“You could say that,” I said, and asked him if he wanted more whiskey.
“Desperately,” he said, “but I’m going to pass. I need a clear head right now.”
I pushed his hair out of the way and stuck a big bandage to his head, pinning the ear in place. I began to wrap a big white length of gauze around his head at an angle so that his good ear would remain uncovered.
“That feel any better?” I asked.
“Doesn’t feel any worse.” With the gauze around his head he looked like a soldier whose brains and good sense had been blasted out across some rice paddy.
“I called Evan,” I said. “Just so you know.”
He turned to look at me. “What’d you tell him?”
“He wasn’t home. I left a message for him to call here.” He looked at me with disapproval. “It was stupid of me to send him away yesterday. We need him, especially now.” His expression didn’t change. “It’s over, Nolan. The bribes didn’t work. It was wrong of us to try. This is as far as we can take it.”
He stared at me a moment as if he might argue my point but then looked away and nodded at the glass partition. “What about crazy man over there? You’d better tell him.”
I nodded. “My guess is he’ll be relieved.”
Nolan moved the contents of the first-aid kit onto the floor and gently laid himself down on the couch. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait here. For some reason I’ve got a slight headache.”
When Jeffrey had taken Marie from the Milk-n-Bread, at first every minute had seemed precious. But now an entire night had passed, and the currency of time had inflated. Seconds no longer mattered, and minutes went by almost unnoticed. When I told Jeffrey that I’d called Evan, that I wanted him here when we let Marie go, he merely shrugged. “It’ll be nice to see him,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
It was noon. I spent most of the next hour trying to clean the blood off the hallway carpet. I wasn’t too successful, but fortunately the hallway was always dim and the gray carpet was already terribly stained from years of grime and beer and cigarette ash.
When an hour had passed, I called Evan again from the studio’s phone. The hell with not leaving a phone trail. I got his machine again and left another message—same content, more urgency. Then I called information for the number to his law firm. The operator directed me to the company directory, and after pressing the digits for his last name, I reached his work voice mail and left another message. Evan never went long without checking for messages. A client or partner might be calling. After another hour had passed, I nearly called a third time. Instead I went out to the sub shop on the corner and bought Italian subs for the guys and a veggie special for Marie. None of us had eaten all day, and my stomach was feeling somewhat better.
I handed Marie her sandwich, and as she unwrapped it I told her that Evan was coming. That we were waiting for him and then we’d let her go. She didn’t deign to look at me, and started picking onions off the sandwich.
“Just remember,” she said, “you made a pledge to me.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Good. Because I don’t feel safe around those guys,” she said. “I don’t trust them—especially the good-looking one. Though I’ll bet he isn’t so good-looking now.”
Standing there in the doorway I wanted to say more, but through the glass, in the control room, Nolan was waving the phone receiver at me.
While at the University of Virginia, Evan had made law review and was recruited heavily by the big firms, wined and dined and offered signing bonuses as if he were going to be throwing touchdown passes instead of writing memos and taking depositions. My uncle had been a lawyer in Jersey City, estates and wills and real estate closings, but Evan’s job was nothing at all like that. In the deals he worked on, billions of dollars were on the line. He wasn’t allowed to name his clients, but he implied that they were the corporations that advertised during the Super Bowl.
He was calling from halfway across the country. The moment his boss learned that he wasn’t taking the weekend off in Jersey, Evan was whisked away to Minneapolis. A client needed his help on a deal that was close to being finalized.
“Come home on the next flight,” I told him.
“Can’t do that, Will. I just got here.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Drop what you’re doing. Whatever it is. Get to the airport as fast as you can and take the next flight to Newark. Rent a car. I’ll give you the address—”
“Wait a second, now. Just slow down. The client’s in the next room. We’re in a meeting. You’re not being reasonable. So just slow down a minute and tell me—”
“Listen to me, please,” I said. “Ditch. The. Client.”
“Will …”
“Tell him someone’s been in an accident. Or that your mother’s sick. Do whatever you need to do.”