Long Knives

by Charles Rosenberg

  “Yeah, but there’s also good news. The other two faculty on your committee are much more favorably disposed toward you.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Do you want to know who they are?”

  I hesitated for a few seconds, then, finally, said, “No.”

  He laughed. “Or at least you don’t want to know right now.”

  “I need to sit down,” I said. I moved away from the door and sank into one of the two guest chairs.

  Aldous came out from behind the desk and plopped himself into the other chair. “I think I’ll join you out here. It’s weird talking to you from behind my desk. Not emotionally connected enough.” He smiled.

  “Very funny, Aldous. Ha ha. Somehow I’m not focused right now on who’s sitting where, and I don’t want to rehash our conversation of this morning.”

  “You’re not having a good week,” he said.

  “Not hardly. Did you read the lawsuit?”

  “Yeah, I did. You’ll need a lawyer, obviously.”

  “I know. I was thinking about that as I was driving in.”

  “Got anyone in mind?”

  “Yeah. Oscar Quesana.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He was my co-counsel when I defended Robert against the murder charge. I learned a huge amount from Oscar. We had a rocky start, but we became good friends in the end. He’s an unusual guy—a vegan who lives in a house that looks like it was decorated by the Vermont Country Store and doesn’t believe in cell phones or fax machines, let alone e-mail—but a great lawyer.”

  “Ah, yes, you’ve mentioned Oscar before. But isn’t he a criminal defense lawyer?”

  “Yeah, he wasn’t even in our law firm. We didn’t do criminal defense. But I think he used to do civil cases, too, and he’s aggressive. He’ll figure out a way to get rid of this in short order.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Sounds good. If he can’t do it, I’m sure you know lots of others who can. In the meantime, though, I’ve got a class to teach. Do you want to stay here until you’re sure Greta has gone away?”

  “It doesn’t matter one way or the other.”

  Aldous got up from the chair and reached for the doorknob, then paused. “You know, Jenna, you really can’t blame Greta for being hostile to you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because she thinks you leaked that she had that job downtown.”

  “I didn’t do that.”

  “I know. But everyone around here thinks you did.”

  “That really pisses me off.”

  “I’m just telling you what I hear.”

  I had been having an internal struggle about whether to tell Aldous about the dying plant, and the conclusion I’d reached about who had been the target of the killer. On one level he didn’t seem like the best person to tell because our relationship was so fraught. But on another he did care about me. I decided to tell him, even if we had only minutes left before he had to leave.

  “Aldous, before you go, there’s one more thing we need to talk about. And it’s something I haven’t wanted to bring up because it seems nuts.”

  “What?”

  “I believe there was poison in that coffee; not just in Primo’s cup but in the pot—I’ll explain later why I think so. So I think someone was trying to poison me, not Primo.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, and I’m scared. Terrified, really. So afraid that when the process server served me with the lawsuit this morning, I thought he was an assassin. Not only that, I’m thinking of moving to a hotel until they catch the person who did it, and I’ve pledged to myself not to eat a single bite of anything that I didn’t make myself.”

  Aldous sat back down in the chair. “I can be late for my class. Tell me the details of why you think Primo was poisoned and why you think the poison was in the coffeepot.”

  I told him. When I was done, he looked at me and said, “This is a lot more serious—for you—than I thought it was. When you came in here, I thought you were just being paranoid.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “Crazy as it seems, someone may actually have tried to kill you. Although I think we need to find out for sure what was in that coffeepot. Going to the police right away is a good idea. But I have another idea.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why don’t you stay at my house while I’m gone?”

  “It’s lonely up there. You don’t even have any close neighbors.”

  “I can hire a security guard for you if you want.”

  I thought about it for a moment. It was one of those on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand conversations I was always having with myself. Oddly, one of the on the other hands was that despite sometimes being attracted to Aldous because of his wealth, I didn’t want to be dependent on him and his money. Which somehow, in my warped internal monologue, seemed to balance out my life being in danger.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary, Aldous, but I appreciate the offer.”

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  “I will, but I don’t think I’ll change my mind.”

  “Okay, I do really have to go now.” He got up from the chair, opened the door and looked back at me. “There’s one more thing, Jenna.”

  “What’s that, Aldous?”

  “Emotionally unavailable as I am, I love you.”

  He exited through the door and shut it gently behind him.

  CHAPTER 21

  As soon as I got back to my own office, I picked up the phone and called Oscar. It had been almost five years, but I hadn’t forgotten his number. After a few rings, a mechanical voice answered and said that the phone had been disconnected and there was no new number. I tried information. Nada.

  I sat and thought about it. Oscar was a major Luddite. He didn’t own a cell phone and he didn’t have a fax machine. He didn’t use e-mail. There was one place, though, where he had to be listed. I went to my computer and looked him up on the California State Bar website. All active lawyers are required to provide contact information to the State Bar. That didn’t work either. The only phone number listed was the one I had just called. A Google search, when I tried it, was equally unavailing. There were precious few references to Oscar, and those that were there were all at least two years old.

  Had he died? I checked the obituaries in the LA Times. Nothing.

  Strange as it seemed, and close as I had been to Oscar at one time, I didn’t know a single person who also knew him. Except for one—Robert Tarza. Robert liked to keep in touch with people, and he might well know where to find Oscar. But Robert wasn’t someone I was super anxious to call. He hadn’t been happy about my leaving M&M and had tried hard to talk me out of it. After that, despite the fact that he had been my mentor for more than seven years—we had done six long civil trials together, and he was the closest thing to a father figure I’d ever had in the law—our relationship had cooled once I left. I was going to have to suck it up and call him.

  I chose calling because Robert was terrible at checking his e-mail, and I assumed, stuffy as he was, that he didn’t text.

  I dialed M&M’s main number. It was picked up on the first ring.

  “Marbury Marfan,” the voice on the other end said.

  I recognized the voice of Christine, the firm’s longtime receptionist. “Hi, Christine, it’s Jenna James.”

  “Oh, hi, Jenna, it’s so nice to hear your voice. How are you?”

  “I’m great. How about you?”

  “Very good. Who do you want to talk to?”

  “Robert, of course.”

  “Oh, I thought you guys were close, but I guess not so much anymore. Robert went senior—retired—five or six months ago. Didn’t you go to his retirement party?”

  “No, didn’t make it.” I decided to leave it at that and not mention that this was the first I’d heard of it, that I hadn’t even been invited.

  “Oh. Well, he still has an office here, but he almost never comes in, and I think he sold
his house. So I don’t really know where he is. But Gwen is still here, working for someone else, and she probably knows. I’ll put you through to her.”

  “Thanks.”

  After a few rings, Gwen picked up. “Mr. Carlson’s office.”

  “Hey, Gwen, it’s me, Jenna.”

  “Oh, hi, Jenna. What can I do for you?” Gwen wasn’t the chatty type.

  “I’m looking for Robert. Do you know where I can reach him?”

  “Yes. He’s living in Paris.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. With an old flame. Apparently.”

  Now that was an amazing piece of information. In all the years I’d known him, Robert hadn’t had a single girlfriend. I wanted to know more.

  “Someone we know?”

  “Not I. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Mr. Tarza, but I now know there were some things he chose not to share with me.”

  I smiled to myself at the sharp note of disapproval in her voice. Gwen had worked for Robert for more than twenty years. They had seemed to all of us almost like a married couple. But apparently he’d been cheating on her, if failing to disclose a girlfriend to your secretary was cheating.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Tess.”

  “Interesting. I suppose we’re all entitled to a few secrets.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So do you have a number for him?”

  “Yes. Tell me your e-mail address, and I’ll send you the contact information there.”

  I gave her my personal address. It wasn’t a good idea to use my UCLA e-mail, which the university could read if it wanted to.

  “I’ll tell him you said hello, Gwen.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  I suppressed a laugh. “Uh, all right. You have a good day.”

  “You, too.”

  After I clicked off the call, I sat there and thought about it. Robert, in Paris with an old girlfriend. What was that all about? A ping on my cell announced that an e-mail had arrived, and when I looked it was from Gwen with the contact information. His address was in care of someone named Tess Devrais in Paris in the 5th arrondissement, which put it somewhere on the Left Bank. I knew from my recent visit that it was quite a chic area.

  I did a rapid time zone calculation. Paris was nine hours later than Los Angeles, which meant it was not quite 7:30 in the evening there. I didn’t know what outrageous amount my cell-phone carrier was going to charge me for a call to France, and I didn’t feel like using Skype, so I figured what the hell and punched in the number.

  CHAPTER 22

  Robert Tarza

  When Jenna’s call came through, I was sitting on the couch in Tess’s apartment, sipping a vodka martini and looking out the window at Notre Dame, just across the river. Tess was in the kitchen, whipping up a soufflé of some sort. It was early by her standards, but she had adapted—more or less—to my American desire not to wait until ten o’clock to have dinner.

  Tess is the French equivalent of a Silicon Valley multimillionaire, except her many millions are in euros. She used to run a large tech company that she founded. Now she just dabbles in the things that retired multimillionaires dabble in. A charity here, an investment fund there, helping out some young entrepreneurs over there. Whatever keeps her busy. I had first met her in a bar in Paris, almost fifteen years earlier, before she was really rich, during my first and only sabbatical. The bar of the George V, to be exact, one very raw night in March.

  I can command a room if I want to. Tess, whether she wishes it or not, demands the room. When I walked into the place that night, she was sitting at the bar, doing just that. Every person in the bar was looking at her, openly or furtively.

  It’s hard to say exactly why Tess has this effect on people. If you look carefully at her, no one part of her is truly world class. She has a pretty face, but not one that would put her on the cover of Vogue. She has high, firm breasts, but not of a size that attract a lot of men these days. And while she has great legs, they aren’t so stellar that they would need to be insured, à la Betty Grable.

  Nor is it the way she dresses. Understated and tasteful, but with clothes just as likely to have been bought at Bon Marché as at Dior. It could be her hair, but there are a lot of women with tousled mops of jet-black hair.

  Perhaps it’s her eyes, a deep green that can be as warm and inviting as a forested glade on a summer day or as cold and distant as the edge of a freshly calved iceberg. That night, though, the bar was sufficiently dark that I doubt anyone could have seen the color of her eyes unless they were sitting right next to her, which no one was.

  I was riveted by her, too, but chose to sit in a booth in the far reaches of the place, as far from her as I could get. I had always done okay with women, but it was clear to me, just from glancing at her, that she was out of my league.

  For whatever reason, she came over, drink in hand, sat down opposite me in the booth and said, “Hello, monsieur l’Américain.” I had apparently been given away by my shoes.

  Much later Tess told me that she had simply liked the way I walked when I came in, which is when she also noticed my shoes. Who knows if that’s really true? She just wanted me, and Tess has been used to getting what she wants since she first learned to walk. Probably even before that.

  Later that night, to my utter disbelief, I ended up at her elegant apartment overlooking Notre Dame and the Seine and stayed for two months. When it was time for me to return to M&M, Tess argued with great fervor—in English, a language she speaks passably well, although far from perfectly—that I should quit the firm, stay in Paris and live out my life with her. I pointed out at the time that I was forty-nine and she was thirty-two, and that, therefore, she would likely still have a lot of life to live after I had become a drooler, but she was not amused.

  In the end I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just couldn’t picture myself as an expatriate, even with Tess at my side. At first, upon my return to Los Angeles, we had exchanged a few desultory notes on paper. Then that had dwindled down. Not even an e-mail had followed.

  When I retired I decided to treat myself to a summer in France. I started by checking into the George V in Paris for a few days—one of my favorite hotels anywhere—while I looked for a monthly rental. The first night I was there, I went down to the bar, which seemed unchanged from the last time I’d been there, fifteen years earlier. When I walked in, Tess was, to my shock, sitting at the bar. I started to turn and walk back out, but before I could get out the door, I heard her say, “Alors, how long have you been in Paris, monsieur l’Américain? And why have you not called me?”

  Six months later I was once again living with her in the very same apartment—no one in Paris gives up a good apartment until they die—and not planning to go back to the US anytime soon. Nothing much had changed between us, really, and she, at least, still looked great at forty-seven. Indeed, but for a small crinkle of fine lines in the corners of her eyes, she had changed hardly at all. I, on the other hand, was, at sixty-four, badly in need of joining a gym and getting my hair cut.

  The phone had stopped ringing, and my reverie of the past was interrupted by Tess standing in front of me, holding out the portable phone. “It is some American girl for you.”

  I took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Robert, it’s Jenna.”

  Jenna was the last person in the world I expected to hear from.

  “Hi, Jenna. How did you find me?”

  “Gwen.”

  “Of course. She’s still my keeper, I guess.”

  “I don’t think she approves of who you’re living with.”

  “Probably not. My sin was never telling her about Tess. Someone I met on my sabbatical. Oh, but you wouldn’t know about that. You weren’t at the firm yet. Come to think of it, you were probably still in grade school.”

  “How long ago was your sabbatical?”

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  “I was in my junior year of college.”


  “Oh. Well, now that we’ve got the chronology out of the way, what’s the reason for your call?” I knew that sounded a bit abrupt, even cold, so I added, “Are you coming to Paris? Is that why you’re calling?”

  “No, I’m up for tenure this year, so it’s nose to the grindstone, no travel. I was actually calling to see if you know how I can reach Oscar. His phone is disconnected and I can’t find him.”

  “That’s easy. He was here just a month ago with his new wife.”

  “He got married again?”

  “Yes. Wife number six. Nice lady.”

  “I hesitate to ask: How old is she?”

  “Thirty, I think.”

  “Younger than me.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Thirty-four. How old is Oscar?”

  “I’m not really sure. A couple of years older than me, I think. You can look him up on the Cal Bar website and figure it out.”

  “I suppose. But how do I reach him? The number he lists there is disconnected.”

  “I’ll give you his cell number.”

  “He has a cell?”

  “Believe it or not, he has an iPhone. The new Mrs. Quesana is trying to modernize him.”

  “Will wonders never cease?”

  “I’ll text the contact info to you, including his—believe it or not—e-mail address.”

  “Great.”

  As our conversation continued, I found, to my amazement, that despite our virtual estrangement since Jenna had left Marbury Marfan—and had, in my view, left me in the lurch at a critical moment—my old, warm feelings for her were somehow bubbling up.

  “Jenna,” I said, “back in the old days you would have told me from the get-go why you needed to reach Oscar. I hope you’re not in any kind of trouble.”

  “Some serious trouble, actually. A student died after falling ill in my office, and the police are investigating his death. I need Oscar to talk directly to the police about it. And I’ve been sued in a crazy civil suit. The brother of the student who died claims I stole a treasure map from him. I need Oscar’s help with that, too.”