Rape by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

Walt tried to reason with Jay Kirkpatrick. It was unfair, Walt argued, that, because he had two sons on trial, he had to pay double. For two clients charged with exactly the same crimes would not require nearly so much legal effort as two separate clients charged with two separate crimes, would they? How could they?
    â€œIt’s like twins, right? A woman has two babies, they ain’t actually twice as much work as two would be, another time. Everybody knows that. That’s why a woman has two breasts. Ask any woman.”
    Walt had hoped for a discount of maybe 10 percent. Kirkpatrick smiled and said Walt would make a damn good lawyer, arguing so precisely. Except a discount was not possible.
    â€œI am an attorney, Mr. Pick. I am not a remnant carpet store.”
    Marvin Pick, Lloyd Pick. They’d been high school wrestlers. On the East Side Marv was admired if not much liked. Lloyd was his lieutenant. Always he’d been the emotional brother,hobbled by the rudiments of conscience like a horse with a pebble in its hoof. Now he was blaming Marv for the trouble he’d gotten them into.
    â€œFuck you, asshole. You were the one said, ‘Let’s jump those two cunts.’ ”
    â€œI did not! Fuck I never said that! Marv, I did not .”
    Lloyd was excitable these days, tears springing into his eyes. Marv just laughed. Now that Jay Kirkpatrick was their legal counsel he was feeling almost laid back. “Don’t worry, Lloyd. I ain’t going to in-form. I ain’t going to turn state’s witness.” Since the intrusion of the Niagara County criminal justice machine into the Picks’ lives, Marv’s vocabulary had expanded.
    Marvin Pick, Lloyd Pick. Before the boathouse incident they’d been picked up for local break-ins, lifting merchandise at Home Depot and Kmart, an attempted carjacking. They’d been arrested, pleaded guilty on the advice of their legal defense lawyer, served minimal juvie time. Marv saw that the criminal justice system was crowded with black guys, some of them really scary gangsta types, stone-cold killers at fifteen, him and Lloyd didn’t look so threatening, somehow.
    Their cousin Nate Baumdollar, whose father, part owner of a tavern and bowling alley in Lackawanna, was believed to be “mobbed up,” told the brothers they were assholes, the bunch of them, not to finish the job and dump the females in the lagoon. Both of them. “See, now you wouldn’t be up shit crick. ‘Eyewitnesses.’ Bet you never thought of it, noneof you, huh? Shit-for-brains.” Nate brayed with laughter. He was Marv’s age. All their lives the two had been hateful of each other but thrown together to “play” at family outings.
    Marv protested, “We wasn’t gonna kill her, come on. It was never anything like that. Only just, we got out of there and left her. Joe said she was bleeding like a damn pig, if nobody found her and called the cops that was it.”
    â€œDumping her,” Lloyd said, nerved up, picking at his nose, “would be something you could prove. For sure, they’d get you then.”
    â€œGet who, asshole? I wasn’t there.”
    Marv said with sudden vehemence, “That’s right, fuckface. You weren’t there. So shut up.”
    Nate laughed. He liked it that Walt Pick had approached his old man for a loan, having to humble himself to his brother-in-law, and Nate’s shrewd old man had said sure, Walt, but there’s 12 percent interest. And we get the document notarized.
    Marv said, aggrieved, “She asked for it. Fucking Teena. I seen her around, I know her. She knows me, too! She was showing her ass and her damn boobs. She was plenty hot. She said, ‘What you guys got in your pants? Are you hot, or what?’ ”
    Lloyd looked at him, incredulous. This was all fanciful stuff, like what came out of Kirkpatrick’s mouth was contagious.
    Marv continued, inspired,