But When She Was Bad Read online

  I say, “No.”

  “Excuse me? No, what?”

  “If you are as good as you say you are, Mr. Applebee, then I have a proposition you should find appealing.”

  An eyebrow rises on the mass opposite me. One eye shrinks further down into a squint; a mere hint of hooded black now shows. Mormon F. Applebee is assessing me with the same cold-blooded alertness of your typical rattlesnake: He is skeptical. Rapt yet remote. Intrigued. There may be food here.

  “Speak,” he says finally in a sibilant whisper.

  “Win or lose, you get a total of two thousand dollars for expenses. But if we lose, not a penny more.”

  Both eyebrows are up now. He is appalled at the very notion of a contingency fee. A hand is beginning to rise for a wave of contemptuous dismissal.

  I continue. “However, if we win, and win in every aspect of the case, then you will receive $150,000.”

  The eyebrows fall from their scornful heights and migrate toward the center of the face. It may be a frown. “Cash?” Mr. Applebee asks.

  “$120,000 if it’s cash,” I say. “$150,000 if by check.”

  Mr. Applebee closes his eyes and ponders this suggestion. The eyebrows are back in what may be their normal position. The waving hands are still, laced on the frontal slab.

  “You have the wherewithal, I assume?” he says after a while.

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I work. I take snapshots.”

  The eyes open. “I would imagine it takes a great number of snapshots, Mr. Wexler, to account for $150,000.”

  “Not really. I overcharge too.”

  A hand waves. “Touché.”

  Eventually, we agree on the terms. There’s one asterisk he insists on, and I accept it. I’ve anticipated such an escape clause, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it covered … with a little deviousness of my own. He’ll take a check after all. He’ll also accelerate the process as best he can. We will be at trial in no more than six weeks time.

  “Good,” I say. I rise to take my leave.

  A hand waves. “Would you care to tell me, Mr. Wexler, why you are willing to pay so much more than my fee would likely be otherwise?”

  “No,” I say.

  The eyebrows rise again but he is silent. There is the slightest hint of a nod and the meeting is over. Mormon F. Applebee probably understands that you don’t tell a condom everything.

  52

  True to his word, Mormon Applebee was an efficient, relentless dynamo over the next few days and weeks. The suit for my sole legal and physical custody of Todd was filed, with appropriate motions appended. Appointments were set with all the minor state functionaries who evaluate one’s fitness to be a custodial parent Character witnesses who would attest to my stellar qualities were lined up.

  And Annie White went utterly ballistic.

  I picked up the phone one evening and I heard a banshee shriek: “You cocksucker! What the fuck have you done now!”

  I waited, silent. She went on.

  “Is this for real? Are you for real? You unbelievable son of a bitch, you want Todd? You want to take Todd away from me?”

  “Bingo,” I say.

  “We’ll see about that, you miserable fuckhead! I’m going to hire a lawyer who will ream your ass into the ground, you low-life son of a bitch! I’ll make sure you rot in hell before you ever see Todd again, much less get custody of him, you cocksucking, motherfucking, shit-eating son of a diseased-whore prick of a bastard!”

  There was more along those lines, and then she got vile. I listened for a while and hung up. Good, I thought. Spend all the money you have, Annie, and then borrow some more. Fight it for all you’re worth and please stay mad as hell—because then you’ll spend even more.

  Later in the week, I got another apoplectic call from Annie. She’d apparently learned that Mormon Applebee, chugging right along, had filed for an injunction to prohibit Annie from taking a mortgage on or filing an equity line against the condominium I bought her. Pending the court’s ruling on the motion, she couldn’t borrow against the house.

  Knight takes Queen, I thought.

  As with so many things in today’s America, it all comes down to money. Outspend them, cost them as much money as you possibly can, and then spend some more—that’s how the game is played when you want something through the courts.

  Drag your opponent through pointless hours of depositions, all with an expensive lawyer sitting elbow-to-elbow next to them. Make them produce photocopies of every document, every file, every scrap of paper that could conceivably relate to their finances, their child-rearing proclivities, their habits, their beliefs. Shower them with motions, discoveries, writs, counter-complaints, motions to dismiss their motions, motions to amend motions already filed—on and on and on.

  Mormon Applebee, my highly motivated machine of retribution, handled it all for me. I’d offered him so much money because, looking at him, I knew how desperately unhappy Mr. Applebee was. Trapped in that ridiculous body, here was a man arguably the best in his field—and yet the thrill was clearly gone. The greed that had so inflated his body was not enough anymore, not by its lonesome. The man lusted after a challenge and would likely do anything to prove to himself that he was still (fat notwithstanding) the best around. The money? Added incentive. $150,000 would buy a lot of food.

  It was a lot of money to me, too. But if my plan worked, it was money that wouldn’t be out of my pocket.

  Mr. Applebee’s assistants (all attractive, svelte young women who had not a pound of excess flesh on them) spent day after day in the studio, rooting through my file cabinets and copying every manner of document they could lay their hands on. They copied tax returns and credit card statements, school records and vaccination histories, work schedules and Day-Timer pages going back five years. Then they filed it all with the court and demanded that Annie do the same with her life.

  I went to psychologists and shrinks and M.D.s and dull-eyed social workers and then made the rounds again, this time with Todd accompanying me. Mr. Applebee had to file a motion to achieve this, of course, and there was a rather noisy little hearing in a judge’s chambers before Annie White was made to see she had no choice in the matter.

  On and on it went. We had six full weeks of this very expensive games-playing and then it was time to play the game before an audience of one—Judge Malcolm Biers, a former attorney and political hack now anointed a Solomon of the state.

  “He is, of course, a dullard and a fool,” Mr. Applebee wheezed confidingly as we stood outside the county courthouse the first morning of the hearing. Mormon was on his fourth or fifth cigarette, working hard to build up a nicotine level sufficient to carry him through the morning. “But at least he will occasionally rule against women if the feminists are sufficiently distracted at the moment to let him get away with it—or if the woman herself is unsavory enough to be beyond righteous defense.” The attorney swiveled his pinpoint eyes to me. “Did you happen to see any of the O.J. Simpson trial, Mr. Wexler?”

  Bits and pieces, I allowed.

  “It was useful theatre,” Mr. Applebee said, wheezing. He had his gargantuan bulk braced against one of the courthouse’s marble pillars and I must admit, I sneaked a few appraising looks at the pillar’s mortising before I got too close to him. “Useful in that it gave the citizenry a closer look at the Judge Lance Itos of the world, the fools and charlatans and rather stupid men with whom we attorneys must cope on a day-to-day basis. They are all witless, sanctimonious egotists, Mr. Wexler, and I have no doubt they have very small penises.”

  I chuckled. You have to let a man have his say.

  “The Honorable Malcolm Biers has, at best, a room-temperature I.Q.,” Mormon Applebee said, lighting up anew. “And we are speaking of room temperature on a very cold day, Mr. Wexler.”

  I nodded but kept quiet.

  The attorney went on to relate that Judge Biers was also a born-again Christian, the survivor of a particularly bitter (a
nd public) divorce, and, not least of all, a father whose two aggrieved, non-custodial sons refused ever to speak with him.

  “So are you saying we got lucky with this Judge Biers?” I asked, feeling obliged to say something.

  Mormon Applebee took a long drag on his cigarette and turned a baleful stare at me. “There is no such thing as luck, sir, when it comes to a hat trick like that. One would think you knew that by now. You may trust that I made very sure our case would be assigned to Judge Biers’ docket.”

  “I see,” I said, biting my tongue against what I really wanted to say, which was, Screw you, you pompous prick.

  Mr. Applebee went on. “Not only is he pre-disposed to dislike your Miz Annie White with an earnest, self-righteous passion, he is also a notoriously inattentive jurist. Which means that we may find ourselves with considerable latitude in besmirching said lady.”

  I nodded some more, pondering once again just how much I disliked arrogant, 500-pound attorneys.

  It took one more cigarette before we were ready to go back into the courthouse, during which time I was regaled with stories of Judge Biers’ woeful ignorance of the law and his consequent shambles of a courtroom. “It can oftentimes be a circus when Malcolm is on the bench,” Mr. Applebee chuckled, grinding out his final butt.

  As he heaved his bulk away from a groaning courthouse pillar, his assistants drew toward him like symbiotic pilot fish escorting their very own Moby Dick and, en masse, we proceeded into court.

  These four assistants (again, all young women) were his spear carriers and his filing cabinets. Mormon Applebee did not take notes and did not consult notes. Rather, he would simply extend a waving hand to his right when a particular document had to be produced or cited from—and it was always there. He was like a surgeon in that regard, one surrounded by nurses who knew just which blade to hand him, when. He disdained the ubiquitous yellow legal pad which all attorneys cling to like a liferaft; his prop was his girth, which spread out in tented majesty over the specially-built chair which accompanied him everywhere.

  Again, it was his hands atop this immense stanchion of flesh that commanded everyone’s attention. A hand would wave and a judge would be alerted to this or that precedent or point of law; or a document would appear in momentous, thick-fingered display; or the opposing attorney’s words would be met with a contemptuous flick and then the words, “Objection, your Honor.”

  Annie’s attorney, a harried, inept-seeming man who appeared never to be sure he was in the right place at the right time, goggled at these theatrics. He continually bounced up and down from his chair to his feet, his yellow legal pad clutched in slightly tremorous hands. Mormon Applebee sat unmoving all the while, questioning me for the better part of three days, then examining some sixteen witnesses on my behalf over the succeeding three days.

  During all this, I watched Annie figuratively tearing her hair out as Judge Malcolm Biers doodled and dozed through the days and days of fatuous, pointless testimony. I could tell she’d lost weight over the past month and a half of attorney-inflicted terror, and I could also tell that she was growing frantic because here she was, day after day, idly, pointlessly spending $200 an hour to be sitting next to Mr. Albert Redding, her attorney.

  Finally, though, it was Annie’s turn, and I could see the relief evident in her aggressive stride toward the witness box.

  She had offered no battalion of expert witnesses like her schmuck of an ex-husband had; she had no psychologists and psychiatrists promoting her cause. She did have a few neighbors in, to testify that she was indeed a superlative, exemplary mother to her only son Todd.

  Beyond that, she had only her self and her motherhood to stand up for her. And of course the knowledge that all divorced men and women have: that very few judges will go against the ancient and time-honored myth that a child is always better off with his or her mother. Particularly a mother who already has custody and who has done such a demonstrably outstanding job in raising her son.

  So in her striding to the witness box, Annie was supremely confident. Because now she would have free rein to tell the world just how much a bastard this Gil Wexler son of a bitch really was—and how absurdly unfit he was to have custody of Todd Wexler.

  She looked good that day. She was in full makeup, her hair was fixed nicely in a bun which let loose sexy swirls to wreath around her head, and she had on a suit which showed her body very nicely. Plus, she was wearing all her jewelry: her Rolex and her pearls from Harry White, her multi-carat engagement ring and her diamond tennis bracelet from me.

  It had always puzzled me how Annie had so casually worn Harry White’s gifts during our marriage, but now that I saw her still wearing mine as well, it made more sense: she had no emotional attachment to these or any other objects … just as she had no emotional attachment to the people behind them. They were trophies, plain and simple.

  When I saw Mormon Applebee actually rise to his feet to greet Annie at the stand, I realized that all else in the six days already spent in court (as well as the six weeks before this) had merely been prelude.

  Prey was in the water and a shark was on its scent.

  All of us in the courtroom viewed this ascension with troubled eyes and nervously held breath. Mormon Applebee did it slowly, his 500 pounds wavering from side to side as he rose to his feet, and all of us wondered, somewhere in the backs of our minds, what on earth would happen if he fell. I had visions of a wall being removed in the courtroom to let a construction crane snout its way in and lift him back up—but he did finally make it.

  His hands laced across his body, Mormon Applebee padded the several steps to Annie (his mirror-shined shoes made a heavy splat! splat! sound as he went) and he offered her a hint of a smile with just the slightest nod of his head. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss White,” he said. Annie offered a frosty smile. He nodded again to her, then turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, if I may ask the court’s indulgence to examine Miss White while standing?”

  Judge Biers shrugged and nodded. “As you wish, Mr. Applebee. Unless Mr. Redding has any objections?” He did not.

  Mormon led Annie through much the same territory I had followed earlier in the week under his and Mr. Redding’s questioning: our meeting each other, our getting married, Todd’s arrival, her move from the house, the gradual process of divorce. He scored no points, he inflicted no wounds. All he elicited was the familiar old tale of two people not quite hitting the mark and thereby strewing victims in their wake.

  Then something happened to the air in the courtroom.

  All of us could sense it—though we didn’t have the slightest notion what it might be and what it could mean. Maybe there really is some kind of primitive jungle telegraph still alive in all of us and buried deep within the brain stem. In any event, we seem to know.

  The closest I can come is to say that the tone abruptly shifted in the magnetic field around us. The clerks and the court reporter shuddered and drew their sweaters tighter around their shoulders. Judge Biers, feeling that same nameless something in the air, snapped his head up from his doodling and gazed sharply around. Mr. Applebee’s four young assistants sucked in their breath and sat at attention in their chairs. Coincident with this erie shift in the feeling in the air, the largely empty courtroom began filling up with a full complement of sixty or seventy spectators.

  Over the previous six days of our smarmy spectacle, there had been very few of the idle and the curious wandering in and out of the courtroom; those who did attend were mostly of the bored battalions of the nose-picking retired. After all, even the airing of a couple’s dirty laundry leaves one yawning after a while.

  But now it was different. The jostling, murmuring crowd of attorneys, office workers, and plaintiffs and defendants from other trials somewhere in the courthouse—they didn’t really know why they’d come in. But they knew enough to bide their time. Soon. Soon it would come … whatever it was.

  Nothing untoward happened for another half hour
, as Mr. Applebee methodically questioned Annie. More than a few people in the crowd were clearly wondering why they had bothered. But then there was a subtle shift in Mormon Applebee’s pacing. All morning long, there had been a steady slap! slap! of his shoe leather on glossed tile as he paced here and there, tossing out questions as he would stale bread to the swarms of pigeons on the courthouse steps: casually, almost contemptuously. Abruptly, though, there was a stutter in the pacing—it somehow became more motivated, if that makes any sense at all.

  He was describing a circuitous, looping orbit between his table and the witness box and he was at the far apogee of that orbit when he threw another crumb of a question out over his shoulder:

  “So are you a casual lay, Miss White? An easy screw? A quick boink?”

  Albert Redding, Annie’s attorney, was on his feet faster than a terrier can snap at a scurrying rat. “Objection, your Honor! Objection!”

  The crowd, now very attentive, issued a low thrum.

  Judge Biers, stunned, said, “Have you lost your mind, Applebee?”

  Mormon Applebee, contentedly pacing, said, “I withdraw the question, your Honor.”

  “You’ll do more than that, Mr. Applebee. Either I hear a sincere and abject apology this instant to the Court and to everyone in this courtroom, or you, sir, will be bound over to the sheriff and held in the county jail for contempt!”

  “I do so apologize, your Honor, and to you, ladies and gentlemen,” Mormon said sweetly, closing his eyes briefly and swiveling his head from the bench to the many grinning spectators and back again. “Most sincerely and utterly, your Honor. I do not know what came over me.”