You think you know me pretty well (an Alex Sedaka thriller)

by David Kessler

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe she paid them to let her take the identity of a dead patient. Or, maybe it was to disguise her appearance with cosmetic surgery so the new identity would work. Then again, maybe they were blackmailing her over something.”

  “We’re getting a little paranoid here, aren’t we, David?”

  “I can think of something even more paranoid. How do we know that she was transferring the money at all? Maybe she was dead? Maybe they brought in a ringer to milk her account.”

  16:45 PDT

  “Alex Sedaka’s office.”

  “Hi, Juanita.”

  “Oh hi, boss.”

  “Listen, you remember that quip you made about Clayton having a face transplant for the school yearbook?”

  “What about it?”

  “I’m beginning to think you may have been on the right track.”

  “Are you bullshitting me?” she asked, not troubling to hide the irritation in her voice.

  “I don’t mean Clayton: I mean Dorothy.”

  He quickly filled her in on what David had told him about the payments to the medical center and the various theories that went with it.

  “So what, now you think she had some sort of plastic surgery to disguise herself so that she could resume life under a new identity?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Only in Hollywood,” she said skeptically.

  He wondered if she meant action movies, or real-life aging actors trying to extend their careers. However, now wasn’t the time to discuss the movie industry. What mattered was the evidence that Dorothy was alive at least a year after her disappearance.

  “Look, David is going to fax over the paperwork to you.”

  “It’s coming through even as we speak, boss. I can see it on the machine.”

  “Okay, what I want you to do is get Nat to sprint over to the District Court with it for another TRO petition – and I want you to phone the clerk to let them know he’s on his way.”

  “But would it make any difference after the last time?”

  “Yes, because these are transactions after she vanished and was presumed dead! Also, the payments are to a business in England – the very place that she bought that airline ticket to. That means she went there and spent money there – long after she was supposedly dead.”

  “Shall I tell them to put your ‘face off’ theory into the petition?”

  Alex was amused by the mockery. He realized that she was just trying to relieve her own tension.

  “Just the facts, ma’am – just the facts.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then, when you’ve done that, put in another call to the clinic in London. Try and talk to the same nurse you’ve been talking to and tell her that we know about the large payments. Try to take her by surprise and ask her what it was for.”

  “Okay, but can I ask you a serious question, boss? Do you think this is kosher?”

  “Frankly I don’t. Unless she had some rare form of cancer or something, I can’t think of any reason for her to pay that kind of money. That’s why we need to try and corner them.”

  “I think David’s other theory about someone milking the account is plausible.”

  “You think a medical clinic would do that?”

  “Let me put it this way, boss, your assumption that respectable professionals would never do anything dishonest is touchingly naïve.”

  “Well thank you for that vote of confidence, Juanita. Anyway, let’s not make any assumptions. Let’s take ‘em by surprise and see if they’re ready to talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “Meanwhile I’m gonna step on it to Daly City.”

  He had already told her, when he called from outside San Quentin, that he was on his way to see Jonathan. But she remembered something else.

  “Oh boss, there was something else.”

  “Be quick.”

  He was approaching the Silva Island overpass and wanted to concentrate on driving.

  “Esther Olsen has had a relapse. She was taken to the Idylwood Care Center and she’s been asking for you.”

  16:49 PDT (00:49 BST, August 15, 2007)

  Susan White was sitting by the phone, desperately hoping against hope for a call from Stuart Lloyd. She didn’t know whether he was actively dealing with the problem and trying to get legal advice or had simply forgotten about it and gone to bed.

  It was quiet on the ward, on this graveyard shift, so she and the other nurses were not rushed off their feet. But they still had to remain alert. But the only thing that she could concentrate on was the telephone. She wanted to phone Stuart to find out how things were progressing, but she didn’t dare. If he was working on it, he would feel insulted and, if he had gone to bed, he wouldn’t take kindly to being woken up at ten to one in the morning.

  But a man’s life was at stake. And she was reduced to sitting here on the sidelines waiting for permission from others to do the right thing.

  She was tempted to jump the gun and just fax them the information. But it wasn’t as easy as that. The information was on a password regulated computer. She couldn’t just access the files even if she wanted to. There was a hard copy – some of the original notes were even handwritten – but this too was secured under lock and key. She would have to break into a filing cabinet to gain access to it.

  And breaking locks wasn’t exactly her specialty.

  She told herself that she would do it if she could be sure that it would help. But she couldn’t even be sure of that. She didn’t know anything about the legal procedures in America and she could end up ruining her career, getting a criminal record and still not managing to save the innocent man whose life hung in the balance.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin when the phone finally rang. She answered, hoping to hear Stuart’s voice on the other end.

  “Hallo, is that Nurse White?”

  It was the woman from the law firm in America. Susan felt a stab of disappointment.

  “Yes.”

  “First of all I was wondering about your efforts to get the legal go-ahead to send us the paperwork about Dorothy Olsen’s stay there.”

  The hesitation was palpable.

  “I’m afraid not. We’re still waiting for clearance. But you have to understand it’s very difficult at the moment. It’s after midnight here.”

  “Okay, but you are still trying?”

  “Oh yes.”

  This time there was no hesitation. Susan felt guilty about lying. But she didn’t know what else to do.

  “Thank you. And if you fax us the paperwork for the whole year – not just the abortion – we’d be grateful.”

  Susan broke out in a sweat.

  “What do you mean the whole year?”

  “Well she was there for a whole year, wasn’t she?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “She paid nearly forty thousand British pounds … over the course of a year.”

  “That doesn’t mean she was…”

  Susan knew that she had been said too much. But she realized how desperate these people were, and understandably so. She wanted to help, but her hands were tied. Finally, she decided to spill her guts. If she couldn’t tell them the whole truth, the least she could do was stop wrong-footing them with vain hope.

  “Look … I’m sorry if I’ve messed you round. But I don’t think my boss is doing anything about it. I think he’s decided that there’s nothing he can do. I mean … I think he’s probably just gone to bed.”

  “To bed?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So you’re just gonna let our client die?”

  “Look, it’s not my decision!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to attack you.” Juanita’s voice was conciliatory. “Could you at least tell us … even if you can’t send anything in writing?”

  “I’ve already told you: she had an abortion.”

  “Yes, but we have conclusive evidence that she paid you forty thousand pounds
sterling – I mean, she paid the medical center.”

  “I can’t confirm or deny that,” the nurse replied timidly.

  Juanita was gentle in her response.

  “You don’t have to. We already know it. What we need to know is, what was that money for?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Susan felt for Juanita. She could understand her helplessness. She couldn’t even blame her for trying emotional blackmail. But it was clear that the sympathy game had gone as far as it could go.

  Juanita spoke again.

  “Look … what if we could obtain the consent of Dorothy Olsen’s mother … or her brother … or even both?”

  The seconds ticked by.

  “It wouldn’t make any difference. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “I don’t understand. Surely if we can obtain the consent of Dorothy Olsen’s surviving relatives—?”

  “There’s nothing I can do!”

  There was silence on both ends of the line.

  “Okay. Well thank you anyway.”

  Juanita knew that there was no point flogging a dead horse. But she wondered why Nurse White had suddenly turned so hostile … and then so … guilty.

  16:53 PDT

  “First of all, thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  Alex was in Jonathan’s living room, the room that looked like a shrine in honor of Dorothy. As he looked round, he felt the full measure of Jonathan’s devotion – or perhaps that should be obsession. But he wondered if such an obsession could have gone sour. Could love have turned to hate?

  “Well I reckon if I could drop in on you at short notice, you have the right to do the same with me. And I assume it’s something important.”

  To Alex this was a conversation filler: obviously it was important when a man was just seven hours away from execution for the murder of Jonathan’s sister.

  “Look, I’ll come right to the point. Did you know about the rape … at the time, I mean?”

  Jonathan looked only marginally stunned by the question.

  “Yes,” he said reluctantly. “She told me.”

  “You would have been … what? Fourteen?”

  “Thirteen, nearly fourteen, I guess.”

  “And she told you? Or you found out some other way?”

  “She told me. She came to the house in tears. She was crying quietly because she didn’t want Mom to hear.”

  “Why? Was she sleeping?”

  “No, nothing like that. She just didn’t want to tell Mom. She didn’t want to talk to Mom. She’d got to the stage that she hardly talked to Mom at all. They were like strangers in the same house.”

  “Did your mom try and talk to her? To break the ice?”

  “She made a few half-hearted attempts. But I guess things had already gone too far by then.”

  “What had gone too far?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What was the cause of the problem? What was it that had driven them apart?”

  Alex remembered that Jonathan had avoided this subject when they had talked in his office.

  “It’s something I don’t talk about.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  Jonathan looked at him with anger and then broke into a smile.

  “You never stop being a lawyer, do you? If I tell you why I don’t want to talk about it, then I’d be talking about.”

  “I’m a lawyer 24/7.”

  He waited for Jonathan to say more. But the look on Jonathan’s face showed that he had said all he was going to say.

  “It must have been hard for you.”

  “What?”

  “The rape of your sister.”

  “Hard for me?”

  “Well I mean, thirteen years old … the only person in the world your sister could turn to.”

  “I don’t think I was old enough to realize how serious it was. I mean, I knew what rape meant, but there’s a difference between factual knowledge and emotional knowledge.”

  Alex nodded approvingly at Jonathan’s insight.

  “You were very close to her, weren’t you?”

  “Like you said … I was the only person in the world she could confide in.”

  Alex was wondering if the rape had undermined this bond between them. She was no longer pure. Someone else had “had” her. Did that matter to Jonathan? Could he have killed her to stop anyone else having her?

  “Your mother gave me Dorothy’s computer. We’ve been looking at the contents.” Jonathan looked surprised. “It had been wiped, but my son has been able to recover deleted files using a scanning tunneling microscope at Berkeley.”

  He was monitoring Jonathan’s face for a reaction.

  “Interesting.”

  The tone was as non-committal as the words, but Alex sensed that Jonathan was afraid.

  “And one of the things we’ve found is a poem.”

  “A poem?”

  Jonathan was smiling with apparent curiosity. Alex sensed that he was toying with him.

  “Yes. It read: ‘You dragged me before the mirror / And ripped the clothes off of me.’ We thought that the words ‘ripped the clothes off of me’ had something to do with the rape. But we didn’t understand the words: ‘You dragged me before the mirror.’ I was wondering if you might know what that meant?”

  Alex noticed that Jonathan was avoiding his eyes.

  “I haven’t a clue,” he replied. But there was a break in his voice. Alex sensed that he was getting somewhere.

  “We also have evidence that she went to England.”

  “To England?”

  “Yes.”

  Jonathan turned away.

  “I didn’t know it was to England. Your secretary – Juanita – told me she’d bought an airline ticket to somewhere, but she didn’t know where to.”

  “Well it was to England, to London in fact … to have an abortion.”

  Jonathan whirled round.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any other information you want to drop on me?”

  “Yes … she paid the clinic forty thousand pounds sterling.”

  He had been watching Jonathan’s face carefully, monitoring it for the slightest of reactions and for a fraction of a second he thought he saw a fleeting smile. But it was gone in an instant.

  16:57 PDT

  “We’re back outside San Quentin prison,” said Martine Yin into the microphone, “where crowds are beginning to gather ahead of the impending execution of Clayton Burrow. As you can see behind me, two groups have formed: one to show their support for the murder victim and voice their approval of the forthcoming execution; the other to protest against not only this execution, but the death penalty in general.”

  The camera zoomed out and panned to show one group of demonstrators and then returned to Martine.

  “Show us yer tits, babe!” yelled one of the prison inmates in the association room where they were watching the news report on the large TV.

  “Earlier today, Eyewitness News exclusively revealed that the governor had offered clemency to Burrow on the condition that he reveal where he buried the body of the victim. However, there is no information to suggest that Burrow has agreed to this deal. Furthermore, a spokesman for the warden of the prison has confirmed that he has received no instructions and that plans for the execution are continuing until he is informed otherwise.”

  The image of Martine talking to the camera was replaced by the shots of her unsuccessful attempt to get a statement from Alex.

  “Earlier today, this reporter tried to obtain a comment from Burrow’s lawyer Alex Sedaka. But Sedaka preferred to stay mute at this time.”

  “Typical of a lawyer,” yelled one inmate as he watched the communal screen. “They never talk when you want ‘em to and they never shut up when you don’t!”

  Several of the other inmates laughed at that.

  “You know, I recommended him,” said Charlie, another inmate.

  A couple of the others
looked at him.

  “When?” shot back one.

  “When I was in the cell next to him. Burrow needed a new lawyer ‘cause the other firm had given up and were trying to ditch the case. So I told him to try this Sedaka guy.”

  “Did Sedaka represent you?”

  “No, I was represented by some wet-behind-the-ears kid from the Public Defender’s office. But he told me about Sedaka. Sedaka had just won some big case with a drug dealer’s broad and everyone was calling him the next big thing in criminal law.”

  “Who was the kid?” asked another inmate with a cheeky grin.

  “Why?”

  “‘Cause I just want to be sure not to hire him!”

  “Why?” asked Charlie irritably.

  “‘Cause if he was any good, you wouldn’t be here!”

  The other inmates laughed. Charlie merely scowled.

  “For your information he must be pretty good, ‘cause he told me that he was working off his notice at the Public Defender’s office and Sedaka had just hired him.”

  17:06 PDT

  “As my rabbi used to say to the congregation every Yom Kippur: it’s nice to see you again.”

  Nat couldn’t fail but smile at the District Court judge’s attempt at levity. He wasn’t sure if most rabbis were failed comedians, or most comedians were failed rabbis.

  “Yes, I know, I’m sorry but—”

  “Oh don’t apologize. You’ve got a client who’s due for execution in a few hours. You’ve got the right to do whatever is necessary within the law.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. Basically what we’ve now been able to obtain are bank statements showing that Dorothy Olsen opened a bank account in London a few days after she vanished. More important, however, these statements show that she made a series of payments to the Finchley Road Medical Centre in London. This went on for more than a year after she vanished.”

  “May I see these bank statements?”

  Nat handed them over to the judge. The judge looked at them and noted the transactions highlighted with a green highlighter pen. But there was something about these statements that troubled him.

  “These look like computer printouts.”