The Touch of Treason (14 page)

“Get going.”

Ed looked around the
room
for his jacket. The apartment was sure a mess. He slipped the jacket on and Cooper held the handcuffs out.

“Do we need to do that?”

“Just shut up,” Cooper said. He hated the idea of a lawyer who made the law come to him.

CHAPTER NINE

Thomassy got to his office a bit out of breath, wanting to be there before Cooper arrived with Ed Porter. Alice held up a warning hand.

Alice, though “comfortably married” for six years now, still occasionally had the fantasy about her boss lifting the sheet and sliding in beside her, touching her waist with the tips of his fingers. His hand would never move up to her breast, or down to her thighs, just stay safely in the isthmus between erogenous zones, her soul longing for his fingers to move down or up. About six months after her marriage, she’d gone to a counselor because of that recurrent fantasy, and he’d said, “Why don’t you find employment somewhere else now that you’re married?” She’d wanted the fantasy explained, given some harmless excuse, not eliminated. Working elsewhere wouldn’t have stopped her thinking, would it? She hadn’t gone back to the counselor. She was Thomassy’s proximate woman, more than any other woman, even when there was a closed door between them. And if her mind set was right, she could feel his emanations through the door. Thomassy might fire her, though he had no reason to, but she’d never quit.

Alice’s warning hand having stopped Thomassy in his tracks, she said, trying to keep her voice neutral, “She’s in there.”

“She who?”

“She who is right,” Alice said, her voice losing its grip on neutral.

“I forgot to tell you Miss Widmer was dropping by,” Thomassy said.

“I’ll bet.”

The truth was that he had forgotten.

Francine was sitting behind his desk, in his chair. Thomassy closed the door. He didn’t want to lose a good secretary.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said.

She waved away his apology. “Why do you keep my picture face down?”

On the credenza next to the desk was her swan-neck photograph, as if she was turning away from the camera and got caught at the precise angle that made her seem what she was, fleet yet catchable.

“I’m glad you could drop in, Francine. Got a couple of semistupid questions for you.”

“You haven’t answered me. Why face down?”

Thomassy sighed. “In this office I try to find out as much as I can about my clients. I don’t want them finding out much about me.”

“You mean you want to be thought by female clients to be available.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I was a female client. You just lied to me, George. Alice turns my picture face down.”

Thomassy’s smile flickered for a moment. She’d guessed a half truth. Alice had turned the picture down the first time. She claimed she’d been dusting around and forgot to raise it again. Men, he thought, fought about women with their antlers. Women scratched.

“Before you ask me anything, counselor, I have three questions to ask you.”

Oh well, he thought, making himself comfortable in the chair he reserved for visitors, if Cooper comes, Cooper will wait.

Francine stretched her legs, her body seeming to elongate itself in his chair. “You’re staring,” she said.

“I am a student of your body.”

“Don’t distract me,” she said.

“I could say the same.”

“Enough. George, would you take on the case of an ordinary seaman who’d—”

“Is this a hypothetical case?”

“I’m not saying. Yet.”

“Go ahead.”

“This seaman,” she said, “jumped a ship from one of the Warsaw Pact countries and asked for asylum under the following conditions. He told the immigration authorities he was bored with socialism, and they found that insufficient reason to accept him as a political refugee and risk a rumble.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing I’m going to tell you before you answer. Obviously he doesn’t have any money so all you’d get was a promise to pay something out of his future wages if he stayed. Would you take his case?”

“Why did he give a frivolous reason?”

“Boredom frivolous? George! Boredom is one of the great instigators of migration, domestic and international.” She sat up straight in his chair. “Come on risk it, gamble.”

“How?”

“By answering truthfully.”

“I’d take him on.”

“Based on?”

“Anybody who votes with his feet has got guts. Anybody with guts ought to be defended. Are you fronting for a prospective client or testing me?”

Francine touched her long fingers together, forming an arch. He remembered her father doing that.

“Question two,” she said. “Presumably you’d defend an adolescent who killed a parent.”

“As a matter of fact I have. What are you getting at?”

“Would you defend a mother who killed her baby?”

He was silent.

“Is this hypothetical?”

Francine said nothing.

“I’d need to know a lot about the mother,” Thomassy said. “Her life. The circumstances.”

“How do you distinguish between the two cases, then?”

“Well, if you’ve read the books…”

“I’ve read the books.”

“I don’t mean law books. I mean Aeschylus, Freud. Killing a parent is like all killing, wrong, but it’s a not-unknown response to the relationship, held in check by most people. Killing a baby is not natural. Insanity cop-outs are not my dish.”

“If the baby had an incurable disease?”

“You’re loading it on, Francine.”

“If the baby weren’t born yet?”

“Look, this is turning into the kind of discussion I like to have after hours.”

“I’m trying to see if your brain is functioning and you’re copping out.”

“I’m asking for a postponement, Your Honoress.”

“You try calling a female judge that and you’ll get your brass balls tarnished.”

“I’ve got a client coming soon. You’re getting your questions in and I haven’t asked one yet.”

“I have one more before you get your turn.”

He held up a finger. “One,” he said.

“Don’t panic. My lease is up in less than two months. Do you think I should give up my apartment?”

“Have you found a place you like better?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Where?”

“On Allerton, a house set back from the street, occupied by a bachelor with lots of room to spare.”

Thomassy examined the fingernails of his left hand.

“Need a manicure?” Francine said.

“I’m thinking.”

“Once, on the spur of the moment, you invited me to move in. This isn’t spur of the moment, George. We’ve come a long way. Are you worried about what your cleaning lady will say if I move in? She’ll say she finds the house a lot neater.”

“You’re not pregnant?”

“No. And what the hell’s that got to do with it? Your cleaning lady do D&Cs on the side? You don’t like contracts, I’m not asking for one. I was just being practical. I’m there half the time I’m not at work. It’d save nearly five hundred a month. Just think of the vacations six thousand a year could buy. Please don’t just stand there, say something. Say you don’t want a roommate under any conditions.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what the hell is it? You waiting for a woman who’s two inches taller than I am and three points higher on the Richter scale? Look, forget it. This is your meeting. I didn’t mean to preempt it. What did you have in mind?”

Thomassy closed his eyes. He could handle the worst surprises in cross-examination, why was he tongue-tied now? And as he asked himself that question, he remembered his father pointing to a new brown-and-white filly he’d acquired that looked like she’d grow into a stallion instead of a mare.
What you see, Georgie,
his father had said,
is a horse you ride where she wants to go. Other horse, you give apple, piece sugar. Not this horse. This filly eats respect. Can’t buy respect in feed store. You think you handle horse like that, Georgie?

He had left Oswego thinking he could handle anything or anyone in or out of a witness chair, but nothing had prepared him for partnership with a woman who could sometimes churn him like a judge instead of allowing herself to be manipulated like a jury.
You can appeal from decisions easily, Thomassy, but not from this one.

“You were going to ask me some semistupid questions,” she prompted.

Was it the fact that she knew so damn many things he didn’t know?

“George, you’re drifting.”

That brought him back, unsteady, unready, but it was his turn. He could hear his stomach rumbling. Nerves. She was one case he wanted to win more than any other. She wasn’t a case. Was he incapable of risking sounding less bright than she was? If not with her, whom?

“I thought you were pressed for time,” she said.

“Question,” he said, a word to get started. “I need some litmus for this case I’m on. You’ve spent time with all those Third-World creeps at work. How do you tell the difference between the fuzzy-brained ones and the ones who squat when the bear tells them to?”

Francine was relieved. All that pressure building in him. “Try self-determination. Not straight out, just ease around to it and ask do they mean people who go elsewhere when they can’t vote at home. If they say only malcontents emigrate, you know you’re probably listening to a Russian ventriloquist. Or mention self-determination for the Puerto Ricans. That always gets the puppets because the damn Puerto Ricans vote to stay with us imperialists. That’s a giveaway word. Ask how Portuguese imperialism in Angola differs from Cuban imperialism in Angola. If they say the Cubans are just trying to help little old Angola’s economy, you know where you are. If they start on antinuke talk, ask them if they are opposed to war. If they insist they are opposed to nuclear weapons, ask about biochemical weapons. Gas. Lasers. You get to see the difference between a jerk and a party liner pretty fast. Why this lesson now? I thought you didn’t get into Kunstler’s kind of law?”

“I’m not. I’m defending a kid who’s supposed to be a whizz bang in Soviet studies. I just want to find out if I’m defending a kid for a cause. I don’t like causes.”

Alice buzzed on the intercom. “Detective Cooper is here,” she said. “And two others.”

“One in handcuffs?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

To Francine he said, “Thanks for the prepping. I wish I wasn’t so dumb about the things you know.”

“Would it make you feel better if I asked you how you can tell if a witness is lying?”

“I’ve got to see these people now.”

“When we talked you looked pale. Now you’ve got high color in your face. We have to talk some time about what makes your juices flow. Right now you have the look of a walking adrenaline pump.”

“What’s eating you?” he asked.

“I wish I could turn you on as quickly as clients do.”

She was gone.

*

In the anteroom, Francine stopped short when she saw Cooper, Ed Porter, and the uniformed cop. The one she was staring at was Ed Porter.

Thomassy came out of his office, saw Francine still there, wanted to say something to her, but the other three were seeing his agitation. So was Alice from behind her desk. He watched Francine close the outside door without a glance back at him. He heard her heels clatter on the stairs going down. He felt as helpless as a fifteen-year-old kid. Everything he had learned to outsmart opponents was useless up against Francine’s maddening advantages, the curves of her skin, the ultimate cove, and worst of all that female brain that despite his long bachelorhood was enticing him toward capture.

CHAPTER TEN

“Very attractive client you’ve got there,” Cooper said, jiggling his head toward the exit door.

Thomassy still wanted to run after her. The remedy was work. “Who’s your friend?” he asked Cooper.

“This is Detective Hoffman,” Cooper said. “I brought him along to help keep an eye on your client and to have a witness that you’re not bribing me for bringing your client here instead of you coming to the station house.”

“Much obliged,” Thomassy said, nodding at Hoffman.

Cooper handed Thomassy a piece of paper. “This is the name and badge number of the New York City patrolman who witnessed the arrest.”

Thomassy said, “Thanks. These walls are thin. I want to talk to the defendant in private. Why don’t you gentlemen have some coffee. Downstairs, three doors right, there’s a coffee shop. And would you mind removing Porter’s cuffs.”

Cooper said, “I’ll leave Detective Hoffman at the outside door.”

“Thanks,” Thomassy said. “That’ll make me feel real safe.”

*

Outside, Cooper said to Hoffman, “Come on, Hank, coffee time.”

The detective, addicted to coffee as are many policemen who spend so much of their lives waiting, said, “I thought I was supposed to guard the door.”