Undue Influence

Chapter 1

‘Bottom line, she was an unfit mother.’ Melanie Vega, Jack’s new wife, speaks of Laurel in the past tense — as if she were dead.

In this, I suspect, is some inkling of how Jack and Melanie see their case, like blue chips in a bull market. For two days their lawyer has chewed on Laurel’s past. He’s had her fricasseed and fried, spiced with indiscretions, and served always in the same way, marinated in liquor. In the valleys that have been Laurel’s life, this is a common theme, though I’ve seen no hint of the bottle through all of this.

‘Move to strike. Not responsive.’ Gail Hemple, Laurel’s lawyer, is on Melanie in the witness box like mustard on rye.

The judge tells the court reporter to strike the witness’s last statement. Alex Hastings, up on the bench, has the look of perpetual irritation carved on his face like a death mask. This is taking far too long.

Laurel is Jack Vega’s former wife, Nikki’s sister, and the reason I am here, a blood oath that I would look after Laurel. It was Nikki’s last request, for a lot of reasons. Our children are close. While Sarah is younger, she dotes on her two cousins, Laurel’s teenagers. But in the end, for Nikki, I think it came down to a more basic denominator of nature, an older sibling’s watchful eye over her little sister. Nikki was three years older than Laurel.

Though initially I thought I might grow to regret my involvement here, the fact is that Laurel’s cause has grown on me. This may be for no other reason than that Jack, my former brother-in-law, is a jerk of the first water. That his experts and lawyers have Laurel on the run merely proves the adage that there is no such thing as justice — either in or out of court.

I’ve spent this time here in Family Court as a kibitzer in Laurel’s corner, for support. Another lawyer is doing her case.

Laurel is thirty-six, an inch taller than I, a sandy blonde with green eyes and dimples that look like they’ve been press-punched beneath high cheekbones. When she cares for herself she’s an attractive woman. In the years when our families spent time together for holidays, and one brief vacation, Laurel always wore the look of leisured money. But the two-hour facials are now faded memories like her leached-out salon-driven tan.

In recent months she has been forced to fend for herself and her children. With a college degree in the arts, when the divorce came Laurel had no immediately marketable skills or experience. To fill in around the ragged edges of support, which comes hit-and-miss from Jack, she has taken a job at the health club where she used to be a member, teaching aerobics and swimming. At night she chases a teaching credential at the university — something with a better future.

Laurel’s fall from affluence can be measured with the precision of the Pearl Harbor bombing. It came one morning with the service of process, divorce papers on the front steps of the family home, and like an iron bomb in a powder magazine it has scattered the pieces of her life.

A rational person might not call this a sneak attack. Over the years Laurel has either known of or suspected Jack’s infidelities. They came with the regularity of the seasons, as predictable as blossoms in the spring. Like Ferdinand the Bull, Jack’s testosterone level always elevated along with the length of skirts in warm weather. And Jack did little to conceal these moments of misdirected passion. If it weren’t so painful, I’m certain he would have carved notches in his dick to commemorate the conquests.

Jack adhered to the lofty view that adultery was merely the application of democracy to love. He saw it as simply another act of statecraft. Some might call this the culture of politics in the state capital, where Jack has held a seat in lower house for twelve years. Still, Laurel was dazed when the marriage ended, in the same way one is stunned when a graceless pickpocket murders his victim. Today her face is a map of tension. It is this look that forms the greatest resemblance to Nikki. She and Laurel were not just siblings, but novitiates of that common order — the Sisters of Worry.

Laurel’s two kids, Danny, fifteen, and his younger sister, Julie, wander in the hallway outside like the walking wounded, shell-shocked and numb, excluded from this family boneyard by the court’s Solomon-like wisdom. During Nikki’s illness and later, after her death, Laurel’s children have spent a good deal of time at my house. It has been a place to go while their mother is trying to get their lives together.

Laurel sits directly in front of me, just beyond the railing, at the counsel table.

‘The witness will answer the question,’ says Hastings. ‘Do you understand?’

Melanie nods.

‘Speak up,’ says the judge.

‘Yes.’

Melanie Vega is a woman who thrives in the eye of a storm, a personality that grows on animus like a reactor with its carbon rods removed. She gives the judge a smile, something between coy and confused, as if it were possible to forget Hemple’s last query — whether she was screwing Jack when he was still married to Laurel. The subtleties of Family Court. One of the reasons I do not practice here.

‘You don’t remember the question, Mrs. Vega?’ The judge looks down at her in the box.

She makes a face, a wan smile, like maybe with repetition it will get better.

‘Perhaps counsel can repeat it,’ says the judge.

Hemple nods, only too happy to oblige.

‘I asked you whether you had carnal relations with Jack Vega during the time that he was married to, and living with, Laurel Vega.’

With the term ‘carnal relations,’ Melanie’s eyebrows are half-way to the crown of her head. It is an expression that says it all, like leave it to lawyers to reserve the ‘f’ word for what they do to each other — and their own clients.

‘Carnal relations?’ she says.

‘Fine,’ says Hemple. ‘Sexual relations. Is that better?’

From Melanie’s perspective, a woman on the make with another lady’s husband, she’s not so sure.

‘I might have,’ she says.

‘Yes or no? Were you sleeping with the Petitioner while he was married and living with the Respondent?’ Hemple is tiring of the mind games.

A slight shrug, a concession by the witness. ‘What if we were? Consenting adults,’ she says. She looks up at the judge and smiles. Cute but still adultery.

Hemple moves squarely in front of the witness box, still far enough away not to be seen as coercive.

‘While you were doing all this consenting,’ she says, ‘with Mr. Vega — did you ever happen to do any of it at the Vega family home — maybe during periods when Laurel Vega was away?’

‘We might have. I didn’t keep a calendar,’ she says.

‘Might have?’

‘Once or twice,’ says Melanie. A grudging point. She looks the judge square in the eye, brazen, and shrugs as if to say, since his wife wasn’t using Jack’s bed, somebody else might as well.

All she gets back from Hastings are deep furrows above bushy eyebrows.

‘I see. So you were just doing your duty, servicing another woman’s husband?’

‘Objection.’ Jack’s lawyer is on his feet.

‘Withdrawn,’ says Hemple.

Hastings is shaking his head as if to say that having scored her point, Hemple is now screwing it up.

‘Then let me ask you another question,’ says Hemple. ‘Were the Vega children in the home when you were sleeping with their father — during the time their mother was away?’

Melanie’s eyes dart. She swallows a little saliva. She finally gets the point, but a little late. Hemple’s not interested in Melanie’s sexual conquests, but in Jack’s poor judgment as a father.

I look at Laurel, now sitting a little sideways in her chair, eyeing me for effect, to assess the impact of this latest dirt. I can guess where this information comes from. The kids have talked; Julie and Danny Vega. It is the single consolation for Laurel in an otherwise disastrous custody battle, that the children have taken their mother’s side in this brawl.

Their father, Jack, is of that political ilk from the southen part of the state who has lived for a decade like one of the barons of yore, members of a political class who believe they invented privilege and still hold the patent.

If money is the mother’s milk of politics, Jack has nursed his lips to a purple hue. According to election records he’s tickled the udders of various special interests for more than a half million dollars in the last six months. This is money no doubt he intends to put in his pocket. Term limits in this state now have politicians eating their elders. Jack must either run for Congress against another prince of patronage more encrusted with incumbency than himself or find another job. He now talks of ‘the people’ with acid bitterness for their stunted vision in derailing his gravy train. Now I hear he is making plans to peddle influence as a lobbyist in D.C., where many of his legislative cronies have gone, to the great political Valhalla on the Potomac.

What motivates Jack’s action here in court is not entirely clear. But then most legal family disputes are more a matter of venom than reason. He has unleashed a colony of highly paid investigators and therapists, like carpenter ants, to chew on the dry rot of Laurel’s character, to show that she is unfit to raise her own children. My own thinking is that Jack is at a crossroads. If he moves east he must either seize custody and take the children or continue to pay child support to Laurel. This has been drawing down his legislative paycheck in a major way, a terminal hemorrhage for a man who likes to drink lunch at the Sutter Club and vacation at Cabo San Lucas.

Several months ago Jack fell in arrears on support. Laurel, through her lawyer, brought contempt proceedings, and then stuck a lance a little deeper by sending copies of her legal papers to the media in Jack’s district. It was just before the last election, a press release with a suggested headline:

DEADBEAT LAWMAKER DITCHES FAMILY

In the end, Jack was forced to muster a loan from his political slush fund to come current, or go to jail. He won the election based on a handful of absentee ballots cast before Laurel punctured him with her journalist’s javelin.

But Jack has never been one to miss an opportunity for revenge. It came three months ago when Danny, who is fifteen, was picked up on juvenile charges that raised questions of parental neglect and seemed to undercut Laurel’s continued custody of the children. The kid was caught joyriding with three friends in a stolen car. One of the other boys had a juvenile record longer than Melanie’s face up on the stand.

‘It’s a simple question,’ says Hemple. ‘Did you sleep with Mr. Vega in the family home when the children were present?’

‘Well, they weren’t in the room,’ says Melanie. ‘I would have noticed.’

Laughter from the few courthouse groupies in the audience, and one reporter in the front row, a paper from Jack’s old district, getting the local angle.

The judge slaps his gavel on the bench and the laughter stops.

‘That’s not what I asked,’ says Hemple. ‘I asked you whether the children were in the house?’ There’s an edge to her voice this time.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You slept with the man in the family home and you don’t know whether the children were present in the house at the time?’

‘No.’

‘Well, who was watching the kids?’

‘Not me,’ says Melanie.

This brings more laughter, a smile from the bailiff whose eyes are glued to Melanie’s dress, something more sedate than her usual attire. I have seen her outside the courtroom in a red satin halter-top stretched tight as a drum at the bodice. Melanie Vega is not a big woman, except in the upper regions. I am told she works with weights to maintain this, a regimen that gives new meaning to the maxim ‘build it and they will come.’ She has the complexion of a ripe peach, clear, with the softness of film shot through silk gauze. She is the kind of woman for whom ‘blonde’ jokes were invented. At twenty-six, she is young enough to be Jack’s daughter. The two have been married now for five months, and Jack is starting to show a little wear. He keeps yawning in court, something that makes me think he and Melanie are doing things other than discussing courtroom strategy in the evenings.

With the practiced skill of a fly caster, Melanie flings her head to the side and whips the blonde tresses that have slid over one eye, back out, past her shoulder.

Hemple is looking through some documents, a quick conference with Laurel, a cupped hand to one ear, client to lawyer.

At the counsel table with his own attorney, Jack smiles encouragement to his young bride, like she’s doing a standup job.

Hemple is back to the witness in the box.

‘Now earlier you testified that Mrs. Vega had a drinking problem?’

‘I’m Mrs. Vega,’ says Melanie.

Hemple looks at her. ‘The first Mrs. Vega,’ she says. Laurel’s lawyer refuses to concede the point.

‘Is this correct? Did Mrs. Vega — Laurel Vega — have a drinking problem?’

There are mean little slits for eyes from Melanie.

‘Like a fish,’ she says.

“I think your words were, ‘She always had her head in a bottle.’ Is that what you said?”

‘That’s what I said.’

‘And what exactly does that mean?’

‘An expression,’ says Melanie.

‘I see.’ Hemple paces a little in front of the witness box for effect.

‘So you didn’t really mean that she actually put her head inside a bottle.’

A pained expression from Melanie, like give me a break. ‘I meant she was always drunk,’ she says.

‘Always drunk?’ Hemple jumps on it.

A face from Melanie. If the lawyer likes this answer so much, maybe she should change it.

Hemple doesn’t give her the chance. The first canon of the courtroom. Never talk in absolutes.

‘So if she was “always drunk,” that means that in all the times that you saw Laurel Vega you never saw her sober?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘Well, you just said she was always drunk.’

‘Most of the time.’

‘Ah. So she wasn’t drunk all the time, just most of the time?’ says Hemple.

‘Yes.’

‘So we’ve gone from someone who “always has her head in a bottle,” to someone who is always drunk, to someone who is drunk just most of the time.’ Hemple waltzes a few steps over in front of the bench. ‘Sounds like a picture of the recovering alcoholic,’ she says.

No reply from Melanie. Hastings appears to be dozing up on the bench. Good point, but no score.

Hemple moves on to a Capitol Christmas party last year, at which Jack disappeared with Melanie, leaving Laurel with the office help.

‘Might someone who saw you drinking at the party say that you had your head in a bottle?’ says Hemple.

‘I wasn’t falling-down slobbering drunk,’ says Melanie.

‘And Mrs. Vega was?’

‘Yes.’

Hemple shakes her head as if to say are we going to have to do this again?

‘Fine — and how many times did you see Mrs. Vega actually fall down at this party?’

Exasperation from Melanie, a look like ‘picky, picky.’ ‘Okay, so I didn’t see her fall down.’

‘I see. Just a little more license?’ says Hemple.

‘Call it what you want. The lady was a lush. On her ass,’ she says.

‘Another of your sayings?’ asks Hemple.

Wary of having to define the anatomy or describe the posture, Melanie does not respond.

‘Were you sleeping with Mr. Vega at the time of the Christmas party?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Why? Because it was not memorable or because by then you’d done it so many times with the Petitioner that you can’t keep them straight?’

‘Objection, your honor.’

‘Withdrawn.’

A quixotic look from Melanie, a spark of light in the eyes, then an expression that could kill.

‘She did drugs too,’ she says. This little gratuity is added to her testimony like the last dollop of frosting on a crude cake.

‘Objection, your honor.’ Hemple’s now taken up the chorus.

‘That’s a lie and you know it!’ Laurel’s halfway out of her chair. ‘I’ve never done drugs,’ she says.

‘Some people call it an illness.’ Melanie ignores her, smiling into the growing rage that is Laurel’s face at this moment. This last added as a flourish for credibility.

‘You’d know about illnesses, wouldn’t you?’ says Laurel. ‘My husband picked you up at a cocktail party like some communicable disease.’

‘Former husband,’ says Melanie.

The judge gavels them to silence. Laurel sits down and turns to look at me, a face of anger I have not seen before. Perhaps it is a measure, her own assessment of how this case is going. I lean across the railing and tell her to calm down. She is now clearly hurting herself, giving credence to Jack’s shrinks and their weasel words about instability.

‘And you personally saw this … drug use by my client?’ says Hemple.

A look in Melanie’s eye like maybe she could say yes and wing it. But what to do about the details? Where and when? Who was there? And what they were doing when Laurel was doing drugs?

‘No. I didn’t actually see it. But I heard about it enough times to know it’s true.’ With this Melanie looks at Jack, sitting with their lawyer at the other counsel table. The smile between them removes any doubt as to the source of this information.

‘Move to strike, your honor.’ Hemple bears down. Not that it will do much good. Jack will repeat all of this, the dirt as to drinking and drugs, when his turn comes. No doubt whatever Laurel swallowed or inhaled Jack had bought and probably shared. ‘The reporter will strike the last answer,’ says the judge.

‘Now,’ says Hemple, as if she is finally getting down to it, ‘let me ask you: In the five months that you’ve been married to Mr. Vega, and in the time before that when the two of you were busy consenting as adults. During this period how many times did you actually see or meet Laurel Vega?’

‘We met …’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Four … no, three times.’

‘That’s all?’

‘It was enough,’ she says.

‘You didn’t find these meetings pleasant?’

‘No.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ says Hemple.

‘Objection.’ Jack’s lawyer is up again.

‘Sustained. Get to the point, counsel.’

‘The first time you met Mrs. Vega was she drunk?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘You do remember the first time you met her?’

A long sigh from Melanie. ‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell the court the circumstances of that meeting?’

‘It was at Jack’s home …’

‘The home he then shared with his wife, Laurel, and their children?’ Hemple would like to paint Beaver Cleaver running across the lawn with his school books strapped by a belt, while Melanie was busy humping their old man upstairs.

‘Yes — it was at the home.’ Melanie looks at Hemple like maybe she’d like to meet this bitch in the alley outside after court.

The lawyer is all sweetness and smiles.

‘And would you please tell the court what you were doing when you first encountered Laurel Vega in her home?’

A look from Melanie, something between anger and a trainstruck deer. ‘We, ah … We were in the living room …’

‘ “We” meaning who?’

‘Jack and I,’ says Melanie. ‘And she came in.’ Melanie nods toward Laurel at the counsel table.

‘You mean Mrs. Vega, who was then Jack’s wife?’

‘Laurel — whatever you want to call her,’ says Melanie.

‘Then we’ll call her “Mr. Vega’s wife,” at least at that point in time.’

‘Fine.’

‘And what were you doing — you and Jack — when his wife came in?’

‘Umm.’ Melanie is stalling for time. A lot of anxiety focused in the eyes. She makes several false starts on an answer. Then suddenly a smile. Resolution has descended like a chariot from the heavens.

‘Necking,’ she says. ‘We were necking.’ She settles back in her chair, satisfied with this.

‘Necking.’ Hemple says this, nodding her head as if she understands. ‘Can you describe this necking to us, or is this just another of your expressions?’

‘We were kissing,’ says Melanie.

‘Kissing?’

‘And hugging,’ she adds.

‘Kissing and hugging.’ More nodding from the understanding lawyer. ‘And can you describe to the court your attire? How were you dressed when you were doing all this kissing and hugging?’

‘I don’t understand the question.’

‘Isn’t it a fact that the first time you met Laurel Vega you were completely naked on the carpet of her living room floor, engaged in full-blown sex with her husband?’

This brings a lot of forced indignation to Melanie’s expression, a prim posture in the box that speaks loads of denial.

‘No. That’s not true,’ says Melanie. ‘I can state categorically, for a fact, that is untrue,’ she says. ‘Because Jack didn’t like it by mouth.’

There’s a second of dead silence, then open laughter from the audience as it settles in. Vega’s head is in his hands. Melanie looks out wide-eyed. Clearly she’s misunderstood something.

‘Who told you that?’ she says. A lot of fluster and denial, what Shakespeare said about protest.

In a voice marked by uncertainty almost inaudible: ‘Jack didn’t like it,’ she says, as if maybe this will clear up any confusion. It brings another swell of laughter.

The judge raps his gavel and this subsides to little tiffs, a contagion of muffled barks and hacks.

‘We just didn’t do that.’ Melanie puts moral tone to her voice this time, leaving it unclear whether like Shakers they didn’t do the act at all, or if it’s just the oral stuff they shunned.

In her eyes I can tell Melanie’s still wondering what it is that she’s gotten wrong.

‘Well, thank you for that insight,’ says Hemple. She starts to move on. With points like this you don’t press.

For the most part, the two days of hearings over contested child custody have been like a legally sanctioned gang bang. While Hastings is not likely to give much credence to the likes of Melanie, a legion of experts hired by Jack have been beating up on Laurel with professional jargon, enough syndromes of dependence to cause real problems for her case, to leave Hastings with a serious doubt as who is best to now take the children.

‘How much more do you have for this witness?’ The judge cuts Hemple off.

She asks for a couple of seconds to confer with her client. Hemple’s at the counsel table talking with Laurel. Clearly they are concerned about this latest revelation on drugs. Hemple will now have to draw and quarter Jack on the stand to have any chance to get them back to level ground.

‘An hour,’ she says. ‘Maybe more.’

Melanie’s expression droops like a basset hound’s.

‘And how many more witnesses?’

‘Just one,’ says Hemple. She looks over at Vega like maybe he might wish to marinate parts of his anatomy overnight for the roasting he is sure to get in the morning.

‘Then we’re going to adjourn for the night. And we’ll finish tomorrow,’ says the judge. ‘Is that understood?’

Jack’s lawyer is on his feet, nodding, like the sooner the better. With Jack on the stand, the press will be here in spades.

‘Your honor, one more thing,’ he says. ‘We would like a conference in chambers with opposing counsel after adjournment.’

Hastings slaps the gavel and is down off the bench, trailed by the lawyers to his chambers.

Outside the courtroom I am leaning over the water fountain for a drink when he comes up behind me.

‘I guess we’ve both seen better times,’ he says.

Jack Vega’s voice has the quality of a wood rasp drawn across the broken edge of a tin can, the vocal legacy of cigars and alcohol. He’s tracked me to this little corridor and boxed me in between the water cooler and the rest rooms. Jack’s idea of a good meeting place.

When I turn he is smiling, standing there with his hand out extended in greeting, a goofy look on his face. To those he has never married, or conceived, Jack is probably harmless.

‘What can I say, Bro?’ He still refers to me as his brother-in-law, which we have not been for some time now. It’s an awkward moment. I give no reply, but stand looking at his offered hand until it is dropped, limp at his side.

I can see Laurel looking, focusing on me over her lawyer’s shoulder as she and Hemple talk fifty feet away. Whatever happened in the judge’s chambers has them agitated. A lot of hand gestures by the lawyer, manual conversation. But at this moment I am certain Laurel is hearing none of this, wondering instead how I could possibly exchange anything but profanities with this man.

Having his peace-offered hand rejected, Jack is now posturing for defense, circling the wagons around his ego.

His hair has less gray, more color than I remember from our last family outing, a year ago. It seems Melanie has driven Jack to a different kind of bottle. There’s a bald patch the size of a pitcher’s mound on top. This is surrounded by tufts and wisps in sundry tones of orange. Still, by any measure he is a handsome man in the way middle-aged and austere men can be.

He is like most of the pols I have known; a wannabe statesman, come up rug merchant. Over the years he has managed to learn a little style, and now wears it like the thousand-dollar suit that frames his angular body. The freckles that seem to run over his face like flyspecks seem more pronounced, a kind of ruddy out-of-door look. Jack has been in the sun. He lives for golf, especially the courses peopled by celebrities where they run a water wagon with iced cocktails to every hole.

He passes some pleasantries, that I look good, that life seems to be treating me well. This despite the fact that my wife is now dead, something Jack seems to avoid. He is testing for other more pleasant subjects, anything that might lead to a friendly opening. All the while he is bobbing and weaving, prancing from one foot to the other, up on his toes. This is a nervous tic that Jack has never controlled. In the Capitol, among the lobbyists who ply their trade kissing collective legislative ass and twisting arms, Jack Vega is known as the Dancer, at least behind his back. Like his voting record, Vega’s body seems to constantly migrate toward the last loud noise.

‘I’m glad at least that you didn’t take her case,’ he says, ‘for old times’ sake.’

He’s bounding on his toes in front of me like a child facing an urgent call of nature. For those who know Jack, this motion is a measure of his rising anxiety.

‘Divorces and family bloodlettings aren’t my bag,’ I tell him.

‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Still, you coulda stayed a little more neutral.’

‘Did you want me to sit in the center aisle?’ I say.

He laughs a little too much, then gives me a look, the kind of tight smile I’ve seen on some men just before they call someone out of earshot an asshole.

As I look in the distance, Jack’s son, Danny, is on a bench against the far wall studying his mother with her lawyer. He is lost in this setting, looking a little like the cartoon caricatures of Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow. For all of his six-foot size he has yet to grow into his ears. He lives for sports, mostly baseball and basketball, watching and playing and fills a hollow leg with six meals a day.

His sister, Julie, is standing a few feet away from him, waiting for an opening to approach her mother.

Julie would not be here except that her mother has forced her to attend. The girl wanted to stay home with her friends, party and frolic as if nothing had happened. Laurel thinks she is spoiled. I think it is Julie’s own defense mechanism.

‘It’s okay,’ Jack tells me. ‘I suppose you gotta do what you gotta do.’

‘You mean my presence here, with Laurel?’

‘Yeah.’

‘This is a labor of love,’ I tell him.

He nods he comprehends this, forming his own favorable interpretation. But Jack doesn’t get my meaning, that this has only partly to do with family ties, the fact that Nikki and Laurel were sisters. I stand up for Laurel and the kids now, in the opposite corner from this man, for the same reason I might run over a rattlesnake on the hot pavement in front of my home.

‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Families. It’s the thing about blood and water.’

I’m thinking sharks. He’s thinking family ties. Jack is giving me absolution, his forgiveness for my bad taste in siding with my sister-in-law. All the while he’s doing a number from Busby Berkeley, up on his toes.

He offers his condolences for Nikki. I don’t remember him at the funeral. I tell him this.

A few awkward starts and he makes amends. ‘I didn’t know if I’d be welcome,’ he says.

I make a face, leaving him to wonder.

He asks after Sarah. I tell him she is fine.

To our right, Melanie emerges from the ladies’ room as if on cue. I wonder if she’s been listening through the lavatory’s louvered outer door. She comes up and does her own straight routine next to her husband’s soft-shoe.

‘Did you meet my wife?’ he says.

I look over at Laurel. I’m not sure this is the right time.

Still, Jack makes the introduction. I nod and smile. She gives me a look like a store clerk wondering if I’ve shoplifted.

She stands silent for several seconds as we pass idle chatter, then finally looks at Jack and says: ‘Did you ask him?’ To Melanie the shortest distance between two points is a direct assault.

‘Gimme time.’ A look from Vega at his young wife. This does not put her off.

‘Jack’s got something to talk to you about,’ she says.

He coughs, clears his throat, smiles at me as if to say, ‘Pushy women.’ Jack’s prance-in-place seems to move to a canter.

‘We’re wondering,’ he says. He looks over at Melanie. ‘We’re wondering if maybe you could talk to her?’ He nods toward Laurel across the corridor.

I give him a look, a question mark.

‘Maybe talk some reason to her. This stuff is really hurting the kids,’ he says. He’s talking about the verbal bloodshed in the courtroom.

‘What the hell does she want, anyway?’ he says.

I am dumbfounded by this tactless frontal assault.

‘Well, you know I could never read her,’ he tells me. ‘Maybe that’s why our marriage failed. Lack of communication,’ he says.

That and Jack’s dozen mistresses.

‘Why don’t you read her pleadings?’ I tell him. ‘I think it’s all pretty clear. She wants the kids,’ I say.

‘Sure,’ he tells me. ‘But you know what I mean? What does she really want?’

I am looking at him, unsure that even he is this dense. The confirmation is written in his eyes. Jack’s looking for some crass financial bottom line, the price to buy his own children from their mother. For the first time I wonder if maybe Jack has doubts about his case.

‘You think she wants something else?’ I’m incredulous.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Talk to her. She’ll listen to you. We’re reasonable people,’ he says.

I shake my head, not the kind of gesture that says no, but a show of disbelief. ‘You want me to spell it for you. Laurel wants one thing — the kids.’ I say this louder so that maybe half the people in the hallway can hear it. But Jack is impervious to embarrassment and relentless when he wants something.

‘She’s not capable of dealing with them,’ he tells me. ‘Hell, I’ve offered her the summers.’ He looks at Melanie and they both nod like this is a deal. Six weeks during the summer, a week at Christmas.

‘I’ll even fly the kids out and back.’ He lays this added treat on like the clincher on closure at an auto sale. Melanie’s nodding at his side, batting her eyes as if to emphasize the weighty value of this offer.

‘Not exactly like having the kids, is it, Jack?’ I look at him.

‘Well, how the hell do you think I feel? They’re my kids too,’ he says.

‘Laurel’s not taking them out of the state,’ I remind him.

‘What do you want me to do? I gotta make a living.’ Jack makes it sound like tassel-loafered lobbying is a blue-collar job.

‘Besides, the kids are getting older,’ says Melanie. ‘Danny’s starting to get into trouble. The boy’s picked up with the wrong crowd,’ she tells me. ‘We think we could do a better job.’

‘I didn’t know you were so maternal,’ I say.

She gives me a look, straightens her skirt with flattened palms on curving hips, as if to say, ‘What do you think this body is for?’

Jack steps in before his wife can get into it with me.

‘Did you see the police report?’ he says. ‘On Danny?’

‘I’ve seen it. What can I say? Kids get in trouble,’ I tell him.

‘Come on, Paul.’ He gives me a hearty smile, then gets personal. He puts one hand on my shoulder — something from the male fraternity.

‘You and I,’ he says, ‘we know the realities. Laurel lives in a dream world. The woman’s had a sheltered life.’ He makes it sound like he was slaving in the vineyard through their marriage while Laurel was eating bonbons.

‘That was fine when she was growing up and her father was paying the bills, when we were living together and I was supporting her.’

‘And there are some,’ I say, ‘who might argue that she was raising three children back then.’

Jack ignores this, but the smile fades and his tone becomes more earnest. ‘She can’t take care of Danny and Julie the way we can, and she knows it. You and I know it. Hell, if there’s problems, we can give them the proper counseling by professionals, put ’em in private schools. Can she afford that?’

‘Maybe you should tell the court to increase your spousal and child support,’ I say.

He looks at me dead in the eyes. ‘I thought maybe we could talk reason,’ he says. ‘This is your niece and nephew who are in trouble,’ he tells me.

‘And I feel for them,’ I say. ‘They are now children from a broken family, with all of the attendant problems.’ I dump it, the divorce and all of its progeny, back in his lap.

Melanie gives me a look, something defensive, like maybe the subject is shifting to the question of home-wrecking.

‘You sound like some touchie-feelie therapist,’ he says. Suddenly the touted professional counseling he could give the kids sounds like a labor performed by quacks.

‘Did you talk to him?’ I ask.

Vega looks at me, dense. I’ve lost him with the question.

‘Danny?’ I say. ‘After he was arrested, did you talk to him?’

‘Sure. I chewed his ass.’

‘But did you talk with him?’

‘What’s to talk about? The kid needs some discipline,’ he says.

‘That’s something only his father can give a boy.’ Melanie gives me a quick up-and-down with her head like this is holy writ direct from the source.

‘The kids are getting older,’ says Jack, ‘and she can’t control them.’ Then he brings up the issue of Laurel’s drinking.

Now I’m getting it, both barrels from the two of them.

‘She drank,’ I say. ‘Past tense. She hasn’t touched a drop since this started, even with all the crap laid on by your witnesses.’

‘Yeah. Until the next time,’ says Melanie.

‘It’s been nice.’ I start to go laterally to get around the two of them. Our conversation has become too loud, too obvious. Laurel is making overt moves to break away from her lawyer and Julie.

‘Yeah? Well, it’s gonna get a whole lot worse,’ says Melanie, ‘unless she’s willing to talk reason.’

Prancing in place, shifting his weight, Jack gives her a look that could kill.

Their case is over, all their evidence, their witnesses presented. I wonder what Melanie is talking about. I linger for a moment, an invitation for her to open her mouth, maybe put her foot in it.

But Jack has her by the hand, squeezing her fingers till the ends are white.

‘Talk to her,’ says Jack. ‘Tell her to be reasonable.’ They start to move off. Suddenly behind them I see Laurel, coming on like a locomotive at a crossing, her eyes ablaze, two white-hot coals. She swings it over one shoulder with both hands like a misaimed hammer throw in the Olympics, and three pounds of purse crash across Jack’s shoulder. The purse misses Melanie’s head by an inch and instead catches Melanie’s own little bag, a beaded thing carried under one arm, sending it careening to the floor with Laurel’s.

There’s lipstick, compacts, and wallets everywhere, slapping and sliding on hard terrazzo, the objects women carry scattered for the world to see. A plastic brush caroms across the floor where it ricochets off the polished shoe of a bailiff outside Department 14.

Before I can move, Laurel’s into it with the broken strap of her purse, gripping this strip of leather as a handy garrote and seizing Melanie’s throat. For some reason this venom is not unleashed on Jack but Melanie Vega.

I grab one arm before she can move.

Jack is caught in the middle between the two women. He has both hands and forearms to his head now, covering up like a prize-fighter backed into a corner. He’s wearing a woman’s hanky near the crotch of his pants. A lacy black thing like a doily, it clings to the wool nap of his suit.

The bailiff’s moving toward us.

I grab Laurel by an arm and put myself in front of her, blocking her way. She has an athletic vitality, a sensuous muscularity. As I lean against her I am amazed by the mass of rippled muscle in her arms, and her legs of coiled spring.

‘What’s going on?’ he says. The bailiff’s best command voice.

The guy recognizes me and nods.

‘Just a disagreement,’ I tell him.

‘Disagreement, my ass.’ Jack’s coming out of his crouch. ‘Bitch tried to nail my wife with her purse,’ he says. Not an ounce of fat on her body, thin narrow hips, feeling Laurel’s upper arms, Jack’s fortunate she didn’t take a swing and come up short. He’d be on his ass, cold-cocked on the floor.

‘You can use the lawyers’ conference room.’ The bailiff seems interested in avoiding problems, ducking a formal charge that will mean a lot of paperwork.

Melanie with two fingers picks the woman’s hanky off her husband’s pants and lets it float to the floor. She gives the bailiff an imperious look like he should do something more.

He does. He picks up the handkerchief and hands it to Melanie. ‘Belong to you?’ he says.

It is the closest thing to spit I have seen from a woman. Hemple’s picked up Laurel’s purse. I take the handkerchief from the cop and stuff it inside. People are picking up objects from the floor.

‘You bitch. You stay away from my kids.’ Laurel is pumping up the venom again, a second wind. ‘I wish it was a goddamned sledgehammer.’ She’s holding up the purse by a piece of its broken strap.

I’m pushing her away now. The bailiff is giving us one of those dubious law-enforcement looks, perhaps second thoughts as to whether he should ask the victim if she wants to press charges.

‘Ask her what she did.’ Laurel’s in my face now as I block her with my chest and move her toward the conference room.

‘And you,’ she says. Laurel turns it on Jack now. ‘You don’t give a damn if she destroys your own children.’ She calls Melanie a liar, among other assorted and more odious epithets.

I have no idea what she’s talking about, but lawyer’s instinct tells me it has no place here in a public corridor.

Hemple’s now joined us. She’s coaxing Laurel along from behind like a tugboat at the stern.

Melanie’s talking to the bailiff, all hands and facial gestures, like maybe she can convince him to get out his handcuffs. He gives her a face, lots of sympathy and equivocation. All the while he’s backstepping toward the courtroom, picking up things, offering them to Melanie for her purse, no doubt wishing he’d been looking the other way when this started.

Inside, behind louvered blinds and enclosed glass, Hemple gives me the news.

Laurel is still too angry to talk.

‘It’s Julie’s school,’ says the lawyer. ‘They caught another girl with drugs. The kid claims she got them from Julie.’

To the extent that anything involving adolescents can surprise me, I am startled by this. From every appearance my niece’s only narcotic to date is the adulation of her peers. To this she is heavily addicted. I wonder if it has led to heavier things.

‘Crack cocaine,’ says Hemple, ‘The other girl, her friend, had enough for personal use, not dealing.’

Thank God for little favors. ‘Are they bringing charges?’ I ask.

Hemple makes a face likes she’s not sure. ‘They caught the kid three days ago. They’re still investigating.’

‘How did Jack find out so fast?’

‘What I’m wondering,’ says Hemple, like maybe there’s some artful device going down here, Jack and Melanie engaged in creative self-help. A kid caught on charges might be willing to fabricate a story, implicate some innocent for a price. The rules of commerce. Jack is not above seeing the social problems of his children’s school as an ocean of opportunity, a place with more substances of abuse than the average pharmacist’s shelf.

‘It gets worse,’ says Hemple.

‘It’s a lie,’ says Laurel. She looks at me stone cold, an edge to the expression in her eyes. We have reached bottom, like the thump of an elevator in the basement. To Laurel this is now something fundamental, a tenet I must believe.

Still, denials are the small talk of the lawyer’s venue, more common than discussions of the weather, and Hemple ignores her.

‘According to the kid,’ she says, ‘Julie made admissions.’

‘What kind of admissions?’

‘The kid says Julie told her the stuff came from home, a stash her mother kept in the house. What’s worse, Melanie has confirmed this. She says Julie also told her the same thing, that her mother used drugs.’

‘It’s not true,’ says Laurel. ‘She’s a lying bitch.’

I might expect her to fold, to be fighting back tears, driven to the edges of the glass enclosure by the charge. Instead she is standing, head erect, shoulders squared, shaking her head, and in clear unassailable language telling us that this is crap.

Laurel came to the divorce with a schoolgirl’s faith in the justice of courts. It has been rocked by the slow recognition that money speaks here as clearly as anywhere in life. If I believe her, and I do, she is now getting a cynic’s first taste of how the scales can tip with the preponderance of perjury.

As I stand and study her, at the opposite end of the small conference table, standing in the glare of fluorescence, there is a cold recognition, like a dark cloud, that passes across her face.

‘I’m gonna lose the kids,’ she says. ‘Aren’t I?’