Long Knives

by Charles Rosenberg

  “A treasure map? That’s odd.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, long or short, why are you calling Oscar about it and not me? He hasn’t done civil stuff in years.” And then I said, actually shocking myself at the words that came out of my mouth, “I’m willing to help a bit with that if there’s some way I can do it from here.”

  “Well,” Jenna responded, “it didn’t occur to me to ask you because we’ve been out of touch for a long time and, let’s face it, as close as we used to be, we’d drifted apart…”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  The conversation had reached that awkward stage at which one of us either had to change the topic or break it off. Breaking it off seemed the best thing to do.

  “Well, Jenna, I’m glad you called. If you do find yourself in Paris, I hope you’ll let us know you’re here. And I meant it when I said I’m willing to help with the civil suit.”

  The change in my tone from the beginning of the conversation, which had come unbidden, truly astonished me. Perhaps it was nostalgia for a life that was now gone. One in which I worked full-time at a time-consuming job and Jenna was, in effect, my adjutant.

  “Okay,” Jenna said, “if I do come to Paris, I’ll be sure to call. As for the civil suit, I think that’s best handled by someone who’s here in LA. Now I need to go. Be well.”

  “You, too.”

  Tess appeared, carrying a plate of soft white cheese and crackers. She eased herself onto the couch beside me while simultaneously putting the plate on the coffee table in front of us. “Robert, who is this American girl, this Jenna, where her call puts first a frown and then, later, a smile on your face?”

  “You were eavesdropping, eh?”

  “What is this word, eavesdropping?”

  “In French, espionné. Spying.”

  “Yes, I spied on you and your old girlfriend on the phone.”

  “She was not a girlfriend. I will explain.”

  “I will wait to hear.”

  That wasn’t much of a reprieve. Tess isn’t a person who likes to wait. I was going to need to explain my relationship with Jenna well before the clock struck midnight.

  CHAPTER 23

  After dinner, Tess and I took a walk along the Seine, which was something we did often. It was a cool evening, with a slight drizzle. I was wearing a light wool topcoat, the kind that sheds the rain if the drizzle isn’t too heavy, and a dark fedora for which I had paid much too much. No one paid me the least bit of attention. Tess was wearing black midcalf boots, dark wool pants, a blue navyesque pea jacket with gold buttons and a red knit cap. As usual, she turned almost every head.

  After we had walked awhile, we stopped briefly to admire Notre Dame in its flood-lit glory, then headed for our favorite café, a place we often stopped at the end of our walks. Since it was raining, the tables had been put up, and we went inside. Tess moved toward a small table for two in the back corner, which was relatively isolated from the other tables. I knew that, with privacy, she was about to reopen her inquiry into Jenna.

  “Alors,” she said, once we were seated, “who is this Jenna…exactly?”

  “Exactly, she was an associate in my law firm.”

  “She was only associated with it? She did not work there?”

  “No, sorry. An associate is an employee of a law firm. I was a partner—I still am, technically. The other lawyers who work there—who don’t own a part of the firm—are employees and are called associates. I don’t know why they’re called that, but they are.”

  “This is confusing still.”

  “Think of it this way, I was Jenna’s boss.”

  “Ah, there are many types of bosses in this world.”

  Before I could ask her what she meant, a waiter appeared and took our order. Tess ordered an espresso. I ordered a brandy. I thought I might need it. After the waiter departed, I tried to follow up on her comment about bosses.

  “What did you mean when you said there are many types of bosses in this world?”

  “When I had twenty years of age, before I commenced my own company, I worked for a small company and had a boss. Patron is the word we use. The patron, he squeezed my ass every day.”

  “I never squeezed Jenna’s ass.” Which was absolutely true. I could have joked that it was tempting, but I decided that saying that, even in jest, would complicate our conversation.

  “Did you squeeze anything, Robert?”

  “No. Look, Jenna and I were never romantically involved. Not even a little. We worked together a lot. I was her mentor.”

  “We have this word in French, too. It is like a teacher, no?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But a teacher, he also squeezed my ass.”

  Just then the waiter arrived with the espresso and the brandy. He must have overheard Tess’s remark about the teacher, because he gave us both an odd look as he set down the cup and the glass. And the bill. French waiters in cafés always leave the bill at the start.

  “It sounds,” I said, “like your ass was constantly at risk.”

  Tess picked up her cup, sipped it and just smiled at me over the rim of the cup. “Yes. But when I was le patron, it was not.”

  “I have no doubt of that. But Tess, why do you care so much what my relationship was with Jenna? Even if we had had a romantic relationship—which we did not—it would be over. I was married, too, once upon a time. You’ve never been jealous of my former wife.”

  “I am not jealous of this Jenna girl. It is just that when you spoke on the phone, at the end your face lit itself up. Like you spoke to a lover you had lost.”

  “I didn’t think my face lit up.”

  “It did.”

  “Well, if it did, the look said only that I was once fond of Jenna and hadn’t talked to her in a long time.”

  “Ah, and why not?”

  “She left the firm to become a law professor, and I was super pissed off at her for leaving.”

  “You did not think she was permitted to leave? Like she was a slave?”

  “No, of course not. It was just that the two of us had been planning to open a new practice in our firm—a high-end, white-collar criminal defense practice. We had worked hard on the plans for months. We had persuaded the firm to support the idea and presented the plans at a firm meeting. We had even persuaded Oscar to join us.”

  “And then?”

  “She waltzed in one day and told me she had an opportunity to teach at UCLA, and she felt she couldn’t pass it up, that it was something that wouldn’t come her way again. Of course, it was an opportunity she had, quite clearly, aggressively pursued. In secret. It didn’t just fly in the window and land on her desk.”

  “What did you say to her then, Robert?”

  “Not much. I was so angry I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the time she was at the firm. And I’ve continued to be angry. I didn’t even invite her to my retirement party last spring.”

  Tess picked up her coffee cup, took a sip and leveled her gaze at me across the top. “Do you imagine this was the good way to behave?”

  “No. It was childish of me.”

  We sat for a couple of minutes drinking our coffee and not saying anything. Finally, Tess said, “In this time before you were angry with Jenna, you were not ever with her in a romance, and you do not wish to be, is this correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So she will not interfere with us? Like your firm interfered with us fifteen years ago, when you went back to it? Your firm was like a wife.”

  “She will not interfere.”

  “Good. Because I have jealousy sometimes, you know.”

  “I do know. You look annoyed when I even look at other women.”

  “You look at other women? I am shocked!” And then she burst out laughing, so loud that the others in the café turned and looked at us.

  “Seriously, Tess, there’s no reason to be jealous of Jenna. Jenna and I did six long civil trials together. That means
we were together almost constantly. And it means I taught her many things, but she also taught me a lot of things. She is, among other things, a tougher negotiator than I am.” I paused and thought how best to sum it up. “Tess, Jenna was like a daughter to me, really.”

  “More than the daughter you have? The one you do not talk about? Or to?”

  “Yes, much more than that one.”

  “But she is now a second daughter you do not talk to—or, until tonight, about. This is a problem for you, that you throw daughters out of your mind.”

  I smiled. “We would say ‘put daughters out of mind.’”

  “Whichever you would say, do you not think it is time to be less like a child?”

  “Yes. You are right. And now she’s in some kind of trouble and I should help her. Much like she helped me when she represented me in the criminal trial.”

  “I thought it was Oscar who helped you.”

  “He was the lead, but Jenna figured it out. She’s the one who truly saved me.”

  “I understand now,” Tess said. “And if you wish to help her, I will wish to help her, too.”

  “That’s kind of you, Tess. I don’t know what you can do to help, though. But I appreciate that you said it. And to repeat, she is no threat to you and me.”

  Tess held up her cup. “To you and me and for you and me to help your friend Jenna. And, as we say in French, from the Bible, ‘Maintenant que je suis un homme, j’ai fait disparaître ce qui faisait de moi un enfant.’”

  “Meaning ‘the time has come to set aside childish things’?”

  “Oui.”

  I picked up my brandy glass and touched it to her cup. “To all of that.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Jenna James

  Week 1—Late Tuesday Afternoon

  Now that Robert had given me Oscar’s phone number, there seemed no reason to put off calling him. But Oscar is a what-exactly-do-you-want sort of guy, so I tried to think through what I really did want from him, other than the comfort of a competent voice in my ear. I composed in my head what I wanted to say and punched in his cell number. The phone rang for a long while, and I had begun to assume my call would go to voice mail when he answered.

  “Oscar Quesana.”

  “Hi, Oscar. It’s Jenna.”

  “A pleasant surprise indeed. But I thought I was well hidden. How did you track me down?”

  “Robert gave me your number.”

  “That’s the damn problem when you’re forced to let a telephone live in your pocket. Anybody can give out your number, and then someone else can call you up anytime they want.”

  “Am I just anyone?”

  “No, no, of course not. You’re a person I like. But I haven’t talked to you in what, three years? So you aren’t likely calling to invite me to a garden party. What might you want?”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want you to be in trouble. I apologize for my abrupt manner. It’s just me getting used to being so reachable. What kind of trouble are you in?”

  “Well…”

  The tiny pause I had injected in the conversation by saying well gave me time to take a blank piece of paper that had been sitting on my desk and fold it in half. “Two kinds of trouble, Oscar. First, I’ve been accused of stealing a map of sunken treasure from a third-year law student named Primo Giordano, and I’ve been sued for the return of that map. Which, by the way, I’ve never seen and I don’t have.”

  “You need a civil litigator to defend you, which I’m not. In any case, you should be able to get your insurance company to hire one for you, at least to cover the defense costs.” As he spoke, I folded the paper in half again. I’m fortunate in being able to talk and fold at the same time. I’ve been practicing since childhood.

  “You’re right, Oscar, except the insurance company won’t take care of my second problem.”

  “Which is?”

  I folded the paper in half a third time. “There seems to be a bizarre rumor going around that I killed Primo by poisoning him. He died yesterday.”

  “Well, you know my usual first blunt question in a criminal case. Did you do it?”

  “No.”

  “Did you poison him?”

  “No.”

  “Kill him in some other way?”

  “No.”

  “Harm him in any way at all?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if someone else did kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know someone who wanted to kill or harm him?”

  “Don’t know that either.”

  “Do you know what he died from?”

  I folded the paper in half a fourth time. How did I want to answer that question? Had the coffee killed him?

  “No to that, too.”

  “You paused slightly before answering that one. Is there something more?”

  “No, I was just distracted by something here.”

  “Okay. Are the police investigating you?”

  “I’m not sure. A UCLA cop was in my office looking around, and someone from campus security bagged up the coffee cup the student had been drinking from.”

  “With your coffee in it?”

  “Yes. Freshly made.”

  “At some point I’ll need to hear the whole story, but it’s clear you’re already being investigated as a suspect, if not a target. Anything else you know of going on in that investigation?”

  “Yes. The UCLA cop who was in my office is Detective Drady. Used to be on the LAPD and was one of the cops who arrested Robert on the plane. He testified briefly in the preliminary hearing.”

  “Can’t say as I recall him.”

  I was staring at the much-folded paper as we spoke. Folding it in half a fifth time is always hard, particularly if you want the folds to be nice and crisp.

  “Tall and fat with a red face.”

  “Oh, yeah, I do remember him now. But he’s a cop, so the media never called him fat. They used some more friendly euphemism like ‘beefy.’”

  “Probably.”

  “Jenna, why does anyone suspect your coffee?”

  “I don’t really know if they do yet, other than that it smelled bad, Primo drank it and he died a few hours later.”

  “What else?”

  “I dumped the leftover coffee on a plant yesterday, and by today the plant was well on its way to being dead.”

  “Do the police know that?”

  “Not yet. But sooner or later they’re going to analyze the coffee sample they have and figure out that it’s poisonous.”

  “And since it was in your office, they’ll conclude you’re the one who put the poison in it?”

  “Yes, but please consider, Oscar, that whoever poisoned the coffee may well have been trying to poison me.”

  “That seems unlikely. What was their motive?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, what was the motive to kill Primo?”

  “We don’t know enough about Primo to even speculate about that, but there no doubt is one.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jenna, you know a lot about your own life and you just said you can’t come up with a motive that would make you the target. So what we need to focus on is moving the police away from the idea that you could be Primo’s killer.”

  Oscar’s response was exactly the problem, of course. Everyone was going to suspect that I tried to kill Primo by poisoning his coffee in order to get the effing map. Whereas my gut told me that because the poison was in the pot, someone had tried to poison me.

  While I was listening to Oscar and thinking those thoughts, I had managed to fold the paper over for the fifth time. I smoothed it down really hard with my thumbs. It was crisp enough, although not perfect.

  “The good news,” Oscar was saying, “is that it’s a pretty circumstantial case against you. Not to mention that it makes no sense. If someone as smart as you wanted to poison this guy Primo, you wouldn’t do it and then leave the poison sitting around i
n your office.”

  “Yes. The whole thing is bullshit.”

  “As you well know, even bullshit cases can take on a life of their own. And I hate to say it, but both the LAPD and the DA’s office likely still remember you left them with egg on their faces after Robert’s case. They might trump something up just to get even.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. Detective Drady even brought up Robert’s case in a not-so-friendly way, and he mentioned that I’ve now been associated with two dead bodies.”

  “That’s ominous. But Jenna, let’s go back to the civil case for a minute. If the student is dead, who’s suing you for return of the map?”

  “The student’s alleged brother and some mysterious company in Italy.”

  “So this is already very complicated.”

  I looked at the folded paper and decided not to attempt folding it a sixth time. It was certainly doable, but it always looked gross unless you used a really, really thin piece of paper to start with, which I hadn’t.

  “Yeah, Oscar, it is.”

  “You want me to represent you in the criminal investigation?”

  “Yes, if there really is one.”

  “There is one already.”

  “Okay.”

  “It will be awkward to charge you a fee.”

  I smiled. “Then don’t.”

  “Tell you what: for the initial investigation and consult, I’ll do it gratis, except for expenses. In exchange, you can take me and Pandy to dinner.”

  “Pandy’s your new wife?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’ll like her.”

  “Well, congrats on that, and I’m sure I will. Is that her real name?”

  “No, it’s Pandora, but, as you can understand, she’s kind of sensitive about it.”

  “Uh-huh. I get it. So when can we get together?”

  “That’s going to be awkward to do in person right away, because I’m living in New York. Pandora has a really nice place here.”

  “When will you be back in LA?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “All right, let’s play that one by ear, then.”

  “Okay.”

  “One more thing, though, Oscar.”

  “What’s that?”