The Four-Night Run Read online

  At night, sometimes while she slept, he would lie awake and stare at that very point as it swelled and contracted with the working of her lungs.

  “What’s that, there?”

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  “Stop. It tickles. No, really. Jen. Stop.”

  “There.”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing. What is it?”

  “My third nipple.”

  “God, that’s disgusting.”

  “The Druids used to think it a mark of the anointed. They’d walk leagues and leagues just to rub one for good luck.”

  “Leagues?”

  “And leagues. Go ahead.”

  “No. Please. Yuck.”

  “Go ahead. Don’t be afraid. It doesn’t have any teeth. Make a wish first.”

  “A wish?”

  “Yes, like the Druids.”

  “Those wacky Druids. All right, here goes. How does that feel?”

  “Fine. Really fine. You know they used to rub something else for good luck, the Druids.”

  “That?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “You’re making it all up, about the Druids.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “A big liar.”

  “I admit it, yes. And getting bigger all the time. No, don’t stop. Don’t. What happened?”

  “You’re nothing but a fraud.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t choose to consort with big firm frauds.”

  “Consort? That sounds suspiciously mercantile. Anyway, about the whole big firm thing, I’ve been thinking.”

  “Well, there you go, Scrbacek, screwing up everything.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Roll over onto your side, and it’ll pass. You were made for a big firm. You already have your white shirts and khakis for casual Fridays.”

  “But I think I want to do trial work.”

  “So you’ll be a corporate litigator.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of corporate litigation. I was thinking maybe of criminal law.”

  “No way.”

  “Hey, I need that arm. I’m thinking defense work.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Really.”

  “That son of a bitch, he got to you, didn’t he?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Yes, he did. He treated you like shit all year, and now you’re going to be DeLoatch’s bitch.”

  At the beginning, when they had finally fallen into it, they had sex constantly, obsessively—nothing new there with young lovers—their bouts interspersed with gossip and their grand hopes for their futures in the law.

  But even after the beginning, when the sex was not as constant, not as obsessive, and then later, when the sex became far rarer than the arguments and when his drive was slaked by other matter, inanimate and animate both, even then the progression was always the same. Whatever the position, whatever the length of their efforts or lack of efforts, whatever their moods or their emotions or even the disdain they felt one for the other, whatever, it would always come down to his lips against that spot, her letting go of whatever was holding her back, the feel of her skin, the musk sweat beneath her arm, the taste, the rush of blood, the anger and passion and love, yes, love, spreading over everything, washing it clean.

  All coming alive for the two of them from that magic patch of flesh.

  “DeLoatch has got nothing to do with it.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Scrbacek. He’s got everything to do with it. He hooked you. The more he abused you, the more he had you hooked.”

  “I have a theory that he humiliated me regularly and used me as the butt of his jokes out of some fiercely sublimated homoerotic attraction.”

  “It sounds like you dream about him.”

  “Not him. His wife.”

  “How do you figure someone like her with someone like him?”

  “The power of intellect.”

  “It’s a good thing then, Scrbacek, that you’re so good-looking. It’s a tough road, criminal law. It’s hard to get established.”

  “All it takes is one case, one great case.”

  “That’s what we’re all looking for, the holy grail, one big case to finance the rest of our careers. Maybe we can work together. Ling and Scrbacek.”

  “Scrbacek and Ling.”

  “Whatever. I’ll do civil, you’ll do criminal. Making gads of money in the public interest.”

  “All we need is one big case. DeLoatch said he’d help.”

  “DeLoatch?”

  “I talked it over with him, the criminal law thing. He’s not so fierce up close. He actually said he wasn’t surprised. He said when I get out, he’ll steer some work my way.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “No, about taking his help. I mean, criminal law is cool and all, nothing hotter than a self-righteous public defender, but I’ve heard things about DeLoatch. How he’s gotten a little too close to his clients.”

  “Empathy.”

  “How he sometimes advises as well as represents, how he becomes their friend, lives their lifestyle, arranges their deals.”

  “Malicious rumors.”

  “Shares their drugs.”

  “As long as he shares.”

  “Don’t emulate too much.”

  “Don’t worry. I know where the line is, and I won’t get anywhere near it. But I like the idea of representing those in the direst circumstances, those with the biggest need.”

  “Now you sound like me.”

  “Except I’m going to get rich as sin doing it.”

  “Well, see, there you go. My friends are right after all. You are a Republican asshole.”

  And after the end, with all its savage hurts and bruised emotions, it wasn’t the bitter aftertaste of the sarcasm or the fights that remained most deeply embedded in his memory. It was that patch of skin, and the dance of sex that it promised, a dance that seemed to transcend the physical laws that strapped them to the mattress, or the wall of the shower stall, or the dark stretch of lawn in the park at night.

  Her body seemed to change in the very act, to twist and swell, to elongate and then shrink as his hand gently brushed the length from her hip to her shoulder. Her neck, her thigh, that perfect patch of skin. And from that singular touch, they would dive together, soar together, land gently or roughly, their tongues twisting like red stamens, their legs twining like hardy vines, grinding together in slow twists, banging into each other with fierce violence, oblivious to the sky, the temperature, the phone ringing in the background, the quick snapping bark of a dog, the phone, oblivious to the phone as they grew and swelled and arched, the phone, the phone . . .

  Scrbacek woke from the ringing of the phone and the sound of footsteps up the stairs.

  He was still lying on his back, in the robe, but the robe was parted and he was ludicrously erect. He sat upright and covered himself as Jenny, still in her lawyer clothes, hurried into the room and answered the phone. She smiled at him as she said hello into the receiver.

  Palsgraf jumped onto the bed and started sniffing Scrbacek’s crotch, as if searching for a bone to worry. Scrbacek pushed the dog away.

  “No,” she said. “Everything’s fine . . . Still, yes, but he’s just about ready to leave . . . I don’t think so, no, not tonight. I’m going to spend it with Sean . . . I appreciate that, yes, but I think Sean needs some time . . . I’ll call you . . . No, not tomorrow night either. I’ll call you . . . Okay . . . Yes . . . Me too . . . Yes . . . Bye.”

  She hung up and looked at Scrbacek, sitting up in the bed in the robe, his hands crossed on his lap, still fighting to keep the dogged Palsgraf away, and she shrugged.

  “Dan,” she said.

  “I figured. He seemed nice enough.”

  “He’s a waste. You look rested.”

  “How long have I
been sleeping?”

  “Most of the day. I was able to get out a little early.” She pointed her toes, slipped off her shoes, first one then the other, and arched her back as she took off her tight little jacket. “Your name is still all over the news. There are reports that you burned down a house on Ansonia Road.”

  The dog sat beside Scrbacek on the bed and let him ruffle the fur beneath his chin. “I was there,” said Scrbacek, looking at the dog, “but I didn’t start the fire.”

  She rested one knee on the bed and leaned close to Scrbacek to examine his face. The heat of her body and the scent of her perfume pressed against him. “Your face is a mess. You need someone to look at that cut on your nose.”

  “Eventually. Not now.”

  She sat down beside him, her legs stretched out in front of her.

  “That boy who was killed in your car, was he your intern?”

  “Ethan Brummel. Yes. He was a good kid.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I went to pay my respects to his parents. His mother acted like I killed him myself.”

  “It must be so hard. I can’t even imagine it.”

  “I tried my best to comfort her.”

  “I’m sure you did fine.”

  “I quoted the Constitution to her.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “And now they think I was planning to kill her too, if her son told her all the terrible things I was doing.”

  “The Constitution? Jesus.”

  Scrbacek leaned over to Palsgraf and grabbed the dog’s face and rubbed the sides of his muzzle. The dog’s head lifted, and he grimaced a smile and let out a long satisfied sigh. “I didn’t realize how much I missed this guy.”

  “The papers say the case against you is growing stronger by the hour,” she said, “and that an indictment is expected shortly.”

  “Surwin’s indomitable.”

  “I’ve always found him pretty fair. Hard but fair.”

  “He wants to fry me. He’ll be fair about it, sure, but still I’ll fry.”

  “Cirilio Vega’s come out saying you’ve come unhinged.”

  “Good old Cirilio. It’s nice to have friends, isn’t it?”

  “He hit on me once toward the end of when I was still with you.”

  “He always had taste.”

  “I told him he was a smarmy piece of shit, and he laughed and thanked me.”

  “And then?”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Objection. Answer was nonresponsive. Anyway, he’s representing Breest now, so whatever he says about me he’s just doing his job.”

  “Did you do it, J.D.? Did you kill that boy?”

  He stopped rubbing the dog and turned to face Jenny. “No.”

  “Good,” she said, nodding. “I knew, I just wanted to hear it. So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see the big picture yet, and until I do I’m running blind. Still, I have no choice but to keep running. If I don’t, they’ll kill me. Remember that Remi Bozant?”

  “The dirty cop in the Amber Grace case?”

  “He’s the muscle, but somebody higher up is paying him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long are you going to keep running?”

  “Until there’s no place left to go.”

  “You have to do something.”

  “I know,” he said. “Something.”

  And as he said it, he couldn’t help himself. He had to do something, and so what he did was reach out his hand and gently touch her blouse, on the side, beneath her bra, touch that small patch of skin beside the bottom curve of her breast, that magical place that lived still in the recesses of his own damaged heart, and somehow, against all odds, still represented for him the last desperate refuge of his dwindling hope.

  25

  AMBER GRACE

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Jenny Ling, pulling abruptly away from his touch.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “You’ve been thinking about me?”

  “About you, yeah, and remembering us, in this room, sitting on this bed just like this, side by side.”

  “You’re lying on my bed in my robe with a poorly disguised hard-on, thinking about us? Are you mental? Are you a mental case?” She rapped his head hard with her knuckle. “Paging Doctor Freud.”

  “Jen.”

  He reached out again for that spot, but before he could touch her she was off the bed.

  “Five years ago you stroll out of my life, and since then there’s not been so much as a Christmas card.”

  “The restraining order.”

  “The order expired thirty days after issuance. You were using, you were scary, I needed you to cool off and dry out. And once you cooled off and dried out, you totally disappeared from my life. Five years. Which was fine. Your choice. Time to move on. But now, when someone’s hunting to kill you and Surwin’s just aching to indict your sorry butt, you show up with a bruised expression and your little hard-on to say you’re thinking about us?”

  “Jen.”

  “Where have you been for five years, J.D.? Which asylum?”

  “I was lost. I came back here, and I remembered the way we were.”

  “Somewhere in the distance I hear Barbra Streisand singing.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “There are things we need to talk about.”

  “No, there are not. There is nothing we need to talk about, not a single damn thing.” Her expression was as fierce as a warning. “All we need is for you to get dressed and get out. Your clothes are in the dryer downstairs. Try to keep your manhood in check while I bring them up.”

  “I miss you, Jen.”

  She stopped on her way out the door and backed up without turning. “It’s been too long a time, J.D. It’s not worth even saying now.”

  “Still, it’s true. I’ve thought about you a lot over the years, but I’ve always been too afraid to do something about it.”

  “Sometimes it’s best to listen to our fears.”

  “What happened to us, Jen?”

  She spun around at that and spit out a derisive “Fuck you.”

  “Jen.”

  “Just fuck you. What kind of gall do you have to ask me what happened? You know what the hell happened. You won your big case, J.D., the one you were itching for since law school. You popped Amber Grace out of death row and became a star. And the clients came pouring in—the pimps and the mobsters and the big-time drug dealers with their stacks of cash and rolled-up hundred-dollar bills, like the ones in your boot. And the nights got later, and the partying got hotter, and you started taking powder in lieu of money for your fee. You lost control, with your guns and your drugs and your paranoid rants. And when I wouldn’t go along on that sick little ride and told you to clean up your act or get the hell out, you left me cold without a word or a glance back and hightailed it for the greener pastures and less demanding women in Casinoland. That’s what happened to us.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Oh, no? You didn’t start representing anyone with the cash to pay? You didn’t stop coming home at night? I didn’t find you sprawled unconscious on the floor of that very bathroom, lying in your own vomit, your face covered with your fine white powder, the gun you had waved in my face stuck in your belt? You didn’t leave for a new office and new life in Casinoland without a single note of regret? You didn’t find a string of cocktail waitresses to wet your wick without the muss or fuss of something so inconvenient as a relationship? Tell me it’s not true, J.D. Tell me.”

  “It wasn’t like you said.”

  “Then tell me sometime how it really was,” she said. “But not now. Now just get the hell out of my house.”

  Before he could say anything in response, she was gone. Scrbacek watched her go an
d then faced the dog. The dog stared balefully at him for a moment before jumping off the bed and following his mistress out the door, leaving Scrbacek to try to remember. To remember the way it really was.

  Which meant remembering Amber Grace.

  Amber Grace.

  She had been sentenced to death for the murder of a pimp named Lucius Haste, a grisly murder that had left a hole in Lucius’s chest the size of a volleyball, and his face looking like half a blood orange squeezed already of its juice.

  Amber and Lucius had been more than lovers, they had been business associates. Amber worked the highways and byways of the old resort town while Lucius cruised the night in his gold Lexus to keep track of her and the rest of his string. But Lucius had heard that Amber was holding some of her hard-won wages back, and he had been swearing in the Crapstown bars that she wouldn’t get away with it. “I’m gonna get that bitch, you understan’ what I’m sayin’? She’ll earn those bills she been slippin’ down her bra. You know what I’m sayin’? You understan’? You know what I’m sayin’?” And Amber, for her part, didn’t like the attention Lucius was lavishing on the new girl, just off the bus, with the lank blonde hair. They had been arguing, loudly, Amber and Lucius. There were records of visits by Amber to the emergency ward, a nose broken, an eye swollen shut. And then they found Lucius Haste’s body in an alley with a sawed-off shotgun by his side, the very shotgun that had put the hole in Lucius Haste’s chest and afterward had battered him featureless.

  The evidence showed Amber Grace’s fingerprints to be on the barrel of that sawed-off shotgun, just where she would have been holding it if she’d swung it like a baseball bat against Lucius Haste’s head. The evidence showed Amber Grace to be in that very neighborhood a short time before the killing. The evidence showed Lucius Haste to be no model citizen and the killing to be well deserved. But still the color photographs presented to the jury showed his face looking like half a blood orange squeezed already of its juice.