Beach Lawyer (Beach Lawyer Series)

by Avery Duff

  Chase didn’t answer. Jack looked at him. “How’s it going at the firm?”

  “Fanelli’s gonna shitcan me. Every day that goes by, I can feel it.”

  “Wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Chase said.

  “No, no, listen up. Firing you, that’s not how the firm works.”

  “How then, maestro?”

  “More like, Fanelli will start drying up the workflow coming your way, redirect it to his guys or other guys in litigation. End of the fiscal year, the senior partners will get together—you won’t even know about it. Everybody will talk about your pathetic billable hours, how they have no choice but to cut your share of profits. A few years of that . . .”

  “Meridian will leave me if that happens. What would I do without her?”

  “I don’t know. What would you do?” Jack asked.

  Chase glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means losing her wouldn’t be a problem—not if you had the stones Worth has.”

  “The fuck is it with you today? You call me from out of the blue to play paddles and grab lunch, then you cut the set short, and ever since Worth showed up, you’re in my grill.”

  Jack didn’t bother answering. Ahead of them, the boardwalk ended at a row of high-end, two-story, concrete town houses.

  “Where’d you fuckin’ park, Malibu?” Chase asked.

  “Almost there,” Jack said. “Seeing Worth reminded me of something. How Worth always said you would cave as my alibi. Matter of fact, that’s what he used during his negotiations with me. My biggest problem was, I always knew he was right.”

  “Hey, the whole firm was breathing down my neck. Fanelli thought you were lying—no way I was going to commit perjury over it.”

  “Fanelli didn’t know. Like you said, he thought you were lying. All you had to do was get Meridian to back you up, to say, ‘Yes, Mr. Fanelli, my husband was working with Jack that night. I picked Chase up at the firm. I saw Mr. Pierce with him.’ After all I did for you, Chase, guess that was too much to ask.”

  “Meridian’s not cut out for that kind of pressure. You giving me a lift to my car or what?”

  “Sure,” Jack said, “I’ll take you all the way.”

  They made it around the end of those town houses. Jack’s car was parked on a guest pad. Chase walked to the passenger side to get in. “They’re gonna tow you, parking here,” Chase said.

  Jack stayed beside Chase. “Friend of mine lets me use the place when he’s out of town.” Then Jack added, “Fifteen hundred dollars a night, Fitz. Guess Meridian’s cut out for something, right?”

  “Fifteen hundred—what?”

  “Meridian? Worked at Caesar’s in executive training? Believe that if you want, but that’s not what I remember. What I remember is: Flip me over, baby. Flip me over and do me.” He’s laughing now. “Pretty good line for a whore—she still use it?”

  “Fuck you, motherfucker.”

  Chase took a swing at Jack, but it was a tennis-player punch, telegraphed from out in Pacoima. Jack rolled it off with his left shoulder, slid in close, and sank a vicious right uppercut deep into Chase’s solar plexus. When Chase’s face came down, Jack drove a knee into his groin and pushed him into a landscaped pod, where Chase doubled up in pain.

  Chase squeezed out: “You burned every bridge in town. Nobody’ll hire you. Nobody’ll work with you. Keep driving that piece of shit, Pierce, you’re an out-of-work loser.”

  Jack strolled to the town house door, rang the doorbell, and told Chase, “All these years working side by side, you still don’t know who I am.” He headed to the driver’s door of his rental car and opened it.

  “Then again, Chase, nobody does.”

  Chase lay in the bushes, crying, and heard Jack’s car drive away. The town house door opened behind him. Then he heard Meridian asking: “Jack, that you, babe? Where’d you go, doll?”

  CHAPTER 36

  In the fading beach sunlight, Stanley’s needle-tracked arms glowed golden beneath his sprayed-on tan. From his car idling on Speedway down from Robert’s building, he eyed the Bronco as Robert drove it into Unit 1’s garage, then raised his camera’s telephoto lens.

  In his viewfinder: Alison stepped from the car, and Robert grabbed a couple bags of groceries. She punched their alarm code into the garage’s pad, and Stanley captured, the third time this week, rapid shots of her hand.

  The garage door began to close, and Stanley drove past the condo, up Speedway. Wind gusts from the west rocked his car. At Driftwood, he stopped, looking seaward into the sinking sun. A charcoal storm front gathered out there, taking its time moving in. He rolled up his window against wind-shot sand and checked his photos. Looked like he caught ten out of eleven numbers the girl just punched. He cross-checked them with numbers from earlier shots and saw no last-minute changes to their nonsensical password: A+R+lastcondonp.

  “Good to go,” he said, and headed home to get ready for Freddy.

  CHAPTER 37

  That night, howling storm winds blew sideways off the Pacific, shaking the condo’s plate-glass slider. Outside, greedy raindrops sucked up dry sand and smacked their windows with it like tiny bullets.

  Robert and Alison were making their first homemade dinner since moving in. A Whole Foods chicken stuffed with garlic and lemons roasted in the oven. Rosemary potatoes, too, drenched in olive oil and cooked with garlic cloves.

  “The garlic,” she told him, “is in your honor.”

  “An homage,” he said.

  Alison was reading an online recipe for Caesar-salad dressing—even more garlic. At the counter, he poured his third stiff whiskey of the night.

  Their lights dimmed for a moment, then came up again.

  He slip-stepped through their boxes over to the window and looked out, mulling over what he’d learned from Judge Rosen’s website. Her docket tomorrow: In re: Jack and Dorothy Pierce. That was it, the only item on her docket. Same thing Jack told him when he challenged Robert to drop by the courthouse.

  “Want anchovies?” she asked.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “If you do,” she said.

  “Whatever you think,” he said. “Damn, this rain is—whoa, there they go!”

  Two cheap beach chairs flew off their deck into the night.

  She saw it, too. “Damn, those were heirlooms.” She tore romaine lettuce into pieces and dropped it into a salad bowl. They didn’t speak for a while. Until she asked, “What did you think he would be doing now?”

  “Who?”

  “Guy you’re thinking about all day. Did you think he’d be panhandling for spare change?”

  “Man can dream, can’t he?”

  “Seriously. You’ve been acting weird ever since we ran into him.”

  He walked over to her and sat at the kitchen counter on their one bar stool.

  “Ran into him? You think we ran into him?”

  “Well, yeah. They used to eat there all the time after playing paddle tennis.”

  “Oh, right,” he said.

  She’d mentioned that to him a while back. He wondered if he should tell her more about her case. For the most part, he’d done a decent job steering her clear of it, but for him, the case was filling up the room.

  So he explained more about the nondisclosure agreement and why it was okay for them—as parties to it—to talk about the case.

  Then he explained more: that they’d sued the entire firm, not only Jack. That’s why they got such a big settlement. And once the firm was involved, Chase had to pony up his share, too. A smaller share because he was new coming on board, but a big chunk of change for a new partner.

  “Poor Chase,” she said, smiling.

  “I know, but look: I understand every deal I ever made, know the deal inside out, but when I settled your case with the firm? Chase had just made partner. One month later—boom. He’s out, what? Two years of salary because Jack screwed up.”

&nb
sp; “Screwed up? What he did to me?”

  “That, yes, and more,” he said, meaning Jack’s malpractice insurance screwup. “Now, say you’re Chase, and Jack’s not at the firm anymore. He’s gone, adiós. Can’t help you, can’t hurt you, but he cost you real money. Do you ever speak to Jack again?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Sure, you know. You wouldn’t speak to him, and you wouldn’t hang out with him, either.”

  She pulled the roasted chicken from the oven, set it on the counter. “Well, then . . . what? What does it mean?”

  “That’s my problem—I don’t know what it means. But there they were today, played paddles, grabbing lunch like nothing ever happened.”

  “Maybe they moved on . . . Maybe we should, too?”

  Frustrated, he downed a swallow of whiskey. “You don’t move on from that. It was a big deal. We hurt them, and they were pissed off about it—really pissed off. Each one of ’em, same as I would be and same as you.”

  “Is that all that’s bothering you?”

  “Christ, isn’t that enough?”

  “Our checks clear when?”

  “Tomorrow, end of the day. Next morning at the latest.”

  “Winnebago or not, we’ll leave town, and life is good, right?”

  He didn’t answer. “Chicken smells great,” he said. “Need any help?”

  “No.” She looked at him, cutting the chicken with a large, sharp knife. “My Caesar salad’s a disaster area.”

  “Potatoes are vegetables, right?” he asked.

  “Think I’ll have a drink, too,” she said.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Same as you. On the rocks,” she said without looking at him.

  Ten minutes later, they started dinner at their dining table, his desk from Ozone. If anything, the wind and rain outside had built up since they sat down. This was a major storm, rain lashing the front windows, sheeting down, and their deck already pooled six inches of water.

  At the table, he was online, checking weather reports. “Storm advisory says another hour at least.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  The condo lights dimmed again. Robert and Alison went quiet, their clinking cutlery swallowed by the elements.

  Finally, she said, “Last night . . .” She stopped talking until he looked at her. “Last night, when you went outside to get your bike, I came out to the balcony.” She pointed upstairs. “And I saw you going through my legal stuff. Through my legal file.”

  “I did. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I found a gun in your desk, bullets. You never told me about it.”

  “Then I told you why I had it. Didn’t you believe me?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “But?”

  “I wanted to double-check. Guess it’s too many years being a lawyer. And I’m sorry, really.”

  “A revolver, it’s not a big deal where I’m from,” she said. “We lived in the boonies. There were alligators in the yard sometimes, rabid raccoons. And if I remembered I had it when that douche bag came to my apartment, who knows?”

  “Cheers,” he said, raising his glass.

  She drained the rest of her drink without toasting. “You told me what happened to your sister, then I signed that power of attorney and turned my life over to you. I trusted you with all of it. Trusted you, Robert.”

  “I know,” he said.

  He hoped he was wrong about where all this trust talk was headed, but he had no idea how to stop it. Ever since he’d seen that scar on her calf, he had wrestled with texting Alison’s picture to the Saddle Peak bartender. Have Gary ask around about Tattoo Girl on the off chance someone remembered seeing Alison. Why go there? he kept telling himself, but now that’s exactly where he was. There.

  Alison spoke again. “This whole time, I never once second-guessed you about what you were doing.”

  “You were great about it,” he said. “The best. And I came through, right?”

  “Do you trust me?” she asked.

  Trust. There it was again. Before he could answer, she went for another whiskey. From the kitchen counter, she asked, “Do you think I had sex with Jack Pierce?”

  Right there, laid out on the table. Blood rushed to his head from whiskey and from emotions. Exactly which emotions, he wasn’t sure, but they all ran hot.

  He said, “I lost my job over what you told me.”

  “You’re a lawyer,” she said, turning on him now. “Taking my case doesn’t mean you believed me. It doesn’t mean anything. I told you day one, outside the bookstore, the very first time we talked—the guy hit on me. He hit on me a lot, but he was this heavy-duty lawyer, and he was going to take Brian’s case. Jesus, if you were me, what would you do?”

  He nodded, agreeing, but couldn’t shake the image of Alison as Tattoo Girl. Of Alison all over Jack at Saddle Peak, like the waiter said.

  “How’d that happen again?” he asked. “I don’t think you told me exactly where you were when Jack took your case.”

  “So fucking sorry for messing up like that. Here you go. That day? The day you’re so interested in? The big day? He called me and told me it was a good idea to get together face-to-face and sign that retainer thing.”

  “At the firm, right? Because that’s where my first-time clients always met me.”

  “No, not the firm.” She tried to remember. “Where was it . . .”

  “See if this helps—Saddle Peak Lodge?”

  “Right, Saddle . . . how did you know?”

  His stomach tightened. “Jack’s kind of predictable once you get to know him. Very predictable. That’s what I heard, anyway.” From Gia, he didn’t say.

  Now he got up, made another drink, and wondered what happened to roasted chicken, rosemary potatoes, and watching the storm from their bed in the dark.

  She said, “We ate lunch. I signed some papers. He ordered wine. I drank water.”

  “Where’d you sit?” he asked. “Nice patio outside?” But he was thinking, How about upstairs? In the private dining room? You and Jack banging away?

  “I don’t remember where we sat,” she said.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I went there twenty times at least. So I can’t remember where I sat, okay?”

  “Nobody eats way out there twenty times in what? Two years you’ve been in town? Nobody. Ever.”

  “Really? Not with Brian and the guys he rode with, you asshole? It’s fifteen minutes from Topanga—on his bike. A great drive on a bike. Twenty times—maybe more. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Tell me, then. What about the Bel-Air Hotel?”

  “Tell you what about it?”

  “That’s his drill: Saddle Peak, the Bel-Air, two girls, a little rough stuff.”

  “Wait, wait, let me get this straight. Now you think I get tied up, fucked by my lawyer at some hotel? With another girl? That I lied to you about Sonya, about that lesbian waitress? About doing girls? That I’m one of his little whatevers? Is that who I am to you?”

  Their voices rising now.

  “I said that’s what Jack’s into. That’s his drill, and that’s all I said.”

  “How do you know what he’s into? One of those sluts at the bank tell you? That Gia, maybe? That one? For all I know, you were fucking her. And you were fucking Jack and her! Were you?”

  “No. I wasn’t. You know that.”

  “Do I? Fine, then, I’ll take your word for it, but you? Take my word? Trust me? Fuck, no!”

  Hard to tell which one of them had up a fuller head of steam. Now Alison opened her desk drawer and grabbed the handcuffs.

  “You think I like rough sex? That it?”

  “Since you’re asking?”

  She threw the cuffs at him. “Go ahead. Cuff me. See how much I like it. C’mon, we did it every other way. Let’s go. Let’s see if I like it that way!”

  He tried to pull back, standing. “Alison, c’mon, let’s just . . .”r />
  A huge blast of wind outside rattled their sliding door, and boom. Lights went out in the building. They stood in silence. Outside, it was power-outage dark. Dark the way only the beach and ocean can get. His eyes hadn’t adjusted. He couldn’t see her. Then a handcuff clicked in the dark.

  “Go ahead!” she screamed. Her hands shoved him hard in his chest. He fell back, hit a stack of boxes, and tumbled onto the floor.

  “You fucking lunatic!” he screamed back.

  “Do it. Cuff me up. Go ahead. Let’s see how much I like it. Go ahead!”

  He jumped up, moved toward her voice. She pushed him again in the dark. Furious, he groped till he found her. When he did, he grabbed her shoulder, fumbled with her till he found the hand she’d already cuffed. Then he turned her body and pushed her facedown onto the dinner table, plates and glasses flying off it.

  “You asshole,” she said.

  “That’s what you wanted, right?”

  He didn’t stop. She had pushed every one of his buttons. Some of them twice. Pulling her arms behind her, he snapped the other cuff closed. He reached around the front of her jeans, fumbling for her zipper.

  “What you asked for, right? Right?”

  No answer came back in the dark. Her zipper was moving.

  “Right, goddamn it?”

  As her zipper slid down, he felt her body shaking. Even worked up as he was, that stopped him. Chest heaving, he reached for her face, felt her tears soaking it, and pulled away from her. He sank to his knees at her feet, his adrenaline still ramped with booze and anger, testosterone and suspicion, the wind still howling in the darkness.

  “Where’s the key?” he asked.

  “Drawer,” she choked out, crying.

  At least he could see better now, but as he reached in her drawer for the keys, a noise came from upstairs. Even in all the wind, he could hear: thump. She heard it, too. Her crying stopped.

  “What . . . what’s that?” she asked.

  Another thump. He found her, unlocked her cuffs.

  “Stay here,” he said. “Call 911.”

  Fumbling in the dark, he found the revolver in her desk drawer.

  “What’re you . . . What’s going on?”