by Sydney Bauer
‘David,’ said Arthur, ‘Doctor Logan may be on TV, but I doubt he has the skills to mastermind such advanced technological wizardry. Stephanie Tyler was your friend, and as such it is understandable that you . . .’
‘No,’ said David, his heart racing. He could feel the adrenaline pumping as he paced around the room. ‘The recording itself is for real – but its content is a load of sick and twisted lies.’ The three of them stared at him some more. ‘It was scripted, directed, acted, crafted, manufactured, contrived.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ said Sara, striding across the office to meet him. ‘You think that the entire Logan family agreed to play themselves in the dysfunctional family video from hell?’
‘I think at least three of them were forced to take roles they hated themselves for playing.’
‘Dear God,’ said Nora.
‘That’s right, Nora,’ he said, moving towards his beloved older secretary. Nora Kelly was like a second mother to him, and as matriarch of their small but tight office ‘family’, he felt an all-encompassing need to make her understand.
‘I know Stephanie was a good mother, she would have loved her kids more than life itself. She must have known her children were in danger – and so she agreed to . . .’
‘She held a gun at her teenage son’s head,’ argued Arthur, his voice now raising a notch.
‘Because he was holding a gun on them.’
There was silence, the only sound in the room the thickness of David’s breath.
‘You saw a gun?’ asked Sara.
‘Well . . .’ David hesitated, shaking his head. ‘Maybe not a gun specifically, but there was something on that table that scared the hell out of them – something powerful enough to keep them all in line.’
‘You think Logan has been terrorising his family?’ said Arthur.
‘I think Logan killed his wife.’
‘But J.T., the evidence . . .’
‘Things are not always as they seem, Arthur.’
‘Like the video,’ said Nora.
‘Like the video,’ David repeated. ‘Which does not tell us everything, but in the very least, gives us somewhere to start.’
‘So that’s why you said you would represent him,’ said Sara.
‘That – and because his mother asked me to.’
‘She what?’ began a completely confused Sara before stealing a glance at Arthur. ‘David . . . how on earth . . . when did she . . . ?’
‘Just then, in that video,’ replied David. ‘She asked me to help her, Sara – and no matter what it takes, that is exactly what I am going to do.’
Seconds later they were interrupted by the simultaneous ring of two telephones in outer offices – one on Nora’s general office number and a second on David’s direct line. David moved across the room quickly to pick up his own call from Arthur’s extension, while Nora moved just as swiftly from Arthur’s office to answer the main line from her own front reception desk. Both Sara and Arthur stood stationary as they watched David and Nora listening, barely responding to the callers on the other end of their phones, before hanging up simultaneously to move back into the centre of Arthur’s office. Nora took the first opportunity to report.
‘J.T. Logan is out of processing,’ she said, her strong Irish accent giving the statement an almost profound rhythm of importance. ‘Detective McKay wants you to call him back immediately if you would like to see the boy before he is transported to Plymouth for the night.’
‘Call him back and tell him no,’ said David.
‘No?’ said Sara. ‘But I thought you just said . . . ?’
‘That was Marc Rigotti,’ said David. ‘J.T. will have to wait until morning, because Marc says he needs to see us – fast.’
‘The Logan case?’ asked Arthur.
David nodded. ‘It seems Stephanie never bought that kick-ass rifle after all.’
21
The following morning
Tony Bishop rose from his black leather ergonomic chair and moved towards the window. It truly was beautiful, he thought, as he looked out across the eastern side of the city and the royal blue harbour beyond. It was barely after eight but the sun was already burning with a vengeance, bouncing off the cobalt blue water now being sliced at random by boats big and small as they went about their ‘business’, promising a respite from what had been an unusually cool spring, and warming the pedestrians whose pace always slowed on mornings such as this, as if they needed to soak in every last ray before they hit the confines of their tiny, rectangular, artificially lit workspaces.
Tony had always thought it odd that he could watch people, from up here on the thirty-fifth floor of his circular Financial District commercial high-rise building, but that they could not watch him back. He could see them walking – men and women, solo and in pairs, young and old, tall and short, fat and thin, collar and tie, hat and overalls, trainers and suits and the odd commuter in a compulsory company uniform which no doubt bore some square-shaped shrunken logo embroidered just so on the left breast pocket, suggesting to the world that ‘my name is not important but the people who pay me are’.
Tony knew he was one of the ‘others’ – one of the elite minority who got to look down without the inconvenience of reciprocation, and he had to admit it felt good. True, he only felt the sun on his back a couple of days a week; true, he spent double the time in his office than he did in his space-age Tempur bed; true, he was servicing clients who cared more about the bottom line than they did about world starvation – but in the end it was all a matter of give and take, and in all honesty, the compensation was more than enough to ease the pain. At least it was most of the time, but perhaps not all of the time, as was proven a bare two minutes later when an unexpected visitor came to his door and he felt the first twinge of bona fide professional discomfort.
‘Tony,’ said junior attorney Harry Harrison from the Family Corporation Management Division way down on the twenty-ninth floor. Harrison had tapped on his door like a bird before sliding into his office sideways, with one foot pointed in and the other staking its claim on his seemingly much anticipated retreat.
‘I just wanted to get your take on this – on what I should do, I mean,’ Harrison began, his weight shifting slowly from one awkwardly placed foot to the other. ‘It’s about the Logans, or Stephanie Tyler to be exact. It seems when I was on vacation last week, she called and left a message – last Friday, the morning of the day that she died and well, she said that, ah . . . that she needed to see me urgently . . . that she wanted to change her will.’
And that was when the twinge turned into a pang – both professional and personal.
‘What did she want to change?’ asked Tony, maintaining his composure as he moved around his desk to walk towards the nervous young attorney before him. ‘Specifically, I mean,’ he added, knowing Harrison was not one to cut to the chase.
‘Well, she wanted to remove him as a beneficiary,’ Harrison said quickly, a ‘cut’ if ever there was one.
‘Remove who?’ asked Tony.
‘Her husband,’ Harrison returned. ‘But the police have the original. They requested it as a matter of procedure early yesterday – the old one where her entire estate goes to Doctor Logan, the one before the changes.’
‘But you said there were no changes,’ said Tony.
‘No,’ said Harrison, half-nodding, half-shaking his balding, pointed head. ‘What I mean to say is, I didn’t make the changes physically because I was away. But I have her instructions on my voice mail. And they are very clear.’
Tony nodded, his brain now ticking over at a million miles a minute.
‘You still have the message?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the husband, Jeffrey Logan, he is your client too. Am I right?’
‘Yes,’ said Harrison. ‘I represent the family’s interests and our media division looks after the doctor’s business interests.’
Tony’s firm, Williams, Coolidge and Harrison, had many divi
sions, including a growing Media Department. Tony worked in corporate under Gareth Coolidge; the media division was litigation/defamation expert Henry Williams’ domain; and Charles Harrison covered the family division, which was probably why his ‘thick as a brick’, prematurely balding nephew was currently standing in front of Tony.
‘Jesus,’ said Tony, thinking aloud.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Harrison.
‘Have you told anyone else about this, Harry?’ asked Tony after a beat.
‘My uncle is still in the Berkshires,’ he said. ‘In fact, you are the most senior attorney here at present, Tony, with Mr Williams in Los Angeles and Mr Coolidge still recovering from his knee replacement surgery.’ It was true, Tony was king of the castle right now – a position he had been savouring just moments ago – but one that now felt decidedly . . .
‘So, no,’ finished Harrison, interrupting Tony’s thoughts, his back foot sliding an inch or two backwards, towards his intended route of escape. ‘I haven’t told anybody but you.’
‘Okay,’ said Tony, after a pause, seeking some solace in the fact that, in the very least, the information was ‘contained’, which would allow him some much-needed time to think. Tony was totally aware of all that was going down in the Logan case – a case he had a fourfold interest in considering his past relationship with Stephanie, the fact that the family were long-term clients, the complication that his best friend was now defending her murderer, and Tony’s girlfriend was head prosecutor for the Commonwealth.
And despite his personal feelings, he knew that above all else, this new information created a conflict of interest of the highest order, considering their first client – Stephanie, the one who gave Harrison the instructions – was dead, and their second client – Logan – was the subject of Stephanie’s ‘evidentially significant’ request. Even though Stephanie was gone, both she and her husband deserved the respect and confidentiality guaranteed by the firm’s legal and professional responsibility. And the fact that she used to be his girlfriend, the fact that Tony once believed he could well spend the rest of his life with her, was well . . .
‘Tony?’ said Harry Harrison, obviously eager for a response.
‘Leave it with me,’ said Tony, moving quickly behind his desk, knowing Harrison would be out the door faster than the roadrunner in one of those old Wile E. Coyote cartoons. But Harrison did not move, and in that moment, as Tony collapsed onto his smooth leather chair, he knew that the worst was yet to come.
Harrison told him the rest of it and Tony felt that nasty little pang become a stab, starting somewhere near his breastbone and finishing way back in his chest. And when Harrison finally made like the roadrunner, Tony closed his eyes as he asked himself, What to do? He took a long slow breath and wished for some magical solution that would both satisfy him professionally and personally and avoid offending any of the myriad of personalities involved.
No, he reasoned with himself, there is no perfect solution. Someone is going to get burned.
He opened his eyes and reached across his desk top, lifting the hand piece of his modern, metallic, multifunctional office phone before he had a chance to change his mind. And then he began punching in the direct line which he had committed to memory a mere few months ago.
‘Hi,’ he said, just as the woman picked up and answered the call promptly and abruptly, giving only her last name in greeting.
‘I’m sorry, Tony, but I’m really busy. I am going to have to call you . . .’
‘No, I’m sorry, Amanda, but this is urgent. Whatever you are doing you need to drop it – because we need to talk.’
22
Not long after a relieved Harry Harrison had hightailed it from Tony Bishop’s office, leaving Bishop with an almighty minefield to negotiate, David Cavanaugh was doing some serious mental navigation of his own. He waited for his good friend Joe Mannix to arrive at a greasy Roxbury Diner known as Lenny’s and wondered what in the hell he was going to say.
Joe wasn’t the problem – David trusted him 100 per cent – but their respective jobs were a different matter altogether. For while David had a professional responsibility to his fourteen-year-old client, Joe had similar obligations to the District Attorney’s Office, or more specifically, to an ambitious ADA by the name of Amanda Carmichael.
‘Hey,’ said Joe, prompting a deep-in-thought David to look up and half-stand so that he might shake his good friend’s hand.
‘Hey. I didn’t hear you come in,’ replied David, as Joe took a seat on the red vinyl bench across from him.
‘It’s broken,’ said Joe.
‘What?’
‘The bell over Lenny’s door.’
‘Lenny has a bell?’
‘Doesn’t every dodgy corner diner in this country have a bell over its gingham-curtained door?’
David smiled. ‘You know that that checked material over the door is called gingham?’
‘McKay told me,’ said Joe.
‘Well that explains it.’
A few minutes of chitchat, a double order of Lenny’s too-salty bacon and eggs, and two bottomless mugs of hot black coffee later, Joe was the one who cut to the chase.
‘You didn’t have to do this, you know,’ he said as he signalled for a refill from a white-haired waitress named Pearl.
‘Do what?’ asked a genuinely confused David.
‘Meet me here – at my end of town, at this shit hole excuse for a restaurant just to explain.’
Now David was completely confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on, David. You hate this joint. You normally want to catch up at Myrtle’s where, in the very least, we know the eggs come from chickens and the meat comes from a pig.
‘You’re dropping the kid,’ Joe continued when David didn’t respond. ‘And I get it. You were friends with his mom and no matter what went down, you’ve made the decision that it’s best for all concerned that you step down.’
‘You think I’m bailing on the kid?’ asked David. ‘You think I came down here to explain why I . . .’
‘Well, didn’t you?’ interrupted Joe.
‘No, Joe. No, I didn’t.’
‘So you’re still on board then?’ said Joe, and David could not help but hear the relief in his detective friend’s voice. ‘Because when Frank called Nora yesterday, and when he got the message you didn’t want to come down to see the Logan boy after he was processed, and considering the boy is kinda lost right now, well . . .’ Joe hesitated, it was not his place as head of Boston Homicide to offer opinions on who defended who, but in this case David sensed Joe was feeling more than a little angry at how the kid had been railroaded.
‘It’s okay, Joe. I’m still in,’ said David.
Joe nodded.
‘But there’s a but,’ said David, after a pause.
‘Isn’t there always?’
David could not help but smile. ‘It’s just that, before you go championing my decision to help the kid, I have to warn you that my motives for asking you here are not entirely selfless.’
Joe looked up from his breakfast. ‘So the indigestion I am about to suffer won’t be put down purely to the eggs.’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘And why am I not surprised?’
David began at the beginning – with Logan’s hole-a-minute story, Katherine de Castro’s accusations, the contents of that all-revealing video tape and the doctor’s confirmation of his wife’s ‘relentless emotional abuse’. He took Joe through the tape in detail, describing the dialogue and movements minute by minute, before stepping back from the obvious to explain what he had read between the lines and deducted from, as Sara had called it, the ‘family home movie from hell’.
‘First up, the lighting is totally off,’ he began.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Joe, the first question he had asked in minutes.
‘It’s green, a sort of surreal artificial colour, like someone had lit it that way on purpose.’
‘Come on, David,�
� said Joe, shaking his head. ‘You and I both know that the lighting doesn’t mean jack.’
‘True, at least not on its own. But when you watch this thing, you can tell that Stephanie, J.T. and Chelsea . . . it’s as if they are all reciting from a script. Their speech is stilted as if learned, their mannerisms are taut, controlled and jerky, and Logan plays it up big time, his arms sweeping in gestures that verge on melodrama, his intonation rising and falling at all the appropriate moments.’
‘Like I said, David,’ said Joe once again, ‘while I need to see this little DIY production for myself, from what you are describing, it is not enough to . . .’
‘Their eyes keep flicking,’ said David, needing to push on. ‘As if there are prompt cards set at the other end of the table. J.T. keeps looking up before he says anything, and at one point, where Stephanie appears to have forgotten her lines, she looks back and forward while repeating the same sentence twice.
‘And Chelsea just sits there like a robot. In fact, the only time she actually reacts is when her father re-takes his seat and reaches for something in the middle of the table.’
‘And what is he reaching for?’ asked Joe.
‘A gravy boat.’
‘A gravy boat!’ repeated Joe. ‘David . . .’
‘What I mean to say is, it looks like a gravy boat but,’ David needed Joe to see it, ‘. . . but I don’t think it is a gravy boat or any other piece of expensive silver dinnerware. I think it’s a gun or some other form of weapon, because when he reaches towards it, Chelsea reacts immediately. It is like a reminder to them all that their lives are in danger every time they overstep the line.’
‘You think this man was terrorising his family to such an extent that he could totally control their behaviour?’
‘I think he was, and still is, trying to portray Stephanie as the tyrant, in order to hide the fact that he is the oppressor himself.’
‘So he can get away with killing her,’ said Joe.
‘And setting up his son in his stead. I know all the evidence points to the kid, Joe, but . . .’
