Reporters are looking for me, but I have had enough of the story. Others would like to find me: Link and his boys; Roy Kemp when he hears I’m talking to the FBI; perhaps even Arch Swanger, who’s likely to phone in at any moment and ask why I sang to the police.
Partner takes me to Ken’s Kars and I drive away in a dented Mazda with 200,000 miles on it. No lawyer, regardless of how impoverished, would be caught dead in such a vehicle. I know one who was leasing a Maserati when he was forced into bankruptcy.
I spend the rest of the day in my apartment, hiding and working on two cases. Around five o’clock, I call Judith to check on Starcher. He’s fine, she says, and the reporters have gone away. I check the local news where the “dramatic rescue” is the lead story. They use some old footage of me walking into the police station and make it sound like I risked my life to save my son. The fools are swallowing all the bait the police give them. This too shall pass.
Because I’ve slept about six hours out of the last seventy-two, I finally collapse on the sofa and fall into a coma. Just after 10:00 p.m., my cell phone rings. I check the caller ID, then grab it. It’s Naomi Tarrant, Starcher’s teacher, the gorgeous young thing I’ve been fantasizing about for months. I’ve asked her to dinner five times and have been hit with five noes. But, the rejections have been progressively softer. I have neither the talent nor the patience for the usual mating rituals—the stalking, the accidental encounters, the blind dates, the silly gifts, the awkward phone calls, the referrals from friends, the endless Internet chatting. Nor do I have the guts to go online and lie about myself to strange women. And, I fear I’m forever scorched and gun-shy from the Judith disaster. How can one human possess so much meanness?
Naomi wants to talk about Starcher, so we do. I assure her he was not harmed in any way. He’ll never understand what really happened, and I doubt anyone will tell him. Frankly, he was pampered for about forty-five hours by two people he viewed as buddies. He’ll be at school tomorrow and he needs no special attention. I’m sure his mother will arrive with a long list of demands and concerns, but that’s his mother.
“What a bitch,” Naomi says, dropping her guard for the first time. I’m surprised by this, but love it nonetheless. We spend a few minutes thoroughly trashing Judith and Ava, who we agree is an airhead, and I haven’t had this much fun in years.
From left field she says, “Let’s do dinner.” Ah, the life of a hero. The power of celebrity. The reporters claim I risked my neck to save my son and women are throwing themselves at me.
We establish a few rules. The date has to be a big secret. The school does not expressly forbid its unmarried teachers dating unmarried parents, but it’s certainly frowned on. And why ask for trouble? If Judith found out, she would probably file a complaint or a lawsuit or something from her bottomless bag of dirty tricks.
We meet in a dark, low-end Tex-Mex joint the following night. Her choice, not mine. Since no one speaks English no one will be listening. No one cares, especially me. Naomi is thirty-three years old and rebounding from a divorce. No kids, no discernible baggage. She begins by telling me all about Starcher’s day at school. As expected, Judith brought him early and had some instructions. All went well; no one mentioned his little ordeal. Naomi and her classroom aide kept a close eye on him, and, as far as they could tell, nothing was said by his friends. He seemed perfectly normal and went about the day as if nothing had happened. Judith picked him up after school and grilled Naomi, but it was hardly out of the ordinary.
“How long were you married to her?” she asks in amazement.
“The paperwork says less than two years, but we could live together for only the first five months. It was unbearable. I tried to tough it out until the kid was born, but then I found out she was already seeing her latest girlfriend. I fled, he was born, and we’ve been fighting ever since. Getting married was a horrible mistake, but she was pregnant.”
“I’ve never seen her smile.”
“I think it happens about once a month.”
The margaritas arrive in tall, salty mugs and we dive in. We briefly touch on her marriage, then move on to more pleasant matters. She’s been dating, there are lots of calls, and I can understand why. She has soft, beautiful brown eyes that are hypnotic, even seductive. The kind of eyes you can gaze into for hours and wonder if they’re real.
Me, I don’t date much, don’t have the time, too much work, and so on. The usual disclaimers. She seems fascinated by my work, the unpopular cases, the notoriety, some of the thugs I represent. We order enchiladas and I keep chatting away. I soon realize, though, that she follows the one rule of a great conversationalist: Keep the other person talking. So I push back and ask about her family, college, other jobs she’s had.
