Free Swan Dive by Jeremiah Healy

enjoying the bustle of the Common and letting the refreshing air cross-ventilate the room. I’d let slide two reports on insurance scams, so I wrote them out longhand; the claims departments involved would have them typed and returned to me for signature.
    After the reports, I read a letter request from a concerned mother in Kentucky . She believed that her Marbrey, aged fifteen, had run off to Boston and would get in more trouble than a rooster at a fox farm. Finding my name in a telephone directory at the library in Lexington , she trusted me because she once knew an honest storekeeper over to Clay City named Cuddy who came from back east somewheres. Enclosed was a weathered family photograph (with a penciled arrow pointing to a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten) and a postal money order for $ 100. She didn’t include a telephone number. I wrote her back a polite letter, returning the photo and the money order and suggesting that she contact me if she could assemble the laundry list of information I requested.
    I called Hanna, who said that she’d seen no sign of Roy and that Vickie really loved her new kitty. I told her I thought the worst was over and that the divorce would probably go as smoothly as those things could.
    I hung up, tried Chris’s number, and got him on the third ring.
    ”Christides.”
    ”Chris, John Cuddy.”
    ”Jeez, what have you done now?”
    ”Nothing, Chris. That’s why I was calling, to see if you needed anything else.”
    ”Anything else? Listen, I got plenty now. A driving-under tomorrow morning with a guy whose Breathalyzer shoulda belonged to a beer vat, another closing with that bank—”
    ”Chris, Chris, nice and easy. Any progress on Hanna’s case?”
    ”No, and if I don’t have anything better to tell Felicia Arnold than what you gave me on Friday, I don’t see any.”
    ”What do you mean?”
    ”Marsh is still saying you roughed him up.”
    ”Believe me, I barely touched him. His wounds are self-inflicted.”
    ”Yeah, well, you gotta remember that I’m telling Felicia—to cover your ass at your request, remember —that you weren’t even there.”
    ”That’s right. Just like Marsh wasn’t there at Hanna’s house.”
    ”Jeez, John, enough with the cat, all right? Anyway, Felicia says that while her client would have been, quote, ‘reasonable and flexible,’ your ‘unprovoked attack’ has changed all that.”
    ”Chris, what are you saying?”
    ”I’m saying she’s saying they’re gonna litigate it now, understand me? No settlement, trial all the way.”
    And no easy ten thousand for Hanna’s lawyer. ”Chris, first of all you’ve got to see this for what it is.”
    ”For what what is?”
    ”Felicia Arnold’s ‘let’s litigate’ talk. For God’s sake, you said yourself you’ve got him on adultery.”
    ”Yeah, but—”
    ”And I’ve got him even tighter.”
    ”You do?”
    ”That’s right.”
    ”On what?”
    I thought about whether I wanted Chris to know exactly what I had. ”No details, yet. Just take my word for it. Marsh can’t litigate this case. You push for the house, and they’ll fold on it.”
    ”Push for the house.” He made a gargling noise. ”John, do you have any idea how much paperwork I’ll have to do on that? Jeez, I can get my client a quick fifty-five, plus probably a car and enough furniture to set up in a nice apartment, maybe—”
    ”Chris, your client doesn’t want an apartment. She wants the house, for her and Vickie, and I don’t blame her. Look,” I said, stretching a point, ”I told her you were a tiger in these kinds of cases. You push the other side, and push hard. They’ll give in, hell, they’ll beg you to take the house and probably pay you twice the fee they trotted out on Friday.”
    ”Twice?”
    ”Guaranteed.”
    ”I don’t know.”
    ”Trust me, Chris. They don’t dare fight. And if they keep giving you trouble, I’ll call Marsh—”
    ”Jeez, John—”
    ”—I said I’d call