Question of Trust
“What?” he said.
“When I met you. The club on Damen.”
When Theo and I had been introduced by my friend Jane, she’d practically shoved us together on a leather booth.
“That’s where it all started,” I reminded him, nudging my hip into his thigh. It was a small gesture that no one else would see but had become one of our habits, a thing we did, just the two of us, a signal that indicated so many things but mainly lust and love (or something like it) in equal servings.
Theo grinned, but it wasn’t one of those looks he usually gave me—one I knew was created just for me, that made me feel as if we were at the center of the universe. (A universe that was kind. And fair. And safe.)
No, it wasn’t that type of look. But unfortunately, I couldn’t read the expression. His mouth, normally so lush, was stretched straight across to show teeth. His eyes were lifeless. Where did you go, Theo?
“Is your dad going to remind me of you?” I asked to pull him back to the present.
“Nah.” He pointed at his dad, who wore a black blazer, clearly expensive, and a large watch. He pointed at the women. “And they are not like you.”
“Who are they?”
“Who knows? They change all the time.” He laughed then. “My dad will never change.”
“Sometimes that’s not a bad thing.” I thought about the changes I’d gone through—the ones my family had gone through—over the past year. Sometimes it felt as if we were hurtling through life at light speed. And many times that was hard to get used to.
We made our way to the booth. When we reached it, the syrupy smiles of the women dropped. All eyes shot to Theo. They all sucked him in with their gazes, shot each other glances that said, Who is THIS? I didn’t blame them one bit.
“Theo!” His father stood and grasped Theo’s hand, throwing his arm around him and thumping him on the back. When we spied him across the bar, Brad Jameson had looked like a player with all the women around him, but now, with Theo, he only looked like a happy, proud parent.
“Hey, Brad.” Theo had told me he called his father by his first name. Always had. I thought it was strange, but I also had one of the strangest father-child relationships around, so I wasn’t one to talk. Theo grasped my elbow gently and pulled me toward him. “This is Izzy.”
“Izzy.” Brad Jameson shook my hand. “I’ve heard wonderful things about you.” He gave me a genuine smile. As with Theo’s mom, I’d wondered if he might have some misgivings about the eight-year age difference between Theo and me, but based on the women at the table, he clearly was a supporter of dating the youth.
We spent an hour talking to Brad and his friend Kent and sometimes talking to the women—LaBree, Jenni (“with an i”) and Erin. (Or Karen? It was some variation on that theme.) LaBree was a cool girl—gorgeous and smart. The other two, though, weren’t much interested in conversation unless one of the men was giving them attention.
When I had the chance, I studied Brad. I couldn’t quite figure him out. I could see that Brad had given Theo his straight, strong jawline, the piercing eyes, the full lips. But those physical traits on Brad couldn’t help him in the crowd of injection-perfected twentysomethings. To me, he appeared like an older, somewhat shrunken version of Theo.
But he was pleasant enough and appeared to be a smart guy. Every so often, when LaBree went to the restroom, he and I had the chance to talk, just the two of us. The topics flowed from the Chicago political climate to a trip he’d taken years ago to hike in Machu Picchu, something he wanted to do again.
At one point in our conversation, I’d asked him the question at the top of my mind. “Theo told you he was turned down …”
Before I could even finish, or decide whether I should finish, he answered, “… For a mortgage?”
“Yeah. Why do you think that happened?”
Brad nodded right away. “It’s killing me. Theo has worked so hard. I don’t know what’s going on. HeadFirst just has to figure out their situation here and overseas. But hopefully, it’ll …”
LaBree returned then, and Theo, whose mood seemed to have lifted a little, began telling a story about a surf trip to Mexico. I watched Brad, and it was evident he adored his son, nodding enthusiastically, looking around as if to make sure everyone was noticing how wonderful Theo was. And since I thought Theo was wonderful, too (even with his absent nature the past few days), that made me like Brad Jameson a lot.
And then that voice coming from my right—“Izzy?”
My ex and I now blinked at each other, the thump-chucka-thump-chucka-thump of music reverberating around us.
In all the time since we’d broken up, we had never simply run into each other.
Sam’s blond hair had grown a bit long, darkened a little in the months since I’d seen him. His skin, too, was more fair than usual, but all this only made his green eyes more intense, like emeralds dropped in the snow.
Seeing Sam someplace random was something I’d feared for a while. What if we bumped into each other and he was with new/old girlfriend Alyssa? It would be so awkward, so … sad.
But thankfully my fears never materialized, and, in fact, I had stopped fearing it all together. And yet, here we were—Sam with his green, green eyes, and me in a booth with Theo, his father, his father’s friend and some very, very hot, young girls.
Sam looked at our little group, blinking. I glanced past him, fearing the sight of Alyssa, but only saw R.T., Sam’s musician friend, who wore a small smile that he was clearly trying to stop from spreading across his face at this amusing turn of events. I waved at R.T., and he waved back, then pointed toward the back, gesturing that he’d return in a minute.
I climbed over LaBree and Brad, careful not to flash anyone. For a moment, I regretted my dress and high-heeled boots. But when I saw Sam’s eyes drag up and down my body, revealing what I knew to be pure lust, I was grateful.
I took a step toward Sam and we embraced—a kind of brisk, pat-pat hug that was more like something you’d share with a cousin.
Theo stood from the booth, too, and I felt his presence next to me. I gestured between the two men. “Theo, this is Sam. Sam, Theo.” I almost giggled inappropriately, the moment was so weird.
Theo knew who Sam was and said, “Oh, hey, man. Great to meet you.”
He stepped forward and shook Sam’s hand, pumping it congenially, if a little forcefully.
Sam had heard about Theo this past summer when I was in Italy and Theo had come over to visit me. He knew I’d been dating someone, but I’d never used Theo’s name when we’d briefly discussed it. In fact, Sam had seemed uninterested, as if he preferred to not know the details. But now the details were right in front of him.
Sam’s eyes squinted for a moment, as if trying to figure out or remember who Theo was. Recognition broke across his face and he seemed to take in all of Theo then, all his gorgeousness. He shot me a look that I actually couldn’t read, then turned back to Theo. “Hi. Nice to meet you, too.”
“So what’re you doing here?” I asked.
“R.T. is the sound guy for some band that’s playing in the back room. Some party.” He said nothing further, asked nothing of me, and so we stared uncomfortably, my mind scrambling for conversation and finding none.
“What about you guys?” Sam said finally, the phrase you guys ringing like a self-conscious bell.
“We’re just hanging with my dad,” Theo said.
Brad disentangled from LaBree and slid out of the booth so Theo could introduce them. Sam reached out to shake hands when Erin/Karen barreled through from the dance floor with Kent in tow. She clamored into the booth, apparently not caring whether she flashed anyone her underwear (which matched her dress—what little there was of it). Kent dove in after her, grabbing her ass on his way. Karen/Erin giggled and reached for a bottle. Sam seemed to be waiting for an explanation of their presence as I tried to force my face into an expression less appalled and embarrassed.
“Brad Jameson,” Theo’s dad said, his voice loud in order to be heard over the music, offering Sam his hand.
Sam responded by shaking Brad’s hand, smiling gamely. “Nice to meet you. So you guys—”
But Sam was cut off by LaBree, who scooted between them, then reached up and planted a wet kiss on Brad’s neck, her hand sliding down his back. She whispered something into his ear and walked off toward the dance floor.
Brad stared appreciatively at LaBree’s body.
“Very nice to meet you,” he said to Sam earnestly. But then his gaze drifted. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said without looking at any of us, then headed off after LaBree.
Suddenly, I found myself alone between Sam and Theo again. I looked from one to the other. Strange, strange, strange. I liked both of them so much. They were two of my favorite people in the world. I felt like saying to Theo, Isn’t he great? Isn’t he cool? To Sam, I wanted to say, Okay, how hot is this guy? And isn’t he so sweet and smart?
I knew that wasn’t the way to go, however, and so, uncharacteristically, I once again found myself mute. A long awkward moment ticked by.
Theo was the one who finally spoke. He gestured at the table. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, I’m cool. Thanks.” Sam looked at me. “I should find R.T.”
“Right. Yeah.”
Theo looked between the two of us, giving me an expression I couldn’t read, then excused himself and left.
Sam and I just smiled at each other. “So how’s …” I stopped. I couldn’t say it. How’s Alyssa?
But Sam, apparently, could still read me. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not …?” I glanced down at his left hand. No ring.
“Alyssa and I broke up. After we …” He pointed between himself and me.
After we almost got back together this past summer.
I felt bad at how happy I was that he wasn’t with Alyssa anymore—perfect, tiny, blonde Alyssa, his high school sweetheart, who seemed to love Sam even more than I had.
Sam glanced behind him. “I should see if R.T. needs any help.”
“Sure. I’ll come back there later and say hi.”
But when I did, there was no sign of Sam.
13
When Theo and I got home from the club, Theo turned on his Xbox to play Madden NFL Football. He played against people around the country and won a lot. Still, it was almost one in the morning.
“You’re playing now?“ I asked him.
“Yeah, I just need to blow off a little steam.” Theo scrolled through the Xbox menu, trying to find an opponent at his level.
I sat in my favorite yellow-and-white chair, yet it failed to comfort me as it often did. “Did you have fun with your dad?”
After Sam had left, I’d spent an hour trying to listen to LaBree and Brad, who were talking about the patent LaBree was working on and that Brad was helping her with—some kind of invention to hold bra straps in random places. The product actually sounded rather smart, but I couldn’t focus. Kept replaying over and over my run-in with Sam. Then Theo and his dad began having what looked like a serious discussion, and soon after that he had been ready to leave.
“Fun probably isn’t the word for it,” Theo said now.
“Right,” I said. Then, “What is the word for it?”
He didn’t reply, just clicked a button to enter a game.
I put my head against the back of the chair for a minute. Then I lifted it again. “Hey, have you ever given anyone the code for the door?” I asked him. “Talking to Vaughn yesterday made me think about it.”
“I haven’t given it to anyone.” Theo mashed a few buttons. “If you think about it, anyone from the street could watch and see us using the code, then use it to get in when we’re not around.”
“But why not steal something if you’re going to all that trouble?”
Theo stayed silent, his jawline set.
“What about people you’re with when you come in the front door?” I asked.
“Like who?”
“Well, didn’t you meet Eric here before that show at the Congress the other night?”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Did you come here from work together?”
Theo nodded, tucked a lank of light brown hair behind his ear.
“So he could have seen you entering the code downstairs.”
“What about people who’ve been here with you?” Theo said leaning toward the TV.
“Spence was with me a few months ago. Other than that …” I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “My mom was with me once, too, but she already has the code.”
“What about Sam?” There was a little something bristly in Theo’s tone.
“What about him?”
“Does he have the code?”
“No, I’m sure I changed it since we broke up. But wait … There was that time that we hung out.” I shook my head. “But no, that wasn’t here.”
“What do you mean, you hung out?”
My stomach clenched, as if I had something to hide. And I guess I did. “Last summer. We met up. He’d gotten engaged …”
“And he said he’d get back together with you if you wanted.”
“Yeah.”
He focused on his game.
“What?” I said to his back. “What’s wrong?”
He kept playing for a moment or two, then paused the Xbox. He turned around from his seat on the ottoman, and now we faced each other. “There’s something between you guys,” he said.
“Oh, is there?” I started thinking about it. He was right. Even though we’d hugged like fishing buddies, I’d seen the way Sam looked at me. “I mean, there will always be something, right? We were sorta family, you know? Almost sorta married.” It sounded sorta brainless and deranged.
“When’s the last time you saw each other?” Theo asked. “Before tonight.”
“Hmm.” I thought to myself. “Maybe at the hotel? No, no, it was after that. In court.” I focused back in on Theo. “Yeah, in court during Valerie’s trial.”
“What hotel are you talking about?”
“Oh, you know. What’s it called? The one right off of Michigan Avenue? The Peninsula, that’s what it is!” I sounded way too enthusiastic, and I was talking faster than normal.
“So you guys went to the bar at the hotel, right?”
“Yes,” I said with assuredness. So far I hadn’t lied. I just hoped he didn’t ask any more questions.
“And then did you go upstairs?” The hope got shot out of the sky. “Like, did you get a room?”
Oh, this was not good. Not good. Not good. “Here’s the thing …” How to explain this?
Theo crossed his arms and looked at me with something approaching disappointment on his face.
“Here’s the thing …” I tried again. “We did get a room, but we didn’t use it, if you know what I mean. We didn’t sleep together.”
We had, in fact, made out in a major way, and there was some nudity, but no sex.
“You never told me that,” Theo said, the disappointment apparent.
“There was nothing to tell. We wanted to see if there was anything left between us to rekindle. There wasn’t. We weren’t right for each other.”
Silence.
“We aren’t,” I said, liking the present tense of that word better. “We aren’t right for each other.”
“Whatever.” Theo turned and picked up the game controller.
“Are you mad?”
Nothing.
“Jealous?” I was oddly flattered at the thought, but I didn’t want him to feel bad. I stepped behind him and began to rub his shoulders. He shrugged me off.
“Look,” Theo said without stopping his game, “we’re not married. You can do what you want…. And so can I.” He started mashing the buttons harder and harder until he growled in frustration and tossed the controller to the floor. “Damn it,” he blurted as Game Over flashed across the screen.
“I’m going to bed,” he mumbled with a gruffness I wasn’t ready for. Then he strode purposefully to the bedroom and slammed the door.
14
If I thought that once I joined Bristol & Associates my life would be one big, rollicking murder trial after another, I was wrong.
“Your Honor,” I said, “the defense requests supervision on this matter. As you know, Mr. Hemphill—” I gestured to the fourteen-year-old kid on my right “—does have one other obscene-conduct offense involving public urination. However—”
I heard a little snort. I glanced at Johnny Hemphill, Maggie’s cousin’s kid, who tried to conceal a laugh. He’d told me when we first met that he couldn’t help it. He found the term public urination funny. It hadn’t helped when Johnny’s father, sitting next to him, also guffawed.
Johnny shot me an apology shrug.
I tried to muster a glare, but these kinds of cases didn’t inspire me enough to do so.
Since we’d started working together, Maggie insisted that handling criminal defense matters that were small and mundane was good for me. She said I had to learn the ropes of Chicago’s criminal legal world, and the only way to do that was to start from the ground floor. So when her neighbor’s brother’s boss got a speeding ticket or Maggie’s grandfather’s dry cleaner was accused of stealing a pearl button from someone’s coat, Maggie assigned me as the go-to girl. Maggie said that criminal defense warriors like her had to take a lot of these little cases because your brilliant handling of them put you on people’s speed dial. Then the dry cleaner would call you from jail after a hit-and-run accident and the boss might give you a quick jingle when he was arrested for sexual harassment or when some other large-ticket, moneymaking, cunning-intelligence-required case emerged.
I understood the marketing aspect. And I also knew lawyers had to be available for their clients on matters both great and gratuitous. Even more, I needed busy-ness to distract me from thinking about Theo—Theo and HeadFirst, and more important, Theo and me.
Now, I scrounged up a stern look for Johnny Hemphill, then squared my shoulders back to the judge. Raising my right index finger, I made my impassioned plea for one more round of supervision for this kid who simply thought it was funny to pee behind the movie theater on Roosevelt Avenue.
Thankfully, I won. This is the last time, the judge had intoned, looking at me and not Mr. Hemphill.
I thanked him, did a geisha-esque bow and hustled out of the courtroom before he could change his mind, leaving Johnny with his guffawing father.
I took the elevator to the first floor of the courthouse at 26th and California Avenue and ran to the big bulletin board that hung on the wall. There, sheets of paper in rows were tacked, each listing a courtroom and the cases to be called that day. Next to each case number was a description—armed robbery, murder, assault, drug trafficking, etc.—the sight of which made me remember I was far, far away from the civil courthouse where I used to spend all my professional time.
I elbowed and jostled my way toward the front of the small crowd huddled there, everyone craning their necks. Maggie had assigned me four cases to handle that morning, but I’d forgotten to find out what courtrooms they were in. Frantically, I searched the multitude of papers. The 26th Street Shuffle, I’d heard other criminal lawyers call days like this.
As I ran toward the elevator, I paused for a brief second, as I always did, in the old vestibule of the courthouse. And maybe it was that pause that allowed me to feel the faint vibration from my shoulder bag. I glanced at my watch. I had more time than I thought—at least five minutes until I had to be in Judge Johnson’s courtroom. I pulled the phone from my bag.
My father. I hadn’t been able to call him back since he called yesterday while I was at brunch. I hadn’t seen my dad in almost a week, and I knew he had no one in this town. He’d been here only a few months. He’d been in our lives only a few months. And it had occurred to me that when I’d seen him at the diner last week, he had said something to me—You can tell me if you ever want help. If anything isn’t all right. I’d been wondering if he might have been referring to himself, subconsciously or not.
On the far side of the vestibule were marble stairs, each worn sufficiently in the middle from the hundreds who had climbed them in the hopes of justice.
I sat on the first one and was about to answer the phone when a security guard started toward me. “Miss,” he said, “you can’t …”
I knew what he was about to say. The stairs were closed now, part of the old glory of the building, the glory that had mostly given way to ruin.
I gave the guy a pleading smile.
He raised his hand and gave me the you’ve-got-one-minute gesture, then respectfully turned his back.
“Hi,” I said to my dad. “So sorry I haven’t called you back yet, I’ve been running from one thing to another.” And trying to figure out what’s going on with my boyfriend and worrying even more now that I confessed I’d been with Sam. And didn’t exactly tell him the whole story of that night, which had come very, very close to being sex-filled.
“Boo, I’ve got some bad news.”
“Bad news …” My stomach clenched.
“It’s about Theo.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected that. My father had met Theo only once, only briefly.
My dad paused. And it was a weighty silence.
“What?” I said.
“Something’s going on with him.”
True. “How do you know that?”
He sighed. “Izzy …” There was a slight layer of irritation in his voice.
“I know. I should stop asking how you know these things. But it’s just—” what was the word? “—off-putting.” My father had disappeared from our lives decades ago. But he had watched us during that time. (I suppose I would say “watched over us,” except that would make him sound angelic, which wasn’t exactly right.)
“It’s not good, Izzy,” my father said.
I’d gotten better over the past year at taking bad news. And things were easier, I learned, if such news was simply laid out flat.
True to form, my father gave it to me. “Theo is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
15
Bristol & Associates was on LaSalle Street near Monroe in an old high-rise, home to a host of criminal defense firms. Like 26th and Cal, you could tell the lobby was once impressive, but now the marble was yellowed and the lighting spotty.
On the tenth floor, Bristol & Associates wasn’t much better. Maggie and her grandfather made more than enough money to afford a sleek office overlooking the Chicago River, but like many criminal defense firms, they didn’t care about image. They cared about the work, the clients and the cash. Q had already started a campaign to get them to move. So far, Maggie and Martin had been impervious.
I walked in and blew by the receptionist, Leslie. Usually, I stopped and talked to her, or at least waved. She called out to me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I lied. I was still replaying the conversation with my father in my mind.
“He’s what?“ I had blurted after my dad said those words—Theo is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
I knew Theo had financial issues. Or his company did. But how did any of that rise to the level of a federal/criminal investigation? I tried to muster all I’d learned from Maggie over the past few months as I shifted from civil to criminal work, but there were too many layers of feeling and concern for me to sort through them for possible facts.
“We’d better meet,” my father had said.
“Does Theo know this?” As soon as I’d asked the question, I heard its odd nature. Why was I asking my father what my boyfriend might or might not know?
“Doesn’t look like it from what I can tell,” he said.
“Then I have to tell him. I should—”
“No,” my father said forcefully. “I didn’t get this information from … uh … mainstream sources.”
“Do you ever?”
“Izzy,” he said with a cautionary tone like you would with a young kid. Instead of pissing me off, it reminded me of being a kid. When he was still around. When he was still a regular dad.