The Sirena Quest (3 page)

Chapter Four

Shortly after six the following evening, Lou headed down the hallway toward the main reception area. They'd filed the Donohue brief in the Court of Appeals a little over an hour ago.

At last
, he told himself with a mixture of relief and unease.

Coming down the hall in the opposite direction was Ron Perlow, one of the senior associates.

Lou smiled. “How'd the Carson deposition go?”

Perlow gave him the thumbs-up as he passed. “Pretty good, Iceman.”

Iceman
.

Lou shook his head with resignation.

He'd earned the nickname during his second year at the firm. Earned it on the final day of the Cunningham Industries trial—although “earned” might be too strong a word. The Lou Solomon at the end of that insane day thirteen years ago more closely resembled the stunned army private who receives a medal of honor for stumbling through the smoke and explosions on a blood-spattered battlefield.

He'd been the junior associate on the case—the grunt that spent the trial days on a hard bench in the back of the courtroom taking copious notes and then headed back to the office to work until the wee hours getting his superiors ready for the next day. But two weeks into trial, on the night before the long-awaited cross-examination of the defendant's founder and CEO, the lead trial lawyer was rushed to the hospital with a bleeding ulcer. The next morning, the high-strung junior partner freaked out and locked himself in a men's room stall after the judge denied his plea for a continuance. When the jury filed into the courtroom a few minutes later, there was only one attorney at defense counsel's table. A new face. The jurors eyed him curiously, as did the reporters for the
Wall Street Journal
and the other national publications that had been tracking the case.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge had said, “Mr. Reynolds has taken ill and can't be with us this morning. The young man at counsel's table is Louis Solomon. He'll be pinch-hitting this morning.” He turned to Lou, eyebrows raised. “Do you have any questions for the witness, son?”

Lou glanced up at the witness box as he stood and walked to the podium. The imperious Jeremiah Cunningham gazed back with a look that seemed to say,
If you just sit back down, boy, you won't get hurt.

Lou leaned forward so that his hands rested flat on the podium. That way Cunningham wouldn't see them shaking. He cleared his throat.

“I do have some questions, Your Honor.”

Word spread back at the firm. When Lou's cross-examination resumed after the lunch recess, there were at least a dozen Rosen & O'Malley lawyers in the gallery. And Andi, too. She'd been called by one of the attorneys and rushed down to court. By noon the next day, shortly after Cunningham Industries had dismissed its lawsuit, he'd been given the nickname Iceman.

Iceman
, he thought as he waited for the elevator.

He glanced down at his shoes and smiled. Awfully macho handle for a guy wearing loafers with tassels.

Even so, he'd never forget walking through the front door that night—the first time in a month that he'd been home before midnight. Andi came out of the kitchen wearing nothing but a red teddy and matching string bikini panties.

She'd placed her hands on her hips, given him an impish grin, and said, “Let's go upstairs and see if we can make the Iceman cometh.”

Chapter Five

Lou entered the lobby of the Marriott and checked his watch.

6:32 p.m.

He smiled as he stepped into the bar, thinking back to all those late nights freshman year, stumbling down into the basement bar of one of the fraternities in search of Ray. He'd usually find him seated on a barstool, a sixteen-ounce plastic cup of beer in his hand, sometimes singing rugby songs with rowdy upperclassmen, sometimes staring vacantly at the wall above the bar, sometimes listening to the rambling words of wisdom from a boozy, melancholy senior. (“Never underestimate a fat girl after midnight,” one drunken philosopher had advised them after they'd returned, alone again, from a mixer at Hampton College.)

Lou scanned the barstools.

“Yo, Lou!”

Ray was standing at a back booth. Lou waved and headed toward him. They gave each other a hearty handshake. A waitress appeared as Lou sat down. He ordered a beer, as did Ray.

“Where's Brandi?” Lou asked.

“Fucking TWA. Plane was late. Got to the hotel only fifteen minutes ago. She's in the room unpacking. She'll be down soon.”

“So how's the shopping center czar of San Diego?”

Ray chuckled. “Up to my neck in Old Navy. Thank God for the American consumer. How're your kids?”

“Doing well.”

“You still dating that sexy doctor—what's her name?”

“Robyn. Sort of.”

“What the hell does ‘sort of' mean?”

“We see each other about once a week.”

“And?”

Lou shrugged. “Whatever it is, it isn't love.”

Ray studied him a moment. “To quote that great American philosopher, ‘What's love got to do with it?'”

“Ah, yes, Professor Tina Turner.”

Ray grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Remember that concert? Freshman year?”

Lou nodded. “Remember the Ikettes?”

“Those chicks were wearing the shortest dresses I'd ever seen.” Ray leaned back, smiling. “Ol' Ike Turner in the back with those shades? Jesus, what a badass he turned out to be.”

“Shot his newspaper delivery boy, right?”

“Claimed the kid was throwing his paper in the bushes on purpose. Been reading all that crap in the papers about the twenty-fifth anniversary of Woodstock this summer. Bunch of nostalgic bullshit—summer of love, Age of Aquarius, and how Altamont sounded the death knell for the sixties. Altamont?” Ray shook his head. “Nope. Death knell was Ike Turner shooting his paperboy in the ass.”

The waitress arrived with their beers and a bowl of roasted nuts. Although she was at least sixty years old and sixty pounds overweight, neither fact deterred Ray, the consummate waitress-schmoozer. He promptly got her into an animated discussion over the racetrack across the river.

As Lou watched them banter, he thought back to his first encounter with Ray—all the way back to that morning after his rainy night in the dorm room. Ray had been the first of the others to arrive. Lou had been expecting preppies. He hadn't been expecting a hood, which is what they called guys like Ray back in high school. Close-cropped black hair, long sideburns, an Iron City Beer T-shirt with a pack of Camels rolled up in one of the short sleeves. Sears-label dungarees, black wraparound sunglasses, paint-splattered construction boots. An army duffel bag in one hand, a leather bowling ball bag in the other.

After they'd introduced themselves, Ray set the bowling ball bag onto one of the desks and unzipped it. “Check it out, man.”

He pulled out the bleached white skull of an adult gorilla.

Two decades later, Lou noted, Ray had gone upscale in the clothing department. He wore a khaki safari shirt, navy-blue pleated chinos, a braided leather belt, and penny loafers sans socks. Brandi, or perhaps a clothing consultant from one of his upmarket shopping centers, must have steered Ray away from Sears and toward Lands' End.

He'd also put on at least twenty pounds since college, and there were touches of gray in his black hair. But the weight and the gray looked good on him. Ray had never been Hollywood handsome. Not even close. More like a nightclub bouncer or junkyard owner. He'd had plenty of rough edges back in college, and plenty of fistfights to back them up—in crowded bars, on the intramural football fields, and once at a candlepin bowling alley in Belchertown. But the extra weight and sprinkling of gray hair helped smooth some of those rough edges.

Made him almost look contented.

Almost.

Ray Gorman was the youngest of six sons of a Pittsburgh steelworker and the only one to go to college. Although his brain landed him at a prestigious liberal arts college in New England, he didn't concede an inch his freshman year. Went candlepin bowling on the weekends, chewed Red Man, and tacked above his desk posters of his two heroes: John Wayne and Joe Frazier. To celebrate Joe Frazier's pummeling of Muhammad Ali that year, Ray put on a keg for the floor. Schaefer's, of course.

When the waitress left, Lou asked, “So when's your meeting on the refinancing?”

“Tomorrow morning at nine.” He gave a dismissive wave. “A couple of jarheads from Mercantile Bank. The whole thing'll last less than an hour.” He leaned forward with a grin. “We got more important stuff to do in this town. You're on board, right?”

Lou gave him a noncommittal shrug. “I don't even know what I'm supposed to be boarding.”

“The Sirena Express, dude.”

“You really think you have a lead?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

Ray raised his eyebrows. “Enough of a maybe to get in a goddamned plane and fly out to this shit-ass town.”

“What about the others?”

Ray took a sip of beer. “I tried to reach Gordie yesterday, but he was out of the office. I'll try him again tomorrow.”

“And Billy?”

“I reached Bronco. Told him I was meeting you today. Told him we'd check it out down here. Told him if it panned out, he and Gordie better be ready to shit and split.”

“Can Billy get away?”

“Hard to say.” Ray shook his head. “Poor guy. You ever met Dorothy?”

“She's a tough woman.”

“A beast,” Ray said. “Runs some sort of New Age nursery school—one of those cult outfits where the kids can only play with wooden toys and can't watch TV and can only wear clothes that are one-hundred-percent cotton. Poor Bronco. Talk about pussy-whipped.”

Ray took a big sip of beer and reached for a handful of peanuts. “Worse comes to worse, we'll just have to liberate that sorry bastard.” He popped the peanuts in his mouth and chewed. He took another sip of beer. “But, first we've got to make some progress down here.”

“Speaking of which,” Lou said, “what exactly is supposed to be down here?”

Ray was looking past Lou's shoulder. “Here she comes.”

Lou turned as Brandi approached. He was not alone. Every pair of male eyes in the room followed her to the booth.

She gave Lou a big smile and bent over to kiss him. “Hello, Louis.”

Brandi looked and smelled terrific. Her straight platinum hair was cut in a pageboy, which accented her hazel eyes, pug nose, and Southern California tan. Gordie Cohen had described her as a cross between Doris Day and the porn star Seka. Tonight she was wearing a simple cotton twill shirtdress with flap breast pockets, a wide olive belt, and white sandals. She could have stepped off the pages of
Vogue
.

She scooted into the booth next to Ray.

“How are you, Louis?”

“Doing okay. You?”

“Couldn't be better.”

“Still swimming?”

“Of course.” She paused to give the waitress her order. “Stoli and tonic water, twist of lime.” She turned back to Lou. “Four nights a week. Girl's gotta make a living.”

“Not really,” Ray said.

“Yes, really.” She gave Lou a wink.

“Still Queen of the Nile?” he asked her.

“Nah. They may bring that Egyptian shtick back for the summer, but this month—” she paused, giggled “—this month we're doing the French revolution.”

“And it's truly revolting,” Ray added. “You haven't seen dreck until you've seen ‘The Love Slaves of Robespierre.' Worse yet, she plays Marie Antoinette in the ‘Let Them Eat Cake' number.”

“That one does sort of suck,” Brandi said. “I wear these round cakes over my boobs. I pull them off at the end—the cakes, that is.”

Ray said, “Hard to believe Meryl Streep got her start that way, isn't it?”

Brandi poked him in the side with her elbow. “Very funny, Raymond. Just wait. Someday, when Steven Spielberg decides to go aquatic on a remake of
Peter Pan
, I'll be ready.”

When Lou visited Ray last fall—the first time they'd seen one another in more than twenty years—Ray had taken him to see Brandi's show. The huge neon sign out front proclaimed the Seahorse Saloon as “Home of the Topless Mermaids—Featuring San Diego's Favorite Little Mermaid, Brandi Wine.” The high wall behind the bar at the Seahorse Saloon was thick glass. It had taken Lou a moment to realize that it was actually the front side of an enormous tank of water. Except for a pair of red underwater lights and an occasional wiggle of bubbles, the water was dark and opaque.

At the hour, the lights had dimmed, and a tinny version of “The Theme from Rocky” came over the sound system. The underwater floodlights came on. An unctuous voice welcomed them to “the Seahorse Saloon's Special Salute to Ancient Egypt.”

And some salute it was. Depending upon the scene, anywhere from two to five “mermaids” entered the water from an unseen platform above the bar and, with bare breasts bobbing and brightly colored G-strings flashing, enacted ninety-second routines, including such timeless masterpieces as “The Slave Girls of Tutankhamen,” “A Romp with Ramses,” and “An Afternoon With the Vestal Virgins of the Temple of Amon.” Brandi played Cleopatra in the finale, wearing nothing but a pink spangled G-string and a rhinestone-studded headdress. She was flanked by four topless handmaidens, all wearing King Tut masks and treading water while the announcer offered a solemn tribute to “the glory that was Egypt.”

The lights had come back on as the last stanzas of M.C. Hammer's “Can't Touch This” faded.

Ray Gorman had looked over at Lou and shook his head. “That's the kind of crap that gives kitsch a bad name.”

But Lou came to appreciate Brandi, and mostly for reasons that weren't on display in that tank of water. She had a feisty, no-nonsense personality and a generous, sympathetic heart. Moreover, despite her cynical airs and Ray's gruff demeanor, they were clearly crazy about each another.

Brandi downed the rest of her drink and stood up. “Come on, guys, I'm starving. Let's get some chow.”

“Where to?” Ray asked Lou.

Lou thought a moment. “Broadway Oyster Bar. Good food, good beer, good blues.”

“Sounds like heaven,” Brandi said.

As they walked south on Broadway past Busch Stadium, Brandi hooked an arm through each of their arms.

“It's awesome having you guys together again,” she said. “You make a great pair.”

Lou smiled. Once upon a time they'd been a great pair—in the dorm, in those freshman intro classes, at parties. Even at work in the dining hall, where the two of them—both on financial aid—had been assigned campus jobs as bussers. Wearing their white cotton jackets, they'd work the evening meal as a two-man team, pushing that cart up and down the dining hall, clearing the tables one by one—scraping and stacking the plates and trays, emptying and racking the glasses, sorting and standing the silverware in the baskets.

A long time ago.