by Neil Gordon
Still, she stepped into the steam with him. She, too, was in a hurry; she, too, had a busy day planned.
2.
As soon as Dee had left, she dressed in jeans, a sweater, and a woolen jacket. At a deli she bought a phone card for fifty dollars. Then, after trying several pay phones, she settled on one down Hudson Street, and made two telephone calls.
The first was to the number she had gone to Borough Park for, an office in Florence, Italy. A woman answered, “Pronto,” then there was a brief pause before a man’s voice spoke.
“Mr. Chevejon?”
“Yes?”
“Sir, my name is Allison Rosenthal. Ronald Rosenthal’s daughter. You don’t know me.”
“Ms. Rosenthal. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.” Without even the briefest of hesitations, the urbane voice went on in, she was surprised to hear, a perfectly British English. “What can I do for you?”
Encouraged, she explained to him briefly what she needed, and again, as if she were asking the most normal question in the world, he responded without a pause.
“I see. And when can you have the . . . material ready?”
She considered. “Immediately.”
Far across the line, Chevejon laughed. “Shall we say Thursday? I’ll have to send one of my colleagues from Europe.”
“Thursday then.”
“Good. Why don’t you bring your material to the piano lounge of the Waldorf-Astoria at, say, teatime? Four o’clock?”
“Okay.” Allison waited for him to go on, for she felt that such a transaction could not be this simple, but Chevejon seemed to have finished, and after a few sentences of small talk, they hung up.
Next, after a pause for thought, she called Bob Stein at his offices on Pine Street. Stein was out, and with some frustration, she returned to her apartment to wait for his call back. But evidently his secretary had deemed the message important enough to pass on, for he returned the call from his cellular just before lunch. Allison thought that he must be in court, judging from the sounds behind his voice, but later in the conversation he’d interrupted to ask “Billy” for “another one,” and then Allison had pictured him, correctly this time, at the Yale Club stand-up bar, drinking martinis out of their big glasses.
“Alley girl! How you doing?” His booming voice sounded, after Chevejon’s precisely British diction, very American.
“Fine, Bob. I wanted—”
But he was speaking again. “We must talk. I got some news about this Ocean View thing.”
“Yeah. Could we meet?”
“Of course, honey. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, sure.” Allison was not sure how to change the track of the conversation. Sooner or later, she realized, she had no choice but to be rude: not unlike when resisting a pickup at a bar.
“You hear anything new from California?”
“No. Bob, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to ask you some questions. About the case.”
“The case. Of course. Opening arguments are, what, Monday next. I got disclosure last week.”
“Right. And?”
“And?” Stein sounded confused now, and Allison went on.
“And you filed for dismissal, I’m sure.”
Pause. Then, kindly: “Alley, honey, there won’t be any dismissal.”
“Of course not. But a motion would have effected a stay of seizure on my father’s property.”
A long silence now, and then Alley went on. “Or are you planning on losing the case?”
A laugh. “Honey, take it easy now. All I mean is, we’re in damage control right now. I tell you what, give me a couple days. Before the trial starts, I’ll go over the case with you, that’s a promise. Say, let’s see—Thursday. That suit you? We can do it at the club. Twelve-thirty?”
“Fine. I’ll be at the bar.”
The bar was a place traditionally reserved for men, and Stein hesitated audibly. Then, covering the annoyance at the bottom of his big voice, he said: “Lovely, my dear. I’ll look forward very much.”
3.
The person Bob Stein found himself facing over a lunch table at the Yale Club—he had tactfully strong-armed her away from the stand-up bar—was very different from the girl he had known all her life, and he saw quickly that the avuncular attitude with which he had opened the meeting—pleasantries masking his bafflement about why this girl was making him eat lunch with her—was not going to fit the bill at hand.
Like many big men, when he was nervous he used a kind of patronizing jocularity as friendliness. But he was also, as a good trial lawyer must be, a very sensitive observer, and he quickly saw that something was not striking home in this girl, the daughter of his dear friend and oldest client. When he tried to open a conversation about the letter he had received from Gillian Morreale, she brushed him off. Confused, he tried expressing hope as to the trial’s outcome. That made her look annoyed; when he asked how school was going, she didn’t answer. They ate in an uncomfortable silence, and when they were finished, and all the tables around them in the dining room had cleared, the girl leaned toward him and spoke in a low, surprisingly deep voice.
“So Bob, let me ask you this: what am I supposed to do now?”
He stammered—just slightly, and purposefully—in his response. “Alley, honey, you know we’re doing everything possible.”
She stopped him by looking away. Under the white of her blouse, open at the neck, a thick chain hung, ending at a heavy golden Star of David at the V of her bra. The chain gave a straight measure to the contour of her neck and breast: a slim, strong, grown woman. Stein had not realized, perhaps, what an impressive person she had become. She looked back and spoke.
“Who exactly are you working for, Bob?”
He thought it was Ron speaking, so exactly was it her father’s intonation. Like that movie, he thought, where the guy turns into a chick, and he had to remind himself that this person in front of him was in fact not Ron, was just a girl, and that he didn’t have to answer. And, in fact, he didn’t have a chance to answer, because she was continuing, her eyes directly on him and her face calm, to talk.
“How can you possibly say you’re doing everything possible? What exactly is it you’re doing? You know, and I know, you’re just waiting for conviction. You’ve already tried him.”
He started to respond, and then stopped, as something occurred to him. He thought: if this girl speaks so exactly like Ron, then he should probably treat her forthrightness the way he would have treated Ron’s more brutal honesty, which, no matter how confrontational, always left you the option of matching it. So he switched strategies and answered her as directly as he would have her father.
“The prosecution has a State’s witness testifying that there was no government directive guiding Ron. I got full disclosure last week. I’ve got a claim of government direction based on Ron’s testimony. There’s no paper trail: no presidential finding, no end-user documentation, no Commerce or State records.”
“Of course there’s not. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t directed.”
Bob nodded impatiently. “Alley, let’s cut the crap, okay? I know he was directed. That’s not the point. Just because it’s in criminal court doesn’t mean this is a criminal trial, Allison. You know that. And you know that doesn’t only work against us. The political winds might blow our way yet. My job is to make this trial last. It’s a waiting game.”
She nodded impatiently, and Stein felt suddenly convinced that Ron had no idea that his lawyer was meeting with his daughter.
“So what’s your plan?”
“There’s no choice. Try to establish that Ron was acting under orders. We can’t do it, but we can make the trial last, try to get into a higher court. And then we see what the news brings. Court cases have a way of making the bodies surface.”
“Will it work?”
Stein paused now, considering. “There are issues that could go to the Supreme Court on their own merits, but there’s a lot of pressu
re on the court. The Teledyne precedent never went to trial, which is good and bad. I’ll of course try to make it good.”
Stein hesitated, then went on. “I’ll be straight with you, honey: I’ve never seen a more direct line of pressure, the White House right down to the line prosecutor. I wouldn’t have thought it could be done. This isn’t Clinton-business-as-usual, doll. Someone’s been very, very smart.”
“I see.” She drank her coffee, watching him over the rim of the cup with those serious green eyes. Then: “How full has prosecution been on disclosure?”
“Punctilious. It’s the government.”
“Good.” She put the cup down and motioned for the check, adding, nearly incidentally, “I want to see their case. Everything you’ve got up to now, and daily transcripts.”
To this, Bob reacted immediately, without calculation and with real amazement. “Are you crazy? Your own father wouldn’t ask me that.”
She watched him, affectless. “Is there anything unethical about showing me?”
“No, of course not. Client’s family? Of course not. It’s not unethical—it’s insulting.”
“Can I insist that you do?”
“Not unless Ron backs you up. At which point, I’d quit.”
She licked her lips, regarding him impassively, looked away, then shrugged, as expressively as any lawyer he knew. The check came, and she reached it from his hand, then signed it without looking and handed it back to the waiter. When he went, she continued in a careful tone that contained less earnestness and more—he felt—challenge.
“Then quit. In fact, I think you better quit.”
“Oh, do you? I think I better speak to your daddy.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Bob. Know why? Because you are two seconds removed from plausible deniability. In two seconds I am going to put you in the position of choosing between colluding in a felony or exposing me for the intention of committing one. How do you like the idea of telling my dad that?”
Bob paused, something close to flabbergasted. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“And you don’t want to. Take it from me.”
Was she serious? He stared at her, calculating, aware that any question right now could well receive an answer he didn’t want to hear. He asked, “What is it you want?”
“What I told you. Disclosure and daily transcripts. I’m warning you: don’t ask me another question.”
“And if I quit?”
She shrugged. “Then you have to deal with my father.”
Bob Stein was used to having to make hard decisions. This one, he found, came with unexpected ease, unexpected confidence in this suddenly powerful figure before him. There was nothing more he could do for Ron, he knew that. If she thought she could, well . . . She was on target about plausible deniability: the less he knew about any illegal action she might be contemplating, the better. Was she going to hang herself? That was her decision.
In fact, she left him no choice: not as an officer of the court, and not as her father’s friend.
But in the end of that brief pause, the decision was made more on a hunch than on reason.
And, of course, with a threat.
“You put me in a position I can’t say no. But I tell you what. The only person here has anything to lose is me. Ron’s in Israel. You’re, forgive me, just a girl.”
He stood now, towering over the seated daughter of his oldest client, a girl he had known all her life, a girl suddenly transformed.
“You keep that in mind, Alley.”
4.
From the Yale Club, Allison walked meditatively to Park Avenue, a young woman in business dress, arms crossed against her chest, eyes thoughtfully to the ground. It was educative, she thought, to see Stein in action. She had always suspected his avuncular affection to be a farce. But once, on the drive back from a summer’s day at Stein’s Amagansett house, she had mentioned that to her father, and his response had surprised her. Driving, without a pause, he’d shrugged off her concern:
“I don’t got to trust Bob. Nor him me. He works better for me that way.”
She hadn’t understood then, but now she thought she might grasp the utility of being defended by someone you didn’t trust. That way, she thought, you didn’t owe them anything. That way you could better manipulate them.
She entered the Waldorf hesitantly, feeling as if she were being watched, and found a seat at a table for two by the piano. She ordered tea, watching curiously out over the lobby. What, she wondered, would happen now? And who would it be that approached her? Unconsciously editing all but suited men out of her vision, she tried to make out the choreography of surveillance that was undoubtedly taking place in the lobby, and after an hour of watching was surprised when a blond woman in a black pantsuit approached her and spoke in an accent she recognized as German.
“Allison?”
Disarmed, she stood and automatically shook the woman’s hand, trying to place her. She was perhaps thirty-two, and at first Allison thought the woman must be some forgotten college acquaintance. But then she spoke, calmly and fluently.
“I’m from Chevejon. Kiss me on the cheek, now, like we’re old friends. Gut. My name’s Natalie. I take it this bag has your thing for us? Gut, just sit now, and put the bag on the floor.”
They sat, and as the woman talked she leaned down to transfer Allison’s envelope into her small leather attaché case on the floor.
“Very good now. It’s the big envelope, I take it. Voilà. I don’t think anyone’s watching, but why not be sure? Now, when we’re done, you’ll take your bag and go, and I’ll stay here for a bit. Okay?”
Alley answered, trying to mirror the girl’s bright, not evidently forced, smile. “Aren’t you going to count it?”
She answered without looking up, buckling the case, which, Allison now noticed, was attached to her left wrist by a silver chain. “Chevejon said not to. He also asked me to tell you that he can’t be bothered discounting a sum of this size. He will take his expenses, and hopes you will accept his service as that of a friend.”
Allison absorbed this, then asked: “Does that mean it’s too small, or too large?”
The woman looked up and smiled, a wide, pretty smile showing the pink tip of her tongue between even white teeth, and suddenly Allison found herself liking her. She wondered how someone like that got into such work, and wished she could ask.
“Far too small. He says he’ll put it in a numbered account for you. Shall he choose a bank? Good. Mr. Chevejon assumes you’ll be coming to Europe before long?”
Allison nodded.
“Do you need any help with that?”
Confused, she shook her head. Then she added as an afterthought:
“Such as what?”
“Ach, I don’t know. A passport? Anything like that?”
“Oh. No, thanks. I’m set.”
“Set to jet, good to go. Fine. Just contact Chevejon when you arrive, and he’ll let you know the bank location and account number. Just one more thing, now.”
Sitting, looking up, Allison waited.
“Chevejon would like you to know that he’s at your service, now or any other time, for anything at all that you might need. He particularly wished me to tell you that . . .” She hesitated, as if her English were failing her, and then went on: “That this is regardless of your father’s wishes. That is . . . that his help is not dependent on your father. I don’t know what he meant. Do you understand?”
Allison nodded. The interview seemed to be over now, so she thanked the woman, who offered her right hand for a handshake, accompanied by a curious and, somehow, amused look directly at Allison’s face. Then Allison stood and walked off with her empty bag.
As she left the Waldorf, a brief moment of nervousness overcame her. But no one stopped her, and nothing happened. She crossed the street and then, on sudden inspiration, stopped and leaned against a doorfront to watch the entrance to the hotel. After ten minutes or so, the woman in the black pant
suit came out, the silver chain of her attaché case around her wrist hidden under her sleeve, balancing on high heels with the easy confidence of a businesswoman leaving a meeting, but flanked by two large men in well-cut Italian suits.
The three of them climbed into a taxi, the taxi pulled out, but Allison kept standing there for a long time, lost in thought. This amused person, she thought, an out-and-out criminal, was the most sympathetic presence she had been in for months. And when she came to herself again, she found herself humming a tune, the familiar tune of a song, except that in the fugue of thought her mind had mistaken the words:
It’s like I told you,
Only the guilty can play.
5.
On Wednesday morning, October 19th, the New York Observer ran a picture of Allison Rosenthal and Bob Stein leaving the Yale Club. Later Allison found out from Martha that an acquaintance from college, now an editor at Vogue, had seen them lunching, called his girlfriend at the Observer, and the Observer had sent a photographer over. Martha had delayed them for a week, then been powerless to stop them from running it. At first, she was very worried about that. Then she saw that the publicity suited her perfectly.
That made her realize something important.
It made her realize that events were in conspiracy with her. They had been since the beginning.
She thought about that, Thursday morning after Dee left, for a long time, sitting over coffee in her sunny kitchen. Then she shrugged the thought off. Probably, she thought, anyone with an objective in mind found that pure chance sometimes helped, and sometimes hurt. When it hurt, they didn’t notice. When it helped, well then, it was like riding a bicycle downhill, drawing on the well of potential energy, enjoying its effortless transformation into kinetic.
Until you have to start climbing uphill again.
Anyway, she had long known that most people never rely much on chance: they’re too frightened to be anything but safe, running scared for a safe spot in the status quo. Only those who try their luck, she knew, ever find out how good it might be.
Luck, however, needed help, and she rose now to dress again in business clothes.
