Personal injuries

CHAPTER 18

McManis phoned Evon at home that night. He had never done that before and he stayed with the cover, telling her he hadn't received a copy of Feaver's brief in a case in which his reply was due the next day. He insisted, cordially but firmly, that she bring it to his office right now.

He unlocked the door himself. Past 8 p.m., the LeSueur Building had a ghost town feeling. A cleaning man ran a floor buffer down the corridor, but aside from the security guards, he was the only person she'd seen about. Somewhere, young lawyers were toiling, but they were confined like secrets, given away only by the occasional scattered lights visible from the street.

McManis told her the story in bold strokes. Her heart rippled at one point when she thought he was about to play her the tape, but Jim proved too old-fashioned for that. Shame was her predominant reaction anyway. It felt as if someone had poured battery acid into her veins. She had been placed in Feaver's office to prevent, or detect, episodes exactly like this.

"So I look real good on this thing," she said when Jim finished. From experience, she'd have expected something forgiving from McManis, his usual faint, silent smile. But his light eyes were still as he studied her. Jim had his tie down, his sleeves rolled. Two cartons of Chinese were at the end of the long conference table, one of them emitting an overpowering odor of garlic.

"And you had no clue on this?" he asked. "No idea about this judge?"

'Clong' was the agent term, the rush of shit to the heart when you suddenly saw you'd screwed up. Sure, she knew. There was that remark about messing around with a judge which Feaver had made after the first time they'd seen Walter.

"Anybody else hear about that?" McManis asked. He was fully focused, intent. She drummed her fingers. She had told Alf, who had a persistent lurid curiosity concerning Robbie's catting about.

"Alf?" McManis looked to the fake grain of the conference table as he pondered. Behind the steel door, the night sounds of the city were held at astonishing distance. "Somebody backdoored me on this," Jim finally said. "Alf must have let it slip. Maybe to the local agents on the surveillance. But Sennett knew. And he went around me. He handed me a signed warrant on Friday morning, told me to get Alf to do the installation. No details. He must have used the IRS guys to nail down the probable cause. I didn't understand what he was ticked about." McManis flexed his hand, on which the fingers were slightly clubbed. His usual comfortable manner had worn down. If he was from D.C.and his comments over the weeks had largely confirmed that-he'd been through this before. You ran with the big dogs in that town. Got crackbacked and bushwhacked and cut down at the knees. Still. It wasn't Jim.

"He was sending us a message," Jim said. "Me. And you. About staying on our toes. He wants you inside this guy's shirt from now on. He already said as much. You're with him whenever he leaves home."

Her impulse as always was to defend herself. Robbie had made it sound as if the relationship was long over.

"Then learn the lesson. Anything like this in the future, some mention of other judges, any hints, you better let me know." The rebuke was mildly spoken but it burned through her. "And when he starts talking-" McManis weighed what he was saying. "You've got to try to draw him out. More. See if you can. God knows what else there might be like this."

More. Evon nearly laughed. More and she'd need to borrow a couch from a shrink. Or somebody's wet suit. But McManis's expression allowed no room for humor. Jim's mouth worked around what he was going to say next.

"This isn't the nicest part," he said and looked at her directly, so she didn't miss the meaning. She considered the advice in the strange hush of the building and tried not to shake her head. "It's not easy," Jim said. "UC is the hardest. And you know, Feaver-" Jim shrugged. "I've sort of gotten to like the guy. In his way."

"In his way," she agreed.

McManis smiled. "I like him-" He checked himself there and gave his head, and his boyish do, the tiniest shake. There was a leased car for her in the basement garage, McManis told her. She'd see Feaver in and out the door to his house every day now.

As she drove home, she felt her emotions collecting in a familiar way, sliding into humiliation. She felt hammered down by it, more ponderously now that she was alone. When it came back up again, by the time she'd closed the dead bolt inside her apartment, it had made its inevitable transformation to anger, her ferocious companion. She'd been played! Played by Robert S. Feaver, future felon and full-time slimeball. She was even enraged with McManis, who was doing what bosses do in bad situations, sending her in two different directions at once, asking her to be warier at the same time she was supposed to lead the guy along. They had the wrong girl for that. There wasn't that kind of art to her. If she didn't respect McManis so much she'd have told him so.

"Fucking Sennett," she said aloud. Game player. Powermonger. "I hate that shit." Playing the Mormon girl, she'd reverted for months to the vocabulary she'd used in high school. The curse words resounding around the apartment struck her as childishly amusing. Fucking Sennett. She laughed then. She'd just realized what it was McManis was going to say. About Feaver. At the end.

He was going to say, I like him more than Stan.

At 6 A.M., she was parked outside Feaver's house, blocking the driveway. He didn't ask why. He knew it was coming. For cover, though, they'd still travel in the Mercedes. Settling in, she slammed the door with a powerful heave. He did not look her way as she frumped around in the seat.

"I'm gonna be out here every morning now, bucko. And I'm gonna be seeing your wandering behind through the door every night. And I'm calling every two hours to make sure you've stayed put. I'm even tying a string around your ankle when you go to the potty."

He flirted with a smile, then apparently reconsidered under the circumstances.

"Do you have just the smallest clue how bad you made me look?" she asked.

When he turned, his expression-its harshness-was shocking.

"Cut the crap. I know you dimed me out on this. I know you went right to Sennett when I said I'd had a thing with a judge."

"I only wish I had, Robbie."

"Did you listen in on my phone calls, too?"

"Sure," she said. "Absolutely. I record them on that wire I'm wearing. Sennett's up all night listening to the output."

They were driving. There'd been a frost again last night and the windshields of the cars at the curbs were glazed with what looked like large snowflakes. He made a bitter remark: Everything with her was business.

"You're not gonna do this," she said "You're not gonna embarrass the hell out of me and then try to make me feel bad cause you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. You're not going to do that, Feaver."

"Hey, I'm a big boy. I took a chance and I lost."

She battled herself. He was always saved by intuition. Because of course there was a piece of her that inevitably needed to explain.

"You barefaced lied to me and now you want an apology?"

"Lied?"

"Didn't you tell me that you'd stopped that stuff?"

"Oh, please."

"Didn't you? What was it you said. `It seems disloyal'?" He'd be single again soon enough. She skipped that part out of sheer mercy.

"What's it to you?"

"Only my job. That's all. Just what I get up every morning to do. I'm lyin in bed last night, ripping the hell out of myself. `How'd you miss it?' Then I realized you'd looked right in my dumb green eyes and told me that whopper."

"You didn't believe it anyway."

"Stop making excuses, damn it! What kind of person are you? How can you just flat-out say stuff that isn't true? That you know isn't true?"

"Aw, don't give me that production number. `Men were deceivers ever.' Shakespeare, right? Everybody lies. `Oh, I love your hair.' `What a great idea.' `The dog ate my homework.' Jesus Christ. Every minute you're living is a lie. Look at you. `My name is Evon Miller. I'm a Mormon girl from Idaho."'

"But that's for a reason. For a good reason." "So, I had a good reason, too."

"Yeah? Fooling around and getting favorable rulings?"

He tried to speak, then stopped. His hands moved first.

"Listen, you know, when I went romping around up on the stage, I always felt like I was trying on things about myself. Little pieces of myself. Seeing if they could be ginned around to fit. Like making stained glass. You can call me a liar, and people do. But at least I've tried. I haven't sat around with the same loony-tune fantasies as everybody else, keeping them in some hot dark box until they start to stink. If you talk, if you tell, if you make the play, if you say, That's who I am, at least it gives you the chance to figure out if you're right."

She thought of a million old sayings. So full of it his eyes were brown.

"And who did you think you were trying to be by b.s.ing me?"

His Adam's apple wobbled.

"Somebody you liked."

She didn't say anything. He was an actor, she reminded herself. An actor. At a stoplight, a woman in the next car was making up her face, sharpening her brows at the moment, as she hiked herself up to the rearview to peek at the results. They drove on quite some time without speaking, the morning burble of two high-powered drive-time jocks filling the car, the pair yelling at each other to revive their audience.

"So'd you listen to it?" he asked.

She just slid her eyes over. He knew the look by now.

"Oh, come on. Fess up. I know you listened to that tape." They went through that a couple of times, each runthrough stoking her anger again.

"Why would I care?" she asked him.

"Cause you've got this burning interest in my scintillating personal life."

"Me?"

"Oh, come on. That's all you want to talk to me about. Almost from day one." He went down a list he'd apparently been keeping, beginning with the girl with the flag. He didn't mention the other day when she'd frisked him, but it was clear the incident had emboldened him. By the time he finished, she could barely hear over the blood rush throbbing in her ears.

"Hoo boy. Here we go again. What do they call this? A recurring theme? I just can't resist you."

"You're curious about something."

"Drop dead." She said it as if she meant it. Which she did. Instead he repeated himself. She was curious.

"You know, Feaver, you ain't as smart by half as you think you are. I thought you told me you had the picture? When you gave me your big lecture about Shaheen Whatever Her Name Is who you kissed onstage? I thought you said you had me all figured." A little voice within asked what in the Lord's name she was doing. But it was the stuff with McManis. The only way she could translate it was just to let fly.

In spite of traffic, he'd turned full about to look at her. She did not shy away, just let the anger bum from her eyes. For the moment she had him confounded. Not because he didn't remember. But because he couldn't get the words out of his mouth.

"I never said that," he insisted.

"The hell."

"I didn't."

"Well, what if I said you were right? What would you say, smarty-pants?"

He took an awfully long time.

"You dig girls?"

"What would you say?"

He drove in silence. But she could tell he was thinking. His eyes seemed to have shrunk back some infinitesimal measure into his face.

"I'd say, Good."

"Good!"

"Yeah," he said, and finally cheated a glance her way. "I'd say we have something in common."

"You know, I know that was just a line. Yesterday? About you being a-"

She arched an eyebrow awaiting the slur. They were in the Mercedes, on their way into work.

"What should I say?" he asked. "`Sapphist'?" "'Lesbian' seems to be the word if you're straight." "But you're not, are you?"

"Straight?"

"Not-straight."

"Look, whatever I am is none of your business." "So why'd you tell me?"

She'd been contemplating that for a day. She'd needed to knock him off his high horse, to regain some control, let him know he didn't have her completely pegged. But whenever her mind lit on what she'd said, she wanted to crawl away.

"I think it's a play," he said.

She told him to think what he wanted, but she couldn't settle for that. After a moment, she pivoted on the smooth leather of the passenger seat.

"It's just a hoot. I'm tellin you things, my Lord, sayin things to you I haven't told my sisters. And you're sittin there goin, Prove it. What do you want me to do? Describe my first time?" He actually seemed to consider that.

"You know, I've done that," he said, a block or two farther on. "Said I was that way. `Inverted'? Isn't that the word?"

"You said you were gay?"

"Yeah, I did. I did it a lot. As a play."

"Naturally," she said dryly.

"What does that mean?"

"Forget about it."

"You think I'm always on the play, right?"

"Look, just tell me the story. That's what you're gonna do anyway, isn't it? You think I'm giving you a line about being a lesbian and you'll prove it by telling me how you've said you're gay. Which, of course, is a play, because nobody could ever believe that about you."

He stared at her for some time. They had just pulled into the garage at the LeSueur and he slammed the car into park. God, where did that come from? She was mean. She could hear her mother's voice clearly, delivering that judgment: she was mean. She grabbed his wrist.

"Look, tell me the story."

"Another time," he said. He patted his muffler into place, inspecting himself in the vanity mirror on the visor as he prepared to present himself to the public in the lobby of the LeSueur.

"Okay, be like that."

"Look, it's not a big deal. I told you it was a play. You're going to hate me for it, anyway."

"Then I'll try to forgive you," she said. Her mother had always said that forgiveness was a virtue. He took the chance of looking her way to see if she meant it, before he stared out the windshield into the murky reaches of the garage.

"It was just in college, all right? It was a line. I'd tell girls that. You know, that I was having a crisis. That I thought I was that way. That I was really worried about it. And in those days, they'd be horrified. For my sake. You know, they'd say, 'No, not you, you can't be that way. Have you ever done anything?' `No, no,' I'd say, `but I just worry about it sometimes.' Look, it was the dark ages. Nobody ever talked out loud about this stuff. It probably sounds ridiculous now. But to an eighteen-year-old girl from Great Neck, it was pretty convincing. And you realize what the point was, right? You know what I was really after."

"And it worked? Girls fell for it?"

"All the time. They were always so proud of me afterwards. Even girls I never called again didn't mind. It was our little secret that they'd sort of healed the leper. I guess I shouldn't laugh. Right?"

"Right." She looked away.

"You said you'd forgive me."

She'd said she'd forgive him. Her mother, who preached that lesson, seldom seemed to forgive her. Some woeful guttural escaped her. Every time she sat her large pink fanny down in this automobile something went awry.

"Who cares?" she asked. "I forgive you, you forgive me. Who we kiddin? You're just talkin dirty and I'm lettin you do it."

"It's not dirty."

"No, what is it?"

He took a moment.

"It's friends. Isn't it? Aren't we? We're talking like friends, that's all."

Friends. She couldn't believe it. She felt the weight of him watching her.

"So do they know?" he asked.

“They' who?"

"Your bosses. Headquarters. Whoever's on the homo patrol, now that they missed J. Edgar Hoover."

She could see how this was going to turn out. A cataclysm. It was never going to end. She refused to answer.

"I thought that was an issue," he said. "They don't want anybody blackmailed."

"Are you threatening me?"

"No. God no."

"You're threatening me. I tell you I'm a lesbian-"

"Hey," he said. "I don't care if you say, `I'm a little teapot.' That stays here. I don't rat my friends, Evon. No matter what. That's why everybody was on my case yesterday."

She wondered what Walter Wunsch or Barnett Skolnick would say about that. This guy would never make sense.

"I was just thinking," he said. As he paused, a little ironic wiggle flexed through his even features. She knew what was coming. Something of dubious taste, surely insulting. Something that would treat her life like a dirty joke.

"Don't you dare," she told him. She popped the door lock on her side.

"No." He reached after her. "No, I just realized."

"What?" What could he possibly have realized?

"You're always undercover."