“What relationship he was a tool what ended it was Marty being a loser screwing up a pitch meeting and coming home early and finding us not that I cared about Marty it was the way he reacted Daney just scurrying off with his you know what tucked between his legs.” She flipped her hair. “My motto no wimps no losers no complications.”

“How’d Daney react to your breaking it off?”

“Called me kept calling me finally he gave up.”

I said, “Why do you think he punctured the condom?”

“You tell me you’re the psychologist,” said Weider.

“Could he have wanted to get you pregnant?”

“No because he didn’t like kids.”

“He told you that?”

“Sure more than once he said his wife wanted them she couldn’t have them he said no way he didn’t want the hassle.”

“He confided in you.”

“He talked about everything I couldn’t get him to shut up what’d he do anyway?”

“You never asked him to explain why he’d tried to puncture the condom?”

“I told you he gave me that stupid story and I hit him upside the head I didn’t care what his story was the main thing was do things my way.” Another hair flip. “I don’t think it was pregnancy per se I think it was sperm.”

“Pardon?”

“S-P-E-R-M he thought his was the elixir of the gods he’d go off on these long speeches about his you-know-what and how it was the magic wand of the future you could create cities countries continents with a teaspoon he’d get like that after he had his glorious three minutes all he wanted to do afterward was raid my refrigerator and blab.”

“Magic sperm,” said Milo.

“He was really into it really weird obsessive what’s that other word— fixated that’s a psychological term right that’s what you guys call it fixated.”

I nodded.

Milo said, “Daney had a sperm fixation.”

“Want to know what I think about Daney I think he was a fixation sperm egomaniac everything about him was so so important he even started thinking he was an attorney thought he could tell me how to run my case believe me that didn’t last long I put him in his place.”

I said, “The Malley case?”

“He watched too many movies had all these ideas these bad TV movie ideas like cross-examine the cops until they wore themselves out or shift the blame to the kid’s father so there’d be reasonable doubt I said shutup this isn’t Perry Mason the little bastards were caught with the body they admitted they did it I’ll get the best deal for them but they’re going away and that’s what happened.”

“Daney wanted to blame Barnett Malley.”