The Baxter Trust

will still be the facts. And she’s going to be convicted—there’s nothing I can do about it. And I don’t even think it’s me. I don’t think any lawyer could do anything about it. But that doesn’t help.”
    “Well, maybe she’s guilty.”
    “Maybe. But I think she’s innocent.”
    “Well, that’s half the battle, isn’t it?”
    Steve sighed. “That’s what they tell you in law school. Actually, it’s a crock of shit. If your client’s guilty, at least you know what the facts are, and you can make up a story to account for them. If your client’s innocent, you don’t know what the fuck is going on.”
    The phone rang. Judy picked it up. “Hello? ... Yeah, what time? ... Okay. Great. Goodbye.” She hung up the phone.
    “Another audition?”
    “Yeah. Commercial.”
    “Break a leg.”
    She looked at him. “You know what the trouble with you is?”
    He sighed. “Shit.”
    “I know. You don’t want to hear it. Listen. You know the character in Arms and the Man? Captain Bluntschli?”
    “I played Bluntschli in summer stock.”
    “Yeah? I played Raina. At Long Wharf. So you know. Bluntschli was this supercool, super professional soldier. They were all in awe of him. Is he a man or is he a machine? That’s the tag line, right? ‘What a man. Is he a man?’ And he’s just cool, crisp, efficient. Not a nerve in his body. And then, in the end, when he’s accounting for himself, he admits that he’s a man who all his life has spoiled his chances through an incurably romantic disposition. And they’re floored, because that’s the last way they would think of him. And then he explains himself—I did this when a man of sense would have done that—and it’s true.”
    Judy smiled. “And that’s you. That’s who you are. An incurable romantic. No, don’t argue. I know you don’t think so. You see yourself as this practical, no-nonsense guy, cutting through the bullshit. Well, maybe you are. But the reason you are is because behind it all you’re the romantic hero, the white knight on the charger, slaying dragons and saving damsels in distress.”
    Steve laughed. “Jesus Christ. This is what I came here for? Two-bit amateur psychoanalysis?”
    “No.” She smiled. “I know what you came here for. Now this particular damsel in distress. I saw her picture in the paper. She’s pretty.”
    Steve looked at her. “Are you implying something?”
    “Why? Is there something to imply?”
    “Are you kidding? She’s just a kid.”
    “Right. Of twenty-four. Whereas I am a worn-out old hag of twenty-nine.”
    He laughed. “Right. Over the hill. Washed up. Soon to be playing old-lady-character parts.”
    He tickled her. She giggled, twisted away.
    “Stop that.”
    “No, devil woman. You are in the clutches of the incurable-romantic tickling machine.”
    She twisted away again, laughing and spilling brandy.
    The phone rang.
    “Time. Saved by the bell,” Judy said. She leaned over and grabbed the phone. “Hello.”
    She listened, then turned to him with a slightly puzzled expression on her face. “It’s for you.”
    “Oh. That’ll be Mark Taylor. I gave him this number.”
    “Oh.” She handed him the phone.
    “Hello, Mark. What’s up?”
    “We can’t get a line on Sam Benton. He never served in the military. He never filed a tax return. He never drove a car.”
    “Well, he was born, wasn’t he?”
    “Not according to vital statistics. So in all probability, Sam Benton isn’t his right name.”
    “Shit. What about Alice Baxter?”
    “We’re trying to run her down. The trail’s pretty cold. It’s been twenty-five years, you know.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Steve hung up the phone. His momentary kidding mood was gone.
    Judy looked at him. “Bad news?”
    “That’s the only kind I get,” he said.

41.
    W HEN COURT RECONVENED THE NEXT morning, Dirkson called Carla Finley to the stand.
    Sheila Benton leaned over to Steve Winslow, and whispered, “Who’s she?”
    “Greely’s girlfriend,” Steve whispered back.
    “Oh.”
    Sheila was surprised. She had been so caught up in her own predicament, that it had never occurred to her the dead man was a person too, with a life of his own, and friends, and girlfriends. She watched Carla Finley with some interest.
    Steve watched Carla Finley with some interest too. It was hard to believe that this woman walking down the aisle and taking the witness stand was the same woman he had seen in the peep show. Her hair was pulled