Free Paris Trout by Pete Dexter Page B

to be.
    "Sit down, Paris," he said, and was
surprised when Trout sat down. He began to pace. Trout followed him
with his eyes, back and forth.
    "We got a problem here between us and the
prosecutor," he said. "It isn't black-and-white, at least
you better hope not. It doesn't matter what's in any bill of sale, it
concerns people that have been shot." Trout stole a quick look
at the paper. "It isn't in the goddamn bill of sale,"
Seagraves said. He leaned across the desk, smelling dried sweat, a
faint odor of vomit. "It's in Cornell Clinic. There's a child in
Comell Clinic named Sayers, and she's been shot four times and is all
but done living. That's all Ward Townes wants to talk to you about
now, and you would be smart to prepare yourself, not to make this
worse than it is."
    Trout blinked his red eyes and waited. Seagraves
found himself suddenly calm. "Listen, now," he said. "I
want you to take yourself home, bathe, and put on something it don't
look like you've been wrestling pigs. And then, at one o'clock on the
dot, you be at the prosecutor's office, looking like somebody, and
talk to the man about that girl. Not that you shot her — don't put
yourself in as deep as you did with Hubert Norland — but talk about
the girl, acknowledge her."
    Trout patted the paper on the desk. "This is the
proof," he said.
    "Don't use that word this afternoon,"
Seagraves said. "Don't try to tell Ward Townes what proof is."
He thought for a moment and put it a different way. "I'll be
with you," he said. "I can stop you from saying the wrong
thing, but I can't make up the right words and whisper them in your
ear. I believe this thing is . . . an affront to Ward Townes.
Something in it is personal, like you had insulted him. Treat it like
that, like he was offended."
    Trout sat still. "How much is this gone cost
me?" he said finally.
    " I don't know," Seagraves said. °'Some of
it's up to Ward Townes, some of it's up to you."
    Trout took a mechanical pencil out of his shirt
pocket and handed it to Seagraves. "I want you to write it
down," he said.
    " Christ Almighty, Paris . . ."
    The pencil was green and translucent, he could see
little specks floating around inside. The eraser was worn smooth at
the corners, and the word SCRIPTO was worn half off the side. It was
a nineteen-cent pencil, and Trout had kept it probably five years.
    "The price to represent my legal case. I want
you to put it right here on a piece of paper, so we both know where
it is."
    Seagraves put the pencil on the table, beside the
mineral water. He noticed spit floating on top. "The price
depends on the time," he said, "you know that as well as
anybody." It was part of the enigma of Paris Trout that he had
graduated from law school himself, someplace up in North Carolina,
but never practiced law.
    Trout shook his head. "I want one price,"
he said.
    " I don't discuss price," Seagraves said. "I
got a girl that prepares the billings, but she can't tell you a thing
until we determine what that child in Cornell Clinic's going to do
and what Ward Townes intends to do about it."
    " I want a number wrote down, right now at the
start," Trout said.
    " That's how I do business." He was smiling
now, as if he had Seagraves trapped. Trout's teeth were yellow and
gapped, and against his will, Seagraves imagined the way it would
have looked when he shot the girl.
    " All right," he said, "you tell me
what you did, and I'll tell you how much it costs."
    Seagraves took the chair in the corner and moved it
to the table. He did not want to be in the room with Trout and what
he had done — he had wanted it softened first, to read it, have one
of his clerks take the statement — but there was something in Trout
that pushed things farther than they were intended to go.
    Trout sat still. His face was changed, but it held
the smile. "What did you want to know?" he said.
    " Everything you did in that girl's house."
    Trout rubbed his ears and pushed the hair back off
his face. "The family owed me a