William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

“Does she or not?”

“No.”

I kept driving. Sometimes, as a lawyer, you have to put your finger in someone’s face and call him a liar, and sometimes you just have to be quiet and let the silence talk.

“I want us to be a family Daniel can be proud of,” he said finally.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t have to. It ain’t your family. You won’t be living in Mayfair. You married?”

“No.”

“Got any kids?”

“No.”

“How was your family life growing up?”

“Crap.”

“So what the hell are you talking about? You don’t know nothing.”

“Maybe not.”

“My place is right up here.”

We were on a busy street just off Roosevelt Boulevard. There was a brick showroom fronting a large warehouse and yard. Heavy pipes, bins, and boxes lay out in the yard, along with a forklift. Men in hard hats were standing around the forklift, drinking coffee, holding themselves in the blurry, motionless stasis that men fall into in the mornings, waiting for the workday to begin.

I parked the car. When Randy got out, I got out, too.

“Where you going?” he said. He had been pretty amiable through our chat, but something about my last couple of questions had withered our budding relationship, and there was now a bite of anger in his question.

“You don’t mind, do you, Randy, if I ask your boss about your work history? The judge might want to know.”

He glanced at the yard for a moment and then shrugged. “Go ahead,” he said. “I work my ass off here, and I never miss a day.”

“That’s good,” I said. “That says a lot.”

He gave me a look, thought about saying something more, and then thought better of it. I watched as he walked away. Yeah, I know, I hadn’t pushed it about the daughter and followed my unanswered questions with others that he would also leave unanswered. I hadn’t done the whole cross-examination thing. But the line between anger and rage is a narrow one, and while I wasn’t really concerned with weathering any storm I provoked, I wasn’t living with him, was I?

But that didn’t mean I didn’t have questions still. I want us to be a family Daniel can be proud of, he had said. What the hell did that mean? I wondered. And even as I asked it, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer.

We were talking about Bob.

“I think he’s marvelous,” said Carol Kingsly as she picked at her salad. “Mystical, almost. When he works on my teeth, my jaw tingles.”

“I’m not sure that tingle is the right word,” I said.

“Oh, yes, yes, it tingles,” she gushed, in a way that made me wonder if she was talking about more than her jaw. Dr. Bob? Yikes.

“How long have you been seeing him?”

“Only for a few weeks now. My yoga instructor recommended him. Do you do yoga?” she said.

“No, but I bend over sometimes to pick up a beer.”

“You should do yoga. It’s very spiritual. And so good for the skin. My instructor, Miranda, is fabulous. Amazingly limber. She would speak about her dentist in hushed tones, said his chakras were very open, especially his heart chakra. That’s the energy source that reaches out to heal. How could I not give him a try? Before him, I went to a Philadelphia magazine top doc, one of the most respected in the region, but I never felt as comfortable in his chair as I do with Dr. Pfeffer. And with what he’s done for my friend Sheila, I think he’s something close to a saint.”

“Is that possible for a dentist?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I always thought dentists fell somewhere between blasphemers and sodomites in the seventh circle of hell.”

“Victor.”

“I have sensitive gums.”

Carol Kingsly smiled and, all credit to Dr. Bob, her smile was fabulous.

I had fished her number from my shirt pocket, screwed up my courage, placed the call, and invited her to lunch. She was so happy to hear from me it was shocking. I repeated my name three times and carefully explained who I was, to be sure she didn’t think I was some other man named Victor Carl. And now here she sat, across the table from me at some trendy bistro not far from Independence Hall, flashing that fabulous smile. But it wasn’t only that smile I was interested in, or the lithe body, or the pretty eyes that were bluer than I remembered from the washed-out waiting room. No, I had an ulterior motive for asking Carol Kingsly out. I wanted to talk about Bob.

Who the hell was he? Where did he come from? What was he really after? I like to help , he had said repeatedly. Sure, and I like corned beef, but that didn’t answer those questions or the big one that had sent me into his office in the first place: Was it merely a coincidence that Whitney Robinson, François Dubé’s trial attorney, and Seamus Dent, the eyewitness with the troubled past who testified at François’s trial, had both been patients of Dr. Bob’s?

“Where’s Dr. Bob from, do you know?” I said.

“I’ve heard Albuquerque, I’ve heard Seattle. He spent some of his childhood in Burma, from what I understand.”

“But no one knows his hometown?”

“His history is a little vague, and I think he likes it like that. He only gives out bits and pieces to his patients. He practiced in Baltimore immediately before he bought a practice up here, I know that, and his diploma is from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, but his name on it is smudged just enough to make one wonder.” She smiled, licked her lips. “No one is certain of his details.”

“An international man of mystery.”

“Exactly. Can I ask you something, Victor, something that has been puzzling me?”

“Of course.”

“That tie. Is it an heirloom?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“I’m just trying to figure out why you would decide to wear such a thing. I could only imagine that it was some barbarous custom, passed down the generations, father to son, like a family curse.”

“Alas, for a lawyer ties are part of the uniform.”

“No, not ties in general. I think ties in general are wonderful things, anything roped around a man’s neck is a step in the right direction. But why would you wear that tie?”

“It’s very convenient, wash and wear.”

“Do you know the number one fashion rule, Victor?”

“What is that?”

“Never wear anything you can clean in the dishwasher.”

“I like my tie.”

“Victor, don’t be silly. After lunch we’ll go to Strawbridge’s and pick out something more suitable.”

I rubbed my tie with my thumb, enjoying the way it crinkled at my touch, feeling the delicate ridges of the polyester. “You mentioned a friend of yours,” I said to change the subject. “Sheila, was it?”

“Yes. She was also in class with Miranda. A nice girl, but a little sad, a little frumpy, you see. She was still pining over an ex-boyfriend who was always calling her but just wanted to be friends, and she was being harassed at work by her boss. Nothing was going right in her life. Miranda had been trying for years to open up Sheila’s sacral chakra, the one that flows from the abdomen and has to do with emotional health and sexuality, but had been totally unsuccessful. She was just stuck. Then one of Sheila’s wisdom teeth became impacted.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“And Miranda urged her to see Dr. Pfeffer.”

“Double ouch.”

Carol narrowed her eyes disapprovingly at me. “You are such a coward. We’re going to have to do something about that. Anyway, she went to see Dr. Pfeffer, and it turned out that more than her teeth got fixed. It’s been four months now and the change in Sheila has been astounding. She’s more vibrant, more alive than ever. She lost weight and looks fabulous. Just last week she got engaged to a podiatrist.”