Courting Trouble

Anne grabbed a white pen, read it, and felt a jolt like electricity surge though her system. She thrust it into the air, and it shot up like a Roman candle. “We got him!”

21

Anne was surprised to discover that a lime-green VW Beetle could be almost as much fun as a Mustang convertible. Okay, not really, but she was so excited that they were finally going to get Kevin that she was trying to convince herself. Judy was driving her car, Mary was in the passenger seat, and Anne bounced along on the cloth-covered back bench as the VW chugged its way up the incline of the Ben Franklin Bridge. Mental note: Any vehicle with daisies in the dashboard is not a muscle car.

Anne rolled the white pen from the florist’s between her fingers. It was a cheap plastic ballpoint with gold- toned letters that read daytimer motel. Underneath was the motel’s address and phone, in Pennsauken, New Jersey. It had been the only motel or hotel pen in the pencil cup at Schwartz’s, and Anne was praying that Kevin had found a room at the Daytimer. The Beetle reached the top of the bridge and slowed behind snaky lines of traffic.

“Uh, oh. People still going down the shore,” Judy said with a sigh. She had rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and let her left arm dangle out the window. “I was hoping everybody who was going had gone already.”

“Damn.” Anne edged between the two front seats and assessed the traffic through the funky windshield. “This looks bad. How long will it be, do you think?”

“Not too long,” Judy answered. “There’s a line to the toll booths, but they’re not taking tolls this direction, so it’ll move along.”

“It’s enough time to call Bennie,” Mary ventured. “I have my cell. Maybe we should.”

“No,” Judy and Anne answered in unison, and Anne was liking Judy better and better.

“Don’t back out now,” Anne said, to a worried Mary. “We settled this. We’ll call Bennie as soon as we see that Kevin’s checked in at the Daytimer. Why bother her if it’s a dry hole? If this isn’t the pen he left? We’re just taking a chance that he’s at the Daytimer, and it’s a remote chance, at best.”

Judy nodded. “Anne’s right. Also Bennie would never let us do this, and why shouldn’t we? It’s fun! We get to play hooky! Isn’t it so cool up here?” She waved her arm against a clear blue backdrop of sky and a soaring arc of expansion bridge, but Anne couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. They were back on track, after losing him at the service. She would get him yet. She was so close she could shoot him.

“It’s smart of Kevin to stay in New Jersey, isn’t it?” she asked, idly. “It gets him out of town and takes the heat off.”

Judy agreed. “Plus, it raises a jurisdictional question with the Philly police. Requires cooperation with the FBI, which is problematic.”

Mary covered her ears. “We shouldn’t be discussing this. This is wrong. We’re going against Bennie. She’ll fire us.” She uncovered her ears and turned to the backseat. “Murphy, let’s talk about the case. Chipster. You have to make a new opening argument, now that you’re going to tell about the affair.”

“You’re right,” Anne considered it, then reached into her purse, snapped the phone open, and hit speed-dial for Gil. “Here we go. Everybody be quiet.”

“No fart noises, Mare,” Judy warned. The VW stopped next to a gigantic billboard for Harrah’s Marina, in which a woman drove a steamboat as big as an ocean liner. Sequined letters glittered, i’ll take you there. The call was picked up.

“Gil, it’s Anne.” She cupped the phone around her ear to keep out the traffic noise.

“Anne, where are you? Are you okay? I was so worried about you, after what happened at the Chestnut Club.”

Right, that’s why you haven’t called. “Listen, we need to discuss your new defense. Meet me tonight, at the office at seven and bring any evidence you have of your affair with Beth.”

“Evidence? Like what?”

“Cards, letters, anything.” Anne flashed on I love you I love you I love you. Weird how parallel the relationships seemed. “Cards from flowers. Hotel receipts, phone bills, calendar notations. Any writings at all that show your relationship with Beth was consensual, not a quid pro quo for continued employment. We’re not going to hide the truth. We’re going to prove it.”

“Anne, no! I don’t want that public, not now.”

“It’s the only way you’ll win. We have to preempt any argument Beth may have, any proof of a sexual relationship.”

“She has nothing! I never wrote her anything. You think I’m stupid?”

Don’t answer. It’s not good client relations. “They have Bonnard, the French woman. She’s already testified at her dep that you forced her into sex, so they have pattern and practice. We’re moving to exclude it but the judge won’t rule until next week, and he’ll probably let it in. If they come at us, you’re dead and so is Chipster.”

“But I didn’t force her! I didn’t force any woman! I did have a thing with Janine Bonnard, but—”

Oh, great. “I know, you’ve been fooling around for years. That’s our defense. It isn’t pretty, but it isn’t illegal. We’ll talk when we meet. Just bring the stuff. I have to go.”

“What do I tell Jamie? That I’m going to humiliate her in public?”

You did that already. “Tell her I want her at that trial every day, in the front row. And when I put her up, she’s going to tell the truth. Testify about the pain your affairs caused her, but say that you wouldn’t force sex on anyone. Your philandering will win this case, Gil. Your pattern and practice is cheating, not harassment.”

“That would be awful for Jamie, and for me!”

“No, it will be awful for you, but I have a feeling Jamie would love to tell her story, and she just may save your sorry ass. She’ll be a counterpoint to the plaintiff, and the truth of what happened comes out best through her, because it’s so obviously against her interest to admit. The jury will see that you’ve been punished, and go for the defense.”

Gil sounded distinctly unhappy. “Anne, I have to think about this.”

“We’ll talk tonight, after I see what you got.”

“Does this mean you’re still my lawyer?”

“See you tonight.” Anne snapped the phone closed, feeling uneasy. She’d liked the case so much better when she believed in Gil. Now she knew the truth.

Judy met her eye in the rearview mirror. “Traffic’s starting to move,” she said. “It’s a sign.”

“Let’s go get ’em,” Anne said, and Mary managed a cautious smile.

Fifteen minutes later the VW was zipping through the toll booths and negotiating Admiral Wilson Boulevard, which didn’t show the Garden State to great advantage. Its four lanes snaked through strip bars, liquor stores, then more strip bars and liquor stores. Sometimes the scenic wonder was interrupted by another casino billboard or a strip bar that called itself a gentleman’s club. Anne felt confident that no gentlemen went there. The VW took a left, then a right, winding past tire warehouses, an auto body yard, and a stop for the PATCO speed line, a monorail tram that took commuters over the bridge into Philadelphia. After getting lost a little, the Beetleful of sweaty lawyers finally found themselves in the parking lot of the Daytimer.

It was a small, tawdry motel that looked like it had been built in the sixties, with a low-slung sloping roof at the entrance, which was meant to serve as a carport. The glass over the front door was covered by security bars, and to its right flickered a neon sign that read VACANCY. As disgusting as the place was, it was all Anne could do not to run in. “I can’t believe we’re here. We got him!”

Judy pulled into a space facing the entrance and cut the ignition. “Whoa,” she said, looking over the curved hood. “Take a look at this layout. I like it.”

Anne boosted herself up and realized immediately what Judy meant. The motel had been designed as a short, straight line, like a hyphen set parallel to the parking lot, and it consisted of two floors, so that its two decks of numbered rooms were in full view of the lot and street. “We can see all the doors, and when he goes in and out.”

“Hey, check out the license plates.” Mary was eyeing the parking lot. “They’re all out-of-state. Connecticut. New York. Maine. Virginia. That’s funny. There’s nothing to see around here, no tourist attractions.”