Proving that Mom isn’t a nun quit working around the time Kramer vs.

Kramer came out in the movie theaters. Nor is that the only problem they have with the issue.” He now sounded positively gleeful.

“Tell me.”

“Max Devore is eighty-five and divorced. Twice divorced, in point of fact. Before awarding custody to a single man of his age, secondary custody has to be taken into consideration. It is, in fact, the single most important issue, other than the allegations of abuse and neglect levelled at the mother.”

“What are those allegations? Do you know?”

“No. Mattie doesn’t either, because they’re fabrications. She’s a sweetie, by the way—”

“Yeah, she is.”

“—and I think she’s going to make a great witness. I can’t wait to meet her in person. Meantime, don’t sidetrack me. We’re talking about secondary custody, right?”

“Right.”

“Devore has a daughter who has been declared mentally incompetent and lives in an institution somewhere in California—Modesto, I think.

Not a good bet for custody.”

“It wouldn’t seem so.”

“The son, Roger, is…” I heard a faint fluttering of notebook pages.

”… fifty-four. So he’s not exactly a spring chicken, either. Still, there are lots of guys who become daddies at that age nowadays; it’s a brave new world. But Roger is a homosexual.”

I thought of Bill Dean saying, Rump-wrangler. Understand there’s a lot of that going around out them in Calij3rnia.

“I thought you said sex doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe I should have said hetero sex doesn’t matter. In certain states—California is one of themhomo sex doesn’t matter, either… or not as much. But this case isn’t going to be adjudicated in California.

It’s going to be adjudicated in Maine, where folks are less enlightened about how well two married men—married to each other, I meanan raise a little girl.”

“Roger Devore is married?” Okay. I admit it. I now felt a certain horrified glee myself. I was ashamed of it—Roger Devore was just a guy living his life, and he might not have had much or anything to do with his elderly dad’s current enterprise—but I felt it just the same.

“He and a software designer named Morris Ridding tied the knot in 1996,” John said. “I found that on the first computer sweep. And if this does wind up in court, I intend to make as much of it as I possibly can. I don’t know how much that will be—at this point it’s impossible to predict—but if I get a chance to paint a picture of that bright-eyed, cheerful little girl growing up with two elderly gays who probably spend most of their lives in computer chat-rooms speculating about what Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock might have done after the lights were out in officers’ country… well, if I get that chance, I’ll take it.”

“It seems a little mean,” I said. I heard myself speaking in the tone of a man who wants to be dissuaded, perhaps even laughed at, but that didn’t happen.

“Of course it’s mean. It feels like swerving up onto the sidewalk to knock over a couple of innocent bystanders. Roger Devote and Morris Ridding don’t deal drugs, traffic in little boys, or rob old ladies. But this is custody, and custody does an even better job than divorce of turning human beings into insects. This one isn’t as bad as it could be, but it’s bad enough because it’s so naked. Max Devore came up there to his old hometown for one reason and one reason only: to buy a kid. That makes me mad.”

I grinned, imagining a lawyer who looked like Elmer Fudd standing outside of a rabbit-hole marked DEVO with a shotgun.

“My message to Devore is going to be very simple: the price of the kid just went up. Probably to a figure higher than even he can afford.”

“/fit goes to court—you’ve said that a couple of times now. Do you think there’s a chance Devore might just drop it and go away?”

’gk pretty good one, yeah. I’d say an excellent one if he wasn’t old and used to getting his own way. There’s also the question of whether or not he’s still sharp enough to know where his best interest lies. I’ll try for a meeting with him and his lawyer while I’m up there, but so far I haven’t managed to get past his secretary…”

“Rogette Whitmore?”

“No, I think she’s a step further up the ladder. I haven’t talked to her yet, either. But I will.”

“Try either Richard Osgood or George Footman,” I said. “Either of them may be able to put you in touch with Devore or Devore’s chief counsel.”

“I’ll want to talk to the Whitmore woman in any case. Men like Devore tend to grow more and more dependent on their close advisors as they grow older, and she could be a key to getting him to let this go. She could also be a headache for us. She might urge him to fight, possibly because she really thinks he can win and possibly because she wants to watch the fur fly. Also, she might marry him."

“Marry him?”

“Why not? He could have her sign a pre-nup—I could no more’ introduce that in court than his lawyers could go fishing for who hired Mattie’s lawyer—and it would strengthen his chances.”

“John, I’ve seen the woman. She’s got to be seventy herself.”

“But she’s a potential female player in a custody case involving a little girl, and she’s a layer between old man Devore and the married gay couple. We just need to keep it in mind.”

“Okay.” I looked at the office door again, but not so longingly. There comes a point when you’re done for the day whether you want to be or not, and I thought I had reached that point. Perhaps in the evening… “The lawyer I got for you is named Romeo Bissonette.” He paused. “Can that be a real name?”

“Is he from Lewiston?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Because in Maine, especially around Lewiston, that can be a real name. Am I supposed to go see him?” I didn’t want to go see him. It was fifty miles to Lewiston over two-lane roads which would now be crawling with campers and Winnebagos. What I wanted was to go swimming and then take a long nap. A long dream/ess nap. “You don’t need to. Call him and talk to him a little. He’s only a safety net, really—he’ll object if the questioning leaves the incident on the morning of July Fourth. About that incident you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Got it?”

“Talk to him before, then meet him on Friday at… wait… it’s right here…” The notebook pages fluttered again. “Meet him at the Route 120

Diner at nine-fifteen. Coffee. Talk a little, get to know each other, maybe flip for the check. I’ll be with Mattie, getting as much as I can.

We may want to hire a private dick.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“Uh-huh. I’m going to see that bills go to your guy Goldacre. He’ll send them to your agent, and your agent can—”

“No,” I said. “Instruct Goldacre to send them directly here. Harold’s a Jewish mother. How much is this going to cost me?”

“Seventy-five thousand dollars, minimum,” he said with no hesitation at all. With no apology in his voice, either.

“Don’t tell Mattie.”

“LALL right. Are you having any fun yet, Mike?”

“You know, I sort of am,” I said thoughtfully. “For seventy-five grand, you should.” We said our goodbyes and John hung up. As I put my own phone back into its cradle, it occurred to me that I had lived more in the last five days than I had in the last four years.

This time the phone didn’t ring and I made it all the way back into the office, but I knew I was definitely done for the day. I sat down at the IBM, hit the TU,N key a couple of times, and was beginning to write myself a next-note at the bottom of the page I’d been working on when the phone interrupted me. What a sour little doodad the telephone is, and what little good news we get from it! Today had been an exception, though, and I thought I could sign off with a grin. I was working, after all-working. Part of me still marvelled that I was sitting here at all, breathing easily, my heart beating steadily in my chest, and not even a glimmer of an anxiety attack on my personal event horizon. I wrote: