by Avery Duff
“Wrong case, Jack.”
“There is no other case, Worth.”
“Sure, there is. My case involves hospital records. It involves tachycardia, secondary to acute anxiety. And it involves bruised wrists. All of it caused by sexual assault by my client’s lawyer. Her lawyer, the one who told her he’d drop her case if she didn’t have sex with him. And guess what? He dropped her case. It’s her claim against you, Jack. And it’s for malpractice.”
Robert was amazed Jack kept his cool.
“Malpractice, against my firm?”
“Not against the firm. Against you, personally.”
“Either way, a corporate drudge like you? You couldn’t find the right courthouse.”
Actually, Robert had looked into that issue and knew two things: Alison’s actual ZIP code was Culver City, and Culver City residents sue Bel-Air residents in Santa Monica.
“I can find it, and when I do, I’m suing you for a million eight. For malpractice. Suing you personally.”
Malpractice and a million eight hung there as blue lights flashed outside. A Bel-Air security officer stepped from his car. Jack hesitated, then cranked open a casement window and called out to the guy. “My bad, Benny, he was on the guest list. Dorothy sends her apologies. She never tells me anything. Wives, right?”
The security officer waved, got back in his car. Jack turned back to Robert.
“Let me see your cell phone.” Robert showed it to him. “Let me see you turn it off.”
Robert powered off his phone and put it on the table. “Now you,” he said.
Jack powered down and put his phone by Robert’s. “Let’s be clear. If you have a backup device, you don’t have my permission to record what we are about to say.”
“Same goes for me,” Robert said.
Jack took the lead. “Sounds great sitting here, doesn’t it? Malpractice, a million-eight verdict, piece of cake. But you’re no trial lawyer, just a bitter ex-employee who couldn’t play hardball with the big boys. End of the day, it’s still your trailer-trash client’s word against mine, and good luck with that.”
“You’re right about one thing—only one thing. I am bitter. But it’s not only Ms. Maxwell’s word I’m counting on. There’s another ex-employee. Her name is Gia Marquez.”
“Gia Marquez has nothing but good things to say about me and always will.”
“Sure about that?” Robert said.
“Quite sure,” Jack replied.
“I’d say good things, too, if someone were paying me to keep quiet. Paying me lots of cash, helping me out with living expenses, while I cruise the Westside, chilling out.”
“You’re speaking in tongues, Worth. You can’t ever prove—”
“I can show her twenty-thousand-dollar cash deposit made at Bank of Brentwood, then I’ll let Ms. Marquez explain her deposit in her deposition. Or any other of her deposits for large amounts of cash that I might find in pretrial discovery.”
He left out what he saw and heard at the Saddle Peak Lodge. He didn’t want Jack spreading money around up there, clouding memories.
“Depositions? Discovery?” Jack asked. “My trial calendar’s full, unlike yours. We’d get around to her deposition, when? A year from now? Two years? And a trial? A verdict? Appeals? You might be who-knows-what by then.”
Robert saw it: Jack was threatening to drag out the legal process with tactical delays. A weak position to be in. He knew he had Jack backpedaling now, so he went in for the kill.
“Trials, verdicts, appeals—so what, Jack? I’m filing suit in two days. In two days, Ms. Maxwell’s public complaint will allege what you did to her: physical threats, sexual assault, threats to drop her case if she didn’t go along. I’ll couple that with your cash payments to a former office manager, payments made so that she could keep her Brentwood home. And that the hush money was paid to keep her quiet about your affair with her.”
“Allege whatever you want. I’ll deny every allegation, have the case dismissed, and before it’s over, I’ll have your law license.”
“Not before I call the Times. Not before I tell them about a lawsuit involving a certain Bel-Air power couple. About an innocent wife and her deviant husband. You know, TMZ might even want an exclusive; Harvey Levin works out at my gym. Hard not to wonder, isn’t it? How will all this play around the Brightwell dinner table?”
“Don’t you get it, Worth? Even now? Your client is using you.”
Ignoring the questions, Robert said, “You know, I did do some legal work for you at the firm. That was a long, long time before you summoned me to the Maxwell meeting.”
“So Fanelli told me. Who cares?”
“You do. You care a lot because Fanelli never told you I drafted your prenuptial agreement. Did he happen to mention that?”
“What?”
“It was so long ago, Fanelli probably forgot the specifics, but I did a hell of a job and I was proud of my work. So proud that I kept a copy of it in my files at home. It’s real simple and real clear: Dorothy pays you zero in a divorce if she can show infidelity. Tell me now, Jack, who’s using who?”
This time, Jack didn’t move or say a word.
Robert had figured out the prenup was Jack and Dorothy’s, even though Philip left both parties’ names blank. Once Robert found out the firm represented the wife, and the husband repped himself, he knew the contract was between the engaged lovebirds.
Finally, Jack said quietly, “Your client’s a liar. A goddamn liar.”
“Yeah? Then where were you that night? Prove to me you weren’t in Culver City—assaulting my client—and this whole thing will go away.”
“I already told you—”
“Working late with Chase? When I get him under oath, facing perjury with his law license at stake, he’ll fold, and you know it. So, where were you? It’s a simple question. Same question your wife and her father are gonna be asked in their depositions.”
“I’ve got no problem proving where I was. None at all, but take a seat.”
Jack sat down. Robert stayed where he was until Jack said, “Worth. Please.”
Please? He took a seat facing Jack on the other couch.
“Coming here tonight, bringing the game to me, you finally showed me something. Something I didn’t think you had. You showed me you’re prepared to go the distance.”
Go the distance? He hadn’t heard that chestnut since the day Jack fired him. Those finish-line photos Robert noticed earlier backed up Jack’s metaphor.
“Finally something we can agree on, right?” Jack asked.
“Could be,” Robert said.
“And given what’s happened, I think it only fair that I—that we reconsider your partnership. Fanelli, as you might guess, will have no problem doing so.”
Robert closed his eyes and let those words wash over him.
“I’d be lying to say I haven’t pictured this moment,” Robert said.
“Well, nobody wants to make a liar out of you,” Jack said, smiling at him.
First time for everything, he was thinking. And he said, “How do you see it working, Mr. Pierce?” He could tell Jack liked being Mr. Pierce again.
“I’d start you at two hundred twenty-five thousand, Robert.”
Robert? That was a first, too. “I don’t know,” he said. “Kind of disappointing under the circumstances.”
“Then I’ll go two-seventy-five,” Jack countered.
Robert said, “We’ll end up at three hundred base salary, but let’s put a pin in that number for now. One reason I chose the firm in the first place was the prospect of a view. Is there a corner office available with an ocean view?”
“A corner’s not possible now, but there is a large office on the front of the building. Full ocean view, and I’ll leapfrog you on the list for a corner. In all candor, that might be a while.”
Robert leaned back and gave it some thought.
“I’ll make it happen.”
“There’s one more thing, Mr. Pierce.
”
“Three hundred thousand base salary? I agree, so let’s put this thing to bed.”
“So, all I need now is that you fire Chase. I can’t work with him,” Robert said. “Something about him rubs me the wrong way. And that needs to happen today. Now. Right here in the other room.”
That demand brought Jack up short.
“What’s the problem? He’s a litigation partner, and I’ll see to it you never work with him.”
“No, he’s not a litigation partner . . .”
“Last time I looked he was a—”
“He’s your bought-and-paid-for alibi. There’s no conceivable way you can fire him, is there?” Robert stood up. “Besides, I won’t take your job offer. I don’t sell out my clients like you do, because we both know that would be blatant malpractice.”
A calm descended on Jack. He stood up, too, and told Robert, “Do you think I’d ever give all this up?”
“Pay up. One million, eight hundred thousand dollars—not a cent less—and nobody ever knows. A small price to pay for silence. That’s part of the deal—nobody ever finds out from my client what a scumbag you are.”
“Call me next week at the firm. Now get out of here.” Jack turned his back on Robert, dismissing him.
Robert said, “Here’s how it’s going to work. I need your answer on Monday morning. By 11:00 a.m. sharp. That’s when I file this at the Santa Monica courthouse.” Robert handed him a folded document from his jacket and said, “Read it. See if you have any questions.”
Jack started reading Alison’s four-pager against him. Her beef. Sure, Robert could have gotten away with checking boxes on Santa Monica’s Civil Case Cover Sheet: Legal Malpractice, Unlimited Amount; Jury Trial. Could have alleged minimal facts, too, and let Jack’s imagination run wild about things Robert wasn’t yet divulging.
But Robert didn’t have that luxury. Jack needed to know how bad his life was going to get, so he was reading a full-blown, bare-knuckle version. Four pages that painted a picture of his conduct toward Alison: her brother’s death, Jack’s promises of success, her abusive meeting with him at the firm, then a double shot of sexual assault, chased with withdrawing from her case in a judicial hearing behind closed doors. Four pages that his wife and her father would see. The only thing he left out was an allegation about amyl nitrites. That piece of business, he held back.
He didn’t wait for Jack to finish.
“You’re not on the front steps of the courthouse by eleven sharp, start packing up your go-the-distance Ironman selfies, and get ready to kiss all this good-bye.”
Without waiting for an answer or looking back, Robert left the way he came in. Once the door closed, Jack sank onto the couch, the complaint dangling from his hand.
“Goddamn, Gia,” he said. “Goddamn it, what have you done?”
“You’re kidding me. Your breasts?” Robert asked Alison.
“I swear, he wanted to look at them. Wanted to admire them, he said.”
“Jesus,” he said, laughing and lowering a baggie of ice from his face.
They were walking along the boardwalk not far from his apartment.
She said, “Lionel had a glass or two of wine, really feeling it, but what a great guy. Then Nurse Rodney showed up, and I got the picture: Dorothy can’t have other women around. I feel sorry for her father—her, too. All that money, and look at the mess they’re in.”
“You saved me big-time back in her kitchen. Dorothy really liked you.”
“I was so nervous at first, then . . . Oh, I saw your man, Rolando. What was that all about?”
“Rolando, two other waiters at Bistro Fresco. I paid them to tell me when they saw Jack hitting on anybody. I thought it would give us an edge if we caught him doing his thing.”
“His thing? You were that sure?”
“Not like it happened, but he hit on my dates the last two years. Nothing serious, let me show you around the house, that kind of thing. I didn’t think too much about it back then.”
“I don’t believe it. You had dates?”
“It happens,” he said, rolling his jaw from Jack’s punch.
She took his baggie of ice and said, “Hold on.” She went into a corner market closing for the night. Its eclectic sign: EGG ROLLS, KABOBS, PIZZA, TACOS.
Waiting for her, he looked around. Shop lights were shutting off, the night crowd starting to take over. Rougher, a harder edge, and in the shadows, hooded addicts with pipes began to materialize. A ragged girl with knotted hair and sun-scabbed lips hit him up for smack change. He remembered her: fresh-faced a year ago in her creased khakis and Tommy Bahama shirt. His money wouldn’t help, just the opposite. After the flywheel came off lives down here, the only thing that worked was serious rehab and a new vector.
The boardwalk, he was thinking after the girl moved on. One of those SoCal places you had to visit. Nobody said it was a good idea to stay.
Alison came out of the market and tossed him a new ice-filled baggie. He held it to his face as the lights inside that shop dimmed, too, throwing them into the shadows. Out there in the dark world, he heard the shore break smack the sand, and right here, he knew lawyer and client were standing too close, looking at each other with the fresh taste of winning running wild inside them.
Alison pulled out of the moment first and started walking again. “I loved going up there,” she told him, “but I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”
“C’mon, he’s all talk,” he said.
“What do you call that, Ali?” she said, pointing at his eye.
“Sure you want to know?” he asked.
“Maybe a little,” she said. “A little more than I do.”
“I call it backing him into a corner. He’s got no decent alibi for that night.”
“That’s gotta be bad.” She thought about it. “Chase, right? That’s the best he could come up with?”
“He was too cocky. He committed to that story early on, and that was a big mistake. Should’ve kept his mouth shut, the same advice he’d give any client.”
They turned inland onto Brooks, walked toward Speedway. Then she asked, “Do you know anybody out here? I mean, really know them?”
“One person, I think,” meaning Philip. “Other than that . . .” He shrugged.
“I meet lots of people at the bookstore, and they all talk shit. Everybody’s got something big, no, something major going on. I don’t believe any of them anymore.”
“Sometimes I think there’s not enough to go around in LA, so people lie to make up the difference.”
She looked at him. “Do you think people come to LA to forget who they are?”
“To forget, to reinvent themselves, sure. I’ve seen lots of that,” he said.
“All your family pictures, you’re still connected. You know exactly where you’re from. You’re so lucky to still have them, to have a family, a home.”
“I know,” he told her. “I am.”
Inches from each other this time. A definite sexual vibe, and Robert knew it was a bad idea.
Again, she eased away first. “I’m gonna go to my car and head home. Alone, okay?”
He nodded. “Alone. Definitely, alone.”
“I don’t expect miracles, but thanks for trying. For believing me.”
“It’s a winner. I’ll call you when I know something.”
She was halfway to her car when he called out: “Tell me again about Chase cutting Lionel’s grass.”
“I already told you!” she said, turning around and walking backward.
“Meridian was crying? C’mon, tell me again!”
“When I see you!” she laughed, waving to him.
He watched her get in her car, turn on the lights, and disappear into Sunset Court. Too jacked up to go home, he walked south toward Venice Pier. While he walked, what Alison said about having a home stuck with him.
Home. A week before he took on her case, he’d driven up to Gilroy, four hours north on the I-5. He turned off CA 152 before Gilr
oy proper, then north through the familiar, fertile farmland nestled beneath the Diablo Range. Game plan was to show up at the farm, surprise his parents, tell them what happened, and hit the road. The whole visit, two hours tops.
Just as he’d reached Worth Avenue—the family driveway, really—he stopped and looked down the eucalyptus-lined drive to the gate. Rancho Rosalinda was emblazoned over the gated entrance. That stopped his forward momentum even after being away, more than at home, the last fifteen years.
Worth Avenue. The family called it Big Worth Avenue in honor of his grandfather. Philip had been impressed with this mailing address: “It’s not every day I meet a person with a street named after his family.”
“It’s a small town,” Robert told him not long after he and Philip first met.
“Even so, Robert. Worth Avenue?”
Sitting there in the driveway’s eucalyptus shade, he realized Philip had been a big piece of his professional puzzle. In most ways, the biggest piece.
That he happened to meet Philip at all was because he caught fire in high school his sophomore year. The year Robert got serious at Harkins School in nearby San Jose. The year he saw the uphill road for mediocre students and started going all out in sports and academics. His burst of excellence through senior year was enough, in state, to land him in Berkeley, and from there to work his way into Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.
He started backing out of the driveway. He knew he couldn’t bring himself to take his sad tale home. Headed back to LA via Gilroy, he pulled in at one of his family’s roadside produce stands. Wooden support beams, a real roof, and roll-up polyurethane flaps. He hadn’t recognized either of the Latinas on duty, so he went inside.
Rustic by design: garlic-pepper jellies, garlic oil, wooden bins of squash and pears, melons and cherries, even a dried-chili Christmas wreath. Garlic strands hung everywhere. Red garlic and artichoke garlic, the reds in long, thin, mesh weaves, the artichokes woven into strands with their long, supple stems.
Scratching a single clove of red garlic, he raised it to his face, and smelled the juice. Memories flowed from its powerful scent, making him happy and sad at the same time. He wondered if he was old enough to feel nostalgia.