Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Report them to you and try to ascertain the correct information.”

  “How long did you work at this project, Mr. Tanner?”

  “For two months, on and off. For a total of seventy-five hours, approximately.”

  “Did you incur significant expenses?”

  “Yes. There was a good deal of travel involved. I went to Durham, North Carolina; Providence, Rhode Island; Washington, D.C.; and to Massachusetts, Missouri, and Iowa as well.”

  “Now, I show you a copy of what has been marked Defendant’s Exhibit D. Can you identify that for me?”

  “That is what you have given to me and described as the resumé attached to the employment application that Mr. Halliburton submitted to Arundel Corporation back in 1979.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Tanner. What items on that resumé did you find to be true?”

  “Objection, Your Honor. No foundation.”

  “Your Honor, plaintiff has previously admitted pursuant to Section 2033 of the Code of Civil Procedure that certain affidavits and other documents obtained by Mr. Tanner during his investigation were authentic and genuine. Those documents will be offered into evidence after Mr. Tanner completes his testimony, as providing the foundation for that testimony. If at this late date counsel for Mr. Halliburton seeks to challenge the authenticity of these documents, I assure him that we will move pursuant to CCP Section 2034(c) for an order requiring plaintiff to pay the expenses of any and all affiants and records custodians forced to travel to this court to authenticate the documents, and for reasonable attorneys’ fees as well. Are you making such a challenge, Mr. Kinlaw?”

  “Our position regarding the documentation will be asserted when and if they are offered into evidence, Mr. Stacey, and not before.”

  “May I proceed, then, Your Honor?”

  “You may, Mr. Stacey. Subject to a motion to strike if a sufficient foundation is not forthcoming.”

  “Thank you. So, Mr. Tanner. Tell us, for example, what you learned of Mr. Halliburton’s place and date of birth.”

  “His resumé says he was born in Paris, France, in 1939. Actually, he was born in What Cheer, Iowa, in 1945.”

  “How big a city is What Cheer?”

  “In the 1980 census the population of What Cheer was eight hundred and three.”

  “How about Mr. Halliburton’s education?”

  “His resumé states that he attended Governor Dummer Academy in Massachusetts, then Brown University, the London School of Economics, and the graduate school of business at Duke University. It also states he was awarded the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts in Economics, and a Master of Business Administration. Actually, Mr. Halliburton graduated from high school in Moravia, Iowa, and attended Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville, Missouri, on a football scholarship. He dropped out after two years when a knee injury ended his athletic career. Mr. Halliburton is still remembered by several merchants in Kirksville, as owing them sizable amounts for food, clothing, and other necessaries which were extended to him on credit during his college days.”

  “Your Honor, move to strike the final portion of that answer as hearsay. I know of no affidavits on that point. The matter is also immaterial.”

  “Read the answer please, Mr. Reporter. Thank you. The objection is sustained, Mr. Kinlaw. The jury will disregard everything following the word career. You know better, Mr. Tanner.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I got carried away by my intrepidity.”

  “Continue, Mr. Stacey.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. So Mr. Halliburton has no college degree, to say nothing of a Master’s in Business Administration?”

  “He has no degrees from the institutions he listed, and I found no evidence that he attended any educational institutions other than Northeast Missouri State and Moravia High.”

  “How about his employment record?”

  “His resumé states that he was employed by Exxon Corporation, and he was, but not as an assistant vice-president of bulk product marketing, as he represented.”

  “In what capacity was he employed?”

  “As a gas station attendant in Washington, D.C. The station was on Connecticut Avenue.”

  “How about his other position, that of Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton, Incorporated?”

  “That much is true. He did hold that position in that company. But the company did not have assets in excess of thirty million dollars and it did not have more than one hundred employees and it did not engage in the manufacture and distribution of computer software.”

  “What were its assets and what was its business, Mr. Tanner?”

  “Halliburton, Incorporated owned a 1973 Dodge Challenger and not much else. What it did was sell the contents of its trunk—which ranged from Gucci shoes from Mexico to Navajo jewelry from Taiwan—at various outdoor locations in the Washington–Baltimore corridor. Most of the locations were vacant lots.”

  “I see. Was there anything at all on that resumé that was the truth, Mr. Tanner?”

  “Well, Mr. Halliburton said he was a skilled and experienced salesman, and I’d say there was some truth to that.”

  “Why?”

  “He did a damned good job of selling himself to the Arundel Corporation.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tanner. Your Honor, I submit the aforementioned affidavits and other documents which support Mr. Tanner’s testimony, which have been stipulated as authentic and which have been collectively marked as Defendant’s F.”

  “Any objection, Mr. Kinlaw?”

  “Ah … no, Your Honor.”

  “It may be admitted.”

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  “You may cross-examine, Mr. Kinlaw.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Tanner, you’re a private eye, right?”

  “Right.”

  “For sale to the highest bidder.”

  “Not always.”

  “But usually?”

  “Maybe not even that. I look at the bidder as well as the bid.”

  “Come now, Mr. Tanner. You testify in court quite often, do you not?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “And you get paid for it, true?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re being paid for the testimony you just gave, aren’t you, Mr. Tanner?”

  “I’m being paid for my time, Mr. Kinlaw, not for my testimony.”

  “At what rate?”

  “Forty dollars per hour.”

  “That’s quite a lot, isn’t it?”

  “I happen to know it’s only one fifth of what you charge for your time, Mr. Kinlaw.”

  “That’s hardly the point, is it?”

  “I don’t know. You brought it up.”

  “I … Now, you’ve testified for Mr. Stacey several times before, have you not? In other cases?”

  “Twice.”

  “How did those come out?”

  “Won one, lost one.”

  “Did you receive a bonus afterward, in either case?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am. And so is my banker.”

  “I see. Now, you don’t know of your own personal knowledge or experience that Mr. Halliburton lacks an MBA degree, do you, Mr. Tanner?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t know whether he ever sold computer software for a living, do you?”

  “No. I just know he didn’t sell it for Halliburton, Incorporated.”

  “So as far as you know, the essential parts of Mr. Halliburton’s resumé may well be true, isn’t that right?”

  “I guess it depends on what you mean by essential. He got his name and address right. And the color of his eyes. But I imagine the Arundel Corporation sees that resumé as a rather expensive hoax.”

  “Move to strike as nonresponsive, Your Honor.”

  “Overruled.”

  “But—”

  “Proceed, Mr. Kinlaw.”

  “Very well. Let’s turn to
your previous profession, Mr. Tanner. You say you used to be a practicing attorney, but now you’re not. I wonder if you can tell me why you’re not a lawyer anymore.”

  “There’s not an easy answer to that. A lot of it had to do with not liking to talk on the telephone, I think.”

  “Come now, Mr. Tanner. There was more to it than that, was there not?”

  “I suppose there must have been.”

  “You got in some trouble, didn’t you? Trouble that resulted in a jail term.”

  “What I got into was a situation in which I felt it necessary to make certain observations in order to protect my client’s rights. The person to whom I made those observations didn’t take them kindly. Since he happened to be a judge, he sentenced me to six months in jail for contempt of court. I served the time rather than apologize. After I got out I decided that since none of the reasons for my contemptuous outburst had disappeared, I’d try to get into a more respectable line of work.”

  “More respectable? Surely you don’t expect me to believe that a private detective pursues a more respectable calling than an attorney-at-law.”

  “No, Mr. Kinlaw. I don’t expect you to believe that. But I think the jury might.”

  TWO

  Just another day in Superior Court—predominantly boring, with intermittent flashes of wit or tension; periodically entertaining or even enlightening if either of the lawyers is any good; marginally productive; and in this case, since my client was a lawyer and his was a corporation, a day more profitable than normal.

  It was warm and sunny—typical San Francisco summer-in-fall—so I decided to stroll back to the office instead of hailing a cab. Along the way I dodged the drunks and the ravers as I considered what to do with the proceeds of the Arundel account. I needed a few big-ticket items—a refrigerator, a couch, a valve job—and countless smaller conveniences as well—a floor lamp, a shower curtain, a belt. But what I needed more than anything was to patch things up with my secretary, so along the way I stopped at the Neiman-Marcus perfume counter and bought Peggy a quarter-ounce of Obsession, which the salesclerk assured me was the latest thing. I had no idea if the scent was to her taste, I just hoped the same thing the manufacturer hoped—that with that name and that label it didn’t have to be.

  The little box—gift-wrapped in glass and paper worth more than the fragrance itself—was concealed behind my back as I let myself into the outer office, but there was no one there to give it to. I surrendered my contrite smile and did a quick calculation: it was Monday and it was afternoon, so Peggy was definitely scheduled to be on duty and Peggy always did what she was scheduled to do. I considered the possibilities, shrugged, put the little box on top of her typewriter, then went into my private office and sat down at my desk prepared to glide to the end of the day on the wings of my triumphant court appearance.

  I was slitting open the top envelope from the stack of mail in front of me before I noticed her. She was lying on the couch, one arm a shield across her eyes, the other a sash across her chest. One leg was stretched out straight but the other dangled awkwardly off the cushion, and that single ungainly image was enough to make me hurry to her side, propelled by the sudden, sweaty conviction that Peggy Nettleton was dead.

  Perhaps it was Malcolm Halliburton’s hateful stare that had so attuned me to catastrophe, perhaps it was the persistent fog of dread that clouds my profession, perhaps it was merely a temporary tic of fear, but whatever it was I was firmly in its grip as I knelt by Peggy’s side and touched her shoulder. It was warm and yielding, definitely alive, a much more precious gift than the one I’d left atop her desk. I saw no blood, no blue-black smear of violence, and beneath my searching gaze Peggy’s chest ballooned with a placid breath. I pressed her flesh more firmly, then shook her till she stirred.

  She groaned and rolled away from me, so covetous of sleep she convinced me she was imperiled only by a nightmare. I mouthed an inchoate prayer of thanks and went back to my desk, lightened of most but not all of the apprehension of the previous moment, uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable I was to fate and mischief. To subdue such musings I continued through the mail, which was entirely routine and thus unable to keep my mind from casting stark, bleak images of life without the woman on the couch.

  Our history was neither complex nor fantastic. She’d answered my ad in the Sunday Chronicle—the one I placed when I was finally in a position to afford some help—and had sailed through the interview as though I were the applicant and she the jaded boss. She accepted my offer of employment only after establishing some ground rules: half-time only, no nights, no demeaning personal services such as fetching lunch or laundry, the immediate replacement of my manual typewriter with a new Selectric, and the equally immediate cleansing of the office carpet and painting of the office walls. I’d accepted her conditions gratefully, and she’d begun work the next day. Suddenly, somehow, it was eight years later and the rules were less precise.

  It was a unique relationship, at least for me. She was my only audience, my only motive to verbalize a thought or express an emotion. The rare and random epiphanies of my life would go unremarked if not for Peggy, yet there was nothing sexual between us, though once I’d made a halfhearted try that was wholeheartedly rebuffed on the sensible ground that we needed each other as friends more than we needed each other as lovers. There was a whole lot of respect on each side of the association, and an equal measure of affection, and maybe in each of us there was a sense that, whatever heated little exercises we might have going on the side, this was the alliance in our lives that mattered most. It was not something I viewed as an achievement, but my best times were the times I spent with Peggy.

  Her measured breathing continued to sweeten time, so I went back to my business. I’d worked my way down to an urgent appeal from the Native American Rights Fund when Peggy struggled to a sitting position and looked at me. Startled, she rubbed her eyes, groaned, and looked at me again. “Hi,” she said thickly.

  “Hi.”

  “I guess I fell asleep.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ve never done that before. I’m sorry. I …”

  I waved at her apology. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No. I’ll come in early tomorrow to make up the time.”

  “Don’t be silly. Go back to sleep if you want. I don’t have anything that needs doing right away. Except this.”

  I trotted to the outer office and retrieved the little package and went back and presented it to Peggy.

  “What’s this for?” she asked, frowning. “My birthday’s in June. You even remembered this year.”

  “A little peace offering. So we can forget our little fight.”

  “What fight?” she asked, her words still slow and fuzzy. “Oh. That. I tried, Marsh, but about midnight my fingers broke off relations with my brain and the strangest things started to show up on the page. I just couldn’t send out those reports with typos in them; it’s so … tacky. I—”

  “It was my fault,” I interrupted. “I shouldn’t have pressed you. Thank God someone around here has standards. Another day didn’t matter anyway. I was unreasonable.”

  “No you weren’t. I was incompetent.”

  I grinned. “Let’s have another fight about whose fault it was. You take my side and I’ll take yours. Like those horse races where you ride my horse and I ride yours and the money goes to the one that comes in second.”

  Peggy smiled, yawned, and opened her present. “Obsession. I’ve always wanted to try it.” She looked up from the package at me. “You can’t afford this.”

  “Today I can.”

  She took a moment to decipher, then nodded. “The Arundel trial. How’d it go?”

  “Okay, I guess. As I left the stand, Halliburton tossed me a look that activated my acne, so I suppose I did what I was hired to do.”

  Peggy gazed back at the tiny cruet as though it had been filled from the fountain of youth. “Shall I put some on?”

  “Sur
e.”

  She opened the bottle, tipped the essence of something or other onto a fingertip, and dabbed it behind her wrists and ears. “Want to smell?”

  I went to the couch, leaned down, and took a sniff. My nose wriggled in self-defense, and I suppressed a sneeze as I tried and failed to identify the scent. I doubt that it existed anywhere but on the flesh of wealthy women. “You don’t have to wear it, you know,” I told her. “I didn’t know what kind you use.”

  “But I like it I think,” she said, inhaling. Then she grinned. “My usual brand’s Norell, if the question ever comes up. In Trivial Pursuit, or something.”

  We exchanged flirtatious peeks, then Peggy closed her eyes and leaned back against the couch, giving me a chance to examine her more closely.

  Tall, angular, she was darkly and archly handsome, with long brown hair that curled at her shoulders and black-brown eyes that were customarily narrowed in a dedicated skepticism. Below the eyes, her sharpened chin and nose seemed always to be accusing me of being less fervid than I ought.

  At quick glance, Peggy had aged not a whit from the moment she first entered my office eight years before, but closer inspection revealed minor flaws. Her hair seemed limp and neglected, her cheeks two shades too pale, her eyes in danger of drowning in the big black pools that spread beneath them. Her shoulders sagged; her hands lay lax; a stocking puckered at the knee. Her entire aspect was that of an extremely efficient appliance that had recently been unplugged.

  The contrast from a few short weeks before was so disturbing I asked a question. “Is anything wrong?”

  I asked it casually, gently, my eyes back on my mail, all to belie my concern. But as usual I didn’t evade her defenses.

  She opened one eye. “What?”

  “I asked if anything was wrong.”

  “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”

  “You do.”

  She closed the eye. Her smile was arid and forbidding, and succeeded a sigh. “The perfume doesn’t give you a license to be candid, Mr. John Marshall Tanner.” Her words were as stiff as steel.

  “You’re exhausted,” I persisted. “You’ve been on edge for over a month. Usually you handle my more boorish outbursts without a ripple, but lately you’ve been giving me exactly what I deserve. Which is your right, but not your style.”