by Martin Clark
“Have you checked with, uh, damn…his name’s on the tip of my tongue…Brooks? Brett Brooks? Is there a chance he was in on the scam and gigoloing for Garrison? You think Brooks will complicate things—well, heck, I’m not even sure what you’d want him to do. Is it better if he lies or tells the truth? You’re right. This is messy.”
“The worst of it is, I can’t stand to see Joe under all this pressure. This suit might crush us. He’s worried sick, and it’s killing me. His law license is on the line. He’s such a good man, M.J.”
“Here’s my advice,” M.J. said, her tone blunt. The giggles and cocktail gushing were altogether gone. “You should stick to your guns and don’t bail the first time some predator takes a bite at your stock. Stand your ground. Very little has changed in the big picture. Garrison didn’t respond exactly how you thought he would, and he’s blown serious smoke and done a fine job of firing back at you, but you’re the best lawyer I know, and I know a bunch of them. Keep the faith. More to the point, what other options do you have?”
“Where Lettie VanSandt is at the very beginning of an equation, faith doesn’t help. She’s always plagued me and been a thorn, dead or alive.” Lisa lifted her wineglass by the stem, then set it down without drinking. “I hate to ask,” she said, focusing on the glass, “but if we have to—”
“I’m completely on board if I can ever help you,” M.J. insisted. “Whatever—I’m your girl if you need me. I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles I was with you.” She leaned forward, her chin past the mojito, both palms flat on the table. “Not much scares me, Lisa. I’ve seen the junior version of Seth Garrison over and over and over, starting with the Craps Pirate and the repulsive little troll sales managers who’d offer to trade extra orders for a quickie blow job in a dealership toilet. I shot a man who needed shooting, but I didn’t kill him even though I could’ve and damn well would have enjoyed it. To me, Seth Garrison is the exact same creature, except he has a fancy-pants yacht instead of a Sea-Doo over at the redneck marina. And you’re the friend who looked after me when I was broke and an embarrassed failure living with my parents. So yeah, you give me my script and I’ll read it.” She relaxed, sat normally again.
Lisa continued staring at her wine, and she could see a slice of the restaurant reflected on the glass’s pregnant side, was able to make out tables and chairs and the yellow-and-purple paisley in a woman’s summer dress, the scene elongated and shrunken, capped by an overhead light distilled to less than a pinpoint, burning in the midst of the chardonnay. “I hope,” she said softly, “I can sort through this.” She didn’t look at her friend. “Thanks. Thank you.”
—
Still rattled and paranoid three days later, Lisa decided to visit Brett Brooks at his office, but she didn’t phone or e-mail before leaving Martinsville, just traveled an hour to Roanoke with plans to appear unannounced, hoping to avoid intercepts and wiretaps and catch him cold, before he had time to prepare a lie or, perhaps, ask Seth Garrison for his marching orders. It was the beginning of August, and her car was blistering hot when she cranked the engine, didn’t cool down—even with the controls dialed completely to cold—until she reached Bassett Forks. She nervously kept watch on the road behind her, accelerated to eighty-five when there was no other car in sight, parked at the Hotel Roanoke’s lot, hurried into the lobby, had the concierge arrange for a cab, changed clothes in a restroom stall, crammed her hair into a hat, departed through a side door, used the pedestrian bridge to walk downtown and met her taxi next to an Italian restaurant.
Riding to Brooks’s office, she let her head rest against the window glass, watched the city pass by cropped and unnatural, mostly the tops of high concrete buildings, thick black power lines and snatches of heavy, humid sky. She debated whether she should’ve simply driven herself to Brooks’s address, whether her sneaking and plotting were wasted on surveillance that didn’t actually exist or, if it did, was floating miles above in a satellite and wouldn’t be fooled by her changing highway speeds and exiting side doors. She glanced at her driver, who seemed unusually poised and clean-cut. They stopped for a traffic signal. Shit, she even wondered about M.J.’s new beau, this lawyer who’d miraculously sprung from Zeus’s head and tumbled into a parking lot. “Poor Downs,” she mumbled as they accelerated and switched lanes.
Brooks’s receptionist was pleasant, then firmly professional and finally irate. “Mr. Brooks is with a client,” the lady said. “I’ve explained that, okay? You can wait until he’s finished, and I’ll ask if he’ll see you without an appointment, or we can schedule something later, but I’m not going to interrupt him just because you’re a lawyer and want special treatment.”
So she was forced to wait in Brooks’s reception area, wasting time on a leather sofa with squishy cushions, absently thumbing through a copy of Garden & Gun, then Time, the mailing labels precisely clipped from the magazines’ covers, a precaution that she and Joe didn’t bother with given how simple it would be for an unhappy client to locate their address. She was accompanied in the lobby by an elderly husband and wife who sat across from her, glaring, put off by the commotion, no doubt concerned she’d try to leapfrog them on the schedule. Lisa was nervous, embarrassed, unsettled, on the brink of seeing a man she’d been naked with not so long ago, then done her best to erase and forget, the biggest calamity of her life. She caught herself jiggling her foot and quit it. “Do you have a restroom?” she asked the receptionist.
Fifteen minutes later she heard Brett’s voice migrating down the hall, and a frail man trailing a green oxygen tank appeared and shuffled through, leaving the office. She stood from the quicksand couch and Brett spied her as he reached the archway to the reception area, and his expression—pure delight, no disdain, mischief or guilt, nothing contrived—made her exhale and smile despite her frazzled mood, and she paused to adjust a necklace that was hanging cockeyed before walking toward him, didn’t rush or kowtow, and he met her and wrapped an arm around her and cheerfully welcomed her and told her he couldn’t think of anyone else he’d rather have materialize in his office on a dull Tuesday afternoon. “Why didn’t you let me know Mrs. Stone was here?” he asked the receptionist, whose mouth narrowed and shoulders sagged.
“No worries, Brett,” Lisa said. “She was very considerate and since you were with a client, I didn’t want to interrupt you. I’m fine. She handled things as she should’ve.”
“Oh, okay. Excellent.” He turned to the older couple who’d been waiting along with Lisa. “How long you been here, Max?”
“Twenty minutes,” the man replied.
“Longer,” his wife added tartly.
“Here’s the deal. Mrs. Stone is a rare bird and hotshot lawyer from Martinsville, and I very much need to speak with her, been trying to for weeks, so if you’ll give me about ten minutes to take care of our particular business, your visit will be on the house, free as free can be. And, we’ll pay for your parking.”
The man grunted, but he was, like most people, charmed by Brooks. “We both know there’s no cost to park in your lot anyhow,” he said, suppressing a chuckle. “But we’ll take the free meeting.”
“Ten minutes,” the lady declared. “After that, we start chargin’ you. I’m keepin’ track.” She tapped her wristwatch, her finger bony and misshapen, the knuckles gnarled.
Brooks’s office was enormous and remarkably meticulous, the furnishings expensive and vaguely retro, especially the chairs, the feel that of a discreet, high-end 1960s private lounge where scads of arrangements were brokered off the record and powerful people twisted arms and gunned dry martinis. There was a signed Dalí print—probably fake, like most of them, Lisa guessed—an original Chagall, and behind Brooks’s sleek desk a LeRoy Neiman painting of a boxing match, vivid men in colorful battle, nothing too precise in the details, but the scene somehow exact and true, convincing.
“I like your office,” she said. “I have a cheap reproduction of Blind Justice, a framed Monet poster and my diplomas on the wall. I
didn’t realize you’re interested in art.”
“Oh, hell, I’m really not.” Brooks was sitting beside her in a chair, his legs crossed. He was wearing black cowboy boots with intricate tooling, the toes overlaid with silver. “I buy things when I’m in Vegas. Usually I’m about half in the bag when I visit the gallery, which is strategically located near the casino at Caesars. Melissa Robinson—a lawyer who does know her art—told me the Dalí’s a counterfeit, that I overpaid by several thousand for the Chagall and the LeRoy Neiman is ‘frat boy rubbish.’ But I like them, so I bought them, and hang them here so I can take a tax deduction.” He flashed a lopsided grin, pulled a cuff farther down the boot’s shaft. “The Taubman hasn’t been pounding on my door offering to take them off my hands, that’s for sure.”
“Thanks for seeing me,” Lisa said.
“Happy to. Given the story in yesterday’s Lawyers Weekly, I’m assuming I’m going to be disappointed as to the reason you’re here. I’m guessing this is business, not Bahamian.”
The reference to their trip caused her to involuntarily sit stiffer, her back jammed tight against the chair’s support. “Strictly business,” she answered immediately, stammering slightly. “Yeah,” she added pointlessly.
“Ah, well, you can’t blame me for asking. But there’s no need to make you uncomfortable by revisiting that weekend. As they say in junior high, I’m pleased we can still be friends.” Self-assured as he was, Brooks seemed slightly uneasy, clumsy, genuinely disheartened. He awkwardly slapped the chair arms with both hands when he finished speaking, and it made her like him even more. “How can I help with your dreadful lawsuit? What do I need to say about Nassau?”
“My problem is discovery, Brett. It’s amazing how Joe and I sat and debated this, and it seemed so distant. I just knew we’d have hearing after hearing, skirmishes and grinding miniwars, and this would take years to resolve, and now, damn, we’ve got about three days left to answer under oath tons of questions that put me in a major bind, and as we both understand, there aren’t any effective do-overs with interrogatories. We’re locked in once Joe submits his answers. There’s that pesky perjury concern too.”
“I see your problem. Basic discovery and you’re already in a straitjacket. I’m sure they asked you to list all witnesses and the names of all people with knowledge of events, the standard questions.”
“The routine interrogatories, but given our answer to their counterclaim they’ve also specifically asked us to list who was with me in the Bahamas. Just like that, the case went from zero to a hundred.”
“Well, technically, your husband’s answering the discovery, and he’s telling the truth as he perceives it, so he’s covered.”
“Yeah, but he’s claiming I was with M. J. Gold. You don’t have to be Learned Hand to see where that leaves us—they’ll depose M.J. and me, and we’ll have to lie. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. M.J. will claim she was with me and enjoy every minute of it—she’s cold-blooded under pressure and doesn’t have a very high regard for the legal system. But I figure there’s at least a decent chance they’ll learn you were there, so they’ll get M.J. and me swearing on the record and then drop proof of you and me in Nassau, and suddenly we’re in a world of hurt. I’m not only a liar but a cheater as well, and Joe gets hammered twice, legally and maritally. The final piece of my unfortunate puzzle is that while M.J. kept a fairly low profile the weekend we were gone, she used her credit card, and her other phones will show they were active in Raleigh, not the Caribbean. Our cover wasn’t intended to…to fool anyone but Joe.”
“Once they start digging, it won’t be difficult to establish that we were together. Passports, immigration, TSA and airport security tapes aren’t our friends. The seat belt fuzz and mini-pretzel constables might even recall us; it hasn’t been that long.”
Lisa cocked her head, puzzled.
“The flight attendants. They’re so tiresome and redundant about the seat belts, as if they’re going to do any good when you plummet from thirty thousand feet and bust the ground and the plane fireballs. It’s a personal issue with me. Once, I dared unbuckle before the ding at the gate and almost was barred from my connecting flight.”
“Oh,” she said, barely listening to Brooks’s practiced rant. “But right, they might remember us. I think strategically we have to proceed under the assumption they have the truth on you and me and can prove it.”
“What can I do to help?” Brooks asked. “I’m happy to lie so long as I’m not under oath and don’t jeopardize my license. I’m just not positive exactly what lie helps and what lie hurts.”
“Well, basically, I’d appreciate it if you could stall and delay for as long as possible, should you become involved. We didn’t expect to have to show our hand this quickly.”
“Joe’s clean, right? Hell, he’s the most ethical lawyer there is.”
“Absolutely,” Lisa answered emphatically. “We have a few tricks of our own. Well, we have one trick. Maybe. If we can locate her in the damn top hat. Mostly, though, we need time to regroup and figure things out.”
“I can definitely buy time if I’m subpoenaed or they attempt to depose me.” He nodded decisively. “I know better than most not to believe the case that’s tried in the press, but it sounds like they’ve got a couple big guns. If the will Joe gave the clerk is a forgery and benefits him, that’s brutal, Lisa. I don’t envy your choices when it comes to how to handle this.”
“I hope I don’t have to choose,” she said. “More important, I needed to make sure, well, where you figured in all this.”
Brooks recoiled. He scowled. “Meaning?”
“I had to make certain you weren’t a part of some kind of plot. Sorry. The stress can make you crazy. You start hallucinating. You question everything.”
“No need to worry about me,” Brooks promised her. “I can’t believe you’d even consider the possibility. I’d sure hope you could look back and tell my…friendship was completely genuine. Hard to fake head-over-heels. I’ll do all I can for you.”
Two days later he phoned Lisa on her cell. She was in her car, driving to see a disabled client about drafting a power of attorney, still making the occasional house call. “The damn process hound just arrived with a dep notice for me in your case,” he said. “It’s conceivable they sent it simply because my office prepared the renouncement, but I wouldn’t count on it being so insignificant. I’d say that’s a message from Benecorp, wouldn’t you? And I’d also say you were tailed to my office. Sorry, Lisa.” Brooks sounded concerned. “I threw the damn notice in the trash with him standing there, but we both understand I’ve now been served and the clock’s ticking.”
—
The morning following Brooks’s call, the Stones met Phil Anderson and Robert Williams at Williams’s conference room. Anderson had brought along a computer wizard named Derek Hansen so he could explain his opinions about the bogus VanSandt will in the clerk’s office. When Lisa and Joe entered the room, he was busy with an iPad, and he looked up and acknowledged them only after several taps and slides on the tablet’s screen. He initially focused on Lisa, stuck to the gaze longer than was mannerly and rotated his head several degrees clockwise, delicioused, not bothering to conceal his admiration. “Good morning,” he said. He stood and stretched across a mahogany table to shake hands with her and Joe. He was wearing a seersucker jacket, khaki pants, a red tie and brown tasseled loafers. Lisa guessed he couldn’t be more than twenty years old.
“Derek’s the best in the business,” Anderson stated after they were through with introductions and were all seated around the table, files and papers in front of everyone except Hansen.
“You’re not what I expected,” Joe noted, directing the comment to Hansen.
“My age?” Hansen asked, his tone neutral.
“No, actually, I’m pleased our expert is young—it’s definitely a young man’s game. Truth be told, I expected a skateboard and a backpack, maybe a piercing and sullen bad posture.”
/> “That is the stereotype, isn’t it?” Hansen replied. “But I’m not about that. Being a slacker’s stupid, and it’s even dumber to think your talents somehow justify antisocial behavior and hobo hygiene. You can be brilliant and bathe, can’t you?” He was intense, spoke forcefully. “It’s my own little crusade.”
“How old are you?” Lisa asked.
“I’m twenty-two. But I’ve already graduated from Virginia Tech.” He paused for effect. “The doctoral program at Tech. Strictly speaking, I’m Doctor Hansen. I brought a CV with me if you’d care to have a copy. How old are you, Mrs. Stone?”
“I was born in 1966.”
“I wasn’t asking as rhetorical payback. You’re rockin’ hot for your age.” He turned toward Joe. “No offense meant, sir,” he said, almost in a monotone. “It’s a compliment, not a gambit. I have a steady girlfriend.”
Joe smiled, amused. “None taken. After two decades, I’m accustomed to it. Plus, I agree with you.”
“So tell us about the will,” Williams said. “I’m anxious to hear how a fake could be substituted into the system.”
“Sure. You hardly need me—this is a rung above Computers for Dummies. Here’s the deal. The VanSandt document appears as a binary image on the terminal in the clerk’s office. The software package is basic—Adobe PDF, probably the same program all of you run on your laptops. The very efficient Mrs. Helms has an RMS server there in her office. So does every other clerk’s office in the state. Her whole package is provided by Richmond and, like I just mentioned, the components are uniform throughout Virginia perhaps with a few exceptions that don’t concern us.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “I’m assuming, then, that you’d need to access her server, where, for lack of a better term, everything’s stored.”