Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel - Hardcover

Passaro, Vince

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068485726X ISBN 13: 9780684857268

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2002

Synopsis

While defending a wealthy client accused of murdering his wife, successful lawyer William Riordan finds his personal life in shambles when his wife Ellie demands a divorce, forcing Will to re-examine his existence, an undertaking fraught with humor, terror, and sensuality, in order to win back his wife and set his murderous client free. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Vince Passaro's fiction, essays, and criticism have been published in numerous national magazines, such as Harper's (where he is contributing editor), Esquire, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, Salon.com, and many other venues. He lives in New York City with his wife, Beth Passaro, also a writer, and their three children. Violence, Nudity, Adult Content is his first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

From the desk of William H. Riordan. To the files: I would like to tell the truth. I am in my office on Rector Street, looking out at the cemetery of Trinity Church, pretending to work, in this sort of trance just short of being asleep. It's a form of mental break, but to make partner around here you can never look like you're taking a break, you have to look like you're billing time, so I have a deposition open in front of me and my head's down over it, as if I'm reading it. You get into an intensity of work that is like exercise, a zone; time attenuates, you're inside the thing; then you're out again and you rest. My head lowered, my eyes cast to the left, toward the window, watching the light on the blackened stone walls and gray slate roof of the church, I can hear the rapid, soft pock pock pock of Anna, my secretary, inputting this morning's draft of a motion I'm supposed to have on Jack's desk by tomorrow night; it's a matrimonial case.

* Contrary to the specious, self-serving assertions in Wife's Answer to Husband's Motion to Order Compliance, Husband 1) never hit, struck, or slapped, or physically or verbally or in any other manner abused or attacked Wife, 2) never hit, struck, or slapped, or physically or verbally or in any other manner abused or attacked his children, 3) never addressed his children and/or appeared in their rooms either in the nude, in unusual garments, or in any other unseemly manner or condition, either while they were sleeping or while they were awake. The introduction into the proceeding before the Court at this late date of these reckless and false allegations, when Husband merely seeks compliance with an existing order of the Court rendered four months prior to this proceeding and well after all due opportunity was given to Wife to present arguments against Husband's parental suitability, deeply undermines the credibility of the allegations.

* Husband did not, as claimed by Wife, arrive home drunk on "a regular basis"; Husband became inebriated on no more than ten occasions during his sixteen-year Marriage to Wife, each of those in relation to business-oriented social events such as dinners, dinner-dances, banquets, shows, and other forms of business-related entertainment.

* Because at the appropriate time, when custody was under valid examination by the Court, no arguments were made against Husband's suitability, nor was such evidence presented, the argument is, inherently, without standing and merit before this Court, as fully described in Part 1, §1 et seq.

* For these and the reasons above stated in Parts I and II, with special emphasis on Part I, Section C, Paragraph 5, Wife's Morion for Summary Dismissal of Claim should be rejected, and immediate compliance with existing, legally valid and proclaimed custody agreements should be ordered...

Below me, in the whitening summer light, the gravestones in the churchyard look like scattered teeth. A woman's voice comes over Anna's intercom: "Anna, can you please ask Will to see me in my office when he has the chance? Tell him to bring his Day-Timer. Thanks." It's Sue Williamson, one of the partners. She refuses to buzz me directly, insists on using an intermediary; not only as a proper formal exercise of her authority, but because then she avoids the risk of buzzing me, finding me not there or on a call, and then having to buzz Anna -- five seconds or so of otherwise billable fucking time.

"Did you get that?" Anna calls out.

"Yeah," I say. "Thanks."

"Hey, glad to help, anytime," Anna says, still typing. "Do you want some pages?"

"Give me some pages," I say. "Give me some precious pages."

"I'm, like, on sixteen or something," she says.

"Fine, whatever you have."

Anna says, "I'm sending it to the printing station."

"Why can't you use the printer you have there?" I say. She always avoids the smaller dedicated printer on her credenza, I've noticed.

"I don't want to be responsible for loading the paper," she says. "There's a right way and a wrong way; where it jams, and I can never figure it out."

"That's ridiculous. Just put it in, see what happens." I look up at her from my desk. "Take some risks, for chrissakes."

"That's easy for you to say," she says. "What risks do you ever take?"

"Okay, fine," I say.

"I'm shooting it to the laser."

"Fine," I say. "Whatever." I'm shooting it to the laser. I'm setting it on fire and catapulting it over the church spire.

"Sue?" I say; arriving at Sue's office.

"Will," she says. "How are you on Thursday? I have a client coming in for a preliminary discussion at three-thirty."

"Fine," I say.

"Where's your Day-Timer?" she says.

"I don't use a Day-Timer," I say.

"Are you sure about Thursday? I want to confirm with the client."

"Thursday's fine," I say. "Friday I'm getting a haircut."

"I tell you what," Sue says. "Come to lunch with me tomorrow. I'll fill you in on background."

"I'm kind of tied up writing this motion for Jack," I say.

Sue's face undergoes a series of changes, a surface darkening with underlying tectonic shifts. In law firms, superiors rarely give you shit directly; so finely tuned are the nuances of authority that the mere threat of giving you shit is enough. "I'm not going to be free between now and Thursday," Sue says. This means, if I want to work on the case, or any others she has anything to do with in the furore, I have to go to lunch with her.

"I guess I can slip out," I say.

"Good," Sue says. The face as instrument of power: hers softens now; she is warm with rectitude and approval. "It's an interesting case. Very desirable if we can get something going. Deep-pocket defendant, possible press, the whole bit. It's a name case when it comes to partnership."

I'm up for partner in December. Broad hints are now regularly dropped. Offers dangle, bribes and extortions hang in the air flaccid as yesterday's balloons. "Thanks, Sue," I say.

She lowers her voice. "Actually, Jack wanted me to use Carol but I insisted on you."

"Thanks, Sue."

"Carol's a putz. She's smart, I guess, but she's a putz."

"Thanks, Sue."

"So lunch, tomorrow, one?"

"Sure." I turn. "And thanks again, Sue."

"Fine." Sue snaps down the flap on her Filofax. It sounds like small-arms fire in a distant field.

At four-fifteen Sue's secretary, Jeannie, delivers to Anna a Redweld file containing Sue's correspondence and notes so far on the Murray case, the case she's invited me to work on. On the outside of the folder, a little yellow stick-on note from Sue: "Will -- please review this material before tomorrow's lunch. S." I put the folder on the floor next to my desk, and don't pick it up again until seven, when I've finished revising today's draft of Jack's motion. It is a rape case. Two men broke into the client's apartment, beat her, raped her, and eventually robbed her before they left several hours later. They were never apprehended. It is obvious that we will propose she make a case of negligence and loss of contracted service against the building, an east side high-rise. According to the police report, there were three security people scheduled to be on duty, but only two had reported for work, and at the rime of the attack, one of those was on break. The video equipment, a camera mount in the hall-way, had been in disrepair for three weeks. No one was overseeing the displays for the surveillance system at that rime anyway, because of the shorthanded shift. The police are pleased to include these details because they like to see the guilt radiate and hum, especially without a suspect in hand.

The file includes a psychiatrist's letter, which describes our client as suffering from "chronic clinical levels of depression, hostility, alienation, and aggravated sexual dysfunction. She has been unabl

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 068485726X
• ISBN 13: 9780684857268
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304