Breach of Trust

17

“How uncharacteristically enterprising of you, young man.” Shauna, my law partner and probably best friend, if I thought about it, seemed genuinely surprised. She took a healthy drink of wine from the bottle and passed it to me. “It’s almost like you want to have a legal career, after all.”

Shauna had been on me to pick things up at the firm, starting with showing up on a daily basis and using my celebrity as Hector Almundo’s lawyer to drum up business. Technically, I was just renting space from Shauna and she had no financial connection to my success. But she was hoping that jumping back into the pool would help me recover from whatever it was she had diagnosed as ailing me.

Maybe I was, too. I was taking this gig because I wanted to look into what happened to Adalbert Wozniak and, by extension, Ernesto Ramirez. But I couldn’t deny that I was intrigued. It always seemed like a dark and murky world, this backroom political thing, and if it had escalated to a murder or two, so much the more enticing. It was reckless of me, sure. Nothing that I would have done, had I still been married to Talia and a father to Emily Jane.

Then again, it could have been the wine emboldening me. Shauna and I were camped out on her living room floor, listening to old R.E.M. music on the iPod hooked up to her stereo and splitting a bottle of red wine with our spinach and garlic pizza. This was basically how we spent our junior and senior years at State, only back then we had about a dozen other roommates, and if you wanted to lie on the floor, you needed a tetanus shot. Shauna now had a condo in a high-rise on the near west side, which was pretty small (about a thousand feet) but with a terrific view west that made the place seem twice as large.

We’d fallen back into this routine of late, hanging together the majority of evenings and listening to music or watching the rare show worth viewing on television-a list that grew smaller each year-or sometimes clicking on one of the inane shows that passed for entertainment just so we could ridicule it. Some nights, I’d just slept on her couch rather than make it home. It was always her place, never mine; there was something haunted and unspoken about my townhouse.

Shauna, with her short blond hair, blue eyes, and small frame, had a bit of an angelic look about her, but she could dissect me like a frog in biology class. “So what’s the catch?” she asked, leaning back in the chair behind her desk. “Why this government thing?”

“Steady work between high-profile murder cases.”

“I see.” She wasn’t buying it, and the tone of her voice was her way of saying so. “But this is just a contract, right? Just a client? You’re not becoming a state employee.”

“And leave behind this dynamic private practice I’ve built up?”

“Hey, listen.” She pulled her oversized sweatshirt over her knees. “Christmas. What do you have going on?” She always did this, since Talia’s death, asking after me but in a casual way that tried to deflect her concern.

“I might go down to see Pete. Otherwise, I don’t know. You?” I passed her the bottle.

“My family’s coming. My parents and my brother’s family. I think it’s more an intervention than Christmas dinner.”

“Ah,” I said. “You’re over thirty, and not even a boyfriend, Ms. Tasker.” Shauna grew up on the city’s south side, like me, though we didn’t meet until college. I couldn’t even call myself Catholic compared to her. Her parents were outfitting her for a nun’s habit when she informed them she was heading to law school. She never told them that I was her roommate in college. They wouldn’t have survived it-dual coronaries within minutes of each other.

“Anyway, I could use a lawyer for the interrogation,” she offered.

“I’ll pretend to be your boyfriend. We’ll say we’re living together.”

She laughed, but the offer still stood and I hadn’t answered. “Maybe,” I said. “Thanks.”

She let it go, nodding toward the iPod resting on her stereo system. “You can’t group them by twos the way you’re saying.”

“Sure you can. Murmur and Reckoning, obviously. Fables and Pageant, when Michael started feeling confident in his voice.”

“He wasn’t confident in his voice during Reckoning? Ever heard ‘South Central Rain’?”

“An anomaly.” I took the wine from her. We’d had this debate over R.E.M.’s music since State. She had trouble admitting she was wrong. I was fortunate not to have that problem, because I was always right.

“You know, Lynette asked about you the other day,” she said.

“Lynette from law school? Jewish girl with the nice rack?”

Her head fell back, resting on her shoulders. “Why are men such single-cell organisms?”

“You like us that way, Tasker. You can manipulate us and turn us into groveling dogs.”

She smiled, still looking up at the ceiling. “That’s true. We can.”

She didn’t move, but I felt her eyes fall on me. She was constantly poking around with this kind of stuff, gauging my progress. She wasn’t lying, I suspect; Lynette from law school probably had made a comment, but Shauna chose her words carefully and wouldn’t have mentioned it unless she’d had a reason.

I loved Shauna. The way she watched over me, while challenging or insulting me in the same breath, was downright touching. But sometimes her protectiveness landed the wrong way, like an off-color comment made in mixed company. The slow unraveling of my senses, as the second bottle of Cabernet lay empty on the carpet, on this particular evening put me into the early stages of edgy belligerence.

“Next topic,” I suggested.

“I’m drunk is the next topic.” Shauna eased herself down to the carpet. “On a weeknight.”

“There, there, pet.” I stroked her hair. I played some of my early favorites-“Harborcoat” twice, then “Wolves, Lower”-and Shauna grew quiet, her body rising and falling with ease.

“Next year’ll be better, Jase,” she mumbled. I’d thought she was down for the count. I tried to coax her up and, failing that, lifted her up and carried her to her bedroom. She smiled and moaned with pleasure when her face touched the cool pillow. Moments later she was in a deep slumber. I kissed my hand and planted it on her forehead, then went back to the living room and played the same songs all over again.