Blood Orange (6 page)

“You squeeze,” Bailey cried, shoving her hands against his chest.

Sweat beaded his forehead.

Dana said, “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t call them.”

“Roses? Big old red cabbage roses? Jesus Christ, Dana, can you
think how that sheet’s going to look on TV?”

“It’s the only one big enough to cover that window.”

“I had to park a block away. Felt like a tight end making it
through the crowd to the door.”

“DaddyDaddyDaddy.” Bailey put her hands on David’s cheeks
and turned his head so he looked at her. “The s’cream man banged
Moby and a rock crashed-“

David looked at Dana. “Ice cream?”

“Moby got broke.”

“How’s he do-?”

“Mr. Cabot?” The speaker was a moon-faced young police officer in a beige uniform stretched tight across his muscular chest and
shoulders. “Patrolman Ellis.” The men shook hands, and as they
began to talk Dana headed for the kitchen.

She had already explained to the police about the white van and
Moby and how she had left the dog for the night at the emergency
clinic and come home just before five, driving fast all the way be cause while sitting in the clinic she had remembered the sound of
shattering glass. Something thrown from the white van had broken
the large, triple-arched window at the front of the house. No, she
told the police, she did not get the license number of the van. No,
she could not say how many passengers were in it or what they
looked like. There was a bumper sticker on the back fender, driver’s
side; no, she did not remember what it said.

While Patrolman Ellis had asked Dana questions, Bailey tugged
and hung on his arm. “The s’cream truck hurt Moby.”

Ellis-no wedding ring, a bachelor unused to a nagging, dragging child-looked at Dana with eyes that cried, Get this kid off me.

Bailey patted Ellis’s hand as he tried to write down Dana’s answers. “Policeman, policeman, policeman,” she chanted excitedly.
“Policeman, policeman, policeman.”

Dana sat on the couch in the living room and watched him suffer.

He managed to ask about the rock. “And you picked it up.”

“Moby Doby got hurt.”

“Of course I picked it up.” She had not thought about fingerprints. “I saw the rock and the paper around it-“

“What did you do after you read the note?”

“I called 911 and my husband.”

The boy cop made her feel guilty for doing what any person
would, and she disliked him for ignoring Bailey. Television, she realized, had given her unrealistic expectations of police officers.

Dana hoisted Bailey onto the counter beside the sink. Bailey immediately began banging her heels against the cupboard, chanting,
“Brown s’cream, white s’cream, pink s’cream,” and so on through
all the colors she knew, which were blessedly few.

Above the sink and along the speckled granite counter, a line of
square windows the size of playpens overlooked a wide redwood
deck and back garden separated from an alley by a six-foot wall
overgrown with Carolina jasmine. To the right there was another
wall and a gate between the garden and the driveway. A UnionTribune truck was parked in front of the garage, and a man with a
camera snapped pictures of the back of the house. The pots on the
deck needed watering, Dana noticed. News at Eleven: Dana Cabot
neglects her garden. She yanked the blinds down, plunging the
kitchen into gloom.

“How you holding up, Number One?” David asked as he entered the kitchen. He kissed the top of her head.

Gratefully she turned and laid her head against his chest. She
timed her breathing to match his and relaxed a little.

On the counter, Bailey held out her arms. “Me, Daddy, me, me,
me.

“Come ‘ere, Buckaroo.” He held them both easily.

In college and as a pro, David had a reputation for being a quarterback who stayed cool in the pocket as three-hundred-pound, cornand potato- and pork-fed Nebraska farm boys barreled down on
him with mayhem in their eyes. She had worried about him before
games. He’d told her, “They won’t run me down if we don’t let
them.” A team, he believed, could do anything if it worked together.

“How’s Moby?” he asked.

“He’ll be okay. He’s in Emergency.”

“Shit, that’ll cost-“

She pressed her palms against his chest. “Please, David, don’t
start with the money.” He would never see the bill; she would pay
off the vet in installments.

Bailey tugged on David’s earlobe hard enough to make him wince. “The window got broke and the policemens came ‘cause the
s’cream man wrote a bad note. I saw all the letters.” She made a
down-mouth, shook her head, and sighed. “No B. “

For once Dana was glad that her seven-year-old daughter could
not yet read. She asked her husband, “Did you see it?”

He nodded. “We’ll talk about this later. You two go upstairs-“

“I want s’cream.”

Dana scooped chocolate ice cream into a Babar bowl knowing
that in thirty minutes she would regret giving her daughter sugar,
but she could not face the inevitable screams if she played tough
mommy right now. Choose your fights, or at least postpone, she
thought as she settled Bailey at the counter with a dish towel tied
around her neck.

“Eat up, Sweet Pea.” She put the ice cream carton back in the
freezer. “What happens next?”

“I guess I have to talk to the cameras.”

Oh, you’ll hate that, she thought sarcastically and then felt meantempered and small. The limelight was his natural environment.

“I wish you wouldn’t encourage them,” she said. “Some ambitious kid reporter’ll be over tomorrow wanting to write a feature
story about the family of the poor beleaguered defense attorney.”

“I’m going to turn this around, Dana.” He gripped her shoulders. “Whoever threw that rock doesn’t scare me.”

“But he scared the hell out of me. And what about Bailey?”

“It’ll take more than a rock and a note to get me off the Filmore
case.

She wondered if he had even heard her say his daughter’s name.

“What’s more, we’re going to make this work to our advantage.
Filmore can’t get a fair trial in a city where-“

“He killed that child,” Dana said, whispering. “You know he
did.”

“The evidence is lousy, Dana.”

Bailey banged her heels into the chair leg and clanged her spoon
against the side of her empty dish. David said, “Hey, Bailey, you
want to come outside with me and talk to the cameras?”

She cheered and lifted her arms, swinging her spoon wildly.

Dana took it from her. “No, David.”

“You come too.”

She shook her head and turned her back on him, staring down
into the stainless-steel sink, where she saw a blurred reflection of
herself and was thankful the image was unclear. “You’re using her.”

He waited a beat. “If you’re not coming out, make me some
eggs, will you?”

“At least wipe the ice cream off her face.”

“And bacon if you’ve got any.”

ater she regretted everything: the saturated fat in the eggs and
bacon and butter; the floral sheet; going to the emergency veterinary clinic when Dr. Talbot would have served as well and
charged a quarter as much. Worst of all, she had forgotten what
every defense attorney’s spouse must always remember: the client is
never guilty until the verdict is in. And sometimes not even then.
She should have walked onto the front porch with David and
Bailey; they should have stood together like a team.

As they prepared for bed that night, she thought how mean she
was to David, how she withheld herself as if she wanted to punish
him when he had done nothing but give his best. She thought of
saying she was sorry, but she was no good at apologies.

Sometimes she let herself think what their life would have been
like if Bailey had been normal. There would have been another
child by now, maybe two. They had bought the Miranda Street
house because Mission Hills was a safe neighborhood and they
wanted a big family. As Dr. Wren told her every time she saw him,
there was no reason not to have another child. Bailey’s disability was
no one’s fault. Though she understood his words with her logical mind, another part of her felt responsible. She had soured on her
body. Occasionally David brought up the idea of another child,
though rarely in the last few months. She knew he hoped for a son,
someone to play ball with and dream for. So why not just say yes,
let’s have another baby?

She did not want to think about what might be holding her back.

“You want to watch the news?” she asked.

“God, no. I don’t even want to think how that sheet’s going to
televise.”

She felt the blush of heat in her cheeks. “I used the only thing
big enough-“

As soon as the police and press left, David had called his partner,
Marcus Klinger, who appeared an hour later with a bag of nails and
several large sheets of plywood that they hammered into place over
the window.

“I’ll call the glass man tomorrow.”

“You won’t have to.” David got into bed wearing short-legged
sweat pants and a T-shirt with the Miami of Ohio Athletic Department
logo fading on the front. “They’ll be lined up after seeing the mess
on TV.”

Dana’s diaphragm tightened. “Did you tell the reporters what
the note said?”

“Just that it was a threat.”

“Maybe Marcus should take the case. If you were second
chair-“

“I won’t be intimidated, Dana. You know me better than that.
Whoever did this, he’s a coward. Only cowards and kids throw
rocks and run away.”

She grabbed a hairbrush off her dresser and dragged it through
her thick dark hair.

“Frank Filmore deserves a fair trial just as much as anyone.”

She nodded.

“I know you hate the work I do.”

Her temper flared. “I don’t hate your work. I believe in it. But
couldn’t you for once defend someone who’s not a scumbag?
What’s wrong with a clean-cut bank robber?” She thought of
George Clooney or Cary Grant. “Maybe a nice jewel thief?” She sat
beside him and laid her hand on his chest, feeling the heat of his
body beneath her palm. “Why does it always have to be the dregs of
the earth? Can’t you see how these people pollute our life?”

He couldn’t leave them behind at the end of the day. He brought
them home from the office and court and jail-the rapists and drug
addicts, the thugs and derelicts. And not just their crimes and cases,
but their agonized histories, too, all their rage and pain and deprivation. He couldn’t help it.

“You weren’t so miserable when I showed you that hundredthousand-dollar retainer.”

Giddy described them both when they’d counted the zeros on
the check. And astonished when it didn’t bounce, when it settled
comfortably into the business account beside the two-hundred-andfifty-dollar payments on time, the five-thousand-dollar checks for
twenty-thousand dollars’ worth of labor. Overhead at Cabot and
Klinger was high, and the money was gone in less than a week; but
for a day or two they’d both felt rich.

“If this trial goes the way I think it will, there’ll be plenty more
big retainers. You can pay off all the charge cards and Bailey’s
school and finish fixing the garage apartment and get yourself a new
car. Think about it, Dana, no more pinching pennies, no more
debt.”

“This isn’t about money.”

It was about injured dogs, broken windows, and the danger
Dana smelled in the air like a grass fire circling them.

“This is the Super Bowl, Dana. You don’t walk away from-“

She stood. “It’s not a god damn game.”

“Don’t I know that? I have a man’s life in my hands.”

And he could not forget that any more than he could overlook
his loyalty to his family. He was made that way, and Dana knew she
should trust him. He would die before he let his family down. But
there had never been threats before. And their home had not been
violated.

He put his arm around her shoulders. As he pulled her to him
she had to tell herself to relax. This man who meant everything to
her: when had she begun having to work at loving him?