“How about one question?” Shrake said. “Can we go back inside? It’s too hot to be standing out here. I’m afraid a robin is gonna shit in my hair.”
She said, “No,” and half jogged back to the house, arms stiff at her sides once again.
Virgil moved deeper into the shade, and said, “I’m glad I wasn’t dumb enough to wear a suit and tie.”
Shrake yawned.
Virgil: “Listen, You did okay with her, but now let’s dial it back to a seven.”
“That’s where I was, a seven,” Shrake said. “You ain’t never seen my eleven.”
“Okay, take it back to three. I don’t want Internal Affairs taking up residence in my shorts.”
—
A lawyer arrived, but it wasn’t Jones, it was Hardy. He jumped out of his green Range Rover, looked at Virgil as though he couldn’t believe his eyes, then strode across the lawn, and Virgilsaid, “Mr. Hardy,” and Shrake said, “Watch your hair. There’s a robin up in the tree that’s been trying to shit in ours.”
Hardy looked up in the tree for a second, wiped his hand across the top of his head, then turned back to Virgil, and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for Mrs. McDonald’s attorney of record. As a courtesy. Before we take her in.”
“A courtesy? Take her in? For what? And, by the way, I’m one of her attorneys of record. In addition to Robin Jones.”
“We find that interesting,” Virgil said. “And that’s what we want to talk to Mrs. McDonald about. You guys filed a nuisance suit against the university, which is prepared to take you on, with one of the smartest and most admired men in the Cities ready to testify that everything you claim is bullshit. Then it turns out that one of your clients lures—”
“She didn’t lure anybody!” Hardy shouted. “They were lovers.”
Shrake snorted. “A famous rich doctor is in love with a hooker when he could date any one of a thousand single women in the Twin Cities for free? Tell me another one.”
Virgil rode over both of them. “Lures him into the library, where he’s killed and therefore can no longer testify in your lawsuit, which Robin Jones has said he might split and sue Quill’s estate separately? Did I get that right?”
“No. It’s like you’re taking crazy pills.”
Another car arrived, a Mercedes SL550 with its hard top down, and Hardy said, “Here’s Robin.”
The top on the Mercedes started up, and Shrake said to Hardy, “You know those billboards of yours? ‘Call me Lare’?”
“What?”
“You ought to call yourself Batman since your sidekick’s named Robin. You could put—”
“You know how many times I’ve heard that joke?” Hardy asked. “About a million. You should be embarrassed.”
Shrake shrugged, but in fact he was. Nothing like being the millionth guy to tell a bad joke.
Jones got out of the car and hurried over, a briefcase under his arm. Virgil pegged him to be in his early thirties, with a well-tailored light blue summer suit that was too expensive for his age. You tended to look at him, with his car and his suit, and think, Asshat. He nodded at Hardy, and said, “Glad you could make it. I wanted to talk to you before I file a criminal complaint against these two.”
Shrake yawned again and scratched his ribs.
Jones to Virgil: “You’re Flowers? That’s the most disrespectful outfit I’ve ever seen on a cop. A poetry shirt? They’ll be hearing about that, too.”
Virgil looked down at his shirt; it took a minute, but then he tumbled: Poe. Jones must have thought that Edgar Allan’s first name was Larkin. It made him smile.
“You wanna go inside?” Shrake asked. “I’m sweating like a blind lesbian in a sushi bar.”
“Hey! I don’t want to hear that misogynistic kinda talk. And before we go inside, I want to tell you you’re not taking Mrs. McDonald anywhere,” Jones said. “Not to the BCA, not to Hennepin...”
Virgil said to Hardy, “Robin’s giving me a sharp pain in the ass.”
