Client Privilege Read Online Free Page B

costumes, we were back in sixteenth-century England. Burton was riding a horse. I figured I’d missed the premise, so I changed the channel to 38. The Bruins were in overtime, so I watched the toothless young men glide over the ice, colliding with each other as they pursued the little rubber disk around the rink.
    The teakettle began to sing at about the same time the game ended, still tied. I turned off the television and went to the stove. I dropped a bag of Sleepytime into a mug and poured the boiling water over it. I stared through the floor-to-ceiling glass sliders at the harbor while my tea steeped. In the moonless night, I couldn’t distinguish the line between sky and ocean. A few lights blinked dully through the haze.
    I retrieved my tea and took it to the phone. I dialed Pops’ home number. He lived in West Roxbury, which is not to be confused with Roxbury, although both are sections of Boston. Roxbury is a black ghetto situated between Huntington and Columbus avenues in the heart of the city next to the Northeastern campus. You go to Roxbury to buy drugs. You live in Roxbury only if you have to.
    West Roxbury is a swanky white enclave. It’s located in the southwest corner of the city, hard by Brookline and Newton and Dedham. It’s separated from Roxbury by the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale sections of the city. West Roxbury is bounded, roughly, by the Charles River and several golf courses, including The Country Club, one of the oldest and most exclusive in the nation.
    Judges tend to live in West Roxbury. The people who appear before them often come from Roxbury.
    I got Pops’ answering machine. Marilee Popowski’s voice repeated the number I had dialed and invited me to leave a message at the beep. “It’s Brady,” I told the machine. “Just got back from my meeting. I’m home now. Give me a call.”
    Pops hardly ever answered his phone, whether he was sitting beside it or not. He used the answering machine to screen his calls. I hung up after delivering my message to his tape and sat beside my telephone, sipping my tea, smoking a Winston. I assumed he’d call me back instantly.
    I finished my tea and rinsed out the mug, glanced through the latest issue of Newsweek, and smoked a couple of cigarettes. When Pops still hadn’t returned my call, I shucked off my clothes and took a shower. I luxuriated in the hot needles that blasted relaxation into my muscles. I went through my entire repertoire of old Johnny Mathis make-out ballads. I was in good voice.
    I got out, dried myself, and slipped into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
    When I went into the living room, I saw the red light on my answering machine blinking. Blip-blip. Pause. Blip-blip.
    Two messages. I played the tape. “It’s Gloria,” she said.
    “Hope I didn’t interrupt something. Please give me a call when you get a chance.”
    The voice of my ex-wife never fails to constrict my throat a little. We’ve been divorced about as long as we were married, but she still gets to me.
    The second blip was Pops. “Returning your call,” he said. “I’m here.”
    I called Pops first.
    “So what happened?” he said.
    “Let me ask you something, first.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Your home phone’s unlisted, right?”
    “You betcha,” he said. “Be pretty stupid, a judge having a listed phone number. I change it every couple months, too.”
    “So who knows your number?”
    “Marilee and the girls. Some of their friends, I suppose. You. Some of the folks at the courthouse. Hard to keep a phone number a secret, even if it’s unlisted. Tends to keep away the creeps, though.”
    “You said our friend called you this morning, am I right?”
    “Hell, yeah. I never thought of that. Yes, he called me here, at this number. What do you make of that?”
    “I don’t know. Either it’s someone who you know well, or it’s someone who knows how to find out things.”
    “Well,” said Pops, “I guess we know he knows how to find out things. He came