Chapter 55

We are in office again to speak with client. Linda will speak with him alone, Irving has another trial, and she asks that I come with her.

“You won’t be paid for this one, darling, I can’t justify it, but I’d like you with me anyway,” she said in the evening before. “I’m not really comfortable with McDonald, and anyhow it won’t hurt to know if he’s lying.”

The investigators have found much, she says, and she wishes to verify as much as pos­sible with client. So I sit with her at table where she talks with client.

“Sam, I need to take you back to high school,” she tells him. “When you knew Jerry Truesdale. How’d you two meet, by the way?”

He tells that each of them played in sports against the other school, football, basketball, baseball, and came to know each other in that way and became friends.

“We hung out together a lot,” he says. “That was before, well, before I went on and made it and he kind of busted and got sour about it. He kept hitting me up for loans, and he was slow about paying back, and it got to a point where I turned him down flat and he got really pissed. Took a swing at me, and I had to put him down, and after that...”

Again I see the arrogance, the feeling in him that he is always right and any other person is always wrong. And I see something else I don’t like more in how he looks at Linda and how he behaves with her. It is his desire to have sex with her that governs his actions, he doesn’t treat her with the respect that should be given to any woman and especially not the respect he should give to one who will speak for him in court.

“All right, but back to high school,” she says. I know she sees his manner too, but she ignores it. “There was another boy at your school, Jared Watkowski. Do you remember him?”

“Watkowski?” he says without recognition. “Jared?”

“I think he may have been called Jerry, too,” she adds.

“Jerry Watkowski? What year?”

“One behind you.”

“He play sports?”

Linda shakes her head. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so,” she says.

He laughs. “Honey, it was a big school, and it was full of a lot of losers,” he says. “If you’d been there I’d have noticed you, all right.” He makes a leer to her. “But some nobody in a lower class, no chance.”

She ignores his look. “All right, how about Patricia Lowell, she was a cheerleader?”

“Pumpin’ Patty?” he says with an ill laugh. “Sure.”

“‘Pumpin’ Patty?’” Linda repeats after him.

“That’s what Jerry used to call her,” he says with the same laugh. “He got to know her the same way he got to know me, at the games, and they dated for a while. Well, dated, mostly they’d go out and do it in the back of cars or even a couple of times a motel. He used to tell me she pumped him dry.”

“How charming,” Linda murmurs. “A couple of gentlemen of the old school. Whoever said chivalry was dead?”

“Yeah, well. She was just a piece of ass. Anyhow, he got tired of her and dumped her.”

“Do you know why?”

He shrugs. “Other fish in the pond. She was pretty clingy, she thought it was more than it was and got on his case if he didn’t see her or call for a while, and he told me he was getting sick of it. So he dropped her, flat.”

I see that he does not say all, but Linda seems to understand this as well because she keeps on. “Did you see anything of her after that?” she asks.

“Yeah, she started coming around to me whining. See, she knew me and Jerry were friends, hell, a couple of times we went together, him and her and me and some skank. They’d take the back seat and we got the front. So she wanted me to talk to Jerry for her. Even told me she was knocked up, dumb damn bitch. Well, I wouldn’t do it, of course, and after a while she kind of dropped out of sight. Out of school, too, I think. Baby, what’s she got to do with this?”

“It’s not important that you know right now,” Linda tells him. “Let’s just stick with the questions.”

“Shit, sweetie, I’m tired of questions,” he says. “Look here, how about you ditch the bodyguard there”—he nods toward me—”and let’s get out of here and go get us a drink or two. You can ask your questions then.” He reaches out to touch her leg. I would move to stop this, but I know I must let Linda do for herself.