William Lashner - Past Due

“How is the old guy?”

“Tanned.”

John Sebastian piped up, “Is this relevant?”

“Are you instructing him not to answer?” I said, my voice exploding in finely aged indignation. Sebastian’s head snapped back with such force that I wondered if it was my breath. “Because if you are, I’ll call the judge right now. I’ll get on the phone right now. I’m entitled to ask this.”

“You don’t have to go ballistic on me.”

“I’m entitled to ask this.”

“ ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’ ” said Beth.

“Excuse me?” said Sebastian.

“So the question I have, Mr. Manley,” I said, having set Manley’s lawyer back on his heels, “the question you need to answer here, is where did you get hold of the ten-thousand-dollar down payment you paid Mr. Penza?”

“I don’t know. I saved up.”

“On six dollars an hour?”

“Time and a half for overtime. And I was living at home.”

“But you weren’t a monk?”

“I had some times, sure.”

“And some girls?”

“What, are you kidding me?”

“I heard that your girlfriend at the time, who later became your first wife, was expensive. She liked nice clothes, jewelry.”

“Who told you that?”

“She did. I assume the bulk of the six an hour went to her.”

“Whatever you assume, you ain’t assuming the half of it.”

“So from where did the ten thousand come?”

“I don’t know. I did a guy a favor, maybe.”

“Who?”

“Just a guy what I knew.”

“Give me a name.”

“I don’t remember his name right off.”

“What kind of favor did you do for this friend?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. Let’s forget about it.”

“Where was this favor done?”

“I told you to forget about it.”

“I want to show you a picture. Let’s mark this as plaintiff’s nine for identification. It’s a photograph of three young boys, altar boys. Do you recognize the boy in the middle?”

“Is that me?”

“How old were you there?”

“Truth be told, I can’t ever remember being that young.”

“Who’s the boy on the left?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“It’s Joey Parma, Joey Cheaps, isn’t it?”

“Where’d you get this?”

“And it was Joey Parma with you that night at the waterfront?”

“What night?”

“The night with the moon shining overhead. The night where the two of you waited in the shadows to do that favor for your friend.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Who was the friend who asked for the favor?”

“I told you I don’t remember.” He lifted the pitcher, poured a shaky stream of water into a plastic cup, took a sip. “Is it getting hot in here?”

“You and Joey Cheaps, with a baseball bat, waiting in the shadows.”

“Never happened.”

“For the guy with the suitcase.”

Manley’s head tilted down, his eyes turned hard beneath his brow, his voice lowered into a growl. “Watch yourself, Victor.”

“The baseball bat and the guy with the suitcase who was hit in the face and then the splash. Do you remember the splash?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Manley stood, threw his plastic water cup at my face. Lucky me, the water landed mostly on my tie. Isn’t polyester a wonderful thing?

“This deposition is over,” said John Sebastian.

“That’s what you and Joey discussed on the phone the morning before he died, isn’t it?” I said. “What you did together that night at the waterfront?”

“Are you deaf,” said John Sebastian, standing himself now. “It’s over.”

“What did you do with the suitcase, Derek?” I said. “What happened to the money in the suitcase?”

Derek Manley, his face crimson, his nose fluorescent with rage, leaned over and jabbed his finger at my face. “You don’t know shit about what happened.”

“And what did you do twenty years later to Joseph Parma?”

“Yo,” he shouted. “I didn’t have nothing to do with whacking Joey. He was my friend.”

Sebastian put his hand on Manley’s shoulder as if to comfort. “Don’t say anything more, Derek.”

“On the advice of counsel I’m shutting up for good. But let me give you some advice, Victor. You like your bowels? You find it convenient having them sitting there between your mouth and your asshole?”

“Let’s go, Derek,” said his lawyer, the hand on the shoulder now pushing him out.

“You shut up about what it is yous asking about or I’m gonna reach down your throat, pull out them bowels, toss them against the wall so they stick, you understand, you little pissant? You don’t watch out you’ll be shitting out your ear. Don’t think I won’t.”

“This was totally inappropriate,” said Sebastian after Manley had stormed out of the room. “The judge will hear about this and so will the Bar Association.”

“Don’t leave, John,” I said, as he made his exit too. “There are still Danish left.”

“They seemed to have marched off in a huff,” said Beth.

“What does that mean anyway, ‘in a huff’? A huff. It sounds like one of those short fur jackets.”

“Is that what you wanted?” she asked.

“Close enough,” I said. And it was. Manley had as good as admitted to being there that night with Joey Cheaps when the bat had slammed into Tommy Greeley’s face. And he had as good as admitted that he had been there on the behest of a friend. It was the friend’s name I needed; all I’d have to do was squeeze a bit to get it. It wouldn’t be so hard. I was a lawyer, my entire professional training was in the art of the squeeze.

And it wouldn’t end with Manley. I fully expected word would get out about what I was looking for; I fully expected someone other than Manley would start to feel the pressure. I just didn’t expect it to happen so fast.

I HAD Adate the very night of my deposition of Derek Manley with Dr. Mayonnaise of the serious mien and the pretty blue eyes. She was everything I was supposed to want in a companion, the moral and financial rock upon which I could securely anchor my flailing existence. And she was a doctor, a doctor to bring home to my Jewish mother, if I had one to whom I still talked and who gave a damn about more than her next drink. So I decided that I would work at this one, that I’d see if I could build, with the good doctor, something akin to a healthy relationship. It was not something I was good at, building healthy relationships, but I was determined to give it the old community college try.

We met at my favorite restaurant in Chinatown, with its barbecued mallards hanging in a row at the entrance, and everything should have been right with the world. Yet, as I pawed with my chopsticks at the tofu stir-fry, tofu because Karen, which I discovered to my utter delight, was a vegetarian and we were sharing, I found myself scheming of ways to get the hell out of there.

Maybe I was simply a coward. Yes, I was afraid of committing myself to a healthy relationship, whatever that was, and yes, I was intimidated by anyone with a richer past and a brighter future than my own, which included most of the known world and certainly included a doctor, and yes, I was paralyzingly afraid of earnestness and sincerity. I was a coward, that was undeniable, but maybe what really got to me was the sight of the heaping platters of duck and beef and chicken and shrimp passing by our table as I pawed at the tofu. This is what I have learned of life from eating in Chinese restaurants: The meal that would make me most perfectly happy is always being served at the table next to mine.

“After dinner,” said Karen slowly, seriously, as if making a statement of great portent, “let’s say we go back to my place.”