It began with all the normal opening drivel you see in any speech about how happy the President was to be there, the great honor and privilege, what great friends Americans and Russians were, blah, blah, blah. Then the meat: Neatly underlined in red pen was the section Alexi described, the President of the United States saying Chechnya was an understandable thing, much like America’s Civil War, a struggle to hold the nation together. He added a few admonishments about how the Russians should be civilized and try to hold down civilian casualties and all that… still, he was justifying, in fact sympathizing with, their monstrous war.
I finished the key sections and looked up. Katrina said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Do you believe Alexi now?”
I rolled my eyes. “No. The President giving a particularly insipid speech doesn’t prove any damned thing.”
She waved an angry finger around at the wall safes in my office. “What other chance do you have of getting Morrison off?”
“I’m designing the defense right now. Golden’s case isn’t as foolproof as we thought. There’s no actual proof Morrison gave those documents to the Russians. And if he can’t prove the treachery, he can’t prove the murder charges. They’re linked.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not kidding.”
“Have you seen his witness list?”
“Of course I haven’t.”
“No concerns about that, huh?”
“What are you implying?” I mean, the absence of a witness list while we were still preparing for the plea hearing was self-evident. Eddie and I wouldn’t have to exchange witness lists till we were staring at a full-blown trial.
“What if his wife testifies? What if Mary says, ‘Yes, my husband was a traitor? I lived with him, watched him, saw his disaffection, his suspicious activities, his unexplained absences when he met with his contacts’?”
“Wouldn’t happen.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. She’s protected from testifying against her own husband. I know her. She’d never participate in her own husband’s lynching. Her kids would never forgive her.”
“These are the same kids who don’t know their father’s in jail? Hello… anybody home?”
I was beginning to lose patience with this woman.
“Mary won’t testify,” I insisted again.
“Are you an expert on women now?”
“Perhaps not, but I know Mary.”
She continued. “You said she knew about his trysts in Moscow. Pull your head out of your ass. Any woman would want vengeance.”
“We discussed it last night. She accepted it. She was resigned to it.”
“Don’t be a fool. You’re ignoring your last chance to prove Morrison’s innocent.”
“Look, Katrina, the CIA’s been watching the region like a hawk and doesn’t even believe the cabal’s there. If I bring it up in court, Eddie will cut my nuts off. I’ve got one day before the deal expires. What exactly do you want me to do?”
Her face tightened even more. “Give Alexi the benefit of the doubt. Talk to the CIA and FBI. And stop putting Mary on a pedestal. Her husband cheated on her.”
My head was shaking long before she was done. She stared at me and I saw in her eyes what was coming. I had the merest fraction of an instant to divert it… but I decided not to.
“Then find yourself a new associate,” she said, her voice tentative, as though this was a bluff she didn’t want called.
“Accepted,” I replied.
Her head snapped back and she looked surprised, then confused and, ultimately, resigned. Without another word she spun around and left, closing the door quietly behind her, which wasn’t the way I would’ve done it, but then I have my flaws.
I didn’t like the way this ended, but I’d lost my appetite for arguing with her. In cases like this you run into all kinds of dead ends, and you need to recognize when the street doesn’t go anywhere or you’ll spend days lost in cul-de-sacs. And, for the record, I didn’t have days.
Anyway, I put that behind me and started going through the stacks of papers Eddie had left, searching for clues. I kept trying to focus on those papers, only it wasn’t working, and at five o’clock I called Mary and left.
The black Porsche wasn’t there when I pulled up twenty minutes later. I walked to the entrance and rang the bell. Mary opened it immediately, as though she’d been waiting by the entrance. She was dressed to the nines in a short skirt and a low-cut bodice. She stepped out and gave me a tight hug and a kiss.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “I’m all alone. I could use some good company.”
“What, no kids?”
“I shipped them off this morning for a month at an outdoor ranch in Wyoming. They were going crazy being cooped up in this house. Nor was their grandpa handling it well, particularly after Jamie threw a football that broke a Ming vase.”
“A Ming vase? A real one?”
“Sixty thousand dollars’ worth of genuine Chinese porcelain.”
I chuckled. “I knew that boy had greatness in him. I wish I could’ve witnessed that.”
She chuckled and said, “No, you really don’t… I mean, you really don’t.”
I peeked around her. “And Homer? He’s not hiding behind the door with a knife, is he?”
“He’s at some Kennedy Center shindig and won’t be home until late. I’m sorry. I know how much you two enjoy each other.”
“My night is ruined.”
She grabbed my arm and tugged me inside. “Come on. I need a stiff drink and you look like you need one, too.”
I pulled backward and said, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“My father has a special bottle of 1948 Glenfiddich. He’s had it for thirty years and refuses to open it, like it’s liquid gold.”
Well, how could I possibly refuse?
She led me back to the living room, where a fire was roaring in a truck-size fireplace. No lights were on inside the room; the only illumination came from the evocatively flickering flames. She made herself a vodka gimlet and me a tall glass of scotch, and then we sat on a brown leather couch that faced the big fire. I savored that first sip and guessed it was probably worth about two hundred dollars. It wouldn’t bankrupt old Homer, but it would give him a little something to remember me by.
After a long while staring at the fire, Mary said, “Sean, I need to tell you something. No matter how this turns out, I’m going to divorce Bill. I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier. What a miserable marriage we had.”
I nodded, because we both knew I wasn’t expected to offer any comment or condolence. He was my client. She was my former girlfriend. My prescribed role was to stoically absorb this news.
She lifted her glass and took another sip. She said, “Bill and I haven’t had sex in over two years.”
“Gee, two years. That’s a long time,” I replied awkwardly, because if you had to pick the most hazardous topic in the world for us to be discussing as we sat all alone in this big house, well, here it was. I added, “If it’s any consolation, he isn’t having any sex these days, either.”
She stared into her glass and said, “I know about him. What about you?”
“What?”
She stopped staring at the glass and looked at me. “Are you involved… with Katrina, maybe?”
“Uh, no. Our relationship’s professional… or it was… she quit today.”
“That’s too bad. She seemed very nice.”
Which part was too bad? That I wasn’t involved with her or that she was no longer on the team?
She leaned against the arm of the couch and put her feet up on the seat, stretching those tantalizing legs
