About ninety minutes later he arrived at his office. He had stopped on the way for coffee, which was bitter and acidic, and what was purported to be a cheese Danish, but which seemed to be about thirty percent industrial waste. Now as he settled in for the morning, he had what felt like a bellyful of molten lava. "And gas," he said quietly, then emitted a muffled belch. Between the fiery indigestion and the raging itch, he was plenty miserable. "What else can happen?" he muttered to himself, then a little louder, "Don't answer that!" Questions like that brought their own answers, which were never, ever good. He pulled a package of antacids out of his desk and chewed one up with a grimace. After a minute he chewed up a second one. He scratched the worst itch vigorously yet discreetly and turned to the case he was preparing.
The case, on the surface, seemed easy enough. The defendant, Willis Proctor, suspecting something was going on, came home unexpectedly one afternoon and found his wife of eighteen months in bed with another man, post-coitally asleep. The defendant had armed himself with the first heavy object he could find, a liquor bottle ("Glenfiddich. Waste of good scotch," Jack thought ruefully, "That's the brand Arthur keeps in his desk, not that he's shared any with me lately.") and had broken it over the other man's head, fracturing his skull, and causing his demise. He had then attempted to strangle his wife, but she had been able to fight him off, giving him a black eye and a fat lip in the process. She then was able to subdue him till the police came, being twenty one inches taller than he was. She was 5' 5". He was 3' 8".
One of the things that Jack particularly liked about his position as Executive ADA was that to a certain extent he got to pick and choose his cases. However, he sometimes got stuck with a case that he was not interested in but which had some circumstance, such as high media interest, that caused Arthur to assign it to him. Thus it had been with this case. Willis Proctor was a fairly successful off Broadway actor who went by the stage name, Wee Willie. ("Way off Broadway!" Jack had thought) Jack had been dimly aware of him before, having seen articles about him from time to time in the newspapers. He was the principal actor in a troupe that primarily did revivals of old musical comedies, but would also occasionally attempt to perform a classical drama. Willie usually played the lead role. Last year they had done Julius Caesar, with Wee Willie playing Caesar, of course. At the thought, Jack's stomach gave a fiery spasm.
Jack actually knew someone who had seen that play. She had told him that the assassination scene was unintentionally but uproariously funny. The fifteen or so senators were all much taller than Caesar. They had chased him all over the stage, trying to grab hold of him but failing. All the while the scampering Caesar was shrieking in a falsetto voice, "Dudes! Hey! Whatcha doin'? Brutus? Dude! Whatcha doin'?" Eventually they surrounded him and began swinging away with daggers, fifteen senators bent over double to reach the squealing and kicking diminutive dictator, fifteen butts high in the air. Jack's friend had told him the entire scene had reminded her of a greased pig competition at a second rate county fair. All in all, Willie had quite a cult following. Naturally the press was passionately interested in this case.
When Arthur had given him the case, Jack had found an old Daily News article about the wedding. The bride, Charlene Owensmouthe, whom everyone called Charley O, had been an actress herself, appearing in both really bad porn and grade Z sci-fi. Her one big porn hit had been a feature length film called Wilma Does Wilkes-Barre, which had been a moderate hit in certain blue collar neighborhoods, in which she had entertained members of a college marching band, of the fire department, of a local biker gang, and of a famous parcel delivery service, all at once. She never had a big hit among the sci-fi films she was in. Her part was the one you see in all such films, the one in which the unconscious girl, head lolling back and long hair cascading down, breasts heaving against diaphanous fabric, is being carried away in the arms of a lustful mutant, or a lustful robot, or a lustful bug-eyed monster, or a lustful Republican. She had ceased acting about fifteen years ago, and the film industry somehow survived. She did do occasional voice work. She had supplied the voice for the main character in a recent and quite popular adult computer game, Snow White and the Seven Studs. Now she was mainly a theatrical agent, not a good one, whose clients ran the gamut from bad to really bad. One client whose name had stuck with Jack was Joseph 'Hooks' McGraw, a little used character actor who had formerly been a chainsaw juggler.
In the article about the wedding, Charley O was quoted as saying, "He's all man where it counts. He's not little everywhere." Next to this had been a photo of the happy couple. In the photo, Wee Willie was wearing a powder blue tuxedo with an enormous pink boutonniere, about the size of his head. The top of his head was about level with Charley O's diamond studded navel ring. As for the blushing bride, she was wearing a white bolero top tied very tightly over a pair of grossly excessive silicone implantations, a tight, white leather micro-miniskirt over white fishnet stockings, and white Batgirl boots. She wore a huge pink flower matching her groom's behind her left ear. Jack had looked at the photo for a minute or two, until a very disturbing mental image involving their wedding night came unbidden into his consciousness. This image had not dispelled until he had looked up and seen Serena looking at him with that expression of hers he thought of as "bovine electroshock." Jack quickly returned to the present. He found himself wondering, not for the first time, whether Serena ever blinked.
Jack's reveries were interrupted by a fresh outburst of itching. He reached down and scratched savagely, which did little good. There was that impression of a memory again. What was he trying to remember? His attention returned to the file. The late third participant in this domestic comedy was one Calvin Jones. He had been a friend of Charley O's for many years. They had acted together in several porn films. Calvin had used the subtle and evocative stage name Myles Long. Jack smiled at this and wondered if there had been any truth in advertising there. Calvin had remained in the industry after she left it, though his work these days was more behind the camera rather than in front of it. According to the file, Myles' friends and acquaintances in the industry had all thought of him as a "stand up guy."
It was the most bizarre love triangle Jack had ever encountered. It definitely was one for his memoirs, except that no one would ever believe it.