Cape Disappointment by Earl Emerson

almost at the same time. They looked at each other, and I could see it wasn't so much a disagreement as the fact that Driscoll had decided to hand me a little white lie. I decided to keep that in mind with regard to our future dealings.
    “Okay. I'm on board. I'll need to clean up some things this afternoon, but after that I'm yours.”
    “Going to be some long hours,” said Maddox.
    “I've worked long hours before.”
    “Good. Tomorrow morning. Six o'clock. I want you to start by going over the names of the people in the office, everyone except Deborah.”
    I already knew Deborah was the first person I was going to check out. “Sounds good.”
    As I left the office, I had a few seconds to watch the two of them in the reflection of the window that divided the office and the anteroom. Maddox was reaching for the telephone. Driscoll was watching me.

THE TROUBLE WITH MARRIAGE to a woman as attractive as my wife is that wherever you go guys are eyeballing her, some to the degree that you want to put a boot up their asses. It doesn't help that, as a criminal defense attorney, Kathy represents her share of impoverished, indigent, and sometimes mentally ill defendants. Her profession puts her into proximity with dirtbags who are lonely and easily swept up by her charms, men whose lives are circling the drain and who, when they get close to someone like Kathy, think they've met a creature from paradise.
    The classic example is Bert Slezak, identical twin brother of my longtime friend and confident Elmer, aka Snake. Two years ago, recommended by Elmer, Kathy defended Bert in a trespass and theft case after he was caught carting off a two-ton piece of statuary from the estate of a local judge.
    Bert and Elmer were both named after their mother's favorite film star: Burt Lancaster, who starred in
Elmer Gantry.
Elmer and I are close, but Bert, whose name was misspelled by his father on the birth certificate, crossed way over a line that Elmer only straddled, and at times I found him close to despicable. Like Elmer, he had a long ré-sumé: soldier, stump grinder, pressure washer, door-to-door salesman, drum maker, author (a book on UFO abductions), long-haul trucker. Ididn't believe his claim to having once been a gigolo any more than I believed Snake's. Over the years, Bert's frequent contact with my wife had been an irritant. Once, I overheard Bert trying to convince her to leave me, supposedly to spend the rest of her days guzzling beer and munching Cheetos with him in his trailer while watching reruns of
Gilligan's Island.
    Two mornings after the governor's ball I made my way to Kathy's office in the Mutual Life Building, braving crowds of tourists queued for the underground tour in Pioneer Square. When I stepped into the office, Beulah rolled her eyes and gestured with her head toward the inner sanctum, where through the open door I could see Bert's arms constantly moving in time to his rapid-fire speech. His sentences came out like machine-gun bullets, lickety-split and often punctuated with the same nervous giggle Snake sometimes evidenced.
    I stepped into the small cubicle I was using as an office. It contained two chairs, a desk with a computer, and a file cabinet. When I interviewed people, I did it over the phone or on their turf; if they came to the office, I borrowed Kathy's meeting room, which was generally empty because Kathy spent so much time up the hill at the King County Courthouse either consulting with clients or working deals with deputy prosecutors, or in court itself. Bert spent his share of time up there, too. Like a lot of habitual criminals, Bert was always suitably contrite and humble around the courthouse.
    “What if my ex goes back to court and says she doesn't need the restraining order anymore?” I heard Bert asking Kathy.
    “The point is,” Kathy said, “you've already violated an existing order, and that's the charge we'll be responding to in court next week. The order was in place; you