Эд Горман - Fools Rush In

I caught up with him. We’d known each other professionally for three or four years. He was a small man in his forties with a somber face and a cordial manner.

“She’s going to be all right, Sam. But it’s going to be a while before she’s back on the bench.”

“I don’t even know what happened. I just got a call from her driver that she’d been in an accident and was in the hospital.”

He frowned. Leaned in, quieted his voice. “She’s got to face it this time, Sam. She was coming home from the club alone and ran off the road out by Simpson’s Peak.”

“That ravine?”

He nodded. “She’d be dead if she hadn’t run into the pine tree that’s right down from the top. Nobody found her till about four this morning. She’d lost a lot of blood. She’s also got a broken hip, a broken arm, and a concussion.”

“Is she awake?”

He studied me a moment. “Sam, the way she tells it, the reason she got so drunk at the club last night was because she’d had some kind of falling-out with you. She said she didn’t trust you any longer.” Then: “She wanted me to be sure and tell you that.” One of his infrequent smiles. “Working the old guilt routine on you. Esme’s drunk every night of the week no matter what happens in her life, good or bad.”

“She wanted you to tell me that but she doesn’t want to see me.” Alcoholics always blame other people.

“That’s what she says anyway, and in her condition, I didn’t want to argue with her. For one thing, we gave her a lot of pain medication, so she’s not thinking clearly. And for another, you’re just a handy excuse, as I said.”

A nurse passed by and smiled at me. Former client of mine. Happily remarried after I helped her win an unchallenged divorce. Another wife abuse case. “Sam, you’re closer to her than anybody.”

“Than her friends at the country club?”

“I’m one of those friends at the country club. We all care for Esme a great deal, but we really don’t know her, even after all these years. You know how she holds herself back. Even when she’s drunk and staggering around, she never divulges anything personal. And she’s at the end, Sam. She can’t go on drinking. Her body won’t let her. Her liver—”

He made a face.

“You work with her. You have influence with her. You’re the only one we can think of who can get her into that clinic. If she doesn’t go through that program and give up the bottle, our Esme won’t live another year. Two at the very outside. And believe me, they won’t be pretty years either. Not for her or anybody around her.”

His name was announced in that sterile tone of all hospital announcements.

“Give her a day or two, Sam. Then come back and see her. I need to go.”

Judge Whitney submitting herself to the structure and vagaries of a clinic. Life lived at the mercy of somebody else’s rules. Unthinkable.

“Good morning, Mr. C.”

“’Morning, Jamie.”

“My birthday is next week. And guess where Turk is taking me?”

“The Dairy Queen?”

She laughed. “No, a birthday is a big event. He’s taking me to see Frankie Avalon.”

“Is Frankie Avalon still around?”

“He is in Des Moines. Don’t you like him?”

“He’s all right. But I’d take Chuck Berry, personally.”

“He puts too much grease on his hair. Like Jerry Lewis.”

I knew this could go on forever, so I said, “Any calls?”

“Just one. Nancy Adams.”

I got myself seated behind my desk, scanned down the “To Do” list I always make for myself the day before.

“You want her phone number?”

“Sure.” She gave it to me and I dialed. “Nancy Adams, please. This is Sam McCain returning her call.”

“Dammit,” the woman said, after cupping the phone. Or kind of cupping the phone. “Your father and I told you not to call him.” I couldn’t hear what Nancy said. The woman again: “May she call you back? She’s washing her hair right now.”

“Or I could call her back.”

“Well, actually we have to run a few errands after she’s finished with her hair. And she’ll call you after that. Good-bye, Mr. McCain.”

“Did you take the call from Nancy Adams or did the service?” I asked after hanging up.

“The service. It came in before I got here.”

I dialed the three digits to connect with our answering service. “Hi, this is Sam. Did you take the call from a Nancy Adams?”

“Yes, I did, Mr. McCain.”

“Did she say anything other than she’d like me to call her back?”

“Not really. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Well, I sort of had the impression she was sort of nervous. It was her tone, I mean. She didn’t say anything specific. She just sounded real uptight.”

“Thanks, Betty.”

I had three briefs I had to read before I could spend any time on the Leeds murder. Or on what I was going to say to Judge Whitney when the time came to go up and see her and bring up the subject of the clinic in Minnesota.

In the next two hours I caught up on everything pressing. I’d told Jamie to tell everybody I was out. She knew the exceptions were Judge Whitney and my folks. Right now, she didn’t have to worry about the judge.

When I finished, I leaned back in my chair and started mentally plotting out my argument for court tomorrow morning. An especially ugly divorce case. I represented a mill worker who, in response to the affair his wife was having, took their three-year-old daughter for the weekend without telling anybody (a) that he did it, or (b) that he was taking a hotel room in Cedar Rapids.

It was easy to portray the wife as a woman of soiled virtue. But I knew John, the husband, was almost psychotically suspicious of her and had made their lives hell from the start of their marriage. John was a decent man and Sandy was a decent woman. She claimed she was justified in having an affair because he’d had so many himself. The joys of divorce court. Plenty of psychic pain and blame to go around with the kids in the middle.

She came in just before lunchtime.

Turk had made his usual appearance (“Hey, Mr. C, you always look so busy, man, you should relax more.”) his black leather jacket looking like something from West Side Story rather than The Blackboard Jungle.

A few minutes after Turk and Jamie left, Nancy Adams stood in the doorway and said, “Are you busy, Mr. McCain?”

“Hi, Nancy.”

She smiled nervously, a perfect young woman, slim in tan walking shorts and a starched white blouse, possessed of long, tanned arms and legs and a small earnest face. Her dark hair was worn short in a shag. “I wondered if we could talk a little bit.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t think badly of my mom. She just doesn’t want to see me dragged into court or anything. That’s why she said what she did on the phone.” A voice as soft as her brown eyes.

“I know my office isn’t much, but don’t be afraid to come inside.” She was still standing on the threshold.

“Oh, right.”

She came in and took one of the client chairs. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

“If you’re telling the truth, then that’s the right thing.”

“That sounds like something you’d hear on TV.”

I laughed. “A little pompous?”

She smiled. She was blushing. “I probably shouldn’t have said that.” I’d been doing that lately — beginning to sound like Dear Abby.

“I have some pop in the refrigerator.”

“No, thanks.” Still busy with her hands. “I guess I may as well just tell you, huh?”

“Probably best, yes.”

She sat up a little straighter. “Well, you know I go out with Nick Hannity. Or I should say, used to go out with him.”