17
I decided I’d go in and talk to the lawyer alone. I called Bill at the motel, explained my position and told him to hang tight.
I called Griffith’s office. His secretary connected me to him.
“Hey, que pasa, buddy?” Virgil said. “It’s been some kind of time. How’s the ole tallywhacker swinging?”
“It isn’t swinging all that good, actually.”
“Yeah? Then this isn’t just a touch base with a friend call?”
“No. It’s business.”
“Bad business?”
“Pretty bad business. Not directly my business, but close enough.”
“In other words, if life ain’t fucked enough, you got friends and family to help out?”
“Good guess.”
“That’s the way it us
“I’d like to come in and talk to you about my problem. I don’t think I want to talk to you about it over the phone.”
“Sure. But you can’t right now. I’m heading out. Told my partner and everyone here I got business to attend to, but what I got to do is go home and get a beer. It’s been one of those days already. I want to put my feet up and watch some ignorance on TV. What you got wait until tomorrow?”
I thought that over. I could go to another lawyer, but I felt Virgil was the man I preferred to deal with. We could cut through all the legal shit and get right down to it. On the other hand, a day’s delay might make a big difference.
“It’s pretty important,” I said.
“Well, hell, if it’s important, we’ll do ’er. Why don’t you come out to the house though. We can tell some lies about all the women we’ve had and how there isn’t anyone we can’t whip.”
He gave me the address and I drove over there.
It was a pretty nice part of town and Virgil’s house was large, if plain looking, with a slightly yellowed lawn decorated with a chipped, stone duck on which someone, probably Virgil, had drawn in black marker, a pair of glasses.
I rang the bell.
The glass panel on one side of the door had been knocked out and patched with cardboard and masking tape. I was examining it when the door opened and Virgil smiled at me. He had gotten bigger, way we all had. His blond hair had thinned considerably and was cut short. He had a slightly blushed complexion, highlighted by his orange sports shirt and yellow tie. He was in his briefs and was barefoot. He and Fat Boy could have modeled together.
“Get your ass on in here,” he said. “I was just slipping into something more comfortable. Sit the hell down and I’ll finish and get us a beer.”
“I’ll skip the beer,” I said.
“Suit yourself.”
He disappeared into a back room and I sat down on the couch. The place looked as if it could legally qualify as a disaster area. Newspaper strewn from one end to the other, dirty paper plates all over the coffee table, a greasy paper sack overflowing with beer cans. There was a smeared reddish stain on the wall over the TV, and something dark, small and round was stuck in the middle of the stain. I got up for a better look and had to peel a sticky paper plate off my shoe. I dropped it on the floor, went over and examined the wall.
I was pretty certain it was pepperoni.
Virgil came in. He was wearing a pair of blue and white Bermuda shorts and a white T-shirt with Kill All Lawyers written on it in black.
“Nice shirt,” I said.
He used both hands to pinch the shirt away from his chest, held it a moment, then let it go. “Stenciled that on there myself. That’s pizza on the wall, by the way.”
“I thought I recognized a pepperoni. How are the other rooms decorat romyself. ed? Cheese and sausage?”
“Wife threw that at me.”
“Carolyn, isn’t it?”
“That was number one. I’m on the fourth. This was Meg. Came home last week and she was banging my law partner. They broke a couple slats on the bed.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I tugged him out of the bed and shoved two dollars at him and told him to buy himself a good piece of ass, then kicked his butt down the hall and threw him into that panel by the door and bounced him around the room some. Sonofabitch took out of here naked. Had him a spare key under the bumper of his car, I reckon, ’cause he drove off not wearing a goddamn stitch.”
“That’s rough, Virgil.”
“Yeah, guess we’ll get a divorce. I’m in the right business for it, aren’t I? I can lawyer the hell out of a divorce… Hell, that isn’t why you’re here, is it?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t think about getting a divorce would you?”
“No.”
“Change your mind, I’m your man. Sure you don’t want a beer?”
“No thanks.”
I sat back on the couch and Virgil disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a beer. He sat down in a gouged leather recliner and kicked his feet up.
“Meg wasn’t much good at nothing, ’cept fucking,” he said. “In bed she could make a pig speak French. Put her in the kitchen to cook dinner, she usually cooked a couple of pans or managed to catch the goddamn stove on fire.”
“I see you’re a liberated kind of guy.”
“Hey, we all got our cross to bear.”
“How long were y’all married?” I asked.
“About a year. We were pretty happy till she started accusing me of fucking around. Things went downhill after that. Then she started cheating on me.”
“Were you fucking around?”
“Hell, I’m a lawyer. We fuck everybody.”
“That doesn’t reassure me much. Guess you’ll be cutting out on your own.”
“What?”
“Your own law office. I mean, I’m inclined to believe you and your law partner might be on shaky ground.”
“Hell no. I was screwing his first wife and he caught me at it. Me and him got an understanding. I can get another wife easy enough, but a good partner like Tim is hard to come by. I took the sonofabitch out to lunch today. What happened to your face?”
“Kind of a fight,” I said. “It’s not important.”
“What’s your probleUs tom, then, Hank?”
I told it slowly and carefully, leaving out Bill’s present location and the fact that he and Arnold helped me break into the apartment and steal the video cassettes. In fact, I left Arnold out of the story altogether.
“Goddamn,” Virgil said when I finished. “That’s some situation. The videos. That photo album. You got ’em?”
“In the truck. The cassettes are copies. I’m playing it safe.”
I went out and got the cassettes and the album. I showed him the album first. “Shit,” he said. “I recognize
