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  "Oh, Lord."

  "Yeah," he said. "And you think your sex life's strange." Robbie was just talking, but the remark hit her hard. She was afraid from the start that he'd put her down. "My sex life's not strange." She eyed him severely. "Then you're the only one," he said. "Sex is always strange. Whether it's Brendan-strange or me-strange or you strange, it's strange."

  She hadn't heard this theory yet.

  "I mean, this is the most private, inner thing in life, isn't it?" he asked her. "It comes out just a little bit differently in each of us, like a fingerprint. Who you do what with. And your fantasies. And what part you like best. And what you're thinking. It's unique. That's why it's intimate. That's why it's magic."

  She had once been at a sex club in San Francisco where she'd watched one woman fuck another with a dildo strapped to the crown of a leather hood on her head. There hadn't been much magic in that. Not for her. But it was no business of his.

  He took her silence to mean she required convincing.

  "Here's what I'm saying," he said. "I picked up a woman one night. Well, `picked up.' I wouldn't say picked up. She works in the clerk's office. I've known her forever. Single gal. Joyce-Well, forget her name, but you know, I like her. Anyway, we're both pretty toasted. And we get to her place, she says, Sit down. And she takes out this photo album. Said she took the pictures herself. And they're of her. She's doing a sort of striptease for the camera. More than a tease. Very explicit. I don't know if she sent this in to Collected Kinks of America. But she was ramping up to show it to somebody. And it was me. And you know, if I was a jerk, I could have laughed. But I was fascinated. And very touched. And also really turned on. Even though I wouldn't exactly say she showed to advantage. She had pretty legs, but just about zip on top and, you know, the camera, it can be pretty harsh. But she was sharing it with me. Her strange little secret. Which was cool." He peeked her way to see how, she'd received this. "So," he concluded, "you ought to ease up on yourself."

  "Myself? How'd I get into this?"

  "Don't give me that. I got you figured now."

  She laughed and, as soon as she'd done it, felt a tremor.

  "Laugh all you like," he said. "I know why you always wanna talk about it."

  "You're the one always talking about it."

  "But you wanna listen."

  "A-gain?"

  "It's true."

  "The hell."

  "You can't," he told her.

  "Can't?" She felt a stab of apprehension. "Can't what?" `Be like that. Or at least what you think I am. Free. You can't be like that." He squared around to face her at a stoplight next to a shopping mall, teeming in the early hours of the evening. "I mean, I don't know if your thing is girls or boys or lightning bugs, but whatever it is-you can't. Not the way you'd like. Maybe you can't come. Or maybe you're too frozen up, inhibited, whatever you call it, to actually get it on with anybody. Or maybe you've gotten tanked and gone out for anything that comes your way and there's still a whole big country of pleasure you know you can't get to. But it's something like that. Don't tell me I'm wrong, because I know I'm not."

  It was a form of punishment to have to meet his eye. The heat of her flush had reached her scalp and her gut pinched. But she didn't look away. And in the few seconds that passed, another of those things that seemed to happen between them occurred. He was the one who emerged looking abashed and somewhat caved in on himself. He was the first to break off, to flip up the switch for the sunroof and fiddle pointlessly with all the other dials in the walnut console. He was the one who didn't dare look at her the rest of the way home.

  CHAPTER 22

  "George, I've been meaning to call you," said Morton Dinnerstein. I had just stepped into one of the elevators beside the grand lobby of the LeSueur. As soon as Mort saw me, he lit up with his silly off-center smile. I was a referring attorney now, a source of income and someone to whom he was obliged to show gratitude and charm. He pumped my hand several times. But it turned out he had serious business on his mind. "You didn't by any chance get the settlement check on this Petros v. Standard Railing matter, did you? The guy who fell out of the balcony at the Hands game? The thing was over two months ago and this McManis is stringing Robbie along."

  In the brass-ribbed elevator, with the artful festoonery adorning the grillwork, I suddenly felt like a bird in a cage. I remained determined not to lie for the government.

  Not so far as I know, I told him.

  "And the client, this Peter Petros, he isn't banging your door down? That's a miracle. Where'd you find this guy, George? There must be a couple more like him somewhere on earth."

  I laughed far too robustly at Morty's humor and looked up desperately at the old-fashioned clocklike mechanism that counted the floors.

  "I'm going to get this taken care of this week, George," Mort promised as I alighted. It was nearing April 15, and I guess Mort, like most Americans, was scrounging for tax money.

  Again and again, Petros confirmed the lesson I'd learned over the years watching my wife, Patrice, practice architecture: you can never plan well enough. Life will always outwit you. The devices employed to avoid detection of the Project were elaborate. With no questions asked, the General Counsel at Moreland had agreed, as part of their continuing cooperation with Stan's office, to confirm McManis's role with the company. Every plaintiff and defendant in the contrived cases had a listing with directory assistance and a phone number that forwarded to Amari's desk, as well as post office boxes from which the UCAs dutifully collected the mail. The companies created, like Standard Railing, were registered with the Secretary of State. But there was no controlling random events.

  The day Skolnick had pressured McManis to settle the painter's case, Klecker had rushed to the courthouse to correct a problem with the FoxBlte only to find, as he went through the metal detector, that he'd left his gun on under his jumpsuit. Amazingly, he'd gotten away with rapping on it and telling the deputies it was a tool. But the whole Project might have come down at that moment. Then last week a law student in Malatesta's class had called Feaver. He happened to have been in court, watching the judge on the bench, the day Silvio had ruled on the motion to dismiss in Petros and the student was now thinking of doing a paper on the case for a seminar. Feaver told him he couldn't discuss the matter without the client's consent, but everyone was living in dread that the student might decide to investigate on his own.

  No one, so far as I knew, had given much thought to the fact that Dinnerstein would expect to see money. It had been enough just to maintain all the pretenses in court. Yet if you believed the paperwork created to dupe Mort, he had several hundred thousand dollars coming, something he was unlikely to forget. In the office with both Robbie and Evon, he was, naturally, far crankier than he'd been with me. She had been around several times recently when he'd reminded Robbie to get after McManis, and Feaver's failure to produce results had even made Mort slightly mistrustful.

  "You sure spend a lot of time with that guy," Mort said one day this week. "Don't forget you're supposed to be kicking his ass."

  "Hey," Robbie answered.

  Mort turned to Evon. "He falls in love with people, you know." Dinnerstein had come to accept her regular presence, inured to the random women who became enmeshed in Bobbie's life. Evon, for her part, had learned to enjoy the gentle needling between the two men and, even more, the intimate undercurrents that inevitably overcame Mort's frequent exasperation with his partner. But finances were one of Mort's responsibilities in the firm, and despite his good nature, he was exacting. He could tell you the monthly income within a few dollars without a financial report. He invested shrewdly, too, Robbie said.

  `That dippy head-in-the-clouds stuff,' Robbie had once told her, `that's partly a schtick he got into as a kid so he could ignore a lot of hairy stuff. You're too young to remember how it was, but until Salk found his vaccine, mothers would sort of hover over their kids all summer, watching for even a runny nose, knowing that somebody-some kid from
school or the third cousin of your downstairs neighbor-but someone was going to end up with this horrible plague. And Morty was the one. He was in an iron lung for months. That can weird you out some. The paralysis pretty much receded. But afterwards, his ma was always hanging on him. Sometimes when he was sleeping, she'd put a mirror under his nose to make sure he was breathing. And she made him wear this leg brace, so he felt like the world's biggest dork. When he'd get out of the house, we'd take it off and hide it in the bushes. It was leather with steel rods and laces like for shoes. I must have tied that thing a hundred times, helping him put it back on. Sheilah was never the wiser. He'd go home to Mommy with that dopey out-of-it smile.'

  Feaver found this story, like everything about Mort, endearing, but the point was well taken. The same day Mort had seen me, Shirley Nagle burst into McManis's conference room to announce that Dinnerstein was in reception. As it happened, Evon was with Jim, doing a status check on the paperwork outstanding on each of the contrived cases. Shirley described Mort as polite, but determined. He'd already made a couple of unanswered phone calls to McManis today. He'd now announced that he'd just wait out there until Jim could see him. Dinnerstein had taken a seat in one of the upholstered chairs, reaching into a full briefcase to draw out a draft on which he began marking out changes in his small careful hand.

  "Should I hide?" Evon asked McManis.

  "Hell," said Jim, "you better go see what he wants."

  In reception, Evon explained her presence with something close to the truth: she'd come down here to confirm briefing schedules on a number of cases and, hearing Mort's name, thought he might have been here to find her. It was the money. of course. that he was after.

  "Why don't you stick around," Mort whispered. "I wouldn't mind a witness."

  Eventually they were ushered back to McManis's office. Mort never stopped smiling throughout the visit. He said that after all those months of hearing Jim's name, he thought they should meet. Trying to build a bridge, he even tossed out the names of a few people in Moreland's legal department whom he took for mutual acquaintances. McManis was not completely convincing in response, but owing a fellow several hundred thousand dollars didn't generally foster a relaxed appearance.

  When Mort finally reached the subject of the money his firm was due, Jim, in usual lawyerly fashion, blamed the client.

  "Well, we have a client, too." Dinnerstein laughed. "And we're going to have a hell of a time explaining to him why we didn't file a contempt motion." Mort happened to have a draft of such a motion in his briefcase and, with no lapse in his jovial manner, handed it to Jim before Evon and he went on their way.

  Naturally, Sennett and Robbie and I were urgently summoned in the aftermath. This problem was only going to get worse. Beyond Standard Railing, Dinnerstein would soon be looking for a settlement check on the case of the poor painter with cancer which had been before Skolnick, and also on King v. Hardwick, the sexual harassment suit on which Robbie had informed Judge Crowthers' clerk of a settlement two days after the hearing. Things were only half as bad as they looked, since Feaver would immediately refund his end to the government. But retrieving the money from Mort, whenever the Project was over, might be a complicated legal undertaking, especially if Mort was angry, as he figured to be. The folks at UCORC, who were forever hounding McManis and Stan about the significant costs of the Project, seemed unlikely to let go of $250,000 they might never see again.

  We all watched Sennett calculate, banging his fingers against his lips. It reminded me a little of one of those game shows I watched in childhood, where the audience waited for the correct answer to come spinning down in a sheaf of IBM cards dropped from the bottom of Univac.

  "They'll do it," he said suddenly. "I know how to handle it." Around the table, we awaited a further explanation, but it wasn't forthcoming. Sennett gave us a dry smile, but his idea, whatever it was, was locked in the need-to-know treasure chest. Yet he was right. The money was wired from a code-named account to McManis two days later.

  "You know," Robbie told Evon the night he'd presented Mort with the check, "I wasn't really scared. I've always figured with Morty that if push comes to shove, I can just tell him to shut up and trust me."

  Sennett would not like that-what if Mort let something slip to his uncle?-but Robbie was right. For all his lapses and deceptions, Robbie was committed to Morty's wellbeing, and Dinnerstein knew it. Years ago, despite some qualms from Joan about Robbie's philandering, Mort and his wife had named Robbie in their will as their children's guardian, recognizing the powerful bond Robbie had formed with both boys. He was `Uncle Robbie,' and had coached Mort's older son, Josh, in Little League for several years, in `the good old days' as Robbie called them, when he would show up for practice at eight on Saturday morning still in his suit. The younger boy, Max, was not an athlete. But from an early age, he'd been an exuberant performer, a talent Robbie had helped cultivate by directing the annual children's theater production at the local Jewish Community Center. Last summer, for the first time, he had bowed out because of Rainey's deterioration, but Evon heard Robbie on the phone with the boy often, coaching him for different parts.

  "You have any friends like that?" Feaver asked her now. "Like Morty and me?"

  "Me?" Evon was somehow startled by the thought. Her first impulse was to mention her sister. But family wasn't quite the same. She knew that. No, was the honest answer. The bare facts sank her, but she told him the truth.

  "Not many people do," he offered for comfort, clearly having read her reaction.

  But it was not a good night after that. When she got up to the small apartment, she was reeling. She felt fierce anger at the way Robbie managed to sneak up on her, and she hated herself for being who she was, so simple and manipulable in her longings. She sat on the couch in a blanket for quite some time, before she even had the spunk to put on Reba singing "It's Your Call." She was going to have to go out and call Merrel. There was no choice about that. Downtown, in a couple of the fancy hotels there were luxurious phone booths, elegant enclosed spaces, with brass fixtures and a little shelf of granite, a place where she did not feel in peril when she spoke in her old voice.

  She took a box from the freezer, unsure exactly what entree was in it, and punched the beeping buttons on the microwave. She went to shower while her dinner twirled under the rays. When she'd stripped down, she considered herself in the small mirror on the bathroom vanity, whose corners were already being glossed over with vapor. Good tits. She had that much going for her. The sight, without any expectation, brought on the first vivid fantasy of being with Feaver that she'd experienced in all these months. It was sudden, enrapturing, and brief: just an intense image of him in darkness. An exact tactile memory of the unanticipated male hardness of his limbs revisited her. Her nipples peaked at once; she knew if she lowered her hand for consolation she'd be wet. But she twisted away from that, almost like a wrestler escaping from a hold. No. No. And then she prepared herself to recoil from the shock. But she wasn't upset. It was just a piece of something she'd tried out, knowing all along it would never fit, just one more thing rocking and rolling inside her.

  She looked to the mirror, hoping for some confirmation from the woman there, but her face was already obscured by the steam.

  CHAPTER 23

  Theday after Robbie's televised payoff of Skolnick, Stan had met with Chief Judge Winchell and played the tape for her. He wanted her to know Petros was on the right track, that Feaver's accusations were proving out. Stan's hope, yet again, was that she'd be willing to authorize the installation of a bug in Judge Malatesta's chambers. The Chief Judge was careful not to give him any advice; she was the judge, not the prosecutor. But Sennett felt that if he could specify a limited time frame, a few days in which the government was watching for a particular event, she'd sign the warrant. Therefore, Sennett sought Robbie's help in devising a scenario for an emergency motion, one Malatesta would have to rule on quickly, which would give the government an event to earma
rk in applying for the bug.

  There were still two contrived cases on Malatesta's docket. Given Walter's warnings, they had remained largely dormant, supposedly snoozing along through the interrogatory stage in discovery. One of the cases, Drydech v. Lancaster Heating, concerned a gas water heater that had supposedly exploded in the barn of Robbie's client, a farmer. Drydech, based on an out-of-state decision Robbie had read, was known as `The Fart Case' around McManis's office. The planned defense was that combustion resulted not from the water heater but from a buildup of high quantities of methane emitted by a barn full of cows.

  To create the emergency, Robbie now proposed that he file a motion to advance the deposition of a company engineer who allegedly had warned of the potential for flash explosions if the heater was installed in an enclosed space occupied by livestock. The motion would require an immediate ruling because the engineer, supposedly, was seriously ill and slipping downhill.

  As soon as the papers were typed, Robbie and Evon dashed to the courthouse to file them and visit with Walter. The predicate for the bug would be a conversation, much like the one in Peter Petros's case, in which Feaver told Wunsch that the outcome of the lawsuit would hinge on Malatesta's ruling. The government would then watch to see how Wunsch brought this news to the judge and how Silvio reacted.

  When they arrived, Walter was already in the courtroom, getting ready for a hearing at 2 p.m. Once court started, Robbie would have a hard time holding any conversation with Wunsch, and they galloped across the corridor. As Evon flew through the swinging door behind Robbie, she nearly knocked over a burly guy twice her size. He was somebody she'd seen around here before, a cop or a deputy from the looks of him. While she apologized, he stared incredulously, not so much angry as unaccustomed, Evon figured, to taking that kind of wallop from a female.