Butterfly (16 page)

She fought back the tears. She so badly wanted to tell him that she wanted things to

be different for them; she wanted their love to be pure and beautiful; she wanted him to

make her forget the nightmare she was living. But he looked at her with those compelling

green eyes that were at the same time lazy and intense, and she felt herself fall once again

under his spell. As he unzipped his pants and guided her hand inside, and then gently

urged her down to her knees, Rachel tried hard not to cry, not to get sick. She just wanted

him to love her and take care of her. That was all she wanted in the world.

9

There he was. Getting out of his GMC 4X4.

Trudie turned toward him, hands on her hips, mad as hell. “Hey, Bill!” she shouted.

“’Bout time you got here!”

He grinned below aviator sunglasses. Trudie did not doubt that he melted many a

feminine heart with that smile. But not today. She was going to let him have it.

He came sauntering up the lawn, just as casual-as-you-like, one of those egotistical

types that are aware of their masculine beauty. He waved to the electrical crew now work-

ing on the fifth stage of the pool’s construction. They all waved back. Most of them were

Mexican, but there were a few blond types, shirtless—good ol’ boys.

“Hey, Trudie,” he called when he was close. “So what’s up?”

She was mad and had to control herself. “Bill,” she said with her jaw thrust forward.

“Why aren’t there three return lines on this pool? You know I always have three return

lines on my pools. Did you read the work sheet? Didn’t you even look at the plot plan?”

“Hey,” he said easily, laughing. The January sunshine did things to his hair and he

knew it. He paid for that special cut, made sure the waves caught the light just so. It never

failed to work magic beneath dance-floor lights. He studied Trudie from behind the dark

glasses. Maybe the old charm wasn’t going to work in this case. Well, he’d heard she was a

ball breaker.

“Just give me a straight answer, Bill.” As the plumber for the pool, Bill’s work came

right after the initial excavation. He had called her two days ago and said he was all done.

So she had called for the Gunite to be applied. That particular crew, headed by Sam

Brand, a good guy overseeing a good crew, had begun work early this morning, spraying

the Gunite into the big scooped hole in the ground. She’d received the call at eight. “Hey,

True,” Sam had said, “don’t you usually have three return lines?”

So she’d gotten on the phone and told Bill to get his ass down here and fast. Why the

rush? Because the concrete was hardening and it was going to be hell to cut into it for that

third return line.

“Hey,” he said now, “why so riled up?”

“Tell me why you didn’t install three return lines.”

He looked at her appraisingly. Not a bad-looking chick, he thought. She filled out a

tank top and a pair of shorts the way no male contractor ever did. And beneath the ballsy

facade, he was certain, beat the frustrations of any single female. “I didn’t think it was nec-

essary to have three return lines on a pool this size.”

“You don’t tell me what’s necessary. I have three return lines on all my pools because I

happen to build the best pools in Southern California! You’re to follow my instructions.”

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Kathryn Harvey

Now she was getting to him. Here he was being nice and easygoing, trying to explain

the way real work was done, and she comes on like some Sherman tank. These women

who try to be men! What True Stein obviously needed was to get laid. “Well, it’s done,

isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t,” she said evenly. “I want you to get your crew back down here pronto,

and I want to see that third line in there by tomorrow morning.”

“Hey listen, honey! Do you know what it means to redo it? It means sawing through

concrete!”

“I don’t care if it means chipping away at the concrete with your teeth! That third line

goes in.”

He glared at her. He could tell she was mad by the way her breasts heaved. But he

could get mad, too. “No way,” he said quietly.

Just as quietly, Trudie said, “All right, then. I have something for you.” She picked up

a plastic trash bag that was lying by her feet. She opened it up and held it out for his

inspection. “Do you see these, Bill?”

Warily he looked in. There must have been eight or ten empty beer cans in the sack.

“Yeah…So?”

“Sam found them this morning in the trenches. Bill, your guys were drinking on the

job.”

“Hey, no way—”

“Don’t you ‘no way’ me!”

“Those cans could have come from anyone. Sam’s crew, for one—”

“Sam’s a born-again Christian, Bill, and you know it. You know he runs a clean crew.

He says he found these cans here this morning, and I believe him! That means your guys

are responsible.”

Bill shifted nervously. “So what does that—”

“You don’t drink on my jobs!
Is that clear?”

He eyed her with caution. His relaxed stance was gone. “So what are you saying,

Trudie?”

“What I’m saying, Bill, is that you cut through that concrete and install the third

return line. If you don’t, I swear I’ll see to it that you don’t work a single job in this county

ever again.”

He was silent for a moment, measuring Trudie and the situation. Then he spread out

his hands and said, “Hey. So what’s the big deal? I’ll get my guys on it right away.”

“And no more drinking.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He turned and walked away, muttering something about uptight

broads. Trudie turned on her heel and marched away around the deep end of the gray, dry

pool.
Butt-head,
she thought.
The man’s a butt-head.

She looked at her watch. There were two more excavations to be inspected, and then

she had to get over to Jessica’s office. The two were going to Butterfly this afternoon.

Jessica had an appointment to meet with the director and receive her member’s bracelet.

*

*

*

BUTTERFLY

67

The offices of Franklin and Morton were located on the Sunset Strip—a small Greek

temple tucked in between the ostentatious Federal-style offices of doctors, lawyers, and

interior decorators. It was High Rent but so was the clientele. Jessica and Fred had been

in partnership for seven years, competing with the big established law firms housed in the

towers of Century City. Their appeal was that they dealt with clients on a personal, inti-

mate level. They didn’t mind that they were known as a “boutique firm.” Their client list

was still small, but it was growing, thanks to the publicity from the Mickey Shannon trial.

All Fred and Jessica needed, they knew, was to win a few more cases like that one and

their days of struggling would be over.

Jessica was in her office, facing a scowling man. He was the opposing counsel for a case

she was involved in, and he sat drumming his fingers on the leather briefcase in his lap.

“Mrs. Franklin,” he said, “this happens to be the amount your client asked for.”

“Yes, it is, Mr. Hutchinson. Or, rather, I should say, it was. But that was weeks ago,

and the agreed date of settlement has passed. We are now demanding a million dollars.”

“What!”

Her intercom buzzed. She picked up the phone and said, “I told you to hold all calls.”

The voice on the other end informed her that Trudie Stein was waiting in the reception area.

“Oh yes, thank you. Please offer her a cup of coffee and tell her I’ll be with her shortly.”

After she hung up, Jessica folded her hands on the desk and said, “Mr. Hutchinson,

you know that we are fast approaching the date of trial, and I am sure you are aware that

a jury will be very sympathetic to my client. We will win, and the court will award us two

million dollars. But my client is willing to accept one million now to avoid the strain and

inconvenience of a trial.”

He gave her a long, thoughtful look. This was the first time Ron Hutchinson had

entered into litigation with Jessica Franklin, and although he wasn’t pleased with the way

things were going, he admired her tenacity. There were no guarantees that she was going

to win, and he
was
offering her a generous settlement: three hundred thousand dollars,

signed, sealed and delivered on her desk today. Yet she stubbornly held out for more. He

wondered how far she would go to chance losing everything.

“We agreed on three hundred thousand,” he said, putting a finger on the cashier’s

check that lay on her desk and moving it toward her. “Take it now, or we meet in court

and you don’t get a penny.”

“We are asking a million now, Mr. Hutchinson. By the close of business tomorrow.”

He could see by her face that she wasn’t going to budge. So he took his check back,

rose, nodded curtly to her and left the office.

Before joining Trudie, who was waiting to take her to Butterfly, Jessica stopped by her

partner’s office to report on her meeting with Hutchinson. Fred Morton, prematurely

bald, ran his hand over his smooth head and said, “I don’t know, Jess. Are you sure we

should hold out? After all, we can’t be certain that we’re going to win in court. Chances

are good that we will, but it is still a big gamble.”

She smiled. “I’m willing to take that risk, aren’t you?”

As Trudie deftly maneuvered her Corvette through the heavy traffic on Sunset, she

glanced at her friend and said, “Nervous?”

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Kathryn Harvey

Jessica laughed. “Intrigued!”

“I’m glad you decided to join.”

“Well, I’m not a hundred percent convinced that I need to go to a place like Butterfly,

but you’ve made me curious. I want to get inside and see how it works.”

“Believe me, it works wonderfully! I went again last Saturday.”

Jessica looked at Trudie. “What did you do this time?”

“I chose the same companion. My intellectual lover. He was so good the first time, I did-

n’t see any reason to change. Apparently a lot of the members request the same man over and

over. You develop a sort of relationship, as you would if you were seeing a therapist.”

“Therapist! You make it sound like a sex clinic.”

“In a way, that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

Jessica studied Trudie’s profile, the expensive shag cut of blond hair, the long silver ear-

rings, the aquamarine eyes. Jessica had always envied Trudie’s beauty. “What do you and

your intellectual companion do?”

“We argue and then we fuck.”

“And you find that satisfying?”

Trudie made a quick lane change and sped off down Beverly Canyon Drive. “I find it

immensely
satisfying. And I couldn’t really tell you why, except that it seems as if every

man I meet doesn’t quite measure up to my expectations. Dates usually leave me feeling

unfulfilled. Even after I’ve gone to bed with a guy, and even if the sex was okay, I still

come away feeling it wasn’t a
total
experience. Whereas with Thomas, both times were

dynamite. Maybe it’s the anonymity of the situation—he doesn’t know who I am, he

doesn’t even know my name—or maybe it’s because I control the scene. I don’t know. And

I’ve been trying to figure out the answer, but it eludes me.”

Jessica gazed out the window as they turned onto Rodeo Drive. Exactly what was
she

hoping to find in Butterfly’s secret rooms? Why had she decided to join? A lot of it, she

knew, had to do with the element of risk about it all—that was why she loved litigation

so: nothing was predictable, there were no guarantees, you either won or lost, and each

day each new case presented a whole new set of challenges. She perceived Butterfly as

being something like that. But there was more to it—ever since Trudie first told her about

it Jessica had felt an inexplicable compulsion to become part of Butterfly. Was it because

there was, despite Trudie’s protests that Butterfly was safe, an element of danger?

“How can I be sure I won’t be blackmailed?” she asked as they pulled up in front of

Fanelli. “I have to think of my career, my law partner.”

“Well, according to my cousin Alexis, who got it from her friend Linda Markus, who

got it from the woman who got
her
into Butterfly, this place has been in operation for sev-

eral years, and in all that time there hasn’t been an incident of blackmail or anything even