Her expression relaxed. “That’s Artie’s handiwork. I had nothing to do with it.”
The intercom came to life with a familiar voice. “Ricky, are you entertaining the lovely Sandra Kokker? Don’t keep her all to yourself.”
Mark Kane, glad-handing her electronically. Sandra’s social voice rose to meet his. “Hi, Mark. What brings you into the office on a blue Monday?”
“Watching out for my favorite client. Bring her on over here, Ricky. Sandra and I have a lot to catch up on.”
I escorted Sandra out the door of my office, hung a roscoe, hung a louie at the end of the long corridor, and pushed open the big double doors—only after knocking and hearing a hearty, “Come on in!”
The smell of Polo permeated the rosewood-paneled room. The artwork hanging on the walls looked like it might have been painted by Hitler. There, behind a presidential-sized desk, sat Mark Kane himself. He looked smaller than in his TV ads, in which the TV Mark Kane strode up the steps to the courthouse, his Rinse-o-Blue pompadour reflecting Old Glory, his craggy face set like cement. Ready to do battle with the big insurance companies, the voice-over said. An admiring crowd of local extras fell back in awe of him.
The real Mark Kane stood formally and bent to kiss Sandra’s manicure like a eurotrash count. The glass surface of his desktop made a mirrored meditation pool reflecting a two-shot of them but leaving me out of camera range. He offered her a drink from a crystal decanter; she declined. I stood there at the sideboard like a waiter while the two of them made preliminary small talk. Then Mark Kane—without breaking eye contact with Sandra—told me to “close the door on your way out, Ricky.”
As I did so, I nearly ran into Duane Benoit rushing headlong down the corridor, wearing the look of the summoned. At least we had that in common.
Chapter Twenty-One
All We Have to Sell
I brought back the Weegers. The smell of them was rancid deep-frying oil and old denim soaked in BO. They were as oblivious to it as a skunk to its own perfume, but it threw me until olfactory fatigue set in. Celestal constantly interrupted my trial-prep prepared speech with thoughts of his own on another subject. Nobody seemed to want to talk about the Weegers trial, not even the Weegers.
“I found out who desecrated my daddy’s grave,” Celestal volunteered proudly.
“Really? How’d you manage that?”
“Taught myself the internet.”
“So what’d you find out?”
“They’s devil-worshippers, all right.” From his shirt pocket, he pulled out a flyer from the instant-oil-change grease pit where he worked and read from notes he’d scrawled in the margins. “They have these here jamborees, like Candle Mass Eve—that’s February first—and they’s a big ol’ orgy they’re throwin’ on Lupercalia—that’s February fifteenth. But they’re savin’ the worst ‘til last this February.”
“Probably trying to compete with the ratings sweeps on TV. What’s this worst thing they have planned?”
“Something so bad they only have it once every four years. It’s called the Lilith Sabbat, and it kicks off at midnight on February twenty-ninth. That there’s Leap Year Day, Mr. Galeer. It was on that very date, way back in sixteen hundred ninety and two, they up and arrested all them Salem witches. Do you know there’s one of their local covens, they call ‘em, no more’n a hoot and a holler over yonder?” He pointed out the window, west, toward Missouri.
“Where, exactly?”
“That’s the part’s got me all catawampus. I still can’t rightly say where, but that there’s what I’m a’fixin’ to find out.”
“Celestal, I’m going to give you a piece of free advice: don’t try and run this down yourself any more. If you’re on to something, let the cops handle it from here on out. The people you’re tracking are dangerous, the way I hear it. Dangerous as in deadly. You have a baby to think about now.”
“What kind of pappy would I be to him if I was to let some grave-robbin’ heathens get away with desecrating his grampappy’s memory?”
“Celestal, I don’t know what kind of shivaree you’re planning, but I sure don’t want to see it backfire.” I handed him one of Diaz’s cards. “Call a professional.”
I could tell he was about to reply, but then the blood ran out of his usually sallow face. It was a moment before I recognized the realization that haunted him: that I might be one of them.
I gave the Weegers my speech about eye contact with the jury, about dressing clean but not fancy, and about the mention of the word insurance in court being like saying a dirty word in church. I helped Misty prepare a mental checklist of all the specific ways the injury had affected her activities of daily living—a day in the life of Misty Weegers. Letting her yes be yes and her no be no during cross-examination. Don’t get angry with the other lawyer, but don’t explain, either. They both nodded away. The baby was getting fussy; it was about time for Misty to give him some titty. I knew just how he felt.
My intercom came alive the moment they left. Mark Kane. Two words: “See me.”
Sandra had gone, but her lavender perfume lingered. Kane didn’t ask me to sit. I stood behind one of his winged back leather chairs. Diane would have known its pedigree.
“You like working here, Ricky? You like a regular paycheck? Eagle squats and shits right in your open palm every other Friday around here for years, am I lying?”
Anger and fear, as always, arm-wrestled to a draw in the core of my being. I still suffered from a kind of moral paralysis that had dogged my so-called career for over two decades. So instead of fighting or fleeing, I stood at attention and tried to suck it up.
“Kirk Kokker’s pissed,” he went on. Both of us knew his opening questions had been rhetorical. “I’m not one to get into anybody’s private life—hell, I’ve got a private life of my own—but apparently your wife’s been putting some screwy ideas into Sandra’s head lately. Crackpot religious ideas or something. Now, I need men like Kirk Kokker to be happy, and so do you. My practice and your continued lucrative employment depend on that fact. Oh, by the way.” He fixed me with a flinty stare. “If you ever try fucking her in the office again, I’ll crucify you.”
I pitched forward, managing to catch my forearms on the winged backs until the room stopped spinning.
“I don’t know how you can afford to keep her in the first place. I must be overpaying you, or else you’re embezzling from me.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “You’re not embezzling from me, are you, Ricky?”
“No, sir.”
His eyes crinkled. He gave me the warm, television commercial smile. “Do I have your word on that?”
“You have my word on it. Yes, sir.”
“Your word is good with me, Ricky. The only thing men like you and me really have to sell is our integrity.”
I was game. The whole sordid incident had become a codicil to my life. And if nothing changed, it would become my epitaph.
“Anyway, getting back to the subject at hand, she’s taken a shine to you, Sandra Kokker has. Even tells me she’s got your bun in her oven. Do I embarrass you? I hope not. We’re both men of the world here. We take what we want, you and me, and leave it to others to clean up the mess afterward. Am I right?”
I nodded, open-mouthed and flummoxed. It was an expression I was getting used to wearing lately.
“A mistress like Sandra Kokker is more expensive than a tag team of blackmailers, but a million dollars is still a lot of money, even with today’s inflation.”
“I know.”
“Do you, Ricky? Let me show you something, then. Something a man like you might appreciate.” He rose with the celerity of a much younger man. For the first time I became aware that the walk-in vault door stood ajar. He stepped in, emerging a moment later carrying a black catalog case. He hefted it onto his green desk blotter and popped the latches, tilting it for me to peek inside.
I inched forward and took a look. Neat rows of bundled legal tender, bank-banded, all new hundred
s. Kane slipped the paper band off one stack as though he were undressing a woman and let me handle the currency to prove it was real. Benjamin Franklin gave me his Mona Lisa smile. More of a pursed-lipped smirk, actually. A hundred Ben Franklin clones in that one stack alone—ten thousand dollars—in my hand. Their eyes followed me as I riffled the bills; the serial numbers danced and changed. Not sequential. Random. Untraceable.
I handed the back to him, exhilarated yet intimidated by the powdery stiff texture of new currency. He crumpled the band, replaced the loose bundle in the case, closed the lid, and snapped the latches shut. “Why don’t you try lifting it and carrying it around for a while yourself?” Kane offered. “It’s not every day a man has the opportunity to lug a suitcase with more cash in it than he’s earned in—what? Your whole life up until now, Ricky?”
Kane insisted until I did just that: hoisted the case off the desk and schlepped it around his office in a circle, like a medicine man carrying a totem. It weighed about as much as a small car battery. Finally I handed it back to him. “I don’t know what to say,” I said, shrugging off the weight of the case and dropping into one of the winged backs.
“That’s your problem, Ricky. You never know what to say. Say ‘yes,’ damn it! This firm will handle your divorce, strictly as a professional courtesy. Benoit’s firm can take care of Sandra’s end. All you have to do is convince her to waive any and all claims to a property settlement—or maintenance—in lieu of a single, million-dollar cash payment to you as nominal trustee. That and get her the hell out of Dodge—permanently—before her condition becomes an embarrassment to Kirk.”
“No judge would ever approve it,” I protested. “It’s a contract of adhesion. Fraud on its face.”
“Jerry O’Byrne still owes me a few favors.”
“You’ve got this all worked out, don’t you? But you’re forgetting one thing: I don’t want a divorce. I’m happily married.”
“That’s not what John Diaz’s been telling me lately.” Kane circled around his desk and stood over me. I rose awkwardly. He offered a hand. After I’d taken his—the first time we’d shaken hands since the job interview—I drew back a new hundred. He had palmed it a moment ago before replacing the stack.
“A little earnest money, just for thinking it over.”
“Mommy called me the B word.” Tearful with the news, Anastasia met me at the kitchen door when I returned home after six-thirty. I found the others huddled in their rooms, unnaturally owl-eyed and quiet—the way I’d seen them behave before whenever an intimidating stranger came to call.
No cooking smells, no dinner preparation underway at all, and no homework spread out on the kitchen table. All the shop lights had been left burning after hours. I approached down the corridor. Even the taciturn saints seemed apprehensive. A guilty unease permeated the air—the ozone calm between lightning discharges at the height of an electrical storm.
Diane reclined on a puce velvet Victorian fainting couch in the salon, her expression that of a predator lying in wait. Her long blond hair cascaded over milk-white shoulders bared by a form-fitting, sleeveless red knit top. I was more interested in the plunging V-neckline. My eyes slithered down to her straining cleavage. Then I saw it: Sandra’s Cultus Sororitas medallion, its live coal rubies glowing like a branding iron, suspended around her fair neck as though it had belonged there all along. Something in her eyes told me she knew everything.
“Where’d you find that?” I asked.
“Your secret lovers Janis and Sandra—how do you suppose they’ll react to the news about your dead whore?” She said it calmly, as one might choose a menu item in a restaurant.
“Diane, I—”
“You had your head between Mad’s legs in a parked car. You pissed in Janis’s mouth that same night in her shower stall. You had anal sex with Sandra right there in your office. Stop me if I should happen to misstate anything, won’t you?”
“I don’t know what’s come over me lately,” I began, staring at her feet. Even they were beautiful. “I’ve made a few mistakes—”
“Mistakes? Is that what you call fly-by-night sex with the woman I thought was my friend, the woman I took into our formerly happy home? The woman who now thinks she’s carrying your bastard child? Well, you can have her and her bastard. I’ll throw in our four brats too, since you seem to like kids so goddamn much. Let you and her cook for them, clean up after them, wash and fold their dirty laundry, and wipe their dirty asses!”
“Diane—”
“Fuck you.”
“It’s the medallion, Diane. It’s making you do crazy things, putting insane ideas in your head. It carries a curse.”
She rose only then from her recumbent posture. As she drew nearer, I saw her mouth contort. I thought she might cry, but when she reached hugging and consoling distance, she spat in my face. I felt her saliva run down my cheek like a warm caress until it pooled in my collar and grew cold there. Her face, nose-to-nose with mine, challenged me. I backed up a step, reflexively glancing aside to check whether the drapes were closed against nosy neighbors or late-coming customers drawn by the shop lights. That was all the opening Diane needed to start pummeling me with her fists, gnashing her teeth, panting with the effort. I raised my arms in front of me and crossed my forearms against the blows. It had the same effect as holding a crucifix up to a vampire; she recoiled and covered her eyes with one palm.
I’d already taken too many Crankenstein breaks to count; for some reason I flashed on that night with Cheryl. The whole scene—the spitting, the recriminations, the talking dirty, even the blows—turned me on again. I reached out, grasped Diane’s top with both hands and yanked it down.
There was no brand of Lucifer to be seen.
She primped, waggling her bare breasts at me. “I think I’ll keep my new necklace.” She then gave me the finger, as casually as that. “It’s you I don’t think I’ll keep!”
I drove north of town until I sighted the Sphinx Lounge unnaturally lighting up the horizon ahead. It was early enough that the place wasn’t crowded yet. I took a seat far left ringside, by the stairs leading to the stage, and ordered a double Chivas on the rocks. The waitress—a Babylonian number with a truck driver’s face, steel mill shoulders, and breasts like dirigibles—told me I’d been comped the drink. I twisted around to the back bar and saw Ramses Ware seated there next to the waitress station, his shades pointed in my direction. I raised my glass to him in acknowledgment; my hand shook so badly I spilled a few drops down my arm. Ramses said something to the bartender, pushed off, and started his way over. I managed to lower my drink back down to the tabletop, then bend and sip generously from it like a skid row rummy, before he pulled up a chair next to mine.
“Thank you,” I croaked. He said nothing—didn’t even smile.
“Little trouble at home,” I volunteered, trying to make conversation. “You know. Women.” Still nothing. I affected a laugh. “So, what time the show start?”
“Hey, man,” Ramses said, his voice soft and commanding. “Tell your friends it weren’t me. I never had no bone to pick with the unfortunate victim, know what I’m sayin’?”
“Oh, hey, I don’t think Diaz thinks that. I don’t believe he’s even considering that. I mean—” But Ware was already headed back to the bar.
“Tell him for me,” he called back without turning around.
The calming effect of the premium liquor coursed through me. This time I was able to handle the rocks glass like a gentleman. Even though I signaled the waitress for another one of the same, she still lugged her blue-collar tits down the full length of the theater aisle to take my order tableside. I laid the new hundred—Kane’s earnest money—on the table and told her to keep them coming and to let me know when that ran out. She snatched up the bill and stuffed it snugly into her steel-belted lame belly dancer’s halter.
“Wish I’d thought to tuck it in there myself,” I told her.
“Finish that drink, hon, and maybe I’ll let you have
a try,” she lilted with an accent that said West Granite City via Dover, Tennessee.
I sucked down one scotch after another and watched the place fill up. Every off-duty cop in the place made me think of Diaz. Finally the lights dimmed and the show began. My waitress took her turn up there with all the others and showed me and everyone else what she had under that halter besides Ben Franklin.
If every man reminded me of Diaz that night, every woman reminded me of Diane. Diane shooing the children from our bedroom; Diane working out on the Stairmaster; Diane working out under me—her pale blue eyes gazing into mine—showing me the face of paradise.
The paradise face. I called my waitress over.
“You got a mirror with a straight edge?”
She looked left and right, alarmed. “Uh, we don’t allow that stuff in here, hon. Now, I got my break coming up. If you and me was to step outside to the parking lot, maybe take a little drive—”
St. Agnes' Eve Page 23