You Think You Know Me Pretty Well

by David Kessler

  “It’s not so unusual. Guilt and torment often mounts up. Besides, what else could it be?”

  “Maybe something to do with Dorothy?”

  18:26 PDT (02:26 BST, August 15 2007)

  “Where are you going?” asked Juanita.

  Nat realized that she was probably surprised to see him on his way out. On a normal day this wouldn’t have been so unusual. But today was hardly a normal day.

  “I need some fresh air. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He would have said a cigarette break. But she knew that he didn’t smoke.

  As soon as he got outside, he whipped out his cell phone and put in a call to the Finchley Road Medical Centre. A nurse answered.

  “I’d like to talk to Stuart Lloyd please,” said Nat, remembering the name on the letter from the center.

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Nathaniel Anderson. I’m calling from the United States.”

  He regretted using his real name now. He didn’t know who this woman was or what her status was.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Lloyd isn’t here. He’s gone home.”

  “Home?”

  “Yes, it’s half past two in the morning.”

  Nat realized that she was right. He hadn’t thought about that.

  “So … I mean … like when did he leave?”

  “I don’t know. He usually leaves round five thirty or six o’clock.”

  “That’s impossible! He sent a fax to my – He sent a fax less than half an hour ago.”

  “Well not from here. I started my shift half an hour ago and he wasn’t here. At least I don’t think he was. It would have been most unusual for him to be here at this time.”

  “Well it might have been a bit longer than half an hour ago. It was stuck in the memory of our fax. The machine had run out of paper, so it might have been sent before that.”

  “Like I said, I’ve been on a double shift since ten last night and I got here a bit before that and I didn’t see him. I also didn’t see any lights on in the offices or other departments. There’s only one small ward here, the rest is out-patients. I suppose he could have been here though.”

  Nat’s mind was reeling.

  What the hell is going on?

  “Look, I need to speak to him.”

  “He’ll be here tomorrow morning. He usually arrives by eight thirty.”

  “No, you don’t understand: I need to speak to him now.”

  “Like I said, that’s not possible. ”

  “I need his home phone number then.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible, we’re not allowed to give out the home phone numbers of staff.”

  Nat was growing increasingly irritated.

  “Okay, well what about his cell phone number?”

  “His cell phone?”

  “Yeah. His … mobile.”

  “Yes, I do know what a cell phone is,’ she replied testily. ‘But we’re not allowed to give that out either.”

  “Look, damn it, I need to talk to him!”

  “Why now? What’s so urgent?”

  “He sent a fax revealing confidential information about one of your patients!”

  “I’m sure Mr. Lloyd wouldn’t do such a thing – ”

  “Well some one did!”

  “I don’t know anything about that. But if you could tell me your name again, I can leave a note for Mr. Lloyd to let him know you called.”

  “There’s really no need.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, if there’s any problem about that fax – ”

  “There’s no need.”

  18:39 PDT

  “He blamed himself because he was guilty,” the woman said firmly.

  Alex was in the home of the first Mrs. Olsen. Anita Olsen - or Anita Morgan as she now called herself – was a fifty-five-year-old woman with blonde hair, slim and elegant in her appearance. He had recently been “trained” by his secretary to watch people more closely. She told him that to be a good lawyer, he needed a woman’s powers of observation, so when he shook hands with Anita Morgan he looked at her roots expecting them to be dark. They were not. The blonde hair, he concluded, was natural.

  Anita Morgan had agreed to see him at short notice, more out of curiosity than anything else. He had told her who he was and what he was doing and she agreed to meet him at her house. She was neutral on the issue of Clayton Burrow’s guilt, not having followed the case all that closely. But she was in no doubt as to her husband’s responsibility for the death of their son.

  “How do you mean ‘guilty’? In the criminal sense?”

  “Oh no, in the criminal sense it was that drunken lout who swerved across the divider line.”

  “Then…?”

  “It was the way he responded to it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Instead of swerving toward the emergency lane, he swerved left. The other car slammed straight into the passenger side, killing Jimmy instantly. Edgar was more concerned with saving himself than protecting little Jimmy.”

  Anita Olsen sniffled into her handkerchief. He understood her emotions, but the gesture seemed somewhat contrived, a trifle false.

  “Jimmy was in the front?”

  He couldn’t believe that anyone could have put a three-year-old kid in the front passenger seat, even in those days.

  “No, he was in the back, but he was on the right side. I mean, he wasn’t sitting, he was moving round, the way three year olds do.”

  “He wasn’t in a safety seat?”

  “In 1977? Children’s safety seats were an optional extra back then. He wasn’t even wearing a safety belt.”

  For a second the neutral look on her face gave way to a grimace, as if she were about to break down in tears. But she fought them away and regained her composure.

  “Did he have time to think about it? Edgar, I mean. When he swerved?”

  Anita Olsen looked at him coldly.

  “Oh I know what you’re thinking: that it was instinctive … the natural human urge toward self-preservation.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make excuses for him.”

  “No, you’re right. It was instinctive. And he probably didn’t even know which side of the car Jimmy was on. When the back seat was empty, Jimmy was all over the place. You couldn’t keep him still. It’s just the fact that he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. That was Edgar’s responsibility and he should have made sure he was wearing one.”

  Alex looked round the room. In some ways it reminded him of Jonathan’s place. Not that it was a shrine or anything quite as extreme as that. Just that over the mantelpiece there was an ever changing reminder of little Jimmy. It was one of those digital picture frames – a seven-inch one – and it was showing a rotating selection of pictures of Jimmy from baby, through toddler, to the cute dark-haired three year old he was shortly before he died. One could tell from their grainy look that they had been scanned. Some of them showed little Jimmy together with his father or mother. Sometimes both. There were even a few short video snippets, obviously converted from 8mm movie footage.

  Alex wondered if Anita Olsen had put them there for his benefit or if she always had them running through the cycle like that.

  Whatever the reason, it was a moving treatment in every sense of the word. But then the pictures changed and various pictures of girls appeared. Again they were toddlers and young children, but then at last some of them were teenagers. Then a woman in her twenties appeared. For a minute, Alex thought this was one of the daughters. But then he realized that it was in fact Anita herself.

  “May I ask you a personal question?”

  “You can ask. I don’t guarantee an answer.”

  She was smiling. He sensed the nervous tension. As a lawyer he was trained to put people at ease, but he realized that in this case he had succeeded in doing the opposite.

  “Did you have any more children?”

  “Not with Edgar. I had two girls by my next husband.”

 
; “Ah,” he said, grateful for the clarification.

  “When did you break up with Edgar?”

  “About a year after Jimmy died: early 1978.”

  As it cycled back to Jimmy, Alex noticed some footage of the boy playing soccer with a man who was every bit as blond as Anita. He stood up and took a step forward toward the frame.

  “Is that him?” asked Alex. His tone was more puzzled than curious.

  “Who? Edgar?” said Anita. “Yes. Why?”

  “I was just wondering whether he dyed his hair blond to match yours?”

  Anita looked surprised at this.

  “He didn’t dye it. That’s his natural color.”

  “You don’t see many blond Jewish men,” said Alex with a wry smile.

  “Oh Edgar wasn’t Jewish.”

  Alex shot Anita a surprised look.

  “His second wife was, but he wasn’t. I remember he had a kind of fascination with all things Jewish though.”

  “What, you mean like … he believed in those silly Jewish conspiracy theories?”

  Anita smiled.

  “Oh no, nothing quite so dramatic. No, it was more of a fascination that he developed when he was living in New York. He picked up a lot of Jewish expressions and he liked the food. He always used to complain that you can’t find any good kosher delis on the West Coast – at least nothing to beat Richie’s in the Big Apple, he used to say. I think that explains why he became so fascinated by Esther. Apparently she was quite a good cook. But he was of Norwegian origin – like me. That was how we met. There was this club called the ‘Scandinavian Club.’ It was used by rich men to meet beautiful women. But Edgar really was of Norwegian extraction. I think he always thought of himself a bit of a Viking warrior – at least in his business activities.”

  Alex walked toward the frame and stared at the images.

  “A Viking who was fascinated by Jews,” said Alex with a wry smile as he continued to stare at the frame. “Fascinating.”

  “Why, what’s the matter?”

  “I was just thinking about something in biology – something called ... Mendel’s Law.”

  18:44 PDT

  Juanita was irritated by the fact that Nat was taking such a long break. She knew that she had been a long time too, but that was different. She had gone out to get sandwiches for both of them. He had gone just because he felt like a break.

  Admittedly, at the moment she was just marking time, waiting for some of these lawyers or the medical center to get back to them. But it was as if he wasn’t pulling his weight.

  But she knew that this was unfair. He had done a lot so far. It was just that it was lonely with Alex out of the office. It was silly, she knew. But the thought of a man’s life hanging in the balance and his fate in their hands was a strain that she would have preferred to share than to shoulder alone. It was an awesome responsibility and it frightened her. Juanita had always viewed the law as standing alongside science as the central pillar of support for human civilization: man’s social contract with his brethren to create and maintain a just society. But, for the profession’s practitioners – lawyers, judges, their staff and even jurors – it was an onerous burden to carry.

  As if to emphasize the point, a ringing tone followed by several bleeps and high pitched tones told her that a fax was about to come through. It reminded her of the theme from the original Star Trek series.

  She went over to the machine as the fax was coming through and tried to read it. But it was upside down and she had to wait for it to emerge fully and turn it round to read it, while a second page came through. It was a covering letter for an affidavit of service from the law firm in New York, confirming that the District Court order had been served on the airline company. The covering letter explained that they had served the order on the Chief Operating Officer of the airline; apparently he hadn’t been very happy about it.

  She looked at the next page, the affidavit of service itself. It was a simple one-page affair stating that the order had been duly served at such and such a time on such and such a date. She took it out of the machine and was about to walk back to her desk to staple the pages together when another sheet started coming through. She waited for a second and saw that it was the journal: the automatic printout of the last twenty faxes that they had sent or received. She always filed the journals too, so she waited for it to print out.

  Then she took it and walked back to her desk, glancing at the journal. She noticed that the last item was the fax from the law firm that had just come through, but it was the one just above it that caught her attention. It showed the time as 01:45 and the date as 15-08-2007. That didn’t make any sense. How could it have come in the morning and what on earth was the fifteenth month?

  Then, as she looked at the number – beginning with +44 20 – she realized that this was from England.

  In England they put the day before the month! It’s from August 15!

  But that’s tomorrow…

  She looked at the time it listed. The fax had been sent at 01:45 AM London time. Now it all made sense. England was eight hours ahead of the west coast. She did a quick mental calculation and worked out that this was 5:45 pm Pacific Daylight Time.

  But that didn’t make sense either. She was in the office at that time and she would have heard if a fax had come through. Then she remembered that she had heard a fax come through. But she had been too busy to look at it … the machine must have run out of paper!

  A fax had been sent over from England! But where was it?

  Before she could gather her wits, the front door swung open and Nat walked in, looking pleased with himself.

  “Any news?” he asked.

  18:46 PDT

  “I don’t understand,” said Anita Morgan.

  “It’s a biological law to do with the inheritance of physical characteristics. Things like eye color and hair color are all controlled by dominant and recessive genes. I don’t remember much of my high school biology, but I do remember that dark is dominant and blond us recessive. That means that blond parents must have two recessive blond genes. And that means that blond parents can’t have a dark-haired child. You must have faced a lot of comments over that.”

  He was being deliberately offensive in the way he chose to phrase it. With a client on death row and the clock ticking away, he needed answers – fast. Ordinarily, offending a woman was the last thing he would do. But in the present circumstances it was a small price to pay for the answers that he so urgently needed.

  “We didn’t actually. The people we associate with are too well-bred to make such comments. But you’re right in your insinuation. Little Jimmy was not Edgar’s son.”

  Although he had already figured it out for himself, Alex’s mind was reeling.

  “So the son for whom he yearned … the son whose death he mourned and felt guilty over … wasn’t even his son?”

  “That’s right. Rather ironic really.”

  “And he never guessed?”

  “Oh he knew.”

  “How did he feel about it?”

  “I … I’m not sure. I think he understood … in a way. I did it for him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You see … As you said, Edgar always wanted a son. But he was sterile. We both had ourselves tested at a clinic and I – ”

  “Clinic?”

  Alex held his breath.

  “Yes, a fertility clinic. Why?”

  “Where was this clinic?”

  “I don’t remember. Los Angeles, I think.”

  He exhaled again.

  “So it was definitely in the United States?”

  “Yes, in California. I think it was LA.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please continue.”

  “Well anyway. I got my results and it said I was okay. No problems of any kind. I never got to see his results and he brushed me off when I raised the issue. Basically, he was in denial.”

  “So what exactly was it that you d
id for him? Artificial insemination with a donor?”

  “Er no, it was rather more direct than that. You see Edgar was too stubborn to admit his … er … little problem. But I wanted children and I knew that he did too. So I had an affair with a mutual friend.”

  18:49 PDT

  Juanita was sitting at her desk, trying to remain calm while Nat hovered round.

  Had Nat taken the fax? Destroyed it? What did it contain?

  She debated whether to ask him about it, but she knew that she couldn’t. If he was up to something, anything she asked would merely alert him to the fact that she was on to him. With Alex out of the office, she didn’t like that idea.

  She had never really felt comfortable with Nat. There was something about him that put her in a continuous state of unease. She had tried to mask her own feelings with humor, sometimes even flirting with him. That was just a defense mechanism that she had adopted precisely because she did feel so uncomfortable in his presence.

  The phone rang.

  “Alex Sedaka’s office.”

  “Hi, it’s Lee Kelly here.”

  Lee was a fifty-five-year-old career burglar and by all accounts a good one. Considering how prolific he was, he got arrested surprisingly little.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Kelly?”

  “I’m calling from the Park Police Station on Waller Street. I’ve been busted and I need Alex to rep me at the arraignment.”

  “Mr. Sedaka isn’t here at the moment, I’m afraid, and he won’t be available all day.”

  “But I need him.”

  “Mr. Kelly, I don’t mean to be rude but there’s no way Mr. Sedaka can see you today. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news but we have a client on death row and unless we can get a stay of execution he’s going to be fried at one minute past midnight. So I think you can understand that right now you’re very low on our list of priorities.”

  “Maybe he can fit me in? I mean, it’s only a few minutes in court.”

  “I’ll pass it on to him, Mr. Kelly. But I strongly advise you to use one of those local attorneys at the arraignment court to get you bail and then Alex can take over as attorney of record when he’s not under so much pressure.”