Rough Trade

loose a groan. “Christ, look at the time. I’ve got to run.”
    I stepped up and gave him a quick hug. “Don’t worry,” I said, suddenly feeling more like a friend than a lawyer. “This is all going to turn out all right in the end.”
    The look he shot me over his shoulder on his way out the door said, I sure as hell hope you’re right.
    As soon as the door banged behind him, I went upstairs in search of Chrissy. I found her, as Jeff had indicated, in her bathroom putting on her makeup. The room was roughly the same size as my office, only prettier, with hand-painted porcelain sinks and flattering rose-tinted tile. The vanity was littered with dozens of jars, tubes, compacts, and brushes, including several implements that I had never seen before. I pulled out one of the two pouf stools tucked beneath the counter and took a seat.
    “Trouble at the office?” she asked, carefully patting moisturizer around her eyes with her ring finger in the way she’d tried to teach me when we were both in high school—before she gave up trying to make me over.
    “Oh, nothing that couldn’t be solved with a .45 and a shovel.”
    “That bad?”
    “That bad.”
    “As bad as what’s happening to us?”
    I shook my head. “In this case the clients are bad people and they’re used to trouble. No matter what happens they’ll just disappear under a rock for a while and then ooze back out again after it all sorts itself out.”
    “Whereas Jeff and I are about to be crushed into the ground and may never recover,” observed Chrissy, setting down her brush and turning to look at me.
    “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that you aren’t looking a pile of trouble in the face,” I said. “But as big as it is, it’s nothing that can’t be handled. And I promise, I’ll be right there next to you every step of the way.”
    “It’s all so surreal,” complained Chrissy. “I hold the baby, I look at the house-—everything seems exactly the same as it did on Monday morning before any of this happened, only now it seems like it’s so fragile that it’s made of smoke. One big gust and it will all blow away....”
    “The baby isn’t going to blow away. Jeff isn’t going to blow away—”
    “No. They’re just going to come and take him away in handcuffs,” observed Chrissy bitterly. “And all because they think that he couldn’t wait to get his hands on the glorious Milwaukee Monarchs. And you know what the hysterical part of all of this is? While the cops are busy thinking that Jeff killed his father in order to get rich, we don’t even have the money to pay for his funeral. That’s why Jeff left early. He wanted to be there to talk to Mr. Massy in case our check has already bounced.”
    “It won’t.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I had Cheryl make arrangements with your bank. Whatever checks you write will be automatically covered.”
    “We can’t take your money, Kate,” protested Chrissy.
    “You and I have known each other much too long to even be having this conversation,” I pointed out brusquely. “So just forget about it. We’ll settle up once we’ve got this whole thing straightened out.”
    “You mean once we’ve moved the team to L.A.”
    “Is that what you and Jeff have decided you want to do?”
    “We haven’t decided anything. With everything else that’s going on we haven’t even had a chance to talk about it. On the one hand I know that Jeff doesn’t want to be remembered as the guy who took the Monarchs away from Milwaukee.”
    “And on the other hand?”
    “On the other hand I think he’d rather die than see Gus Wallenberg sitting in the owner’s box.”
     
    By the time that Chrissy and I arrived at the funeral home, the line of mourners was so long that it wrapped all the way around the block. They were friends and acquaintances, funeral buffs and politicians, but mostly they were fans—regular folk who’d come to stand in the cold to wait their turn to pay their last respects and sign the visitors’ book as a token of their appreciation of the man who’d brought them thirty years of Monarchs football. Even the Monarchs’ court was there, the dozen or so fans who dressed up for every game. They stood near the head of the line, somber in their medieval garb. Beau, ever the showman, would have loved it.
    Mr. Massy met us at the door and took Chrissy by the hand, drawing her into the building. He murmured a mixture of condolences and instructions as he led