“Talking.” Leo is still wearing a suit, though he has untied his necktie. “Button that blouse, Olivia.”
Livy does not button the blouse. She steps away from her father, leaving no obstacle between him and me.
“I can’t believe you brought this bastard into our house,” he says, his eyes locked on mine. “I want an explanation.”
“Make one up. Anything you like.”
Her defiant tone draws Leo’s gaze away from me for a moment. “Don’t take that tone of voice with me, young lady.”
“I’ll take whatever tone I please.”
Leo looks off balance. Livy is not playing the role of favorite daughter. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “What’s Cage been telling you?”
“What could he tell me? Have you been keeping things from me?”
“Of course not.”
“No?” She reaches into her blouse and brings out the scrap of legal paper, which she unfolds and hands to him without a word.
Leo stares at it for several seconds, then looks up blankly. “What’s this?”
“Think about it,” she says, her arms folded over her chest.
His face shows only confusion. He looks like he might have had a couple of drinks since receiving the warning about Presley. “Why don’t you save me the trouble?”
“The adoption,” Livy says in a dead voice.
“Your adoption?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“You took money for it?”
Leo shrugs. “So?”
“Thirty-five thousand dollars?”
“That paid a full year of your tuition at UVA.”
Her mouth falls open. “Paid… you sold my baby to pay my college tuition?”
“ ‘My’ baby?” Leo’s face softens as he senses the hurt in his daughter. “Honey, you didn’t want that child. I tried to get you to terminate the pregnancy, but you were against it. Given that adoption was your choice, I don’t see what’s wrong with-”
“Selling your own flesh and blood?” Her eyes are blazing now. “Like you needed the fucking money?”
“Profanity doesn’t become you, Olivia.”
“Profanity? Try obscenity. Selling my misery for money. That’s about as obscene as it gets. I was just another profit-loss entry, I guess. Offset the liability of college tuition with the asset of unwanted babies. What the hell, right?”
Leo reaches out to her. “Honey-”
“Don’t even try to justify it,” she says coldly, backing away.
His look of sympathy evaporates. “I don’t have to justify anything. You made a mess, I cleaned it up. It was the only big one you ever made, but it damn sure ruined most of what came after.” He swings back to me. “Thanks to this punk.”
“Leave me out of this,” I tell him. “You’ve had the wrong idea about me for twenty years.”
“How so?”
Livy looks at me and shakes her head.
“Ask her.”
“Livy?”
“I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
Leo’s eyes roam over the study, taking in the wine bottle on the bar, his bookshelves, and finally the desk, where his gaze settles on the Sig-Sauer lying beside Livy’s purse. He is nearer the gun than I, and he knows I’m thinking that.
“It was you who said Ray Presley was coming here to kill me, wasn’t it, Cage?”
“That’s right. I was doing you a favor.”
“I think you were lying.” He stabs a finger in my direction. “I think you broke in here looking for some kind of evidence. And I think I’d be within my rights to blow your goddamn head off.”
He picks up the Sig-Sauer, cycles the slide, and walks around the desk.
“Presley killed Ike Ransom tonight,” I say quickly. “He tried to kill me, but I got clear by sending him after you. I told him you gave him up to the FBI as part of your deal with Hoover.”
Something twitches in Leo’s cheek. “You’re still lying. You’re using my daughter to try and get at me.” He turns to Livy. “The trial’s tomorrow, and he’s desperate. He’s using you.”
A dark light shines in Livy’s eyes. “The way you used me against him?”
Leo isn’t much of an actor; his feigned surprise is almost comical.
“Once I got here,” she says, “I realized why you’d asked me to come. What you wanted me to do. The sad thing is, I wanted to do it. I thought Penn could wipe away all the mistakes I’d made. I thought his wife’s death was fate. That we were being given a second chance.”
“That’s only natural,” Leo says in a soothing voice. “But he took advantage of you, honey. What did he ask you to do for him?”
“Nothing. He loves me. He always has.” Her smile is full of irony and self-disgust. “And he has more integrity than both of us put together.”
Leo snorts. “Spare me the wine and roses. Did you have to bring him here? Couldn’t you have checked into a motel?”
“The way you always did?”
“Olivia-”
“Don’t say anything. Just go back to your room. Go upstairs and take care of Mother. Better late than never.”
Instead of walking to the door, Leo gives me the superior stare I’ve received in the private chambers of a dozen judges. “The trial’s tomorrow,” he says in a peremptory voice. “I’m going to give you one last opportunity to save face, and to help this town. Call your little tart at the newspaper and get her to print a public apology for the remarks you made about me. A full apology from you, and a retraction from the paper. If that’s printed tomorrow I’ll dismiss the suit.”
His offer leaves me dumbfounded. There can be only one reason for it. He’s running scared.
“I don’t see your lips moving,” Leo says. “You’d better jump while you can. The offer’s good for sixty seconds.”
“Dwight Stone is alive,” I think aloud. “And neither you nor Portman can find him.”
His face remains impassive. “Fifty seconds.”
A wicked elation flows through me. “You can stick that offer right up your ass. Tomorrow-”
All of us turn at the sound of the door.
Ray Presley is standing in the study, aiming a revolver at Leo’s chest. It looks like a .357 Magnum. He’s abandoned his pajamas in favor of Levis, Redwing boots, and a black western shirt. Only the John Deere cap remains the same. The vulpine eyes burn from beneath its bill just as they did the day I bought my father’s .38 back from him.
“Evening, Judge,” he says.
Presley looks like he’s lost ten pounds since I saw him last. He’s still ropy and tough, but he seems diminished somehow. Imagining him raping Livy is almost beyond me, he looks so much older than she now. Yet Livy has backed against the wall opposite me like a frightened girl, like she’s trying to become her own shadow.
“I’m not armed, Ray, ” Leo says from behind his desk, but I see that he’s holding Ike’s Sig-Sauer behind him.
“Throw that Sig on the floor, Judge,” Presley says like a chiding parent. “I saw it in your hand when I came in.”
