All the Dead Yale Men by Craig Nova Page B

said. “To cut a deal. Do it right out in the hall. None of that in camera bullshit.”
    â€œI’m going to try the case,” I said.
    He breathed into the phone. Sucked a tooth. Thought it over. “You know, Frank,” he said. “When I got shot down I was coming in low. They can’t hear you coming when you come in low. But before I could do anything, I was hit by ground fire. Oil burning in the engine. Smelled like a cheap cremation. Control surfaces hard to move, but I got the plane going straight up, you know, trading speed for altitude so I could jump. You’d be amazed how clear things are when you’re up there and when you get out on the wing and jump and you’re still going up, boots first, when the parachute opens. It’s all clear then, Frank, with the parachute between you and the ground. And down below you see a mess of Italians kneeling and then you realize they’re trying to shoot your ass off. See? That’s when it’s clear what your position is. Blown up, at the top of arc, and these guys want to kill you. See what I’m saying? You need to be smart and you need luck. And the messed-up thing, Frank, is that you are shooting at yourself.”
    â€œThis isn’t the desert,” I said.
    â€œThat’s where you’re wrong, Frank. It uses different landscapes, different people, but it’s always there. Always.”
    â€œI’m not going to stop now,” I said.
    â€œWell, that’s too bad. A crying shame. Well, come on over when you’re done. I’ll give you a Negroni.”
    I wore a gray suit and a blue tie. Shined my shoes.
    The cheapness of the business of the Citron Modèle Beauty and Nail Salon, the proxy fight with the dog (and of course I should have seen the danger of this), ran back to those old outrages from thousands of years ago, which, for me, was a perfect reservoir of every bit of suppressed fury I had ever felt about stupidity and cruelty.
    I had picked as an assistant a young attorney, Carol Perkins, a smart lawyer if there ever was one, editor of the law review at school, and who could have had her pick of law firms that paid what can only be called real money. But for all her intelligence, she was nevertheless interested in justice. I loved her for it. She was in her late twenties, had red hair, freckles, and green eyes, and everything about her, the way she walked and held her head, the gray suits she liked and wore with such subdued effect, her scent (like baby powder), but most of all her expression of barely contained fury, made her an ideal lawyer to have with me. She was tough with details and contradictions and knew the law.
    Citron sat in court with his hair in a ponytail, drawn back and held with a rubber band. He wore a black suit with a tee shirt, although his attorney, Martin Pullagia, had talked him out of the gold chain, but it was obvious that Citron missed it and from time to time reached up to his neck but found only his cold skin. Pullagia had gone to the Sussex Law School at night, represented gangsters, and was involved in things that would get him in the end. Later, he was charged and convicted in a money-laundering scheme. Before he was sentenced, he testified against the men he so frequently defended and finally ended up in thetrunk of a car at Logan Airport.
    Citron should never have said a word, but Pullagia let him testify. He told a story of such vagueness, of such lack of detail compounded by an inability to remember as to be a gold standard of slippery obscurity.
    Citron’s voice seemed to have the pitch of a hair dryer. Then I leaned close to Carol, into that scent of innocent outrage, and said, in a voice that was louder than I had intended and which could have been heard by the jury, “That asshole is a lying son of a bitch. And we both know it.”
    Carol flinched. Pullagia objected, demanded a mistrial. The judge looked at me for a long time. Then he considered