Jim Courter: Symmetry
The lawyer’s wife came to me first. It had been over three weeks since my last job, a blackmail case, and I was beginning to wonder where the money for the next month’s rent on my office would come from. Across the room she looked moderately attractive. As she neared my desk that impression faded. She might have been in her mid-thirties, but age was already catching up to her in some unfortunate ways.
“You’re Mr. Pool?” she said.
I smiled and nodded. “Barry Pool. Private investigations.”
“I’m Michelle Jennings,” she said. “I’d like to hire you.”
“I’d like that, too,” I said. “What is it you want me to do?”
“I think my husband is being unfaithful to me, and I need to know, one way or the other.”
“How long have you suspected this?”
“A couple of months.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
She winced. “I guess I was in denial.”
“What makes you suspicious?”
“Nothing concrete,” she said. “No lipstick on the collar or the smell of a strange perfume. It’s mostly a look in his eye, a preoccupied mood. He’s not as ready for sex as he used to be, although he blames me for that. He works at night sometimes, or so he says, but when I call him there he doesn’t answer. Will you take the case?”
“That depends. If you want photos of him caught in the act, those can be difficult to come by.”
She shook her head. “All I want is word from you that he appears to be playing around.”
“I’ll need to know what he looks like.”
She pulled a wallet-sized photo from her purse and handed it to me. It was a candid in which he stood sideways but with his head turned to face the camera, as if he knew his picture was about to be taken. His hair was thin; his most prominent feature was a big belly. She told me his name was Terry Driscoll and that he was forty years old. “He’s five-eight and about two-thirty-five. He’s a partner at Ruffin, Driscoll and Page downtown. I own a spa and gym in Brookfield.”
“What does he drive?”
“A silver Lexus.”
I told her my fee and how much I’d need as a retainer. She got her check book out and wrote in it. She tore out a check and pushed it across the desk.
“When can you start?” she said.
I looked at the calendar on my desk, then at my watch.
“This afternoon. When does your husband get off work when he doesn’t, um, work nights?”
#
Finding evidence of Terry Driscoll’s infidelity was easy. The web site for Ruffin, Driscoll and Page included pictures and bios of the partners and associates. Among the latter group, a female named Lenore Brady caught my eye. I thought I could see in her face the ambition to make full partner. That seemed a good place to start.
The firm’s offices were in a building on Plankinton Avenue, west of the Milwaukee River. I staked out in a parking lot across the street with a view of the exit from its ground-level parking.
On the first day Terry Driscoll drove out at four-thirty. I got behind him and followed him to a house in Waukesha. The address matched the one on his wife’s check. The next day, a little after noon, he left the building in his silver Lexus with a female in the passenger seat. It looked like Lenore Brady. I followed.
They went north through town and the suburbs all the way to Port Washington. They pulled into the lot of a Holiday Inn on the inner harbor, got out and went in. I parked in a far corner of the lot and waited.
They came out at 5:30 and walked to a restaurant. He was shorter than her, and she looked to be in better shape. I followed on foot and watched from a coffee shop across the street. Around seven they left the restaurant and walked back to the hotel. A half hour later they reappeared and got in the Lexus and headed back south. I tailed them to the building on Plankinton. He drove into the basement. A few minutes later a Chevy Malibu emerged with Lenore Brady at the wheel, followed by Terry Driscoll in his Lexus. They went in different directions.
The next day I called Michelle Jennings at her spa. She was at my office within an hour. I told her I had clear indication that her husband was having an affair.
She nodded slowly, assimilating, then said, “Do you know who it is?”
“Yes.”
She bit her lower lip, closed her eyes, opened them and held up a hand.
She said, “I’ve been telling myself I only wanted to know whether, not who, and I’m sticking to that. For now, anyway. How much do I owe you?” She seemed to want closure to fight the temptation to change her mind.
I told her. She wrote a check then got up to leave. She opened the door, hesitated, then went through and closed it.
And that, I thought, was that.
A couple of days later Terry Driscoll showed up at my office.
Dum-da-dum-dum.
My first thought was that he had caught wind of his wife’s having hired me or that he had spotted me tailing him, figured out who I was and tracked me to my lair. If so, to do what? Negotiate? Intimidate?
When he sat, his pants belt disappeared beneath his stomach. He had the shifting eyes of a man who was uncomfortable in his own skin.
“My name’s Terry Driscoll,” he said.
I resisted telling him I knew that.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said.
“I want you to find out if my wife is being unfaithful to me.”
I wasn’t surprised that a cheater objected to being cheated on. Given my jaded view of human nature, I’d have been surprised if he didn’t. I asked him to elaborate. His suspicions roughly paralleled his wife’s. He even said she was less interested in sex and blamed him for that. I listened as if I hadn’t gone through the same routine—regarding him—only days before. As with her, I spoke of the difficulty of coming up with photographic evidence.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Just find out who it is. I’ll deal with the bastard myself.”
For about ten seconds I wrestled with the question of whether taking Terry Driscoll’s case after just having finished with his wife’s, regarding him, constituted a conflict of interest. I decided it didn’t. My only reservation was Driscoll’s implied threat.
“Do you own a gun?” I said.
“No,” he said “but I might go out and get one if you confirm my suspicions. Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t like the idea of giving you information that you’ll use as a pretext for murder.”
“Just find out if she’s cheating,” he said. “We can talk about that later.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I let it ride. I remembered what I had charged his wife, added fifty percent, and charged him that up front. If he balked, I’d turn him down.
He pulled a checkbook and a pen from the inside pocket of his suit coat and started writing.
#
Proof of Terry Driscoll’s wife’s infidelity was no harder to come by than proof of his. After only a few days of staking her out and tailing her and digging through records, I had seen enough to confirm Terry Driscoll’s suspicions that she was cheating on him, and with whom.
The guy putting horns on his head was Ralph McNeese. Among his numerous real estate holdings was the string of shops that included Michelle Jennings’ spa and gym. Another was an apartment complex nearby, where they enjoyed long lunch hours in what I presumed was an unrented unit. He was also the husband of Lenore Brady. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser.
Five days after his visit to my office, Terry Driscoll was back. I told him what I had learned, without giving him Ralph McNeese’s name.
“I want to know who it is,” he said, belligerent and demanding.
I shook my head.
“I haven’t bought a gun,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean you won’t,” I said, “or that you can’t get your hands on one, or that you won’t find some other way to commit mayhem. I have to think of how it would look to the people who issue licenses for the kind of work I do if I aided and abetted a homicide.”
“Fine, pal,” he said. “You just talked yourself out of whatever else I owe you. And I guarantee you I’ll find out anyway.”
He walked out.
That was okay. After calculating my time and expenses, he had already overpaid me.
#
Having made some decent money in the past couple of weeks, I felt like celebrating. I called my girlfriend Jill Frye to make a date—dinner at a pub and micro brewery on Water Street, to be followed by a Bucks game.
We had finished up and were getting ready to leave when in walked a foursome out on a double date: Terry Driscoll and Michelle Jennings, Ralph McNeese and Lenore Brady. They took a table between us and the entrance. Jill had her back to them. I hunkered down in my seat and leaned sideways so that Jill was in the line of sight between them and me.
If we waited out the happy foursome, we’d miss the start of the Bucks game. I considered going past them on the way out, even greeting Michelle Jennings and Terry Driscoll by name, to see how they might react, but thought better of it. A waiter passed. I waved him over and asked if he’d tell Arnie, the night manager, that I wanted to talk to him. Arnie came.
“I need a favor, Arn,” I said. “Can we exit through the kitchen and out the back?”
“No problem,” Arnie said. Jill gave me a puzzled look but didn’t ask for an explanation.
#
On Monday afternoon of the next week Ralph McNeese walked through my door, crossed the room, and sat in a client chair. It took all the willpower I had to resist saying, Let me guess, Mr. McNeese, you want me to confirm or deny your suspicion that your wife is being unfaithful.
“My name’s Ralph McNeese,” he said, “and I want to hire you to find out if my bitch of a wife is cheating on me.”
He was about the same build as Terry Driscoll, although shorter and heavier, but he didn’t share Driscoll’s insecurity. Just the opposite, in fact. One of the enduring mysteries of the universe is on what basis the Ralph McNeeses of the world manage to acquire arrogance. But there he sat—short and flabby, with oily skin and bulging eyes—exuding smug arrogance like a rank odor. The only way I could see Michelle Jennings in bed with him was if he was giving her a break on her rent.
Before I could ask him to fill in the details, the phone rang.
“Do you mind if I answer that?” I said.
“Go ahead.”
I lifted the receiver. A woman’s voice said, “I’d like to make an appointment.”
I asked for her name and why she wanted to see me.
“My name’s Lenore Brady. I want to know if my husband is cheating on me.”
“When would you like to come?”
She gave me a date and time.
“I’ll see you then,” I said, and hung up.
I wrote LB and 1:30 in the square for Wednesday and looked at Ralph McNeese to see if he had heard his wife’s voice through the receiver. Apparently he hadn’t.
“Thanks for your patience, Mr. McNeese,” I said. “Now, you were saying?” DSS
Jim Courter, of Macomb, IL., is an emeritus writing instructor at Western Illinois University, a winner of an Illinois Arts Council award for short fiction, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has been widely published, and his novel, Rhymes with Fool, was published in 2018 by Peasantry Press.
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