got it so the lights went on and the arm skittered across the rolling paper and the motor made a most impressive humming noise.
I was just finishing up when Linda and Jeff arrived. I could tell they were still estranged. They both looked awkward, afraid to even brush up against each other.
“What the hell’s this all about, McCain?”
Jeff asked. “I’ve got two very sick dogs waiting on me.” Being a popular veterinarian was more than a full- time job.
“Well, there’s a very sick human being you need to see too.”
“Who?”
“Chip O’Donlon.”
“Chip O’Donlon?”
“You two get in that closet and stay there and shut up until I tell you to come out.”
“I don’t like this,” Linda said.
“Well, I don’t especially like baby-sitting you two, either.”
I was just lighting a Lucky when the knock came, a jaunty top-of-the-world-man knock. One of the rulers of the cosmos had arrived in the humble form of Chip O’Donlon. I shushed them and hurried them into the closet and closed the door. Then I went to greet my favorite narcissist.
“Hey, Dad,” he said, as he walked in and gave my office his usual condescending lookover. “You got quite a pad here.”
He wore a tan cashmere jacket, no less, a yellow V-neck sweater, white shirt, chocolate-colored slacks, desert boots. With his tousled hair and imposingly handsome face, he was his own Dreamboat Alert.
“I thought you didn’t have any money,” I said.
“I don’t.”
“Then where the hell’d you come up with a cashmere jacket?”
“I got friends, man.” He gave me his best pretty-boy grin. “Lady friends. They buy me stuff.”
The hell of it was, he was probably telling the truth.
“Sit down over there.”
He glared at me. He didn’t like being told what to do. “What’s that?”
“Lie detector.”
“You aren’t putting me on that thing.”
I had to switch tones, to the reasoning-with-an-ape voice I have to take with about a fourth of my clients. “I have to try this out on somebody I know, Chip. Just to see if it works.”
“Not me.”
“The Ryker job?”
“What about it?”
“Now, I know you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Damned right I didn’t.”
It was one of the few things Cliffie had accused him of that Chip actually didn’t do. “That’s the kind of question I’ll be asking. Things I already know the answer to. Simple things.”
He watched me suspiciously. “How come you’re doing this, anyway?”
“The Judge wants me to get it rigged up before next week. She wants the District Attorney to interview a witness while the machine’s running.”
“I don’t want to do it, man.”
“I’ll cancel your debt, remember?”
I’d hooked him again. That would have made me suspicious: a lawyer willing to cancel a bill-even though he knew he’d probably never be paid anyway-j to try out a lie detector set. I knew then that one town suspicion wasn’t true. Chip O’Donlon wasn’t Albert Einstein’s illegitimate son.
“The whole thing?”
“Every penny.”
“Wow. No more of those bullshit bills from you, man? You know it’s embarrassing when the landlady sees that Deadbeat thing next to my name on the outside of your envelopes.”
“A little personal touch of mine.”
He looked the machine over. “It won’t give off electricity or anything?”
“Chip, it’s not the electric chair. It’s a lie detector. A harmless lie detector.”
“Like on Dragnet?”
“Just like on Dragnet.”
“It might be cool to get hooked up to it.
They say if you’re smart enough, you can fake it out.”
I resisted the easy retort. I had to get him on my side. “I’ll even take your picture, if you want me to.”
“Hey!” he said. “That’d be cool, Dad!
Strapped up to a lie detector! The chicks’ll flip, man! They really will!”
A noise. In the closet.
Chip looked over. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise?”
“Oh, you must mean the mice.”
“Mice? How big are they?”
“They go down to the feed mill to fill themselves up, and then they come back here to sleep.”
“Man, they must really chow down.”
“You wouldn’t want to hear them eat, believe me. You can hear them smacking their lips for blocks.”
Chip sat in the chair and looked the lie detector over, his brain, such as it was, no doubt filled with images of himself looking just like John Garfield wired to the machine. He’d probably carry autographed glossies around and hand them out at the supermarket.
“You’ll really take my picture with this thing on?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your camera?” I showed him.
“That thing work?”
“You bet.”
“How old is it?”
“Not that old. Now c’mon. Let’s get you hooked up.”
I got the cuff on him and then sat down across from him. I’d spent a minute looking for my clipboard-a person never looks more serious and professional than when he’s got a clipboard -but I couldn’t find it so I had to settle for my notebook.
“Is that Captain Video?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I hate that show. Everything looks fake.”
“Let’s get on with it, all right?”
“Especially the robot.”
“What?”
“Especially that robot, Tobor. Shit, I could build something better than that in my garage.”
“Did you know that Tobor is robot spelled backward?” I figured I ought to annoy him a little more, the way he was annoying me.
“I can’t believe you’ve got a Captain Video notebook. You don’t take that thing to court, do you?”
“Not so far. Now, how about getting to work?”
“I want a cigarette in my mouth, you know, when you take the picture.”
“Of course.”
I got the arm working. I said, “Here we go.”
“Your name?”
“You know my name.”
