Excerpt from Honor Thy Wife by Norman Bogner

Trapped between the Willamette River and the Columbia headwaters, the smoky acid rain swirling from the sawmills and tanning plants in Port Rivers had a sleety razor chill. It slashed over the roofs of wharf taverns and clacked over the tarps of the fishing barges that thumped against their moorings.

Lead weights seemed to be falling from the sky and the air was filled with the murky discharge of fumes that blurred and clouded shop windows in Old Town. Freighted by stunted storage buildings and sullen tenements, hobo camps, embedded like rust, flourished inside abandoned terraced shanties. The only visible light elusively crept out of the marine works where men with welding torches seared a steel hull. The hissing flames formed an amber specter over their ghostly masks.

Earl Raymond appeared to emerge from this catacomb. It was a few days before Christmas and Earl had no reason to celebrate this or any other season as he limped across the street away from the hissing exhaust of the bus. He lowered his head in the wind and his gait was as crooked as the corroded stanchions supporting the embankment at the ancient bus terminal. It hadn't given way and that was a mercy. The road was as slick as eelskin, and Earl navigated past a series of troughs, wary of deep sinkholes. They were a scandal the locals--about a hundred thousand of them to judge by the last census--constantly griped about. The council would eventually refill them by spring to avoid prison.

The neighborhood mutated without warning and gushed into a gentrified square that had once been home to nineteenth-century traders in tea and spices who had established a northwest outpost for the Orient. Along the restored square, under period gaslamps that had been electrified, building after building arrogantly displayed the burnished shields of lawyers, brokers, and scheming financial privateers once more afloat.

With his long hair matted to his forehead, his nose running, and water dripping down his neck, Earl wove like a drunk. A skidding car almost hit him and for a moment he didn't care what happened. The way his luck was running, the driver probably had no insurance and Earl would wind up disfigured as well as crippled. A six-five geek with a mashed-potato face who could palm a basketball but could no longer dribble the length of the court. Earl was twenty-seven, and according to his doctor, his future was behind him.

The only law firm to take his call and actually speak to him was Brett & Conlan, which was located in the heart of Buccaneer Square. The building housed two offices: a babble of accountants' names on the ground floor, and Brett & Conlan in the penthouse. Renovated to the sconces, even the old pine banisters had been stripped and marine-varnished; the carpet itself was the crisp green of cash. The gated elevator was an Otis reproduction and it whispered up to the second story like a Rolls-Royce.

Without enthusiasm, Terry Brett had mentioned on the phone that he seldom did a personal injury case. He specialized in murder and mayhem. It was a slim opening, but Earl decided to drive down the lane like the old days when a championship game was on the line. Terry would give him a straight answer and wouldn't demand a retainer. Not that it much mattered. Earl had twelve bucks and change in his pocket, about enough for forty minutes of a happy hour.

In the waiting room, he cautiously eased himself down on an old English green leather sofa, trying to get comfortable. His knee was still locking. When he canted it on the table, he could hear the floating cartilages crunching, like the sound a drinker made chomping stale bar peanuts.

Terry came out a few minutes later. He still wore blue button-down Oxfords and penny loafers. His rep tie was askew, but his navy flannel suit was well cut and he seemed to be doing very well. The magazine subscriptions were in his name and the fancy lettered plaque outside was polished brass. The office trumpeted money.

"Well, Earl, sorry to have to pull you out in this freaking weather, but it was the only time I had."

"I know what you're thinking--I look like shit."

"Nah, you just smell like Gorgonzola," Terry replied.

"Right now I'd settle for a hunk of it and a beer."

"Ah, come on."

Terry smiled at him and pushed back his long, straight, blond hair, which had fallen over his broad forehead. He had always been strikingly good-looking, with a moody expression, a grand Irish lantern jaw, and a retroussé nose. His patrician bearing proclaimed a man in harmony with himself. His sharp, lustrous hazel eyes exuded the confidence of attainment. He stood opposite Earl, and although Terry himself was an even six feet tall, and broader than his former college roommate, there was still something of that imperial trait conveyed by very tall men like Earl. But late nights and booze had puffed dark pouches under Earl's cloudy, gray cat eyes and bloated his soft baby face into bacon fat.

Terry affably led him along the corridor. "Can't be that bad, Earl. I've finished all my other appointments. Let's play catch-up."

Earl stared at Terry enviously. Terry was still the clean-cut gladhander Earl had known at USC. He had a greater maturity, and his hair covered part of his ears, which was as far as he went to accommodate sixties, hippie fashion. He had been one of those professionally smart scholarship boys who always knew the right thing to say.

"So, Earl, what's the news from the front?"

"If the knee had my sack moves, I'd be playing point guard in the all-star game. Instead, I'm pouncing on retired cheerleaders and falling off the bed. I tell you..."

Terry laughed. "No more hot, scented towels on a tray?"

"Yesterday's news," Earl said with a snarl.

"You haven't changed. Come on in."

A plump, young woman with a pretty face craned her neck behind Terry. Earl's remark embarrassed him but not her. She gave him an abashed smile.

"This is Georgie Conlan, my associate. Earl Raymond."

She glowed with eagerness when Earl took her chubby, dimpled hand in his long Herculean fingers and allowed it to vanish in his palm.

"I saw you break the state record when you played us at Salem. Fifty-six points," she said.

"Five-six, easy eleven," Earl said, talking to imaginary dice in his fist and winding up for a roll at a craps table. "Come to me, baby."

"Georgie does our domestic work," Terry said. "Maybe she can come up with a rich divorceé with Playboy stats for you." He winked at Georgie. "When we roomed together, Earl was very fussy about that sort of thing. I spent my senior year sleeping in some booster's car while the master entertained the morning glories in his playpen."

"Hey, Georgie, I'm not so particular any more. She can be in a wheelchair, long as she's got a trust fund. Better yet, I'd like her husband dead, or being hunted by cannibals in Borneo."

Terry tweaked his lustful partner. "I hope you're taking this down, Georgie."

"Fast as I can. We're known for pleasing our clients. I'll see what I can do," she said, watching the onetime All-American basketball player grimace as he hobbled ahead of her partner.

Georgie looked them over, like a judicious housewife at the market. Double destruction, Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. What havoc they must have wrought in sunny California with sorority sisters clamoring for Earl's paws and Terry's charm. She envied the girls. As a divorce lawyer, her days and nights were spent listening to tales of man's inhumanity to woman and yet she dreamed of virile brutes like Earl flinging her over a bare shoulder and heaving her on a bed. In court, though, her soft, melodic voice had a growl when she churned bedroom Apaches into sausage meat.

A few minutes later, Georgie knocked on Terry's office door to say good night and catch another glimpse of the renowned basketball star. But Earl was indignantly poring over legal documents and pointing to X rays curling over Terry's desk. She wanted to invite Earl out for a drink, but the spark was lost.

"Sorry to interrupt." Terry looked grateful. "I just got a call. The Arnold case is settled."

"Which one was that?"

"You met him. Chris Arnold, that navigator in the Merchant Marines who retained me for his divorce from the airline princess. He died aboard ship of appendicitis and was buried."

"Victory at sea."

"Do I have to return the retainer to his estate?" she asked.

"Not with Mr. Arnold wrapped in a flag."

She handed Earl a towel. His hair was still dripping. He draped it around his neck and nodded brusquely. With a sigh, she left.

Earl resumed his tirade. "You won't represent me as an act of friendship--on the come?"

Terry presumed that he was Earl's last resort and he had burned out all of the college contacts he had owned during his balmy campus days. Prospective clients like Earl Raymond were a nuisance.

"Jesus, Terry, it's only a few calls for you."

"Not exactly, Earl." Pondering how could he unload him, Terry thought quickly. "Hey, did you try getting in touch with Billy Klein about this? He's in LA."

"Rich Billy! You've got to be kidding." Apparently, Earl had tried Terry's law school drone. "When a lawyer carries a crocodile attaché case, he either has a salami sandwich inside or his black book with hookers' numbers." Invariably the hurt child when he didn't get his way, Earl flapped his arms. "I don't get it, Ter. We were roomies, buddies."

Terry halfheartedly sorted through the crumpled maze Earl had made of his documents, the daydreams of a score.

"With all this material, you can really get your teeth into Jonah Wolfe."

"What? Who the hell's he?"

"The owner of the Los Angeles Stars. He never paid me my disability insurance when I was injured. And I was covered!" Earl commenced a disjointed tale of betrayal. "Jonah's responsible. I treated him like a friend. My pal. He was a meatpacker from Milwaukee. Makes the Wolfe Dog. You could puke from the shit he churns out for the supermarkets."

Still demurring, Terry tried another approach. "It's the hours I've got to put in. They'll have some big gun against you in LA."

"A big gun against us? I'm not afraid of a big gun."

"You used to be one yourself," Terry said kindly, but Earl took it in the wrong way. "Look, I don't want to bust my ass and have you wind up with five grand and no expenses."

"Five big ones would mean a lot to me."

"I'd give you maybe a month or two before you've blown it. Then what? Working as a bouncer in some club. Earl, you have two skills: screwing and dunking a basketball."

"Former skills."

Earl's arms and legs appeared to retract like landing gear. Behind the close-set gray eyes and the sodden, shoulder-length hair, Terry saw a frightened young boy still living in a maze of old triumphs and dog-eared scrapbooks. Terry realized he had been too severe.

"This could be--I don't know--like a landmark case," he said.

"I like the sound of that. You always thought big," Earl responded, as he unleashed his coiled body, stood upright, spanning the room with his arms extended as though he was going for a rebound after a missed foul shot.

"It's a total crapshoot. Could take years to work it out."

Years! Years! No one liked that plural. He paused, hoping to discourage Earl. The minute a client came into a lawyer's office with a grievance and moldy papers, he was already counting his money. "We'd have to go to the appellate court and appeal if we should lose...If I were to take a case like this, I'd have to be prepared to sue the bastard forever."

Earl knew all about Terry's reputation. He'd heard about it from other lawyers in town who'd already turned him down. One of the old courthouse pros had said: "You get involved with that Terry Brett, it's like dancing with a bear." In five years, he'd won acquittals in a dozen murder cases, made fifty thousand on an arson-extortion setup, and developed an uneasy reputation for knowing how to investigate a case so that the jury felt he probably knew the color of a witness's panties. He was thorough and witty, which gave his briefs an incisiveness that stirred up the city's clubby, old-time firms but endeared him to judges.

"You see, Earl, I'd have to make Jonah Wolfe's life as miserable as your knee feels. This isn't a quick buck for a nuisance suit. You're crippled and it happened when you were on the job. You went up for a rebound in training camp and you were fouled." Terry was merely spinning wheels as he pretended to outline the case for Earl. He concluded, "Actually, I've never done an insurance tort. Let me think it over."

"Least come down to the hospital and talk to my doctor. He'll tell you."

"I've got your number."

"Don't leave it too long, Ter. I have no unemployment left...no disability." Earl sucked in his breath, expanding his chest, firing a water pistol. "Maybe this kind of case is too tough for you."

Terry ignored the lamentable jibe. It compounded desperation and self-pity, typical of Earl's style.

"What puzzles me is that the club should have had you covered for an injury and an ensuing disability."

"They did. But try collecting from an insurance company."

"Did you?" A note of surprise had crept into Terry's voice.

"They told me to tell my story walking. Isn't that something? Like I made it all up, malingered. Please, I'm doing therapy at Good Samaritan. I beg you, do something."

"Earl, this isn't like writing you a term paper. Do you understand that?"

"I've got twelve bucks in my pocket. I can't even take a dump with all the codeine I chug-a-lug."

Terry locked up the office, saw Earl out, and gave him a fifty-dollar bill. But Earl, who always played good defense and clung to his man like a crab, followed him down to the garage. He was tapping his fingers on the roof of Terry's new Shelby Mustang.

"How's your dad?"

"He asks about you," Terry replied, lying.

"Give him my best and...well, I owe him an apology. You probably don't remember. I was going to get him a ticket to the NCAA championship final. But you know me"--a hapless smirk crossed his face--"I laid it on a piece of tail."

"He'll understand."

"Yeah, he's a man's man. In the meantime, counselor, how do I eat?" Terry's car crawled out of the narrow garage, wheeling around some big-assed Lincolns, but Earl was trailing him and holding on to the open window like a beggar in a foreign film.

"Where're you living?"

"Hanging off the rim out of bounds."

"Try getting a job, Earl. I'll even write you a reference."

"I have to prove I can't work, counselor."

"You got me there, pal."

All content © 1998-2001 by Norman Bogner (No Inc.).