Garden of Lies

by Eileen Goudge

  “She is good,” Rachel said. “I like her.” All true ... in spite of Rachel’s fears, jealousy. “There is one problem, though. She’s Brian’s ex-girlfriend. Small world, huh?”

  Mason whistled, silently shaking his head. “That’s a kicker all right. You figure she’s still got the hots for him?”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged, feeling a little sick, and wishing they could change the subject.

  “Well, I don’t know, if it was Shan’s ex, I think I’d want to fix it so he’d get sent to the slammer.”

  “I thought you two weren’t the possessive types.”

  “Oh yeah, that was great, thinking we were so cool. Until a couple of months after we were married I found out that Shan and Buzz had gone skinny-dipping out at the pond while I was picking up a few things in town. She swore it was perfectly innocent, and I believed her, but that didn’t stop me from seeing red.” He chuckled [449] at himself. “And now look at me, Mr. Maplewood Drive. I’m beginning to remind myself more and more of the old man.”

  “How are your folks? I heard they’re staying with you.”

  “Just for a couple of weeks. Then it’s back to Palm Beach. They’re living there full time now. They sold the house in Harrison after Pop retired. Now he puts in his eighteen holes every day, and Mom spends her time playing bridge and organizing Hadassah benefits. They’re both brown as Naugahyde sofas. Shan and I, we fly the kids down to see them as often as we can. Pop can’t get over our Dylan ... a two-year-old who’s absolutely nuts for peas, spinach, brussels sprouts. Anything Gold Star freezes, that kid eats.” Mason was shaking his head, but Rachel could see the pride and love in his face. “How about your mom? How’s she getting along?”

  “She’s fine. She’s having an affair.”

  Mason’s eyebrows shot up. “No kidding? Well, good for her. She going to get serious with this guy? Or is she just having a good time?”

  “I don’t know. It seems pretty serious, but my mom hasn’t mentioned anything about marriage. She’s different since Dad died. Not so nervous, and happier, too, I think. And you wouldn’t believe how she’s taken charge over at the bank. My mama, the big boss! It’s just ... well, it takes some getting used to. Mason, do you think it’s our parents, really, who’ve changed? Or is it us? Have we changed?”

  “Both, I think. But listen, here’s a scary thought. You and I are about the same ages now that our folks were when you and I were kids dunking each other in the pool.”

  “God, has it been that long?”

  “Yeah, it has.” He gave a short laugh, and tossed back the rest of his drink. “You know, I even like driving my station wagon.”

  Rachel, feeling oddly tender, reached for his hand. She needed a friend, and he was the oldest one she had. “Mason. I’m scared. Of this trial coming up. Of getting older. Of ... oh, a lot of things.”

  Mason squeezed her hand. “Join the club, kiddo. Some days I look in the mirror, and who do I see looking back at me? Ward Cleaver, that’s who. Listen, the day I stop taking at least a few pro bono cases, and buy a condo in Florida, shoot me, will you?”

  “I’ll do better,” Rachel said and laughed. “I’ll draft you to work [450] in my clinic. Defending junkies will seem like a breeze after a couple of weeks.”

  Mason smiled. “Deal.”

  The waiter was standing there now, ready to take their orders, and Rachel suddenly felt ravenous. So life did go on. And, damn it, she would too. And if the ocean was getting rough, well, she’d just have to swim harder, that’s all.

  “Oysters,” she told the waiter. “The biggest plate you’ve got.”

  Chapter 33

  Max slipped in through the double doors at the back of the courtroom as the clerk was taking jury attendance.

  The court was crowded, its long oak benches filled. On the sides people were standing against the paneled walls, and in the back he saw a few jostling to get a better view. Damn those idiot reporters, Max thought. Yesterday, the very first day, the case had made page three of the Post: DEBUTANTE DOCTOR ACCUSED IN TEEN MOM’S TRAGEDY, with a big photo overlay of Alma, lying unconscious surrounded by life-support machines, and alongside it, a cameo shot of her baby. Saucedo v. Rosenthal was being turned into a circus. This crowd made Max think of a school of hyenas, grubbing around the remains of an abandoned carcass.

  Soon Rose would be in the spotlight. And she’d have to be good, or the media would tear her to shreds. But what was he getting himself all wrought up for? Rose was good. But then so was Sal Di Fazio, for all his oily histrionics. Max watched him now, pacing back and forth at the front of the courtroom like an overheated actor, beaming at the crowd as if they’d all bought expensive tickets to see him.

  Max, peering through the crowd, spotted Rose at the defendant’s table, shuffling through her briefcase. She was wearing a suit he’d never seen before, cobalt blue, with a demure ivory blouse open at the neck, showing the delectable golden-skinned column of her throat. She bent down just then to retrieve a paper that had slipped to the floor, her electric dark curls fanning out, obscuring her face, the pearls he had given her swinging away from her throat, catching the light just so. His heart did a slow ninety-degree turn.

  He thought about the call last week from Gary Enfield in Los Angeles. Gary, telling him about Bruce Oldsen’s triple bypass and [452] how it had nudged Bruce into early retirement, then dropping his bomb, asking Max to come and take over the litigation department out there in Century City.

  Max, his mind whirling, had told Gary he’d think it over. Which he’d been doing.

  Totting up all the reasons it could never work. Balancing those with all the why nots.

  Now, gazing at Rose, he thought, Haw can I leave you? How can I let go of even the part of you I have?

  First it had been the separation from Mandy he couldn’t bear to think of. But ironically it was Monkey herself who solved that problem.

  “Cool, Dad,” she had said when he broached the subject over a sundae at Rumpelmayer’s. She’d turned her spoon over, and licked off a blob of fudge sauce. “I could really get into spending my vacations out there. Wow! California. Cyndi says the guys out there are really boss. Would we get a house near the beach?”

  And so it had been settled, Monkey in tight jeans and Styx sweatshirt, prattling on about boys, reminding Max that in a few more years she would be eighteen, old enough to live where she wanted. She might even decide to go to college near him.

  But with Rose there’d be no future, no summer vacations, no second chance. Watching her now he felt helplessly drawn to her. While there was any chance with her at all, how could he walk away?

  Was it four months since he’d moved into the Beekman Place sublet? Four whole months of sleeping alone, of coming home to an empty apartment. Of fantasizing each morning when he stumbled into the bathroom, still half-asleep, that he’d find Rose’s stockings drying on the shower rod. And each night when he unlocked his front door, dreaming that she’d be waiting for him in the living room, waiting to wrap her arms around him and tell him about something funny that had happened to her on the way home. Max felt a hollow ache in his gut.

  Other women? He thought of the last time, a few weeks ago, the pretty little blonde who managed the Lawyers Association on Vesey Street. A disaster. He hadn’t been able to get it up. Finally, out of pity probably, she had taken him in her mouth. Afterwards, when she’d gone into her bathroom to wash him out, he’d lain there [453] on her waterbed and cried. He had felt disgusted with himself, sick with missing Rose.

  Come on, stop this, he commanded himself. You’re a big boy.

  He forced himself to pay attention to the trial, to turn his gaze on Rose’s client. The doctor was holding herself very straight, hands clasped in front of her. Her butterscotch-brown hair, ending above the small of her back,’ shone as if it had been brushed one hundred strokes. It was held back on either side with a tortoise-shell comb. She wore a simple, well-cut suit of sand-colored linen, with a peach silk b
louse. No makeup except for the palest pink lipstick. She looked young and small and frightened, despite the firm set of her chin and the steely expression of determination in her eyes.

  Strike one, Max thought, growing worried. That jury wants Marcus Welby, someone they wouldn’t hesitate to trust if right there in the jury box they should happen to have a heart attack. Not a wisp of a girl who scarcely looks old enough to have graduated from medical school.

  At the plaintiff’s table sat a woman who could only have been Alma Saucedo’s mother. Forty or so, overweight, wearing a cheap flowered dress that was pulled tightly across her plump back, showing the indented outline of her bra. An enormous black patent-leather handbag perched in her lap, her hands nervously twisting and untwisting its frayed straps.

  Strike two, Max groaned inwardly.

  The clerk, in a loud monotone, announced, “Court is in session. Continued trial, Saucedo v. Rosenthal.” The jury filed into the box. “Let the record indicate all jurors are present and all attorneys are present.”

  The hum of voices, the shuffling of shoes on the wooden floor, the rustle of coats being removed gradually died away. Only the soft hissing of the old-fashioned steam radiators, and the creaking of footsteps in the hallway outside could still be heard.

  “Good morning, ladies, gentlemen,” greeted Judge Weintraub from the bench. A fair man, if a bit long in the tooth. Almost completely bald. Bad heart. He’d be retiring soon. “Mr. Di Fazio?”

  Di Fazio, who had taken the chair beside his client, now jerked to his feet—like a marionette, Max thought.

  “Your Honor,” Di Fazio intoned in a voice tinged with a bit [454] of the Bronx, “I would like to call to the stand Dr. David Sloane.”

  Max followed the collective gaze of the courtroom, watching as a tall, good-looking man rose from a bench near the front and strode to the stand. He wore a smartly tailored navy pinstriped suit—cut in the new Edwardian style—and a broad tie. His sideburns were long, widening into a fashionable wedge, but perfectly barbered. Max suspected the guy drove a Corvette, and listened to Mantovani on a tape deck. But, Jesus, he looked impressive: just the kind of doctor you’d want for your heart attack ... or to give testimony in a malpractice suit. As long as he was on your side, of course.

  “Good morning, Dr. Sloane.” Di Fazio twinkled. As if it weren’t thirty degrees and raining like hell outside. The worst November Max could recall in an age.

  “Good morning,” Sloane lobbed back pleasantly.

  “Doctor, are you a physician duly licensed to practice medicine in New York?”

  “I am.”

  “Would you give your educational background toward becoming a doctor?”

  “I attended and graduated from Princeton, did graduate work in microbiology at Johns Hopkins, then studied medicine at Columbia, The College of Physicians and Surgeons. I interned at Good Shepherd in Brooklyn, and I was selected there to be Chief Resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology.”

  Di Fazio leaned up against the witness stand, one hand shoved in his front pocket, as if he and Sloane were two old pals shooting the shit across the backyard fence.

  “And are you a member of any specialty societies, Doctor?”

  “Yes. I’m a diplomate of the American College of Surgeons, a member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a member of the International College of Surgeons, a member of the New York Gynecological Society.”

  Too smug. Good. The jury will pick up on that, Max thought.

  “And are you now affiliated with a hospital in the metropolitan area?” Di Fazio questioned.

  “Yes, I am. I’m Chief of Obstetrics at St. Bartholomew’s.”

  “And how long have you held that position, Doctor?”

  “Six months. Before that I was on staff at Presbyterian.”

  [455] “Do you recall a patient who was admitted to St. Bartholomew’s on July fifteenth of this year, a young woman named Alma Saucedo?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Very well.” He frowned slightly.

  “Doctor, we heard testimony yesterday from Emma Dupre, who was the charge nurse on duty the night Miss Saucedo was admitted.” Di Fazio ambled over to his table, and fished a document from his open briefcase. “Now, I’d like to hand to you Alma’s hospital record, initialed by Mrs. Dupre, which is Plaintiff’s Exhibit Number Two in evidence. Have you seen this before, Dr. Sloane?”

  “Indeed I have.” He glanced over it, and returned it to the attorney. His every motion and gesture looked plainly as if they’d all been rehearsed. “Those are my notations at the bottom of the first page. I examined Miss Saucedo on the evening of July sixteenth.”

  “Can you tell us what you found when you examined the patient, Doctor?”

  David Sloane appeared to be thinking, head bowed slightly, his long graceful hands clasped lightly in his lap, almost as if he were praying.

  When he lifted his head finally, his green eyes troubled but clear, the effect on the crowd was electric. Murmurs rose, bodies leaned forward, expectant. Now, at last, after three days of dry testimony, they were going to get the real soap opera.

  “Miss Saucedo,” he said finally, “was in her eighth month of pregnancy. I found her to be hypertense, and showing severe signs of edema—that is, her retention of bodily fluids was very high. In other words, highly toxic.”

  “So, in your opinion, she presented a risk?”

  “Toxemia isn’t unusual in pregnant women, especially in the final months. But yes, left untreated, it can lead to dangerous complications for both mother and child.”

  “Did you prescribe anything for the patient?”

  “No.”

  “Oh? Can you tell us why not, Doctor?”

  “She wasn’t my patient. The attending physician in this case was Dr. Rosenthal.” David leveled his cool gaze at Rachel.

  Max could have sworn, even from this distance, he saw her shudder. The color drained from her face, the skin under her huge blue eyes seeming to take on a faint, violet tinge.

  [456] His gaze cut away to Rose. She sat very erect, chin up, shoulders thrown back, ready for battle. Good girl.

  Di Fazio was grinning. A man clearly unused to smiling, his thick lips stretching to cover bad teeth.

  “But you did have an opinion concerning the treatment being given to Miss Saucedo, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was your opinion at the time, Doctor? Did you agree with Dr. Rosenthal’s diagnosis in this case?”

  “No. I did not. Not then, and not now.”

  Max saw Rachel’s body jerk a little, as if she’d been slapped; She turned to Rose, shaking her head, mouthing a silent no.

  “Oh? And did you share this opinion with her at the time?”

  “I did. In fact, we discussed it at some length. I recommended to her that she do a caesarean section without delay. I felt the risk of premature delivery to the child was outweighed by an even greater risk to the mother. I quite distinctly remember warning Dr. Rosenthal that Miss Saucedo was in danger of an embolism ... or worse.”

  Max glanced over at the jurors. This was something new. Something damning. There was a moment of deep silence punctuated only by a few rattling coughs and the hissing of the radiator.

  Rachel seemed to sway slightly in her chair, as if she might faint, and suddenly a man seated directly behind her was on his feet, moving around to her side. A man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches. Tall, angular, loose-limbed, he seemed not so much to rise as unfold. Max thought of a young Gary Cooper.

  Max recognized him. The same face he’d seen in magazines, talk show interviews, and later on the dust jacket of his book. And there was Rupert Everest’s party in London. How could he ever forget Brian McClanahan?

  The man Rose was in love with.

  He felt short of breath. He needed to sit down.

  Whatever Brian felt for Rose, he realized, would not affect his own fate. Not one iota. Rose loved this man. And it hardly mattered that he w
ouldn’t—or couldn’t—love her back.

  Brian, too, seemed torn; his arm was about his wife’s shoulders, but his eyes were on Rose, beseeching her. Was it help he wanted, or understanding?

  [457] Time to move on, Max told himself, feeling older, and so very sad.

  At least in California the sun would be shining.

  Max glanced at his Rolex. Quarter past already. He’d have to hustle. Good luck, Rose. Good luck and good-bye, he wished her silently as he slipped out into the corridor. He felt as if he’d come to the end of a long journey, glad in one way to put his feet up at last, and at the same time profoundly sad that it was over.

  Chapter 34

  “He’s lying,” Rachel said.

  Rose watched her light a cigarette, and slump back in her chair. She looked gray with exhaustion, and so tense, as if a touch might shatter her. They were seated in the bailiffs room. The judge had called for a ninety-minute lunch recess.

  Rose, pacing, furious, stopped and glared at Rachel.

  “Either that, or you are.”

  What a damn idiot I’ve been, she cursed herself. Believing she’s told me everything. She deliberately concealed that conversation with Sloane. God only knows what else she’s kept hidden.

  Rachel shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  Rose brought her fist crashing down on the table, knocking over an empty Styrofoam coffee cup, a flimsy metal ashtray. Ashes and lipstick-stained butts spilled over the wood surface. Rachel flinched, but only slightly.

  “You’re damn right it matters! Yours isn’t the only ass on the line. Imagine how I felt, sitting there, listening to Sal Di Fazio’s hired gun fill me in on what my own client should have told me. You purposely kept me in the dark!”

  Rachel just sat there, staring at a large framed photograph of President Ford on the opposite wall. Smoke drifted from her cigarette in an elongated question mark. Rose felt so helpless, frustrated. If only Rachel would yell back.

  But this strange new apathy of Rachel’s, how could she fight against it? Jesus, what was going on with her?