Chapter 6
"I agreed to suspension only on condition that the child is removed from the custody of the parents-both parents, your honor. If this is not to be met, if there is any attempt on the part of defense counsel to defeat this condition, then the suite will press for full trial and maximum charges.
"I want the public defender to tell me now exactly what it is she intends to plead and how-"
"Easy, Mr. Delaney, easy! And you, Ms. Delacroix, either you wish to plea bargain, or you don't. On the other hand, if you find that the evidence does in fact leave room for reasonable doubt, then-well, I don't think! have to fill in your options, do I?
"And I understand you have advised your clients in accordance with your initial agreement with Mr. Delaney here, and that they do understand that they will have to relinquish custody of their daughter, for the remaining year and a half to her majority.
"As she is now in the custody of the Children and Family Services Unit right now, that surely can work no emotional hardship on these folks now, can it?"
"They did ask that I try one more time, your honor."
"Try what, Delacroix? Try to have their cake and eat it too?
"Give 'em another shot at her?"
"That will do, Mr. Delaney! And lower your voice! What is the point of approaching the bench if everyone can hear you anyway?
"Okay, does everybody know what they're going to do?"
Mumbled assent from Delaney and the public defender.
"Very well then, step back."
"In the matter of the people versus ..."
Delaney drifts through the dockets, his responses mechanical, automatic, clearing his files with plea bargains.
"Mister Delaney, may I see you in chambers?"
"Certainly, your honor."
"Help me out of this thing, will you, Howard? "Goddam bursitis! Fucks up my golf game, too." Delaney helps the judge off with his robe. The judge sits behind his desk in his shirtsleeves, motioning Delaney to sit opposite him.
"Howard, I don't like what I see happening here.
"Nobody likes a bully, Howard-not in the schoolyard, not in the criminal justice system.
"And you, Howard, are a bully."
"Listen, Bill, we're supposed to plea bargain, so I plea bargain.
"We're overcrowded, jail-wise, docket-wise, so we're supposed to go the suspension and probation route. I'm doing that."
"Howard, don't make the mistake of insulting my intelligence, okay?
"You want me to identify the pattern of your modus operandi?
"Every case involving a minor results in the parents' having to agree beforehand to relinquish custody of the child or children to the age of emancipation.
"Or I should say every such case involving you as prosecutor.
"And I understand that the term 'plea bargain' in your case is actually 'plea ultimatum'. I understood exactly where poor Ms. Delacroix was coming from this morning, Howard.
"She wanted to see if she could try an end run around you to get at this thing we laughingly call justice.
"You uh, you planning on running for DA in the next election, Howard, protector of the helpless and like that?"
"No, Bill," Delaney replies, sighing, hands tented before him, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.
"You uh, you had an unhappy childhood, perhaps? Some sort of sexual abuse by your parents, an older brother, what?"
"Nothing like that, Bill."
"Then just what is your problem, Howard?
"Your use of my court as an assembly line to strip parents of their children, or children of their parents, depending on one's point of view, like you're shucking corn is, is ... phenomenal.
"And that is most specifically not a compliment.
"You realize, Howard, that you are, in essence, trying to write your own peculiar statute?
"You are making law, Howard, and that is not your place, your prerogative, or your function."
"They can take it or leave it, Bill," Delaney shrugs.
"That's exactly my point, Howard! They can give up their children, or they can go directly to jail, in which case they will also give up their children.
"That's not plea bargaining, Howard, that's extortion! That's fucking blackmail, and you damn well know it! Hell, it's practically legalized kidnapping!"
"Because they're better off," Delany says, flatly.
"Besides, why take chances?"
"We are here to take chances, Howard. We are here to grant the benefit of the doubt. We have, we offer, we are empowered to decree family counseling."
"Don't need it."
"Oho, that's very true, according to your way of doing things, Howard!
"Dissolve the family, and naturally, family counseling becomes an absurdity."
"Neat, isn't it?" Delaney enunciates sharply, his "t"s exploding wetly in the air.
"Don't be flip with me, Howard."
"What are you tryna tell me here, Bill?"
"I'm telling you to change your way of doing things-immediately."
"Or?"
"Or I'm recommending you to the state attorney for reassignment out of the County Sexual Battery Unit."
"To?"
"The killer whale."
The killer whale. ORCA. Acronym and abbreviation for Office of Regulatory and Contract Administration.
"There's simply no place in the criminal justice system for somebody with an attitude like the one you're showing me-me, defense attorneys, the public defenders, and before you know it, the ACLU or some other watchdog group.
"You're unwilling to give society a chance with some of these people and I'm telling you society can no longer take a chance on you, Howard."
"If you saw the things I have, Bill-"
"Don't ever patronize me, Howard! I'm a good fifteen years older than you, most of those years spent in the same system of which you and I are a part.
"You're going to tell me all about a domineering, quite possibly demented, head of household, sometimes married, sometimes not, to the mother figure, she of the low self-esteem, the fear and the servility, helpless in the face of the head gorilla's wishes, unwilling and/or unable to defend her offspring from his outrages, right?"
"So if you know all this, Bill, then why-"
"Why? I'll tell you why!
"Just how long do you think it takes for one of these monsters to get set up someplace else on the same basis as before, Howard?
"You think you're controlling the contagion, but I'm here to tell you that you're merely spreading it instead.
"The first thing that happens is the guy ditches the old lady, who by this time is of secondary interest at best, in any event.
"He leaves our jurisdiction, all legal and proper, proving to us that he's got a legitimate job offer in, say, California, and he becomes their problem.
"Instead of having to get along with his seventeen year old step-daughter under court supervision, he now finds himself getting along with a fourteen or fifteen year old-and of course, her horny douchebag mama.
"And that, Howard, is what you're accomplishing."
"Okay, Bill, you've made your point. I'll see what I can do."
"And so will I, Howard. See what you can do, that is."
The judge gets up, Delaney's cue to do the same.
The judge, hand on Delaney's back, shows him out the door, saying, "I will give ya this much, Howard; you really know how t'clear a docket!"
They laugh, but Delaney's mirth ceases abruptly, as soon as the judge's door closes.
"Howard!"
Same housecoat, same glass in hand. Instant replay, Delaney thinks. Dj vu.
Except that this time, they can skip the preliminaries-except that Delaney doesn't want to.
He wants her body; he despises the woman herself.
He wants to see her anguish, wants her to debase herself before him for what she has done to Susan.
She's a piece of shit, he reflects, thinking that shit never looked so good.
"I was wondering, I mean I was hoping you'd uh, you'd be ... in the neighborhood again," Diedre says, voice breathy, Marilyn Monroe at her respiratory best.
"Found your daughter," Howard says, brushing past her, flopping on the couch.
"You, you did?" she asks, seating herself on the edge of the couch, facing him.
"Right here in the big city."
"How uh, how is she?"
He looks at her, face of stone, replying, "As well as can be expected, under the circumstances."
"I, I don't understand, Howard. What's that supposed to mean?"
"Know a guy named Murray?"
"I, I'm not exactly sure-"
"Y'should, Diedre; after all, he's the one you filed the complaint against."
"But, but I didn't know who she, I mean who it was taping all those high school girls."
"That I can well believe; after all, you and he are sort of old friends, actually, aren't cha?"
She looks at him, wide-eyed in her anxiety.
"In fact," Delaney continues, not looking at her, watching Oprah making earnest chimp faces as he grabs the remote and turns down the volume on the TV, "you met Larry through him.
"So I guess y'could say that ole Murray is a friend of the family."
And now he looks at her, saying flatly, "You really could say that, couldn't you?"
"I, I'm really sorry I started the whole thing, Howard. I just didn't want Susan to be tricked into doing the same thing I-"
"That's really quite touching, Diedre. You have three-way sex in front of Murray's camera with a two-way maniac named Larry, .something about the way he sucks jism outta your cunt and ass hole turns you on, love at first sight an' like that, an' you bring him home to be a regular father figure for Susan.
"The three of you go into a four-year orgy, recorded for posterity-at the end of which you don't want Murray, who is about as tricky as taking a leak, leading your daughter-your adult daughter-astray, hence your complaint against person or persons unknown, engaged in the production of pornographic VCR tapes."
"He moved. She told me where she went and what she did. She didn't name names."
"Diedre, Diedre, Diedre. Whatever are we going to do with you?"
"I withdrew the complaint, didn't I?" she asks, tone sullen, resentful.
"You withdrew the complaint. You cost Murray a small fortune, cost the taxpayers a bundle, had no impact whatever on Susan-who, by the way sends her regards."
"She does?" Diedre asks, brightening.
"Oh yes indeed, she does!"
"What did she say, exactly?"
"Well, it was more of a visual thing, Diedre. I mean, if I'd of had a camcorder with me, I coulda done a better job playing messenger boy, but I think I can recall the scene, blow by blow.
"First of all, Diedre is living with someone. A woman named Helen. Sort of looks like you, Helen does. Looks a lot like you, matter of fact-especially with her clothes off.
"Y'see, the reason I know that is that Diedre led her-and me-upstairs in their little split level duplex and they took off their clothes-"
"I'm not sure I wanna hear this," Diedre says, tone apprehensive.
"But you have to, Deedee dearest after all, like I say, this was for your benefit, a sort of message in mime, an art I held in singularly low regard, until that moment.
"Anyway, to make a long story short, they ate each other-just as they did on the tape Murray made of them, which, by the way, has been cleared for distribution, much the same distribution, one would think, as the one you and Larry did with some muscle type four years ago.
"They uh, they did manage to get each other off, by the way.
"Tell me, Diedre, when you and Larry had your ménage trios-the one with Susan, that is, not to be confused with the classic tape of the same name-did Larry ever have you and Susan become, shall we say ... intimate?"
"Yes. Yes he did. He made us do it. His idea, and always with him involved some way."
"And when Larry left? After he left?"
"We, we stopped, of course. I mean, it was never our, never my idea; just something on which Larry insisted, if uh, if we were to continue to be ... a family."
"A family. In other words, you and Larry sleeping in the same bed, as opposed to Larry sleeping with Susan and you odd cunt out, right?"
"Something like that, yes."
"Don't you mean exactly like that?" Delaney persists, using his finest prosecutorial demeanor, in the absence of a defense attorney to jump up, objecting that Delaney is badgering the witness.
"Yes," she responds, weakly, eyes downcast.
Delaney looks at her, intellectually understanding exactly what went on, but from a logical standpoint failing to comprehend.
How could it be? How was it possible?
Because look, just look at the woman!
That face! That bod! Those boobs!
And Larry? Larry was, basically, a nothing, was all flash and no substance.
A hot number without the presence to back it up, was Larry.
And yet, here is this woman, a woman for which an Arab sheik would pay a king's ransom a couple times over, wrapped around his little finger, willing to do anything to please, to hold onto him.
Nor is this, in his experience a unique phenomenon.
Something about such men, something about such women that was, is archetypal in their chemistry, their interaction.
A woman other men would worship in thrall to a man who worships only himself, however lacking in justification such self-adulation might be.
A woman whom, in other times, under other circumstances, Delaney would have set upon a pedestal.
Instead, a Larry has come along, defiling all he touches, her included, her above all, actually.
A man he has never met has trampled on, has pissed on his taste in women, Delaney reflects.
And there is nothing, nothing, nothing he can do about it, other than to punish her for her lousy taste in men.
And yet, he wants her.
He doesn't want her as the love of his life; that has been ruined, has been destroyed for him by Larry, by Larry and whatever the foul magic was that existed between Larry and Diedre, whatever that corrosive, destructive attraction is that exists between such men and such women.
So that the only way left for him to want her is physically, is salaciously, as down and dirty, perhaps, as was Larry himself, as is Larry himself, wherever he is right now.
And, like Larry, he is enjoying the agony he is causing her, feeding a dark, evil, gloating glee at her discomfiture, her unhappiness.
"She hates you, you know," he says, quietly.
And Diedre doesn't answer, merely nods her head in acknowledgement, biting her lower lip.
He lets her think that one over, lets it sink in, lets her dwell, in her own mind, on how very much she deserves to be hated by Susan, how very much she deserves to suffer, to be eaten alive by that hatred.
And the really clever, really cunning thing here is that she doesn't suspect, hasn't got a clue that, beneath that hatred, behind his manipulation of her- and oh yes, he is manipulating her every bit as much as Larry ever did, only more subtly, with far greater expertise-is a hatred and a resentment he bears her, perhaps as great in its own way as Susan's, even though with far less justification.
He hates her because of her hatred of herself.
He is disgusted with her because of her now well deserved self-disgust.
He holds her in low esteem because of her own low self-esteem, she who had everything it takes for her to have been the perfect woman for him-the operational word here being "had", since she is now hopelessly, although not yet physically, defective.
Yes, physically speaking, she is at her peak, at her moment of ripeness.
Another year, perhaps only another six months, and surely gravity will have its way with her, will reduce her to a decaying mass of gland and flesh.
Already, there are circles beginning to form under her eyes, beneath the makeup, itself not yet very thick, is rather translucent and subtle, pointing up rather than concealing her natural lusciousness, her quite real beauty.
Ah, but she will fade, will decay, will, so to speak, rot, unable to free herself from the sad morass of her life, the inertia of her stasis destined, he is certain, to be slowly but surely fatal.
And he? He will see to it
For your crimes against your daughter and yourself, Diedre Collins, you are hereby sentenced to death, to a slow, lingering death of sagging, slumping flesh.
Which is to change imperceptibly, day by day, destroyed by memories, destroyed by the alcohol imbibed to destroy those memories.
But before you go, Delaney tells himself, I will use you.
Yes, before she is used up, while she is still worth having, in these, the closing moments of her voluptuous beauty, he will avail himself of the facilities.
Because it amuses him, because she deserves nothing better, thus will he treat her.
Will she suspect this abuse on his part-an abuse of inner attitude rather than outwardly manifested, overtly harmful action?
She will not.
Because she is a stupid douchebag, good for one thing, and even that for who knows how much longer.
Already, in his mind, the picture bf Helen appears, clearly labeled as Diedre's replacement, this out of spite on his part.
How he resents her!
A wave of hatred and contempt passes through him as she sits there, gazing down unseeing, eyes glistening with incipient tears, her throat working to swallow the lump of her unhappiness and despair.
"Come on upstairs, babe; I'll make you feel better," he says, adding, to himself, Right, ha ha.
Like he gives a shit about how she feels.
Like he has an actual interest in making her feel better, in making her feel anything-except his cock up her ass.
That's right, he tells himself, following her broad, swaying behind up the stairs, playfully patting the cheeks of her ass, she turning around in the midst of the absolute misery which must surely possess her now to say, playfully and with a smile through her tears, "Oh, you!"
They are into the bedroom now, and she removes her housecoat, revealing her glandular voluptuousness, her absolute thereness, a presence which surely must have overshadowed Larry's sleazy, common good looks.
He thrills to the sight of her, even as he strips rapidly.
So that, now that he is undressed, he has a throbbing, rock-hard boner, the message now being quite simply that he is ready.
Smiling, she lies down on her back, raising and spreading her legs, bent at the knees, presenting herself to him.
But that is not the presentation, not the present he is after, not the one he will accept.
None too gently now (although, he is sure, with none of Larry's mean roughness), he turns her over.
And at once, as though in abject, unconditional surrender, she goes to knees and elbows, presenting, giving him her ass, giving it to him knowing that he could very well simply shove his rampant intruder right up her ass, could give her fissures, could make her bleed, could cause excruciating pain-no doubt as Larry did, from time to time, merely from sheer perverseness, just because he felt like it, or to remind her of her station in his life, having no life of her own.
Ah, but he will not do that.
And not out of any consideration for her, but rather because he has no desire at all to punish or short-change himself.
Why should he suffer for her short-comings?
Enough, is it not, that he has suffered lonely nights, nights of no company or of the wrong company, nights during which Larry-never mind.
Because this is not the time for debilitating, distracting, jaw-clenching, tooth-grinding anger; rather, this is the time to reap compensation, to gather in that pay-off which he so richly deserves.
He wants to feel those voluptuous haunches in both hands!
He wants to make a meal of that big, delicious ass hole!
He wants to devour her, to invade her, to possess her, to let his body rebuke her, to let his cock tell her how wrong she has been, what she has been missing all these wasted, wasted years.
There is-or there used to be-a tradition at dances, he recalls.
No matter what the style of the band's playing, the selection of their music, for many years, when he was growing up, going to college, and afterward, the band's way of telling everyone that it was time to go home was simply to play a song called, 'Goodnight Sweetheart'.
And now, as he pauses there, admiring the view, thinking of the goodies he is about to enjoy, the strains of that music come back to him.
He even remembers how those who knew the words, used to sing in time with the orchestra, sometimes on their own, sometimes led by the vocalist of the evening.
"Goodnight sweetheart, 'til we meet tomorrow,
"Goodnight sweetheart, sleep will banish sorrow-"
And he cannot resist an evil inner chuckle at this last.
Because, you weak, stupid, miserable hitch, no amount of sleep will banish your fucking sorrow, and you damn well know it!
No, the only way she can stop feeling sad is to stop feeling at all.
This is it, babe, he tells her-the last rites!
Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, because after this there ain't no mo'-at least not from him, not from a man who would have given something, someone like her the world on a silver platter, at one time, if it was in his power to do so.
But no, she had a better idea.
Which was to take the overwhelming bounty, the glorious, free gratis, no strings attached gifts of nature-and squander them on the likes of Larry.
One more time, one last time, he will show her what it is to know the physical attentions of one for whom she is-was-the embodiment of the feminine ideal, physically speaking.
And then, having worked his way through her, past her, he will leave her in the gathering darkness, not looking back, as it swallows her up.