Blood Test

“Perish the thought. No doubt you’ve removed the stash, stowed it somewhere else, and would welcome a police search with open arms. Just like you did the first time I was here. But I’ve got Polaroids from the party that would make great porno for the geriatric set. All those worn-out bodies grinding away. Bowls of snow and straws up noses. Not to mention a couple of clear shots of the cache under your bookcase.”

“Photographs of consenting adults having sex,” he recited, sounding suddenly like an attorney, “bowls on a table containing an unknown substance. Plastic bags. It doesn’t add up to much. Certainly not a hundred and fifty thousand.”

“How much is avoiding a murder rap worth?”

His eyes narrowed and his face changed into something lupine and predatory. He tried to stare me down but it was no contest. The itch had grown nearly unbearable and gazing back at the brutal mask was a welcome distraction.

“Go on,” he said.

“I made three copies of the file, added a page of interpretation to each one, and put them in separate safe places. Along with the pictures and instructions to several attorneys in the event of my untimely demise. Before I copied I read through it several times. Fascinating.”

He looked composed but his right hand gave him away. The bony white fingers had clawed the ground and ripped out a handful of grass.

“Generalities are worthless,” he whispered harshly. “If you have something to say, say it.”

“All right,” I said, “Let’s flash back a little over twenty years ago. Long before you discovered the guru scam. You’re sitting in your office on Camden Drive. A mousy little woman named Emma is on the other side of the desk. She’s traveled all the way from a hick town called La Vista to Beverly Hills and has paid you a hundred dollars for a confidential legal consultation. A lot of money in those days.

“Emma’s story is a sad one, though no doubt you think of it as third-rate melodrama. Finding herself trapped in a loveless marriage she’d sought comfort in the arms of another man. A man who made her feel things she’d never imagined possible. The affair had been heavenly, true refuge. Until she became pregnant by her lover. Panicked, she hid the fact for as long as possible and when she started showing, told her husband the child was his. The cuckold had been ecstatic, ready to celebrate, and when he uncorked the champagne she nearly died of guilt.

“She’d considered an abortion but had been too scared to go through with it. She prayed for a miscarriage but none came. You ask her if she’s told her lover about the problem and she says no, horrified at the thought. He’s a pillar of the community, a deputy sheriff charged with upholding the law. On top of that, he’s married, with a pregnant wife of his own. Why destroy two families? Besides he hasn’t called in a long time, confirming her suspicions that for him the relationship had been primarily carnal all along. Does she feel abandoned? No. She’s sinned and now she’s paying for it.

“As the fetus grows in her womb so does the burden of her secret. She lives the lie for eight and a half months until she can’t take it any longer. On a day when her husband is out of town she gets on the bus and heads north, to Beverly Hills.

“Now she sits in your big glossy office, so out of her element, just weeks from delivery, confused and terrified. She’s considered her options for plenty of sleepless nights and has finally come to a decision. She wants out. A divorce, quick and easy, with no explanation. She’ll leave town, have the baby in solitude, maybe in Mexico, put it up for adoption, and start a new life far away from the site of her transgression. She’s read about you in the pages of a Hollywood fan magazine and is sure you’re the man for the job.

“As you listen to her, it’s clear that quick and easy is out of the question. The case would be a messy one. That by itself wouldn’t have stopped you from taking it on, because the messy cases bring in the fattest fees. But Emma Swope wasn’t your type of client. Drab and unglamorous and strictly small town. Most important, she didn’t smell of money.

“You took her hundred, and discouraged her from engaging your services. Gave her a line about doing better with a local attorney. She left red-eyed and heavy-bellied and you filed it away and forgot about it.

“Years later you get shot in the head and decide to make a career switch. You’ve built up lots of connections with the big money people, which in L.A. includes the dope trade. I don’t know who suggested it first, you or one of them, but you decide to go for megabucks as a coke and smack middleman. The fact that it’s illegal adds to the appeal because you see yourself as a victim, as having been failed by the system you’d served faithfully. Dealing dope is your way of saying fuck the system. The money and power aren’t too shabby, either.