Pleading Guilty

didn't explain. I pushed him back to the story.

I said, 'So play it out for me. Some dude with brass knuckles starts making an impression on Archie, telling him he's got to give up the fixer, and all he can give them is you. And you find Archie in your refrigerator and go for the world tour, right?'

'Sort of. I knew I was leaving. Martin had pretty much convinced me of that.'

Bingo. I watched the sweat gathering among all my gray chest hairs, the rivulets running over the swell of my belly and dampening the sheet bundled there.

'Martin had?' I asked. 'Fill in the blank, Bert. Where does Martin fit?'

Bert's reaction was amazing. He hooted.

'What a question!'

'Where he fits? Martin?'

'Hey, the answer's like, 'In Glyndora,'' said Bert and, smirking like an absolute juvenile, circled his index finger and thumb and poked a finger through the form a couple of times. The gesture was so silly but direct that we both laughed out loud. What a life! Here we were, me and Bert of all people, giggling about somebody else's peccadilloes.

'Mar-tin?'

'Fuckin' A,' he answered. 'No way.'

'It's ancient history. Years ago. Not now. Orleans was in grade school. But they're still like, what would you say — ' Bert shifted a hand. ‘I mean, when things get heavy for her, that's who she goes to. Not just around the firm, man. You know. Life.'

'Martin and Glyndora,' I said. I was still marveling. I have made addled party-time chatter with Martin's wife, Nila, for years and know nothing more about her than what meets the eye: elegant looks and cultivated manners. I'd always assumed that Martin was happily wed to his own pretensions. The idea of him with a girlfriend was somehow at odds with his projected image of complete self-sufficiency.

'So what problem did Glyndora come to him with?' I asked. 'I still don't understand why he got involved.'

Bert didn't answer. By now I knew what that meant. Go gently. We were on that subject.

'She was upset about you getting to know Orleans?'

'Right,' said Bert. He took his time. 'He was in the middle at first. A mediator, I don't know what you'd say. She was just out of control. You know her. She's pretty nuts on this subject.' He glanced up bleakly, a one-eyed peekaboo. In the meantime, with that remark, I got a load of the family dynamic. Orleans had grabbed Mom's attention big-time. Not just 'This is how I am,' but 'I am — with your boss. Your world.' I knew Bert would never recognize these intentions. He was like somebody with a perceptual disorder. His own emotions so dominated him that he had little perspective on anyone else.

'Then Martin found out about this, the betting. Man, it was Mount Saint Helens. He was more ticked than Glyndora. He told me straight up we were in way too deep. You know, he learned all about these guys growing up. He said the best thing was for me just to clear out. Disappear.

'And it started to actually sound okay, you know?' Bert said. 'New life. That whole thing. Just drop out of sight. For a while anyway. Get out of the firm. You ever hear of Pigeon Point?'

'No.'

'It's in California. North. On the coast. I found this ad. For an artichoke farm. I've been out there now. You know it's foggy. Amazing, man. The fog comes in over the artichokes twice a day. You barely have to water them. Great crops. And it's a phenomenal food.' He started on the fucking vitamin count, more information in five seconds than a label on a can, and I let him go on, struck again by that notion. The new life. The new world. God, the mere thought still made my heart sing. Then, unexpectedly, I recalled that I had nearly six million dollars in my name in two foreign bank accounts and was gripped by an urgent question I could just as well have asked myself.

'So why aren't you gone?'

'He won't leave.'' Bert threw his big hands in my direction, the fingers crippled by desperation. 'The dumbfuck won't go. I've begged him. I beg him three times a week.' He stared at me, unhinged by the thought, and then turned away rather than confront what he could tell I was seeing — that Bert had given up his life to protect Orleans, and Orleans, when push came to shove, lacked the same dedication. Maybe Orleans couldn't honk off his mother sufficiently from two thousand miles away. Maybe, in the end, he didn't really have it for Bert. However it went, Bert's crusade was a one-way thing. I saw something else then, that this romance, Bert and Orleans, wasn't the high-flown love of the poets. There was something bad in it, it was tethered to pain; there was a reason Bert was so long telling himself the truth he did not want to know.

And even so, I envied him for a minute. Had I ever loved anybody like that? My feelings for Brushy seemed flimsy in the intense heat. But what about time? I thought. Maybe with time. Life has these two poles, it seems. You go one way or the other. We're always choosing: passion or despair.

'I've told him about the police,' Bert said. 'He doesn't believe it.'

'They'll be pretty convincing if they catch him.'

'Can you talk to them?' he asked finally. 'The cops? Are they friends of yours?'

'Hardly,' I said, but I sat there smiling. It was terrible really, the joy I took at the notion of skunking Pigeyes. I already had a few ideas.

The heat and the hour were gradually making me faint. I turned on the water and poured a cold bucket for myself, but didn't have the stamina or the courage to dump it over my head. I stood there before Bert, dabbing the water on my face and my chest, while I tried a moment to figure out what all this meant for me. There was a whisper about of the oven and the rocks barely sizzling.

'You don't know a thing about what's been going on at the firm, do you? The money? That whole thing?'

The sweat ran into his eyes and Bert blinked. He had his impenetrable black look: he doesn't understand you and never will.

I asked if the name Litiplex rang any bells. 'Jake?' he asked. I nodded.

'Didn't Jake send me some memo? And I wrote him a bunch of checks on the 397 account? Yeah,' Bert let his long body bob. He was remembering. 'Something was very touchy. It was a mix-up with the plaintiffs. Jake was afraid Krzysinski would roast his hind end when he heard Jake had to pay these expenses. Big, big goddamn secret. Jake was very uptight on this thing.' Bert reflected. 'Something's fucked-up, huh?' he asked.

'You might say.'

'Yeah,' he said, 'you know, now that I'm thinking, maybe a month ago Martin asked me about this. This Litiplex. But he was like, no problem, no big deal.'

That would have been when Martin saw the memo and the checks. Glyndora, of course, would have come to him first when she noticed.

'So what's the story?' Bert asked.

I laid it out briefly: No Litiplex. The numbered account in Pico Luan. Bert seemed to regard it as remotely amusing until I got to the part where Martin and Glyndora manipulated appearances to make it look like the money was his.

'Me? Those fuck-ers! Me? I don't believe it.' He'd jumped to his feet. I was abruptly reminded of trying cases with Bert, his sudden courtroom rages, objecting to a leading question like it was the landing of foreign troops on our soil. I waited for him to cool off.

'Just answer me straight, Bert. There's no deal between you and Martin for you to take the blame for this? The money?'

'Are you kidding? Fuck no, man.' 'Nothing? No wink, no nod?'

'No. NFW. That's scumbag stuff.' This was Bert, who had deceived millions of Americans about the outcome of sporting events, who had thought with his dick and made a profit besides, but he was on his high horse. He had the same lunatic look as when he talked about the secret poisons some faceless 'they' put in his foods. He got back up on one of the moisture-blackened benches and poured the bucket over his head, and came out of the flood glaring. I had an odd thought at that moment of how much he reminded me of Glyndora.

We went upstairs to dress then, both turned pretty sulky and without much to say. Bert had a bag in his locker with deodorant and whatnot and let me use his stuff.

'Who is it?' he asked me suddenly. 'With the money?'

'Doesn't matter.'

'Yeah, but — ' He shrugged.