Finnegan's Week (20 page)

“Try it,” Willis Ross said. “The best rum money can buy.”

The lawyer removed his white floppy hat and sat on a locker in the shade.

His bald scalp looked even worse than the last time Jules had seen it. The lawyer wore hats now, and ladled on the sunscreen, but it was too late. Crusty patches of white mingled with fiery splotches of red. The cumulative effect of all those years of harsh California sun had done its worst. His flesh was alive with skin cancers from the neck up. Even his hands and forearms were badly scarred from surgeries.

The lawyer said, “You still drive that yellow Miata, don'tcha, Jules? I been thinking about buying one for a …
friend
. She thinks they're cute.”

“Yeah,” Jules said. “I had an auto security system installed in mine. It arms and disarms by remote control. It can even unlock the door. And get this: It can start the engine from a distance of three hundred feet! That way your car's cooled off or warmed up before you get in it. That system set me back a thousand bucks.”

“Isn't that overkill for a cheap little car?”

“Maybe,” Jules said, “but I won't be driving a cheap little car much longer. I'll be glad to show it to your friend if she's interested.” Then he thought:
cheap
car. The
nouveau
shyster!

After the first rum, Jules didn't have any trouble convincing himself to have another. When they were working on the second, Jules said, “I'm getting nearer to close-of-escrow, and when I close, I'll be looking for that spot I told you about.”

“What spot?”

“The topless club, remember? With the most beautiful girls this town's ever seen?”

“Oh yeah,” Willis Ross said, smacking his lips when he licked off the rum. “You gonna sell memberships like the place down on Midway?”

“That might be one way to set things up,” Jules said. “It keeps out the riffraff. I might decide to take a few investors, the
right
people, of course. Interested?”

“I'm interested in being a member,” the lawyer said.

“You'll get membership-card number one,” Jules said. “Can I ask you a couple questions about the law?”

“For membership number one? Fire away.”

“Do you know anything about environmental law? You know, for dumping hazardous waste, that sort of thing?”

“Probably not as much as you know,” the lawyer said. “It's a new field. There really isn't much case law out there when it comes to environmental crimes.”

“You know about the penalties, don't you? Like, a hundred grand a
day
and prison time for certain kinds of violations.”

“It can top two hundred thousand a day,” the lawyer said. “And there's a provision for some big jail time. Why do you ask? I hope you're not in trouble?”

“No, no,” Jules said. “It's just that this guy that's buying my business, he's having some problems. I'm scared to death something could happen to him and make me lose my deal.”

“What problems?”

“Well, it seems that his employees might've dumped a load of very hazardous waste when they should've properly disposed of it. And somebody got sick from it.
Very
sick.”

Before Jules could continue, Lou Ross came flouncing along the dock shouting, “Ahoy, Jules!”

Jules didn't like her but she liked him and she'd made it clear the first night they'd met at the ball in La Jolla. Every time he'd danced with her she'd done more pelvic thrusts than Michael Jackson in concert. But Lou Ross was getting on, and multiple face-lifts hadn't worked, not as far as Jules was concerned. Her body was okay for her age, but unless she had more to offer by way of business, he wasn't interested.

Every time Jules saw her at the club she never missed the opportunity to tell him when Willis was going on a fishing trip. Once she'd left a message at Green Earth saying she'd be having lunch at the club and begged him to be her guest. He'd declined, claiming that he had to go to L.A. to negotiate the purchase of two new bobtails. Still, he didn't want to shut the door because her husband was important. And at this crucial time in Jules's business life, Willis Ross could become
very
important, if any of Jules's worst fears were realized.

He held out his hand to help Lou Ross aboard. She was wearing a glittery T-top decorated with red, white, and blue sequins that formed a small American flag and a large elephant. Her tinted henna hair said hot rollers and hairdressers, and she was ten pounds past looking good in red stirrup pants.

“It's for George Bush,” she explained, indicating the T-shirt. “The Republican elephant? I had it made special when we met Mrs. Bush at the fund-raiser. You like?”

She thrust out her chest when she said it, and he had to admit she had pretty nice hooters. His eyes told her that, and she smiled, brushing the back of her hand against his fanny when she walked by him to the saloon.

“About time,” her husband complained. “I can't just sit at the guest dock all day.”

“Tut tut,” she said. “Old grump wants his baby to look nice, doesn't he?”

Lou Ross turned and winked at Jules, then disappeared inside the saloon to pour herself a generous noontime shot of rum on the rocks.

“It's so good to see you, Jules,” she said, when she returned. “You
are
coming with us, aren't you?”

Jules looked at Willis Ross and said, “Well, I hadn't planned on a boat ride.”

“Might as well,” the lawyer said. “We can talk up on the fly bridge after we get out to the ocean.”

“The fly bridge is his refuge from women,” Lou Ross said, when her husband walked forward to untie the bow line.

“So glad you're here, Jules,” she said. “Hurry and talk business, then come on down so we can have a nice chin-wag.”

“Sure,” Jules said, then started aft to untie the stern line. She put her hand on his bottom and boosted him when he hopped onto the dock.

Jules had the feeling he'd be paying one way or another for his free legal advice, but that's how things work, he always said. Nothing was ever free, not advice, not even love, if there really
was
such a thing. Life was just one big whorehouse.

After Willis Ross eased the big boat out of the marina and they were powering slowly through the channel, Jules took a seat in the fighting chair, lifting his face to the sun. The lawyer's steering station was high up on the fly bridge, so the wind, the rush of water, the growl of the twin diesels, all made it impossible for Willis Ross to hear anything but shouts from where Jules sat on the open deck.

In a few minutes, Lou Ross appeared wearing a wide-brimmed straw sun hat with a scarlet band. She handed Jules a long-billed fishing hat, along with a generous glass of rum.

“Put it on, handsome,” she said. “We don't want skin cancers on
that
baby face, do we?”

Jules usually didn't mind flirtations with older women. In fact, he'd thrived on them. Two of the investors his father had accused him of bilking were older divorcees, both of whom Jules had had to serve sexually in order to get their six-figure investments in a shopping mall that went belly-up.

He put the hat on and said, “Do I look like Papa Hemingway?”

Lou Ross laughed and said, “He was a notorious womanizer, Jules. Is the resemblance coincidental?”

Jules just grinned, and Lou Ross sashayed back into the saloon causing Jules to think: She's
way
past stretch pants.

He put his feet up on the gunwales while they cruised out the channel, passing a Sturgeon-class submarine being demagnetized at the degaussing pier on Point Loma's lee side. There was a Los Angeles-class nuclear sub in one of the huge dry docks, the same dry dock that caused a lot of jokes during the epic visit of the Soviet fleet in 1990. The dry dock had been completely blanketed to prevent the Soviets from taking a peek. This, when every Sunday of the year there were thousands of camera bugs in everything from cruise ships to rubber dinghies sailing past the dry docks, snapping away like at high school graduation.

When the Bertram rounded the lighthouse at Point Loma, Willis Ross pointed the boat out to sea in order to clear the vast kelp beds that every local yachtsman avoided. He got her cruising at thirty knots, and the engines almost obliterated Lou Ross's voice when she said to Jules, “Why don't you have lunch with me later this week?”

“I'd love to, Lou,” he said, “but I'm in the process of trying to sell my business and … you know how it is.”

“You're getting out of that dreadful toxic waste thing? Good for you! Are you gonna retire?”

“I'd like to,” he said, smiling. “But I'm barely forty. I'm afraid I have a lotta years to work.”

“Barely forty,” she said, primping at her blowing hair, for fear the wind might reveal the cosmetic surgery scars. “You
are
a baby, aren't you?”

“Maybe I need a mommy,” Jules said.

“Maybe you do,” she said peering coyly over the lip of the glass. “Come on, let's go inside before the skipper-from-hell opens up both engines.”

Willis Ross steered the motor yacht northwest after they'd cleared the kelp. The seas were very calm, permitting him to cruise at thirty-eight knots without buffeting the passengers below.

The main saloon had air-conditioning, an elaborate sound system and a video entertainment center. The saloon was cabineted, draped and mirrored. Lou Ross stretched out on a peach settee and leaned her elbow on plum and persimmon pillows. Jules sat across the saloon in a barrel-backed chair done in tangerine and banana. When Lou Ross had replaced the factory decor everybody said she now had the world's most expensive floating fruit salad.

“I don't usually drink like this so early in the day,” she said.

“Of course not. Neither do I.”

“I think it's because you're here,” she said.

“Oh?”

“You make me feel …”

“What?”

“Dangerous.”

“I bet you
are
dangerous,” he said, taking her empty glass and refilling it.

When he handed the drink to her, she took it
and
his hand, saying, “And naughty. Jules, you always make me feel naughty and young.”

“You are …”

“Stop that,” she said. “You know very well that I'm, well,
several
years older than you.”

“Oh, I don't know about several,” he said.

“Willis is going to Cabo San Lucas on a fishing trip next Thursday. He'll be gone for ten days.”

“You're not going with him?”

“Are you crazy? I wouldn't spend more than a day on any boat smaller than the
QE Two
.”

“What're you going to do for ten days?” He freshened his drink and sat down next to her on the settee.

“That depends,” she said, “on several things.”

He inched his hand closer to hers and said, “Such as?”

“Whether or not I'll be alone. What're you doing then?”

“Tying up the loose ends at my office.”

“If a few loose ends could wait, you might like to consider a trip to New York. I've got some good theater tickets, and a girlfriend I'd invited can't come. I don't wanna go alone. Won't cost you a dime. Naturally, we don't want Willis to know about it.”

“How many days?”

“Four. We can stay longer if you like. They take care of repeat clients at the Carlyle.”

“Is that the hotel the Kennedys always stayed at?”

“Uh huh.”

“Where Bobby Short sings in the café?”

“Uh huh, you've seen the Woody Allen movie. Interested?”

Jules was thinking about a lot of things. He did have plenty of work to do before the escrow closed, but maybe it could wait. There might be opportunity here. It was rumored that after Lou Ross's father died, she'd inherited enough real and personal property to be worth
twice
as much as her husband, and he was worth a bundle. There was no telling where this could lead.

And then he studied her. She was showing him a provocative boozy smile. With the rum hot in his belly, he thought she really wasn't too bad. He'd slept with a lot worse in his time, but only when it was advantageous to do so. He could manage Lou Ross quite nicely. Yeah, she wasn't all
that
old, Jules was convincing himself.

“Okay, but I think you should be forewarned: I have a morbid fear of flying …
coach
.”

“First-class all the way. And I wanna see you tonight, Jules.” It wasn't an invitation, it was a command.

“Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight.”

“Where? Why tonight?”

“At my condo. And tonight because Willis is going to a boring retirement party for a superior court judge.”

“But is it wise if I come to your house?”

“I didn't say to our house. I said come to my condo. I bought it for an investment after my father died. It's
mine
, not
ours
.”

“Where is it?”

“At the Meridian. Ever been there?”

“I've been
by
there a number of times, of course.”

“Then you'll enjoy seeing it from the inside,” she said. “Twenty-seven floors of good views and fabulous views. Mine's fabulous. On the bay side, of course. It's a getaway nest. Willis hates it. I love it. I have everything I want there, including lots of service and lots of protection. You could easily get used to it, Jules, if you're like me.”

“I better go up topside and talk to Willis,” Jules said. “He'll wonder what's happened to me.”

“Eight o'clock, Jules,” she said. “I'll have something for us. A light supper, maybe.”

“Sounds perfect,” Jules said.

When he climbed up to the fly bridge, he brought a fresh drink for Willis Ross. The lawyer looked surprised, as though he'd forgotten that Jules was aboard. As though he'd forgotten that anyone was aboard. Willis Ross was in his element, and Jules had no doubt that when the lawyer retired he'd set foot on land only when he had to.