THE SPELLMANS STRIKE AGAIN

by Lisa Lutz

  ISABEL: Wow. That was succinct.

  GERARD: I’ve always admired brevity.

  ISABEL: Me too. Except when I have fifteen minutes of tape to fill.

  GERARD: Isabel, I’m a lawyer, not an actor.

  ISABEL: If you want that discount my mom offered you, you better become one really fast.

  [End of tape.]

  In the end, after four martinis and two more hours of rehearsal time, Gerard finally stepped up and played the part of a drunk lawyer on an uncomfortable first date.

  When I played the evidence for my mother, she furrowed her brow with concern and said, “What did you do to him, Isabel? He sounds drunk and . . . depressed.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “I don’t think there will be a second date.”

  According to script, Gerard called my mother the next day and said, “We had some drinks, some laughs, but I don’t think we’re a good match.”

  As usual, my mother needed more information.

  “Why not?”

  “Your daughter scares me.”

  Mom gave Gerard her secret hangover cure and got off the phone.

  “Isabel, you better get on board with this.”

  “I did what you asked,” I replied.

  “Do it better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Connor is not the man for you, and I would like you to get out more to see that.”

  “Mom, I’m thirty-two years old. How is this any of your business?”

  “I’m your mother and I have a stake in your happiness. I also have very, very serious dirt on you. This is how I want to leverage it.”

  “You scare me,” I said.

  “And I love you,” Mom replied.

  DAVID’S NEW FRIEND/MY NEW CLIENT

  To remain marginally in my mother’s good graces and spare Connor an impromptu visit, I decided to investigate what David was doing with all of his free time.

  David’s mystery woman was indeed blond, curvy, and unnaturally tall—attractive in the vein of a 1940s movie star. Her hips tested the limits of her A-line skirt and the buttons on her blouse were on the borderline of tasteful. Her hair stretched down to her waist in waves–the kind that nature stubbornly refuses to create. Our mystery woman must have spent hours on her appearance every morning.

  I staked out my brother’s house exactly one week after the day and time my mother had first spotted our blond Amazon. She exited his residence at roughly two P.M. There was no passionate embrace, but I did observe a warm hug that lingered longer than I thought appropriate. I was about to follow the mystery woman when my dad phoned from the office.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “In the Tenderloin, stocking up on a few rocks1 so I don’t have to drive back later,” I replied.

  I think it’s important that the parents of a thiry-two-year-old daughter should not expect to know her whereabouts at all hours of the day.

  “When you’re done scoring crack, can you please come into the office? You have a three thirty appointment with a new client.”

  “How come I didn’t know about it?”

  “Because the call came in on the same day as Rule #222 and your mother just put it on your calendar without mentioning it.”

  “Oh, I should start checking that more.”

  “I agree.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes. I need to get high first.”

  My plan to tail the big blonde was foiled and instead I picked up my drugs (coffee) and headed back to Spellman headquarters to have an utterly painful meeting with Jeremy Pratt—screenwriter, filmmaker, painter, video artist, guitarist, freelance reviewer, and Francophile.3 I didn’t ask Jeremy whether his enthusiasm for France extended to speaking the language, mostly because Jeremy was really good at elaborating without any encouragement.

  Before I launch into a hearty complaint about my new client, I’d like to file an official one regarding my mother. At Spellman Investigations, like many police departments, the investigator who answers the call has officially “caught” the case. My mother answered Jeremy’s call and made an executive decision, based on Jeremy’s age and my mother’s ability to convince my father to agree with her on almost any subject under the sun, that I should take the case since such a “youthful” client would respond better to a younger investigator.

  I entered through the office window in case the client was already waiting in the foyer. I wanted at least the preliminary information from my mother before my first meeting with Jeremy began. Mom made it sound so simple and easy and maybe even fun. But she’s evil that way.

  Jeremy, as Mom explained, is an amateur screenwriter who used to work with a writing partner named Shana Breslin. They parted ways over artistic differences and couldn’t come to any official custody agreement on the script, and so their contentious collaboration was doomed to fall into the gaping abyss of unproduced screenplays. Or so it seemed, until Jeremy heard rumblings about meetings in Los Angeles and Shana landing an agent. I first asked my mother the obvious question:

  “How is an unemployed screenwriter going to pay our fee?”

  “He lives off a monthly stipend provided by his well-to-do parents.”

  “No regular job?” I asked.

  “No,” my mother replied.

  “Not even at a coffee shop?”

  “No.”

  “I hate him already.”

  “I know,” Mom said, smiling wickedly. “Me too!”

  I cleared my desk and told my mother to make herself disappear. The layout of the Spellman offices (I should really use the singular form—it’s one large room) prevents private client meetings unless the room is vacated by other employees. Mom slipped into the basement, where we hide one desk, a paper shredder, and a DVD player. The room is dark, damp, and depressing; we keep our visits down there to a minimum. When I was a kid, that’s where all my punishment hearings were held. But I digress. Back to my new nemesis,4 Jeremy Pratt.

  The Snowball Effect

  I estimated Jeremy’s age to be somewhere between twenty-four and twenty-five. He liked to layer his clothes as if a blizzard or a heat wave could attack at any moment. I never saw the very bottom layer, but there was a button-down thrift-store shirt under a blue Adidas warm-up jacket under a brown, orange, and yellow-striped ski jacket that his dad probably wore in the seventies. I offered to take his most outer layer, but that’s where he kept his paperwork, so he slung it over the back of his chair and pulled out some pages folded in quarters, unfolded them, and flattened them on top of my desk.

  “Before we begin,” Jeremy said, “I need you to sign something.”

  He then unzipped his Adidas warm-up jacket and pulled a gel pen from the breast pocket of his button-down shirt and readied it for me to sign, as if he were some kind of hipster real estate agent and we were closing a deal.

  “What am I signing?” I asked.

  “I cannot discuss any of my artistic endeavors unless you sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

  “What is the purpose of this?”

  “To make sure that you don’t a) steal my screenplay idea or b) discuss it with someone who might steal my idea. I’m afraid we can’t continue this meeting unless you sign.”

  I snatched the pen in a split second.

  “No problem,” I replied. “I have no show business aspirations.”

  I did, however, read the contract—fine print and all—just to make sure that I was signing away my rights to his script and not, say, my liver.5

  I signed and then decided, based on my client’s ridiculous dress and even more ridiculous paranoid contract, that this conversation needed to go on record.

  “Do you mind if I record this meeting?” I asked. “I’m afraid my penmanship makes note-taking a rather useless endeavor.”

  “Uh . . . okay,” Pratt replied with mild discomfort.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll burn the tapes when the case is closed.”6

  As for the conversation that followed, I’m only g
oing to play you the best part:

  [Partial transcript reads as follows:]

  JEREMY: Before I tell you anything else, you need to know about the project.

  [Jeremy pulls out a set of notes.]

  JEREMY: It’s called The Snowball Effect.

  ISABEL: I like it.

  JEREMY: There’s this snowball that gets tossed from neighbor to neighbor in a small ski town in Colorado.

  ISABEL: Like in a snowball fight?

  JEREMY: Yes. Exactly. So, like, the fight goes for like three months.

  ISABEL: Nonstop?

  JEREMY: They take breaks.

  ISABEL: To sleep and stuff?

  JEREMY: And they have jobs.

  ISABEL: Doesn’t the snowball melt?

  JEREMY: No.

  ISABEL: Never?

  JEREMY: First of all, it’s winter. But it’s a magic snowball.

  ISABEL: You should lead with that.

  JEREMY: Anyway, every time the snowball gets passed to the next person, it makes that person’s wishes come true.

  ISABEL: All of them?

  JEREMY: Just one.

  ISABEL: Okay, I get it.

  JEREMY: I picture a Christmastime release. A total feel-good movie. Not my usual kind of thing, but you got to get your foot in the door somehow.

  ISABEL: Let me ask you a question. What if the snowball ends up in the hands of someone whose foremost wish is that her husband die in a freak accident?

  [Long pause.]

  JEREMY: I hadn’t thought of that.

  ISABEL: Makes it more of a feel-bad movie.

  JEREMY: Yeah. So right now I need to find out what Shana is doing with the script.

  ISABEL: Under the circumstances I’d recommend surveillance.

  JEREMY: Can’t you just look in her garbage?

  ISABEL: That would certainly be another angle I would suggest.

  JEREMY: I think it’s the only angle I can afford.

  ISABEL: I see.

  JEREMY: If she’s actively shopping the script, she’s probably still working on it to put her stamp everywhere, in case I try to dispute it with the Writers Guild. In that case, it’ll end up in her recycling. She prints everything out. A total tree waster.

  ISABEL: So we’ll start with a simple garbology and go from there.

  JEREMY: Right on.

  PHONE CALL

  FROM THE EDGE #18

  ISABEL: Hi, Morty.

  MORTY: Hello, Izzele.

  ISABEL: How are you feeling today?

  MORTY: The air conditioner is on the fritz; how do you think I’m feeling?

  ISABEL: Warm?

  MORTY: I’m schvitzing like a three-hundred-pound marathon runner.

  ISABEL: Thanks for that image. Why don’t you take a dip in the pool?

  MORTY: That’s your answer for everything.

  ISABEL: It’s only the second time I’ve said that to you.

  MORTY: Right. That’s Gabe’s1 answer for everything.

  ISABEL: I think you should have an ice-cold beer.

  MORTY: That’s your answer for everything.

  ISABEL: What’s new, Morty?

  MORTY: I had a tuna sandwich for lunch.

  ISABEL: Please, go on.

  MORTY: You talk. You and the Irish bartender still together?

  ISABEL: I talk to you once a week like clockwork and you ask me that every time.

  MORTY: I’ll try to cut back to every other week.

  ISABEL: Thank you.

  MORTY: Got any interesting cases on your plate?

  ISABEL: Nothing that’s got my full attention—although I spotted a rather handsome blonde leaving my brother’s house in the middle of the day. It shows some promise.

  MORTY: Leave your poor brother alone. She could be the Avon lady for all you know.

  ISABEL: Only she was there a week earlier and I haven’t noticed David wearing any makeup.

  MORTY: Hang on—that’s my other line.

  [Sound of clicking.]

  MORTY: Hello. Hello?

  ISABEL: It’s still me, Morty.

  MORTY: This damn thing.

  [Sound of clicking. Long pause.]

  MORTY: Izzele, I got to go. That was Ruthy. The air conditioner repair guy will be here in five minutes. I got to put some pants on. Talk to you later, bubbele.

  FREE SCHMIDT!

  Rae phoned from Maggie’s office while Maggie was at a dinner meeting. My sister begged me for a ride and said she was out of cash and couldn’t take the bus and her boyfriend/driver was busy. I phoned David’s cell to see if he could pick her up, but he said he was busy.

  “Doing what?” I asked. “Maggie has a business meeting.”

  “I’ll have a popcorn and a Coke,” David replied.

  “Are you at the movies?” I asked.

  “I got to go, Izzy.”

  “What are you seeing?”

  “Talk to you later,” David replied, and hung up the phone.

  Rather than trouble my parents, who I knew were working a surveillance together, I just drove the few miles to Maggie’s office and accepted my fate.

  Once again Rae was holed up in the file room, reviewing case files of the potentially wrongly convicted. The contrast between the sloppy adolescent girl, all denim and unkempt dirty-blond hair, and the single-minded focus of a professional sifting through legal files made for a ridiculous sight. Rae lay flat on her back, her heels hooked on an open file cabinet and her head resting on a stack of files. Without even a single pleasantry, she launched into another lecture.

  “Have I told you the story of Levi Schmidt?” she said, not even lifting her head to make eye contact.

  “Yes,” I replied, hoping for an abrupt end to the conversation. The conversation ended; Rae’s brief sermon followed.

  “When Levi was fifteen his girlfriend was found murdered after a drunken night of partying. Not an unfamiliar phenomenon for you, I would guess. The drunken part, not the murdered girlfriend.”

  “I got that.”

  “The police, convinced that Levi was their one and only suspect, brought him in for questioning. At the time he was drunk, having drowned his sorrows in his parents’ liquor supply immediately upon hearing the news of his girlfriend’s death. Levi was held for forty-eight hours without being charged, questioned relentlessly, and deprived of sleep. Eventually, he confessed. According to Levi, the police promised that he could go home as soon as he signed his confession. All Levi wanted in that moment was to crawl into bed and stay there forever. He signed the confession, which was stupid, but it was a lie.”

  “Rae, I understand your commitment to this—”

  “The cops convinced Levi that he was going down for the crime. He was the last person to be seen with his girlfriend, and fibers from his clothes were found on her body, which was the DNA evidence of the olden days. Schmidt was charged with second-degree murder and held without bail. The prosecution wanted to try him as an adult. He had no alibi, because all of his friends were passed out in the family basement and no one could say with a hundred percent certainty that Schmidt had been there all night long. Schmidt immediately recanted his confession, but then a jailhouse snitch came forward and claimed that Schmidt had confessed to him while they were in lockup together.

  “Schmidt was tried for murder and found guilty by a jury of middle-aged suburbanites who were so not his peers. The judge admitted the coerced confession and the jury bought the snitch’s story. DNA back then was different, so all they had were fibers. Fibers from his sweatshirt jacket were found on the deceased. Of course they were! She was his girlfriend! The jury found the fiber evidence compelling, and Levi Schmidt has spent the last fifteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit.”

  I didn’t want to make light of my sister’s newfound purpose, but I did suddenly realize that my sister’s call for a ride home was more of a call to arms.

  “I take it that this is the case you and Maggie are working on.”

  “Yes,” Rae replied. “But
I can only do so much.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Minors aren’t allowed to interview witnesses in legal cases. Oh, sure, I could be tried for murder as an adult, but I can’t have a recorded conversation until I’m eighteen.”

  “It does seem unfair,” I replied. “Okay, let’s go,” I said, nodding my head toward the door.

  “We could use your help, Izzy.”

  Me: Sigh.

  “There are others who need our help. Not just Levi Schmidt.”

  “I appreciate your passion for this cause, Rae,” I said, “but now is not a good time. I’m not independently wealthy. I have to keep the business afloat.”

  “What about Harkey?” Rae said accusatorily. “You’re not making money on that investigation.”

  “Harkey is my Schmidt, Rae.”

  “That’s the difference between you and me, Izzy. You want to destroy a man; I want to set one free.”

  “Tomato, tomah-to,” I replied.

  Once we got in the car, Rae changed her travel plan. She wanted a ride to Henry’s house to discuss the case. I obliged since I’ve discovered not obliging Rae often has dire consequences. She phoned Henry when we were a few blocks from his house.

  “I’m on my way over. Important matters to discuss . . . Yes. Izzy gave me a ride. Sure. I got it.”

  I pulled the car up in front of Henry’s apartment.

  “Park in the driveway,” Rae said. “His neighbor is out of town.”

  “I don’t need to park, just get out of the car.”

  “Henry needs to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “He didn’t say. But it could be important. Also, the way you avoid him is sooo obvious.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know. It makes you look like you can’t handle being friends with him because, well . . .”

  “Stop talking,” I said with an air of authority that signaled a willingness to escalate to violence.

  “The driveway on the left,” Rae said, and I followed her instruction.

  Inside, Henry served me bourbon, handed Rae her SAT book, and told her they could talk about the case after she completed a practice test in his office.