Compelling Evidence

by Steve Martini

  “What stung him more,” I tell Harry, “was the fact that she was doing it with someone he trusted, under his nose. When he found out, Ben called me in, did a lot of shouting. When he’d vented his spleen, I left, went back to my office, and started packing boxes.” I take a drink. “In the end, I guess you could say I fell on my own sword.”

  Harry laughs.

  I look at him and catch the unintended pun.

  “No doubt about it,” he says. “Should’ve kept it sheathed.”

  “Next time I’ll put a knot in it.”

  “Don’t look now, but it’s time for penance.” Harry’s looking up into the beveled glass mirror over the bar. Ben’s emerged from Wong’s office across the room. Suddenly there’s a knot in my stomach. Potter’s surveying the bar. He sees me, hesitates long enough to tug a little, remove a few of the wrinkles from his sweater vest, then heads our way. The familiar stride, shoulders rounded, knees and elbows akimbo, head down, like he’s leading a marching band across the floor. One of the summer interns coined the classic description of Ben’s expression—“Jewish cool,” the kid called it. Though Potter is as Gentile as Pontius Pilate, the description fit. His look, wrinkles around the jaw and neck, head perpetually cocked to the side, is a strange mixture seeming to verge on and vary between annoyance and boredom. There was a lot of Walter Matthau in the face and manner, a certain curmudgeonly charisma.

  “This may be a little unpleasant,” I warn Harry.

  “I just hope he ain’t packin’,” Harry slips a hand into his coat pocket, makes like a pistol, and winks at me. “It’s OK,” he says. “I’ll be all right. I have a rule. Never come between old friends.” Harry leans palpably, away from me. He’s amused by this.

  “Paul.” My name is spoken softly. Ben has a deep, slow cadence to his voice. I let it break over my back like a wave before I turn. It’s all very casual, like a surprise.

  “Ben.” I smile and extend a hand. I am almost stunned when he takes it. Potter’s expression is an enigma. The sort of smile an insect might expect when examined under a microscope. There’s more curiosity here than warmth.

  I finish the social chores, introductions between Harry and Ben. There’s a quick shake, and Harry’s dismissed as Potter returns his attentions to me. There are a dozen sets of eyes on us from nearby tables. I feel them like lasers probing my skin.

  “Been a while,” he says. ‘After all the years we’ve known each other, thought it was time we talked. Your departure was”—he searches for the right choice of words—“a little abrupt.” Ben is notoriously understated, in his attire and in this case his description of my wholesale flight from the firm. He smiles.

  “Can I get you a drink?” I ask him.

  “Thought we might do that in Jay’s office while we talk.” Potter turns again to Harry. “You don’t mind if I take Paul away for a few minutes?”

  “Oh no. No. Keep him as long as you like.” There’s a knavish grin on Harry’s face, like he’s warning me—telling me to watch Potter’s hands. I grab my glass. Ben turns toward the office. I begin to follow, do a quick pirouette and give a “what-ya-gonna-do” kind of shrug in Harry’s direction. As I turn, Harry’s holding up a slip of paper. Suddenly I comprehend the expression on his face. While I’m cloistered with Ben in Wong’s office, Harry will be drinking on my open bar tab.

  Wong’s office, it seems, is an appropriate setting for my meeting with Ben. It has the hushed earthy tones, the muted indirect light of a tony funeral parlor. An imposing bronze Buddha, larger than life, sits in an alcove behind Wong’s antique desk. Illuminated from the floor, it casts an ominous shadow across the ceiling like some corpulent genie awaiting the order of its liberator.

  Ben leads me to another area of the room, toward two small sofas facing each other, separated by a clear glass pedestal coffee table. He takes a seat on one sofa and gestures toward the other.

  “Sit down.” His tone has lost the veneer of polite finish now that we’re alone.

  He looks at me silently, soulfully, his lips drawn tight, a mail slot to his inner thoughts. I sink into the sofa and wait for his words to bury me, in wisdom—or wrath.

  “Before I forget,” he says, ‘what do you want to drink?’ He picks up a phone on a sofa-side table.

  “Oh, the same. Scotch over,” I say. “This one’s on me.”

  “Nonsense. This is my party;” He says it without humor or much grace, then places the order. Ben’s not drinking tonight. This is no social outing.

  We pass several seconds in idle chatter. He talks about changes at the firm since I left. He asks me how I like the solo practice. He’s killing time, getting my drink, the final interruption out of the way.

  I tell him honestly that it’s a challenge. He admits that he made a mistake in hiring me. I can’t tell whether he intends an insult by this. He hesitates for a moment, then explains himself—that born leaders don’t fit the corporate mold, that I was destined for bigger things than hitching my wagon to someone else’s star.

  It’s awkward, I conclude, being patronized by someone I admire.

  The waiter comes in with my drink, and Potter tells him to put it on his tab.

  There’s a glaze of light off the flat horn-rim lenses Ben is wearing. These are new. I can’t see his eyes clearly. The familiar half-frame cheaters for reading are in his sweater pocket. I can see them sticking out.

  “I’ve done a lot of thinking during the past several months,” he says.

  “That’s two of us. What can I …”

  He holds up a hand, cuts me off. Ben’s not looking for confessions.

  “What’s done is done,” he says. ‘We can’t change it. We can only diminish ourselves by wallowing in past mistakes. I think I know you well enough,” he says. “I think I know how you feel.”

  He leaves no opening for me to respond but rises from the sofa and walks toward the desk.

  “In the end the ancients—the Greeks—always said it best. There really is no witness so terrible, no accuser so powerful as the conscience that dwells in each of us.”

  He’s speaking now almost to himself, his back to me as he puts distance between us, as if absolution is to be my own private, solitary affair.

  I sit silent on the couch, my gaze cast down at the ice floating in my drink.

  “What’s said here, tonight, between us, is an end of it,” he says. “We have an understanding?”

  “Sure,” I say. An easy concession. I have no desire to stoke these coals. What is happening here is necessary if I am ever to be able to look Ben in the eye again.

  “We will never speak of this thing again, then.”

  I nod. He’s not looking at me.

  Then, as he turns slowly in my direction, graceful in his gestures, I notice anew mat Ben Potter is an imposing presence—a counterpoint to Buddha.

  “I can’t begin to describe the pain,” he says, “the hurt that the two of you have caused me.” His voice is not raised in anger. It is as if he’s reasoning, striving to spread the understanding of this thing that has come between us, that has caused his anguish.

  He doesn’t understand this faithlessness, from Talia or from me. He begins to move away from the desk, back toward me. He speaks of his contentment during the first years of marriage, the gratification bred of illusions that youth is a state of mind, that love and fidelity are not rooted in passion. This is the Ben Potter I know. The words tripping off his tongue. The consummate advocate making a case for damages. “I stand here tonight,”’ he says, “stripped of such fantasies.” He is suddenly silent, a pause for effect. “This thing has taught me mat much. Maybe I should be grateful.”

  He’s silent again. Absorbed in thought.

  I sit clinking the ice in my glass and take a drink.

  “I want to ask you one question,” he says, ‘and I’d like a truthful answer. Tell me. Who made the first move? You or her?”

  I’m nonplussed by the sudden frontal assault. I nearly soil Wong’s couch wit
h scotch.

  I flood my face with sincerity. “No,” I say. ‘Something like this—what happened between us wasn’t planned, Ben. This wasn’t some conspiracy. We didn’t sit down and plot who would initiate the first act. It just happened. We found ourselves together. One thing led to another and it happened.” I begin to sound like an echo, but it’s all I can say. “To our—to my everlasting discredit—it just happened.”

  He smiles and nods, a gesture of concession.

  “The diplomat,” he says. “A gentleman’s response. It’s what I would expect.” He says it like he’s already formed an opinion on the subject, that my response has confirmed some previously held suspicion on the question of who was most at fault. It’s a disease mat afflicts us from law school, the lawyer’s penchant to fix blame, like confession and absolution.

  “I tell you, Ben, honestly, as truthfully as I can, it happened—it just happened.” I prime my tone with sincerity. For me at least, a valued relationship hangs in the balance.

  “If I could, you must believe, I would go back and undo it, remove the hurt, remove myself from the temptation.” For a moment I weigh whether to reveal that it was his own deed, Ben’s own assignment of my services to the legal spadework on Talia’s real estate ventures that provided the opportunity. Motive was, in the final analysis, a matter of carnal chemistry. But I keep this thought to myself.

  “I know you would,” he says, “go back and change it if you could.” He smiles. It is, at last, a measure of forgiveness.

  He’s weary and showing it. “Enough,” he says. “There isn’t any sense beating it. We won’t speak of it again.”

  He lifts the telephone receiver and orders a drink.

  It’s over as quickly as that. My sigh is almost palpable, like the perspiration on my forehead. As Ben looks away, I use my cocktail napkin to wipe it. I cannot believe that it is over, that in the brief time in this room with him, with the few words that have passed between us, I am now back on speaking terms with this man who had been my mentor. Perhaps Ben is in a better mood than I had guessed.

  He sets the receiver in the cradle and drops one cheek of his buttocks on the corner of the desk, stretching his arms over his head he sucks his lungs full of air. “Life’s a juggernaut,” he says. “No time to think. Lately, it’s like I’m caught in a time warp.”

  He wants to talk, it seems, of happier thoughts.

  “The nomination?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh.” He furrows his forehead and smiles. It’s clearly pleasant to be fatigued in pursuit of such a cause.

  He winks at me, a little secret. “I took the ‘red eye’ to Washington two nights ago,” he says. “The final cut.” He’s talking about the last round of contenders for the high court. From their ranks will come the next Supreme Court justice of the United States. He leaves me hanging, waiting for the final word, and instead regales me with descriptions of the White House, the Lincoln Study, “intimate—impressive,” he says. His gaze turns crystalline, distant. He’s using his hands to gesture now. “I found myself standing next to the desk where Lincoln freed a million slaves.” He shakes his head. “I swear,” he says, “you could feel his presence in that place, his spirit move.”

  In this vignette I find that there is something that truly moves Ben Potter—the sense of occupying space once held by the Emancipator. To gravitate perceptibly closer to the circle of history, the thought that he himself may one day belong, at least in some measure, to the ages. These are notions too lofty, dream-inspired like so much pixie dust, they have never entered my own mind.

  “I take it it went well?”

  He makes a face, like “Read my mind.”

  For me, knowing Ben as I do, it’s not hard. I know in that instant, in the twinkle of his eye, that this city is about to lose one lawyer. “Congratulations, Ben.” I raise my glass.

  Struggle as he does, Potter can’t contain his smile. “Thank you.” His tone is hushed, almost reverent. “Of course, you’ll keep it to yourself.”

  “Absolutely.”

  ‘It wouldn’t do to have it splashed all over the wires before the President can make the announcement. They didn’t want me to return home—wanted to make the announcement from Washington while I was there. I knew what would happen,” he says. ‘I’d never leave the trail of reporters behind. Senate investigators looking for dirt in the confirmation hearings, the press.” He shakes his head vigorously. “Told them I had some business to complete before telling the world. A few personal tilings. Getting out of there was like pulling teeth.”

  I wonder whether this business, these “personal things,” involve Talia.

  “The price of fame.” I commiserate with him.

  “The world has a penchant for leaks,” he says. “They gave me forty-eight hours and swore me to a blood oath of silence. I take the “red eye’ back tomorrow night.”

  As the waiter comes in with his drink, my mind is lost in thought. It’s a measure of Ben’s tolerance, his liberal spirit, that in this my hour of forgiveness he has seen fit to share the security of his future with me. The waiter leaves.

  Potter makes small talk. He’s not finished. There’s something more he wants to discuss, but he’s taking his time getting there.

  He jokes, about the pending senate confirmation hearings, about all the rumors—stories of a political litmus test for the court.

  “It’s all crap,” he says. ‘Don’t you believe any of it. You go back there, the President shakes your hand, they give you some-tiling to drink, and while you’re standing on this chair being sized for your robe, the tailor asks you if life begins with conception.”

  We laugh. Like much of Ben’s humor, I can never be certain how large the kernel of truth is in this story.

  The smile fades from his face. “There is one more thing,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “A favor,” he says. “Something you can do for me.”

  This is Ben at his best, wheeling and dealing, something that he wants from me at a time when he knows I cannot say no.

  “It’s the law school, something that I started before all of this came up, before I went back to Washington.” There’s a lot of gesturing with his hands here, posturing and waving his drink in little circles.

  “It’s nothing much,” he says. “A trust fund that requires a new administrator.”

  I look at him, like ‘What does this have to do with me?’

  “It’s set up in the name of Sharon Cooper,” he says.

  Suddenly I understand.

  Sharon Cooper was twenty-six when she died, killed in an automobile accident this summer. A second-year law student, she was working with the firm at the time, after I’d left. I had landed her a part-time job with P&S when I was still in favor. This was a courtesy to her father. George Cooper is the county’s medical examiner. We’ve been thick, Coop and I, since my days with the DA.

  “The trust fund was something to remember Sharon,” he says. “Friends set it up at the law school and asked me if I would administer it. At the time it sounded good. But with all of this …” Ben shrugs his shoulders and I realize his dilemma. From three thousand miles away and with a full plate of cases on the high court, the last thing he needs are the minutiae of a trust fund.

  Coop brought Sharon’s personal papers to my office the day after her death. He busied himself in the details of arranging her affairs, her funeral, her estate, anything that would serve to avoid the inevitable grieving. When he finally fell into that pit, George Cooper disappeared from the world of normal men for more than a month.

  But on the day after Sharon died he sat across from me at my desk, entirely composed, a stack of documents carefully sorted and paper-clipped—insurance, taxes, stocks, a considerable portfolio for a young single woman. These were inherited from Sharon’s mother, who had died of cancer the year before. Within twenty-four months Coop had lost both wife and child. In his state of grief, to George Cooper a lawyer was a lawyer, equally adept in ad
ministering the property of the dead as in fending off a long term in the joint. So he came to a friend.

  Unable to say no, I took Coop’s papers, opened a file, and blundered into the probate courts.

  Ben looks at me from across the room in a kind of reverie now. “An endowment, a trust, has been established at the law school in Sharon’s name. A number of people who knew her have contributed,” he says. “It’s a sizable trust, but we need a trustee. I thought of you.”

  This has become an avocation with Ben. A multitude of scholarships and private grants have been spawned under his guiding hand in the last few years, two for deceased partners of the firm, several others for departed wheels in the community. With Ben, it is any excuse to raise money for the law school, his favorite charity. This does not diminish Sharon Cooper, in his eyes or mine, but, his motivations are clear. He will make something positive, even out of the tragic death of this young woman.

  “I’d do it myself,” he says. Ben’s talking about being trustee. “But Washington’s pretty far away. They need someone closer, to confer with the dean on expenditures, to administer the funds in a way she would have approved. You’re the natural,” he says. “Besides, I think her father would want you to do it.” The last is the linchpin of his pitch.

  “What can I say?”

  “You can say yes.”

  I shrug a little gratitude toward Ben for the thought, the confidence that accompanies this offer.

  “Yes.” I sense that a slight wrinkle of embarrassment has crept across my face. “Why not,” I say, like a giddy adolescent being given a prize he never expected.

  “Good!” He smiles broadly. “We should talk again before I leave town, to the up some of the loose ends on this thing. Do you have plans for tomorrow night?”

  “Nothing I can’t rearrange.”

  “Then we’ll meet for a late dinner at The Broiler. What do you say, nine o’clock? We can talk and maybe you can give me a lift out to the airport when we’re finished.”

  “Good,” I say.