Long Knives

by Charles Rosenberg

  “Ah, this is a nice thing you think to do, but it is not necessary. Not at all.”

  Just then the waiter appeared and asked me for my order. I ordered a vodka martini with a twist.

  “How long have you known Robert?” I asked

  “I think it is sixteen years. Maybe more years. I will have to count. And you?”

  I thought about it. “Well, I met him when I was in my second year of law school, so let’s see, that’s maybe thirteen years ago? I, too, would need to count to make it exact.”

  “Jenna, were you in a romance with Robert?”

  I tried to look as horrified as possible. “Oh no, never. Nothing like that. We were professional colleagues. He was my mentor. He taught me a lot, but there was not an ounce of romance.”

  “I believe you,” she said.

  I wondered briefly to myself what possible difference it would have made if I had had a romance with Robert. After all, she was in France. But I put it out of my mind.

  “Tess,” I said, “before I called Robert that night in Paris, had he ever mentioned me to you?”

  “Never. I wonder why he did not?”

  “It’s because he was angry at me for leaving the firm to go to UCLA to teach. I thought at the time that it was stupid for him to be angry about that. But I can see now that Robert thought of the firm as his family, and he thought of me as one of his favorite children. So it’s like I was breaking up his family. He wanted to grow old with his family.”

  “Men, they are bizarre,” she said.

  The waiter put my martini in front of me at that very moment. I lifted it up and said, “Let’s drink to that.”

  We clinked our glasses.

  “We can talk about Robert more later perhaps,” Tess said.

  I smiled. “Or we can talk about something more important.”

  “Yes. I will drink to that, too.”

  We clinked glasses again.

  “Now,” Tess said, “I will tell you something I think you will like to know.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “Before he left for Spain, Robert told me of your troubles. And he explained some of the things—strange things—that have happened.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I told him that I wanted to help you. And I thought to myself there was one thing I could solve.”

  “Which is?”

  “The answer to who is wishing secretly to buy your apartment.”

  “Oh. I have been curious about that. Did you figure it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I am rich, you know. I got from Robert the name of the real-estate agent who came to see you so often. I rented a Rolls-Royce and went to see him. I told him I liked your building. I let him take me to lunch. I let him think I was très intéressé in him.”

  “Were you?”

  “Mais non! Or how do you say?”

  “No way.”

  “Exactement. But I let him think this. I asked him again and again about your building. Who owned each apartment. Who would buy. Who would sell. Finally, he told me that the person who wants your apartment is someone named Greta Broontz.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Is she a bad person?”

  “Maybe. But she’s one of my law-school faculty colleagues.”

  “Mon dieu.”

  “Why does she want my apartment, Tess? I mean, she already lives in the building, and I think her view is almost as good as mine. It’s only one floor below me.”

  “She wishes to have an apartment of two floors. She will, I am not sure of the right verb…”

  “Break through from her apartment to mine?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought to myself that I had now identified a motive for Greta Broontz to poison me. But would she really be willing to kill me for my apartment? I decided not to utter the thought aloud because it was too absurd.

  “Do you think,” Tess asked, “that this woman wishes to kill you for your apartment?”

  “No one is that crazy, Tess.”

  CHAPTER 84

  Week 3—Wednesday Evening

  Around 6:00 P.M. I got a text message from Robert. It said, “Hi, I’m back and back on the grid.”

  I texted back:

  “u r ahol 4 leaving. we needed u.”

  He texted back:

  “Let’s meet at Oscar’s at 8.”

  I texted:

  “Okay.”

  Then I called Oscar and arranged it.

  When I got to Oscar’s promptly at eight, Robert was already there. He and Robert were both sitting at the big table. Robert’s briefcase was on the table in front of him, unopened.

  “Hi,” Robert said. “I gather you’re mad at me.”

  “Yes,” I said, marshaling the iciest voice I was capable of.

  “Well, Jenna, I come bearing gifts, so perhaps you’ll end up forgiving me.”

  “What gifts?”

  “Information about what’s really going on with Quinto and Primo. You’ll be pleased, I’m sure.”

  “Primo’s dead is what’s going on with him.”

  Oscar interceded. “Hey, my friends, you both need to cool it. Jenna, Robert has some good information, so muffle your ire. And Robert, it wasn’t cool to disappear for three days in the middle of a case. It would help if you admitted that.”

  “I admit it,” Robert said. “But I thought the criminal case was over, and I had no idea there’d be a UCLA hearing.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Please tell me what you found out.”

  “I found out that there really is a survivor account—by the navigator of the Ayuda. Apparently it’s been misfiled for centuries.” He unsnapped the briefcase on the table, pulled out a document and handed it to me.

  I looked at it and saw that it was written in archaic seventeenth-century Spanish. With effort I’d be able to decrypt it, but not while sitting at Oscar’s large table.

  I handed the document back to Robert. “What does it say?”

  “My researcher says it is indeed an account written by the navigator. It gives a very approximate latitude of the Ayuda when it sank, and it says the number of days he drifted before reaching land.”

  “How many?”

  “Twenty, if you believe the X-ray of the document.”

  Oscar broke in. “Which means, Jenna, that the Ayuda really did sink somewhere far out in the Pacific, not near Catalina. Hard to figure out exactly where, though.”

  “How,” I asked, “does that fit in with Primo bringing me a map with the location?”

  Robert’s face lit up in a big grin. “Here’s my theory: there’s no real map, or at least no map with a true location of the Ayuda on it. That’s what Cabano said. And I’m guessing they just picked a place far out in the Pacific along the same line of latitude, took a nautical chart and drew an X on that spot.”

  “So you suspect the whole thing was a fraud?”

  “Yes. I think they were trying to persuade investors that they had located the ship on the bottom—with precision—and needed a couple of million dollars to go down and get what was in it. Then they were going to pretend to launch a salvage operation, tell people they failed, take most of the money and go to Mexico.”

  “Why would they try to defraud me? I have no money to invest.”

  “I don’t think they wanted your money. They were getting rebuffed by investors, and it makes sense that they would want to associate a prominent admiralty lawyer with their venture in order to beef up their credibility, the better to try again with new investors.”

  “So you think I was a mark.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, “even if it’s true, where that will get us in this stupid Charges Committee hearing.”

  “Well,” Oscar said, “if it’s true, it seems to me it eliminates one possible suspect. Quinto would have had no reason to kill you. In fact, if Robert’s right, he and Primo would have very much wanted you a
live to help them with their scam.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “Quinto himself had some other reason to kill Primo. Primo’s diary says Quinto threatened him.”

  “Yes,” Oscar said. “But as you and I discussed, Jenna, I think Quinto just didn’t want you involved at all because of your connection to Aldous, who knew at least some of the truth. So if Quinto wanted to prevent your involvement, he would have needed to kill Primo before he met with you.”

  “I have something to add to that,” Robert said. “The guy I spoke with in Spain says they threatened each other all the time, but that it meant nothing.”

  “Well, how much time,” Oscar asked, “did you spend with that guy?”

  “Maybe an hour,” Robert said, “but I think he was very credible. Even if he was himself something of a crook.”

  I sat there for a moment and thought about it. Did I want to eliminate Quinto as a suspect in Primo’s murder on just the say-so of someone I’d never met, with whom Robert had spent an hour, who he thought was a crook but credible on this one point? Quinto was testifying tomorrow, and I wanted him to be friendly, and help me nail the other suspect—Julie.

  “I guess that leaves Julie,” I said. “After all, we know she had the opportunity because she rode up to the campus with Primo and Quinto, so she was around, waiting, or so she says, for Primo to finish talking to me. And I’ve learned—never mind how—that she looked up something to do with the poison on her computer.”

  Oscar just looked at me. “That’s a key piece of evidence, and you’re not going to tell us how you got it?”

  “Well, Oscar,” I said, “this hearing is just an informal chat among friends, remember? Surely where evidence came from can’t be important, can it?”

  Oscar got up and went into the kitchen. “I think,” he said, “that this whole thing has descended to such a level of absurdity that we might as well just drink martinis while we plot tomorrow. And I think Plan B is the way we should go.”

  “What’s Plan B?” Robert asked.

  “It is,” Oscar said, “a criminal-defense ploy. When your client looks guilty, blame it on someone else. Anyone, really, who is even remotely plausible. It tends to distract the jury and sometimes gets the guilty client off the hook.”

  “Are you saying, Oscar,” I asked, “that I look guilty?”

  “No, not at all, Jenna. But you’re the person in the dock, so to speak. So we need to distract the panel to someone else in order to be sure that they don’t find you did it.”

  “So who is it going to be?” I asked.

  Robert spoke up. “From everything I know, we should target Julie.”

  “Can’t we target Quinto, too?” I asked.

  “No,” Oscar said. “Plan B doesn’t work with more than one target.”

  So while we drank martinis, we all agreed the name of the game would be pin the crime on Julie.

  I, of course, had my own little plan on that. I kept it to myself.

  CHAPTER 85

  Week 3—Thursday

  Our hearing, originally scheduled for 10:00 A.M., didn’t get started until 11:00 A.M. Professor Trolder had an unexpected departmental meeting of some kind that delayed us. I had made a certain call at 9:00 on the expectation we’d start at 10:00. I made a second call that fixed the problem. Or so I hoped.

  When everyone was in place, Robert had been introduced and I had duly made coffee for all, Dr. Wing asked Professor Broontz if she was ready with her next witness. She said she was and called Quinto Giordano. Professor Trolder, now a truly expert doorman, went out into the hallway, found Quinto and brought him in. Watching Trolder operate, I wondered what kind of economics paper he’d generate out of this. No academic likes a new experience to go to waste.

  Dr. Wing went through the usual drone about what a friendly group we all were, blah blah, and Greta posed her first question to Quinto.

  “Mr. Giordano,” she asked, “can you tell us what you believe happened to your brother Primo?”

  Oscar said, “I object. That question has no foundation, calls for speculation and is just generally bad.”

  Dr. Wing looked over at him. “Generally bad? Is that really a standard objection?”

  “No,” Oscar said, “it’s not. It was designed to indicate how useless the answer is likely to be. Mr. Giordano’s evidence, if he has any, has to start with some basis—something he saw or heard or knew. The question, as posed, invites utter flights of fancy.”

  “All right,” Dr. Wing said, “I see your point, but I’m going to allow him to answer. It’s more efficient that way, I think. You can ask him questions when he’s done, as you did with the last witness on Tuesday.”

  I thought I actually saw Oscar roll his eyes, although perhaps I was just imagining it.

  “Well,” Quinto said, “on the morning he died, I helped my brother roll up a map, which we put in a big red mailing tube. It was a map that showed some of the information necessary to find the resting place of the Spanish galleon Ayuda, which sank in 1641.”

  “Please go on,” Greta said.

  “Okay, well, I dropped Primo off at the law school, and he said he was headed for Professor James’s office. He had an appointment at 7:30 A.M.”

  “Then what happened?” Greta asked.

  “I went into Westwood to get some breakfast. A couple of hours later, I got a call from the Reagan Medical Center saying Primo was dead. I went over and identified his body.”

  “Was anything missing?”

  “Yes. They gave me Primo’s wallet and other personal things, but the map wasn’t among them. I assumed Professor James had taken it. But she later claimed, according to Dean Blender, that she never got the map from Primo and that it had gone missing.”

  “Do you know what happened to it?”

  “I assume Professor James stole it and still has it. It’s very valuable.”

  “Do you know how your brother died?”

  “The coroner’s preliminary report said Primo died from acute poisoning by sodium azide, and that it was in coffee he drank. It was Professor James’s coffee that did it. She poisoned him.”

  I noticed that he had not once looked at me during his testimony. Mainly he stared at the table in front of him.

  Greta put her hand gently on his shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Quinto, that you have to go through this in your period of grief.”

  I wanted to throw up.

  “But,” she said, continuing, “please allow me to ask you one final question. How do you know it was Professor James’s coffee that poisoned your brother?”

  “Easy,” he said. “The preliminary coroner’s report said it was poisoned coffee, and I know my brother had no coffee before I dropped him off. Professor James has admitted she gave him a cup of coffee to drink, and traces of that poison were found in the cup Primo drank from. So it’s obvious.”

  The panel, to my disgust, had been riveted by Quinto’s testimony. Professor Healey and her helmet of hair had leaned so far out over the edge of the table that I thought she might fall over.

  “I have nothing further,” Greta said.

  “I have a question,” Dr. Wing said. “Young man, what makes you think it was Professor James who put the poison in the coffee cup?”

  “Obviously,” Quinto replied, “so she could get the map. Once she has that and puts it together with the navigator’s survival account, she’ll be able to figure out the location of the ship, just like we did, and go salvage it herself.”

  “Does she have any salvage experience?” Professor Healey asked.

  “Yes, she does. She worked on a treasure salvage ship last summer.”

  I couldn’t help it. “As a deckhand!” I yelled out.

  “Please, Professor,” Dr. Wing said, “you’ll get your chance.”

  “Can you show us a copy of the map?” Professor Trolder asked.

  “No, because only Professor James knows where it is. And even if I did have it, there’s confidential information on it, and I would
n’t want to show it to you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Trolder said, “what’s so confidential about the map.”

  “My brother’s copy, wherever Professor James has hidden it, has the exact longitude of the shipwreck written on it.”

  “What about your copy of the map?” Trolder asked.

  “My copy has the exact latitude written on it. The 1641 survivor account only roughly estimated the latitude of the wreck—that’s all they could really do back then. The precise latitude, which we figured out with a modern sonar search we commissioned, is written on my copy of the map. So if someone were to steal both copies, they’d know where the shipwreck is, and they could go salvage it before we do. We spent much too much money to locate the ship to permit someone else to go grab the spoils.”

  “But you don’t contend,” Trolder asked, “that Professor James has stolen your copy, too, do you? The one with the latitude?”

  “No, but I’m actually afraid of her, and I have my copy under lock and key outside the state.”

  I suppressed a laugh. The idea that Quinto was afraid of me was really too much. The fantasy that was being spun in the room was beyond belief. I hoped soon to unspin it.

  “I see,” Trolder said, although he looked far from satisfied. “I have one more question: Why haven’t we seen a copy of the preliminary coroner’s report?”

  “It’s still confidential,” Quinto said. “I haven’t seen it either. It’s simply been described to my lawyer because I’m a family member of the victim.”

  “Well,” Trolder said, “as an economist, I’ve learned not to rely too heavily on anecdote, and this seems very anecdotal.”

  Professor Healey emerged from her cocoon. “I don’t know about that, Paul. Sometimes anecdotal accounts provide powerful clues to the fundamental memes of culture.”

  Dr. Wing turned and looked at her. “This isn’t about memes, Samantha. It’s about a murder.”

  Oscar had put his hands behind his head and had been listening to the academic banter with a bemused look on his face. “If I may interrupt,” he said, “I have a couple of questions for the witness.”