Question of Trust

by Laura Caldwell

  “She could have been in the apartment building all day,” I said.

  Since Kim’s time of death had been set loosely at 8:00 p.m., we fast-forwarded the video to that evening.

  “Is that her?”

  Sure enough, there was Kim leaving the house, wearing jeans and a puffy black coat, a flare of a scarf around her neck. She returned shortly with a plastic bag in her hand that looked like it was from a convenience store.

  From the timing, we figured that soon after Kim entered the building she must have gone to my apartment, but that didn’t give us any clue as to why.

  But then I heard Vaughn grunt.

  I looked at the screen. There was a guy, not too tall, but heavy around the middle, the kind of guy who carried himself as if he’d once been in shape, arms out away from his body, walking with what looked like hard footsteps to my front door. He took out some kind of instrument, wrenched off the front panel of the keypad, just like that.

  And then just like that, he was gone. He was in my building.

  55

  When I got up the next morning, Theo was sitting on the couch, rubbing a hand over his head, as if trying to remind himself what it was like to have hair, trying to remind himself why and how and when everything had changed.

  “I heard you come in around four in the morning,” I said.

  Last night, after watching the video and driving home in the snow, Theo still wasn’t home. I kept thinking of that guy, so easily wrenching off the keypad on the front door and stepping inside. Wanting some kind of comfort, I’d dug out an old T-shirt of Sam’s I used to sleep in and liberally helped myself to some Tylenol PM. I’d woken only once when I heard the door open and close. I could tell that the footsteps were Theo’s.

  Once Theo didn’t come into the bedroom, I’d let myself slip back into a fog of sleep.

  I told him about the surveillance tape. “I didn’t recognize the guy,” I said. “I have no idea who he is.” I looked at Theo. He had dark half-moon shapes under his eyes. “How was your night?”

  “I was looking for my dad,” Theo said. “I went to his usual places. Then I got a hold of LaBree and we went to all of them again.”

  “And you didn’t find him,” I said, finishing the story for him.

  “He’s gone.” Theo blinked. I noticed that above the dark circles, his eyes were round, like blank canvases. Those eyes had seen many things. Theo was one of those people who had lived different lives in his relatively short number of years, knew much. But now, whatever information he possessed wasn’t registering.

  “He’s gone,” he said again.

  For a moment, I wondered if he meant someone else. “Do you mean Eric?”

  “My father.” His eyes changed. All Theo’s knowledge, all his know-how about software and business and sex, it all came back. But it was tinged, marred.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “LaBree says she doesn’t know.”

  “How does LaBree know Brad’s gone anywhere?” I asked Theo.

  “Brad didn’t show up for a few things they had planned. He was texting like he was in town, saying they should meet here or there. But he never showed.” I noticed he was calling his father by his first name again. “LaBree called his housekeeper, who comes once a week, and she said she didn’t know where he was. But last time she’d seen him he asked her where his passport was. We went to his house and she could tell he hadn’t been there in a few days.”

  “And the passport?”

  “Gone.”

  Just saying that word made his eyes seem more deeply tinged with something dark, fearful. “I wish Eric were here. He knew Brad better than me in a lot of ways.”

  Theo started rambling about how well Eric had known Brad. Finally I put a hand up to stop him.

  “Think,” I said. I had decided it was time to take charge. I’d been mostly sitting back, trying to let my presence support Theo, thinking this was one of those times people have to process and figure out by themselves. But Theo wasn’t doing it. He couldn’t seem to do anything but circle around in his head. The situation had, I realized, shifted into one where he needed help. Badly.

  I thought of Q. When he needed my help, he would say something like, Give me some of your fiery redheaded decisiveness.

  I gave Theo my army-general stare, the one that had served me well in many a deposition where you needed to get people to think, to deliver information, even information they weren’t consciously aware they possessed. “Think,” I said again. Then I let more words come. “What would Eric say about where your dad is? Instead of wishing Eric were here, put yourself in his head.”

  Theo nodded, nodded again, took a breath, the vacant tinge in his eyes lessening. “He’d say that Brad has probably gone to wherever the money was.”

  “But the money is gone. Your company is penniless.”

  But Theo’s eyes were clearing, looking again like someone who knew things, many things.

  “Foreign trust?” I said.

  “Yeah. And I know where he is.” He looked at me. “Will you help me leave town?”

  Before I had time to answer, Theo’s phone rang. He pulled it quickly from his pocket, looking at the screen, his eyes going even wider than before. “Eric.” He looked up at me. “Or what if it’s not Eric? What if it’s someone calling from his phone.”

  The second half of that question was clear. What if someone’s calling to tell me he’s dead?

  “Answer it,” I said. “Face whatever it is.”

  56

  “You sound like a blues singer,” Theo told his partner.

  As we stood next to Eric’s hospital bed, I put my hand on his lower back. Theo was trying to be funny, I knew. Because he didn’t want to say the truth, which was, You sound like an old man. You sound like you’re almost dead.

  “Right?” Eric said, his voice barely making out that syllable. “But a blues singer like Clapton? Not like…” He coughed then, hard, and each cough sounded like a pained bark, like knives were incising his throat with every one. The truth was close enough, we had learned from Eric’s mom. He’d been intubated, a large tube placed down his trachea to help ventilate his lungs while he was in the induced coma.

  In the hallway outside Eric’s room, she’d shown us photos of Eric over the past week, white tape over his eyes, that tube taped to his mouth.

  “He looks dead,” Theo had allowed himself to say then.

  Eric’s mother closed her eyes at that. “He was,” she said. “In a way.”

  Tears popped into Theo’s eyes. “Why did he do that to himself?”

  His mom explained that he had never been a guy to take medications easily, but he always stockpiled meds he got from various dental surgeries and flus in case he really needed them.

  Theo had allowed himself a small laugh at that. “Sounds like Eric.” Theo told Eric’s mom then about their fight at our place, the night before he tried to die. “Did I drive him to this?”

  He looked at me, and it was as if he were challenging me to stay for the answer, no matter what it was. He knew I’d wondered the same thing about him and about myself.

  She was silent. “You are boys.” She smiled. “Men.” The smile left. “And men fight. Don’t do that to yourself. No one made him do this. I have to tell myself this all the time, too.”

  She veered from the topic then, and she told him how removing the tube after Eric woke up had caused a laceration and now an infection. He would have to be on IV antibiotics and remain in the hospital for some time.

  She stopped talking and her eyes asked the question she couldn’t help asking again. Why? Why did this happen?

  “I’ll ask,” Theo said.

  And then we’d gone into the room.

  “Yeah, Clapton,” Theo said now.

  Eric hacked. And coughed. It wouldn’t stop. His mom came in with a nurse, both looking concerned, but Eric barked out, “I’m fine.” And although he didn’t sound fine, not at all, they left the room.

&nb
sp; After a long minute, Eric’s hacking stopped. Then he began trying to operate the bed, apparently to raise it up, but the sound of a motor kept starting and the bed would move minutely then stop. Theo hurried over and looked at the remote for the bed. “It’s on lock,” he said, pointing this out to Eric. He unlocked the bed, raised it a few inches. “Good?” he asked.

  “More,” Eric said, a rasp of a word.

  When he was finally at a decent incline, Theo sat next to him on the bed.

  I made a small gesture to Theo. Want me to leave?

  He shook his head.

  He and Eric looked at each other, eye to eye. Theo asked him. “Why?”

  Eric’s head fell against the back of the bed. “They scared the shit out of me,” Eric croaked.

  “The Feds,” Theo said.

  “Yeah. They said it was simple. HeadFirst owed all the VC people.”

  “Venture Capital,” I said.

  He nodded. “All the initial investors in the business. Our money dried up. We couldn’t pay our bills.”

  “You knew all this?” Theo asked. “Before I moved out of my house and applied for a mortgage?”

  That caused Eric to begin hacking again. The answer was clear though—yes. “They told me someone was going down for it, and if I didn’t help them it would be me. I assumed they meant Brad. It almost killed me when they arrested you.” More coughing. “They told me not to talk to you after it got started.”

  “And so then you almost killed yourself,” Theo said.

  “I wanted to so bad,” Eric said. I wasn’t sure if he meant he had wanted badly to talk about things or if he was referring to the statement about killing himself.

  “The Cortaderos,” Theo said. “What do they have to do with us?” He told him that they had pulled their work from Bristol & Associates as long as the firm represented Theo.

  Eric shook his head. “No idea. Really, man. No clue. What does Brad say?”

  Those four words—what does Brad say?—made Theo stand, and his face filled with a hard look of hatred. “I don’t know. But it’s time to find him and find some answers.”

  57

  “I feel so terrible about Kim,” Maggie said, after I told her about the tape, about the guy entering my condo building.

  “I know. Me, too.” I reached across the table at Lou Mitchell’s and touched Maggie’s belly. I couldn’t stop thinking, My best friend is having a baby! It was the closest I’d ever come to pregnancy, and I was fascinated.

  “When you told me about Kim, I got this feeling that we were all going to be friends,” Maggie said.

  “Me, too,” I said again. “At least Eric is awake now. And he’s going to be okay.”

  We both breathed, fell silent.

  Maggie looked down. “I know I’m not supposed to be able to feel anything yet, but I swear I felt her move.”

  “You think it’s a her?”

  “There are so many hers in my family,” Maggie pointed out. “I guess I’m just used to them.”

  I looked up at her. “You’re going to make a great mom, Maggie Bristol.”

  “Really? You told me that before, and I’ve been thinking about it. I’m starting to get a little scared.”

  “You’ve been taking care of me—”

  “And you me…” she said.

  “For years.” I completed the sentence.

  “Oh, Mags,” I said, struck again by the enormity of what Maggie was about to do, the act of creation.

  I leaned farther forward and gave her a quick hug.

  We talked about all things baby then—onesies and car seats and breast pumps and all-terrain strollers versus prams.

  I sat back on the upholstered booth, talking more. Around us, the diner was the same as it was in the 1950s—Formica and coatracks abounded.

  “Enough about my eggo being preggo,” Maggie said. “Tell me about you.”

  “Well, now that you mention it, I had a couple of favors to ask.”

  “Shoot,” Maggie said. “Wait, hold on.” She waved at the waitress, waved her coffee cup at her and said, “Decaf, please,” with a defeatist-sounding voice, then added plaintively, “And bacon, please.” She looked back at me. “I want bacon all the time. I go from the old-style slabs to Oscar Mayer to turkey bacon.”

  “I’m not a vegetarian, but that’s a little ick.”

  “I know, I know.” She nodded at me to continue as the waitress filled her coffee cup.

  I took a sip of my green tea. “I need a few days off work.”

  “Izzy, you’ve had a lot going on. Until the cops can identify that guy entering your apartment, I say get the hell out of Dodge. If you want a few days or a few weeks, take ’em.”

  “I’ll take work with me. I have two briefs to write, but I’ve got all the research done.”

  “You’re a professional, Iz. I know you’ll do your job. You don’t have to ask me.”

  “You are technically my boss,” I reminded her.

  “Technically.”

  “And you are technically the lead attorney on Theo’s case. So here’s favor number two.” I put the tea down. Took a breath. “I need you to get Theo back in front of the judge. I want you to talk them into letting Theo leave the country. To get evidence on his own case.”

  “They’ll never do it.”

  “Will you ask?”

  Maggie’s faced pursed. “They’d need him to post a significant bond. Like someone’s house. That they own outright. And they have to be willing to lose it if he doesn’t return.”

  I called Theo and told him that. When we were done, I turned back to Maggie. “His mom owns her place outright. He says she’ll do anything for him. She’ll put it up for collateral.”

  “Okay, then I’ll try,” Maggie said. “And, Iz, you understand you have to get ready for that possibility.”

  “What possibility?”

  “That he might not return.”

  I paused. “I’m going with him.”

  58

  “And so, Your Honor,” Maggie said to Judge Diana Sharpe, “we request a change of the conditions of bond.”

  Theodore Jameson, she’d told the court, had reason to believe that his father had left the country to deal with some business associates. He had reason to believe that he alone could reach his father abroad and he alone could convince his father to tell the truth. In short, Mr. Jameson could, and should, be allowed to collect evidence on his own case. Theodore Jameson vehemently denied all charges in the complaint against him, and in order to be able to prove his defense, he needed to see his father in person and determine the entire situation behind the investors and the money that had been put into the company initially by venture capitalists.

  As Maggie summed up her argument, Theo and I stood, unmoving, to Maggie’s left, all of us readying ourselves for a knockdown argument.

  But then Anish, the Indian prosecutor, spoke. “We would consider, Your Honor.”

  Maggie and I were both so shocked, neither of us said anything right away.

  “We would, of course, require bond.”

  Maggie jumped to it, produced a quit claim deed for Anna Jameson’s home.

  “And Mr. Jameson will be required to agree that anything he does and says during said travel abroad can and will be used against him, and that he recognizes that additional charges such as racketeering may be levied against him upon his return.”

  “Judge, it sounds like counsel is advocating an agreement to a waiver of constitutional rights, which I cannot agree to. But I’d like one moment to confer with my client.” She turned to Theo and I, motioned us to lean in. “You guys have any idea why they’re giving in so quick?”

  Theo and I shook our heads.

  “Hmph,” Maggie said, thinking. She stood straight again. “Your Honor, my client will consider the agreement counsel refers to, but we’d like an accounting now of the charges the government is suggesting.”

  “We couldn’t possibly be specific, Your Honor. Federal Rule Sixtee
n is very limited as to what the government is required to provide a defendant. But suffice to say that the charges will be similar. And perhaps other defendants will be named.”

  Maggie swung her head to look at her opposing counsel. “Other defendants?” She squared her shoulders back to the judge. “This is the first time there has been mention of other defendants. We would argue that this court be apprised of this.”

  The judge put her hands together, looked at Anish. “I would like to know more, as well. Counsel? What are you referring to?”

  Anish backtracked. “Your Honor,” he added, “I was hasty in my words. As always, we keep our eyes open for other avenues, should they come to light.”

  “But they haven’t come to light?” Judge Sharpe said. “Is that what you’re saying, Counsel?”

  “Your Honor,” Anish said, “I’d like to point out that a woman was murdered in the apartment of the defendant last week.”

  That drew a raise of the judge’s eyebrows.

  “Objection!” Maggie said, although since we weren’t in a trial, there was really nothing to which she could technically object. “Mr. Jameson’s neighbor died last week, but the police have never indicated Mr. Jameson is involved in any way. I’d be happy to get the superintendent on the stand right now to testify to the same.”

  I raised my eyebrows, deeply impressed and grateful. The newly named superintendent of the Chicago police was a dear friend of Martin Bristol. There had already been talk at the firm about not dialing out his name or getting him involved in the firm business unless it was essential, to avoid any accusations of impropriety. But now Maggie was tossing his name in the ring.

  “Your Honor,” she continued, “the government is using my client as a pawn. He is not a flight risk, as evidenced by him coming to the court with this request, and the government cannot be allowed to run roughshod over these cases. We’ve seen them do this before—bringing down regular business people. Once that businessperson’s life is dismantled, and the government has collected what they need for someone they consider to be a bigger fish, they move on with no thought to their actions.”