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  `But this time, I go around crying in my beer, `Damn this him, she only wanted the dope,' and guys are yukking it up. I mean, really. Always the last to know. Mersing, you met Mersing, he gives it to me real good. `For Chrissake, Robbie. You didn't know the nickname? Cocaine Lorraine? The Snow Queen? But hey,' guy says. `Great tits, right? You weren't exactly there for a sleigh ride either.'

  "Snow Queen. I guess I'd heard it. But I figured it was because she was, you know, not warm, let's say. I took it for a challenge. That's the kind of asshole I am.

  "Man, and I don't know what got into me. But I just thought, Shit, this isn't right. This person has got too much on the ball to be shagging every creep with a connect because she's too scared to go out and cop on her own, and that, frankly, was about the size of it. So I confront her. `What the hell is wrong with you? A beautiful, brilliant person like you?' First she's shocked. Then she's pissed. But when I pulled out the nickname, it's boohoo. Man, Niagara Falls. She was so goddamned ashamed. `I'm gonna help you beat this,' I say like I had any idea what that meant. But I checked her into Forest Hills. I paid the bill, too. And six months later we got married.

  "That was the best thing I ever did for her. I'm the man who saved her life. That's what she called me." He opened the door then and finally looked Evon's way. "Until, of course, I became the guy who ruined it."

  CHAPTER 28

  When Patrice is out of town on a project, I tend to make camp in the den off the kitchen, everything I need spread out in reach of the comfortable chair where I spend the late evenings. I was there when my doorbell rang near ten-thirty, several nights after Robbie's visit to Crowthers. Through the door-eye, I saw Sennett kicking my stoop. McManis was beside him, in his suit coat but no tie, shaking out a long umbrella. This could only be disaster, I knew. Ordinarily, Stan would never have risked a meeting where the three of us could be seen together. I slid back the dead bolt. I have seen executioners who looked more lighthearted.

  Is it bad? I asked first thing.

  "Terrible," Stan answered.

  Had Feaver screwed something up?

  "No," Stan said. "Well, yes. Only `screwup' isn't enough. George, for Chrissake," he said then, "let us in."

  Even anger had been unable to fulfill its usual function of holding Stan aloft from despair. His suit had gone limp in the rain. McManis, on the other hand, looked scattered. He managed a soft smile when he came through the doorway, but stood still there, baffled. Both said okay when I offered a drink.

  Stan swished his scotch around in the tumbler. "Why don't you just show him?" he told Jim. McManis handed over a red expandable folder and I removed a file. He said it was a run of the Roll of Attorneys-at-Law in this state, all those whose last names began with 'F.'

  "Look for your client," Stan instructed.

  Not there. Didn't pay his dues? I suggested.

  Stan delivered a look hotter than magma. He took it I was being a defense lawyer, as I was, instinctively seeking excuses.

  "He's Not A Lawyer," Stan shouted.

  I laughed, naturally. It was ridiculous. Perhaps Robbie had been admitted under a stage name or a different spelling, or maybe in another state. There was an explanation. Walking through the streets of the courthouse triangle with Robbie, as I occasionally did these days, I'd been introduced to half a dozen attorneys with whom he'd gone to law school.

  McManis directed me to the other items in the folder, but Sennett had no patience.

  "He attended Blackstone," Sennett said. "He's in the law school yearbook. But he's never been licensed to practice law. Not in this state or any other we can find. We've been on the phone all day."

  After the panic over Carmody, they'd begun to wonder how easily Jim could be discovered. That had caused them to check the Roll of Attorneys. One thing had led to another.

  I was still too stunned to figure out what this meant. "What it means?" asked Stan. "It means that every day for almost two decades Robbie Feaver has committed an ongoing fraud-on his clients, on the courts, on you, and on me. It means every letter he's signed, every motion, every business card he's handed out has been a lie. It means every nickel he's earned as an attorney is ill-gotten. And it means that every fucking thing we've done on Petros is probably out the window, since Rule One from UCORC was no fraud on innocent bystanders. And now it turns out we've left a one-man fraud wave in place for the better part of a year.

  "And that means Robbie is shit out of luck. It means his deal was a fraud to start, and every horrible thing I said would happen if he dealt us dirty is coming down. It means he's going to the penitentiary as fast as I can get him there, wife or no wife, and that he's going to be inside until the fucking hair on his empty head has all turned white." Sennett closed his eyes and took a breath, perhaps reminding himself that I was his friend, or at least that I wasn't my client. "That's what it means."

  That's what it meant. But that wasn't why Stan was sitting in my den as the minute hand swung closer to midnight on the Howard Miller clock in the corner. I had an obvious assignment. My job was to figure out how to save them all. "IN LAW SCHOOL, there are lots of required courses. You know that. Torts. Contracts. Criminal. Corporations. Yadda yadda yadda. I took all of that. And passed. Not by very much. I was jumping around like a grasshopper, clerking in a law firm, still reading for parts in commercials. But I got by. I'd always tell Morty, `You know what the guy who finishes last in the class gets? A diploma."'

  He peeked up to see if he could get a smile. I rotated one finger forward as a bare command to continue.

  "So it gets to be my senior year, 1973, it's Watergate, and all of a sudden, son of a bitch, we've got a new requirement. Now nobody can graduate without taking Legal Ethics. Like that would have stopped Nixon. Only I can't take Legal Ethics. Cause it's Tuesday and Thursday at four, and that's when I'm working for Peter Neucriss. It was a bigger miracle than the loaves and fishes that he'd hired me in the first place. Blackstone Law School? Law Review from the U., you weren't even worthy to run Peter's Xerox machine. But I got to know him down on the Street of Dreams, he liked the girls I ran with, I guess, so he gave me my shot. This to me is bigger than Broadway. Cause if I really carry the load, then I can get a full-time job as an associate in the best PI. shop in the universe, known and yet to be discovered. It's all in lights: try cases, make money, be a star. So no way am I taking Legal Ethics on two of the four afternoons when I'm supposed to be at Neucriss's office. And besides, the registrar's office, they couldn't hold a fire drill in a phone booth, they'll never know the difference. Right?

  "Wrong. The week of graduation, the dean whistles me in. 'Robbie, Robbie, what the fuck are we going to do with you? You didn't take Legal Ethics.' If it was just me, he'd have flunked out my fanny faster than I could scratch it, but there's about half a dozen other folks who've pulled the same stunt, including, bless his heart, a fella who's number three in the class. So the deal is, we can go to graduation. And take Legal Ethics over the summer, which means write a paper while we're studying for the bar exam. Pretty square deal. Frankly, I was so grateful I cried, because the idea of telling my mother she's not going to this law school graduation, for which both her sisters are flying in from Cleveland, that's inconceivable, that's like the idea of antimatter.

  "So that summer, I'm working for Neucriss, who still hasn't firmly committed to a full-time job for me, and going to Legal Ethics and to a bar exam review course. I'm busier than a bunny in spring and then Peter got this case-it was a huge plaintiff's class, one of the first toxic torts in the country, even before Love Canal. I'm working with Neucriss directly, at the right hand of God, no sleep, and of course, I blow off the final paper in Ethics. All I know is this is it, once in a lifetime, bottom of the heap to the top, and nobody's taking it from me.

  "So three weeks before the bar, it's back to the dean's office. `Jesus Christ, Robbie, we can't certify you for the exam, you've got an incomplete in Legal Ethics.'You know, I tried every angle. I'd donate organs and half my in
come for life if he'd just stamp the little blue sheet. No sale. `Finish the paper now, then you can take the bar in December with the group that flunks the first time.'

  "And I don't know, I thought I was going to do that. Of course, there's no way in the world I'm telling Neucriss that I didn't get my law degree. And, naturally, all of this works to my advantage. Peter thinks I'm a Trojan, cause the other two clerks, they're wimping out to study as the bar comes up, and I'm like, I got it handled. I even came in the afternoon the first day the exam was given. Neucriss was really impressed!

  "So I got the job. Now what do I do? The bar results come back. Everybody's crowing. And you know, the third of November the three new associates-Robbie from Blackstone and two hotshots from Easton and Harvard-get the afternoon off to be sworn in. The ceremony's just a cattle call over in the Supreme Court, eight hundred kids all standing on the front steps. So I raised my hand with everybody else. The only difference was that the rest eventually got mailed a certificate to practice law and I didn't. That's how it happened."

  He sat in the leather club chair in front of my desk with an unfaltering, fawnlike expression, utterly compelled by his rationale for ridiculous behavior. He took no responsibility for the thousands of hours of work to which he'd laid waste-by Stan, by the agents, by Evon, by me-or the peril and pain to which he'd exposed himself and Lorraine. The Robbie I'd come to know and like was elsewhere, like a spirit released from a body and hovering in a corner of the room. Observing my reactions, he made a face and looked out the window.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "You do stuff as a kid and then you're stuck with it. I was a kid."

  He was a grownup, I pointed out, when he didn't tell me.

  He brought a hand to his temple protectively. It was no later than 8 a.m. and he appeared to be watching the light crawl, like a gentle hand, down the sides of the big buildings along the river-anything rather than face me.

  I asked if Lorraine knew.

  "Nobody knows. No one."

  I could take the usual consolation: my bills were paid. And I'd realized all along there were reasons we were each sitting where we were, on either side of the desk. Nor could I pretend that similar things, perhaps not on this scale, but not entirely unlike it, hadn't happened before: clients who lost their deals because they tried to hide money they were required to forfeit; an executive who'd recently gotten probation to testify against the grubby smack-dealer he'd scored from, and then blew his first monthly urine drop and spent a year in the pokey. There was no end to the way clients could disappoint you. But I'd seldom been as thoroughly taken in.

  Feaver finally seemed to be absorbing the weight of it. He was slumped with both feet in his close-soled loafers flat on the floor. Eventually, he went to the door.

  "Are you my lawyer?" he asked from there. It was the right question, not so much for focusing both of us on the pragmatic issues, but because the fragile look that accompanied it redeemed him somewhat. Robbie was an eternal beacon of need, like those dead stars which, even imploded, continue emitting a radio signal through space. But his baddog truckling made it seem that he actually cared about what I would answer, and not simply because it would represent a monumental inconvenience to him if I withdrew. I realized what had been implicit from the start: he had come to me not out of regard for my courtroom oratory or my connections but out of personal respect. I seldom thought of myself as an example, or of the valor of what I tried to do every day. I whisked him out the door with a backward wave and no answer, but I'd already settled the matter with myself. I was his lawyer. In the better sense of the word.

  Near 2 A.M. the lobby buzzer had roused her, a honking duck in her dreams.

  "This is your Uncle Peter," rasped a voice distorted by the intercom. `Uncle Peter' was the Project code word, a fail-safe i.d. for times of trouble. It was McManis who showed up at Evon's door. He was too proper to step any farther into the apartment. He just leaned back against the steel jamb.

  "It's about Robbie," Jim told her. Her first thought was that he was dead. And he was, as far as she was concerned, once she heard the story.

  "I was wrong," McManis said before he left. He was wearing a light suit spotted with rain. "I always said that Mort was the most dangerous person to the Project. Which was foolish. We knew where the risk was from the start and we forgot. Heck, that's why you're here. We knew he was a con. And he conned us anyway."

  "Played us," said Evon. It was more impulse than humor, but Jim responded with his mild smile.

  "There's never a bottom with these people. It's like facing mirrors. You just go down and down." McManis instructed her to skip the morning pickup, just go to the office, so she'd be at hand when they started to sort things out.

  Around 9 a.m., Robbie appeared at the opening to her cubicle. His tie knot was already wrung down six inches below his open collar. He wanted to talk.

  "I don't think so, Robbie."

  "Look, I'm sorry. I want to say that." He was too weakened to raise his hands; he simply opened his palms at his side. "It was the past to me. A mistake in the past."

  She propelled her chair to the credenza behind her and, waiting for him to leave, hovered over a phone-book-sized printout of hospital charges she'd been abstracting. But what was the reason for that? she thought suddenly. A case she didn't care about, clients who weren't really hers. The months, the time, the work, the hope for something of value-the staggering size of what had probably been destroyed, of what was being wrenched away from her, brought a whirling moment of desperation and, as ever, shame. He took a step closer.

  "Don't be a jerk," she told him.

  "A bigger jerk, you mean."

  "You couldn't be a bigger jerk, Robbie. You're maxed. You busted the meter."

  The cover occurred to her remotely, whatever it was worth now. They were out in the open here. Yet it fit. Lovers' tiff. If she wanted, she could throw something at him. Instead, when he tried to speak to her again, she stuck a finger in each ear.

  In time, she felt his shadow move off her. She sat still, contending with her rage. Once lit, it could incinerate everything else, including normally reliable means of restraint. She tried to sit in this chair. be in this place, step aside, but it was useless. In a minute, she was tearing down the corridor.

  "What matters to you?"

  He looked up abjectly from his chrome-armed desk chair. "Did you hear what I asked?"

  "Yeah, I heard." He motioned to close the door. She slammed it.

  "Then what's the answer? "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean. What counts. With you? I can't figure it out. I really can't."

  "Shit, what counts with you? Getting merit badges from the Bureau? You think your bullshit's better than my bullshit?"

  "No way, bub. I want an answer. What matters to you? Can you even tell me? Or is it just whatever play you can work. That's it, isn't it? So you can look down on us poor morons when we buy it?"

  "Is that what you think?"

  "Yes, Robbie. Yes, that's what I think." "Well then, that's what you think."

  "Don't you blow me off. Don't you dare. Tell me what matters to you, goddamn it!"

  In his face, she could actually detect a fluttering aspect of fear. He had no idea how far down she'd drive him. Nor, in truth, did she.

  "Can you tell me?"

  "I don't know. Probably."

  "Then I want to hear it."

  His jaw rotated.

  "It's love. Okay? It's the people I love. That's what counts. My friends. My family. A lot of my clients. That's all. Everybody else? They can take a leap. Everything else? It's just that crap floating in the sea. Flotsam and jetsam. The rest of life is just people doing things to other people for their own good. Except for love."

  She closed her eyes, so angry she felt as if she might fly apart.

  "Is that why you did this? For love? Is that why you walked through that door every day, where it says 'Attorney-at-Law' right under your name, and didn't just fall down from s
hame?"

  "I don't know. I guess that was part of it. There were people I didn't want to disappoint. Christ, what are we talking about? Not writing a twenty-page paper? It's not homicide. I didn't try to hurt anybody. Just the opposite. For twenty years, I've been doing my job, caring about people and winning their cases."

  "That's a play, Robbie. You wanted it for yourself. You wanted the job, the status, the money. But you hadn't earned any of it, and you took it anyway. just like a thief. And because of that you've screwed over anybody who didn't have the good sense to wonder if you were lying when you said `a,' `and,' `the.' How do you keep yourself from seeing that? Look what you've done to Mort. Or to those clients you say you love. My God, think about the poor Rickmaiers-that little girl you cried about when she lost her mom? What'll you say to her, Robbie, if somebody sues her to get back that great big settlement check you handed that family last week? How'd you just forget about stuff like that? For twenty years?"

  "I don't know. I did it. I knew it, but I didn't think about it. I kind of forgave myself, or put it away, I don't know. I don't know how I lived with it. I lie, okay? I lie all the time. You think I really kissed Shaheen Conroe? I never got closer to her than clomping around in the chorus. That car I drive you around in? It's an S500, thirty grand less than the S6. I owned it a week when I saw Neucriss breezing down Marshall Avenue in the 600. Suddenly I felt like such a river-bottom turd that I went back and paid some stock boy five hundred bucks to replace the plate on the trunk lid and the steering wheel so it looks just like a 600. But it's not."

  The car! She actually groaned.

  "I'm a weak, fucked-up person. What can I say? I never told you I made sense to myself." He had another quotation from theater life handy for trouble: "'Ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do."'