Reckless Disregard

by Robert Rotstein

  “Well, I’m an attorney and research is my weapon. I wouldn’t have missed information like that.”

  “What’s this about, Stern?”

  “It’s about the fact McGrath made up a fictional city of her birth for the opening scene in Satan’s Boatman.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Who knows why a writer does anything? Maybe she didn’t think coming from North Hollywood was exciting enough. The only way you could’ve believed she was from Springfield, Illinois, was if you saw the movie. Or worked on it with her.”

  “This is some sick practical joke, right? In honor of the unlikely reunion of Parky Gerald and Nate Ettinger after all these years?”

  “Not only were you on the set of Satan’s Boatman, you were the one who substituted heroin and cocaine for saline in the syringe that killed Hildy Gish. You just thought that it would be William Bishop who died. He was the one who was supposed to take the first needle. But he and Gish ad-libbed at the last moment and the drugs went into Gish’s arm.”

  “You’re insane, Stern.”

  “About the needle being meant for Bishop? I watched the scene. He was going to inject himself. And Bishop told me that they improvised at the last minute. Or, if you mean, where did I learn that McGrath was only pretending to be from Illinois, I finally remembered that Clifton Stanley Gold told me McGrath started with him when she was a thirteen-year-old still in middle school. Turns out that McGrath was a Valley girl. The story about being a runaway was McGrath’s embellishment—she was a wild, restless teenager, threatened to run away, but Gold made her stay home in exchange for acting lessons. But there was nothing about Springfield, Illinois, until Satan’s Boatman. You didn’t do your homework, Professor.”

  “Get out of here, Stern, or I’ll call security.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, E.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “E. That’s what Paula McGrath always called you, right? I got that from Bishop, too. She started calling you that way back in seventy-nine, on the set of The Boatman. And you know what? She calls you that in the Satan’s Boatman video, says, ‘Cut and print, E.’ You operated the camera for that scene, didn’t you?”

  The muscles in his forehead knit together to form an ominous glower. He isn’t a benign college professor anymore.

  “And then there’s Luther Frederickson,” I say. “Bishop and I have gotten to be very close. You know, the enemy of the enemy is my friend, and all that? He admitted to me that he paid off Boardwalk Freddy to disappear. Helped him through rehab and everything. It turns out that Frederickson wasn’t just a panhandler and a transient, he was a businessman. It seems our lapsed accountant was supplying drugs to half the junkies on the beach. And he says that he sold you the heroin and cocaine not long before Hildy Gish died. Of course, he thought you wanted it for recreational purposes, had no idea until now that Gish even OD’d.”

  “I told you, Stern, you’re crazy. Why ever would I do something so horrible?”

  “You know, it’s not something that I like to acknowledge, but by genetics and upbringing I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist. So when something goes bad, I think big—Mafia, Sanctified Assembly. I fight against the tendency, but . . . in my defense, there were a lot of things in this case that confirmed my biases. But as my mentor Harmon Cherry used to say, evil is most often mundane, personal—and so trivial. You worked on the original version of The Boatman and thought you deserved way more credit than Bishop gave you. Then, a couple of years later, Bishop took over the production company you were with, discontinued development of all your projects, and fired you. He never liked you, thought you were a no-talent fake, that as a producer you had no taste. He took away your chance at succeeding in Hollywood. And here you are, stuck teaching as an untenured professor at a small-time college. That’s motive.”

  Ettinger presses his lips together.

  “Then McGrath contacted you in 1987 about reshooting The Boatman. You thought it was going to be your opportunity for glory. Or maybe you just saw it as the chance for payback. So you read the scene where Bishop and Gish were both going to pretend to shoot heroin—Bishop was going to go first—and you spiked the vial with real drugs. But the actors changed the scene and Gish died. After that happened, I’m sure you really were afraid that Bishop would find out what you did and come after you. Then you conveniently showed up at the trial and volunteered to testify against him because you could make sure he was implicated once and for all in Felicity’s disappearance. You could finally help ruin him forever.”

  There’s a clatter under Ettinger’s desk, and when he raises his hands above the ledge he’s holding a gun. I didn’t see that coming, though I should have—he’s been afraid for years that William Bishop’s men would come after him, undoubtedly more so because of the lawsuit against Poniard.

  What I feel is not fear but an odd sense of bewilderment. I’m an attorney, dedicated to resolving disputes in a nonviolent way, and yet this is the second time this week that someone has pointed a gun at me.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Nate,” I say. “You’re not going to shoot me in a crowded office building.”

  “Stand up,” he says.

  I stand. He clumsily takes off his sport coat, drapes it over his arm, and uses it to conceal the gun. Unlike Courtney, he can’t keep his hand steady, and I realize that his jitters are just as dangerous as her psychopathic calm.

  “Outside,” he says.

  I open the door and step into the corridor. He follows, and as soon as he’s out the door, two uniformed cops grab him and wrestle him to the ground. Standing over them with her service revolver drawn is Detective of Homicide Angela Tringali. At the moment, she no longer looks like a real estate broker.

  “Damn it, Stern, this isn’t what I had in mind when I agreed to let you do this,” she says.

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  Yesterday, I met with Tringali in person, telling her that I had information relating to the McGrath disappearance, could help her solve a homicide—but not McGrath’s. When she pressed for details, I refused to reveal them unless she let me spend some time alone with the unnamed killer to try to elicit something incriminating. Ettinger’s mistake about Springfield, Illinois, and even Frederickson’s statement about selling the drugs, isn’t strong proof of guilt. She demanded that I tell her what was going on, but I wouldn’t unless she agreed to my demands. After shouting at me for five minutes and threatening me for two, she relented, but only if I wore a recording device like I did in that silly movie where I portrayed an eleven-year-old undercover agent. An hour later, I played her the Satan’s Boatman video clip depicting Gish’s death and explained why I believed Ettinger was responsible.

  Now, she shakes her head. “You didn’t get him to say anything useful and he could’ve—”

  “Here’s my free legal opinion, Detective. The fact that he pulled a gun and tried to move me to another location is admissible evidence of guilt. I just made your case miles easier.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Ettinger shouts and then realizes even saying that is too much.

  The cops read him his rights and lead him out in handcuffs. I lean against the wall to keep from falling until everyone has left. Then I let the enormity of what happened wash over me. On wobbly legs, I make my way down the hall to the men’s room, where I hide in a stall and vomit. When it comes right down to it, having a revolver pointed at you is far more debilitating than a case of courtroom stage fright.

  Brighton keeps trying to launch Abduction! in the hope that Poniard will bring Felicity back for a sad farewell. It’s silly, but he needs to say good-bye. The only image on the screen is William the Conqueror in prison stripes, even though the HF Queen says that Bishop isn’t really going to jail. Brighton thinks Bishop is a bad man, but the HF Queen says that he’s just weak, that all that money and power meant zero.

  And then, on the day after that college professor is arrested, he clicks on the link and Fe
licity appears. Not Sexy Felicity, not Weepy Felicity, but Warrior Felicity in jeans, a leather jacket, and a baseball cap. Brighton laughs joyfully at the sight of her. She’s holding a compact high-tech movie camera in one hand and a long sword in the other. A bowed stringed instrument—a cello or a bass maybe—and a thunderous kettledrum play creepy war-movie music in the background.

  Her eyes pulse three animated spears of lights. “Abduction! is over,” she says. “But not the quest. That’ll never be over until you find out what happened to me. And you will have the chance.” She stabs the sword hard into the ground, raises the camera, and points it at the viewer. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  The screen goes black. A white death’s skull momentarily flashes on the screen and then explodes into words:

  BETRAYAL!

  The Sequel to Abduction!

  A Game by Poniard

  Watch for It

  Once the cops arrest Nate Ettinger, Satan’s Boatman quickly becomes public. Bishop preemptively dismisses his lawsuit against Poniard, resigns from his position at Parapet Media, and acknowledges that he moved Hildy Gish’s body to cover up his involvement in her death. His PR people issue a contrite press release, apologizing for his lack of judgment. He promises to devote the rest of his life to philanthropic causes. To deflect attention from the truth about McGrath’s disappearance, he accuses Ettinger of abducting her. Fine with me.

  The public pronouncement only increases the scorn and ridicule directed at him. The Sanctified Assembly predictably condemns the movie as blasphemous fraud and threatens to sue Bishop for defamation and copyright infringement for pirating and perverting the teachings of Bradley Kelly. Long-time enemies and former supporters alike call Bishop a hypocrite, a disgrace. That’s also fine with me—William the Conqueror should atone for his sins.

  On each of the next two days, Brenda texts me to say that she’s still suffering from the flu. It’s not until Thursday that she shows up at The Barrista. She makes her way through the crowd of onlookers who’re willing to spring for a cup of coffee and a muffin just to get a look at Parky Gerald, or if they’re too old or too young to care about that, at the man who vanquished William Bishop and exposed Nate Ettinger. Romulo has stationed a brawny barista at a table near me to keep people away.

  Brenda looks like a person who’s been ill—unwashed hair pulled back in a slapdash ponytail, no makeup, a long pink T-shirt, tattered blue jeans, and sneakers. I smile and wave, but she walks past my table and into the storeroom. I get up and follow her inside.

  “Is everything OK?” I ask. “If you’re still not feeling well, you can—”

  She wheels on me. “Why is Bishop free?”

  “Because he’s innocent. Courtney, that crazy cosplayer, murdered Philip Paulsen and the Kreisses. Some bizarre delusion that our winning the lawsuit would disturb Felicity’s soul. And Ettinger killed Hildy Gish.”

  “Why should I believe any of it?”

  “Uh, because Courtney’s knife matched the stab wounds in Philip and Isla Kreiss and the ballistics test show that the gun killed Bud Kreiss?”

  “So say the cops. You know how far you can trust them. They’re in Bishop’s pocket.”

  “Jesus, Brenda, that maniac tried to kill Lovely Diamond and me. And Ettinger—”

  “Ettinger is taking the fall for Bishop killing Gish. The Conqueror murdered Felicity to cover that up. Felicity would’ve gone to the police.”

  “It’s not true,” I say. “I was the one who figured out that Ettinger committed the murder, not the cops.”

  She shakes her head incredulously. “Bishop could make it happen with a wave of his emperor’s wand.”

  “Ettinger pulled a gun on me.”

  Her silence is not just fraught but downright hostile.

  “That still leaves Felicity,” she says. “Why does Bishop get to walk on the kidnapping?”

  “Because he didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Brenda, I . . . I can’t tell you that.”

  Her eyes contort in contending emotions of shock and anger. “After all this time, you don’t trust me? After I’ve given my life to your case?”

  “I do trust you . . . I just . . . I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are reasons.”

  “Did Bishop pay you off, too?”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “I don’t have any idea. I thought I did.” She takes a step back and puts her hands on her hips. For the first time since a trembling Brenda Sica walked into my office last September, I’ve lost her.

  She goes to the table, reaches into her knapsack, and hands me a sheet of legal paper with some writing on it. “While I was out sick I made a list of what we have to do to shut things down. Hopefully we can get it all done today so I don’t have to spend an extra minute in this place.”

  I look into her eyes for any sign of doubt, but they’re unwavering. Can I blame her? I’ve withheld the truth: Bishop’s condition for giving me information is that I can’t tell anyone, not even Brenda. I take her list and return to my table outside. She’s right—the sooner we wrap things up, the better. Her list is thorough—pay court reporter’s invoice, pay videographer’s invoice, retrieve demonstrative exhibits from court file, send client “case and representation are terminated” letter, retrieve “Scotty” letters from Marina Community Bank and arrange for return to client, send client final invoice, close client trust account on receipt of payment, file bill of costs for trial within statutory limit, shut down Law Offices of PS website, settle invoice with website host, archive case file. The last entry says pay six months’ rent to The Barrista and give bonuses to The Barrista staff for all the trouble we caused.

  I set the list down, take a sip of cold coffee, which is OK, because our coffee tastes good no matter what, and pick up the list again. Something’s not right. In fact, it’s all wrong. I bolt up out of my chair and hurry into the storeroom, where Brenda is sitting in front of her computer, apparently reconciling a bank statement.

  “We need to talk,” I say.

  “What is it?” There’s a sandpaper edge to her voice that stops me cold.

  Shock leads to clarity, or an illusion of clarity that sometimes results in the perfect course of action. Parker Stern said that, not Harmon Cherry. I open the cabinet and take out the box of documents that Joyce Paulsen brought me last Monday.

  “What’s that?” Brenda asks.

  “Just some crap I have to look through.” I take the box to my table and rifle through it, finding copies of pleadings in Bishop v. Poniard, LexisNexis printouts, legal research memos—all familiar material. I feel around the box and locate the computer flash drive that Joyce gave me. I insert the drive into my laptop’s USB port and double-click on the file, which launches in Outlook as a series of e-mails from Philip Paulsen.

  I don’t have to scroll down to find what I’m looking for because it’s the first message—it was sent the day Philip died. Philip sent the e-mail to himself, a standard practice of his for collecting data. The subject line reads, “Bishop v. Poniard—Meeting w/ USC Assoc Dean.” That’s why he was at Cranky Franks that day—he’d been at USC following up a lead on Alicia Turner.

  The e-mail contains an attachment, a copy of a 2004 newsletter touting the university’s joint Computer Science/Cinematic Arts program—number one in the nation, according to the headline. Philip must’ve sweet-talked one of the administrators into letting him search the department’s database and scan the document. I don’t see anything relevant on the first three pages of the newsletter, but on the fourth page, there’s an article on the May 2004 departmental video games competition. When I scroll down the page a bit farther and see the photograph of the winners, my arms start flailing, and I knock my coffee cup over, spilling its contents all over my keyboard. I don’t care. As long as the monitor still works.

  With coffee-soaked hands, I carefully lift up my laptop and take i
t into the storeroom. Brenda is typing away at her computer. She doesn’t look up.

  “Look at me,” I say, and not in a gentle voice.

  She looks up.

  “How did you know Felicity’s letters to Scotty were stored at the Community Bank of Marina del Rey.”

  “I . . . you told me they were. When they came in.” What a wonderful actress she is.

  “I told only one person in the world.”

  “Mr. Stern, you definitely told me the letters were at that bank.” So sincere, so ingenuous.

  I walk over, set my laptop down on table beside her, and point to the screen. “Take a look. This is what Philip Paulsen wanted to show me when he asked me to meet him for lunch the day he was killed.”

  She turns to the screen and stares at the photograph, and what frightens me most is that she shows absolutely no emotion. Though they were members of the team that won the competition to design the best video game at the best program in the country, only one of the people in the photo is actually smiling. That was the large young man on the left, identified as sophomore Vladimir “The Mad Russian” Lazerev, First Assistant, who at the time didn’t cover his unsightly birthmark with a beard. His specialty is listed as “software engineering.” He has his arm around the girl in the center, a pretty redhead—Melanie “The Artiste” Oliver, Second Assistant—a freshman and game designer in the Cinema Arts department, but clearly the delusional, murderous cosplayer who goes by the names Courtney and Felicity. And on the right is a small, voluptuous brunette who’s the only one of the three looking directly into the camera, as if in challenge. She’s curled the corner of her full lips up in a scornful smirk—Alicia “The Dagger” Turner, Team Leader, software engineering, game design, and though ten years younger, unmistakably my assistant, Brenda Sica.

  “You called yourself ‘The Dagger’ then,” I say. “And later you refined your nickname to something more obscure, more ominous. I didn’t know what a poniard was until you hired me.”

  She looks at me and shrugs. “I guess this means game over, Parker Stern. You win.”