by Avery Duff
“Our nondisclose.” Philip nodded. “Come to think of it, neither can I. Where do you stand?”
He didn’t answer. Something caught his eye. He moved toward a large living room window looking over the backyard. Inside, over the fireplace, hung that California coastline landscape missing from the firm lobby.
“Looks good, doesn’t it?” Philip asked, joining him.
“I thought you—”
“Sold it? You mean had to sell it to raise funds? Almost,” Philip said. “Again, where do you stand?”
He told Philip about Stanley’s assault, how he was hamstrung filing police reports, about Jack and Gia outside Judge Rosen’s courtroom. “You weren’t in court, so you must already know that Roxanne Paris reps the Brightwells. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that I lost the Brightwell business? After all my big talk about keeping it?”
Robert nodded.
“What’s done is done, but I don’t see how I can assist you.”
“You told me Jack was destroyed. Destroyed, your exact word.”
“I remember. I chose it carefully.”
“He wasn’t destroyed, not the least bit.”
“I’m well aware of that. Then again, I let you down so dramatically.”
“So, you lied about it?”
“It cost me nothing to tell you what you deserved to hear. To give you a free pound of Jack Pierce’s flesh.” Philip smiled. “Wine?”
“No,” Robert said. He followed Philip to a wrought iron dining table. Philip poured a glass of merlot. “What happened? What really happened at the firm?” he asked.
“That’s between me and the firm, isn’t it?”
“I’m asking anyway,” Robert said.
“Even though I’m free to discuss it with you, legally, I choose not to.”
“I get it. I understand,” he said, knowing he had that coming and more.
“Unless I secure proper clearance,” Philip added.
Philip seemed to be talking in circles. “Clearance from . . .”
A splash in the pool. He turned. Someone was swimming an underwater lap.
“Need to talk to the boss about it,” Philip said.
A woman stepped out of the shallow end. At first, Robert didn’t recognize her in the gloom. Then Dorothy Brightwell smoothed back her hair, walked over to them in a sedate two-piece. Radiant, sober, trim, she looked happier than Robert could ever remember.
“What do you think, boss?” Philip asked her. “Should I talk to this impertinent gentleman?”
“Dorothy,” Robert said.
“Robert,” she replied.
He didn’t know what to say next. Philip did. “He likes our painting, Dottie.”
“I know, Philip. Robert once told me there’s something about it. Looks more at home over here than at the firm, don’t you think?” she asked Philip, holding his hand.
Philip told him that, years ago, he and Dorothy happened on the painting one weekend on a drive down the coast. Two friends taking a break. His wife dying a slow, painful death, and Oliver, her husband, working himself to death. That day, they stumbled on the landscape in a small Newport Beach gallery. Dorothy loved it. So did he and he bought it, hung it in his living room.
“That was the day I fell in love with her,” he told Robert.
Day of Oliver’s funeral, Robert recalled leaving Philip sitting in front of that very landscape. In his living room, where it was hanging now. A man lost in his cups that day, Philip saying the painting reminded him of the most wonderful woman he’d ever met, the love of his life. Because Philip’s wife had died recently, Robert assumed he was carrying on about her. But he meant the woman beside him now.
And the two cypresses clinging to the bluff? In Philip’s world—and later, hers—they represented Dorothy and him.
“After Jack swept me off my feet and married me,” she said, “Philip moved our painting over to the firm. That way, I saw it whenever I dropped by. My Philip, letting me know, whenever I came to my senses, he would be there.”
She took her sweetheart’s other hand. Philip kissed hers, and they kept looking at each other, drinking each other in.
No, Robert was thinking. They aren’t lovers—they’re in love. Good for them, he thought, even as his own day caved in.
She told Philip, “Put your trunks on, dear. You’re almost indecent in that skimpy thing.”
“Pardon me, Robert, if you will. And tell him, Dottie, whatever you’re comfortable telling him about your divorce. Not one syllable more.”
As he walked toward the pool house, she swatted him on the ass. “Scoot along, Philip,” she told him, and he did.
From out of the blue, she turned to him and said, “Ten million dollars, Robert.”
“I’m sorry?” That was all he could think to say.
“I paid the firm’s way out of your lawsuit.”
He was thinking, Why ten million, then? The firm only owed five million.
Before he could ask, she said, “I felt responsible—I was responsible—for putting the firm in such a horrendous position. It wasn’t Jack Pierce, attorney, who caused all the problems. It was Jack Pierce—my husband—who took the firm’s reins, leveraged the Brightwell name, and poisoned the water for everyone.”
He thought about it. She was right.
“On top of that, I paid Jack five million dollars to leave our so-called marriage.”
His adrenaline ramped. “You paid him five million? But your prenup, he was . . . well, you know.”
“What? Cheating? Serially? Such a gentleman. You remind me of Philip in that way.”
“But you didn’t have to pay him anything.”
“Legally that’s true, but he made it very clear—he would fight our prenup. Our trial would present a vivid, public spectacle of his affairs, of our marriage. And, I suppose, once he looked into it long enough, my own affair with Philip would come to light. I’m certain, as was Jack, that the public ordeal would’ve killed Father.”
Now it all made more sense to Robert. Chase had not been called on to pay for Jack’s mistake. That was why Chase was capable of sitting down to a civil lunch with Jack at the Sidewalk Cafe. And Dorothy’s prenuptial agreement cutting Jack out? There are contracts people sign, and the people who have to live with them. The two didn’t always match up.
“You had no idea I was here with Philip that night, did you?”
“The night . . . ,” he started to ask.
Philip interrupted, rejoining them. “Our night at the Alibi Room.”
The night in question. The night Alison called him. He recalled Philip telling him on the phone: I have an out-of-town guest. Then again, outside the Alibi: I’m older, not dead.
Dorothy told Robert, “That night, right in front of Father, Jack took a call in the limo and left for . . . for who knows where? And I did what I started doing when he hurt me.”
“She came to me,” Philip said, owning it.
Turned out, Philip didn’t tell her about Alison Maxwell’s allegations until Robert filed suit on her behalf. Then Philip asked Dorothy to lunch by the pool, handed her Robert’s full-blown complaint, and left her alone to read it.
“And reading it, I could see my dear husband,” she said, “captured in your vivid prose. It was as if . . . I hate clichés, but it’s true . . . a fog lifted. And now? I’d pay twice that amount just to be rid of him.”
Philip said, “Well, there it is, Robert. Patience rewarded. Are you clear?”
Very clear. His lawsuit freed Jack from his marriage. Jack didn’t pay one dollar of the firm’s liability. His wife did. And to any sane outsider, Robert Worth led Jack Pierce around his prenup, out of an unhappy marriage, and deposited $5 million into his personal account. Meaning that Jack had no objective motive to murder him. To the world, he was Jack Pierce’s new best pal.
A few minutes later, Philip walked Robert to the back gate. Robert waved to Dorothy. She waved back, then dove into the pool again.
Phili
p asked him, “Tell me, why did I have no certified funds available at closing?”
“Well, the partners weren’t actually paying, so they weren’t giving you problems settling like you told me. That means you were waiting for Dorothy’s funds to clear from somewhere else. Even wealthy as she is, she would never keep ten million wasting away in a bank account.”
“Exactly right.” Philip smiled, his opinion of his protégé vindicated again.
“Never get emotional about clients,” Robert said. “That’s what you always told me. What about you and Dorothy?”
“Good lawyers don’t get emotional, but the best lawyers? Lawyers like us? We always get emotional about certain clients. And now, for some unknowable reason, she asked me to offer you a partnership in the firm. It would be very junior but a partnership nonetheless. I love her enough to yield, both to her and to my better angels.”
“I sued you, sued your firm. Any way you ever trust me again?”
“Over time, perhaps, never like I did before. It’s a onetime offer.”
He thought about it. Thought about Alison, too, before he said, “What kind of partners can’t trust each other?”
Philip nodded, understanding. “I believe you may have entered a dark forest. What must one always do, finding oneself in such a forbidding place?”
“Leave behind a trail of bread crumbs to find one’s way out.”
“A paper trail. And the case citation?”
“Hansel and Gretel vs. The Evil Witch.”
They started to shake hands. Philip hugged him instead. As Robert hugged him back, he felt their history sliding away, and it saddened him more than he thought possible. Philip’s chest moved, and a choked sob escaped his mentor’s mouth. Or maybe it was his own sob. He was never sure because the two men didn’t look at each other after that.
CHAPTER 46
It was pushing four-thirty that afternoon by the time Robert made it back to the condo. On the way home, he called the same movers he’d used before, left a message to meet up with them tomorrow after he finished up at the bank.
He called Leslie from his car, too. His call went straight to voice mail, so he left her a message: “Leslie, it’s Robert Worth. See you at 9:00 a.m. at the bank. Call me at this number to confirm right away. Thanks.”
He grabbed a seat at the kitchen counter. Alison crossed his mind again. Hard for her not to with his phone vibrating every half hour or so. Her calling, her texting: Where are you? You OK? Groggy voice mails with the same message: I miss you. Where are you?
“Blah, blah, blah,” he said and texted her back: Wouldn’t let me visit your room. Tied up with police. Feel better! See you tomorrow.
That would hold her off. She’d come back here; he’d be gone. He’d get his old place back, or not, and she could stay here through the lease, or not. If he never saw her again, that would be fine.
Fuckin’ Tattoo Girl, he was thinking.
Good thing he wasn’t her lawyer anymore. The bank, her money, what to do with it—that was all up to her. Good thing, too, he’d been so clear at Shutters, getting her to sign off on his withdrawal from representing her. Even noting the time of day, getting cute with it, knowing he wouldn’t have been so precise without sex on his mind.
Got lucky on that one, he thought. Score one for the home team.
Didn’t matter now. Nothing either of them could say would make a difference. There was no real them and never had been. Not like Philip. That was the real deal, a man waiting years for the woman he loved. “Patience rewarded,” Philip told him, and Robert knew why Philip missed out on Dorothy after Oliver died. Oliver was his friend and they’d started the firm together. Even though Philip was already in love with her, he felt obliged to wait a decent interval before making his feelings known.
One-of-a-kind gent, he was thinking. If he weren’t careful, pretty soon he’d be blubbering over Cat Stevens’s “Father and Son.” Still, he wondered if he would ever wait it out for what he wanted most. He doubted it and guessed he took after his impulsive father that way.
The living room was trashed from Stanley and from the cops and their fingerprint dust. That prom photograph of Rosalind and him somehow wound up on the floor. He picked it up, set it on the kitchen counter, cracked a beer from the fridge. After sweeping print dust off the counter, he looked at the old photo.
“Well, Rosalind, what do you think? Lotsa crazy shit going on, huh?”
He kept looking at them standing on the front porch of the family home and remembered the live oak growing at an angle on the farm’s steep hillside, angled so sharp into the hill that its lowest branch brushed the ground. They would walk out into it and sit there hidden for hours, eating Abba-Zaba candy bars, drinking Yoo-hoos, and shooting the breeze.
“I miss talking to you, Ros. Hope you’re okay.”
After that, he gave Erik a shout. Left him a message asking what Stanley had to say for himself, then decided to call the condo’s owner about the break-in. That’s what he was doing when he noticed fingerprint dust on top of his filing cabinet. Lots of dust. Even more of it around the lock cylinder on its top, right-hand side.
Moving closer, scratch marks were visible around the cylinder. New scratch marks. He started to reach behind the cabinet for its key, then remembered moving it the night before. Sliding his key ring from his pocket, he found the cabinet key. Then he noticed: the cabinet’s key slot ran horizontal, not vertical. The cabinet was already unlocked. He’d relocked it, hadn’t he? Definitely, he’d locked it.
He slid open the top drawer. Inside were his file folders of documents: Jack’s prenup, Alison’s original case file with the firm, her case file with him. Flipping through the folders, he saw that they all seemed to be in order. Why would Stanley go into his filing cabinet for Jack, anyway? He didn’t get it—Jack was either Alison’s lawyer or a defendant to her plaintiff. Every document here had already been at Jack’s disposal.
The only other folder in the drawer was his bank folder. So he pulled it out, opened it on top of the cabinet. Once he did, he saw his bank receipt wasn’t there. Neither was Alison’s receipt.
The bank receipts’ folder was empty.
He dumped all the top-drawer files on the floor. Looked inside the drawer bottom for their receipts—nada. Opened the drawer next below: pairs of his old sneakers, a couple of his dumbbells from the move. But no bank receipts. The bottom drawer. It was empty, too.
He had no concrete idea what this meant. Checking his watch, he had twenty-seven minutes till Leslie’s bank closed. Ninety seconds later, he was speeding up Pacific Avenue toward Santa Monica, telling himself to obey all rules of the road. He needed to locate Leslie DeRider. Something was wrong again, and again, he didn’t know what something was. He called Leslie’s cell once more. Went straight to voice mail. He Siri-called 411, checking for her home-phone listing, and Siri came back with an unlisted number. That left the bank. So he called it and was put on hold. Not at all reassured by the recording, telling him how much his business was appreciated. Then: “Qualify for a new car loan. It’s easy.”
After jumping two four-way stops, blowing through three yellows, and averaging fifty-five in a thirty-five, he made the bank in under twenty-four minutes. He parked in a handicapped spot and was at the bank’s front door in under thirty seconds.
But its front door was locked. Employees wandered around, doing whatever bankers do after hours. Planting his face against the window, he didn’t see Leslie but spotted the manager on the floor. The one with the loud sports coat. Leslie had called him Jerome. He knuckled the plate glass till Jerome saw him. Kept knuckling till Jerome came over and mouthed, “Closed. We close at six.”
“It’s not six,” he mouthed back. He showed him his iPhone. It read 6:01.
“It’s 6:01,” the manager said with a banker’s helpless shrug.
“I was here two minutes ago,” he yelled, banging the glass. “Before six o’clock. It’s an emergency.”
Employees wer
e looking now. So were customers, still inside. Guess banks didn’t like irate customers banging on their doors. Whatever the reason, Jerome keyed the door, peered through an open slice, and said, “We’re closed, sir.”
“Before you close the door, take this into account.” Robert slipped him a business card and Jerome read it. “Jerome, right?’
“Jerome Hartung, yes?”
“My client and I deposited four and a half million dollars with your bank. I was here before 6:00 p.m. today. Maybe there’s a problem, maybe not, but someone closed this door one minute early. Now, Jerome Hartung, are you gonna talk to me today about my problem or not?”
Jerome checked his watch, as if that somehow mattered, and swung open the door. “Let’s talk in my office, Mr. Worth.”
“Great idea,” Robert said. “Thanks.” They walked across the lobby toward Jerome’s glass cubicle.
“Do you have your account number?” Jerome asked.
“No, I don’t. I’ve been using counter checks.”
Jerome nodded. “Debit card?” he asked.
“Not for another five, six days,” Robert said.
“Driver’s license?”
“Sure,” he said, reaching for his wallet. It was there. So was his license. For some reason, being inside the bank took his headache down a notch.
“Think I might remember seeing you,” Jerome said.
“Good,” Robert told him, breathing easier. That didn’t last long.
Jerome turned away from his computer screen a second time. Away from his array of family photographs and a row of carved Navajo fetishes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Worth. Like I said, there’s no—” Jerome started to say.
“That’s not possible. Seriously. That is impossible.”
“Believe me, it would show up in our system if you had such a large amount here. Any amount, for that matter. Other than your checking account, there’s no . . . Would you like to see your checking-account balance?”
“No.”
He stood, looked over at Leslie’s desk for the fifth time. It was clean—her nameplate gone. His eyes closed. If he kept them open, he might throw his chair through this glass-walled office.
