Free The Kingmaker by Brian Haig Page A

way? . . . Spoiled rotten from birth . . . everything always fell in his lap. He—”
    “Good Lord.” She shook her head and said, “Just give me the facts and I’ll make my own conclusions, okay?”
    “Okay . . . the facts. He’s forty-nine years old, was born in Westchester, New York, the son of some big Pepsi bigwig. Had a typical rich kid’s upbringing, went to Andover, became probably the only Yale graduate in modern history to enter the Army, and, as the saying has it, went on to do great things—depending on your perspective, obviously.”
    She leaned back onto the cushion and asked, “And how did he meet his wife?”
    “I don’t know how he met his wife. I wasn’t there,” I answered, sounding, I suppose, a little annoyed.
    “You have a problem with that topic?”
    “Me? No . . . What gives you that impression?”
    She picked at a nonexistent piece of lint on the couch. “You’re sure you don’t have a problem with this topic?”
    Actually, my problem is with nosy, prying women. I let that thought lie, though, and replied, “They met at work, dated a few months, and got married. Okay?”
    She pushed a stray strand of hair off her eyebrow. It obviously wasn’t okay, but she seemed to conclude it was the best she was going to wring out of me. She was right, incidentally. She asked, “Do you believe he’s guilty?”
    I folded my hands behind my head and stared at the fire. I hadn’t forced myself to consider it. For one thing, I’d been on a whirlwind since Mary first called, and for another, it’s not a question most defense attorneys want to answer about a client. The preservation of ambiguity has almost irresistible appeal in our line of work.
    I finally suggested, “It doesn’t exactly fit with my view of him.”
    “Now that’s enlightening.”
    “Look . . . he just doesn’t fit.”
    “You can be very annoying.”
    “Okay, for those who need lengthy explanations, Morrison doesn’t fit the crime.” Ticking down my fingers, I added, “He’s a pathologically ambitious prick. He’s an oily bastard and an inveterate bully. But a traitor? I could be wrong, but they’ve got the right kind of man for the wrong kind of crime.”
    “Trying to cram an oval into a round hole?”
    “That works for me.”
    “Did you attend the wedding?”
    “Damn it, what is it with you?”
    She looked down her nose. “It was a perfectly innocent question. Am I missing something here?”
    Innocent, my ass. I replied, “Why do you want to know?”
    “Until a minute ago, it was idle curiosity. Now I’m wondering if there’s a tar pit here.”
    “There’s no tar pit here. I was invited, but, uh, I . . . I was too busy to attend.”
    “Too busy?”
    “Exactly.”
    “Not too bothered? Too busy?”
    “I was in Panama, helping track down some asshole named Noriega.”
    “You’re serious?”
    “The wedding invitation was in my P.O. box when I returned from the war. It’d been sent a month before.”
    She said, “Boy, that sucks.” And she was right; it did suck. Then she asked, “Would you have gone?”
    The woman was like a dog with a bone. Stubbornness can be a virtue. At the right place and time, it can also be a king-size pain in the ass.
    Anyway, the right and proper thing to say, obviously, was, Well, yes, absolutely. All’s fair in love and war, and so forth. I wouldn’t have sat in a front-row pew, where I could hear their lips smack when the preacher got to that “man and wife” part: I would’ve been there, though, the classic good sport, rooting forthe bride and wishing her everlasting love and happiness with the idiot she chose.
    I was fairly certain that lie wouldn’t sell, however.
    “I don’t know,” I said, and tried my best to sound convincing, while sensing from her expression that I was wasting my time.
    Having squeezed more out of that response than I wanted her to, she asked, “Can you adequately defend him?”
    “I won’t know that until we