The Plot

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  The two of them stared at each other. Jake let his hand drop. Finally, he managed: “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m sorry you’re sorry. But attorney-client privilege makes it impossible for me to answer your questions.”

  “Are you saying you already know what I’ve come to talk to you about?”

  “I am not at liberty to answer that,” Pickens said.

  “And, just to be clear, you also know which of your clients my questions pertain to.”

  “Again, I won’t be answering.”

  Jake, for all of his anticipation, and despite, in particular, the hour he’d just spent waiting at the café up the street, had not considered this particular scenario. As a result, he was floored.

  “So I respectfully invite you to leave, Mr. Bonner,” Pickens added. He also got to his feet.

  There were, apparently, very long legs underneath that big desk, and they unfolded as the attorney rose. At his considerable height he looked every inch the flower of southern manhood, from that athletic frame to the red face and swept-back hair, a mite too uniformly brown to be entirely natural. He stood, leaning forward, arms braced on his desk, wearing an oddly not-unfriendly smile but clearly expecting Jake to go without further comment.

  Instead, Jake crossed the room and took one of the chairs on the other side of the desk.

  “I’ve decided to hire an attorney,” he said. “I’m being harassed and threatened, and I would like to file suit for defamation.”

  Pickens frowned. Perhaps what he’d been told hadn’t included the parts about harassment, threats, and defamation.

  “I have reason to believe the harassment originated here in Athens, and I need a local attorney to act on my behalf.”

  “I’d be happy to refer you to somebody else. I know some excellent attorneys here in Athens.”

  “But you’re an excellent attorney, Mr. Pickens. I mean, you certainly appear to be, if you don’t look too closely.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Pickens said sharply.

  “Well, you obviously know who I am. I assume that means you also know I’m a writer. Writers research. And of course I’ve researched you.”

  Pickens nodded. “Happy to hear it. My online ratings are excellent.”

  “Absolutely correct!” Jake said. “Duke University undergrad. Vanderbilt Law. Really good stuff. I mean, there was that cheating thing at Duke, but it was your whole frat. Doesn’t seem fair to single you out. And then you did have that one incident with your client’s daughter. And your own DUIs, of course. But who doesn’t have DUIs, right? Also, I’m sure the Clarke County cops were out to get a successful defense attorney like you. Still, that was a close shave with the Georgia bar.”

  Pickens sat down. He was so livid, his face had slid into an even deeper shade of red.

  “Anyway, I think most people just stop with Facebook or Yelp when they’re looking for a lawyer. You’re probably okay.”

  “Now who’s harassing and threatening?” he said. “I’ve already asked you to leave.”

  “Is Rose Parker the person who said I might be coming to see you?”

  He did not respond.

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “Mr. Bonner, I’ve asked you to leave, several times. Now I’m going to phone the police. Then you, too, can have a criminal complaint filed against you here in Clarke County.”

  Jake sighed. He got to his feet. “Well, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’m just worried that when they come talk to you about the Vermont crimes, all that old stuff about you is going to come out. But I guess you’ve made your peace with that.”

  “I know nothing about any Vermont crimes. I have never set foot in Vermont. I have never been north of the Mason-Dixon Line.”

  He said this with such pride he actually sneered. What a pathetic loser.

  “Well”—Jake shrugged—“that’s fine, though when those Yankee investigators arrive I don’t think you’ll get rid of them just by asking them to leave. My guess is you’ll need to hire representation of your own. Maybe one of those excellent attorneys you were about to refer me to. Maybe whoever handled your DUIs or that business with the teenager. And I’ll probably be naming you in my own lawsuit. You know, when I sue your client for damages. So maybe, if they represent you for that, too, they’ll give you a break on the price.”

  Mr. Arthur Pickens looked as if he might blow apart.

  “You want to waste your money on a frivolous lawsuit, you go right ahead. As I said, attorney-client privilege prevents me from providing any information about my client. Please leave.”

  “Oh, you’ve provided plenty of information,” Jake said. “You confirmed that you’re still in communication with your client, Rose Parker. I had no way of knowing that when I walked in a few minutes ago, so I appreciate it.”

  “If you don’t leave immediately I will call the police.”

  “Fine,” said Jake, languidly getting to his feet. “If it doesn’t cross an ethical line, I hope you’ll tell your client that if she doesn’t knock it off with the emails and the letters and the posts I’m going to the Vermont cops with everything I’ve learned. And that includes a couple of things that have been bothering me about Evan Parker’s death.”

  “I have no idea who that is,” said Pickens, barely keeping it together.

  “Naturally. But if your client murdered him, and if you were involved, I can promise you’re going north of the Mason-Dixon Line, because that’s where they keep the Yankee courthouses. And the Yankee prisons.”

  Arthur Pickens, Esquire, looked as if he had lost the power of speech.

  “Well, bye then. It’s been a pleasure.”

  Jake left, rage and adrenaline coursing through him. Of the astonishing things he’d just said to a complete stranger in his place of business, approximately 100 percent had been unplanned, though he’d certainly had all the relevant facts at his disposal for days. Pickens’s moral failings, along with those of his fraternity brothers, had been delineated in no fewer than four articles in the Duke student paper, complete with the names and classes of all involved. The sticky situation with his client’s nineteen-year-old daughter (legal, but gross) had played out over Facebook, courtesy of the girl and her mother, and the DUIs had come right up in a basic internet search. (They really ought to have been expunged, somehow, Jake thought. Maybe he wasn’t all that good an attorney.)

  He hadn’t planned to speak of Evan Parker’s death at all, let alone as anything but an accidentally self-administered overdose, and as for the legal jeopardy Pickens might face as a result of crimes his client had theoretically committed in Vermont, he knew he was on shaky ground. Personally, Jake had no idea what would happen if he walked into the local Rutland police station with his concerns about a five-year-old drug overdose, but he had to assume that it wouldn’t be taken all that seriously, and it was highly unlikely that the state of Vermont would send investigators to West Rutland, let alone to Athens, Georgia. He strongly suspected, moreover, that Arthur Pickens had little to fear from an official investigation, and his client not much more, but it had been satisfying beyond belief to utter the words “Yankee prison” in that office, and the fury he’d felt back there only seemed to be coalescing with every step he took.

  He was actually stunned by what had just happened between himself and Pickens, and sort of grateful that he hadn’t had the chance to consider and temper his response before he’d reacted. It wasn’t as if he’d been especially optimistic when he’d entered the lawyer’s office, but he hadn’t expected to be blocked before he could even get his first question out. He thought he’d feel the guy out, maybe suggest that he was interested in hiring an attorney, and when asked for details about his complaint he would describe TalentedTom’s activities and work his way around to revealing the name Rose Parker. Then, if Pickens declined to give him a means of contacting his client, he would leave, perhaps with some form of the message he’d managed to deliver, albeit not at quite
so high a pitch. For months, he now realized, ever since that day in the car to the Seattle airport where he’d read the first of those terrifying dispatches, he’d been in a defensive posture, bracing for the next communication while hoping, against all logic, that it would never come. That had taken a lot out of him and now, for the first time, he was feeling the sheer rage he’d managed to accrue over that same period, the deep resentment against this person who felt it her business and her right to harry and persecute him, just because he’d found a story and crafted it into a fine and compelling narrative, precisely as writers had always done! There had been something about that guy, though, with his red face and his dyed hair and his shelf of law books and his preemptive stonewall. Something that grabbed Jake by the throat and made him speak in a language he might have learned from TalentedTom herself. No, these people were not going to fuck with him any longer. Or if they did, he was going to fuck with them right back.

  By now he had turned onto West Hancock Street and was drawing closer to the address he’d first discovered at the Rutland Free Library. Only a little over a week had passed since he’d naturally dismissed that Rose Parker of Athens, Georgia, as irrelevant to the unfolding saga of Evan Parker and his avenging angel. Now the address, an apartment complex called Athena Gardens on Dearing Street, was his best remaining hope of finding a connection to wherever she was now, not that he was naïve enough to expect a forwarding address or any connection at all to a current resident. In a university town like Athens, the passage of six years meant a complete turnover of the undergraduates in the town’s many apartment complexes, but he supposed it might still be possible to find someone who recalled this particular person: a description, a memory, anything that might bring him closer to finding her.

  Athena Gardens was a bare-bones version of the luxe options he’d already seen around town, housing complexes fronted by country club pavilions and showing glimpses of pools and tennis courts through their iron gates. This one, on the other hand, looked like a redbrick rehabilitation facility, or a small office complex occupied by gently failing businesses. There was a sign out front advertising Athena Gardens’s amenities (pest control and garbage removal included in the monthly rent, cleaning for a nominal fee) and layouts for the one-, two-, and three-bedroom options. Jake had little doubt which type of apartment Rose Parker might have chosen in the fall of 2012 after going out of her way to avoid having an on-campus roommate. She’d have lived alone here at Athena Gardens. She’d have kept to herself as her old life detatched and fell away.

  There was a management office just inside the main entrance, and he found a woman behind a desk, working at her computer. She had a stiff pageboy haircut that only served to accentuate her very full face, and a default expression that said: I don’t like you, but I’m being paid to pretend I do. She gave Jake a thoroughly disingenuous smile when he entered. Still, it was a far warmer greeting than the one he’d had from Arthur Pickens, Esquire.

  “Hi. Hope I’m not interrupting.”

  She looked to be about Jake’s own age. Possibly older. “Not at all,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Just looking at a few options for my daughter. She’s going to be a sophomore in the fall. Can’t wait to get out of the dorms.”

  The woman laughed. “I hear that a lot.” She stood up. “I’m Bailey,” she said, reaching out her hand.

  “Hi. Jacob.” They shook. “I said I’d take a look at a few places while she was in class. I’ll need to bring her back if I see anything that gets dad approval. I asked my cousin for some advice. His daughter lived here a few years back.”

  “Here at Athena Gardens?”

  “Yes. He said it was safe. Safety is what I care about, really.”

  “Of course! You’re her dad!” said Bailey, coming around the desk. “We get plenty of dads. They don’t care how many stationary bikes are in the workout room. They want to know their girls are secure.”

  “Absolutely right.” Jake nodded. “Don’t want to know what color the carpet is. I want to know, do the doors lock, is there a guard, that kind of thing.”

  “Not that we don’t have a very nice workout room. And a very pretty pool.”

  Jake, who had seen the pool as he came down the street, begged to differ.

  “Also I don’t want anything too close to Washington Street. So many bars.”

  “Oh, I know.” The woman rolled her eyes. “A hundred in downtown Athens, did you know that? It’s wild on a Saturday night. Actually, it’s wild most nights. So. Would you like to see a few apartments?”

  She had a dire two-bedroom that still bore the stained carpets of its recently departed occupants (very thirsty people, if the bottle collection atop the kitchen cabinets was any indication). She had a one-bedroom that smelled of cinnamon potpourri. She had another one-bedroom that actually had a tenant. Jake was pretty sure Bailey wasn’t supposed to be showing it to anyone.

  “You said your daughter wants a one-bedroom?”

  “Yes. She’s had an awful roommate this year. From out of state.”

  “Ah,” said Bailey. Apparently, no more needed to be said.

  “How long has this place been here?” he asked, and she told him nearly twenty years, though he knew this already, from his research. He also knew that Black neighborhoods all over Athens had been bulldozed so that apartment complexes just like this one (most of them much nicer than this one) could be occupied by mainly white students. But he was here for more specific history.

  “And what about you? How long have you been working here?”

  “Just a couple of years. Before that I was managing one of the other sites. We have four in our company, all in Athens.”

  “Nice,” said Jake. “Like I said, my cousin’s daughter lived here. She had a good experience, I think. Her name was Rose Parker. You probably don’t remember her.”

  “Rose Parker?” Bailey considered. “No, doesn’t sound familiar. Carole might remember. Carole’s the in-house cleaner. It’s an extra charge,” she clarified.

  “Wow. Cleaning for a bunch of college students. That’s got to be a tough job.”

  “Carole loves her job,” said Bailey, a bit defensively. “She’s like the den mother.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He let her show him another one-bedroom, and the sad little exercise room, and the pool, where a couple of kids were just getting settled onto cheap loungers. When she invited him to return to the office for a brochure and a copy of the code of conduct he realized he was about to leave Athena Gardens without what he’d come for, which was anything at all. Bailey was trying to set up an appointment for him and his imaginary daughter for tomorrow, but by tomorrow he’d be home in Greenwich Village with not much to show a very worried Anna.

  “Listen,” said Jake. “I owe you an apology.”

  She was instantly wary. And who could blame her?

  “Oh?” They hadn’t reached the office yet. They were on one of the walkways between the pool and the complex’s main building, where the office was located.

  “My daughter, she’s already found a place she likes.”

  “I see,” said Bailey, who looked as if she’d expected something worse.

  “I wanted to look at this place because—that cousin I mentioned? He asked me to.”

  Bailey frowned. “Whose daughter lived here.”

  “Yes, 2012 to 2013. He hasn’t heard from her in a couple of years. He’s very concerned. He asked me to come. He knows it’s a long shot, but, you know, since I was here in town, anyway. Just on the chance that she kept in touch with someone here …”

  “I see,” said Bailey again. “Do they know,” she hesitated, “is she still …”

  “She’s active on”—he provided sarcastic air quotes—“social media. They know she’s living somewhere in the Midwest. But she doesn’t respond to any kind of overture. They thought, if I managed to find someone she stayed in touch with, you know, they could get a me
ssage through. Personally, I didn’t think it sounded all that promising, but … if it was my daughter …”

  “Yes. How sad.”

  For a moment she said nothing, and Jake thought either his story or his acting must have fallen short of the mark, but then Bailey spoke. “Like I said, I was at one of our other properties till last year myself. And as for our tenants, they’re about eighty percent enrolled UGA students, mostly undergrad, so if they’d been here when your cousin’s daughter was here, they’re already long gone. A couple of grad students stay longer, but I don’t think we have any now that were here in 2013.”

  “That woman you mentioned before, the cleaner?”

  “Yeah.” Bailey nodded. She took out her phone and sent a text. “She’s here today. I haven’t seen her, but she started at one. I’m asking her to meet us out front.”

  He thanked her, perhaps a bit too warmly, and they walked together to the reception area outside her office. When they reached it, a solid woman in a faded red Bulldawg sweatshirt was already there.

  “Carole, hi,” said Bailey. “This is Mr.…”

  “Jacob,” said Jake.

  “Carole Feeney,” said Carole, obviously worried.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Bailey said. “This man is just trying to find a girl who lived here awhile back.”

  “My cousin’s daughter,” Jake confirmed. “They haven’t been able to reach her. They’re worried.”

  “Oh my yes,” said Carole, every inch the den mother she’d been billed as.

  “Before my time,” said Bailey. “But I was saying, you might remember?”

  “Could we …” Jake looked around. It hadn’t escaped him that Bailey wasn’t offering her own office for this interview. Now that Jake wasn’t a prospect she clearly didn’t want to give over the space, or perhaps she no longer cared to be in an enclosed room with him. But there were a couple of chairs in a dreary little lounge next door. On their tour, Bailey had called it the common room. He pointed in that direction now. “Do you have a few minutes?”