Reef Dance Read online

  I pondered the bonding question from my own experience. I’d felt the pain of a severed bond as a first grader when my father died suddenly. That day, I was painstakingly hand-sanding the rail of a vintage surfboard he was restoring, hoping to finish the job that weekend and collect my five-dollar fee. The fiver was going to buy me two cans of red metal-flake paint to paint my bike, a secondhand Schwinn Stingray coated with beach-town rust. He was going to help strip the metal, show me how to mask off the chrome parts that didn’t need paint. I never so much as looked at that piece of shit bike again.

  My mother’s disappearing act was more nebulous. I was older and had lived through some disappointments by then, but that was only half of it. All these years later I still didn’t know what to make of Marielena Shepard and what she did to me; I never learned what really happened, or why. The whole subject was as disorienting as pea-soup coastal fog in June.

  Somewhere down the hall Willow Reece was picking up a conversation with another attorney about a drug program that catered to minors. Jesus Christ, I thought, what kind of world. Fighting nausea, I closed the door and gulped a few deep breaths. Then I shoved my mother out of my mind for the ten-thousandth time and picked up the Randall file.

  Unlike me, Nathan Randall was barely four months old now, so young he’d probably be capable of bonding with his mother one week, the Danforths the next, and a pack of wolves the week after that. A completely dependent little infant wouldn’t know any better. Nathan couldn’t differentiate between a bed in a homeless shelter and the leather seats in a twelve-cylinder Jaguar coupe, he just needed to cling to another for sustenance. But for now he’d spent every day of his short life bonding with the Danforths, and Nelson Gilbride would soon have the finest expert money could buy instructing Foley that in terms of bonding, Nathan Randall had already passed the point of no return. My objective was to see Nathan delivered back into Sue Ellen Randall’s waiting arms as quickly as possible.

  I got to court early Thursday morning, hoping to slide past the Channel Six cameras with a minimum of friction, yet ready with a few well-rehearsed jabs of my own just in case. It was a little before 8 A.M. and Holly was not in the building. Neither was Sue Ellen, who I’d hoped would show up early to meet me. Like Phoebe, Sue Ellen hadn’t called me back. There was much to discuss, such as whether she’d found a place to live. Whether her husband, Ty, was out of jail. Whether she’d made preparations to receive Nathan today if Foley was inclined to award custody to her. I’d read the petition again and again. The county’s case was all hype and hyperbole. If Sue Ellen made a strong showing this time, Foley just might return Nathan to her before sorting out the allegations.

  After last week’s debacle, I was ready to deliver some good news, too, the very real likelihood that Gilbride would be sidelined if we went to trial. I was pleased with my opposition to his motion. Sue Ellen needed my encouragement. If we were going to win Nathan back, we’d have to work fast, and as a team.

  There was also the matter of Gilbride’s offer. We should hear him out, I’d advise her, consider every option. Perhaps the adoption could be salvaged, the criminal charges dropped, the dependency matter dismissed without engaging in heavy warfare. I would make Sue Ellen listen.

  Foley finished his 8:30 calendar-call in ten short minutes. Only Belinda McWhirter was present for the Randall case. I shuffled out with the rest of the daily horde to look for Sue Ellen again. Instead, I found Darla Madden.

  “Good to see you, sharp suit!” she said. She was wearing another big, billowing gown, a pink and orange Hawaiian print that made her look like a walking flowerbed.

  I frowned. “You’re not on today’s calendar. What are you doing here?”

  Darla looked miffed. “Man, thanks for the warm reception. Having another bad day Mr. Shepard?”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m very busy. You can’t just show up like this.”

  She folded her arms. “I’m your client.”

  I stared back at her. “I’ve got a lot of clients.” She didn’t budge. “Okay, what do you need?”

  She paused long enough to give herself away. “Thought maybe we could talk about my domestic arrangements.”

  I didn’t believe her. “Guess what, I have a phone.”

  “Ya never pick up.”

  “Leave a message.” I was still looking for Holly Dupree and her crew, and Sue Ellen.

  “They’re outside,” Darla said. Obviously, she was tuned in to the Randall case, too.

  I stood there and just stared at her, disgusted. “I knew it. Listen, you can’t be a spectator. These cases are confidential. Besides, it’s none of your—”

  “That news lady asked me if I knew you!” she said. “You seen her face close up? Boy, howdy! Never noticed those wrinkles around her eyes before when I seen her on TV. Those crow’s feet are a bitch. Bet she’s a smoker. I use Oil of Olay morning and night. Crucial step in my daily beautification and maintenance.”

  “What did the news lady want to know?” I said.

  “Don’t worry, she didn’t hear nothin’ from me! But some old geezer in a fancy suit showed up out of nowhere and the camera guy ran to him like he was hypnotized.”

  “Nelson Gilbride,” I said. “I’d better get down there.”

  “The lawyer, he mentioned you,” she said before I could break away.

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, some stuff about justice, respect for the law. Said you couldn’t keep him out of some case because the truth needed to be told—yeah, he was going to see that the truth be told. And he was talking about the gal who sold her baby being brought to justice. You ever heard of somebody selling their own baby?” She glanced about again before looking me straight in the eye.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’ve covered this territory before.”

  “Mr. Shepard?” A familiar female voice called out behind me. I turned and saw Sue Ellen standing by the door to Foley’s courtroom, looking pretty tuned up for this time of day. Slowly she made her way over to Darla and me.

  Darla didn’t notice Sue Ellen. “What kinda’ mother is that, would sell her own child?” she raved. “That is sick! I hope they lock up the little bitch ’n’ throw away the key!”

  Sue Ellen stopped cold five feet away from us, quivered at Darla’s remark, then burst into tears. Her eyes said “How could you?” to me. Then she turned and fled.

  “Way to go,” I said to Darla.

  “Sick, sick, sick. Just throw away the key, I tell ya!”

  It was so simple to feel that way about the case, about any woman who would abandon her own. Too simple.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “Things aren’t always what they seem.” I looked away, searching the congested hallway for any sign of Sue Ellen. I should have met her early and brought her in through the back entrance. Holly Dupree and crew were more than Sue Ellen could manage alone. They’d probably already knocked her down before Darla piled on.

  Darla looked down her nose at me, her mascara-ringed eyes widening as if she’d just made an important connection. “Oh.”

  I exhaled and didn’t suck another breath, my lungs slowly heating to a burn. “Gee, Darla, sick is a pretty strong word, don’t you think? Some people might think making two kids live in a pigsty like that apartment of yours is sick, too. But hey, who am Ito pass judgment? Tell me, Mom, you shovel all the dog turds off the carpet before you left this morning?”

  The tears came immediately. “I, I’m sorry. I’m n . . . not a bad mom. I love my kids.”

  She was suddenly like a child who’d been scolded by Daddy. But Darla could not be faulted too severely for feeling the way she did about the Randall mess. She carried her guilt like an anchor, as my own mother must have done after she’d ditched me. The notion of Darla Madden and my mother having a significant shared experience darkened my mood.

  My vision blurred momentarily. Marielena, Sue Ellen, Darla scooping poop after breakfast, heavy parental guilt. Not even 9 A.M. yet, and I felt dead on my
feet. I blinked hard. This job had become a matinee horror show. My clients didn’t listen, but neither did I. I’d become a robot, stuck in an endless routine of empty gestures.

  “Of course you love your kids,” I told Darla. “That old geezer you saw downstairs was giving the cameras a watered-down version of the truth. The lady isn’t sick, and she didn’t sell her baby. She gave him up for adoption, but changed her mind about it. Now she wants him back. That’s it.”

  Then, rather inexplicably, I found myself rehearsing a few bits and pieces of the argument I’d planned for the Randall hearing today. Nelson Gilbride was very, very good. I’d heard the stories when I clerked at his law firm, seen the view from the forty-fifth floor of his beautifully appointed offices. Heaven help me, I thought, I’m out of my depth.

  My knees wobbled. “We’re going to win,” I said, pissing into the wind. “Excuse me, Darla, but I have to go find my client.”

  “She went to the ladies room,” Darla said. “I saw her go in. Been watching the hall down there. She hasn’t come back.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got a minute. Want to talk about your current progress?”

  “Not really.”

  “Me neither.” My mind was on Sue Ellen and Gilbride, Phoebe, the D.A.’s office—anything but Darla’s problems. “But you’re here. We should anyway.”

  We talked briefly about Uncle Pete, Eric and Stacy, the apartment and Max the Rottweiler. “Go home,” I told her when we were finished. “I don’t want to see you in here again until your case is back on calendar. Good luck. Now leave.”

  “But, can’t ya get me in to the hearing? I gotta know how it turns out.”

  The situation was hopeless. “Sorry Darla,” I said. “The box office is totally sold out.”

  The Sheriff’s Department had processed Ty Randall’s transport papers correctly this time, and he was led into a small holding cell behind Foley’s courtroom some time after 10 A.M. When Shelly Chilcott, the court liaison, heard Ty had arrived, she quickly made up another file and motioned to Boris Kousnetsov to come pick it up.

  “For me?” Kousnetsov leaned over with a crooked smile, his teeth a tobacco-stained, canine yellow.

  “You’ve got Father,” Shelly told Boris, handing him the file. “He’s in lock-up. Oh, and talk to J. ’cause he’s got Mother.”

  Boris shuffled back to the small gallery and sat down again on the bench in front of mine, a cloud of cherry cough syrup and Old Spice settling back in with him. He straightened his black suit coat and swiveled to see me. “Did you hear, Mr. Shepard? We are working together. We will discuss our strategies, as lawyers must do.” He nodded eagerly.

  “Absolutely,” I said. When he turned away, I shot Shelly the dirtiest look I could muster.

  As I came and went from the courtroom over the next half hour, busy with other cases, Boris pored over the Nathan Randall file like a jeweler studying a mound of glittering stones. I guess he could afford the luxury of time since his triple bypass surgery last January had gutted his caseload so deeply. Boris was not renowned for his courtroom mettle and his seventy-four-year-old body was falling apart, his eyes failing, his knees and elbows crimped with arthritis. Yet he still possessed a spark and managed to hobble into court each day to handle a case or two, do some crosswords, and read from the books he carried with him in his otherwise empty briefcase. Though he never spoke of his family, I imagined Boris was rather adrift since the death of his wife two summers ago. More and more he seemed to crave human contact, if only with the few clients he still represented.

  “What a case! In a moment we will confer,” he said to me, his face already haggard.

  I tapped my watch. “Okay, but let’s do it sooner than later.”

  I liked Boris as a man, but as a lawyer he would be a liability on the Randall matter if I didn’t keep him on track. As he reread the file, I spied the book he’d been leafing through just before Shelly Chilcott gave him the case. It was a hefty hardbound number in the Time-Life mode with a bright jacket consisting of three horizontal strips of photographic action: a forest fire burning orange and wild, an ominous black tornado, and a horrific side view of a pancaked high-rise building. A World of Disaster, the cover fairly screamed at me.

  “What’s the idea?” I whispered to Shelly Chilcott when I was out of Boris’s earshot.

  “He hasn’t had a new case in three days. I had to give him something.”

  “Thanks, Shell.”

  “Think about it, J.” She pulled on the sleeves of her pale blue sweater and straightened a pile of papers on her desk. “Your client’s the one who’s on the hot seat, not Father. Boris will be glad to let you run the show. Besides, I didn’t think you’d want Jorgensen to get Father, and he’s the only other panel lawyer picking up today.”

  Against the far wall and directly beneath the clock, Ken Jorgensen slouched in a plastic chair, working a sausage-like index finger into the gaps in his teeth, picking leftovers from his breakfast. I cringed. “Judas Priest.”

  Shelly’s nose crinkled. “Ugh. Reminds me of Little Jack Horner.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “if you’re on acid. Guess we should be grateful his hemorrhoids aren’t bothering him today. You’re right, I’d rather make do with Boris.”

  I trust Shelly Chilcott’s judgment, even though she works for the county agency that, in the usual game of keep-away between county and parents, generally functions as my arch adversary. She’s a longtime social worker who’d gone into civil service straight out of college twenty years ago armed only with an undergraduate degree in psychology and a folk singer’s passion for helping the less fortunate. She’d taken her current position a mere week before my own fumbling debut in Foley’s court and had shown a good deal of patience in the face of my numerous missteps. Today Shelly lives a paper-pushing existence, doling out new files to overworked attorneys, scribbling orders on sheets of paper to hand to chastened parents as they back away from Foley’s probing gaze, and phoning field workers none too pleased to be informed that their reports and recommendations are being questioned in court.

  But Shell doesn’t complain. I suppose the reason lies beneath her thick, kinetically frizzy brown hair, which these days she gathers behind her shoulders with a hand-painted, rainbow-colored clasp some distressed kid made for her in a crafts class at MacLaren Hall. Two dull purple scars curl up Shelly’s neck like tiny fingers just above her right collarbone. Some time ago an ice pick slashed her to the floor during a fairly routine stop-in on what was to be her final field visit as a county social worker. The boy who’d stabbed her was only ten, but he was big for his age and knew what an ice pick could do, for he’d seen his mother wield the same point of rusty metal many times before in the faces of neighborhood hypes wanting to strong-arm her stash. Shelly bore no hard feelings toward the child who put her behind a desk. He had only confirmed what she already knew: somewhere down the line she’d lost the idealism that drew her to child welfare in the first place, and with it, her nerve.

  Shelly smiled big. “Jack Horner on acid? You were a baby in the sixties, J., what do you know about acid?” Across the room, Ken Jorgensen belched like a sated bullfrog and shut his eyes.

  Boris turned once more to the first page of his file and began to read the file all over again. “That’s it,” I said. “Time for a kick-start.”

  I had the bailiff lead Boris back behind the courtroom to Ty Randall’s holding cell. Belinda McWhirter and Foley were just finishing a hearing when they both stopped and looked at me as if my jacket were on fire. Shelly was dialing a number at her desk a few feet away, but she broke off and set the receiver back in its cradle. I turned around just as Sue Ellen Randall reached out and touched my left shoulder.

  My quick turnabout had startled her. “Oh! I’m sorry,” she said, withdrawing her hand. We were face-to-face and she seemed flustered by our close proximity.

  “Where have you been?” I said, acutely aware now that the usual courtroom chatter had dried up insta
ntly.

  “Sorry about that out there.” She made a hangdog face. “I shouldn’t a run away.”

  “Listen,” I said, “you can’t let what people say—”

  “I know, Mr. Shepard, I know. Can we talk? I got some things to tell you.”

  “Hang on a minute,” I cautioned her. “This way.” I led her into the interview room.

  Today she wore a short-sleeved yellow and white checked dress with lace borders that made her look very young, like a girl I might have enjoyed flirting with at Sunday mass not so long ago. I thought I saw a trace of terror in her eyes.

  I tried a warm smile. “I can’t help you if you hang out in the ladies room all day.”

  “Sorry, I know I should’ve come back sooner,” she said.

  I went into my file and pulled out a legal pad with a series of questions I’d written out the night before, questions about some of the details in the social worker’s report that hadn’t yet been satisfactorily explained by Sue Ellen. But instead of traveling down my query list, I spent five minutes crowing about my sparkling opposition to Gilbride’s motion.

  “Your husband is here,” I told her. “His lawyer is interviewing him. Have you made any headway toward bailing him out yet?”

  She gave pause before responding. “His folks came out from Kentucky last weekend,” she said. Her eyes were red and irritated from crying. “Mr. Shepard, there are some things we need to talk about.”

  Boris Kousnetsov knocked and poked his head into the room.

  “I am so sorry, J., and forgive me to interrupt, madam,” he said, sounding very Russian and bowing formally. “The judge is ready for us now”

  I was caught by surprise. “What? Tell him to forget it. We’re not ready yet,” I said.