“Agreed. But I didn’t.” He added, “People love a good story,including my girls, including your readers. You get your information by what you see and hear and read, and I realize you haven’t done this for years, like Miranda, but you can still tell, presumably, when somebody is lying.” Then he raised a warning finger. “But what if a person doesn’t know she’s lying? You wouldn’t be able to tell.”
He went on to describe the chill that stole over the club when Felicity was arrested. “There’s a lot of longing, right after Christmas. People think, another year and what have they done with their lives? The girls thought that Felicity was going back to college. They thought,Maybe I should do that too.Then, her real job, the murders, that was a Felicity they never knew.” He shook his head. “Everybody caught a cold, not the best look at a place like mine. Everyone coughing, crying at the drop of a hat. Major waterworks! I had to give everybody a raise.”
“Did that help?”
“It never hurts. But you can’t put a price on an illusion. Although I guess that’s what the customers at Ophelia are paying for, an illusion.”
“I wanted to ask why you named the club that. Or was it called that before?”
Jack said, “I just liked the name. I have a relative called that. It was a name I thought I would like to call my daughter. Before, the place was called Club Sir. Another illusion, I guess.”
“It’s a beautiful name but it has a very sad connotation.”
“You mean in Shakespeare. Well, yes... ”
“Naming someone that, isn’t it bad luck? Like I never got naming a baby Jonah.” It occurred to me then, the truth of what one of my professors at journalism school always said, that the answer to any question was in the question. Ophelia was a beautiful name, but because ofHamlet, it would always be sad. Jack might want to make the place over into a diner after the trial. With the same chili for sure.
“I’ll bring my kids up knowing that sexuality is just a natural thing. But if it ever gets to where other parents talk about it, I’ll peddle the place. Kids have it hard enough fitting in. Are you a jock? Are you a nerd? No sense making it harder.” He stood up, smoothing the front of his pants. “Will that do it?”
“Almost,” I said. “Oh right, what did you mean about Lily, her training? What kind of special training does a strip club manager get?”
“I meant her training as a cop. Lily was a cop.”
“Lily was a police officer? When? Why isn’t she still?”
“She left, what, three years ago? She left when she got her twenty years in. She got her pension. She got hurt once too, and I guess that changed her.”
“How was she hurt?”
“I wasn’t there. That would be hearsay,” Jack said.
“Okay, wait... just a moment. This story won’t appear for months, long after the trial is over, and it won’t be as much about a trial as about women’s sexuality, and men’s perceptions of women’s sexuality, at this point in our culture. What I’m saying is, this isn’t breaking news, more of a sort of third-wave feminism analysis based on one woman’s actions at a particular place in time. And so, I want to ask you, did you ever think of Felicity as someone who could murder people for money? Did you ever think of her as being an escort?” I added, “Just from what you knew of her as someone who worked for you. As an acquaintance.”
Jack looked off into the middle distance, as if considering. “I know she was driven. And people who are driven can be ruthless. Just an instinct, but I’ve met all kinds of people. Still, I didn’t know her that well.”
That was the last thing I expected him to say. He was, however, correct about my intuition. I could usually tell when people were lying. And he was. As he put on his gloves, he said, “Givemy regards to Mr. Damiano. He is that rare thing, a lawyer with a conscience. Are you friends?”
“Yes,” I said. “He is a friend.”
Not until Jack had disappeared up the street did a couple of things occur to me.
Although he was perfectly relaxed, the way Jack talked was just like the way Ross described people who were lying: He used too many words and gave too many details. And also, how did he know my mother’s name?
Eleven
Bald Eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus.Bald eagles mate for life unless one of the two dies. Their courtship rituals are spectacular, with the birds locking talons, then flipping, spinning, and twirling through the air in a maneuver called a cartwheel display. They break apart at the last moment, just before hitting the ground. Eagles are serious parents: A pair raises one to three chicks each year in a huge messy nest, the largest nest built by any North American bird. Males and females care for the babies equally. Bald eagles have a wingspan of up to seven feet and, if standing on the ground next to an average-sized human, the bird’s head would reach about to the height of the person’s hip. The female is larger and typically more aggressive. The bald eagle is a traditional symbol of justice, freedom, and the rule of law.
The first morning of the trial, I dressed carefully. It was all I could do. When I went to meet some hotshot designer or movie star, my luxe clothing was my only armor. Someone always complimented me “Oh, you made that old brooch into a necklace with a ribbon.” It was my ritual, my preps, like things that ER doctors do when they know an ambulance is coming—deep breathing, handwashing, knee bends, eye drops, strong coffee. I power walked in place until I was breathless, then blow-dried my irascible slippery hair into amiable smoothness, thenput on my all-white uniform of SiBelle wide-leg trousers and a plain silk shirt covered with a light long-sleeved navy linen duster I’d borrowed from my mother, only a month after giving it to her. I would use this as protective coloration, to fit in with the prevailing press look, which was urban shabby. Like an old-style gambler, I rolled up my sleeves and cinched them with garters to avoid the dreaded ink mark.
In the hall outside the courtroom, the first person I met up with was Sally Zankow, in a black skirt with black tennies and a black sweatshirt, her yellow mane freshly colored. She spotted the garters first thing. “That’s a good trick,” she said. “I don’t know how many blouses I’ve destroyed with pen marks. Are those like wedding garters?”
“Exactly that,” I said.
Then without further small talk, Sally asked, “Do you think she was really sick?”
“Felicity?”
