The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [8]
“You see, Phillip, Ms. Gold, who grew up in the same house as a coldblooded killer, possesses a unique set of abilities. She reads lips in two languages. She can hear conversations from across a crowded room. Allegedly, she has a photographic memory, and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that her idle thoughts can bend spoons. She’s a freak of nature, and my firm has been burned by her so many times, we seriously discussed conducting all our business in Navajo.”
Truman looked again at her. Nada sipped her Diet Coke, winking at him over the rim of the glass. The rapist jerked his head down, while Judson never took his eyes away from hers.
“These are talents certain unscrupulous attorneys find very useful,” Judson was saying. “Some of her associates, perhaps even in the district attorney’s office, paid Ms. Gold for information she obtained by spying on opposing lawyers and their clients. For stealing privileged information they couldn’t otherwise obtain.” Truman opened his mouth silently and wide, like a hungry baby chick. “You don’t believe me? Why don’t we test her?” Judson reached his arm across the younger man’s shoulders and put his mouth very close to the rapist’s ear. He whispered, “Ms. Gold, can you understand what I’m saying to my client right now?”
The lawyer’s lips moved in exaggerated slow motion: Canada. Gold. Is. A. Loathsome …
The last word had one syllable, which began with the thick part of Judson’s tongue against the rear of his palate and ended with the tongue’s bow striking just behind the upper incisors.
Nada grabbed the bartender’s pen and scribbled on a napkin, which she then held up with her left hand while extending a middle finger at the end of her outstretched right arm. She didn’t know if Judson could read the message from his seat, so she left it on the bar for him to find later and lifted her yellow purse and thanked the bartender, who seemed amused and confused and perhaps aroused in equal parts.
Judson continued, his voice apparently just above a whisper but his opinions still largely for Nada’s benefit. “There isn’t a Vegas attorney worth a nickel an hour who’d recite the alphabet to his client without first checking to make sure Canada Gold’s not within a hundred yards. So the retainers have dried up and she spends her days counting cards at blackjack tables and, it seems, harassing wrongly accused young men such as yourself. Do you know how pathetic you must be to become an outcast even among poker players? Nevertheless, if you don’t want every goddamn detail of your personal life to get back to the assistant district attorney, then every time you flap your lips in public, you put your fucking hand over your fucking mouth. Do you understand me?”
Truman looked terrified. A minor victory, Nada thought.
As she was escorted to the door, ten new digits encoded into the seemingly limitless bank of recorded facts inside her brain, Nada wondered how it was possible that a cowardly scumbag like Phillip Truman had so many friends willing to protect him.
Once again, Nada counted her own friends in her head. Friends as good as the rapist’s friends. One. Two.
“Pathetic,” she said to the perplexed maître d’ as she stepped into the revolving door. “Just pathetic.”
4
THE BUILDING WAS an unremarkable rectangle of pale masonry and mortar, with metal doors and small single-paned windows fronted by a thin line of waxy shrubs. Inside were partitioned offices, rehearsal rooms with molded plastic chairs and aluminum music stands, and a gymnasium-size performance space lined with an assortment of donated and used instruments. Still, Chicago