Gladiator-At-Law Read online

  Virginia stood blank-faced. Norvell knew she was trying, and loved her for it.

  The child came untidily down the stairs, her much too sophisticated dressing gown fastened with a careless pin. Norvell said firmly, “Sandy——”

  The child’s face was ancient and haughty. “Please,” she interrupted him. “You know how I feel about that humiliating nickname.”

  Norvell got a grip on himself. “I didn’t mean——” he started, through clenched teeth.

  “Of course you didn’t mean anything. You didn’t mean to wake me up with your drunken performance on the stairs, did you? You didn’t mean to keep Virginia and me in terror when you didn’t bother to let us know you’d be out late.” She shot a sly glance at her mother, fishing for approbation. Virginia’s hands were clenched.

  Norvell said hopelessly, “I only wanted to tell you something.”

  “Nothing you can say now would help.”

  “No?” Norvell yelled at her, restraint gone. “Well, listen anyway, damn it! We’re going to Belly Rave! All of us— tomorrow! Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

  Virginia said at last, with a wiry edge to her voice, “You don’t have to shout at the child.”

  That was the ball game. He knew perfectly well that she had meant nothing of the kind, but his glands answered for him: “So I don’t have to shout at her—because she isn’t deaf like me, is that it? My loyal wife! My loving family!”

  “I didn’t mean that!” Virginia cried.

  “You never do!” Norvell bellowed over Alexandra’s shrill contribution. Virginia screamed:

  “You know I didn’t mean it, but I wish I had! You! Call yourself a husband! You can’t even take care of a family!”

  It went on almost until dawn.

  Chapter Ten

  charles mundin said: “Thanks for springing Bligh, Del.” Dworcas said affably, “Hell, any tune. Besides, he’s a friend

  of the kid’s. Now what’s on your mind?” Mundin said, “G.M.L. Homes. Del, I think you’ve put me

  onto something. If it works out—— Well, I won’t forget.”

  “Sure, Charles. Look, it’s getting late and I’ve got a couple things to do.” /

  “I’ll make it quick. This election, Del—let me out of it, will you? I mean, it isn’t as if you need poll-watchers. And I could use the handout—but I can’t spare the time.”

  Dworcas looked at bun appraisingly and made his decision. He grinned widely. “Hell, Charles—why should I get in your way? Hop on this deal if it looks so good. I’m not saying it won’t leave me shorthanded—I’ve even got my kid brother helping out. God knows he won’t be good for much but he ought to be able to hand out a dodger. So you think this G.M.L. deal is on the level, do you?”

  Charles started to answer, but one of Dworcas’s handymen stuck his head in the door. He whispered to Del.

  Dworcas apologized, “Sorry, Charles, but Jimmy Lyons is here; excuse me a minute.”

  It really wasn’t much more than a minute, even though when Dworcas came back he was walking slowly. He didn’t look at Mundin.

  Mundin said, “Yes, I do think it’s on the level. At any rate, I’m going to give it a whirl.”

  Dworcas said to the wall, “Wonder if you’re doing the right

  thing.”

  Mundin was startled. “How do you mean?”

  Dworcas shrugged. “It’s a pretty serious business, practicing a kind of law you aren’t fitted for. It’s your business, Mundin. I just don’t want to see you getting into trouble.”

  Mundin said, “Wait a minute, Del! What’s this about? It was your idea, wasn’t it?” .

  Dworcas said coldly, “Worried* Mundin? Trying to%ang it on me?” He picked up his phone in a gesture -0| d^missal. ‘Take off, will you? I’ve got work to do.” V

  It bothered Mundin all the way home, and it bothered him the next morning when he woke up.

  It bothered him even more at the County Courthouse. He walked in with a nod to the duty cop, and the cop looked right through him. He said to the assistant clerk at the counter, “What do you say, Abe? How are the kids?” And the clerk mumbled something and closed his window with a bang.

  By then Mundin began to catch on. He got sore, and he got

  determined. He waited in line at the next window and asked for the records he wanted. He sent back the wrong folder they gave him first; he pointed out that half the papers were missing from the right folder when he got it. He sat in the County Clerk’s waiting room for two hours, until the secretary wandered in and said, with aggrieved hostility, “Mr. Cochrane has gone to lunch. He won’t be back today.” He wrote out a formal complaint on the sheet of paper she grudgingly gave him, alleging that he was being illegally and improperly hampered hi his attempt to examine the corporate public-records files of G.M.L. Homes, Inc., and he doggedly left it with her, knowing what would happen to the paper as soon as he got out of the door. It fluttered into the wastebasket before he got out of the door, and he turned angrily to object.

  The duty cop was standing right beside him, looking eager. Mundin went back to his office to think things over.

  Fourteen billion dollars. …

  But how the devil did they know so fast? Not from Dworcas, Mundin told himself; he could swear that Dworcas didn’t know the heat was on until Jimmy Lyons had called him out of the room. And Dworcas had sent him there in the first place. Because—Mundin flushed angrily at the thought, almost certain that it was right—because Dworcas was pretty sure that a two-bit ambulance chaser like himself wouldn’t do them any good anyhow? And what had changed his mind if so?

  Mundin kicked the Sleepless Secretary and went on pacing. In bell-like toaea the Secretary told him that Mrs. Mundin would remit the full balance due by Friday.

  He sat down at the desk. All right, so the going was going to be tough. That figured. What else would you expect? And the harder G.M.L. Homes made it, the more scared they were —didn’t that figure? And the more scared they were, the more chance that’this whole impossible thing was on the level, that Charles Mundin LL.B. stood on the threshold of corporate law.

  He took out a piece of paper and began to figure. They could make it rough, but they couldn’t stop him. He could get court orders to see the records, that was the obvious starting place, if only to make sure for himself that the Lavins were on the level; and as long as Norma Lavin was willing to call him

  her attorney-in-fact they couldn’t keep him out. There would be a slowdown at the court, naturally. But it couldn’t take more than a couple of days, and meanwhile he could get started on some of the other angles. Don’s conditioning— might be a criminal charge in that somewhere, if he could get some names, dates, and places.

  He reached for his model-forms book and began drafting a power of attorney for Norma Lavin to sign. She’d sign it, of course; she was an independent and, no doubt, a difficult person, but she didn’t have much choice. Besides, he thought absently, a lot of that mannishness was undoubtedly protective coloration. In circumstances like hers, what could you

  expect?

  The phone rang; he cut out the Sleepless Secretary hastily and picked up the receiver. “Mundin,” he said.

  The voice was ancient and utterly lost. “This is Harry Ryan,” it quavered. “Norma—she isn’t here. Better come out here, Mundin. I think they’ve picked her up.”

  Chapter Eleven

  norvell was lying on a cake of ice. He kept trying to explain to someone enormous that he was sorry for everything and he’d be a good and dutiful son or husband or friend or whatever he was supposed to be if only the someone would leave him alone. But the enormous someone, who couldn’t have been Norvell’s father because Norvell didn’t even remember a father, only put his hand before hi& mouth and tittered and looked down from a long flight of stairs, and then when Norvell was least expecting ft, areached out and swatted him across the ear and sent him skidding across the enormous cake of ice into the tittering face of Alexandra and the jagged, giant
teeth of Virginia… . ,,

  Norvell woke up.

  He was very cold, very stiff. He looked dazedly around him.

  The living room. But—— Yes. It was the living room. With the wall patterns off and

  no light except a sickly dawn from outside. All of the walls were on full transparent and he was lying on the floor. The bed he had dialed out to sleep in had folded into the basic cube, dumping him on the floor. And the floor was cold.

  No heat. No power. The house was turned off.

  He got up, wincing, and hopelessly sidled to the window control. It didn’t respond; the windows remained full transparent.

  He knew what had happened, and swore between clenched teeth. The skunks. Turning off the place without a word of warning, at daybreak, without even giving him a chance

  He wearily began picking up his clothes from the floor where a rack had dumped them as it returned to folded storage state. Through the indecently transparent windows he saw the other bubble-houses, all decently opaqued with only their nightlights and entry lights and here and there a warmly lit upstairs window. By the time he was dressed he began to hear a clamor upstairs. His wife and daughter charged down in negligee, commanding him to do something about it.

  “Get dressed,” he said, and pointedly disconnected his hearing aid.

  He rambled about the house while they did. Absently he tried to dial coffee and gave up with a self-conscious laugh when the water would not flow. The closets, drawers, and dressers had rejected all their contents, upstairs and down. Pushers had calmly shoved them out and the doors had closed and locked—to him, forever. He contemplated the disordered piles of clothes and kitchenware, and began to pack a traveling case.

  Two bored policemen wandered in while he was doing so; the door, of course, was no longer on lock. He plugged in his hearing aid, taking plenty of time about it. He said to them, “Well?”

  They toltf him he had plenty of time; they weren’t in any hurry. Take an hour if you need it, bub. They’d tote him and his family and their stuff out to Belly Rave, help him pick out a good place. And—uh—don’t take this too hard, bub. Sometimes when people got busted out of contract status they—uh —got panicky and tried to, well, knock themselves off.

  The moving had one golden moment. One of the cops helpfully picked up a suitcase. Alexandra told him to remove his filthy hands from—— /

  The cop clouted her and explained what they didn’t take none of off of Belly Rave brats. The police car handed Norvell a jolt. It was armored. “You—you get a lot of trouble in Belly Rave?” he guessed. The friendlier of the cops said, “Nab. Only once hi a while. They haven’t jumped a squad car hi six months, not with anything but pistols, anyway. You’ll be okay.” And they pulled away from Monmouth G.M.L. Unit W-97-AR. There was no sentiment to the parting. Norvell was sunk in worry, Alexandra was incandescent but still. And Virginia had not said two words to anyone that morning.

  The car paused at the broad beltway circling the bubble-city, motor idling and the driver impatiently talking into his radio. Finally two more police cars rolled up and the three of them in convoy left the city roads for the cracked asphalt that led to Belly Rave. Once the road they traveled had been a six-lane superhighway, threading a hundred thousand commuters’ cars morning and night. Now it wound through a scraggly jungle, the toll booths at the interchanges crumbled into rock piles and rust.

  They bumped along for a couple of miles, then turned off into a side road that was even worse. The first thing that hit Norvell was the smell. The second thing was worse. It was the horrible feeling of betrayal as he looked on Belly Rave. A man can reconcile himself to anything. If life is doomed to be an eternity of agony with duodenal cancer, or the aching and irremediable poverty of the crippled and friendless, he can manage to survive and make the best of it. But when he has steeled himself to disaster … and the event is a thousandfold worse than his fiercest nightmare … the pockets of strength are overrun and nothing remains inside him but collapse.

  And Belly Rave, in its teeming ruin, was worse than anything Norvell had dreamed.

  The police cars swayed around a corner, sirens blasting, and stopped hi the middle of a long, curving block. The convoying cars pulled up ahead and behind; a cop got out of each and stood ankle-deep hi weeds and refuse, hand idly resting on his gun.

  Norvell’s driver said, “This one will do. Let’s go.”

  The act of moving their possessions into the house hi the driving rain, ringed by an audience of blank-faced Belly Ravers, was mercifully blurred hi Norvell’s mind. At one moment he was sitting hi the police car, staring hi disbelief at the wretched kennel they offered him; at the next, the police cars were gone, he was sitting on a turned-up suitcase, and Alexandra was whining, “Norvell, I’ve got to have something to eat before I absolutely die, it’s been——”

  Virginia sighed and stood up. “Shut up,” she said levelly to her daughter. “Norvell, help me get the big suitcase upstairs.”

  She kicked a heap of rattling cans out of her way and headed for a flight of steps, ignoring her daughter.

  Norvell followed her up the narrow stairs, the treads, ancient and patched with a miscellany of boards and sheet-metal, groaning under them. The upper floor (Expansion Attic for Your Growing Family) was soggy with rain, but Virginia found a spot where no water was actually dripping hi. He dumped the suitcase there. “Go on down and watch the other stuff,” she ordered. “I’m going to change my clothes.”

  Before she got down they had company.

  First to arrive were three men hi ragged windbreakers. “Police,” one of them said, flashing something metallic hi Norvell’s face. “Just a routine check. You people got any valuables, alcoholic beverages, narcotics, or weapons to register?”

  Norvell protested, “The police just left.”

  “Them’s bubble-town police, buster,” the man said. “They got no jurisdiction here. If you want to take my advice, you won’t give us arguments. Come on, buster, what’ve you got to register?”

  Norvell shrugged feebly. “Nothing, I guess. Unless you count our clothes.”

  The men moved purposefully toward the bags. “Just clothes?” one of them flung over his shoulder. “No guns or liquor?”

  Virginia’s high, clear voice came down the stairs. “You’re God-damned right we have guns,” she said tensely. “You bums turn around and get out of here before you find out the hard

  way!” Norvell, eyes popping, saw an oldfa^iened revolver in her hand.

  “Just a minute, sister,” one of the “police” objected.

  “Beat it!” she clipped. “I’m counting to five. One, two, three——”

  They were gone, swearing.

  Virginia came down the stairs and handed the gun to Norvell. “Keep it,” she said coldly. “Looks better if you use it. Just in case you were wondering, there aren’t any cops in Belly Rave.”

  Norvell swallowed. He hefted the gun cautiously. It was surprisingly heavy, far heavier than his unskilled imagination, not considering the mass needed to contain bursting gunpowder, would ever have guessed. “Where did you get this

  thing?”

  •• Virginia said drearily, “I’ve always had it. Used to be Tony’s, before he died. There’s lesson one for you: You don’t live here without a gun.”

  Alexandra came forward with shining eyes. “You were •wonderful,” she breathed. “Those detestable brutes—heaven only knows what would have happened to me if only Norvell had been here.”

  She started to plant a wet kiss on her mother’s cheek. Virginia shoved her daughter away and studied her coldly.

  She spoke at last, in a strange, dry voice. “We’ll have no more of that cack, Missy. From now on you’re going to level with me—and with Norvell, too. Hear me? We can’t afford lying, faking, doublecrossing, or temperament You’d better learn it, and learn it fast. The first bad break you make and 111 sell you like a shot.”

  Alexandra’s face was a study hi terror.

  Her m
other said dispassionately, “Sink or swim—you’re in Belly Rave now. You don’t remember; but you’ll learn. Now get out of here. If you can’t scrounge something to eat, go hungry. But don’t come back here until sundown.”

  The child stood blankly. Virginia took her by the shoulder, pushed her through the door; slammed it behind her.

  Norvell looked through a chink in the boarding of the cracked picture window and saw Alexandra plodding hopelessly down the battered walk, weeping.

  He uncertainly asked Virginia—the new Virginia—“What was that about selling her?”

  She said, “What I said. Til sell her. It’s easy, you can always find a fagin or a madam for a kid. I don’t know how prices run; when I was thirteen, I brought fifty dollars.”

  Norvell, his hair standing on end, said, “You?”

  “Me. Not Wilhelmina Snodgrass or Zenobia Beaverbottom. Me. Your wife. I guess I was lucky—they sold me to a fagin, not into a house. He ran a tea pad; I helped him roll the clientele. That’s where I met Tony. Now, if there are no more useless questions, help me unpack.”

  Norvell helped her, his head whirling. Without shame or apology she had demolished the story of her life—the story he had painstakingly built up from her “accidental” hints and revelations over the years. She “hadn’t wanted to talk about it” … but somehow Norvell knew. The honest, industrious parents. The frugal, rugged life of toil. The warmth of family feeling, drawn together by common need. The struggling years as a—as a something she had never exactly specified, but something honorable and plain. The meeting with Tony Elliston—glamorous cad from the Field Day crowd. Not a bad fellow. But not love, Norvell—not what we have… .

  He had thought himself clever. He had pieced it together into a connected tale, chuckling privately because she couldn’t know how much he knew.