by Avery Duff
He started loading bullets into the gun. “Call Erik Jacobson in my Contacts.” He found her hand, slipped his phone into it.
“Who’s up on the roof in all this?” she asked.
“Gonna find out,” he said. “Stay here.”
He dashed away with the gun, and she dialed 911.
“Hello,” she said, “we have an intruder . . .”
Upstairs, water poured through a skylight, down the walls, and the wind created a vacuum in the stairwell. No matter how hard Robert pushed, the deck door wouldn’t open. Finally, he laid a shoulder against it, held down the door lever, and pushed into it off the far wall, hard as he could.
With a big sucking sound, the door flew away from him, banging against the exterior stairwell. He fell out onto the deck, pulled back into the open doorway with the revolver. The exterior stairwell structure: six feet wide, twelve feet long, eight feet high. Its mass sheltered him from the incoming storm.
Lights were off all over the Peninsula. There was that sound again. Three in a row this time: Bam! Bam! Bam! From the other side of the stairwell. He eased to his feet, moved around the stairwell corner, into the wind and rain. Revolver leading, heart pounding.
Wham! he heard. He pinned himself against the stairwell wall. Edging closer to its far corner, sweeping water from his eyes. Peering over at Unit 3 but unable to pierce the darkness.
“Got a gun!” he screamed. “It’s loaded!”
His voice, lost in the wind. Ten, twenty seconds, waiting, and right when he’s making his move around the corner—something heavy whistled around that corner and struck his temple. His gun flew from his hand and he dropped to the deck. Out cold.
Minutes later, Alison peered around the stairwell corner, gripping a baseball bat. Saw him lying on the deck, blood streaking his face.
“Robert! Robert! Oh, no!” she cried out.
She stepped out into the wind, crawled out to him. And just then—bam!
Over her head, the object struck again. She saw what hit him: a one-pound buoy, tied to a twenty-foot, quarter-inch sailboat line. The line had tangled on the front-balcony railing. Every so often, the wind caught the line just right and whipped the buoy around the stairwell, slamming it against the wall.
She grabbed him by the shoulders. Slipping and sliding, she pulled him back into the sheltered doorway.
“Robert, please . . . c’mon . . .”
Ten more seconds passed before he came to. When he did, he looked up at her, dazed.
“You’re okay?” she kept asking.
She was crying, stroking his blood-soaked face. He asked what happened. She told him. Once he understood what she was telling him, he asked, “A buoy?”
“Want to file a report on that buoy?” Erik asked Robert. “Assault with no intent whatsoever?”
Erik’s squad car idled in the Speedway, lights strobing. He was talking to Robert, writing up the mishap on the roof and what had happened earlier that day.
Robert was adding as much flavor as he could from his last conversation with Jack: “Just put down that I suspect someone is trying to do me harm based on threats that were made earlier today.”
“This makes two reports so far. You into something over your head?”
“Hope not,” Robert said, and reached for a stuffed Shamu toy he was sitting on. “Yours?” he asked and laughed. It had been a while since he’d done that.
Checking his cell phone’s Thai translation app, Erik said, “Taking my miia and two luuk chaay to SeaWorld.” His wife and kids.
Then Erik got down to it. “I know there’s things you can’t tell me, I get that, but seriously, man. I know you from the beach, the handball courts, from you helping me out, and you’re a stand-up guy for sure. But you never back off. Me? I like that about you. Still, every once in a while, think about taking a step back.”
“Even when you know you’re right?” Robert said, signing the report.
“Especially then. If I hadn’t, years ago LAPD’s bagpiper would have been squeezing ‘Amazing Grace’ over my dead ass.”
Robert saw that his friend was serious. “I hear you, man. I do. Thanks.”
“By the way, my trademark went through today. Natural Gas, baby. I’ll get your sweetheart a first-run unit. After you left Rae’s the other day, she was seriously into it.”
“A handheld gizmo that makes fart noises. You surprised?”
“Women,” Erik said, “the last true mystery. I’m around. Sawatdee khrap, dude.”
Fifteen minutes later, Robert lay across his bed in the condo’s master. Alison held a towel filled with ice against his head and lay down beside him. For a while, they didn’t speak, each of them tired of apologizing to the other. Then he tried telling her more about what he knew.
“I didn’t want you to worry, thought I could handle it all myself, but Jack . . . I’m starting to think he wants us out of the way.”
“You mean, what? Wants to kill us?”
He had her full attention now. “I don’t know, not really, but . . .”
“He’s just a top-tier ambulance chaser, isn’t he?”
“More than that. He started out practicing criminal defense, was damn good at it. Got a lot of bad people off—drug dealers, money launderers, who knows what kind of scumbags he knows who owe him favors.”
He told her what Jack had told him earlier today: Jack knew they lived on the Peninsula. “I never said a word about where we lived. Any way he’d know that?” he asked.
Not from her. She hadn’t told anyone.
He told her, “I think someone was watching us from Unit 3.”
As he told her his suspicions, other worries surfaced, and he told her about them. “Mr. Fanelli, my boss at the firm, he was my friend. He told me Jack was destroyed by our lawsuit, but that’s not how he acted today. He acted like he . . . like he was in on a big secret, and once I found out what it was, it would be too late. Too late for us.”
“I don’t know what happened with you two today,” she said. “I went to the car. But cocky? Walking by him, yeah, I can see that. Cocky, definitely.”
“So goddamn cocky,” he said. “And if I put you in danger—the last thing you need is another trip to the ER.”
“Too much excitement is bad.” She nodded and kissed his forehead. “The wrong kind of excitement. Guess you’re right; he’s up to something. But I know this. He’s trying to poison your life—our lives—and that won’t work if we trust each other.”
“Pretty smart, aren’t you?”
“Working on it,” she said.
“Look, I want to go to the Santa Monica courthouse tomorrow morning. Would you come with me? It’s important, and I don’t want you here alone.”
“Is this about Rosalind?”
“What?”
“Your sister. Protecting me because of what happened to her?”
“I promise. It’s not because of that.”
“Why are we going, then?” she asked.
He told her what he knew about Jack’s divorce hearing in front of Judge Rosen.
She said, “This one last thing about him, I’ll do it for you. But look. I know I needed help when you met me. Not anymore. I’m a big girl and I don’t need you to protect me. We’ll go to the courthouse because we’re partners.”
He nodded. “And after we meet Leslie at the bank, we get outta town.”
“Leslie? The hot banker you swear you didn’t sleep with and I believe you? That Leslie?”
Smiling, he said, “That one. Did you find my key?”
“Taped behind your filing cabinet? Nobody would ever look there.” She reached in her shirt pocket, handed it to him. “You worried about your filing cabinet?”
He slipped his filing-cabinet key onto his key ring.
“Not really,” he said. “I don’t know . . .”
CHAPTER 38
Jack and Dorothy Pierce sat together at the table in front of Judge Rosen’s art-deco courtroom. Not exactly together but at the same table. That was the
first thing Robert noticed, watching from the back row with Alison. The second thing: between Jack and Dorothy sat a single attorney, Roxanne Paris.
Robert had seen her in the news. High-profile, she worked out of a Century City firm that ate up several floors of high-end commercial space.
Back of his mind, he’d hoped Philip would be here with the Brightwells. That Philip was the good friend of yours Jack taunted him with.
Judge Rosen spoke into her mike: “Our next, and only order of business, is the matter of Pierce versus Pierce. Ms. Paris, do you wish to address the court?”
Roxanne stood up, speaking with confidence bred of storied courtroom wins. “Your Honor, I represent both parties, and I am delighted to report, my clients have reached an amicable settlement in this matter.”
“Excellent news from where I sit,” Judge Rosen said.
Roxanne asked, “Have you had an opportunity to review our proposed final order, Your Honor?”
“Certainly, Ms. Paris. Do both parties understand that each has thirty days to appeal this order should either have a change of heart?”
“Not likely.” It was Dorothy talking.
A hearty courtroom laugh followed. Even Jack was laughing. In fact, everyone in the room was laughing except Robert, Alison, and Lionel Brightwell. He had nodded off in the aisle in his wheelchair.
Roxanne said, “One additional matter, Your Honor. If it please the court, both parties would ask that the court consider one final item.”
Judge Rosen checked her watch. “Very well, proceed.”
“We would ask the court’s indulgence in assuring my clients that the property settlement between them will be sealed and withheld from public view.”
“Sealed? Is that weird?” Alison whispered to Robert.
“Unusual.” Maybe weird, too, for such a high-profile couple.
Judge Rosen said, “I’d like everyone to approach the bench. And if possible, let’s make it quick.”
“Tee time at Bel-Air, Your Honor?” Jack asked.
“Good guess, Counselor,” Judge Rosen replied. “Anybody see Harvey’s TMZ villains out front?”
Everyone laughed again. Lionel perked up in his wheelchair and looked around. But Robert had his eye on Jack, Dorothy, and Roxanne. Judge Rosen held her hand over the mike, and everybody up front was kidding around, like they all planned to go clubbing tonight.
Right then, Mr. Brightwell whirred over to Robert and Alison. Robert stood up and said, “Good morning, Mr. Brightwell. Robert Worth.”
He shook Robert’s hand, but his eyes stayed on Alison. His grin offered a glimpse of a youngster still residing inside his eighty-nine-year-old frame.
“Alison Maxwell,” he said, with no coaching needed with her name. “You never came back up the hill to see me?”
She took his offered hand. “This guy right here might not like it if I did that. Otherwise, I would have.”
“Give an old man a minute, would you, honey? Just the two of us?”
“Robert?” she asked.
“Sure, I’ll be out in the hall.”
He headed for the closer of two exits and glanced up front. Jack was looking right at him. Then Jack winked at him, and Robert pushed hard through the door.
Out in the hallway, a few lawyers and litigants trickled up and down the hall. Robert sank to a wooden bench, frustrated and confused.
Philip’s image came to mind first. When they’d last spoken at the firm, Philip planned to keep Brightwell as a client. Had he been too optimistic? Had Brightwell jumped ship to Roxanne’s firm? Looked that way, and he hoped he was wrong.
Sitting in the hall, he pictured Jack and Judge Rosen together on this very bench. Not only sitting, he decided. Sitting together.
On a hunch, he Googled Judge Rosen on his iPad. Rosen, it turned out, attended Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, same as Jack. After that, she’d been a prosecutor, working out of downtown LA.
Rosen a prosecutor, Jack doing criminal-defense work. The same age, classmates, then courtroom adversaries. Pals from way back and, knowing Jack, more than pals at one time or another.
He wondered what Jack’s point had been, taunting him yesterday. Getting him into Rosen’s courtroom?
Did he want Robert to see his power? To see that he was in a bracket beyond what Robert could fathom? Or was there more behind it? Was Jack signaling he had planned his exit from the firm and from his marriage before Robert ever sued him? Was it possible Alison’s lawsuit was something Pierce welcomed? Or, at least, that he used?
That wasn’t possible, he decided. Jack had been fired, his name taken off the firm masthead. He saw it with his own eyes. Together, Robert and Alison had taken more than $4 million of his firm’s money. Gia broke off another half million for good measure, and Jack, the primary wrongdoer, paid his share. That money was real. Leslie had called both Alison and him, confirming their meeting tomorrow. That was a lock.
And Dorothy? She had her prenup and knew Jack had engaged in infidelity.
Infidelity, he thought. Bland contract lingo for blatant, brazen, serial womanizing, and right behind him, in Rosen’s courtroom, Dorothy owed Jack nothing. Exactly zero dollars.
He emerged from where these ideas lurked and collided, glancing to his left. Ten feet away, Gia Marquez sat on his bench. His heart rate ramped.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she said. Then she saw how he was staring at her. “Maybe not.”
Now he knew the identity of his good friend. “Why?” he asked Gia.
“You first, Mr. Worth.”
“You and Jack are together?” he asked.
“Looks that way. He moved in with me, let’s see, about a week ago?”
“Jesus. You helped me, ruined him, so you could get him back?”
“Told you, didn’t I? It was never about money for me. Nobody in your life you never got over?”
He didn’t answer.
“All these years, I never got over him. Two bad apples, huh?”
“You’re nothing like him. You like thinking you are, but you’re not. Guys like that never change; they get worse. Don’t you know that?”
“You’ve changed, Mr. Worth. I told you he makes people crazy, remember? And look at you now, sitting outside his divorce waiting for . . . waiting for what?”
He stood, heat rising. “But I’m not the one living with him, am I?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “No, you’re not. So back off, all right?”
But he didn’t. “Smartest woman I know, doing this to herself. Why?” No answer. “He’s screwed everything that moves ever since you met him, and he always will. He’s a sociopath.”
She shrugged. “I know everything about him. Everything, okay? And we love each other.”
“That right? Like your big date at the Saddle Peak? Maybe you can go there again, hand each other envelopes of cash under the table. Hey, I know—maybe The Famous Tattoo Girl can come along for a threesome. You, him, and Tattoo Girl. Might be a nice change of pace for him. Oh, wait—that’s no change of pace at all, is it?”
For some reason, hearing what he said, she came alive. She stood, fronting him. “What are you talking about?”
“Forget it,” he said, getting a grip on his anger. “None of my business. I was out of line. I’m sorry, I—”
“No—you said Saddle Peak. Then something about what? A tattooed girl?”
Before he could answer, from behind him Alison said, “Fuck you, Gia.”
He wondered, among other things, how long Alison had been listening. “Alison?” he asked, turning around. That’s all he got out before she rushed for the courthouse door. Before he could follow, Jack emerged from Rosen’s courtroom and took Gia’s hand.
Robert stopped, looked at them.
“We’re done in there,” Jack told Gia. “Home free, babe.”
Gia didn’t say a word. Her eyes were still on Robert. Then Jack turned to him, “Glad you decided to show, but you saw what happened. The damn settlement’
s sealed. Must be hard for you, seeing the two of us so happy. But hey, odds are good that Chase is getting divorced, so that’s working for you.”
“Cool it, Jack,” Gia said.
Robert headed for the door again. Jack caught up with him and took his arm.
“Wait up, my man.”
Robert looked beaten as Jack told him, “Want you to remember this, Worth. Remember this as you count the endless hours of your new life dragging by. Remember that nobody ever fucked you over like I did.”
Endless hours? Dragging by? Robert was out of words. Nothing left to say as Jack returned to Gia. Robert could see her standing in the shadows. She looked small. Hurt and embarrassed.
And Robert was certain he’d never see her again as he ran out of the courthouse.
CHAPTER 39
Lucky for Robert, the LeBaron’s convertible top was down because Alison wouldn’t brake to let him inside. After chasing her down two levels of courthouse parking, he managed to leap into her moving car.
Headed down Main Street, he wanted to ask what Lionel had said to her earlier. Judging by her Don’t-say-a-fucking-word-to-me look, he decided that could wait.
She’d driven ten fast blocks down Main when she brought it up herself.
“Know Nurse Rodney?” she asked.
“You mean—” That was all he got out.
“Rodney ran off to Palm Springs with his boyfriend, so Lionel offered me a job taking care of him. Great, huh? Isn’t that awesome.”
“Well,” he said.
As she ran a yellow light at Venice and Pacific, he braced himself against her dash. “I had no idea Gia was going to be there.”
“Who cares about Gia! Fuck Gia Whoever, fuck Jack, and fuck you.”
He wondered how much she’d heard in the courthouse between Gia and him. Then he found out.
“This tattooed girl. The one who goes to Saddle Peak with Pierce? Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Jack Pierce, Saddle Peak, and a tattooed girl—you think it’s me, right?”
“Can we please—Jesus!” Screaming because she ran a red light at Washington, headed onto the Peninsula. He waited a full minute before speaking again. “Can we just talk, please?”
