Simple Intent (9 page)

Shazad sat next to him swaying, his lips moving as he whispered, “Munchy, Munchy. Do you feel me?” 

Ray went to the sink, splashed water on his face and swallowed hard. He heard Shazad rise.

“Something is wrong, my friend?”

Ray said, “I saw Tara and the baby. Just like last time.” 

“It is what you want it to be. You see what you need to see.”

“I don’t need to see that. That’s like a heroin dream or something. That’s not real.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know that it is not real? You said yourself Ray, you never knew what became of the baby, after...”

“After what? After Tara died?’ Ray looked at his friend. “Is that what you were going to say, Shazad? Go on. Tell me what I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, except what her mother told me. Some stupid-ass letter telling me this is what’s right for the baby. A second chance, a new beginning... Tara needed me, and where was I? I was here.” Ray looked around, tears in his eyes. “I was here. I should’ve been with her. That motherfucker Gallo. If I’d been there, she’d be okay.” Ray broke down sobbing. 

Shazad held him. “I know, my friend, and Tara knows too. She has forgiven you, Ray. You need to forgive yourself. Listen to your heart; it will guide you.”

Fast Eddie was on his way to losing his first case out of the courtroom. “Mariel, come on sweetheart, I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just innocent flirtation... No. But that was months ago, you said you’d forgiven me... You can’t take it back. Dammit, Mariel, you’re acting like a child!” Deluca’s phone lit up. “Listen, I have to go, Mariel. We’ll talk about this later.”

He clicked over to the other line, snapped, “Deluca. What is it?”

“Mr. Deluca, it’s Sailor Beaumont. I had a message to call you.”

“Ah, yes.” He leaned back in his chair. “I need you to assist me on a few loose ends. Montgomery thought it would be appropriate.”

“Appropriate? How’s that?”

“Do you know the Witherspoons?”

“Richard and Lee?”

“Yes.”

“They’re friends of the family. I’ve known them for years.”

“Good.”

“Why? What’s—”

“Did you see this morning’s paper?”

“No, not yet.”

“Let’s just say, this is one socialite party I wish I hadn’t missed. Be in my office in fifteen minutes.” Deluca hung up.

Sailor rummaged through her backpack for the morning edition. She flipped the pages until she found what she was looking for. There was her father’s friend on the front page of the Inquirer’s Living section, wedged between two tall, large-breasted blondes. His hair was mussed, eyelids drooped, and there was something dark stuck between his front teeth. Richard Witherspoon III had seen better days. Worse yet, was the disgusted expression on his faithful wife in the background. The copy read, Philadelphia Philanthropist or Philanderer?

She had one thought, phuck. Sailor hung up the phone and began to read.

Two noisy gulls down by the water’s edge fought over a piece of crab-infested kelp. Maria adjusted the beach towel under her head and scootched down into the sun-warmed blanket. She checked her watch then scanned the deserted strip of beach, saw the small human dot grow larger as he walked toward her, a straw bag in one hand and a picnic hamper in the other. Perfectly balanced. What had she ever done to deserve a guy like this? Maria smiled and waved. She couldn’t see his face yet but knew he’d be grinning.

Her cell phone chirped once, twice. Maria pulled it from her handbag and checked the incoming number—unlisted. 

“This is Maria.”

“Nice day for the beach, eh, Maria?”

“Excuse me? Who is this?”

“Aw, I’m hurt. You don’t remember me? What? Did you forget your own husband?” 

She got it then and wondered why she was suddenly so popular with the Philly crowd. “That’s ex-husband, Lou. And no, I didn’t forget you.” Thinking, how could I possibly forget you and saying instead, “Look, I’m busy. What do you want?”

“I need you to go to a party for me in Philadelphia and deliver a message.”

Maria laughed. “Right. Now why the hell would I do that?”

“You want me to remind you, Sweetheart?”

When there was no reply he said, “I didn’t think so.” And went on, “Our friend, Detective Berger is finally retiring, and the city’s putting on a shin dig at The Ritz. I can’t be anywhere near town this weekend. So you’re going go in my place. I’ll put the invitation and the details in your mailbox.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Hey, buy Berger a nice present, would you?”

“Jesus, Lou. I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. And Maria?”

“What?”

“Tell your friend he looks good in blue.”

“What?”

Maria stood up, phone to her ear and scanned the beach. Across the grassy dunes, on a crest of land by the access road, she glimpsed a large black SUV and two bulky figures. One man waved. 

On the phone Gallo said, “Boo.” 

Maria watched the men climb into the vehicle and speed away.
Shit. He’s here
.

GINA tossed the cordless phone onto the bed then stepped into the steaming bath. Glass jars filled with colored powders lined the windowsill over the large tub. She selected the third jar from the right, sprinkling the purple dust as she sang softly, “Oh, when the shark bites, with his teeth dear...” 

Scents of lavender, lemongrass and chamomile filled the room. Gina replaced the jar and sank into the water. A newspaper lay open on the floor near the toilet: Deluca’s beaming face next to the hardened mug of her ex-husband Lou Gallo. The story continued from the front page under the headline, “Deluca Does It Again.” Eddie was good. For a few minutes up there in the box, he even had Gina believing she’d been with Lou that night, that he hadn’t been anywhere near the docks or the man with the crushed skull.

What a week. Between the courthouse, questions and reporters, all Gina wanted was a little peace and quiet. And for five blissful minutes, the only sound she heard was the drip of the faucet and the hum of the air-conditioner—until the phone rang. Torn between duty and curiosity, she raised herself halfway from the warm water, then dropped back into the tub and let the machine pick up.

“Hey Babe. It’s Hi. Guess I must have missed you. I called the diner. Susie said you were taking the day off. Bet you’re getting all dolled up for the big party tonight, huh? I’ll pick you up at seven, okay?’ After a pause long enough to make Gina think he’d hung up, he added, “You know who loves you.”

Gina closed her lips and disappeared under the lavender froth.

Reilly was in the bathroom again. 

Sailor called down the hall, paper menu in hand, “How about pizza for lunch? Do you like pepperoni? Or they have Hawaiian…”

Reilly answered through the closed door. “Anything’s fine with me.” He hadn’t really eaten in a day or two and wasn’t hungry, but knowing what she wanted to hear he said, “Get whatever you want, Sailor.” 

“You sure?” 

It sounded like she was just outside the door. Reilly said, “Yeah, sure,” and wondered what she was waiting for. When he heard her on the phone in the kitchen, he snorted the last line.

In the living room, he ran a finger under his nose, pinched the nostrils and did a quick inhale. He wondered if he smelled okay and almost left the room to slick some deodorant under his pits then looked around the room and figured who the fuck cares. Newspapers and books overflowed from the easy chair onto the carpet. The thickest books were stuffed so full of notes and scraps of paper that their bindings had given way. Reilly hadn’t seen the surface of the coffee table since he’d moved in, but was sure it was somewhere under the coffee cups, legal pads, files, pencils, highlighters and books. Against the wall, t-shirts and more trash littered the tops of poorly stacked, white file boxes. 

Reilly plopped himself on the couch and flipped the page of his legal pad. He pretended to be interested in his notes as he watched Sailor in his kitchen. She tapped the pencil eraser into her chin, smiled into the phone. Reilly wanted to kiss her. Then he remembered who he was and where she came from. He looked away.

Sailor hung up the phone, saying, “Should be here in thirty minutes.” 

Reilly tugged a flat wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open. “How much is it?”

“Don’t worry about it. I already paid him.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” He pretended to flip through bills in his wallet. They were receipts, yellow, white, blue. “I got money.”

“I know. You can pay next time, okay?’ She smiled.

Next time. “Sure,” he said and slipped his wallet back under him, back to the worn spot in his jeans.

“Do you have any beer?”

“In the fridge, bottom shelf.”

Reilly admired the view of Sailor reaching into the refrigerator. As she approached him with her hands behind her back, he thought the view wasn’t so bad from the front, either. 

She said, “Which hand?”

He smiled, getting into it, thinking she was coming on to him. “The right. It’s always the right.”

Sailor revealed a box of garbage bags in her right hand, two beers in her left. “Sorry.” She tossed the box to Reilly.

“What?”

“Go on.” Sailor motioned to the messy room with a nod of her head then glanced at the beer. “It’ll be here when you’re done.” 

Reilly mumbled something about a slave driving clean freak and shot Sailor a mock evil look as he pushed himself off the couch. He almost bitched about having to clean up, when she sunk down into his recently vacated spot on the couch and crossed her long tan legs, tipped her head back and raised the beer to her lips. There was something about her throat, how it was so fully exposed, or the way her hair fell away from her face. Maybe it was the way he could almost follow the path of the beer from mouth to throat with each swallow, see the liquid moving down and down. Jesus. Reilly was suddenly very warm. Maybe cleaning up wasn’t such a bad idea.

Sailor balanced the beer on her knee and licked her lips. She said, “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“Thanks, pal.” Reilly pulled a bag from the box and shook it open. “So what were you saying about ‘actus reus’ and ‘mens rea’?’ 

Sailor rubbed her bottom lip with her thumb. “The ‘actus reus’ is the guilty act and the ‘mens rea’ is the evil intent. But it depends on the state of mind, the depth of the intent, so to speak, that determines the degree of guilt.” 

“Which is how you get murder in the first degree.” 

“Premeditated.”

“Or voluntary manslaughter.”

“Or involuntary manslaughter.”

Reilly said, “So, the harshness of the punishment depends on the degree of the intent.”

Sailor nodded.

“Dude, that sucks.” 

“Dude, that’s the law.”

And it was. There were people who said trust the system and justice will prevail. But they were the ones who would never be put to the test. They lived safe and warm in their glass houses on the hill, setting their alarm systems every night and crawling into bed after a Seconal and scotch. They were the same people who misunderstood poverty and unemployment, the same ones who treated child prostitutes as criminals instead of victims. They used generic phrases like, “They must not want it enough,” “You just don’t wake up one day and that’s your life,” and “Anyone can get a job.” 

They tossed things back into the world that didn’t make sense, ignoring the fact that it had taken money, connections and beauty to get them what they had. Not everyone was so lucky.

Reilly finished clearing the trash and stacked the bags at the door. He watched Sailor run that same thumb over her plump lip and wondered what she was thinking about and if he’d ever get the balls up to ask her out—on a real date. 

He said something so she’d look at him. “Have you talked to Banning lately?”

“Not since Friday. Why?”

“I heard there might be a new case, something more...challenging.” 

“Challenging?” Sailor scoffed. “What could be more challenging than representing bums who pee in storefronts, or women who think the asshole that’s been beating on them for five years will suddenly stop when a piece of paper is filed? Don’t forget, we’re the interns, lowest on the totem pole. They won’t be giving us any challenging cases.”

Reilly reached for his beer and sat on the couch next to Sailor. “I know, I know what they say. Pay your dues, prove yourself and all that, but Missy said—oh maybe I shouldn’t tell you.” He took a long pull on the beer.

“What did Missy say?” Sailor asked. 

Reilly belched into his hand. “Just that some guy called from prison. Poor son of a bitch didn’t know his lawyer kicked the bucket. It’s kind of funny, actually.” 

Sailor shot him a look.

“Yeah. Well anyway, it’s one of the Herring cases that Banning’s assigning. He didn’t say anything to you about it? I mean, you did spend the day with him, and all.”