William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“Well, I’m a lawyer. Helping is my business.”

That brought a yelp of mirth from the little man.

“Why don’t you gentlemen sit down where the clients are supposed to sit and I’ll sit behind the desk, where the lawyer is supposed to sit, and maybe then we can discuss your situation.”

The tall man looked at the short man. The short man stared at me for a moment before giving the tall man the nod. Then we all do-si-doed one around the other like a set at a square dance. When we were in our proper positions, I appraised the two men sitting across from me and found myself very unafraid, which I didn’t think was their intention.

I guess it was the dealing with all those murderous mob hoodlums in the last few years that did it. It wasn’t that I had turned brave from my association with them. I had been born a coward, raised a coward, and faithfully remained a coward. It was part and parcel of being my father’s son and I would have taken great pride in my cowardice if I didn’t realize it only meant that in my thirty sorry years I hadn’t yet found a cause or a love worth dying for. No, I wasn’t frightened by these two men who had barged into my office in what they had hoped was an intimidating style because my experience with the more vicious elements of the city’s underworld had given me the capacity to judge the truly sadistically vicious from the bad-boy wannabees. The geezer in black, he was a wannabee. The truly sadistically vicious don’t have to go around dressing like Steven Seagal to stoke fear. One look in their eyes and you know to step aside. And as for the little guy, well, would he have frightened you?

“So, gentlemen,” I said. “What is this problem you were telling me about?”

“Harassment,” said the man in black.

“Well, actually, that’s a specialty of our firm. My partner, Elizabeth Derringer, is one of the top sexual harassment lawyers in the city. The surreptitious pat on the butt, the sexual double entendre, the sly brush of protruding body parts as your boss passes you in the hall, the inappropriate suggestion of an after-hours liaison. It’s a terrible problem, yes, but there are laws now under which we can bring suits. Even the stolen kiss in the supply closet, once the province of harmless office fun, has now become actionable. And quite profitable too for the plaintiff and the lawyer. So,” I said with a wide smile. “Which one of you was sexually harassed?”

“That’s not what we’re talking about,” said the man in black.

“No? So what is it? An old girlfriend calling every night? Being stalked by a secret admirer? I want to help.” I roughed my voice a bit. “I just need to know what your problem is.”

“You’re pretty clever, Mr. Carl, aren’t you?” said the man in black.

“With enough rewrites, sure,” I said.

“Well quit the cleverness and shut up.”

“A child has died,” skirled the short man with the beard. “She was a sweet and much-loved child. I find tragedies bring out the best and the worst in us, don’t you, Victor? My name is Gaylord. This is Nicholas. The tragedy of this child’s death has raised a problem for us that you are going to resolve.”

“Well, as you must know, I take a keen professional interest in other people’s tragedy.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” said Gaylord.

“We don’t want you interested in the tragedy of this child’s death,” said Nicholas in his husky whisper.

“All right, gentlemen, let’s stop the playacting,” I said, more curious than anything else. “Who are we talking about and what do you want?”

“You’ve been asking questions about Jacqueline Shaw’s death,” said Gaylord, shaking his head and closing his psychiatrist eyes as if with sadness. “Her death has caused us all much pain and we are trying to put the grief of her loss behind us. Your running around the city like a fool, badgering the police, bothering her friends, is only making it more difficult for our wounds to heal. You are to stop immediately.”

I waited a moment and looked at them, the little squeak of a man and the fraud hard guy in a ponytail, and my only emotion was a sort of indignation that the likes of these two thought they could intimidate me. Didn’t they check me out in Martindale-Hubbell, didn’t they ask around, didn’t they know that with one call to certain of my clients I could have their knees pounded into mash? I leaned forward and clasped my hands together like a choirboy and said what I had to say slowly.

“Listen, you little weenies, don’t you ever again frighten my secretary by ignoring her requests and marching into my office uninvited. Don’t you ever again try to play the hard guy with me when neither of you have the stones to pull it off. And don’t either of you ever again, for an instant, think that I will listen to any orders that come out of pathetic losers such as yourselves. Whatever work I’m doing for my clients I will do no matter what you or anyone else says to me and whether I am or am not looking into the death of this friend of yours, whatever her name is, I will continue to do whatever I was doing before your pathetic attempt to scare me off. Now that we are finished here, get the hell out of my office.”

They both remained seated, staring at me with not quite the shocked and wary eyes I had hoped for. Gaylord started shaking his head and as he did so Nicholas rose. He pushed back his chair, swooped his arms before him and lifted his left knee. He stayed motionless for a moment, his left leg raised, his left arm before him like a shield, his right arm at his side, his stance as ludicrous and as far from threatening as if he froze smack in the middle of a power walk. I think I snickered.

“I believe you underestimate our sincerity,” said Gaylord. “It happens.”

In that instant Nicholas hopped into his left leg as he swung his right around, cracking the heavy vase atop the filing cabinet in two with his kick before it shattered against the wall. The shards of glass hadn’t hit the floor before, with a grunt and another spin, Nicholas pivoted off his right foot and buried his left heel into the side of my fireproof, batterproof, burglarproof, heavy-gauge steel filing cabinet. The concaving of the cabinet was punctuated with the slam bang of his heel against the side and the groan of bending metal, not unlike, I expect, the sound of the cracking of bones. From the force of his blow the lock popped and one of the drawers slid open.

By the time Ellie had rushed in to see what had happened, Nicholas was back in his seat, hands folded before him, and I was suddenly suitably frightened.

“It’s all right, Ellie,” I said, without looking at her so she wouldn’t notice my watering eyes. “Just a small accident with the cabinet. Everything’s fine.” I smiled thinly and she left, leaving the door open.

“Sometimes you walk down the street,” said Gaylord, “without realizing, until it is too late, that the fellow approaching you has the ability to reach into your chest and rip out your lungs.”

“I trained in Chiang Mai,” whispered Nicholas.

“You know, Victor, I think I killed you in a prior life,” said Gaylord. “Were you by any chance in Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century when Godfrey of Bouillon stormed the city? Because your aura is very familiar.”

I still hadn’t recovered enough from the shot into the solar plexus of my filing cabinet, wondering at what a shot like that would do to my rib cage and the oh so delicate organs encased within, to start exploring my past lives with Gaylord. The image of my heart compressing to the flatness of a plate, my lungs exhaling first air, then blood, then bronchioles, alveoli snapping, my colon popping like a pea, such images tended to wipe out all thoughts of the hereafter with obsessions of the dangers in the here and now. I was breathing hard when I said, “What is it exactly that you want?”