The Best Friend

by Adam Mitzner

  I drove myself to the morgue to make the identification. Lying there in the drawer, covered in a sheet, Samantha barely looked like herself. Bloated and blue, her hair matted. She smelled like the ocean, even through the formaldehyde scent that permeated the room.

  Detective Hibbitts told me that her body had been found washed up against a rock jetty, about four miles from our home.

  “I don’t understand why she would have gone for a swim in the ocean at night,” I said.

  Detective Hibbitts didn’t provide an answer. Instead, he said, “Your first wife, she drowned too, didn’t she?”

  34.

  Samantha’s mother lived in a retirement community in central New Jersey, about twenty minutes from where Samantha had grown up. Samantha’s sister, Danielle, still lived in their hometown with her husband and three young children.

  I agreed that Samantha could be buried near them. In part because the alternative was an LA funeral, and that would have brought out the stars and the paparazzi. The other reason was that it was the least I could do for her family after withholding from them the circumstances of Samantha’s death.

  After I made this concession, the Remsen family must have decided that I served no further purpose for them, because they broke off all contact. None of her relatives returned any of my phone calls or texts in the ensuing days. Even when we met at the funeral parlor on the day Samantha was to be laid to rest, her mother refused to look at me. Danielle dispatched her husband to tell me that the family would appreciate it if I didn’t communicate with them at all during the service and kept at least ten feet away at all times.

  Samantha’s funeral was a modest affair, especially by Hollywood standards. A few of Samantha’s actual friends—the people she saw with some regularity—flew east, but most of the celebrities who tweeted out photographs of themselves standing beside Samantha and professed their undying love were no-shows. Tyree came, as did the other attendees of his dinner party. Each of them showed me the same disdain as Samantha’s family.

  The only person in attendance whom I counted as a friend was my literary agent, Scott Stonehill. My team in LA, the people who handled the movie and television side of the business, sent regrets, telling me that, for one reason or another, they couldn’t fly to New Jersey on such short notice. They all said that they wanted to see me as soon as I returned to LA, and their agencies sent overly elaborate floral arrangements to the funeral home.

  It was difficult to obey the Remsens’ ten-foot rule at the church, as the minister asked that all immediate family sit in the first row. Danielle and her husband put their children between us, like a human wall, and Samantha’s mother sat on the far end of the pew.

  When it came time for eulogies, Danielle spoke for the Remsen family. I worried that she’d say something inappropriate—calling me out by name as her sister’s murderer, or claiming Samantha never really loved me. But like Carolyn’s brother decades earlier, Danielle did not dishonor her sister’s memory. She spoke of their childhood, of her sister’s devotion to her nieces and nephew, of the future that Samantha would sadly never see.

  “She was our star in life, and now, like a star in the sky that sailors use for navigation, we will look up to the heavens for Samantha to guide us from there,” Danielle said in conclusion.

  When it was my turn to speak about my wife, I did so not because that was what Nick Zamora, who had no idea of the circumstances that had led to his wife’s death in the ocean, would do, but because it was what Nick Zamora, who loved his wife, had to do.

  “I loved Samantha. More than I thought I could ever love someone. And—I’m sure like all of you—I wondered why someone so beautiful, so young, so talented, would love someone like me.” There was some nervous laughter, proof that what I’d said resonated with those who knew Samantha, but the Remsens sat stone-faced, like the opposition party at a State of the Union address. “The answer is . . . I wish I knew, but I don’t. What I do know, however . . . what I am absolutely certain about, is that we were happy together. I hope that the years we were together were the happiest of her life, but all I know for certain is that they were the happiest of mine.”

  I could feel myself choking up and took it as a sign that I’d said enough. As I left the stage, I made no effort to embrace the Remsens. Instead, I placed a hand on Samantha’s casket, and then I resumed my seat at the edge of the pew and cried alone.

  The interment service was brief and handled solely by the minister without any opportunity for the mourners to speak. Scott stood beside me during this portion of the ceremony, and I was careful to maintain my distance from the Remsens.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Nick?” my agent asked after the service had concluded. “I know that . . . well, you don’t have the strongest support network.”

  “That’s the nicest way I’ve ever heard someone say that I’m friendless,” I said.

  I didn’t hear a word of his reply. Something had caught my eye in the distance.

  “Nick, are you okay?” Scott asked, low-key alarm in his voice.

  “I’m not sure.” My sightline was directed toward the edge of the collected mourners as the object of my fascination broke free of the crowd. “If you’ll excuse me for a second, I think there’s someone here I know.”

  My first thought was that Clinton looked better than I thought possible. He’d aged in a way that smoothed out the skinny, bookworm look that he maintained in my mind’s eye. His hair was now silver, and he’d gained just enough weight to fill out his suit the way the designer had intended. The one thing that remained consistent was that Clinton held himself with the same gravitas he’d had since his childhood.

  He was already walking toward me. When we met midway, I extended my hand.

  He grasped it and immediately pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around me, his face pressing into my chest. Before he could speak, I was sobbing.

  “I’m so sorry, Nicky,” he whispered in my ear.

  Nicky. When was the last time someone called me that? As soon as I asked myself that question, the answer came: It was Clinton. Thirty-four years ago.

  When I was finally able to regain my composure, I released him from our bear hug. “I . . . I don’t know what to say. You have no idea how much you being here means to me.”

  “I’m so glad you said that, Nicky. When Anne died, and then when I . . . I suffered a tragedy a few years ago, with the loss of my younger daughter, one of the things I wished for was that I still had you in my life. So when I heard about your wife’s death, I thought, I need to fix this thing between Nicky and me because . . . because there are too few people in your life that you love, and it’s never too late to be there for them.”

  I knew he didn’t mean to evoke this reaction, but I felt an inch high. I remembered when his daughter died. It was all over cable news, even in LA. The days she was missing . . . the manhunt . . . and then the discovery that she had been murdered. I watched Clinton break down live at the press conference. For weeks, even months, after it ended, I thought about reaching out to him. But I was too afraid.

  For reasons that I can no longer fathom, thirty-four years earlier, I had convinced myself that I could never be happy without Anne. My heart charted its own course, I told myself on countless occasions, and I had no choice but to submit to its demands. I was a romantic, not a scoundrel. Everything would make sense on the other side, and the only way the story could unfold was with Anne and me together.

  Of course, in reality, I was deluding myself. As Anne had told me at the beginning, I didn’t have to act on my feelings, and a better man—no, simply a decent man—would have refrained.

  When we were younger, I always knew that Clinton Broden was the better man. That unpleasant feeling you have deep inside but can’t deny. The things that transpired during our estrangement did not cause me to reconsider that assessment, even as I tried to live the best life I could. Even as Clinton became rich and famous by representing the worst of humanity. Yet
his presence today emphatically settled the question, incontrovertible proof that I had been correct all along.

  “I . . . I still don’t know what to say.”

  “Say that we’ve been out of each other’s lives for too long.”

  “Yes. Of course. I’ve missed you, Clinton. You have no idea how much.”

  “I think I know exactly how much,” he said with a smile.

  PART FOUR

  * * *

  CLINT BRODEN

  July–October 2020

  35.

  Like that old Hemingway line, I think about my estrangement from Nicky as occurring slowly, and then all at once. After his trial for Carolyn’s murder, Nicky couldn’t get out of New York fast enough. That I understood. I’ve had too few clients acquitted to constitute a large enough statistical sample size, but to a person, they all exiled themselves.

  When Nicky first arrived in LA, we spoke by phone a few times, but I knew that our friendship, which I’d once taken for granted would last forever, was on borrowed time. I could have blamed our estrangement entirely on Nicky, but that wouldn’t be fair. Which is not to say that he made much of an effort to maintain our relationship, or that I wasn’t convinced he was relieved to have me out of his life—only that I felt that way about him too.

  The night after Samantha’s funeral, Nicky and I went back to my house in the city. A few glasses of scotch down, Nicky offered an apology. “You’ve never been anything less than a brother to me, Clinton. And I . . . well, I’ve loved you like a brother, on that I’d stake my life, but—”

  “But sometimes a brother can be a real sonofabitch,” I interrupted.

  “Exactly,” he said with a sad smile. “And for that, I’m truly very sorry.”

  “Apologize by paying it forward, Nicky. By coming back into my life.”

  And he did. For the next month, we were in steady contact. We talked on the phone two or three times a week, and sometimes those calls went on for hours, remembering our youth or trying to catch up on the last thirty-odd years. More than once he noted that we were like long-lost lovers, and it occurred to me that was exactly what we were.

  In late August, I went to LA to speak before law students at UCLA. When I told Nicky about my trip, he didn’t hesitate to invite me to stay with him. My initial plan was to fly in on Wednesday, the day of my speech, and then fly out the next day, but Nicky wouldn’t hear of it, insisting we spend the weekend together.

  My speech at UCLA had been advertised—not by me—as “a discussion with F. Clinton Broden, the most celebrated criminal defense lawyer of our time.” My student wrangler, a woman named Nancy Wong who had a short Cleopatra haircut and wore oversize glasses, told me that it was the best-attended student-sponsored event of the year. “We had the governor here last month and way fewer people showed up.”

  The event was held in a small theater. By my estimate, it had five hundred seats, and they were all occupied. A podium was centered in the middle of the stage, and off to the right were two chairs, one of which I occupied, while Nancy stood center stage to introduce me to the crowd. After my opening remarks, I would return to my seat to participate in an interview and answer student questions.

  “We’re very excited to have F. Clinton Broden with us,” Nancy said to the audience. “A graduate of St. John’s University and its law school, Mr. Broden began his legal career in the Federal Defender’s office in Manhattan, then went into private practice as a criminal defense lawyer. He gained initial fame when he successfully obtained an acquittal for bestselling author Nicholas Zamora, who was accused of murdering his wife. Since then, Mr. Broden has represented a string of A-list clients in virtually every field imaginable—movie stars, politicians, sports heroes, and titans of finance. Mr. Broden has also proudly represented more notorious figures, such as the reputed terrorist Nicolai Garkov. He is, as we say in the title of this talk, the most celebrated criminal defense attorney of our time. Ladies and gentlemen, the Criminal Law Clinic of the UCLA Law School is very proud to bring to you F. Clinton Broden.”

  The applause was enthusiastic. When I reached the lectern, I thanked Nancy for her kind words and removed from my breast pocket the paper copy of the stump speech I used for this type of event. I’d delivered it so often by now that I rarely even glanced at the pages.

  After telling the students what an honor it was to be there and joking about my grades and UCLA, I told them that the topic of my talk would be the role of the defense attorney in the criminal justice system.

  “In popular culture,” I began, “there are three types of noble lawyers. First, there is the defender of the innocent. Perry Mason and Atticus Finch immediately spring to mind. The second type is the civil rights warrior. Thurgood Marshall and RBG are the patron saints of this category. And lastly, there is the crime fighter. My daughter, Ella, who heads up the Sex Crimes Unit in the Manhattan DA’s office, fits this category, as do many other prosecutors throughout the country.

  “Obviously, two of those categories don’t apply to me at all. Although I’ve done some civil rights cases, I haven’t dedicated my career to the cause. And I’ve never been a prosecutor. Which means that the only hope I ever had to be a noble lawyer—at least according to popular culture—was to defend the innocent. But I have to admit, I’m not that either. From time to time I represent an innocent client, but the vast majority of my clients are guilty as charged. Yet I represent them, and I do so proudly. The conventional wisdom is that I do so for money—and I’m not going to deny that I am lucratively compensated for my services—but I maintain that my role representing the guilty, and fighting as hard as I can for them to be acquitted, is as noble as any other in the justice system.

  “As I’m sure you all know from your Crim Pro class, the Fourth Amendment prohibits illegal searches, and the exclusionary rule bars the admissibility of any evidence obtained in or flowing from such an illegal search, under the theory that we lawyers call ‘fruit of the poisonous tree.’ From TV, you’d think that this entire area of jurisprudence was designed solely to exclude the murder weapon from trial. But without this rule, there would be nothing to stop the police from entering your home without a warrant, or any justification at all, and conducting an illegal search. If they found . . . really, anything, they could use it against you. Now, the judge might yell at the cops for violating the Constitution, but if the prosecutor can still introduce illegally obtained evidence at trial, that doesn’t do the defendant a whole lot of good, or deter cops from doing it the next time to someone else. Pretty soon, you’re living in a police state.

  “So what does any of this have to do with me being a noble lawyer? you ask. My answer is that there are many important procedural safeguards in our criminal justice system that are indispensable for us to live in a free society. The undisputed king of these civil liberty protections is that a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Anything I can do to make the government meet that test keeps us freer than we would otherwise be. And for our justice system to work, for it to truly keep us free, we defense attorneys must make the government meet its burden of proof when representing our clients, whether innocent or guilty.”

  I went on for another twenty minutes or so, hitting the clichés that law students seem to like, peppered with war stories. During the Q and A, the students asked the usual questions: Do you really not feel conflicted when representing someone guilty? “No, not for a second. Any more than a heart surgeon would think twice about saving the life of a patient he thought was guilty of a crime.” What was your favorite case? “They’re like your children, so I don’t pick among them.” Are you ever tempted to break the rules to help a client? “No, never. That would go against the entire idea that I’m doing noble work. If you cheat, even because it is going to get the result you think is just, you have perverted the system, and a lawyer’s duty, first and foremost, is to the justice system. Your obligation to your client—even the innocent client—comes second.” And,
of course, one guy—and it’s always a guy—asked, Is your firm hiring?

  At the conclusion of my remarks, the law students gave me another standing ovation. As they clapped, I saw Nicky smiling proudly back at me from the second row, the way Anne always looked when she attended my talks.

  According to Nicky, the best steakhouse in LA was Chi Spacca on Melrose. I had promised this dinner was on me, compensation for his accompanying me to UCLA. When I opened the menu, I realized that Nicky must have confused best with most expensive.

  “Over two hundred bucks for a steak,” I said.

  “I would have thought that the most celebrated criminal defense lawyer of our time could cover that for the client who made him famous,” Nicky said with a smirk. “It’s fifty ounces, so we can split it. Anyway, it’s the bottle of wine I’m gonna order that will really set you back. And, yes, you can thank me later.”

  To quote my favorite line from Pulp Fiction, paraphrasing because John Travolta was referring to a vanilla milkshake, I’m not sure if the steak was worth $250, but it was a damn good hunk of meat. The wine was also top-notch.

  “Do you believe the stuff you told the kids back there?” Nicky asked when we were midway through dinner.

  “Absolutely, I do.”

  “But don’t the guilty deserve to be punished for what they’ve done?”

  The question seemed too weighty for dinner chitchat. Was my oldest friend going to confess to me here and now? About Carolyn? Samantha?

  The police had already determined Samantha’s death to be a homicide, the result of blunt force trauma to the back of her skull that caused her neck to break. The lack of water in her lungs proved that she had been put in the ocean postmortem. That was more than enough evidence for the press—especially the cable news pundits—to declare Nicky guilty.