EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories by Sean Chercover Read Free Book Online

Judge Brian Chapman and learned that he’d studied law at Northwestern. An alumni site featured PDF back-issues of their newsletter and I found a blurb about the Judge’s nuptials. Chapman’s best man was fellow alumnus—and fellow Judge—Ted Lens.
    I cracked open a beer and thought it through. Chapman falls in love with a hooker. She’s probably got a record and the judge wants a wife with no skeletons. He calls his buddy Ted Lens and arranges a new legal identity for the woman, and Lens seals the court record to make it a clean break.
    It was a pretty safe conjecture that Margarita Chapman, nee Vasquez, had something locked away in the closet of her past. Something that she would prefer didn’t follow into her present. Into her new life of respectability. Maybe she had been a whore. Or a grifter or a petty thief or a junkie or any number of other things.
    But whatever it was, it was in the past. And the thought of doing this job made me feel even less like one of the Good Guys.
    Thursday afternoon at 3:02, Margarita Chapman’s Land Rover pulled into her driveway and stopped. She unloaded the kids and they crossed the perfectly manicured lawn and disappeared into their three-story Tudor home. I’d been tailing them since morning.
    I didn’t really know what I hoped to learn. Maybe I hoped that Margarita Chapman would beat the crap out of her kids or kick the family dog or something— anything —that would make me feel less of a jerk.
    But she didn’t. Neither did she feed the hungry nor comfort the afflicted nor balance the federal budget. She just acted like a normal Highland Park mom. She took the kids to day camp and dropped them off with a Don’t forget your lunch. No I love you, or goodbye hugs. Just a slightly hurried mom dropping her kids at day camp. She watched them from the driver’s seat until they were safely inside the building, then drove to Central Avenue. After much trying on and rejecting, she bought a pair of leather sandals at S’agaro for $275, plus tax. She had a manicure at about ten bucks a finger. She then met two other women for lunch at Café Central and they laughed a lot and too loud and said bad things about their men, which made them laugh even louder. They shared a bottle of wine over lunch. I drank my lunch at a nearby table.
    Margarita Chapman and her friends kissed the air near each other’s cheeks and bid each other Ciao . Then Margarita collected her kids from day camp. The kids had crafts to show mom. Kyle held a couple of handmade candles on a string and Stephanie, a cardboard house. Mom acted suitably impressed by their obvious and undeniable genius but still made them fasten their seatbelts before take-off, the way I imagine any normal mom would act.
    And now the whole normal family was inside their beautiful home, drinking chocolate milk or something. Probably reading the Bible to each other for kicks. Or whatever normal families do. And you, Dudgeon, are one lowlife bastard if you advance this case any further.
    A beige Toyota Corolla pulled to the curb and stopped across the street and down the block from the Chapman home. The Toyota’s windows came down and the engine stopped but the driver didn’t get out. Instead, he adjusted his side mirror so he could watch the house without facing it. I was parked a block-and-a-half down, on one of the cross streets.
    I pulled around the corner and came to a stop directly behind the Toyota, got out and approached the driver’s window. The man sitting in the car was big in all directions, with curly black hair, a bushy moustache, and a thick head. His meaty paw dangled a wallet just outside the window. The wallet held a badge.
    “Sorry, officer,” he squeaked. “I was gonna check in at the station, but I was late ’cause of traffic.” The high-pitched voice was unfortunate on a man of his size. I took the wallet and examined his private detective’s license. His name was Paul Pirelli.
    “Chapman the subject of your