[Ramesh_Rocky]

“About...5...I think. Look, the longer we hold this guy, the more risk we take. I really think we need to cut this guy loose. I know the mayhem at the jail looks bad, but he was attacked.”

I leaned back and thought about things. “How’d your son’s game go?”

“What?”

He looked at me as if he hadn’t understood my words.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about something else. You told me once that Jerry was a promising pitcher. He threw a no-hitter once. How did he do Friday night?”
“Oh, he had an okay game. He struck out all but four batters and only allowed two runs. Pretty good game for him, but not his best. Anyway, unless you have a real strong problem with it, I’m going to pop down to Martin’s office and ask him to remove the cash bond. Donnally can be let out on his own recognizance or a pretty low bond.”
“Why don’t you wait, Dave. Let me think about it for just a little while longer. Let’s say I’ll get back to you in an hour. I’m pretty sure I’ll cut him loose, but I just have some, reservations. I know you’ve been in that situation before. Just let me get my head straight, okay?”
“Sure, but I’ll send Martin’s office a heads-up that we will probably be down there this morning.”
After he’d walked out I just stared at the door for a few minutes. I knew and trusted Dave Brandon but I remembered what had stuck in my mind watching him. I’d played poker with him at a couple of friendly games and anybody who played regularly knew that he had a ‘tell’ or unconscious tic he displayed when he was bluffing - he pulled on his right ear. No one had ever told him about it because people loved taking his money. He never did figure out why he always lost at poker.
Then there was that ‘Paula.’ Dave was a formal kind of guy so it should have been ‘Mrs. Donnally.’ Finally, Dave was the patron saint of proud Papas. Usually you had to come up with some reason to shut him up when he started going on about how great a baseball player his son was. It sounded today like his son’s game was an afterthought.
I went through my phone list in my computer and dialed a number. It rang a half dozen times before a voice came on the phone. After I got off the phone I sat at my desk for thirty minutes thinking about what I’d learned. I couldn’t believe what I’d learned, but it was all starting to make sense. It made me feel like shit. Why was it ALWAYS bad news in this business.
Even when we won a few, it was in the aftermath of cleaning up terrible crimes that left lives ruined and hearts broken. It was the nature of the game we


played. We were the cleanup crew that came along in the aftermath to clean up the chaos that was the dark side of life. I had to be grateful for justice, not happy endings.

I walked down one flight of stairs. I could have taken the elevator, but I was putting off what I knew I was going to have to say and do.

I approached Sally Evans. She smiled and said, “He’s waiting for you, Mr.

Maitland.”

I walked into his office and closed the door behind me. At that point I think he knew. I sat down and we just stared at each other for a few moments.

“What the hell did you do, Dave? What did you do?”

“What you think, Bill, but it’s not what you think. I didn’t do anything illegal.

Unethical, maybe. Suicidal but not illegal.”

“You had sex with a victim, Dave. A woman who by definition is under stress and in a position to be manipulated by you. You had sex with a woman who wants a very big favor from this office, and I’ll bet she expects after you screwed her brains out that she’d get it. That’s why you were so hot to get the cash bond reduced or eliminated so Donnally could get out, wasn’t it?”
“She never asked for anything, Bill. We never talked about it. It just happened.”
“What’d she do, Dave, just walk up to you without words and start blowing you? Jesus Christ, where did your brain go? If Darlene ever even has a suspicion about this! I’ve met her, I know the kind of woman she is. She’s Assembly of God, isn’t she? She will divorce your ass in a heartbeat.”
He looked into my eyes as if trying to read what I was going to do.
“If the Big Man ever hears of this - maybe you didn’t do it deliberately, but it sure as hell looks like you blackmailed a distressed wife into screwing you by holding her husband’s freedom over her head as payment for services rendered. You didn’t promise her anything? Please God, tell me you didn’t offer her a deal.”
“You still don’t get it, Bill. You think you know what happened, but you have no idea. God, I wish it had happened the way you think it did.”
I was trying to figure out what he was trying to say. How could it be anything different than what I thought it was. He wouldn’t be the first man in a position of power to succumb to the temptation to use that power to get between a hot woman’s legs. I’d never succumbed because I always had a hotter woman waiting at home for me.
“How did you know, Bill?”
“Not that it matters, and I’ll never be able to play poker with you again, but you always tug on your ear when you’re bluffing—make that lying - and you were talking too casually about ‘Paula.’ Shit, I could look at you and tell you


were in love, so to speak. Last, but not least, you just didn’t brag enough about Jerry’s baseball game. So, I called Darlene to congratulate her on Jerry’s great game and she told me you were working late and didn’t get home until after 11. She was really pissed at me for sticking you with late night work when you’d been with the office longer than I’ve been.”
“You didn’t let anything slip?”
“No, I apologized for letting my bachelor status blind me to the fact that the guys who are still married have lives outside the office. I was so good that Darlene asked me if I could make it to a party you guys are hosting next weekend. She’s got a divorced friend she wants me to meet.”
For a moment I’d been able to forget what I was down here for.
“How did it happen and have you compromised this office? Is she liable to go to a television station if we don’t spring Donnally, go and complain about sexual harassment by one of the top office Assistants?”
He shook his head. He stared at a globe on his desk that contained a hula dancer who would wiggle her luscious ass in a metronomic display if you shook the globe up. It was the most risqué thing in his life, or had been. Even knowing what had happened, I still couldn’t believe it.
“I didn’t know what to expect, Bill, honest to God. I figured she was probably pretty hot. For a guy to get that whacked out you wouldn’t expect Suzy Homemaker, but when she walked in it was like I said - you had to be there! Long black hair, eyes you could fall into and a body that - she had a body! I looked at her and started getting hard. Thank God I was sitting down. Matthews was standing; he just gave me this grin and then he looked at her. She just looked down at his dick, which was already popping up. Just looked, but damn. ”
He stopped, then gave me an embarrassed look.
“I knew it was getting out of hand. That just wasn’t me. Matthews is single and I hear he’s a real pussy hound, but even he.  anyway, I tried to get it back to
a more businesslike meeting. We talked for nearly an hour and she said everything I’d expected her to say. I tried to talk to her and explain your concerns, how dangerous this guy could be, how dangerous he’d already been and we didn’t believe a damned word of that fairy tale she was trying to sell us.
“All the while we were talking, Matthews kept staring at her tits and then at her legs. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife; she was telling us how much she loved her husband but, the way she looked at you.  ! The only
way I can describe it is, the summer before I met Darlene, a friend’s sister came into town and he asked me to take her out with him on a double date.
“I thought she’d be - you know - a pity date, but she was 5 foot eight and blonde and had absolutely huge tits and from the first moment I laid eyes on her I knew we’d be in bed before the night was over. I don’t remember where we


went to eat, the club we went to. Shit, I might have been sleepwalking. We didn’t even make it back to my place. We walked out to my car. I was so hard I could barely stand up straight.