by Mike Farris
“And my sources tell me his laptop was purged. Like you said before, someone’s mopping up.”
*
From the time I stepped off the elevator until I entered my office, I saw three- and four-person cliques speaking in hushed or animated tones. Ellie greeted me with my phone messages then followed me into my office.
“How’s Meg taking it?” she asked.
“I haven’t talked to her yet this morning.”
“You tell her that none of this is her fault.”
“I will.”
She turned to leave.
“Ellie?”
She looked back at me.
“Thanks for all your support.”
She smiled and I noticed tears in her eyes. “Maybe this will all end, now,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
She left and I flipped through my messages, but my mind was on what she had said. Was the end really in sight? Meg still had her lawsuit pending against the firm, but Tripp had always been the real target. Maybe now the firm would entertain serious settlement discussions. The court had ordered mediation to be completed by Christmas, and Robin had been trying to schedule it for the week before. Tripp had been the hold-up, but with his death, maybe the firm would schedule it and resolve the matter. What a Christmas present for Meg.
I went to the door and closed it, then returned to my desk and called her.
“Hey,” I said when she answered. “It’s me.”
“Hey.”
“You doing okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“How about…you know?”
“It bothers me a little bit.”
“What bothers you?” I asked.
“Mostly that I’m not sorry. I feel like I should be…the man is dead, and he left behind a family…but I just can’t make myself feel sorry.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Does that make me a bad person?”
“He got you fired twice, and he tried to kill you. I don’t think anyone would blame you if you didn’t feel sorry.”
“I wish you were here.”
“I’ll come by after work. Maybe take you out to eat. That sound okay?”
“Somewhere where I can get soft food, like pasta.”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too.”
Just as I hung up the phone, the door burst open and Alvin flew in. He seemed frantic, chewing vigorously on his cigar. He plowed up to my desk.
“Now see what you’ve done?” he said.
I stood. “He did it to himself.”
“If you’d left well enough alone—”
“Sooner or later he would have gone down in flames and taken us with him.”
“But—”
“And he hurt a good lawyer in the process. I’m not just talking about physically, though that’s something I can never forgive. But he’s done professional damage to Meg that she may never overcome. And this firm…specifically you and the other members of the Management Committee…helped him do it. I hold this firm, as a whole, just as responsible as I do Tripp. And I want to know what we’re going to do about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to settle that lawsuit.”
“And pay her how much?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Whatever it takes. You don’t want that case going to trial. You don’t want everything that Tripp did, and you supported, to come out. Quite frankly, you don’t even want my deposition to be taken.”
“Is it scheduled yet?”
“I’ve given Robin Napoli dates in the next two weeks when I’m available.”
“And you’d do it?” he asked, chomping on his cigar. “You’d testify against your own firm?”
“The truth is the truth, and the truth hurts this firm. It substantiates everything Meg said. Tripp altered billing records, destroyed others. He ordered up unnecessary work, he defrauded his clients out of tens of thousands of dollars, he destroyed memos from files, and committed malpractice…and the firm helped him at every turn. That’s what I know, and that’s how I’ll testify.”
Alvin stared at me, open-mouthed, losing his cigar in the process. “That’s treason,” he said.
“Settle the lawsuit, Alvin.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Settle the lawsuit.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Most of the firm gathered two days later for Tripp’s funeral at a large cemetery in north Dallas. The weather turned out nice, with sunshine and temperatures in the fifties. Robin and I opted to attend only the graveside service, skipping the memorial service. I wasn’t in a mood to hear Tripp eulogized as a great lawyer and a wonderful father and husband.
We stood near the back as the minister preached Tripp’s last farewell. Alvin, Matt, Steve, and Oscar stood together across the gravesite from us, dressed appropriately in dark suits and wearing somber looks. I watched them carefully, studying their faces.
When the minister finished and the crowd started to break up, I saw Steve McGinnis walking my way, ashen-faced.
“Can you give me a minute?” I said to Robin.
“Sure.”
She walked away a few steps as Steve reached me. “This is getting out of hand,” he said.
“It got out of hand a long time ago.”
“I know.”
“This has got to stop, Steve. I gave you every chance, but you didn’t do anything. If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself, but I want to know what happened to Meg and Robin.”
“If Tripp did anything…and I’m not saying he did…he did it on his own.”
“Did he have any reason to think he had the committee’s blessing?”
Steve shook his head violently, like a dog shaking a toy. “No. No. Nothing like that. Not from me.”
“You know I’ve been subpoenaed to testify at a federal grand jury tomorrow. I figure now’s as good a time as any for the firm to start mitigating its damages.”
“How?”
“Pay Meg whatever it takes to settle her case. Believe me, you don’t want it going to trial.”
*
After the funeral, I took Robin back to her office then swung by her house. Meg was waiting, her things already packed and ready to go. She was making remarkable progress. The nerve damage wasn’t going to be permanent after all, and her therapist was greatly encouraged by the progress she had made. He was confident that, in time, she would be able to walk without crutches or a cane. Whether she would ever play tennis competitively again was still an open question, but Meg seemed content to worry about that later. I didn’t know whether to attribute her improvement to hard work, the surgeon’s skill, or answers to prayer. I was willing to accept any, or a combination, of those reasons.
I was finally able to enjoy our relationship without constant introspection screwing up the pleasure of each moment. No more wondering whether I was imposing myself on her time. No more wondering whether she felt the same way I did. I loved her and she loved me, and I no longer cared who knew.
From Robin’s, we drove to Meg’s apartment. I helped her up the stairs to her bedroom, an exercise that satisfied us both that, no matter how much progress she had made to date, she still wasn’t ready to return to her apartment alone. She gathered the additional things she needed, mostly clothes and a few personal items, which I put in a suitcase and carried to the car. When I got back upstairs, she was still looking around her apartment.
“I miss my cats,” she said. “Mom says she thinks they miss me, too.”
“Does she spoil them like you do?”
“Oh, yeah. Grandma and Grandpa Kelly make me look like the Wicked Witch of the West. I just hope that when I get them back, they’re not totally out of control.”
I laughed. “When you get them back, you’ll spoil them even worse than your folks are.”
“Probably. They’ll be happy to see their mama, even though they like staying with the grandparents. They’ve got a big hous
e to run around out in the country.”
“Does your mom know she’s the grandmother to a bunch of cats?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Doesn’t she think she’s too young to be a grandmother?”
“It’s different with cats.”
“Oh, it’s different, all right.”
I helped Meg back down the stairs and we drove to Forney. Rufus was happy to see Meg, woofing his approval of her moving in as a houseguest. He and Meg had become big buddies. I think he filled, in part, the longing Meg felt for her cats. And besides, Rufus was just pretty darn lovable. For that matter, so was Meg.
If we could just get through the Grand Jury the next day—Meg had been subpoenaed to follow my testimony—and get her lawsuit with the firm resolved, maybe we could settle down to a normal relationship. At least I hoped so.
I put on coffee, then Meg and I retired to the den. I built a fire in the fireplace while Rufus sprawled contentedly on the rug in front of the hearth. Heavy breathing told me he was already asleep by the time Meg and I sat down. I took Meg’s crutches and laid them lengthwise behind the couch, which faced the fireplace.
I turned Meg’s back toward me and began massaging her shoulders. She spun around and swung her legs up on the couch, using her hands to pull up her left leg, and draped them across mine. I put my hands on her thighs and began squeezing, gingerly so as not to hurt her.
“You’ve got to do better than that,” she said, laughing. “I can barely feel it.”
I squeezed harder, amazed at how soft her legs felt, even through her thick jeans. The once firmly muscled lower limbs had atrophied. I knew it would take time and hours of torturous work to build them back up.
“I still can’t feel your hands very well,” she said.
“Your jeans are too thick.”
She smiled. With a great show of flair, she unsnapped her jeans, then unzipped them. I stopped my hands and watched. She shifted her hips upward and pushed her jeans to mid-thigh.
“I’ll need help from there,” she said.
I pulled them to her ankles. She wore pink, high-cut bikini briefs. She grabbed my hands and put them on her thighs. Her legs felt warm. I began squeezing again, working my thumbs around to her inner thighs.
“You’re not my boss anymore,” she said. “So don’t suddenly stop and leave just when you’re getting to the good parts.”
She closed her eyes again.
Chapter Fifty-Three
I had worried that Rufus wouldn’t take kindly to our new sleeping arrangement, but he welcomed Meg into our bed as graciously as I did. In fact, with a little bit of nothing, I could get jealous of him since he insisted on burrowing between us to sleep. As we went to bed that night, I lay on my stomach. Meg turned partially on her side, pressing against me with her hand on my back, gently stroking and rubbing my bare skin. Her fingers trickled across three vertical scars that started just above my waist and ran down onto my butt.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Let’s just say it’s not a good idea to moon a sleeping German shepherd on a dare. Especially if the dog’s a light sleeper.”
She started laughing. “And you were how old?”
“Thirteen.”
“So that’s why Robin calls you Scratch.”
“Funny, isn’t she?”
She fell silent after that, wondering, I’m sure, how well Robin and I really knew each other. Well enough for Robin to know about scratches on my butt.
Rufus burrowed in about then, forcing us apart like the legs on a V. He stretched out between our hips then climbed higher, trying to wedge himself between us. We both drew the line at that before drifting off to sleep.
*
Rufus woke first, then whimpered, waking me. I looked at the clock—2:16 a.m. I lay on my stomach, Meg still pressed against me as if neither of us had moved. I closed my eyes and listened but heard nothing except the wind outside and the usual nighttime creaking of the house. And Rufus’s whimpering.
After a few minutes, a soft growl rumbled deep in Rufus’s throat. He got to his feet and stood at attention, looking down the hallway. I stroked his flank. His haunches were taut, all aquiver.
“What is it, Rufe?” I whispered.
He growled softly, barely loud enough to hear.
“What is it, Rufe?”
He walked to the end of the bed, his nose sniffing the air. I lifted Meg’s arm off my chest and sat up. I kept my hand on Rufus’s flank, which still quivered.
“Let’s go see what it is, boy.”
Rufus jumped off the bed and strutted out the doorway. Although I wore gym shorts and nothing more, and the air was cold—the heat turned low for the night—I still felt hot all over as I got out from under the covers. Adrenaline rushed through me on a river of fear. Meg stirred.
“Bay,” she murmured. “What is it?”
“Shhh.”
She got up on an elbow and looked my way.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“Rufus thinks he’s heard something.”
From somewhere deep in the house, Rufus growled again. This time it was a louder, more guttural sound. A threatening growl.
I picked up the phone and put it to my ear.
Nothing.
I threw it on the bed.
“What’s wrong?” Meg asked. Even in her hoarse whisper, I heard the beginnings of panic. I tried to stay calm.
“The phone’s dead.”
I got on my knees and felt under the bed until my hands trailed across the handle of an aluminum baseball bat. I didn’t believe in guns in the house, but I had hit seventeen home runs my senior year in high school. A baseball bat was my weapon of choice. I must have looked like a lunatic to Meg, standing in the dark like a half-naked Mighty Casey.
“Where’s your cell phone?” Meg asked.
“In the car.”
I looked into her face. Just enough moonlight fed through the mini-blinds to catch the glisten of fear in her eye.
“Everything’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
We heard Rufus bark then heard the sounds of his toenails tick-tacking fast across hardwood. He was running. Then came another growl, a vicious sound I had never heard from Rufus before.
Then a yelp that was more of a shriek. The banshee cry cut through the stillness then went silent.
“Bay!” Meg whispered.
“Get dressed,” I said. “Get your coat.”
I dropped the bat on the bed and ran to the door. I closed it then grabbed the edge of my huge armoire. I shoved it across the floor as quickly as I could. Because of the carpet, I had to work it over, moving first one corner then another. After what seemed like five minutes—but surely was only one—I had the armoire positioned in front of the door.
When I looked back, Meg had already thrown on her jeans and a flannel shirt.
Suddenly another sound exploded through the calm of the night. A bullet ripped into the door, slamming through the armoire and out the front before embedding itself in the wall just behind Meg.
She screamed and fell to the floor.
Two more shots followed.
I grabbed the curtains and mini-blinds in front of the window that faced the front yard and yanked them down. I gripped the bat and swung, shattering the window, the frame, and the storm window on the outside. I swung again then used the end of the bat to clean the jagged pieces of glass from around the edges.
Meg crawled to where I stood. She had just reached me when we heard someone trying to force the door open. The armoire was doing its job well.
I picked Meg up and helped her through the window. She hadn’t brought her crutches, so I gave her the bat to lean on. She cried out as she stepped barefoot onto broken glass in the flowerbed. I came out right behind her, stepping in the same glass, but too numb and scared to feel it.
Though the temperature had been in the fifties for Tripp’s funeral that day, a good old Texas blue norther had blown through that
night. I found myself clad only in gym shorts facing twenty degrees and a twenty-five-mile-an-hour wind. But I was burning up, adrenaline still boiling my body.
“What do we do, Bay?” Meg said
“Next door. Hold on to the bat.”
I picked Meg up and carried her. Still not feeling any pain from the cuts in my feet, I hustled across the half-acre side yard that separated my house from Jack and Peggy Horner’s next door. I had just hit the sidewalk to their front porch when something caught my eye. Squinting, I saw a car parked two houses down on a street that seldom had parked cars. In the faint light of the moon and floodlights from the house it was parked in front of, it looked both familiar and out of place.
I set Meg on the front porch then rang the doorbell over and over, while at the same time banging on the front door.
“Jack and Peggy,” I said to Meg. “Tell ’em who you are and to call the police.”
Leaving her there, I took the bat and cut across the next two yards until I could tell more about the car. I hadn’t seen it from my house since my street curved around to the left, but it had just been visible from the Horners’. I approached the car, twin to Tripp Malloy’s Mercedes, and studied it. I knew that car.
I stepped to the driver’s side then peered down the street toward my house. When I didn’t see anyone, I assumed a batting stance. Despite the cold, perspiration bathed my bare torso. My hands tightly gripped the bat handle, the fat end poised above my shoulder. I swung for the fences, blowing out the driver’s side window. It felt good.
I shuffled in the broken glass, leaving another bloody track from my bare feet. I swung again. My breath escaped in a puff of smoke and hung in the air. The bat hammered the driver’s door of the Mercedes, the crunch of metal on metal testifying to the force.
I shuffled to the back door and again assumed a batter’s stance. A grunt, a puff of breath, and I stepped forward, glass crunching beneath my feet, and swung. The bat tore into a window.
Another grunt.
Another puff of air.
Another swing.
Metal on metal, just below the broken window.
Methodically, I worked my way around the car, determined to make it undriveable, or at least to guarantee a police stop for the driver. I had just reached the rear of the car, eyes sighted on the taillights, when I heard a sound behind me—leather sole on broken glass. I straightened and spun around to face a man dressed in black, pointing a gun at me. I noticed blood, just visible in the moonlight, covering the glove on his gun hand. Rufus’s, I supposed.