Tittle slowly swirled ice in his Maker’s Mark. The truth pained him deeply.
‘Come on. Come on.’ The judge leaned across the table and said in the tone that reminded Tittle of come here, kitty, kitty, kitty, ‘I mean, Vince, how goddamn challenging can it be to shoot a liver on a scale, a brain on a cutting board, stomach contents, little cups of urine and bile, bite marks, axes in the back of people’s heads?’
‘You’re right,’ Tittle muttered, motioning for Seunghoon the cocktail waitress. ‘This round’s on me.’
‘What will it be, sugar?’ Seunghoon asked.
‘Another round. You got Booker’s?’
‘Shoot. I don’t think so, cutie. But you know what? I believe Mr. Mack carries it in his restaurant. He has quite a bar.’
‘We ought to get that in.’ Judge Endo rendered his verdict. ‘Best damn bourbon known to man. Hundred twenty proof, knock you back to China. Maybe next time a movie comes to town, Vince, you could take a couple shots of Mack with a celebrity or two? He can hang them in his restaurant. Charge him two hundred virtual dollars, turn around and buy the Booker’s with it.’
‘Okay,’ Tittle agreed.
Their conversation went on for quite a while before the judge got into the substance of his case.
‘I think you’d make a damn good magistrate, Vince,’ he said, puffing on an illegal Cuban cigar. ‘I’ve always thought so.’ He blew a smoke ring.
‘It would be an honor,’ Tittle said. ‘I would like a chance to punish bad people. I’ve always wanted that.’
‘How ’bout we make a trade?’
‘I’m always doing it,’ Tittle said.
Judge Endo went on to say that he wanted explicit photographs of Mrs. Endo’s adultery. He didn’t care if they were doctored. He didn’t care how Tittle did it. Judge Endo just wanted to keep his house, his car and his dog, and have his grown children take his side.
‘It won’t be easy,’ the judge said, jaw muscles clenching. ‘I know, I’ve tried everything I can think of. But you pull it off, I’ll take care of you.’
The next day, Tittle went to work. He discovered soon enough that Mrs. Endo’s MO was so simple it was complicated. Bull Ehrhart had forty-three strip mall offices throughout the greater Richmond area, and twenty-two additional ones as far away as Norfolk, Petersburg,
Charlottesville, Fredericksburg and Bristol, Tennessee.
Twice a week, Mrs. Endo used a different alias to make a late-day appointment at a different office. When she’d done the circuit, she’d start again. She’d change her accent, hair color and style, experimenting with makeup, glasses and designer clothes.
For weeks, Tittle failed. The adulterous couple was too careful and clever. Just when Tittle was about to give up, he found a crow that had flown into his kitchen window because it didn’t see the glass and died of a head injury, Tittle could only suppose. Tittle got an idea. He put the dead crow in the freezer. He painted a camera and tripod yellow.
Late that afternoon he followed Mrs. Endo to dental office number 17 on Staples Mill Road, near Ukrops, and set up his faux surveyor’s equipment in the parking lot. It was five-thirty P.M. The only office lit up was a corner one, the windows covered by shut Venetian blinds. Tittle gave Mrs. Endo and Dr. Ehrhart fifteen minutes to get into it as Tittle pointed the twelve-hundred-millimeter telephoto lens and attached the cable release.
He pulled the frozen crow out of a pocket of his coat and hurled it at the window, where it hit with a sickening thud, shaking the glass. The blinds suddenly flashed open. The naked dentist looked out and around and down at the ground, discovering the poor bird that had flown into the glass. The naked Mrs. Endo put a hand over her mouth, shaking her head in pity.
They paid no attention to the surveyor walking off the job with his bright yellow equipment. The divorce turned out favorably for Judge Endo. In return, he gave Tittle the appointment, as promised in their bartering agreement.
Magistrate Tittle’s guilt grew with the years. He became increasingly depressed and intimidated when Judge Endo called from time to time to remind him of the favor and the necessity of going to the grave, in this case Hollywood Cemetery, with the secret swap that had brought about Tittle’s dream-come-true. Magistrate Tittle never told a soul.