“In court that won’t matter a whole helluva lot, because there’s a certain amount of money on the other side. Also, the judge is going to be very aware that this one is a powderkeg. That can be useful.”
“What’s the best thing we’ve got going for us?” I asked this thinking of Kyra’s rosy, unmarked face and her complete lack of fear in the presence of her mother. I asked it thinking John would reply that the charges were clearly unfounded. I thought wrong. “The best thing? Devore’s age. He’s got to be older than God.”
“Based on what I’ve heard over the weekend, I think he must be eighty-five. That would make God older.”
“Yeah, but as a potential dad he makes Tony Randall look like a teenager,” John said, and now he sounded positively gloating. “Think of it, Michael—the kid graduates from high school the year Gramps turns one hundred. Also there’s a chance the old man’s overreached himself. Do you know what a guardian ad/item is?”
“No.”
“Essentially it’s a lawyer the court appoints to protect the interests of the child. A fee for the service comes out of court costs, but it’s a pittance. Most people who agree to serve as guardian ad//item have strictly altruistic motives… but not all of them. In any case, the ad/item puts his own spin on the case.
Judges don’t have to take the guy’s advice, but they almost always do.
It makes a judge look stupid to reject the advice of his own appointee, and the thing a judge hates above all others is looking stupid.”
“Devore will have his own lawyer?” John laughed. “How about half a dozen at the actual custody hearing?”
“Are you serious?”
“The guy is eighty-five.
That’s too old for Ferraris, too old for bungee jumping in Tibet, and too old for whores unless he’s a mighty man. What does that leave for him to spend his money on?”
“Lawyers,” I said bleakly. “Yep.”
“And Mattie Devore? What does she get?”
“Thanks to you, she gets me,” John Storrow said. “It’s like a John Grisham novel, isn’t it? Pure gold.
Meantime, I’m interested in Durgin, the ad/item. If Devore hasn’t been expecting any real trouble, he may have been unwise enough to put temptation in Durgin’s way. And Durgin may have been stupid enough to succumb. Hey, who knows what we might find?” But I was a turn back. “She gets you,” I said. “Thanks to me. And if I wasn’t here to stick in my oar? What would she get then?”
“Bubkes. That’s Yiddish. It means—”
“I know what it means,” I said. “That’s incredible.”
“Nope, just American justice. You know the lady with the scales? The one who stands outside most city courthouses?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Slap some handcuffs on that broad’s wrists and some tape over her mouth to go along with the blindfold, rape her and roll her in the mud. You like that image? I don’t, but it’s a fair representation of how the law works in custody cases where the plaintiff is rich and the defendant is poor. And sexual equality has actually made it worse, because while mothers still tend to be poor, they are no longer seen as the automatic choice for custody.”
“Mattie Devore’s got to have you, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” John said simply. “Call me tomorrow and tell me that she will.”
“I hope I can do that.”
“So do I. And listen—there’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“You lied to Devore on the telephone.”
“Bullshit!”
“Nope, nope, I hate to contradict my sister’s favorite author, but you did and you know it. You told Devote that mother and child were out together, the kid was picking flowers, everything was fine. You put everything in there except Bambi and Thumper.” I was sitting up straight in my deck-chair now. I felt sandbagged. I also felt that my own cleverness had been overlooked. “Hey, no, think again. I never came out and said anything. I told him I assumed. I used the word more than once. I remember that very clearly.”
“Uh-huh, and if he was taping your conversation, you’ll get a chance to actually count how many times you used it.” At first I didn’t answer. I was thinking back to the conversation I’d had with him, remembering the underhum on the phone line, the characteristic underhum I remembered from all my previous summers at Sara Laughs. Had that steady low mmmmm been even more noticeable on Saturday night? “I guess maybe there could be a tape,” I said reluctantly.
“Uh-huh. And if Devore’s lawyer gets it to the ad litem, how do you think you’ll sound?”
“Careful,” I said. “Maybe like a man with something to hide.”
“Or a man spinning yarns. And you’re good at that, aren’t you?
After all, it’s what you do for a living. At the custody hearing, Devore’s lawyer is apt to mention that. If he then produces one of the people who passed you shortly after Mattie arrived on the scene… a person who testifies that the young lady seemed upset and flustered… how do you think you’ll sound then?”
“Like a liar,” I said, and then:
“Ah, fuck.”
“Fear not, Mike. Be of good cheer.”
“What should I do?”
“Spike their guns before they can fire them. Tell Durgin exactly what happened. Get it in the depo. Emphasize the fact that the little girl thought she was walking safely. Make sure you get in that ’crossmock’
thing. I love that.”
“Then if they have a tape they’ll play it and I’ll look like a story-changing schmuck.”
“I don’t think so. You weren’t a sworn witness when you talked to Devore, were you? There you were, sitting out on your deck and minding your own business, watching the fireworks show. Out of the blue this grouchy old asshole calls you.
Starts ranting. Didn’t even give him your number, did you?”
“No.”
“Your unlisted number.”
“No.”
“And while he said he was Maxwell Devore, he could have been anyone, right?”
“Right.”
“He could have been the Shah of Iran.”
“No, the Shah’s dead.”
“The Shah’s out, then. But he could have been a nosy neighbor… or a prankster.”
“Yes.”
“And you said what you said with all those possibilities in mind. But now that you’re part of an official court proceeding, you’re telling the whole truth and nothing but.”
“You bet.” That good my-lawyer feeling had deserted me for a bit, but it was back full-force now. “You can’t do better than the truth, Mike,” he said solemnly. “Except maybe in a few cases, and this isn’t one. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes.”
“All right, we’re done. I want to hear from either you or Mattie Devore around elevenish tomorrow. It ought to be her.”
“I’ll try.”
“If she really balks, you know what to do, don’t you?”
“I think so. Thanks, John.”
“One way or another, we’ll talk very soon,” he said, and hung up.
I sat where I was for awhile. Once I pushed the button which opened the line on the cordless phone, then pushed it again to close it. I had to talk to Mattie, but I wasn’t quite ready yet. I decided to take a walk instead. If she really balks, you know what to do, don’t you? Of course.
Remind her that she couldn’t afford to be proud. That she couldn’t afford to go all Yankee, refusing charity from Michael Noonan, author of Being Two, The Red-Shirt Man, and the soon-to-be-published Helen’s Promise. Remind her that she could have her pride or her daughter, but likely not both. Hey, Mattie, pick one.
I walked almost to the end of the lane, stopping at Tidwell’s Meadow with its pretty view down to the cup of the lake and across to the White Mountains. The water dreamed under a hazy sky, looking gray when you tipped your head one way, blue when you tipped it the other. That sense of mystery was very much with me. That sense of Manderley. Over forty black people had settled here at the turn of the century—lit here for awhile, anyway—according to Marie Hingerman (also according to A History of Castle County and Castle Rock, a weighty tome published in 1977, the county’s bicentennial year). Pretty special black people, too: most of them related, most of them talented, most of them part of a musical group which had first been called The Red-Top Boys and then Sara Tidwell and the Red-Top Boys. They had bought the meadow and a good-sized tract of lakeside land from a man named Douglas Day. The money had been saved up over a period of ten years, according to Sonny Tidwell, who did the dickering (as a Red-Top, Son Tidwell had played what was then known as “chickenscratch guitar”).