by Avery Duff
Gia didn’t answer him, kept looking out the window. Leslie said, “I never did anything bad like this before, Mr. Panelli.”
Philip let her mistake slide, examined the signatures. “Oh, I won’t tell anyone about it, Ms. DeRider. I promise. And you can speak freely about it to anyone who signed these documents. That includes me, by the way.”
“Oh, thank you so much.”
“But—if you two ladies, either of you, were to talk about it, dear? Talk about it to anyone else? A third party it’s called in the agreement you signed? Were you two to speak of this situation to any such living soul, Ms. DeRider, it will be my life’s work to have you imprisoned for a very long time.”
“Oh, well, then . . .”
“Leslie. Enough,” Gia said. She looked at Philip. “She gets it. Me, too. Keep quiet or else. Fair’s fair, right?”
“Not in this instance,” Philip told her. He handed Robert two envelopes, Gia one, and they all stood.
Robert asked, “Any chance I could have a word with you, Mr. Fanelli?”
“Of course. I was about to suggest it myself.”
Philip went to the house phone, spoke into the intercom. “Carlos? Come to the conference room now, please. Thank you.” He turned to Gia and Leslie. “Now, you two consultants try not to touch anything valuable on your way out.”
A minute later, he opened the conference room door. Carlos stood there. The two women walked out. Robert could see them walking down the hall with Carlos, Gia looking straight ahead, as if drawn into herself.
As the women reached the lobby, Leslie imitated Robert in the meeting, saying, “‘Any chance I could have a word with you, sir?’ I mean, I knew Robert was hot, but he’s, like, one of the big boys, right?”
“He is,” Gia said. “One of the big boys.”
“I’m still sketchin’. I mean, what’s his angle in all this?”
“I don’t know,” Gia said. “Maybe he doesn’t have one.”
“Everybody has an angle, you told me, right?”
“I know that’s what I said. Him?”
Gia kept mulling it over when they reached the elevator doors.
“How you been, Carlos?” Gia asked.
Carlos said, “Pretty fair, Gia. You?”
“Not bad,” Gia said.
But she was still thinking about Leslie’s question. Wondering whether Robert had an angle as the elevator door opened in front of them.
Philip’s desk was cluttered with work, not unused like it had been before.
“Have a seat, Robert,” Philip told him.
As he took a seat in front of the desk, Robert’s eye caught Spartacus cruising past an upright diver figure. That diver was new, wasn’t it?
Philip took a commanding seat behind his desk. “Well,” he said.
“I’m glad you wanted to talk so I could say, I know you gave me a good recommendation. I didn’t start out planning to sue you, either you or the firm, and I . . .”
Philip raised a hand to stop him. Chase appeared at the door. Ignoring Robert, Chase said, “Excuse me, sir?”
“Yes, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
“I’m heading over to Santa Monica courthouse. Anything you want me to check on while I’m there?”
“No, thank you, Mr. Fitzpatrick, but I’m delighted you came down to the corporate end and checked with me.”
“Of course, sir,” Chase said and left.
“Go on, Robert, ask me whatever questions you have.”
Robert started with, “Sure. Fitzpatrick? Still a partner?”
“Yes, but at my pleasure, and every day when he steps off the elevator, Mr. Fitzpatrick’s chest fills with dread as he wonders whether this day will be his last.”
Robert didn’t reply. Philip said, “Go ahead, ask me.”
“For the night in question, Chase Fitzpatrick lied to cover for Jack Pierce.”
“Mr. Fitzpatrick would have eventually covered for Jack, but it never got that far,” Philip said. “So he never lied to me. That would have been a mortal sin. Still, venal liars like him should suffer, too, and having him genuflect to me will suffice for now. Unlike you. You have been straightforward and aboveboard, and I understand why you took the action you did. But,” he added, “had I been in your shoes while you still worked here? I would have shown more patience dealing with Jack. A bit more. Then again, you and I are different people.”
He listened closely. Philip was always a good read, especially between the lines. “Yes, sir. We are different, but in the long run, very much alike, I hope.”
“Thank you. That said, my former partner’s behavior toward you was unspeakable, and I believe you have every right to know what happened to him.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Robert said.
Philip crossed to the aquarium, sprinkled fish meal into the water. “Once I learned from Jack what was afoot, I called a special partners’ meeting. He showed up and did not look at all well, which, as you know, is quite unusual. From the looks of his bruised face, he had been in an altercation with someone who shall”—he paused for effect—“remain unnamed.”
Philip kept telling the story, recounting it so vividly, Robert could see the partners’ meeting in his mind’s eye:
Jack stood in front of Philip, Chase, and the five other partners. Head down, he was humbled, disheveled.
Philip told Jack, “How could you let something like this happen, Jack? How in God’s name could you do such a thing?”
“Ms. Marquez and I had an affair. I was careless with the firm’s business.”
The other partners piled on then. “Careless? Try gross negligence. The firm had a spotless record until you took over. Fuck anybody but the office manager, you idiot!”
Jack said, “I understand that, and I failed you all.”
Now it was Chase’s turn. He stood up and said, “Screw you, Jack, I’m not paying. I just made partner, and I haven’t got that kind of money.”
“Chase, I—” Jack started.
Philip cut them off. “From what I hear, Mr. Fitzgerald, you may have had a part in the initial encounter with Ms. Maxwell, so I ask you: Should the firm look into your whereabouts, thoroughly, on the night in question? Once the firm did so internally, perhaps we might divine from your time sheets and your phone records and from a serious interview with your wife that you shouldn’t be seated at this table at all?”
That put Chase back in his seat.
“You will find your share of the money, Mr. Fitzgerald, as will each of us, or you will lose your partnership as well as your ability to find work elsewhere. Am I being perfectly clear with you?”
“Yes, sir,” Chase said. “Very clear.”
Jack said, “I’m resigning from the firm, effective immediately.”
“Incorrect, Jack.” Philip again. “Your partnership is terminated—for cause—and you will forfeit any and all interest you may have had in the firm. The Cy Twombly in our lobby belongs to the Brightwell family, certainly not to you. I’m quite certain that the Brightwells will want it returned, so I will see to it.”
“All right,” Jack said.
“Further,” Philip said, “because Dorothy Brightwell has been a valued client of this firm, the firm has agreed. We will settle only after your infidelity has been disclosed to her and to her alone. Now go.”
And Jack walked out the door . . .
In Philip’s office, Robert came down to earth. Jack’s extramarital history was going to be disclosed to Dorothy. He looked at the man who’d engineered that piece of good news. The man who now said, “The upstart prince is banished from the realm, and the natural order is restored.”
“Sounds about right. And the Brightwells?”
“The Brightwell business, I will fight for and keep. And Dorothy Brightwell? Surely, she will divorce him knowing of his infidelity. I believe you know where that particular allegation leaves the profligate Jack Pierce?”
He nodded: no payment was due Jack under his prenup with Dorothy.
<
br /> “You drew blood, son. You destroyed him.”
“He had it coming,” Robert said.
“He did. In full. Anything else?”
He was curious about the missing California landscape but didn’t ask about it for two reasons. Philip likely sold the painting to come up with his share. Second, it was none of his business. Philip came closer to him. “You know, I gave up buying friends for Spartacus because he always killed them. Sometimes, he even attacks his own reflection in the mirror. Do you follow me?”
“Like . . . Jack?” he asked, reaching for Philip’s metaphor.
“Like Jack, certainly. Like you as well. You two are not at all the same person, but you are similar in one respect. You hate to lose. And Jack, he needs to win. At the end of the day, for your sake, I hope the two traits don’t amount to the same thing.”
Philip walked him to the door, shook his hand, and said, “Fact is, both of you are trying to prove something to the world. Him, I don’t care about. You, I do. So don’t wind up being the last fish in the tank.”
CHAPTER 25
Candles flickered inside red-and-white holders around a Bel-Air Hotel suite. Bedcovers lay on the floor, and a shower was running in the bathroom, all of it the aftermath of a serious lovemaking session. By the bar, Jack poured himself a neat O’Bannion single malt from his personal stash.
On the bar: twenty wrapped stacks of hundreds, ten hundreds per wrap, $20,000 in all. Next to the money lay a ziplock baggie filled with white powder, and it was the baggie that had Jack’s attention at the moment. Wearing plastic gloves, he held the baggie up to lamplight, and when he turned it, that powder inside sifted and sparkled.
From his briefcase, he removed a folded sheet of white wrapping paper, slick on one side, the kind used to wrap fish at supermarkets. After that, he laid the baggie inside a long, narrow jewelry box, like one from Tiffany’s for a gifted bracelet. He scissored enough paper to wrap the box, then did the same for the wrapped stacks of hundreds.
“Yo, Stanley,” he said, joking around with himself, “what’s up, my man? Grunion running today?”
He snapped off the plastic gloves, took a swallow of single malt, and opened the bathroom door. Steam billowed into the bedroom. He turned on the bathroom fan and stepped over to the shower, tapped on the fogged-up shower glass.
“Need your help out here, my love. There’s work to be done.”
A female figure behind the glass turned off the water.
“Couldn’t hear you. What’s up?” the woman asked from the swelling mist.
“I have no clue how to gift wrap our friend’s packages.” He handed her a thick towel over top of the glass. “Do you?”
CHAPTER 26
The evening after his meeting at the firm, Robert put Philip’s cryptic last fish in the tank warning behind him and valeted his car at Shutters in Santa Monica. With his briefcase in hand, he made his way into the broad low-ceiling lobby dotted by couches and chairs, encouraging people to talk, drink, and get to know one another. He didn’t see Alison at first even though they were on for 7:00 p.m., then he caught sight of her on his right.
A waitress was taking her order, but as he closed on the pair, the waitress abruptly backed away from Alison, then hurried to the service bar.
Robert took a seat, far end of the couch where Alison was seated. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said, smiling at him. “And thanks for leaving me at Rae’s today with your buddy.”
“Erik? What did he do?”
“Natural Gas. Ring a bell?”
“I suggested you might not be into it.”
“A handheld fart machine? What girl wouldn’t be?”
“Natural Gas,” he said. “Get it?”
“Comes with a how-to booklet and everything,” she remembered.
Erik’s pathway to millions, as he put it, when Robert had applied for the trademark. The waitress came back and set down Alison’s sparkling water.
Looking only at him, the waitress said, “Care for a drink, sir?”
“Same as she’s having,” he said.
“A lime, please,” Alison said.
“Sure thing,” the waitress replied, still avoiding eye contact with Alison.
The waitress left, and he turned to Alison. “You two are . . . what?”
“Do I look like a dyke magnet to you?” she asked.
Short skirt, sandals, and a white jean jacket over a black T-shirt. Hair in a ponytail. Keeping it simple, he thought. To him, she looked like a magnet, period.
“Not sure what one looks like,” he said.
“Know what she said to me?” Without waiting: “‘I get off at eleven. Let’s get together, and I promise, you’ll get off, too.’”
“Whoa, sounds like a guy’s line.”
“I know, right? A cheesy guy line.”
“She looked kind of upset?”
“I told her, ‘Eleven? That can’t be right. That’s when you can go fuck yourself.’”
He smiled at that one. Then the waitress came back, set down his drink. “Enjoy,” she said only to him and left, still frosted.
“I had to quit yoga class because of Sonya,” Alison told him.
He remembered Sonya: the silver-haired woman, hugging Alison outside her house on Amoroso. “The silver fox?”
She nodded. “Sonya got more and more friendly, lots of touching. What’s up with that?” she asked.
“Beats me,” he said. “Mind if we leave your girlfriend’s wait zone and check the view?”
“Great idea,” she said, looking at his briefcase. “What’s going on?”
“Show you outside,” he said.
He opened the door for her onto a small deck. Six empty tables, a heavy mist hanging in the air, space heaters roaring. Lights from the Santa Monica Pier offered a melting rainbow as they grabbed a table. He opened his briefcase, pulled out two copies of a document.
“So,” he said, “those papers you signed today had to do with a big settlement conference. Could have gone a lot of ways, but the way it went, you’re done.”
“Done?”
“Done,” he said. “It’s over.”
“What are these, then?” she asked, pointing at the new documents.
“I’m withdrawing as your attorney of record, and I need you to sign these. One set for me, one for you.”
“I don’t get it. I . . .”
“I need you to sign. You’ll be fine with it, I’m sure. If not, tear them up after we talk.”
She signed both pages, filled in the date line.
“If you’d write down the time of day, too, that would be great,” he said.
“The time?”
“The time right now. What time do you have?”
“Seven twenty-eight,” she said.
“Seven twenty-eight p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Write PST, that’ll be okay.”
She wrote down what he wanted. Then he signed and dated them, too, adding 7:29 p.m. PST beside his name.
“You’re being weird. You know that, right?”
“I know,” he said. He pulled a thin envelope from his briefcase and handed it to her. “The settlement conference today went well.”
“What?”
“Open it now if you want,” he said.
She opened the envelope, removed a check, looked at it, and let out a shriek. “Get outta here! It’s for—it’s for—we won? Are you? Are you?” For a second, she looked like she might pass out. Then she sat there a long time. Then she said, “I . . .”
That’s as far as she got. After that, she started crying, and he sat with her. When she stopped, he took her hand. The first time he’d ever touched her that way.
“You all right?”
“Yes, I’m great, thank you, so much, I . . . whew,” she said. “Excuse me.”
She walked over to the balcony, looked out at the ocean. Then she looked down for a while. He made a quick phone call to the front desk while she gathered herself, and when she came b
ack to the table, tears filled her eyes. She put her hand on top of his and squeezed it, and behind her tears, he saw hunger like his own. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I can’t believe you did this,” she said.
He put his hand over hers. “No, we did it, and Jack Pierce? Fired from the firm. Now he’s just another out-of-work lawyer.”
“That guy,” she said, shaking her head. Then she moved closer. He felt the current arcing between them.
“Know what would have been really weird?” he asked.
She wiped her eyes and whispered, “What?”
“Your lawyer kissing you. That’s why I resigned at 7:29 p.m. PST.”
“Kissing me now? That wouldn’t be weird at all, would it?”
It wasn’t a question. So he said, “Come here.”
Without hesitating, she slid into his lap, slipped an arm around his shoulder. He could feel her trembling when he kissed her on the mouth. After that, they made out till he said, “I made a dinner reservation.”
“What do you think about . . . room service?” she asked.
“Already checked with the front desk. They’re booked solid.”
“Cocky,” she said, smiling.
“No, hopeful.”
Then she stood up and asked him, “Mind if we go to your place and say, ‘Fuck dinner?’”
Robert didn’t mind. Out in the Bronco, she tugged out his shirt, unbuttoned it, and bit his neck. Once he squeezed over to the passenger side, she climbed astride him.
He kissed her deep, lifted her skirt, and she unzipped his fly. She pulled her panties aside and moaned, taking him inside her, ready for him. He pulled her T-shirt up, taking first one nipple in his mouth, then the other.
She whispered, “I wanted you for so long . . .”
His hand snaked around her neck, grabbed her hair to pull her mouth onto his. As they kissed, hungry, she threw back her head and started moving on him. Slow at first. Then she started moving faster.
Oh, he’ll love hearing about that, Stanley was thinking, meaning Jack.
Stanley had been street parked in his Celica watching Shutters’ valet stand. He spotted the lovebirds coming outside, playing grab-ass with each other till one of the valets brought the lawyer’s car around.