A Good Marriage

by Kimberly McCreight

  “Wait, does the school have reason to think this is an inside job?” a tall, broad-shouldered woman asked. She had very short blond hair and very large features, an unfortunate combination. Her bulging eyes darted around the room. “That would be awful.”

  “Sorry, I thought we covered the part about the investigation being confidential and ongoing.” Sarah’s eyelashes fluttered with irritation. “I can tell you that Country Day has hired one of the best cybersecurity firms in the country. And that they’ve launched an investigation. They’ll get to the bottom of what’s happened. It’s all they do. And when they’re done, they’ll report their findings. But I don’t have any more details at the moment.”

  “It seems like they should at least tell us something in the meantime,” the petite woman spoke up again, but more quietly now. She sounded almost shell-shocked. “I mean, what if we have … what if there’s been additional suspicious activity that could be relevant?”

  When Amanda looked around the room, a few other parents were nodding. Like they were victims, too, of this additional suspicious activity. But what was it? Amanda felt sick. Zach would be absolutely apoplectic if he found out about any of this.

  “Well, the good news is that the school has given me a number, a hotline of sorts. You can all call it to confidentially report something that has happened to you personally.” Sarah hesitated, raised a curious eyebrow as if she was hoping someone might spill something right then. “You could also share information you have about who could be responsible. Provided you actually know something.”

  “I’d like that number,” a curly-haired woman next to Sarah said breathlessly. Her eyes were pink at the edges, with circles underneath. She was already digging in her bag for a pen.

  Amanda caught eyes with Kerry again as Sarah dutifully read the information out.

  “Now?” he mouthed at her, motioning again toward the door.

  Amanda shook her head and laughed. She’d have loved nothing more than to race out the door. But where exactly would she run to? That had always been the problem, hadn’t it? No destination. Even now, there would only be darkness out there, more and more darkness. She hugged herself to keep from trembling.

  This had happened once before. She’d gotten hang-ups just like this when Case was a toddler, and they were living in Sacramento. Back then, Amanda had also known who it was. Then, too, she could feel his ragged breathing against her neck. But then the calls had just stopped suddenly. Until now.

  The din in the room rose as parents began to grumble among themselves. Sarah raised her hands and clapped them loudly until the room quieted.

  “Hello! I repeat: call the hotline only if you have actual information to share,” she went on, voice raised. “This firm charges in six-minute increments. So do not call to try to pump them for information. Everything in the investigation is confidential. They will tell you nothing, and we will all end up footing the bill.” Sarah looked about to say something else but seemed to think the better of it. “Now, come on, everyone. It’s summer, and most of our kids are gone for camp. Let’s not waste our precious free time obsessing about this nonsense!”

  Lizzie

  JULY 7, TUESDAY

  It was only 8:30 a.m. as I headed toward Paul Hasting’s office. Absurdly early by Manhattan law firm standards, where typical protocol involved staying into the wee hours, then not arriving at work until closer to 10:00 a.m. Paul was always in early and out late. But then he was not only an ex-prosecutor, he was an ex–Special Forces master sergeant who ran ultramarathons in his free time. He did not fuck around.

  I hesitated as soon as I turned the last corner and spotted the desk outside Paul’s office. Instead of his usual warm, matronly secretary, there sat bitter, bracing Gloria typing away. I’d forgotten: Paul’s secretary was having her gallbladder removed. It was too early and I was already too on edge to deal with Gloria, who’d had it in for me ever since I’d politely declined to have her installed as my own full-time secretary. Gloria had recently been demoted from partner secretary to floater and part-time receptionist when her partner left the firm and no one else wanted to work with her. She’d sat in for me in my first days at Young & Crane, but I couldn’t bear her constant complaining—the weather, her sinuses, some old man who didn’t offer her a seat on the subway. Maybe it wasn’t Gloria’s fault that she was so unhappy, but she also wasn’t very good at her job. Rumor was the firm would have fired her if she hadn’t already threatened to sue for sex discrimination. Knowing Paul, he’d probably asked to have Gloria assigned to him so he could assess the situation himself.

  “Is he in?” I asked, nodding my head toward Paul’s open door.

  “Of course he is.” She rolled her overmascaraed eyes. “He came in early to review every single summer associate’s pro bono billing. All because two summer associates padded a few hours to play a little golf at Chelsea Piers. Harmless, right? Of course, Paul’s out for blood. All he’s done in there is shout.”

  It was exactly the kind of thing that would enrage Paul. He was even more maniacal about ethics than he was about hard work. He’d fired associates for far less. Right before I arrived, he’d even pushed out a fellow partner for “behavior unbecoming.” Unbecoming what, no one seemed willing to specify. And yet Paul liked to consider himself an outsider in the corporate world, and hence a renegade at Young & Crane. It was a volatile combination.

  I headed over to his open door, feeling even more hesitant about mentioning Zach. I could not imagine that being friends with an accused wife-murderer would reflect well on me. And the one time I’d heard Paul talk about associates taking on cases, he’d been pissed at even the suggestion. I certainly did not want him pissed at me.

  Paul was seated with his back turned away from the door, hunched over something. In his early sixties, he had a carefully shorn gray buzz cut and that very fit, weathered handsomeness that only increased with age.

  I sucked in a breath, reminding myself that this conversation was merely a formality so I could get on to the real business of getting Zach the right lawyer. Finally I knocked firmly on the door.

  “Yep,” Paul called, without looking up.

  I could now see that he was fidgeting with a small wooden puzzle on his lap, black reading glasses on the end of his nose. I came to a stop in front of his huge, perfectly organized desk. On the credenza behind him were framed photos of his four college-age children with his beautiful, silver-haired first wife. At least, I was assuming. I’d heard from Mary Jo that all of Paul’s subsequent wives had been much younger, but that he carried an enormous torch for his first.

  “A gift from my oldest son,” Paul said, eyes fixed on the block. “It’s Senegalese. He’s living there. Damn thing is impossible. Probably sent it to torture me. He always was kind of an ass.” He looked up, eyeing me hopefully over his glasses. “Want to give it a go?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not very good at puzzles.”

  “Hmm,” he said with obvious disappointment.

  I often felt Paul sizing me up and finding me wanting. Then again, it was the same matter-of-fact disdain with which he seemed to regard most people. No one met Paul’s exacting standards, which probably explained why he’d been divorced three times. Holding the puzzle in his other hand, he extracted a stapled set of papers from a neat stack and tossed it onto the corner of the desk in front of me. He returned to the puzzle.

  “Your revisions to the DOJ response were an improvement, but our position remains shit.”

  After Sam had fallen back asleep, I’d finished my changes to the letter and sent it to Paul. It had been 2:00 a.m. It was 8:30 a.m. now, and Paul had already reviewed them. That was the problem with Young & Crane: no matter how hard you worked, there was always somebody working harder. Paul was especially hard to beat.

  When I first came to the firm, I’d worked for several different partners. Lately, though, I worked only with Paul. He and I had come to function as a mini white-collar practice within Young &
Crane, one where I did most of the work and Paul criticized it and me. While it was stressful working with Paul, it did spare me the precarious juggling of various partners’ demands that other associates had to contend with. It would not, however, make it easier for me to make partner myself, if and when the time came. Partnership required numerous allies and a savvy political strategy, neither of which I had any interest in. Nonetheless, the fact that for the past four months I’d performed well enough to be worthy of Paul’s continued criticism was apparently nothing short of a miracle. Thomas, my legal assistant, had told me stories about the dozens of associates Paul had taken only days to dispense with.

  “Agreed,” I said. “The positions aren’t strong, but they are the only ones available.”

  In other words, the client—Young & Crane’s client, our client—was obviously guilty. Everything we wrote was simply an attempt to disguise this fact. And as my boss Mary Jo used to say, “Pretty bows on a pile of shit just make it harder to flush.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s—ha!” Paul shouted triumphantly. The puzzle had snapped loudly into place. He set it on the edge of his desk like a punctuation mark, then looked at it for a moment before composing himself. “Shall I assume from the way you are nervously lingering there that the letter to the DOJ was not the sole reason for your visit?”

  “It wasn’t.” I crossed my arms and then uncrossed them: defensiveness was akin to weakness with Paul. “I have a question about firm protocol.”

  “This firm’s protocol?” Paul scoffed. “For Christ’s sake, you can hardly fire people here for arguably illegal behavior. This firm’s protocol is bullshit, if you ask me.” He paused, took an annoyed breath. “But I suppose I can do my best. Shoot.”

  “It’s my understanding that associates can’t take on their own cases,” I began. “A friend asked if I could help with something, and that’s what I told him, but I wanted to confirm.”

  “You are correct,” Paul said. “We need some kind of quality control. We had one yo-yo trying to sue some Upper West Side bodega because his ‘uncle’ supposedly ‘fell.’ I may not agree with a lot of the crap they do here, but at least Young & Crane doesn’t chase ambulances. What kind of case is it?”

  “Criminal.”

  Paul narrowed his eyes, then leaned back in his chair. “What type of criminal case?”

  “A law school friend of mine was arrested,” I began, and there was only one place to go next: the crime. Full disclosure seemed best. “Assaulting an officer. It was accidental, he says. His wife was killed, and he was very upset. He didn’t intentionally injure the officer.”

  Paul’s eyebrows lifted as he brought the forefingers of his two clasped hands to his lips. “Killed?”

  Shit. Was he intrigued?

  “Murdered, presumably. They haven’t charged my friend in connection with the death yet, but it seems likely they will. Anyway, he needs an attorney. Obviously, I don’t think I’m the right person, but he—”

  “Why?” Paul was looking at me intently.

  “Why am I not the right person?”

  “Yes. You are a defense attorney now, are you not? And you would not be here if you weren’t a very good one.”

  Oh, this was dangerous territory. Paul had forcibly made his peace with the switch from prosecution to defense. He’d be offended if I hadn’t made mine.

  “Yes, but all my experience is in white-collar.”

  “You must have rotated through general crimes at the US attorney’s office. Everyone does.”

  That was true. I’d spent three months in the Southern District’s General Crimes Unit right out of law school. But the crimes I’d handled had all been nonviolent. I was actually quite proud of how I’d expertly avoided blood-and-gore cases without hindering my upward advancement. I’d even gotten promoted early to the fraud unit, where there was not a drop of blood in sight.

  “I handled mostly immigration violations and minor drug charges. Nothing like a murder,” I said. “Anyway, I know violent felonies aren’t the kinds of cases Young & Crane usually handles, so—”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “Park Slope,” I said.

  “Brooklyn, huh?” Paul nodded, still with the narrowed eyes. “I grew up in Prospect-Lefferts. Raised my kids in Brooklyn Heights.”

  I felt suddenly like a key was slipping through my fingers, about to be lost forever to some crack in the floor. Whatever I’d gone into that office to accomplish was no longer in my control. I was being cross-examined by someone of far superior skill.

  “Anyway, my friend would obviously be better served by a defense attorney with homicide experience.”

  “I presume you told him that?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, I did tell him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “That he doesn’t care. He wants me to represent him.” I willed my voice steady. “He’s not thinking clearly. He wants somebody he can trust.”

  “Sounds like he’s thinking very clearly,” Paul said. “And he very clearly wants you.”

  There was a challenge to the way he said it. So what are you afraid of? Fear was another of Paul’s forbidden emotions.

  “He’s scared.” My stomach shifted uneasily.

  “As he should be,” Paul said. “You and I both know that innocent men go to prison all the time. You and I have probably put one or two there.” No, I thought. If I believed that, I would have quit a long time ago. How could Paul suggest that so casually? “And so we return to my original question: why not you?”

  Because I have never and will never handle a murder case. For reasons I cannot explain. Also, my life is already so fucked up in general. But I can’t tell you about any of that either without you thinking less of me.

  “I’m an associate, not a partner. You said yourself associates don’t take on their own cases.”

  Paul picked up a pen from his desk and threaded it through his fingers. “You’re not a partner, no. Not yet.” His eyes were alarmingly bright. “But I am. Now, I’m not saying I’ll be burning the midnight oil with you, but I’m in for the assist.”

  I could not for the life of me figure out how this conversation had delivered me here: to representing Zach.

  “Oh, okay, great,” I said, because Paul seemed to be waiting for gratitude. But my heart was pounding.

  “So who’s your friend?” Paul asked. “Our client?”

  “Zach Grayson,” I said. “He’s the founder of—”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Paul said. “That, um, logistics company. I read something about it in the Harvard Business Review.”

  “ZAG.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Making all companies ship like Amazon.” He sounded vaguely disgusted. “Why can’t people shop in stores anymore?”

  Because they work around the clock for people like you.

  “Zach cashed out of ZAG anyway,” I offered. “He’s starting something new in New York.”

  “Has he been arraigned?”

  I nodded. “Yesterday. For the assault on the officer. They’re probably waiting for forensics on the murder. No bail.”

  “No bail? Where’s he being held?”

  “Rikers.”

  “Jesus,” Paul grumbled. “So first we file a habeas writ. Get him out of that hellhole. Then we poke around at the DA’s office and find out what kind of case they have on the murder. Not much of one yet, or they’d have already charged him.” Paul paused, his face flushed with excitement. Like an idiot, I’d flung open the barn door, and he’d made his escape. “You think he’s guilty?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  Exactly that much was true. I didn’t think so. I knew absolutely nothing.

  “But even if he’s guilty, he’d be entitled to a defense, right?” Paul looked me in the eye. “You’ve got to believe that. It’s the only way this works.”

  “I know.”

  And I did. But in that moment, I regretted leaving the US attorney’s of
fice more than I ever had. Everyone was entitled to a defense, yes. That didn’t mean I needed to be the one to supply it. I’d made my peace with that fact a long time ago.

  Paul studied my face a moment longer. “Well then, what are you waiting for?” he asked, seeming pleased. “Get to work on that writ.”

  I nodded and stood, feeling unsteady as I made my way to the door.

  “Oh, and let me know if you have trouble tracking down the ADA that’s caught this one,” Paul called after me. “I have people I can reach out to at the Brooklyn DA’s office.”

  When I arrived at Brooklyn Criminal Court in search of Zach’s public defender, arraignments were in full swing. I’d called the defender’s office and left a message but hadn’t heard back. I sat in the back for a while, still shell-shocked from the direction my conversation with Paul had taken.

  Unlike the stately federal court in Manhattan with its dark mahogany and gold-trimmed ceiling, everything about this court was decidedly practical. The building was tall and modern, the wood inside a honey-colored pine. There were no heavy oil paintings, no weight of history. There were, however, lots and lots of unhappy people.

  The arraignment courtroom was packed—nonincarcerated defendants, lawyers, family, and friends filled the gallery, waiting and waiting and waiting. They looked nothing like the smug, affluent defendants in my federal fraud cases, who would always breeze in at the very last minute, too busy to wait for anything. Most everyone in that courtroom looked exhausted and sad and afraid. On the far side of the bar, at a table to the left, sat the arraignments prosecutor. She had short curly blond hair and a sour expression that may have been caused by her unflatteringly snug wrap dress, or maybe just arraignment duty. If the DA’s office was anything like the US attorney’s office, the junior assistants cycled through arraignments for a short stint before moving on to more prestigious assignments—sex crimes, felonies, homicides.

  For an hour I watched the grim, rapid-fire arraignments drone on, hoping an Adam Roth something would announce himself by making an appearance before the court. Instead my eyes glazed over as pleas were offered, charges were reduced. Files were shuffled. I was beginning to think about abandoning the cause when the next case was called.