over all of it.

  Martin glowed under the praise the way he never would have if I’d been the one talking. He reached in the glove compartment and took out a piece of paper and some cash. The paper was a receipt for forty-three hundred from a place I’d never heard of: “B3” with “Buddha’s Bad Boys” in a much smaller font beneath it.

  “They’re the best,” Martin said. “But you have to drive through the worst part of Portland to get there. Whoever heard of a custom-fabrication operation built out of cinder block with a barbed-wire fence, and a whole horde of pit bulls running around loose?”

  “Apparently you” is all I said. Accepting the money, handing back the receipt.

  “I have got to get some of that,” T.D. said, walking around the Lexus, running his hand lightly over the surfaces.

  “Want to trade?” Martin said, grinning at the very idea of a man who had such a rocket for a car admiring his paint job.

  “Don’t think so, hoss. Those SUVs really widen our carbon footprint.”

  It took a second, but then both Martin and Johnny broke out laughing. T.D.’s car probably widened that footprint every time he started the engine.

  We strolled back toward the roadster. Martin couldn’t stop himself from gaping at it like a virgin walking down one of those streets in Amsterdam where nothing more than glass stands between him and the whores performing in windows.

  “Want to give it a run?” T.D. asked him.

  “Really?”

  “Sure, hoss. Just let me show you a few things.…”

  It took T.D. a couple of minutes to explain some different settings—things you could turn on or off, depending on what kind of ride you wanted—then he tossed the key fob at Martin, who snatched it out of the air like it was a Patek Philippe watch that wouldn’t take well to hitting the concrete.

  T.D. just stood there.

  “Don’t you want to—?”

  “Only seats two,” T.D. said. “And I know you don’t want your partner on my lap.”

  Johnny vaulted into the passenger seat like he’d been doing it all his life. It was way more showy than when T.D. had done it, but he ended up just where he was supposed to be—next to Martin.

  While they were gone, I gave T.D. pretty much all of what I knew, then said: “If I talk to you, is there something like attorney-client privilege?”

  “If you talk to me as a patient, no matter what the conversation contains, I couldn’t reveal it even if I want
ed to. And no court would even try to make me.”

  “So I’ve been a patient ever since I opened my mouth, right?”

  “Before that, hoss. From the second I saw you do that magic trick with the pistol.”

  “Why then?”

  “Because nobody acts like that unless they’ve seen some truly ugly stuff in their lives. And anybody who’s seen a steady diet of stuff like that probably should be seeing a therapist.”

  “Because they’re, what, crazy?”

  “Nothing like that. But PTSD is something you either work through or suffer from—those are the only choices.”

  “Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

  “Yep.”

  “How did you know that I’d know what ‘PTSD’ meant?”

  “Debbie prepped me. Just over the phone, but more than enough to see the defense strategy. Since you’re playing a key role, you’d know.”

  “I get it.”

  “But I wouldn’t need that,” he said. “You’re a very angry man. You’ve learned to put that anger in a box, and you only open it when you want to. So there’s something you don’t know, something you’ll never know. But what you do know is, if you don’t keep that question in that same box, you’ll go off the rails.”

  I’ve been hit. Hit hard. But not like T.D. just did. It took me a while to get my breathing back.

  “How could you know that?” I said, knowing I was admitting it just by asking.

  “How do you know when a man’s about to do something violent?”

  “I’ve seen—No, wait. You mean, it’s the same thing? You see enough of something that you …”

  “Recognize it when you see it again? Yeah, that’s it, hoss.”

  Just then Martin and Johnny pulled up, almost decorously.

  “You like it?” T.D. asked, just a shade of sly in his voice.

  “It’s … unbelievable. I’ve never driven anything like it.”

  “Tell you what,” T.D. said. “That Mini Cooper in there, it’s a John Cooper Works, right?”

  “It is,” Martin said, proud to have common ground with a man who shared his love of cars, never mind one who actually owned a car he could only dream about.