While she talked I noticed my heart had contracted down to the size of a cherry tomato. My sore tongue started to throb. Jackie was poking the map with her right index finger and ranting about something or other.
“Due diligence?”
“Well, we hardly got near any actual hearings. Just a lotta backroom chats with all my dear friends on the appeals board, and with the building inspector and some County schlubs. All we ended up with was a list of things we’d have to do if we wanted to pursue. My point being, why go this far and at the first sign of any real tussle, fold up faster’n an origami master on amphetamines? Nobody thought to check this stuff out beforehand?”
She moved away from me and sat back in her desk chair. She slumped down and put her feet up on the desk. Jackie made an art of repose, however briefly maintained.
“Sorry,” she said, “it just still pisses me off.” She gnawed on the cuticle of her right thumb, stopping occasionally to check the results. “It was a big project and I coulda used the damn work. Not the damn money so much, but the complexity. And the credentials. And the trips to the City for lunch meetings with Mr. Johnson, who, forgive me for saying, was a major piece of ass. We don’t get enough of that around here. Not loose anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Though I guess not really loose enough. Not if you count all the floppsies and moppsies draped all over him day and night. Including some other guy’s wife, which can irritate the hell out of a person.”
“Especially her husband.”
“He’s a drip. She’s a babe. Happens all the time out here. Probably not to you.”
She looked me over.
“You don’t look the type. Too craggy.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers. “No ring?”
“Divorced.”
“Kids?”
“A daughter.”
“My age?”
“A little younger.”
“That’s how I like my men. Sorry.”
She grabbed a clump of her reddish blond hair and held it up to the light, looking for split ends.
“That makes me sound so ageist,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Ageist. Like sexist.”
“Oh.”
She was suddenly back up on her feet.
“So, what else can I do for you? Legally.”
“Who’s Bay Side Holdings?”
She frowned in thought.
“The guys who own all the land. Investors, I guess. I never met any of them. Hornsby was the man.”
“‘All the land.’ Where’d they get ‘all the land’?”
“I don’t know. Groups of guys are always buying up hunks of land. That’s what they do.”
She picked an ashtray off her desk and rooted around until she came up with a half-spent joint. She waved it in the air.
“What do we have here,” she said.
I demurred.
“You go ahead. I’m all set.”
She lurched over to a desk drawer and got out some matches. I waited while she lit the joint and took most of it down with the first drag. She talked as she exhaled.
“What else.”
I had to think about that for second.
“My dad looked after Regina. She didn’t have anybody else. He’s dead, she’s dead. I’m just trying to wrap it up.”
“A philanthropist.”
“I’m still curious.”
“About what?”
“Why didn’t Regina pay rent?”
“She didn’t?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No. I mean, why would I? I was focused on revising an original plot plan. We never talked about the people living in the houses.”
Then she switched to a singsong lampoon of sensitivity.
“Not that I didn’t care …”
I sensed it was time to wrap this up. I tidied up my file and made motions to leave.
“You could give me Hunter Johnson’s address and phone number, if it’s okay. I might want to talk to him.”
She went back into her file cabinet. She whipped out a letter.
“Curious, like I said.”
She handed me the letter.
“Keep it. I got more.”
“Thanks.”
“Can I borrow this?” I held up the map of Oak Point.
She wagged her head as if to shake out the right answer.
“Sure. Why the hell not. Can’t hurt. Just don’t lose it. The case might come back.”
“I’ll make a copy and send back the original.”
“No problem.”
“Thanks.”
“Fagetaboutit.”
She was smiling at me through the tumbled mass of strawberry-blond hair, but I felt her attention starting to dissipate again.
“I guess I’ll let you get back to your case.”
“Thanks a bunch,” she said, and walked out of the room.
I slipped the map and letter into my file and followed her back through the house to the front door. She held it open and leaned her whole body against the jam. We shook hands.
“Good luck with whatever you’re doing,” she said, “which, by the way, is more than you’re telling me.”
I smiled at her.
“Says who?”
“I gave you my freaking map, for Pete’s sakes.”
“You did. I appreciate that.”
“So?”
I pulled out my wallet and gave her a dollar.
“What’s this?”
“A retainer. To assure confidentiality. Attorney-client privilege.”
She held up the dollar bill.
“Never hold up in court.”
I left her watching me from the doorway of her house, pausing for a moment’s reflection before rocketing back into the chaotic Brownian motion of her life. A vision of my daughter threatened to sneak into the receding picture in my rearview mirror, but I distracted myself with thoughts of an army of bulldozers and backhoes led by the profane Jimmy Maddox, crashing over Oak Point like the Blitzkrieg, leveling hedgerows and laying waste to the last refuge on earth.
