“No further questions,” I say. This couldn’t have gone better, and I silently celebrate until I realize that there’s something not right about his testimony. I’ve always thought that if Bishop kidnapped McGrath, he did it to keep her quiet about The Boatman years earlier, that she was blackmailing him. If that’s what happened, why would they be hanging out at the beach together taking pictures?
When Lovely half-stands to ask questions on redirect, Frantz places his hand on her arm and almost forcibly pulls her back into her chair. “Nothing further,” he says.
“We’ll recess until tomorrow morning,” the judge says.
I expect the cosplayers to stand up and cheer, but they file out respectfully with the rest of the gallery. Banquo doesn’t look at me until he gets to the door, but then he stops and gives me a solemn nod. Every woman in the gallery starts to resemble Courtney, and yet I don’t think she’s here.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod,” Brenda says under her breath.
One of Harmon Cherry’s favorite sayings was Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered. It got so that the associates would roll their eyes when he said it—behind his back of course. He credited the words to his father, Harry, who got them from who knows where. William Bishop has always been a hog. It’s high time he got slaughtered.
Poniard:
>@BrandonPlacekTinseltown just tweeted “Abduction! trial shock: witness puts Bishop/McGrath together shortly before her disappearance. Witness denies seeing abduction; is he lying?” It’s all over the internet, on social media
Poniard:
>Answer me, Parker Stern. You’ve had plenty of time to get back from court and check your computer. I waited an hour after court ended and another 30 minutes to reach out to you. LA traffic isn’t that bad
Poniard:
>All reporters on Twitter are unanimous, news stories coming in, they think Boardwalk Freddy helped our side, that Lovely Diamond blew it, you were strong. You exposed William the Conqueror Bishop as the liar we know him to be
Poniard:
>Come on Parker Stern, I just want to Congratulate you and get your thoughts on tomorrow
Poniard:
>???
Poniard:
>???
Poniard:
>OK, I get that you’re pissed at me. I know I’ve been a difficult client . . . but I’ve only done it to get to the truth, and I am not against you. I never have been
Brenda wants us to take a belated curtain call through the courtroom’s front entrance this morning, but Harmon Cherry would never allow premature celebrations, and neither will I. She assumes that one good day in court will lessen my stage fright, but it’s just the opposite—yesterday we had nothing to lose, and today we do. The fear that I’ve felt these past years has merged with my cells. Sometimes, like yesterday, it will remit spontaneously, but that’s emotional fool’s gold, because it will return.
Still, I walk into the courtroom this morning clear-headed and on steady legs—until I see William Bishop and Lovely Diamond sitting at counsel table, reviewing my handwriting expert’s report. I lean against the edge of the table to steady myself, pretending to survey the courtroom. The Conqueror looks like he’s spent the past few weeks tanning and like he had a recent appointment with a sculptor to style his flawless gray hair. He and Lovely are whisper-distance away from being cheek to cheek, his left hand resting on her back between the shoulder blades as if they’re dancing some sort of attorney-client waltz. She glances up when Brenda and I put our things down but dismissively goes back to reading the document. Is it my imagination, or does she lean in closer to Bishop?
The click of the front door lock startles me, though it isn’t even that loud. Lou Frantz walks in, his suit coat flung over his shoulder as if it’s the end of the day, not the beginning. The bailiff fends off the media and locks the door again. Frantz’s open-mouthed grin makes him look like a pit bull deciding whether to snap.
“How’re the jangly nerves today, Stern?” he says.
“Much better now that I remember it’s only you I have to go up against, Lou,” I say.
“Just a heads-up—I’m handling the witness today. Good luck on getting your objections sustained.” He goes over and sits with Bishop and Lovely.
After five minutes pass, the bailiff unlocks the doors and lets first the media and then the general public in. People rush inside and vie for the best seats as if this were some discount white sale at a cut-rate department store. Yesterday’s cross-examination made the trial a hotter ticket than it already was—that, plus the chance to see William the Conqueror testify live. Only minutes before we’re scheduled to start, the bailiff has to eject two courtroom regulars who start shoving each other in a dispute over who gets to sit in the front row. The cosplayers, again dressed in everyday casual, find the same seats on the plaintiff’s side. Still no Courtney as far as I can tell. Again, Banquo barely acknowledges me. One would think that he and his cohort were rooting for Bishop.
Among the spectators racing for seats are Ed Diamond, who’s holding the hand of a wiry child wearing blue jeans, a gray UCLA football T-shirt under an unbuttoned blue-and-white-striped flannel shirt, and Nike sneakers. The boy’s medium-length blond hair is styled in a helmet shape with long bangs that extend to just above the eyebrows. It’s a haircut that you’d see on a child actor, which this kid could be with his good looks and expressive blue-gray eyes. It must give Lovely comfort that the boy looks just like her and not like his anonymous sleaze-ball father. They’re not experienced courtroom watchers and so are about to lose the chance to find seats. I catch Ed’s eye and point to two empty seats in the first row right behind me.
Once they’ve laid claim to the seats, the boy stands up and waves, trying to get Lovely’s attention, but she’s focused on a legal brief and doesn’t look up. Her obliviousness annoys me, maybe because she so bluntly told me I wouldn’t be good for the boy. I reach over and shake Ed’s hand.
“Welcome to my world,” I say.
“We’re here to support my daughter, not you, Park . . . Parker.” His smirk reveals that almost calling me Parky wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Needling is a bodily function with this man. He puts his head on the boy’s head. “This is my grandson Brighton. Brighton, this is Mr. Stern.”
“I know,” the boy says. “Stern is Poniard’s lawyer.”
“It’s Mr. Stern,” says the man who a moment ago almost called me Parky in public.
I extend my hand to the boy, though I don’t know if that’s the proper way to greet a ten-year-old. I haven’t spent much time around children, didn’t have a normal childhood myself. He takes my hand and pumps it up and down once, keeping his eyes focused on my ribcage.
“A pleasure meeting you, Brighton,” I say in a stilted tone that I don’t use with adult strangers.
He glances at Lovely as if to verify that she isn’t watching. “I love Poniard’s games. They’re awesome. You know Poniard, right? I mean I know you know him, but do you really know him? Because my mother says you don’t really.” He says the word “mother” as though it’s a distasteful medication.
“Don’t be rude, kid,” Ed says gruffly. “Mr. Stern has more important bovine to broil than us two insignificant bulls.”
Brighton giggles and then looks up at me and says, “Sorry for being rude.”
“Apology accepted,” I say. “And to answer your question, your mother’s right. I don’t know Poniard. He’s a genius, and no one really knows a genius.”
Lovely finally looks up at the gallery, and when she sees us, slams the document down on the table and comes over. Though I’m no more than two feet away from her, I feel less present than a dust mote floating in the stale air.
“We talked about this, damn it,” she says in a harsh whisper that draws more attention than if she’d spoken in a normal voice.
“This’ll be more educational than anything he could learn in that academy for spoiled brats,” Ed says.
Brighton smiles at her hop
efully. “We’re here to give you—what did Ed call it, to lend you moral support?—after your bad day yesterday.” When he realizes that I, her opposing counsel, could hear him say that, he makes it worse by covering his open mouth with his hand, a similar though less exaggerated version of one of my signature movie moves when I was Parky Gerald.
“You’re dragging me down by being here, boy,” she says in an awful serpentine whisper. “Go to school and let me do my work without worrying about you.”
The boy lowers his head. I’m sure he’d like to hide so no one can see his embarrassment, but the courtroom is full.
I shake my head in disapproval, which causes Lovely to half-spin and face me. “This is none of your goddamned business.”
“It’s just that you sounded exactly like my mother.” I couldn’t have said anything more disparaging. Lovely and Ed both know how Harriet mistreated me.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ed says. “Lovely’s a great mother.”
“You’re right, I don’t know what I’m talking about,” I say. “But whose fault is that?”
A mortified Brighton sits down, lifts his feet onto the seat, and tries to curl into himself like a frightened pill bug. Ed puts his arm around him. Lovely is about to snap back at me, but the clerk calls the courtroom to order. Lovely glares at me one last time and hurries back to her side of the table.
Only then do I notice what I haven’t been noticing—the stage fright that had been triggered by seeing Lovely and Bishop together has subsided. Is this respite as simple as not wanting to embarrass myself in front of Lovely’s father and son?
Anita Grass walks in and says, “Do you have a witness, Mr. Frantz?”
“The plaintiff calls the individual known as Poniard,” Frantz says. He waits for the buzz to die down, checks his watch, and waits some more. He sighs and says, “I guess we’ll have to settle for Poniard’s deposition because he doesn’t dare show his face in these parts.”
Lovely presses some buttons and launches artfully edited video segments of Poniard’s deposition. The spectators ooh and ah at how real the King Richard III computer graphics look. Judge Grass focuses not on the graphics but on Poniard’s attempt to deceive the court and on his refusal to testify about Felicity’s daughter Alicia Turner and the mysterious “Scotty.” When the video presentation ends, she says, “Mr. Stern, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t enter judgment against your client for perpetrating a fraud on the court and refusing to answer relevant questions.”
“I don’t condone what my client did,” I say. “But his artifice wasn’t successful, and there’s been no prejudice to the other side. Your Honor can draw whatever inferences you think best about Poniard’s credibility, though I chalk his behavior up to immaturity. But to decide this case on a procedural technicality would be unjust, especially in light of what happened yesterday.”
I notice Frantz whispering in Bishop’s ear and Bishop vigorously shaking his head no. Frantz shrugs and says, “I guess this is one of the few times that Mr. Stern and I agree on something. Mr. Bishop, too, wants this case decided on the merits.”
So despite yesterday’s debacle with Frederickson, Bishop still wants not simply to win but to prove he’s right.
The judge lifts her eyebrows into twin arches of incredulity and says, “Go ahead, Mr. Frantz. It’s your case to try.”
Frantz uses the next forty-five minutes to examine two witnesses about how Poniard’s video game actually damaged Bishop’s reputation. They’re legally unnecessary—you don’t need a witness to prove that Abduction!’s allegations of kidnapping and murder were harmful—but surprisingly effective.
Frantz’s first witness, Father Ernesto Martinez, also known as the Celebrity Priest because he stars in his own reality TV show, testifies that he has serious doubts about whether his church should accept Bishop’s contribution to build a new school that would bear Bishop’s name. Through him, Frantz brings out Bishop’s philanthropy and religious devotion, in that way undermining my claim that Bishop is a devotee of the Church of the Sanctified Assembly—the Catholic Church has strongly condemned the Assembly.
As Frantz predicted, Judge Grass overrules all my objections, supposedly because “there’s no jury and I know the law, I can sort out the evidentiary issues later, so stop wasting my time, Mr. Stern.” That doesn’t stop her from sustaining his objection when during cross-examination I say, “Don’t you agree, Father, that someone acting as an undercover agent for the Sanctified Assembly would feign devotion to another religion?”
The second witness is a Parapet Studios employee who works as a techie in the post-production department. Though he’s actually in his late-twenties, he looks like he just got out of high school. As soon as he takes the stand he begins exhibiting symptoms that I know well—quivering hands, halting speech, flop sweat. He testifies that he’s an inveterate gamer, a fan of Poniard—he corrects himself to say a former fan—who began playing Abduction! when the game first appeared online. He says—actually stammers—that when he saw the opening cutscene depicting Felicity’s kidnapping, he played the clip for his coworkers. Before each answer, he shifts his eyes and looks sidelong at Bishop, who with arms crossed gazes at the back wall. Bishop has clearly ordered this man to atone for his sins by coming to court and testifying under oath that he believed—but only for a moment—that his boss of bosses was a murderer. I don’t bother to cross-examine the poor guy.
Then Frantz stands, buttons his coat, tugs at his sleeves, half-turns and winks at the gallery, and announces in his divine baritone, “The plaintiff calls William Maxfield Bishop.”
Bishop stands with that elegant posture, all the more impressive because most men his age hunch over from the weight of the years. He springs up to the witness stand, where he faces the clerk and raises his right hand before she asks him to. In reply to whether he swears to tell the truth, his “I do” is loud and unequivocal. Without being asked a question, he’s taken ownership of the room, just like he takes ownership of everything else. Anita Grass smiles a respectful, nonjudicial smile. Why not? Bishop has unlimited wealth and controls much of the media and so could advance her career.
Over the next two hours, William the Conqueror, with Frantz as his de Beaumont, makes the courtroom his Hastings, using lies as his arrows and charisma as his sword. He gives a long and detailed account of his life, leaving out the fact that his father, Howard Bishop, was an LA crime boss. He lists his charitable works, describes his enchanted family life and his forty-year marriage in the face of Hollywood temptation. And then to the merits:
“Did you know Paula Felicity McGrath personally?” Frantz asks.
“Absolutely not.”
“What about the letters that Felicity wrote to ‘Scotty’ mentioning you?”
Bishop shrugs his broad, square shoulders. “I didn’t know those people and don’t have a clue why they would mention me, unless it was because I was a successful producer whom they hoped to meet. In this town, people turn pipe dreams into close personal relationships.”
“What about Luther Frederickson’s testimony that he saw you and McGrath together?”
“Sadly, the man’s mind must have suffered from the alcohol and substance abuse. Never heard of the Tell Tale Bar, never hung out in Venice.”
Frantz even asks about a topic I thought he’d avoid at all costs. “Did you work with Ms. McGrath on a movie called The Boatman?”
Bishop gives a disdainful chuckle perhaps gleaned from those old acting classes. “Of course not. But when Mr. Stern asked me about that movie at my deposition, it sounded familiar. Since then, I remembered that it’s some silly Hollywood movie myth, a film that never existed.”
“What about the document that purports to be a cast list for The Boatman?”
“Documents can be fabricated very easily these days.”
And the final act of this staged fairy tale: “Mr. Bishop did you have anything to do with Paula Felicity McGrath’s disappearance?”<
br />
He leans forward, keeping his upper body straight, his face earnest and sad. “Absolutely not. That’s a fantasy made up by a madman for his own political reasons. This Poniard fellow is nothing but a terrorist who’s spread the basest of lies to the world. And he’s injured me, Mr. Frantz. Despite my assets and my past successes and whatever good works I might have done, he’s damaged my reputation with my friends and family and coworkers and the public. It’s an assault, but unlike a physical assault, I couldn’t hire security or build fences to shut out the danger. I could heal from a physical assault, but I’ll never get over this. It hurts, Mr. Frantz. It hurts.”
After this last answer, Bishop removes his horn-rimmed glasses and dabs at his eyes with a cloth handkerchief that he pulls from his pocket. The Conqueror is a far better actor than Clifton Stanley Gold gives him credit for. I glance over at Lovely Diamond, whose own eyes have misted over. Is she part of the show, too? Judge Grass is nodding her head in sympathy.
“Incredible,” Brenda says under her breath.
Behind me, a child’s voice says in a loud whisper, “She’s winning again, right, Ed?”
Frantz says he has no further questions.
As soon as I’m on my feet, I ask, “Mr. Bishop, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Church of the Sanctified Assembly?”
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