Long Knives

by Charles Rosenberg

  I got into my Lycra outfit, put two bottles of water into the bike’s saddlebag, picked up the bike and headed for the front door. Just as I got there, there was a knock on the door and, almost simultaneously, a loud voice said, “Police, we have a search warrant, please open the door.”

  I looked out through the spy hole and saw a man in a blue uniform with a badge. The thought flashed briefly through my mind that the whole thing could be a setup. “Officer, can you hold your identification up for me to see?” Almost immediately, an LAPD badge was visible through the spy hole. I opened the door.

  Six cops, all in uniform, were standing in the hallway, one in front and five behind. “I’m Officer Krentz,” the door-knocker cop said, “Los Angeles Police Department. We’re executing a search warrant. Please stand aside so we can come in.”

  I wasn’t really surprised. I hadn’t thought specifically about the possibility of the police searching my condo. But once they concluded there was poison in the coffee from my office, it made utter sense for them to do it.

  I did as requested, and the six of them strode into my living room. Officer Krentz looked at me and asked, “Are you Jenna James?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m required to give you a copy of the search warrant.” He handed me a sheaf of papers. “We’d appreciate it if you could wait here in the living room while we execute the search.”

  “What are you searching for?”

  “It’s all right there in the search warrant, and we’ll be giving you a receipt for what we take.”

  I leaned my bike against the wall, walked over to the couch on which Tommy habitually planted himself, sat down and began to read the warrant. I didn’t teach constitutional law, but I did recall that the Fourth Amendment required search warrants to particularly describe the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized. This warrant seemed to fit the bill and then some.

  Under place to be searched, it listed my “living room, kitchen, bedrooms and study, and the closets and drawers therein.” Under things to be seized, it listed “all coffees, coffee beans, coffee grounds and paraphernalia for holding or making coffee, including coffeepots, grinders, filters and bins,” as well as “all boxes and containers that could hold coffee beans or ground coffee.” It also listed “all briefcases, saddlebags or other containers large enough to hold coffee, coffee grounds, coffee beans or paraphernalia for holding or making coffee.” It also listed “all coats and jackets with pockets” capable of “holding same.” I wondered why they had missed pants with pockets, or my shoes. People always hide things in shoes.

  Most ominously, the warrant listed “sodium azide” and “any dry, powdered or liquid substance that might resemble it.” I wondered how they would be able to tell what resembled it. I had looked up sodium azide in a chemistry handbook I found in Tommy’s bedroom—the only research I’d done—and learned that, at least in solid form, it was a white powder. Were they going to take all of my sugar and salt?

  I looked up from the paperwork, intending to protest the gross invasion of my privacy and the obvious overreach of the warrant. Officer Krentz, though, was no longer in the room. He had moved to the kitchen, and I could see that he was busy opening cupboards and drawers and handing things to another cop, who was sitting at the kitchen table. That kitchen-table cop was wearing blue vinyl gloves, with a pile of ziplock plastic bags piled in front of him. Each time Krentz, who was also gloved, handed him an item—he was at that instant handing off my small red coffee grinder—the cop at the table bagged it and made an entry on a log that was sitting on the table in front of him. A one-pound bag of sugar was sitting on the table, awaiting bagging.

  I strode over to the kitchen and addressed Krentz. “Are you planning to take every single thing in my apartment?”

  Krentz stopped pulling things out of a cupboard and turned to answer. “No, just the things listed. And don’t worry, like I said, we’ll be giving you a receipt.”

  “Well, when will I get them back?”

  He sighed deeply, as if this was a particularly dumb question he got asked on a regular basis. “That’s up to the court that issued the warrant.” He resumed burrowing in the cupboard.

  “Officer, can I walk around and watch what you’re taking?”

  “Yes, but we’d much prefer that you just sit down and stay out of our way.”

  His tone seemed threatening, so I went back to the living room. Then I called Oscar, who answered on the first ring.

  “Oscar, the LAPD is executing a search warrant on me.”

  “Where?”

  “My condo.”

  “Not surprising, really.”

  “You seem unperturbed.”

  “Well, that’s kind of SOP. They’ll give you a receipt for what they take.”

  “Which looks like it’s going to be almost everything I own.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s kind of the way it goes. Are they taking your computer?”

  “It’s not on the list.”

  “Hmm. That’s surprising. Must mean they’re looking mainly for some sort of physical evidence, or that they’re going to access your computer data via your cloud account.”

  “When will I get all this stuff back?”

  “It’s up to the court that issued the warrant.”

  “You’re not much more helpful than the cops. So what should I do?”

  “Well, don’t leave. It’s good to stick around and observe what they’re doing. But don’t get in their way either. You don’t want to be accused of interfering with an investigation.”

  “This really pisses me off.”

  “If you told me you liked it, you’d be the first client I ever had who enjoyed having a search warrant executed on them.”

  “This is all the doing of Officer Drady.”

  “Could be. But, hey, I’ve got to go, Jenna. After they leave go down to FedEx or some other place with a fax and fax me copies of the warrant and the receipt.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t be upset if they leave your apartment in a mess.”

  In the end that’s exactly what they did. Dishes taken out but not seized had been piled on the kitchen counters, and clothes removed from drawers and closets but not taken had been dumped on the floor and left there. They did, upon departure and as promised, provide me with a four-page receipt of “items seized,” which listed a large number of coats and jackets and four of my identical black wool blazers. One of the items listed was the jacket I had bought at Nordstrom a couple of weeks before and had intended to wear out to dinner with Dr. Nightingale on Sunday: “One Rebecca Minkoff woman’s jacket, red, silk.” That was annoying. More upsetting, however, was the last thing listed—“one glass jar with lid containing dark liquid.” That was, of course, the sample I had saved from my office coffeepot the day Primo died. I had forgotten it was still in the refrigerator.

  CHAPTER 45

  I looked through my closet to see if anything else seemed appropriate for my date with Dr. N. Nothing looked quite right. Shopping isn’t exactly my favorite thing, but it looked as if I needed to go out and buy something new to wear. Not to mention that I would have to buy, once again, a new coffeepot.

  The question was, should I clean up the apartment first or do it later? I decided on later and called down to the valet to ask them to bring up my car. The answer, which was usually, “We’ll have it for you in five,” was, instead, “Uh, I’m sorry, Professor, but the police took your car.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, a few hours ago they served the valet service with a search warrant. They drove a tow truck down into the garage and took your car away. They left a receipt, though.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “They told us we weren’t permitted to. Something about people sometimes getting upset and violent if they learned their cars were being taken.”

  Officer Krentz had left his card stapled to the search receipt. It listed his cell phone number, and I called it
.

  “Krentz here.”

  “Officer Krentz, this is Jenna James. Don’t you think you might have told me you were going to tow my car?”

  “I could have, I guess, but I thought you’d just get even more upset.”

  “I didn’t think I was upset.”

  “Yeah, you hid it fairly well, but I could tell. Your hands were clenched into fists every time you talked to me.”

  “Well, I guess that’s neither here nor there now. When do I get it back?”

  “That’s up to the court that issued the warrant.”

  “F you,” I said and broke the connection.

  So that meant I had to shop for a rental car first. I called the valet service back and asked them to call me a cab. When the cab came, I asked the driver to take me to the rental car agency in Beverly Hills that specialized in high-end cars. I looked at various choices, rejected the less ostentatious ones and selected a red Ferrari. I’m not sure why I did it, exactly. Maybe it was because renting something out of my league and—let’s face it, show-offy—seemed a good, if temporary, antidote to having had all of my possessions pawed through by the cops.

  The rental guy seemed as surprised at my choice as I was. “Are you sure?” he asked. “It’s pretty pricey and your insurance is unlikely to cover it. We’ll have to add an insurance supplement.”

  “I’m sure, and that’s fine.”

  After he ran a credit check on me, checked my insurance and had me fill out the paperwork, the rental guy tossed me the keys and said, “Live it up.”

  First I drove the couple of blocks to Neiman Marcus, which is one of the few upscale stores in Beverly Hills with valet parking. I went into the store and explained to a salesclerk, a woman of a certain age, that I had an important date and needed something that would show off my figure without being too blatant about it.

  “All right,” she said, “do you want black or do you prefer color?”

  “For sure not black. How about white? Or maybe off-white? Something casual but sophisticated.”

  “I think I have just the piece for you.”

  She disappeared around the corner for a few minutes and came back with a white dress still on its hanger. “This is,” she said, holding it up, “designed by Roland Mouret. His dresses are architectural and have a good bit of stretch. It’s really elegant.”

  “Wow. It’s also really tight.”

  “You’ll look great in it. Try it on.” She pointed to the fitting rooms.

  I took it from her, went into a fitting room, dumped my jeans and T-shirt on the floor, slipped on the dress and zipped it up. It hugged my body in all the right places. I hadn’t put on a dress that tight since law school. The top of the dress, at least, was modest. It rose all the way to my neck and featured little cap sleeves.

  I walked back out and stood, rather awkwardly, in front of the saleswoman. “What do you think?”

  “I think it looks fabulous. You don’t even notice…”

  “The bruises on my face?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m thirty-four. I don’t know if thirty-four-year-olds normally wear dresses like this.”

  “In this zip code they do.”

  “Why not? I need to live it up. Now I need some shoes to go with it.”

  “I have some nude sandals I think will be perfect.”

  “Might be a bit cold.”

  “This is Los Angeles, dear. No one ever admits that it’s cold.”

  CHAPTER 46

  The balance of Saturday was uneventful. Nobody served me with a lawsuit. Nobody searched my condo or towed my car. No further meetings were called by Oscar or Robert. I didn’t hear from my father. The dean didn’t call to press me about deferring my tenure decision. Nobody else died. And the no doubt temporary lull in my fear factor had continued. I did, however, get out my list of suspects to look at. Except for Aldous, they still seemed like good ones to me.

  I also spent some time asking myself why, on top of the extravagant car rental, I’d just bought a dress that cost almost two thousand dollars. With the condo mortgage and fees already stressing me financially, it made no sense. Yet somehow it felt like taking control of a life that had suddenly and inexplicably spun out of control. I knew a lot of people would say that spending all that money on a dress represented just the opposite: lack of control. Somehow my theory made more sense to me.

  Dr. N—that’s how I’d come to think of him in my own mind—called midday to confirm our date on Sunday. I asked him if he’d mind going out Saturday night instead because on Sunday I wanted to get some work done finalizing my law review article. I also wanted to show off my new dress before I lost my nerve.

  To my surprise, he agreed to change the date and offered to pick me up at 7:00 P.M. I told him I’d pick him up instead, and he could just tell me when I got to his place where we were heading for dinner, since he’d obviously need to make a new reservation. He said he would e-mail me his address. Maybe that was just a sneaky way for him to acquire my e-mail address, although maybe not, since he could just as easily have found it through the UCLA Law School website.

  I felt a little guilty about stepping out on Aldous. Who was in Buffalo. Of his own free will. There was no way I was moving to Buffalo.

  As the time neared for me to leave to pick up Dr. N, I put on my new dress and the sandals and examined myself in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. The dress looked spectacular, emphasizing every curve and plane of my body, although I didn’t know how I was going to feel appearing in public in something so “architectural,” as the saleswoman at Neiman had put it. Of course, my Lycra bike outfit was also formfitting, but somehow its arguable function—reduced wind resistance—made it seem less disclosive, to coin a word. The dress had no excuse.

  I looked through my jewelry box, took out a thin gold chain and looped it around my neck. The chain had an intricate set of interlocking links. If you looked closely, you could see that every other link was a tiny lion, and next to each lion was a link depicting a gazelle on its side. If you got really close, you could see that the lion link was feasting on the gazelle link. Robert had given it to me after his trial, with a note that said, “To the hunter go the spoils.” I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, because I didn’t feel as if I’d hunted anything other than a dumb prosecution or that there were any spoils other than two minutes of fame. But I did love the necklace, and I did love the look on the faces of those who got close enough to decipher the design.

  A final decision I had to make was whether to wear a coat. The weather was unseasonably warm—a Santa Ana wind was blowing in off the desert—and I wasn’t planning to do anything other than get in the car and move from the car to the restaurant, where there would inevitably be valet parking. I decided to leave the coat at home.

  At 6:30 I called down to have the Ferrari brought up. When I got there, it was waiting in the driveway, with several men gathered around it. As I strolled out of the door, I heard one of the men say to Hector, the valet, “Whose car is this?” I walked up to the car and said, “It’s mine.” All of the heads snapped around to look at me. I ignored them, got in the car, put it in gear and drove off. In the rearview mirror I could see all of them gaping at me. Or maybe it was the car.

  Dr. N lived in Hancock Park, a leafy neighborhood halfway between UCLA and downtown filled with large, stately houses, all with manicured lawns running down to flawless sidewalks on which children ride their overpriced bikes, watched over by the best nannies in town. In truth, it has always reminded me of the tonier parts of Cleveland. I’m sure the residents of Hancock Park would be horrified at the comparison.

  The area was developed in the 1920s by people connected with big oil, then fell into disfavor in the 1970s as people fled the smog by moving west toward the ocean. In the last few decades, as the smog was abated and in-city living once again became popular, the area again became the lair of prosperous lawyers, doctors and corporate chiefs.

  Dr. N’s house was a two
-story fake Tudor. Looking at it from the front, my guess was that it was about five thousand square feet, most likely with a pool and pool house out back. I pulled up in front and honked. There was no way I was stepping out of the car. After a moment the door opened and Dr. N emerged, wearing khakis, an open shirt and a blue blazer. At least in sartorial style, he looked a lot like Aldous.

  “Wow,” he said as he got into the car. “Is this what law profs drive these days?”

  “This law prof does,” I said.

  “You’re from a rich family or what?”

  “Actually, Doctor, it’s a rental.”

  “You’re going to continue to call me Doctor? I thought I told you my name is Bill.”

  Calling him Bill was another step toward intimacy. But then again, I was going out on a dinner date with him, however much I might have excused it in my own mind as research on who poisoned Primo.

  “Well then, Bill, where are we going?”

  “We’re going to Craft in Century City.”

  “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s elegant, has great food and is pricey.”

  “All of those things but worth it. You know where it is?”

  I put the car in gear. “Yes, I know where it is. Jeez. On Constellation, right off Avenue of the Stars.”

  “You know, Jenna, Avenue of the Stars is a very famous street.”

  “Because it has a dumb name?”

  “No. It’s because the pedestrian bridge that crosses the street is where they filmed one of the major scenes in Planet of the Apes.”

  “Wait. How old are you, Bill?”

  “Forty-three.”

  “You couldn’t have seen that movie when it was originally released.”

  “Right, it came out in 1968, before I was born.”

  “So you’re some kind of sci-fi movie geek?”

  “Kind of. What about you?”

  “I don’t do science fiction.”

  “What do you do?”

  I realized that was a rather open-ended question, but I wasn’t sure whether it was intended that way, or just a clunky way of asking what kind of movies I liked. I decided to interpret it the second way.