05
Nothing shrivels a man’s woody faster than a letter from his ex-wife’s lawyer. Dave’s hand was shaking as he read the court papers ordering him to appear somewhere to do . . . some legal thing . . . that he . . . Damn.
The drug was really kinda fucking with his ability to sort this shit out.
‘Paternity test?’
It was Heath. Alone.
Whatever showdown he’d had with that Trinder asshole, it was over. Dave blinked very slowly and wondered where Em and Compton were because
. . .
well, drugs.
And then, because drugs, his wandering mind wandered back to the papers he was holding.
‘No,’ he said, trying to concentrate. ‘My ex-wife, chasing me for money. I think. Well, she’s not legally, you know, my ex, not yet. But
. . .
but soon. I think.’ He frowned, trying to decipher the legal-speak on the summons, trying to remember whether he was in fact separated or divorced, or just on a break. ‘She thinks I got these deals now. Ralph Lauren, the Bellagio, and shit
. . .
And
. . .’
He read slowly, quoting from the document with difficulty, ‘. . . Any and all such marketing, merchandising, promotional and/or sponsorship arrangements as heretofore indicated by the parties of the
. . .’
He crumpled the paper in his hands.
‘What the fuck does this even mean? I don’t have any of these things.’
He trailed off.
‘Your wife’s got a good lawyer,’ said Zach, shrugging. ‘Must’ve seen you on TV this morning. Saw the shout-out you gave the hotel and picked it up from there. Man that’s super fast work. They must have been on a hair trigger,’ he said turning to Igor, ‘if I ever get married, and then get divorced, I’m totally getting Dave’s ex-wife’s lawyer. Dude’s a monster.’
‘Gotta respect skills like that,’ Igor said.
‘No, no you do not!’
A man was coming at them down the hallway, a man too short to contain the surfeit of energy that seemed to be powering him down the ornately carpeted corridor. Dave thought he recognised him through the drug haze. Same guy who’d waved a bunch of hundred dollar bills at him earlier. His suit was crumpled, as though he had slept in it, or perhaps driven through the night to get here. What was left of his hair floated around his head in an unruly shock, creating a mad scientist halo that was hard to discredit once the thought had occurred. His bald head seemed to be
. . .
what?
Klingon.
He had a Klingon head, Dave decided. But he was a sort of pasty-faced, short-ass Klingon in a crumpled suit.
A few strides brought him directly to Dave and the SEALs where he held out his hand as if to take the papers from him.
Heath moved to put one arm out, blocking the man, but Dave brushed it away. Like a drunk brushing away a friend who wanted to take his car keys.
‘Let the dude
. . .
er. Let him
. . .’
Man, Trinder had some good drugs.
‘Do you mind?’ asked the Klingon. ‘Of course you mind. You have no idea who I am. Let me put your mind at ease on that if nothing else for the moment. Boylan is my name. Just Boylan will do, although I have other names, of course. My parents were hippies, and although they approached most social conventions with a deplorably relaxed attitude, they did think to smooth my path through the world by providing me with more than one name. Professor is my other name. And X. Professor X Boylan. An impressive moniker, yes? But of course single initial names are always striking, and there are few letters in the alphabet more striking than X. It is both mysterious and foreboding. X implies danger, don’t you think? And promise too. X marks the spot, after all. And X crosses out all options.’
He speed-read the legal papers as he spoke, never once looking up from the document to gauge the reaction of his audience. Dave’s reaction was mostly to be confused and very, very stoned.
‘You look like a Klingon,’ said Dave.
The man called Boylan did not look up.
‘I have a prominent occipital crest,’ he said. As if that explained anything. ‘This!’ he declared then. ‘This is nothing!’
He threw the sheaf of papers over his shoulder and they came apart in midair as the paperclip holding them together failed. ‘Pah! Don’t worry about that. I just did that for effect. I will gather up those papers in a moment when you are gone and no longer looking and it won’t be embarrassing for me to scramble around hunched over like some sort of helper chimp.’
‘Dave, seriously,’ said Heath. ‘We need to get going.’
‘No, what we need to do, sir, is crush M. Pearson Vietch like a bug. That is the plan, isn’t it? Crushing the insectile lawyer of your soon-to-be former wife?’
‘Dave,’ Heath’s voice sounded lower, and a little more dangerous.
‘Wait, what?’ said Dave, shaking his head as though to clear it of cobwebs, ‘No, I need to hear about the crushing.’
‘M. Person Bitch?’ said Igor, out the side of his mouth.
‘Lawyer,’ said Dave. ‘Annie’s lawyer,’ he added. ‘Crush Annie’s lawyer.’
‘Yes, I’m all about the crushing,’ said Boylan. ‘I will sneak back now and get those papers I threw over my shoulder to demonstrate my contempt for the feeble efforts of M. Pearson Vietch Esquire to separate you from your newfound wealth.’
Boylan performed a little dance toward the scattered papers, almost curtseying as he bent down to gather them up. Heath gently took Dave by the elbow and started to move him toward the elevator.
‘Come along, Dave.’
‘But
. . .
but my newfound wealth?’
He was having terrible trouble holding any thought for more than a few seconds. He’d start to say something, but forget what halfway through.
‘I have wealth?’ he asked, focusing in as best he could on the most interesting thing the Klingon had said. ‘I thought I
. . .’
He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to force some sort of clarity.
Boylan laughed hugely and theatrically.
‘Oh I am well aware of your disastrous financials, Mr Hooper. I have done my due diligence and arrived fully informed of the daunting task ahead of us. But make no mistake, for once the appalling M. Pearson Veitch is correct and it is you, sir, who is misinformed, at least on this matter. Your newfound wealth remains illusory only because I have not yet brought to bear my nigh on magical skills. Allow me to deal with this Veitch, pro bono, sir, which is to say, at no cost to yourself whatsoever. I shall smite him with the full fury and force and majesty of the law not purely to insinuate myself into your affections, although that will surely be a corollary effect, but because it is the right thing to do, sir. I am, after all, an officer of the court and it behoves me when confronted with incompetence and effrontery and the sheer fucking cheek of one such as this Veitch to ruin him utterly for the sake of the very law, sir.
The sake of the very law
.’
‘Really?’ said Dave groggily, not at all sure where this was headed.
But he seemed to be headed to the elevator. With Heath. While Zach and Igor followed, blocking his view of Professor X, or whatever this free-roaming Klingon mental case called himself.
‘Hey. That paper. I need
. . .
I think I need that,’ he said.
‘Concern yourself with this no more, sir. It is done, it is done,’ the strange little man cried out as he seemed to disappear toward a vanishing point. ‘Already the great iron wheel of the law grinds slowly to reduce M. Pearson Veitch to an unsightly and rather sticky professional pulp. Let us instead concern ourselves with more pressing matters.’
‘Like what?’ Dave asked as he walked backward, still being drawn along by Heath.
Boylan raised his voice as Dave drew further away.
‘Why, breakfast of course. What could be more pressing than breaking our fast at this point? Unless it’s breaking our fast with lobster hoagies.’
‘Oh fuck yeah! Lobster hoagies!’ Dave yelled, suddenly finding his focus again, shrugging off Heath and stumbling back toward his new best friend. ‘Lobster hoagies for breakfast is gonna be awesome.’
He paused, thinking of something.
‘You got this, right, Heath? Because I still haven’t found my wallet. Reckon it’s out on the Longreach or back at the hospital.’
‘Do not worry about it,’ Boylan answered, before Heath could speak. ‘The house will comp us breakfast. And I’ll get them to send a new wallet up to your room.’
‘Awesome.’
*
But breakfast was far from awesome.
‘Who is this wanker?’ Emmeline asked as Boylan seated himself at the booth in the executive dining lounge.
‘Where’s my lobster?’ groused Dave, by way of reply. His head was clearing, but that simply left him more disappointed when the duty manager of the private dining room stood before them wringing his hands, apologising for the unexpected and unavoidable and deeply, deeply disappointing absence of any lobsters which might contribute toward Dave finally getting that lobster hoagie which had been his life-long dream for at least a quarter hour now.
‘I do have an omelette bar set up,’ the manager said, gesturing to two chefs who had been spirited up to the lounge along with burners, pans and all of the fresh ingredients they had left.
‘Eggs, toast and coffee will be fine,’ said Heath, taking a seat while gesturing for everyone else to do so.
‘No. It will not be fine,’ Boylan protested, but before he could lean into another performance Heath cut him off with a hand chopping gesture and fixed the eyes of the floor manager like a snake with a baby rabbit. ‘Eggs. Toast. Coffee.’
‘Dave, your eggs, you have a preference?’ Boylan asked.
‘Dave will take his eggs in whichever form the chef decides best suits the egg,’ Heath said in a voice that allowed for no further negotiations. ‘With toast. And coffee. Now.’
‘And I’ll have tea,’ Ashbury added. ‘Made in a pot, with loose leaves. Not tea bags, which are an abomination in case you were wondering.’
The floor manager acknowledged the order with something that looked like relief. Toast and eggs they could do. Coffee wouldn’t be a problem. Even loose leaf tea they could handle. As he hurried away from the table he began to orchestrate servers with the deft hand movements of a concert conductor.
‘And ham!’ Boylan called out after him. ‘Some baked ham would be nice. To make up for the lobsters.’
‘Who is this wanker, again?’ Emmeline asked.
‘My lawyer,’ Dave said. ‘And he’s staying.’
Two servers, both young women, soon appeared with baskets of pastries, pots of black coffee and small jugs of milk, skinny milk and non-dairy creamer. The manager returned with Emmeline’s pot of English breakfast tea and news that a platter of hot, freshly carved
jamon iberico
would be forthcoming.
‘Excellent,’ cried Boylan.
‘What’s this ham on berry thing?’ asked Dave under his breath. He didn’t like fancy, stuck-up food that ruined a perfectly decent feed like ham by turning it onto berry-flavoured foam or something.
‘The lobster of the Catalans,’ Boylan assured him. ‘Except made of ham.’
‘Okay. Ham is good.’
The executive lounge floated high above the artificial lake and soaring fountains that were the resort’s principal contribution to the street life of Las Vegas. Not as striking as the replica Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and gigantic novelty Montpelier balloon across the strip, but it was still cool to gaze through the high windows and down on the water feature. Or it would have been if their little breakfast club had not been so tense.
Professor Compton frowned across the table at Dave and Boylan. ‘Is there any reason why the ambulance chaser needs to be here? If Hooper has personal business to attend to, I’m sure he’ll have plenty of time to do so after we’ve discussed matters of national security, which Professor Boylan is not cleared for.’
He sneered the word ‘professor’.
‘Ha ha ha! National security? Oh Professor, puh-lease!’ said Boylan, giving back as good he’d just got. ‘You people have no idea! Let me introduce you to your new best friend, attorney–client privilege. Attorney–client privilege mocks the feeble attempts of national security to keep your secrets secret. Nothing is as secret as a secret secured within the chamber of secrets that is attorney–client privilege.’
‘Seriously, who is this arse-clown again?’ asked Ashbury, stirring her tea with delicate swirls of a silver spoon. ‘I so do not care for him that I find myself agreeing with Professor Compton. And nobody wants to do that.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Boylan, favouring her with a professionally polished smile. ‘We shall be the best of friends before this day is done, Professor Ashbury. I shall make it my second priority; my primary responsibility being the sound management of Dave’s interests. On which, I would appreciate knowing what further interference, if any, we might expect from the villainous Trinder. He has already done his best to sabotage one national television interview, which, granted, I did not organise, and rest assured if I had, Dave, your t
ê
te-
à
-t
ê
te with the charming Ms Hasselbeck would not have been–’
‘T
ê
te-
à
-t
ê
te,’ Ashbury interrupted. ‘Is that a French term for making a sex video?’
‘Jealous?’ Dave grinned.
‘No,’ Ashbury said. ‘I’m just disappointed, Dave.’
‘That’s only because we’ve never made a sex video,’ he grinned, instantly regretting it as her face grew darker.
‘Too far?’ he asked, his grin turning from boyish to sheepish.
‘A little,’ Boylan confirmed in a stage whisper. ‘But it’s in the past now. Let’s move on.’
Emmeline was flanked right and left by Compton and Heath, neither of them looking very happy either, and not because Dave and Boylan had grabbed up the seats with the best view of the Bellagio’s dancing fountains. The private lounge was full, with a couple of guests standing by the doors, looking unimpressed as they waited their turn. Zach and Igor had been left outside as well, but they were perfectly happy with the bottomless coffees and hot ham and egg rolls provided on Boylan’s say-so.