Swan Dive

don’t need you to do any investigating here. I mean, like assets or peephole stuff or like that. This guy Marsh is loaded, and I’ve got him dead to rights on at least one solid affair with a nurse who works Samaritan Hospital . This nurse, you wouldn’t believe it, is off Mondays and Tuesdays yet, perfect for screwing around, huh? Plus Hanna says he’s done God knows how many pickups, hookers even.”
    ”You’ve got him financially and morally, where do I fit in?”
    Chris shifted his eyes down and away from me, fiddling with a ballpoint that had printing on its side, a giveaway advertisement from some bank. ”He scares me, John.”
    I watched Chris until I realized I was making him uncomfortable. ”What do you mean?”
    ”Just that. You think it’s easy for me to say?” Chris squirmed in his chair, rubbing his left knee. His ”civilian-preservation” knee, he called it senior year of college, the injury that kept him out of the draft’s chilly grasp. ”The guy scares me.”
    ”Has he done something?”
    ”Not exactly.”
    ”Well, threatened you, what?”
    Chris glanced up at me, not liking this at all. ”Nerida, this former client, she calls me and pours out Hanna’s sob story. Then Nerida calls Eleni, and tells her, and so Eleni nags at me till...” Chris gestured at the folder. ”Look, I’m not complaining. This is a good case. Jeez, maybe a dream case, the guy’s earning power. But this Marsh, as soon as he hears I’m gonna represent his wife, he comes in here, to my office. Nobody out in reception that day, he comes in, stands in that doorway there, and just looks at me.”
    ”Looks at you?”
    ”Yeah, just looks at me. I know he was doing it before I looked up from what I was working on, because I could feel the guy staring down at me. Anyway, he looks at me, and when I ask him what he wants, he says, ‘I just wanted a look at you. I just wanted a look at the man who thinks he’s gonna take away everything I’ve worked for.’ He wasn’t yelling. Jeez, he didn’t even say it angry or nothing. Just low and even, like he was some gunslinger in a western. He stared and said that, and left. He didn’t even tell me his name, like automatically I’d know who he was.”
    ”Did you?”
    ”Did I?”
    ”Did you know it was Roy Marsh?”
    ”Oh, yeah, Hanna described him to me. She’s afraid of him, too. Along with everything else, it seems he was a little free with his hands.”
    ”Can’t you get the court to order him not to bother you? Or Hanna?”
    ”In a general sort of way, yeah. But we’re not at that stage yet.”
    ”I don’t follow you.”
    ”Well, we haven’t filed for divorce yet, so there’s nothing for the court to order him on.”
    ”Why don’t you file?”
    ”There’s a thirty-day separation requirement, and Hanna only moved out a coupla weeks ago. I could go to court and get that waived, but in these things it’s usually better over the long haul to avoid ruffling feathers.”
    ”Meaning, don’t make the other side mad in the short run by having court orders against him?”
    ”Right.”
    ”And try to settle out of court first.”
    ”Yeah. Well, kinda. See, if we can negotiate a fair settlement out of court, then we can put all the kinds of things I’d want the judge to order in our written agreement, and then we just pass it by the court at the final hearing.”
    ”So everything looks like a consensus, not a command?”
    Chris beamed. ”Couldn’t have put it better myself.”
    ”Okay, let me get this straight. You’re afraid of Marsh, but you don’t want to tick him off by going to court first. So you want me to do exactly what?”
    ”Come with me, with Hanna and me, to the settlement conference over to Roy ’s lawyer.”
    ”And do what?”
    ”Nothing. Just sit there.”
    ”Chris, you want a bodyguard.”
    He winced. ”I wouldn’t call it that.”
    ”I would. Why don’t you hire an off-duty cop?”
    ”Because the coupla guys I know on the Peabody force would be out of their jurisdiction in Marblehead . And I don’t know anybody on their force.”
    ”Then why not have the settlement conference here?”
    Chris slouched back in his chair, placing his palms behind his head and grinning. ”Because, as a negotiating tactic, I let her persuade me to have it in Marblehead .”
    ”Hanna?”
    ”No, no. Felicia Arnold. She’s Roy ’s attorney. Heard of her?”
    ”No.”
    Chris closed his eyes and spoke blissfully. ”She’s big-time,