City Primeval

17

THEY MADE LOVE IN A BED with white sheets and a dark oak headboard that towered to the ceiling. They made love almost at once, as though they missed each other so much they couldn’t wait, hands moving, learning quickly, and when he entered her she breathed a sound of relief he had never heard before-even in the beds with decorator pillows and designer sheets, with the girls who would groan dramatic obscenities-none of them came out of themselves the way Carolyn did. Raymond moved with her, involved, but aware of himself too, because he couldn’t believe it was happening, he couldn’t believe it was Carolyn Wilder moving and making the sounds, thrusting, arching up with her head back, straining in faint light that let him see her face in a way she would never see it or recognize herself, Raymond seeing a secret Carolyn and then, for a moment, seeing her eyes open, seeing her awareness. He wanted to say something to her. He said, “I know you.” The moment became a brief silence that was gone as her eyes closed again and then became something that had happened a long time ago.

They remained in darkness, in silence for several minutes, Raymond holding her, seeing the faint outside light against window shades across the bedroom. He heard her say, very quietly, close to him, “God, that was good.” He thought of ways to reply but said nothing. She would feel him holding her, his hands moving gently, stroking; she would know what he felt.

Finally she said, in a voice that was a murmur but clear in the silence, “In my office the other night, when you were on the phone-” She paused. “He said, as he started to leave he said, ‘When do I get the money?’ I looked at him, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said, ‘The hundred-thousand you promised me for killing the judge.’ I said ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘Don’t try and act dumb to get out of paying me. I have proof the judge was putting the stuff on you.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ But that was all. He said something else like ‘I’ll be in touch,’ and left.”

“Then tonight,” Raymond said, “he called you-”

“He called this morning, too. Tonight he called just a few minutes before you did. He said, ‘I’ve been at your place the past hour if anybody wants to know.’ I didn’t say a word to him; I hung up the phone. He called back within a minute and said, ‘Look, if I take a fall on the Guy thing, you’re going with me.’ This time I told him if he was worried about it he’d better get a lawyer, because I was no longer representing him. He said… ‘Oh, yes you are.’ He said if it even looked like he might be convicted he’d sign a statement that I had paid him to kill Guy and he’d-words to the effect that he’d produce enough evidence to substantiate it or at least give credence to a motive.”

“How can he do that?”

“That’s what’s interesting about it, that he thinks he can implicate me.” Carolyn turned enough to see his face in the darkness. “This is in confidence, right?” Raymond didn’t say anything. “I’m not telling you something you can use anyway.”

He was aware of a strange feeling-even with her breast against his arm and their naked thighs touching-that the lawyer was returning, that the woman who had let go was pulling in again, regrouping, perhaps not even aware of it herself as she lay in his arms.

Carolyn said, “I mean if I filed a complaint against him, say on the grounds of extortion, it would be my word against his. Which would be considerable, but not nearly enough to convict him. He’ll put on his dumb-hillbilly act and say I misunderstood him. Clement is very good at playing dumb.”

Raymond said, “Let’s go back a little bit. First, he wants a hundred thousand or he’ll cop, swear you paid him to kill Guy.”

“I think,” Carolyn said, “considering he’s an opportunist, Clement’s first thought is to capitalize on Guy’s death.” She paused. “Whether he killed him or not.”

Raymond told himself to wait, be patient. Ignore, for the time being, the warning trying to tighten up his insides.

“But now he’s a suspect and he’s telling me to use every effort to keep him out of jail-I presume free of charge-or else he’ll take me with him.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“This morning, he called me at the office.”

“What’d he say exactly?”

“He said he knows and can prove I had some kind of bribe scheme going with Guy, that I paid him off for acquittals or reduced sentences. But, because I testified against Guy before the Tenure Commission, helped to get him thrown off the bench in fact, I’m supposedly one of the ones Guy threatened to expose. He was going to write a book, ‘name names of people,’ Guy said in the paper, ‘with dirty hands and indecent fingers.’ Clement will say I had Guy killed to keep him from writing the book.”

“Clement thought up all this?”

“Everybody misjudges him,” Carolyn said. “That’s how he gets away with what he does, why he’s… fascinating, really.” She stirred, bringing her arm out from beneath Raymond. “Would you like a drink?”

Carolyn left the bed naked and came back wearing the brown caftan. She handed Raymond a glass of aquavit and turned on the night table lamp before getting into bed again to rest against the headboard. When Raymond placed his hand on her thigh she raised her glass and sipped the clear liqueur. He had never thought of women using men other than to get carpeting and appliances. He had said to her, “I know you,” and she had said nothing in return. He wondered what he felt about her beyond the fact he liked her eyes and her nose and her body. He wondered if he had been genuinely moved or if he had only wanted to mount and subdue the dignified, distinguished lady lawyer, or if it had been the other way around and it was Raymond Cruz who had been seduced.

“Is he saying he has proof you were involved with Guy,” Raymond said, “or does he have something?”

She turned, leaning against the headboard, to look at him, holding her glass in two hands. “Are you asking was I actually involved, and could there be some valid bit of evidence?”

“I’m asking what he’s holding over you.”

Carolyn paused. “Well… if, for example, you found my name in Guy’s address book… name, phone number and figures that could be interpreted to represent amounts of money, perhaps, by some stretch of the imagination, a list of payments made to him, Guy-and you were looking for a suspect, someone who might have contracted for Guy’s murder-would you consider that evidence?”

Raymond shook his head. “Not by itself… Did you see the address book?”

“What address book?”

“The one Clement, I assume, lifted off the judge.”

Carolyn was still looking at him, at ease against the headboard. “I said what if you found my name in his book. I didn’t say Clement took it, did I?”

“We’ve come a long way,” Raymond said, “but I get the feeling we’re back where we started. You were scared to death of him a little while ago-”

“I’m still reasonably afraid,” Carolyn said, “enough to know that I have to be very careful with Clement. But that doesn’t mean I can’t handle him.”

“You don’t have to handle him. All you have to do is make a statement, Clement admitted to you he shot the judge.”

“Because he’s trying to capitalize on it,” Carolyn said. “I told you before, that doesn’t mean he actually did it.”

“But he did!” Raymond spilled some of the aquavit, pushing himself up on the pillow to get to Carolyn’s level. She watched him brush at the wet spot on the sheet.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said quietly, “the bed’s going to be changed.” She lounged against the dark wood of the headboard while Raymond sat erect, stiffly, bare above the sheet around his waist. She said, “Look, we’ve confided in each other because sometimes we feel the need. You said before, everybody has to have somebody to tell secrets to. I’ve told you things I wouldn’t tell my partners and you’ve told me things, you’ve indicated, you aren’t going to tell your people. You have your game with Clement and I have mine. We both will admit he’s an unusual study, a pretty fascinating character, or neither of us would be quite so uniquely involved. Isn’t that true?”

“You told him to find another lawyer,” Raymond said.

“Yes, but he won’t. He not only needs me, he likes me…”

Raymond listened to the lawyer and the woman talking at the same time.

“… But he is going to have to realize, once he gets this extortion-blackmail bullshit out of his head, that I charge a fee, and if he’s not willing to pay it he will, indeed, have to go somewhere else.” She seemed to smile, though it was a bland expression. “We can play our games, but it still has to be within the context of the jobs we’re paid to do. You can’t expect me to give you information about my client, just as I don’t expect you to shoot him down without provocation… Agreed?”

“I guess we are back where we started,” Raymond said.

“Why? Where did you expect to be?”

He paused and said, “I don’t know,” as he got out of bed and then stood naked looking down at her. “But aside from all that, how was the fuck?”

“Let me put it this way,” Carolyn said, her eyes moving up his body to his face, “it was about what I expected it to be.”