Try Dying

by James Scott Bell

  It did.

  I started off with, “Isn’t it true this whole lawsuit is a product of your hatred for you ex-husband?”

  Dyan did exactly as I’d hoped. Her surgically upgraded face twitched under the Rodeo Drive makeup job. Her black hair, pulled back tight, made a glacier-like move forward before sliding back into place. I’d rippled the façade before breaking a sweat.

  Dyan’s blue eyes threw up a steel wall. “That is a stupid thing to ask.”

  “That’s not an answer,” I shot back.

  Walbert, sheathed in a gray three piece, was sitting next to Dyan across the conference table from me. “I’m going to object to the whole tone of this, Mr. Buchanan, and I’ll call this deposition off right now.”

  “Off the record,” I told the stenographer. She put her hands in her lap. To Walbert I said, “You want to dance, let’s waltz over to a judge.”

  “Good by me.”

  “You going to run your client meter? How does Mom feel about that?”

  Walbert started to stand.

  “Wait.” Dyan put her hand on Walbert’s arm. “I don’t want to have to come back. Let’s finish this. I can handle him.”

  Walbert gave it a thought, then nodded, but told me with his look that this was lodged permanently in his head. He’d probably call McDonough to complain, pull the collegiality card. Guys like Walbert and McDonough, who drank together at the California Club, made a big deal out of getting along.

  Again, I surprised myself by the depth of my not caring.

  “Back on the record,” I said. “My question is as follows. Does not this lawsuit have its genesis in your antipathy toward your former spouse?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t exactly like your ex-husband, do you?”

  “I don’t think about him.”

  “Never?”

  “Oh, something I see may bring back a bad memory. But we split up long ago.”

  “But you allege that he sexually abused your daughter.”

  “He did.”

  “That doesn’t engender hatred, Mrs. Trudeau? That hardly seems human.”

  “Objection,” Walbert said. An objection in a deposition isn’t like one in court. A judge doesn’t rule on it. It’s just a way for the lawyer to make a record or, in Walbert’s case, blow smoke.

  “You may answer the question,” I said. Walbert could direct her not to answer, and then I would decide whether to stop the deposition, go to a judge, and get a ruling. Make an argument for sanctions. That would run into money for both sides. But Dyan had indicated her desire to go on, and she and her new husband were the ones paying Walbert’s costs.

  He let her answer.

  “I don’t hate, Mr. Buchanan. That’s so boring.”

  “Hatred is boring?”

  “Your questions are boring.”

  “Well, let me try to make it a little more interesting for you, Mrs. Trudeau. Back when you originally filed for divorce, you did not allege any sexual abuse of Claudia by Jonathan, did you?”

  “I didn’t know about it.”

  “Instead”—I picked up a file and looked inside at some notes I’d made—“you alleged physical and psychological abuse directed at you.”

  “It was true.”

  “But when it came to custody, you changed your story.”

  “I did not change anything. It came to my attention, with the help of Dr. Kendra Mackee, that Claudia had been . . . touched by Jonathan.”

  “So you just dropped the other allegations.”

  “I didn’t drop anything.”

  “No?”

  “Why would I? Jonathan is a very strange man, Mr. Buchanan. He believes things about himself that aren’t true. He once claimed to me that he’d been an assassin for the CIA. Can you imagine that? I mean, if you’re going to make up a lie at least make it plausible. He had delusions that he was Harrison Ford or something. He’s sick. I want to make sure that’s on the record.”

  While I was glad she ran off at the mouth a little, what she said had a vague resonance with me. I hadn’t been a hundred percent comfortable with Jonathan since our “hunt the meat” talk. Maybe he was the kind of guy who’d make up wild stories about himself, to help get him where he was. He wouldn’t be the first delusional billionaire. But did that evince a man who was off the beam enough to molest his daughter? Wasn’t for me to say. Getting to Dyan was my only concern.

  She added, “Did he ever give you his “hunt the meat” speech?”

  My lips jiggled on my teeth. “I am asking the questions, Mrs. Trudeau.”

  “Just wondering.”

  She looked like she knew it, like this was something B-2 spouted all the time. And the look on her face was too satisfied for my taste.

  So I dropped my bomb.

  48

  A COUPLE OF days before the deposition, I’d had one of our investigators do a little background on Dyan Trudeau. What he unearthed was a nice little tidbit that he could not have nabbed without greasing a palm. That was fine with me. Whatever worked.

  “You attempted to have an acting career at one point, did you not?”

  Dyan snapped a quick look at Walbert. The lawyer opened his mouth, but Dyan turned back to me and said, “I had an acting career going but gave it up for Claudia.”

  “Is that right? I thought the reviews that came in—”

  “How is this relevant?” Walbert said.

  “No,” Dyan said, “I’ll explain life to Mr. Buchanan. He seems so interested. I was represented by one of the best agents in town. I had offers coming in, but my first concern was always Claudia.”

  “You loved Claudia that much?”

  “Of course. Do you have children?”

  A thought of Jacqueline shot through my head. “I’m asking the questions, thank you. Your devotion to your daughter knows no bounds?”

  “None.”

  “Let me turn your attention, then, to a few days before you went to see Dr. Mackee, before the first of her videotaped sessions with your daughter.”

  Dyan shifted a little in her chair. Walbert kept his eyes locked on me.

  “I believe at this time your daughter was taking acting lessons at the Stella Adler studio in Hollywood?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Relevance,” Walbert said.

  “Oh this one’s relevant, Barton,” I said. “This one the jury’s going to hear.”

  “If it’s not, I’ll move to strike the whole thing.”

  “Do what you want, this is going to come out.”

  “What is?” Dyan said.

  “Your daughter’s acting lessons,” I said. “You obviously wanted to live vicariously through your daughter and—”

  “That is absolutely untrue. She has talent to burn, and I only wanted her to develop that.”

  “I see. And didn’t the acting studio arrange a showcase that Claudia was a part of?”

  Dyan Trudeau looked astonished. There is nothing a trial lawyer loves more than seeing that reaction in a hostile witness.

  “Yes,” Dyan said.

  “Which is where agents and casting directors come to watch the students do scenes, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, Dyan wasn’t so talkative.

  “And your daughter was told by a casting director that her chances of succeeding in the business weren’t all that great, correct?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “That woman was an idiot, she was—”

  “Your daughter threw a fit that night and tried to commit suicide.”

  Walbert shot up so fast his knees hit the bottom of the table. Through his wince he said. “Off the record right now!”

  Dyan’s mouth was hanging open.

  For a moment I sat back and enjoyed the spectacle. Walbert losing his cool was a good one. Dyan Trudeau and her fake face, her cherished ability to control things, out the window like a flung ashtray.

  Walbert tol
d Dyan and the stenographer to leave the conference room.

  When we were alone, Walbert let out a snort, like a bull in a ring. “Who do you think you are, you little snot-nosed punk? You think you can pull that stuff around me? You think—”

  “Come on, Barton, you don’t have to pose now.” To me, he was just like that guy outside El Tapado. He was every thug with a knife, every lowlife who stained the landscape. Only his weapons were bluster and legal manipulation. I wasn’t going to let him cut me.

  “You don’t come in here and act like that,” he said. “You don’t pull that dirt in my office.”

  “What dirt is that, Barton? You have a thing against the truth?”

  “McDonough’s going to hear about this.”

  I said, “You’re scared. Because you’re going to lose this case. Because Barton Walbert is going to take a dive into the toilet.”

  Barton Walbert had faced down a slew of great lawyers. I was being pretty reckless. But it was time somebody yanked off his gilded robes and sent him to the street in his boxers.

  “You just committed professional suicide, kid,” Walbert said. “You don’t go around breaking rules of conduct like that.”

  Like I cared. I grabbed my notes and stuffed them in my briefcase. With a quick step on the chair I jumped onto the conference table. As Walbert’s eyes opened wider, I did a little three-step tap dance.

  “What are you doing?” he howled.

  “Gene Kelly,” I said.

  “Get off that table!”

  “This is what it’s going to be like, Barton. You looking up at me from now on.”

  His face changed colors. Cheeks rosy like the dawn. I don’t know why I did it, except that I never liked bullies. On the schoolyard or in a plush conference room.

  Gerry Spence, the greatest trial lawyer of his day, was once asked on 60 Minutes what he’d have done if he were a cowboy in the old West, facing a guy with a knife. “I’d leave him bloody on the floor,” Spence said, “which is the way I try cases.”

  I jumped off the table and said, “See you in court, Barton. I’m going to leave you bloody on the floor.”

  49

  OUTSIDE THE CONFERENCE room Dyan’s husband, Frank Trudeau, got nose to nose with me. “You just made the wrong enemy, friend.”

  “Get in line,” I said.

  He pointed a finger at me. I had to stop myself from biting it. Trudeau’s face was rectangular, with a downturned mouth that reminded me of Bill Cowher, the former coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. If Trudeau didn’t actually chew nails, he wanted you to think he could. A full head of coiled brown hair was either real or a better-than-William Shatner job.

  “You ever do anything like that to my wife again . . .” he sputtered. “You ever try to hurt my family. You ever . . .”

  “Finish a sentence, Frank.”

  He did more than that. He started screaming every curse in the book at me, even making up some anatomically impossible new ones. I thought his red face was going to explode.

  I just laughed.

  Walbert jumped in between us. “Relax, Frank, relax. I’m calling the State Bar about this.”

  “Tell ’em to spell my name right,” I said. Without another word I walked out of Barton’s office and into the cool January air. The weather was kind of a lead blanket on my shoulders, and I didn’t want to head back to the office. There were a couple of motions I could work on at home, but litigation was the last thing on my mind. Strange. All through law school and my early, hungry years with the firm, I was the work dog, the guy who could do anything at any time by sheer force of will. Many a time Al and I had stayed out a little late, and the next morning I’d be ready to go at my desk by the time Al, shades still on, wandered by my office muttering about life’s unfairness.

  Now the thought of going back to the office almost made me sick. But I went anyway, feeling like I was about to get blasted in the gut.

  Didn’t take long to happen. I was ordered to see McDonough the moment I stuck my face in the office.

  Rose, McDonough’s assistant, didn’t miss a beat. “You can go right in,” she said with appropriate dread in her voice. Madame Defarge in a suit.

  McDonough motioned for me to sit.

  “How long you been with the firm?” he said.

  “Five years this August.”

  “You’ve done quality work. Really quality. Everybody thinks so.”

  Waiting for the blade to drop, I nodded. Pierce Patrick McDonough was the quintessential company man. Started the firm in 1977 with Steven Gunther and William D. Longyear, all Yale Law classmates who came to conquer the West. Made his way by being conservative, convivial, and most of all, smart. He was a brilliant legal mind. But he didn’t go to court all that much anymore, which made me wonder if he could still do it.

  Like I was sure I could.

  McDonough ran his right hand down his muted blue tie. “You’ve also been through a tough time, a very tough time. We all know that, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But what you did in Barton Walbert’s office is inexcusable.”

  Of course it was, but I wasn’t in the mood to agree. “Is it?”

  “Of course it is. I got a call from him.”

  “Don’t I have the constitutional right to confront the witnesses against me?”

  “You saying Walbert is lying?”

  “Depends on what he said. Did I go after his sham witness? Yes. Did I hammer her? Yes. Do I have some information that helps show her motive to fund Barton Walbert for her daughter? Yes.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “I knocked his wit to the mat, and he threw a fit.”

  “And you responded by jumping on his conference table?”

  “Oh that.”

  “Did you?”

  “I did not jump. I tapped.”

  McDonough shook his head and sat back. “Tyler, I am not able to understand such a stupid stunt.”

  “He was being an—”

  “I don’t care what he was!” He sat back up, like a gray tiger. “It’s his office! And you’re a lawyer representing our firm. There is no way you can justify what you did.”

  I put my hands up. “You’re right. There’s not. But Walbert thinks he can push anybody around just because he’s got a big name, and I wanted to show him he couldn’t do that to us. To our firm, Mr. McDonough.”

  “This was not the proudest moment in the history of our firm. What am I going to say when this hits the street?”

  “It’ll give this place some color.” I smiled.

  McDonough flashed an angry look.

  “Face it,” I said, “we’re a stodgy place. That’s what they think about us, the Walberts out there. We’ll be all buddy buddy, reach a settlement. We’ve got to get a little attitude back.”

  “Walking on a conference table is not the way to do it.”

  “Maybe it’s a start.”

  To his credit, he thought about it a moment. To his further credit, and my relief, he didn’t throw me out on my elbows.

  “If you will apologize to Barton, I think I can convince him to keep this quiet. He sort of intimated that on the phone.”

  My face burned. “He wants me to grovel, doesn’t he?”

  “Tyler, you have a great future here. I still believe that. And I’m willing to consider your grief as part of the explanation for what you did. But I don’t want to see you throw away your legal future for a few moments of childish behavior—”

  I opened my mouth. He shut it with a look.

  “—childish. Now because of the recent severe stress in your life, I’m thinking that maybe you should be taken off the Blumberg case and get into something a little less pressing.”

  It wasn’t the sound of the guillotine blade, but it was the rack. “Mr. McDonough, I don’t want . . . I’ve been working like crazy on this.”

  “My point. Crazy. You need to—”

  “Please, Mr. McDonough. It won’t happen aga
in, what I did today.”

  “I really can’t be sure of that.”

  “You can. If I mess up again I’ll walk. I’ll clean out my office.”

  McDonough took a long breath. “Let me talk it over with the committee. If you’ll write a letter of apology to Walbert, that’ll help.”

  Reprieve. Pierce McDonough had been my biggest booster at the firm, an early cheerleader. When I first got here I worked eighteen-hour days doing research for a big international case McDonough was handling. It was my brief that won the appeal in the Ninth Circuit. The old cliché about a second father was true with me and McDonough.

  But I had the feeling I’d used up all of a son’s goodwill in one moment in Barton Walbert’s office. There wouldn’t be another chance.

  The walk back to my office felt like the last mile on Death Row. They weren’t giving me the injection, so I went back to my cell to await further word.

  In a lot of ways my office did feel like jail, the same way memories locked me in anguish, like when I asked Jacqueline to marry me for the third time, three months after we met.

  “We hardly know each other,” she said.

  We were at the Getty, looking down on west Los Angeles and at the ocean. It was a clear day and it looked like you could reach out and touch Catalina. I figured there would never be a nicer spot to pop the question.

  “How much more do you need to know?” I said, and then I kissed her. A soft, long kiss, as perfect as the view.

  “Just a little more than that,” she laughed. “Even though that’s very nice.”

  “You know all about me. I’m a very simple guy. I work hard, I make money, and I perform legal miracles.”

  “You play drums.”

  “I kill on drums. What more could you want?”

  She got serious then and leaned on the rail. “I do want you. This is a serious step.”

  “I’m a serious kind of guy.”

  “Are you?”

  “Hey, don’t let my ego fool you. I take it to court with me. I need it to win. But when I come home at night, I put it in a shoe box.”

  “Shoe box? Shouldn’t that at least be a whole garage?”

  “All right, maybe a garage. I’ll move the car to the street.”

  A wistful smile floated across her face. I made a move to kiss her again, but she pulled back.