[Ramesh_Rocky]

“I know you guys, most people, don’t think she’s hot but a lot of guys like heavier woman. Sounds strange, I know, but, the guy that does our pool walks around without a shirt whenever he’s there in the summer. I came in one time and saw her slap him so hard it must have rattled his teeth. I didn’t walk in and waited a couple of minutes. She told me about it that night. The bastard had come up behind her and started rubbing his dick all over her ass and playing with her tits. He’s 22, and the mailman… I don’t want to go there. He drops by the house for every single piece of mail or advertising junk....to hand deliver it. She humors him, but she told me she’s told him a dozen times that she’s happily married. He never pushes it too far so she’ll complain, but I’ve seen him a few times. He’s into her.”

“We talked about it after the incident with the 22-year-old. I was proud of what she did, but I had to admit I’d worry about a 22-year-old with long hair and a flat stomach hitting on my wife. She took me into the bedroom, sucked me off and screwed me until I couldn’t out of bed. She told me I was the only man who was ever going to get into her, ever!”
He raised his eyes to mine.
“That’s the woman who is going to hear me tell another woman that I’ll be thinking about her while I’m inside my wife. She’s going to hear me say that sex with this woman is better than it ever has been with my wife. I feel like taking a spoon and scbanging my eyes out.”
“She was playing you, Dave. She knows that a guy will saying anything in the middle of hot sex. That was your dick talking, not you.”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t change the words. It doesn’t change what I did. I’ve been trying to avoid Darlene ever since and I know she’s going to get suspicious. But I feel like if I look into her eyes, I’m going to break down and confess and beg her to forgive me. I know she won’t.”
He took his head in his hands.
“What am I going to do, Bill? You’ve got to let him out. I have to hope and pray she’ll destroy this, then all I have to do is figure out a way I can live with it. If you keep him in here, I know she’ll send another copy, or put them on the internet, or put it where I can’t block it and she’ll tell Darlene where to look.”
He looked up at me. I’d never seen such a look of raw desperation.
“I was wrong, I was stupid. Bill, please, please, let him walk. I’ll never ask you for another favor again and I’ll owe you my life. But...do this for me.”
I just sat there and couldn’t believe what I'd heard.
“This doesn’t make sense, Dave. This woman isn’t a secret agent or a mob girl. She’s just a housewife. How does a housewife waltz in, seduce two experienced prosecutors, set up a secret taping, and plan on blackmailing the


State Attorney’s office into giving her what she wants? If she was a man, I’d say she had balls the size of cannonballs. There’s got to be more to this.”
“I’ve tried to call her since Saturday, but I haven’t been able to reach her. I don’t know what’s going on. I mean, I do but I’m like you. How does a normal housewife pull this off, or even plan it? Why did she pick me instead of you, or Matthews or anybody else? How did she know I was the most married guy in this office, at least since you and Debbie split? This wouldn’t have worked with anybody else, or not as well.
“Also, why the hell is she doing this? The guy tried to kill her, we both know that, yet she’s doing all this to set him free? If I tried to write this up in a screenplay and sell it to Hollywood, nobody would believe it.”
The phone rang. Dave obviously thought about blowing it off, but then picked it up.
“What is it, Sally? Who? Put her on. You bitch, what are you trying to do?
Do you have any idea...”
He stopped in mid-sentence and it was like he had been hit between the eyes with a board. He looked at the phone as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, then handed it to me.
“Mr. Maitland, this is Paula Donnally. I believe you’ve already seen my little video and Dave has filled you in on what happened Friday. You’re a smart man so I shouldn’t have to fill in between the lines for you. Are you going to release my husband?”
Her voice was rough, a cross between the croak of a 50-year smoker and a woman who’d been strangled so hard her vocal cords were still stressed, but I understood her.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Donnally. You crossed the line from being a loving, caring, guilty cheating wife to something else altogether. It doesn’t feel like a wife coming to the rescue of her husband. It feels like...something else. I just don’t know what.”
“If I send a courier to stop Mrs. Brandon in the supermarket and give her a copy of an interesting DVD, you know your friend will be sleeping in a strange bed tonight, and his wife will divorce him within a few weeks. I know she loves him and she’ll try to forgive him, but she’ll listen to what he said when he was doing me. In the end, she won’t be able to forgive him. Are you willing to destroy your friend’s marriage, his life, just to keep Paul behind bars a few days longer, because that’s all it will be. No matter what you do, Paul will walk out a free man in just a little while, so when Dave’s marriage is over, it won’t do any good for you to change your mind.”
“I need a number I can call you at. Dave said he’d tried to reach you for three days without any luck. I need to talk to your husband and think about things for a


little while. Then I’ll call you - it’ll be today.”
“He couldn’t reach me because I didn’t want to talk to him. You call the shots there. I wanted to wait for you so, yeah, here’s my cell. Call me, but don’t wait too long.”
I wrote the number down and she clicked off.
“She knew I was in here and she knew I had seen the video. She also knew enough not to go after me, because I can’t be blackmailed any more like this. What the hell have you stepped in, Dave?”
He couldn’t answer me because neither one of us had any idea of what was really going on, but I was going to find out.