Did you call Steiglitz? I asked.
I got his voice mail.
Did you leave a message?
I told him that we’ve got to get her back to the clinic.
More money. More post-tax money. For what? To give her another chance to torment us with false hopes and promises? Jesus. How much of this could we take?
I was trying to choke down a scalding cup of coffee when Steiglitz called back. Kelly answered the phone. He said we could bring her to the clinic. He wouldn’t be in today. But he’d see her tomorrow.
At least they could keep her off the stuff til then.
Kelly went to her bedroom, where Melissa was hiding. I drank another cup of coffee. I cleaned the kitchen. I put in a load of laundry. Kelly was gone for half an hour.
She’ll do it, she said on her return.
She’ll go to the clinic?
Yes.
Just like that?
What do you mean, just like that? I had to sell my soul.
I’m sorry to hear that. We’ll have to get you a new one.
I got a small smile for that one. She was resilient. She’d handle it. Hell, she’d handle it better than I would.
What did she say? I asked.
Never mind what she said. She said she was sorry. She made a mistake. She’ll never do it again.
That’s depressing. Yes, it is.
Should I go and talk to her?
She doesn’t want to see you. She’s too embarrassed.
I wasn’t certain how that made me feel. There was a kind of relief. That I wouldn’t have to deal with her. Too many emotions. Loud, insistent and inconsistent emotions. I needed a rest from emotions. But it was also a rejection, of a sort. She didn’t need me anymore.
But had she ever?
Everything I’d ever thought or felt about Melissa was suspect.
I called an office limo for them. I asked them to send Christof. He’d take good care of Kelly.
I went to my bedroom. Booted up the computer. Nosed around some paleontology sites. Sometimes old bones can be comforting.
I heard the limo pull away.
The bones weren’t doing it for me.
I had to get away.
I called Dorita.
46.
We agreed to meet at Trois Pistoles, a nice French bistro near the park. If the mood struck us, we could take a stroll after lunch.
We ordered a nice but inexpensive bottle of Burgundy. We had steak frites. Dorita was a demon for steak frites. For any kind of steak. For meat. Red meat. Red bloody meat. When the waiter asked her how she wanted her steak, she made her usual scene.
Rare, she said. And I mean rare. With a capital R.
Certainly, madame, the waiter said.
No, she said, I don’t think you understand. Make it all caps.
Certainly, madame, he repeated.
Twitching, she said. I want it twitching.
Pardon me, madame?
If I can’t taste the fear, it’s too well done. Get it?
The waiter looked around for help.
Oh, never mind, she said.
Certainly, madame, he replied.
After he had left us, no doubt to regale the kitchen staff with tales of the tall, slim lady and her lust for blood and fear, I got right down to business. I didn’t want to give Dorita a chance to go personal. I’d been having serious second thoughts about revealing my secrets to her. I was not at all sure that our thing could survive. I’d seen a face of Dorita – the kind and sympathetic side – I’d always suspected but never confirmed was there. The dissonance between it and the jolly misanthrope I’d grown to know and love was highly disconcerting. It meant complication. Ambiguity. Doubt. In other words, the very things that defined my marriage. That I’d used my friendship with Dorita to escape.
I wanted to get back to being Nick and Nora, sexually ambiguous detectives.
We talked about Jules. I brought her up to date. The phone records.
That’s an interesting detail, she said. I thought they weren’t on speaking terms.
So they’ve both told me. But it reminded me of something FitzGibbon said when I first went to see him. Something about how Jules didn’t have the balls to call home. I mean, if they weren’t even talking to each other, why would he have expected Jules to call him?
Hm. Something to ask him about.
Jules?
Either or both.
No doubt. I’ll have to think about how to approach it, though. Clients don’t normally take it well, when they find out you’ve been surreptitiously looking at their phone records.
There’s that too.
We searched for benign reasons for Jules to be calling his hated father.
Asking for money? I suggested.
Possible.
Forgiveness?
Unlikely.
Threatening him?
Much more plausible.
But with what? The kid’s a small-time loser. Daddy’s a big-time player.
I told her about the samurai connection.
Jesus, she said. Sounds like the kid needs a shrink real bad.
No kidding. But he thinks he’s Superman. Don’t need no help from nobody. You know.
Denial.
The alcoholic syndrome.
I guess you’d know about that.
I guess I wouldn’t be the only one in the room.
Sure. You got me. But you’re not his shrink, you’re his lawyer. What do you care? I mean, he did or he didn’t, right?
I’m not in the ‘he did it’ business, darling; I’m in the ‘he didn’t do it’ business.
Thanks for reminding me. So, what else?
I told her about my conversation with Kennedy. His fears about FitzGibbon.
My, she said. Maybe Daddy is more than just an obnoxious blowhard.
Could be. But.
But.
Well, say we do a little investigating. Turn over a few flat rocks. Find some slimy things.
