William Lashner - Bitter Truth

Nicholas, for the first time, smiled. I couldn’t help but notice that his smile was excellent and he still had all his teeth. “No more questions about Jacqueline Shaw. That’s what we want.”

“I seem to remember that I sliced off your head with my broadsword,” said Gaylord. “Does that ring a bell?”

“Being beheaded by a midget in Jerusalem? Not really.”

“You scoff. Did you ever think there may be more to life than you imagine, more than eating and screwing and dying?” asked Gaylord. “Did that ever cross your mind?”

“Well, I do watch a lot of TV.”

“I’m talking existence, Victor. Have you ever wondered if your existence embodies more than you could ever imagine? Or maybe even, more profoundly, less?”

“Metaphysics in the afternoon?”

“I hate that word, metaphysics,” said Gaylord, “as if the truths in our souls are less real than the forces at work on pool balls clacking against one another. Let’s say we’re talking about a higher level of cognition. Any ideas?”

“Meaning. You’re asking me about meaning.” I was vamping for time, trying to figure out where this high-pitched little man was going. “Let’s say I’m still searching for an answer to that one.”

“Did you hear that, Nicholas? Victor here is searching. He is at least a one. There is hope for him yet.”

“If he ever wants to become a two then he’ll cooperate,” said Nicholas. “This was just a warning but…”

“This supposed meaning of life you are searching for, Vic,” said Gaylord, his high voice piercing Nicholas’s husky whisper like a dart, “any idea of where you’re going to find it?”

“I read some, talk to people, watch Woody Allen movies. In the past few years my private investigator has sort of been a spiritual adviser.”

“Your private investigator, how clever. You’ve hired him to investigate the meaning of life, I presume.”

“Something like that.”

“You ever wonder, Victor, if the answer is right out there for you to see? Ever have a coincidence happen that seemed too perfect for coincidence? Ever have a déjà vu and be certain that it wasn’t just a trick of the mind? Ever feel almost connected to the secret of the universe, feel that the answer to everything is just out of reach, or just out of sight? Ever think everything is so close except you are deaf to it for some strange reason?”

“Yes, actually,” I said, because I had actually experienced all that.

“Wonder of wonders,” said Gaylord. “You’re a two.”

“Gaylord is a nine,” said Nicholas. “I’m a five.”

“Nicholas is a five and I’m only a two?”

“Well, keep out of trouble,” said Gaylord, “and maybe you’ll rise. We can teach you how to see it, if that’s what you really want. There are novice meetings in our temporary headquarters every Wednesday night at eight.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card, tossing it into the clutter of my desk. “That’s all, I guess,” he said, slapping his chair armrests and standing. Nicholas stood too. “Be a good boy, Victor, and maybe I won’t have to use the sword once again. It is so wasteful when we are forced to relive the calamities of our past lives over and over again. We’ll be in touch.”

With a nod from Gaylord they turned and walked out of my office. I sat and watched them go. Then I picked up the card. “THE CHURCH OF THE NEW LIFE,” it read and underneath it “OLEANNA, GUIDING LIGHT.” There was a Mount Airy address and a phone number and fax number and an e-mail address. The Church of the New Life.

I had always been a little leery of churches, being Jewish and all, but what really gave me the creeps was Church Lite. I could fathom the power in the somber Romanesque visions of the Catholic Church, the stained glass and incense, the passionate story of sacrifice and redemption. But there was something creepy about those pseudomodern, calorie-reduced, image-cleansed, whitewashed churches that were springing up left and right. Glass cathedrals selling salvation and tee shirts. Betty Crocker as Madonna, Opie as child. And then there were those super-cleansed New Age halls, so scrubbed and shined that God had been washed right out of them, leaving crystals and pyramids and channeled entities from the fourteenth century to take His place. That was where I figured the Church of the New Life belonged. My new pals Gaylord and Nicholas were even creepier than I had thought. And none too bright either.

I mean, why would anyone bother to threaten someone off a case? Why not just put up a neon sign that flashed, “LOOK HERE FOR GOLD?” If I had still had doubts that there was something of interest to be found in Jacqueline Shaw’s death before my run-in with the apostles of the Church of the New Life, I had none anymore. And as I thought about the meeting and about my two new friends, the suspicion that had been hounding me, the suspicion that there was my very own way into the Reddman fortune, suddenly burst into the open and snatched my attention out of the air in its teeth and wrestled it to the ground. The route had been so obvious, so clear, that I hadn’t seen it. And now that I did I felt something ethereal flow through me. I grew light, almost light enough to float. I could barely remain seated in the chair as I felt myself suffused until bursting with the giddy sensation of pure pure possibility.

WHEN I HAD TOLD GAYLORDI took a keen professional interest in other people’s tragedy, it hadn’t been just banter. I am a lawyer and so tragedy is my business. Riches lurk for me in the least likely of places, in that dropped package of explosives at the railway depot, in that cup of drive-through coffee that scalds the thighs, in the airplane engine that bursts into a ball of flame mid-flight. Think of your worst nightmare, your most dreaded calamity, think of injury and anguish and death and know that for me it represents only so much profit, for I am your lawyer, the alchemist of your tragedy.

I had seemingly forgotten this, forgotten that one case can make a lawyer wealthy, one client, one fact pattern, one complaint. In delving into the death of Jacqueline Shaw I had belted myself too tightly inside the trench coat of Philip Marlowe and had forgotten that I was a lawyer first and foremost and that a lawyer, first and foremost, looks after the bottom line. You can make money charging $185 an hour, as long as you work like a dog and keep your expenses low, good money, but that’s not how lawyers get stinkingly rich. Lawyers get stinkingly rich by taking a percentage of a huge lawsuit based on somebody else’s tragedy, and that’s exactly what I meant to do.

Caroline Shaw thought someone had murdered her sister, Jacqueline, and had hired me to find out who. After looking it over it seemed to me that she might just be right, and if Jacqueline was murdered I could figure out the motive right off – money, and lots of it. Why ever would you kill an heiress if it wasn’t for the money? Caroline Shaw had only hired me to find the murderer, but I had other ideas. A wrongful death action against the killer would take back whatever had been gained by the killing and whatever else the killer owned, with a third going to the lawyers. All I needed was for Jacqueline Shaw to have been murdered for her money and for me to find the killer and for me to get Caroline to sign a fee agreement and for me to dig up enough evidence to win my case and take my third of the killer’s fortune, which in itself would be a fortune. Long shots all, to be sure, but that never stopped me from returning my Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes entry twice a year.

I was on my knees picking up tiny shards of glass and placing them on a piece of cardboard, thinking it all through, when Beth showed up.