by Avery Duff
“I’m fired, then bam. Chase makes partner.”
She was thinking about it, and he wondered if she would reach the right conclusion.
“Oh,” she said. “Like he was getting a payoff?”
“Bribe, payoff, that’s how I see it, but I’m biased where those two are concerned.”
“So, Chase would go along with his story? Oh,” she said again.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you about another case. Are you doing anything for lunch?”
“What other case?” she asked.
“Yours,” he said. “Your case.”
Robert bought them each a smoothie and walked with Alison toward the skate park entombing the Venice Z-Boys’ old hangout underneath tons of concrete ramps. They sat down at one of the picnic tables, also concrete, where addicts shot up at night, a stone’s throw from LAPD’s Venice substation.
Earlier, he’d suggested the Sidewalk Cafe but she’d brought her own lunch. A homemade lunch every day was his guess. He wasn’t strapped for money yet, but Alison was.
At the picnic tables, she finally spoke to him. Her first words about his proposal since he put it to her on the boardwalk: “You want me to sue the firm? Sue it for malpractice?”
“No, no,” he said. “I want you to sue him for malpractice. Not the firm. Only him. He’ll try your case if you have sex with him? Drops it if you won’t, then sexually assaults you? That behavior reeks of malpractice.”
She took her sandwich out of a baggie and said, “Look, I lived and breathed Brian’s case for a year, and the thought of doing it again? I can’t do it.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in, me showing up out of the blue, but if you’ll hear me out, it’s not Brian’s case anymore. It’s yours—your case—and I’ll take it on contingency. You only pay me if I—if we win.”
“Really, I can’t, I’m sorry, I want my life back again. The way it was before.”
“How was it before?”
“It was . . . I didn’t have some things, but I was fine with it.”
“Money?”
“Sure, there’s that, but I didn’t need much.” He didn’t say anything, let her think about it some more. She said, “But I guess after Jack Pierce started talking those big numbers for Brian’s case, sure, to be honest, my expectations changed a little.”
“How much you owe the hospital?”
“A ton. They keep calling.”
He leaned forward, intense. “Let me handle the case. Your case. I promise, it’ll be short, and after we’re done with him, it’ll be sweet for you.”
“But they said in the meeting you’re not even a trial guy. Are you?”
“You’re right, I’m not. But he won’t let it go to trial. You’ll win, Alison. You’ll win because he’s got too much to lose.”
She saw his conviction, how important it was to him.
“I guess I owe you that. No. I do. I do owe you that. All right, I guess so.” She reached over and shook his hand.
“Deal,” he said, turning on his iPad. “Let’s do it.”
“What—now?” she asked.
“Got time?”
“Right now?” she asked again.
“If you have time, why not get started?”
“I guess—I mean—what all do you need to know?”
After he opened a file on his iPad, his list of prepared questions appeared. “I know this is hard . . . but for starters, did anyone else happen to see him at your place?”
“Really? Now?”
“Two things about me. I’m always on time, and I’m always prepared.”
“Okay,” she said. She looked down, like she was conjuring up a bad memory. It was about twenty seconds before she answered him. “Not that I know of. Nobody saw him. I should never have opened the door. I—”
“Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong. We take it slow, get started, no need to finish today.”
She nodded.
“So, nobody in your building saw him and said anything to you about it?”
“No, nobody. Lots of tenants get up and go to bed early. Construction workers, people like that.”
“After he showed up, did he force his way in?”
“No, not at all. He showed up with a bottle of Chateau something-or-other, some big-deal bottle, and said it was a peace offering for yelling at me.”
“In the meeting?”
“Right. Where I met you.”
“Exactly what happened once you let him inside? Take me through it, would you?”
“So, I was sitting in . . . no, wait. I was making tea in the kitchen when he got there, and I heard something, so I went to the window, and he was standing outside the door, big as life.”
Robert recalled: there was no peephole in her door.
“Then I let him in, and there was some chitchat about my great apartment. I think he went to the kitchen for wineglasses, but I didn’t have any, so he used whatever I had. Oh, I did have a corkscrew, and he opened the wine and said it had to breathe, you know, making a production out of it.”
“Sure,” he said. “I hear you.”
“And then he looked around the living room, wanted to see what kind of books I read. Then, oh, yeah, and he used the bathroom, and when he came out, he said the wine was ready. After that, he got down to it pretty fast . . .”
“It?” he asked.
“His sales pitch,” she said. “Whatever you want to call it.”
As she talked, her story unfolded in his mind like this:
In the living room, Jack offers her a water glass of wine and she takes it, tentative. He takes a drink. So does she.
“You know, my firm has a tremendous amount of time invested in your case.”
“I know.”
“But it’s to be expected. Lawsuits have a way of getting out of hand. Are you sure you choose to go forward with it after all that happened today?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I want.”
“Well, then, your choice requires a commitment—from both of us.”
“But I told you today, I want to take them to trial.”
“Sure, you do, but why should I not petition the judge to let me withdraw? I mean, what’s in it for me?”
“Our fee agreement. You get a percentage if we win. That’s our deal, right?”
Back on the beach, Alison stopped talking. She looked at Robert and said, “Requires a commitment? What’s in it for me? I knew that second he wasn’t there to talk business. I kept hoping I was wrong, thinking I could handle anything he might try.”
“Go on,” he said. “I understand.”
“So, anyway,” she said, “he put down his glass on the kitchen counter . . .”
As she spoke, Robert let himself go to her apartment again:
Jack puts his glass on the counter. Takes hers; puts it down, too. He caresses her arm, moving closer.
“Fee arrangement? Try again, Alison. You’re a very bright girl, so think about my question this time, and use your God-given imagination.”
She twists away from him and heads for the door, tells him, “You’re gonna leave now.”
He follows her. “All right, but remember, if I drop your case, I’ll tell any lawyer who considers it and asks my opinion that it’s a dog.”
She stops. “Why . . . why would you do that?”
“Because it is a dog. And because I can.”
Her eyes flash, her voice rising, “You fucking jerk, get out of here!”
He likes seeing her anger, gets off on it. He pulls her away from the door and bears down on her, throws her against the wall. She struggles, kicks over a lamp, but he presses his weight against her. Holds her against the wall, grabs both her wrists, pins them to the wall over her head.
“Stop it!” she screams.
He forces his mouth over hers. But she twists away.
One of his hands goes between her legs, inside her sweats, his other to his zipper. She struggles hard, trying to break free.
<
br /> “Get away from me!”
He throws her to the floor. Going for her, he knocks over a bookshelf, his chest heaving. He jumps onto her, puts his body weight on top of her. She tries to knee him in the groin, but he blocks it. Puts his knee on her thigh and pins her leg down.
She tries to hit him, but he grabs her wrists again. Rolls her over onto her stomach and pulls down her sweatpants, her panties, too, both around her knees. She tries to scramble away and sees him, wild-eyed behind her, in a cheap mirror resting on the floor.
Alison and Robert, sitting at the concrete table:
“And then he stopped,” she told him.
“Any idea why?” he asked.
“Sure. In the kitchen, on my stove, my teakettle started whistling, and it got louder and louder.”
“Loud enough for neighbors to hear?”
“Maybe. Anyway, he just . . . kind of . . . stopped. Then he stood up, pulled on his pants, and told me, ‘Too bad, you’d be a hall-of-fame fuck.’”
Robert finished taking notes.
Standing, she gazed out at the ocean, still reliving the night. “He didn’t rape me,” she said.
“But he sexually assaulted you. For your malpractice case, it’s close to the same thing. Mind telling me what happened next?”
“Well, he went in the kitchen, turned off the stove. Wait, no, he used his shirt to twist the knob. He took the wine bottle and our glasses and my corkscrew. I screamed at him to get out, and he said, ‘How can I get out? I was never here.’”
“I was never here,” Robert repeated, typing those words.
“He left, closed the door, cleaned the door handle off, too. Then I locked it, put a chair against it.”
She rubbed her wrist absently as he finished taking notes on his iPad. He recalled the simmering teapot on her stove and her chair jammed against the door when he arrived.
“And after that, you called me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay, so . . .”
“No, wait, not exactly. Not at first. I was fine at first, I thought, went in the bathroom, washed my face, thinking I was lucky almost. But anyway, afterward, I started getting more freaked out, hearing things outside, checking the door. I felt so weird. Then I remembered your card.”
“My card, sure. So, you called me.”
“Twice, I think?”
“That’s right, two times. One thing I need to ask—because we both know what he’ll try saying about you―did you ever have sexual relations with him?”
She took a deep breath. “No. Never.”
“Alison, it won’t change anything if you did. It changes nothing but I need to know.”
She stood up, looked at him, and said, “That never happened. Not ever.” She checked her watch and stood up. “I better get going.”
As they headed back to the bookstore, he said, “I really appreciate what you—”
“Thing is,” she said, “he always seemed like he was on the prowl when I first met him, always coming on to me.”
“Where was that?” he asked.
“The bookstore, after he and Skippy played paddle tennis at the beach. Lots of times they’d get lunch at the Sidewalk Cafe or at Jody Maroni’s and come in the store after. Just the way he talked to me. Asking what kind of men I dated, did I like girls, did I go for sex toys. He thought it was cool, but he gave me the creeps.”
He made a mental note of this add-on and handed her his new business card. ROBERT WORTH, ATTORNEY AT LAW. No address. His name and phone number.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re my only client, so thank you.”
He watched her walk past the Sidewalk Cafe into the bookstore. He made it fifty yards up the boardwalk when she caught up with him. She’d remembered something else:
“When he had me down on the floor, he took something out of his pocket or from somewhere, but then the kettle thing happened, and he dropped it on the carpet. It was glass, like a capsule, and it bounced around. One of those party drugs, I think.”
“Amyl nitrite?” he asked.
“Maybe, I don’t know,” she said.
“The capsule. Any chance you have it?”
“No, it was gone, guess he took it with him. Does that help?”
“It can’t hurt,” he said.
Even without knowing California criminal law well, he believed that Jack’s drug possession would help her case. Maybe help it a bundle.
CHAPTER 12
Around eleven that night, Robert drove over to Alison’s building on Venice Boulevard, trying to put himself in Jack’s shoes the night of the assault. Right off, he decided Jack wouldn’t park on Venice, believing as he did that Jack went there to have sex with Alison whether she wanted to go along or not. Not a man with a plan, a former criminal lawyer with a plan.
From the street, Jack would have seen her well-lit parking lot, the MANAGER sign on the building. Even with no security cameras visible, he wouldn’t have parked in the lot or on Venice. Any of his high-profile cars would be remembered at her building or possibly get boosted if left on the street.
So Robert parked on the first residential street past her building. No streetlights, no restricted-parking signs, plenty of spaces. He got out of his car and waited. No lights came on, no dogs barked, and her building’s chain-link fence and gate gave onto this street. Turned out the gate was unlocked, and a short, direct stroll took him to Alison’s ground-floor unit.
Makes sense, he thought. Quick and easy, quiet and dark.
Next morning, he arranged to meet Alison again for lunch and asked her to bring her legal file to work.
By noon, the Santa Anas blew hot off the Mojave Desert, throwing a thin yellow blanket over the city. The beach started hot and went from there, so they took a table under the Sidewalk Cafe’s candy-cane awning, where she signed an engagement letter with him.
After that, she showed him an unopened letter from Fanelli & Pierce. It had been sent certified mail one week after her hospital stay. Inside it, he found Judge Cleary’s order approving Jack’s motion to withdraw as counsel of record.
By now, Robert’s own research told him that to withdraw, Jack could request an in camera session with Judge Cleary. An ex parte hearing without Alison present. No doubt, the hearing was congenial. Both Jack and Judge Cleary were members of the Bel-Air Country Club, Robert had learned. Very wealthy members, very exclusive, very old money, and even though Jack wasn’t old money by club standards, the Brightwells were.
Looking over at Alison, he could tell that actually seeing the withdrawal motion irritated her.
He told her, “Better for you that he withdrew. That’s consistent with our theory: you won’t go along with him, so he withdraws. If he had let your situation slide? That’s not as good for the good guys.”
“Good guys? That’s us, right?”
“Yep,” he said. “All day long.”
After that, he learned more about her. A native of Florida. Nuclear family: mom, dad, and older brother, Brian. Dad had been a contractor—not a general contractor, but he did okay for a while. Then he took out a bank loan and opened a kitchen showroom. “We had installation crews and were doing great till 2008,” she said.
“You worked with him?”
She nodded. “It was fun. I liked it.” She stood and fanned her face. “I’m burning up, could we take a swim?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said.
After she changed in the bookstore bathroom, they headed for the ocean. “What happened after ’08?” he asked.
“Florida real estate in ’08, ’09?” she asked. “People stopped paying, but everybody still expected Dad to pay them. Late 2010, he dropped dead of a heart attack with seventeen lawsuits against the business.”
“God, sorry,” he said. “What about you, coming west?”
First she’d landed in the Valley because of cheaper rent. Took a few temp jobs, saw her brother up in Topanga every so often. Topanga was too isolated and ex
pensive for her, but six months in, Brian was diagnosed with cancer, and she moved in with him.
“Rough couple years,” he said.
“A lot worse for them. What about your family?” she asked.
“Lucky. Both my parents are still alive. They live on a family farm up in Gilroy. You know, the simple life.”
They reached the waterline north of the Venice Breakwater. She dropped her towel from her waist. He shucked down to his short pants and tried not to check out his client’s body. But, he noticed, she had one. Shore break was closing out fast, so they hit the water on the run and dove under the slamming waves, fighting the undertow till they made it past the break line.
Out there, the water was calmer with welcome cold pockets. They held their position against the ebb and flow of the surf, still blowing a little from their effort. Then she lay on her back, floating, staring into the cloudless sky.
She looked over at him. He edged closer to her and said, “I’ll do everything I can to make him pay for what he did.”
“I believe you,” she told him.
Then he told her about another firm employee who had been fired the day before him. Without saying Gia’s name or job description, he told Alison he planned to talk to this woman. Even though Gia hadn’t returned his calls, Robert was pretty sure he knew where to find her.
CHAPTER 13
“Here for the Seabiscuit Tour, Mr. Worth?”
That’s what Gia first asked when he caught up with her that weekend at Turf Terrace at Santa Anita Park. Gia and her banker pal, Leslie, both on their feet screaming and clapping as racehorses thundered down the homestretch. Leslie’s jeans skinny, Gia’s loose, both in heels and blazers, a couple of killers. Gia must have won because she hugged Leslie as the horses crossed the finish line.
Then Gia headed to the cashier’s window with her winner. That’s when she saw Robert and made the crack about Seabiscuit.
“Biscuit?” he asked her. “Maybe, Ms. Marquez. Want to go?”
“Dead-horse tour?” she asked. “Not really.”
She kissed his cheek, then asked, “How’s life treating you, Mr. Worth?”
“Not as good as it’s treating you,” he said, eyeing the hundreds the cashier counted out for her. “Not returning my calls, Ms. Marquez?”
