rolling around inside--ma and pa, killers and cops and various prime-time heroes, and all of them at times reaching for the throttle. There's no way to stop it, and who's to say we should. What seemed sweeter yesterday than the thought of nabbing Bert and running with the money? It's just your brother, the old copper, explaining how it is that folks go wrong. Every guy I cracked said it: I didn't me. to, I didn't want to. As if it were somebody else who'd scored the smack or kicked the coins out of the vending machine. And it is in a way. That's what I'm saying.
I sat in my office this morning, venturing this two-bit commentary for the benefit of my dead sister, as I do a couple of times each day, and noodling over the statement that I'd pocketed from the Kam Roberts credit card. The thought of Bert being someone else impromptu still drilled me with that little secret jolt, but the particulars of his hidden life remained elusive. Besides the charges for air tickets and restaurants and motels in little Mid-Tell towns. there were items. five to fifteen dollar s e ach, posted almost daily for some something called "Infomode," and there was also a series of cash advances totaling about three grand. Bert made more dough than me, maybe 275K, and I'd have figured he'd write a check to cash in Accounting if he needed folding money, rather than pay interest. Then we got really strange: a single credit item, over nine thousand bucks for something called Arch Enterprises. Maybe this was pal Archie, the wayward actuary, but what-for nine thousand dollars credit? I was writing comedy making up the explanations. E . G ., Bert returned a big insurance policy? And then we had the smalltime peculiar, two nights' charges last month at U Inn, a kind of run-down hotel/motel right across from the university's main quadrangle, an odd spot for Bert to be checking in since his apartment was only a mile away.
I was pushing around these puzzle pieces when my phone rang.
"We have a serious problem." It was Wash.
"We do?"
-Very serious." He sounded undone, but Wash is not the fellow we turn to in crisis. There are people, like Martin, who talk about Wash as a legend, but I suspect he was one of those young men who was admired for his bright future and now is forgiven his lapses due to the supposed achievements of his past. Aged sixty-seven, Wash by my reckoning lost interest in the practice of law at least a decade ago. You could say the same of me, but I'm not an icon. This life can make you soft. There are always younger lawyers, agile-minded and bristling with ambition, to think for you, to write the opinion letters and draft the contracts. Wash has capitulated to that. He is, for the most part, a ceremonial lawyer, a soothing presence to old clients to whom he is connected by club affiliations and schooling.
"I just spoke with Martin," Wash said. "He ran into Jake Eiger in the elevator."
"So?"
"Jake was asking about Bert.-
"Uh-oh." Ticklish inquiries from the client. I felt the usual moment of private gratitude that I wasn't in charge.
"We have to figure out what to tell Jake. Martin had to jump onto a conference call--we only spoke for a second. But he should be through soon. He suggested we all get together."
I told Wash I'd stand by.
In the interval I resumed my routine endeavor these days at G &G--trying to find something to do. When I came here eighteen years ago, it was with the promise that Jake Eiger would have lots of work for me, and for a number of years his word held true. I rewrote TN's Employees' Code of Conduct, I conducted a number of internal investigations--flight attendants selling drinks out of their own bottles, a hotel manager whose hiring standard for chambermaids was whether they swallowed after fellating him. Eventually that stuff tapered off, and in the last two years has stopped cold. I'm left doing odds and ends for Bert and Brushy and some of my other partners who remain on Jake's main menu, trying cases they
I sat in my office this morning, venturing this two-bit commentary for the benefit of my dead sister, as I do a couple of times each day, and noodling over the statement that I'd pocketed from the Kam Roberts credit card. The thought of Bert being someone else impromptu still drilled me with that little secret jolt, but the particulars of his hidden life remained elusive. Besides the charges for air tickets and restaurants and motels in little Mid-Tell towns. there were items. five to fifteen dollar s e ach, posted almost daily for some something called "Infomode," and there was also a series of cash advances totaling about three grand. Bert made more dough than me, maybe 275K, and I'd have figured he'd write a check to cash in Accounting if he needed folding money, rather than pay interest. Then we got really strange: a single credit item, over nine thousand bucks for something called Arch Enterprises. Maybe this was pal Archie, the wayward actuary, but what-for nine thousand dollars credit? I was writing comedy making up the explanations. E . G ., Bert returned a big insurance policy? And then we had the smalltime peculiar, two nights' charges last month at U Inn, a kind of run-down hotel/motel right across from the university's main quadrangle, an odd spot for Bert to be checking in since his apartment was only a mile away.
I was pushing around these puzzle pieces when my phone rang.
"We have a serious problem." It was Wash.
"We do?"
-Very serious." He sounded undone, but Wash is not the fellow we turn to in crisis. There are people, like Martin, who talk about Wash as a legend, but I suspect he was one of those young men who was admired for his bright future and now is forgiven his lapses due to the supposed achievements of his past. Aged sixty-seven, Wash by my reckoning lost interest in the practice of law at least a decade ago. You could say the same of me, but I'm not an icon. This life can make you soft. There are always younger lawyers, agile-minded and bristling with ambition, to think for you, to write the opinion letters and draft the contracts. Wash has capitulated to that. He is, for the most part, a ceremonial lawyer, a soothing presence to old clients to whom he is connected by club affiliations and schooling.
"I just spoke with Martin," Wash said. "He ran into Jake Eiger in the elevator."
"So?"
"Jake was asking about Bert.-
"Uh-oh." Ticklish inquiries from the client. I felt the usual moment of private gratitude that I wasn't in charge.
"We have to figure out what to tell Jake. Martin had to jump onto a conference call--we only spoke for a second. But he should be through soon. He suggested we all get together."
I told Wash I'd stand by.
In the interval I resumed my routine endeavor these days at G &G--trying to find something to do. When I came here eighteen years ago, it was with the promise that Jake Eiger would have lots of work for me, and for a number of years his word held true. I rewrote TN's Employees' Code of Conduct, I conducted a number of internal investigations--flight attendants selling drinks out of their own bottles, a hotel manager whose hiring standard for chambermaids was whether they swallowed after fellating him. Eventually that stuff tapered off, and in the last two years has stopped cold. I'm left doing odds and ends for Bert and Brushy and some of my other partners who remain on Jake's main menu, trying cases they
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