CHAPTER 27


Vince Haller drew up a trust agreement for me that was twenty-eight pages long and read like the Rosetta Stone.

"They give courses in gobbledygook at law school?" I said.

"Law school is gobbledygook," Haller said. "No need for a special course."

"If it had been written by a sentient being, what would it say?" I was in Haller's office in the penthouse suite at 5 Staniford, thirty-eighth floor. Genuine antiques, original oils, Oriental rugs, word processors, good-looking secretaries, twelve attorneys. There was gold in gobbledygook.

"It would say that all earning of the capital funding of this trust would be paid to the Reorganized Church of the Redemption, in the person of Sherry Spellman, or her designee, and successors in perpetuity. It would say further that money deposited to this trust was deposited irrevocably."

"Who administers the trust?" I said.

Haller smiled. "Me," he said. "Or my designee and successors."

"Fee?"

"No fee," Haller said. "A tax deductible donation of time at our standard billing rate will be made each month." He was wearing his trademark white suit and a wide maroon knit tie with a gold collar pin.

"So all I have to do is get the thing funded and we're in business."

Haller handed me a deposit slip. "Got the account all ready. Opened it with a one-hundred-dollar tax deductible donation of my own. Checks should be made out to the Reorganized Church of the Redemption Trust."

"I have a feeling that the deposits will be in cash," I said.

Haller shrugged. "Always a negotiable instrument," he said. "You want to come out to the house for dinner Sunday? Mary Margaret has been On my ass to invite you out."

I shook my head. "Thanks, Vince, but I can't make it Sunday."

Haller nodded. "How are you?" he said.

"Still here," I said.

"I got a bottle of Black Bush," he said, "that I brought back from Ireland last time. Want to drink it with me and talk a little?"

"No," I said. "I talk too much as it is."

"How alone are you?" Haller said.

"Paul's with me, and I see Hawk a lot." Haller shook his head.

"And I've met a very wonderful woman," I said.

"They're all wonderful," Haller said.

"Well, many of them," I said.

"I love them," Haller said. "The way they talk, how they smell, the way they touch their hair, everything."

"I know," I said.

"I never thought one woman was enough," he said.

"I've always thought it was."

"Mary Margaret shares your view," Haller said. He stood and took a bottle of Bushmill Black Label Irish Whiskey from an antique highboy, poured two shots, and came around the desk and handed me one. "They don't export it, you know," he said. "Got to buy it in Ireland."

We drank.

"Mary Margaret's a fine woman," he said. "Good mother, good wife." He grinned. "Dutiful lover. But I got a girlfriend in Cambridge that the nuns never got to." He drank some more whiskey and shook his head. "Twenty-six years old, knows things that surprise even me, and I've been researching the field for some years."

"You love your wife?" I said.

"Sure." Haller came around the desk and poured more whiskey into my glass. "Best of all, but I love the girlfriend, too, and I know a woman in Washington I love, and I have loved five or six other women in the last five or six years."

I drank some of Haller's whiskey. It made Murphy's taste like Listerine.

"Worth the trip to Ireland," I said.

"Yeah, it's wonderful, isn't it. You love this woman you've met?"

"Yes."

"Surprise you?"

"Yes."

"You'll learn," Haller said. "You still love Susan?"

"Yes."

Haller smiled happily. He nodded. "See? See? Already you're learning." He filled his glass and pushed the bottle toward me across the desk. His phone rang. He picked it up and listened and said; "Tell him I'll get back to him, and Alma, hold all my calls, will you, honey?" He hung up.

"Maybe I loved a woman in Los Angeles," I said. "At least a little."

"Sure you did, why not give her a buzz? Never can tell when you'll get to L.A."

"She's dead," I said.

"The broad you were body-guarding?"

"Yes."

"Took the firm six months to get that straightened out with the L.A. prosecutor's office too," Haller said. "I didn't realize she mattered to you that way."

I looked at my whiskey, the light from the window made the amber look golden when I held it up. I drank some.

"I'm not sure I did either," I said.

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