Эд Макбейн - Snow White and Rose Red

“I wonder how a judge would react to that, Susan.”

“To what, Matthew?”

“To the fact that you want to take Joanna out of St. Mark’s because two black kids have been admitted. I just wonder what his reaction to that will be.”

“we’re in Florida,” Susan said. “Not that I’m in any way prejudiced.”

“I’m writing to this academy in the morning,” I said. “To tell them Joanna’s father objects to her admission there.”

“The school knows I have custody of the child,” Susan said.

“Damn it, Joanna doesn’t want to go there!”

“Children don’t always know What’s best for them.”

“Why are you doing this?” I said.

Silence again.

“You really are trying to keep me away from her, aren’t you?”

“I’m very sleepy, Matthew. Would you mind if we ended this?”

“I won’t let you do it,” I said.

“Good night, Matthew,” she said, and hung up.

I put the receiver back on the cradle.

“Wow,” Terry said.

I sighed heavily.

“Your ex, huh?”

I nodded.

“They can be real pains in the asses, can’t they?” she said.

I nodded again.

“Do you want me to go home?” she asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“’Cause there’s a game we could play, if you think you’d like to. What it does, it makes the second time around a little more interesting. And maybe it’ll take your mind off your wife, your ex-wife. If you’d like to.”

“You know something?” I said.

“What?”

I wanted to tell her that honesty was a tough thing to stumble across these days, and to find it in anyone was nothing short of a miracle. I wanted to tell her that the time we’d spent together tonight had been as valuable to me as diamonds and gold. I wanted to tell her that she was the most refreshing thing that had happened to me in as long as I could remember.

“You’re a very nice person,” I said.

And perhaps that was enough.

She smiled and said, “Yeah, you, too. Now here’s how this game goes, if You’re interested. What you do is you tease me, I’ll show you how in a minute, until you think I’m right on the brink — That’s what the game’s called, Brink — and then you stop, you just take your hand away or whatever, and then I start teasing you, and then I stop, and it goes on like that forever until we’re so crazy we can’t stand it anymore and we just have to do it or die. Brink. Do you think you’d like to play it?”

“I think You’re wonderful,” I said, and kissed her.

“Do you really?” she said.

Her voice was suddenly very soft, childlike. She looked up at me expectantly.

“I do,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said.

I kissed her again.

She smiled up at me.

“So do you think you’d like to try it?” she asked.

“ You’re the one who’s crazy,” my partner Frank said.

We were standing in what — by the end of May, or so we’d been promised by the contractor — would be one of the new corner offices at Summerville and Hope. The firm was expanding. We were doing good business, knock wood. We were making a lot of money.

“You can’t make money taking on lunatics as clients,” Frank said.

Carpenters were hammering on the wall behind him. The wall was open to the bright April sunshine. The carpenters were trying to “close up,” as the contractor had put it, before we had rain. No one expected rain in Calusa in April, but the contractor was a cautious man. His name was Percival Banks. Maybe anyone named Percival had to be cautious.

“What do those papers you’re waving in my face tell you, Matthew?”

I was not, in fact, waving anything in his face. Frank often tends to exaggerate. He is a transplanted New Yorker, and perhaps exaggeration is a trait peculiar to natives of that city.

There are people who say that Frank and I look alike. I cannot see any resemblance. I’m an even six feet tall and weigh 170 pounds. Frank’s a half-inch under six feet, and he weighs 160, which he watches like a hawk. We both have dark hair and brown eyes, but Frank’s face is rounder than mine. Frank says there are only two types of faces in the world: “pig faces” and “fox faces.” He classifies himself as a pig face and me as a fox face. There is nothing derogatory about either label; they are only intended to be descriptive. Frank first told me about his designation system several years ago. Ever since, I’ve been unable to look at anyone without automatically categorizing him or her as either pig or fox.

Frank also says there are only two kinds of names in the world: “Frère Jacques” names and “Eleanor Rigby” names, this despite the fact that neither his name nor mine fits into either category. Robert Redford is a Frère Jacques name: “Robert Redford, Robert Redford, dormez-vous, dormez-vous ?” Jackie Onassis is an Eleanor Rigby name: “Jackie Onassis, died in a church and was buried along with her name...” I am constantly trying to think of Frère Jacques and Eleanor Rigby names. I sometimes go crazy trying to think of them.

Frank’s proclamations are often insidious. His exaggerations are merely annoying. The papers he said I was waving in his face were in fact resting on his desk alongside a pile of sawdust, a level, a set of blueprints rolled open and held down by a hammer and a screwdriver, and an empty beer can from which one of the carpenters had been drinking not five minutes earlier. I had obtained the papers from the records of the Probate Division of Calusa’s Circuit Court. The papers were a petition for appointment of guardian:

“If I’ve read this petition correctly—” Frank said.

“I’m sure you have.”

“—and if I’ve read the sheet of paper attached to it...”

The sheet of paper attached to it read:

“If I’ve read it correctly,” Frank repeated, “then Alice Whittaker is now the guardian of the person and property of young Sarah Whittaker, which means that the six hundred and fifty thousand bucks she got from God knows where—”

“She inherited it when her father died,” I said.

“ Wherever she got it,” Frank said, “it is now controlled by Mama. So I ask you again, Matthew, where is this girl going to find the wherewithal to pay our admittedly exorbitant legal fees?”

“Once we get her out of that place—”

“ If we get her out”

“—her mother will no longer be guardian of the property.”

“Yes, if we can get Miss Looney Tunes adjudged competent again.”

“Yes, if.”

“ If ,” Frank repeated.

“There must be an echo in this place,” I said.

“One thing anyone from Chicago should never attempt is humor,” Frank said dryly. “Especially when he’s on the verge of committing the firm to an expenditure of time that will result in the loss of a great deal of money.”

“I’m not on the verge, Frank. I’ve already committed—”

“Without first consulting me.”

“I knew you’d want to see justice done.”

“Bullshit,” Frank said.

“Anyway,” I said, “the case is ours.”