Stealing Phin

by Avery Hale

  He put up his hand. “Before you say anything, just hear me out. I made a mistake. Fucked up big time. I don’t want to make excuses, but I think you should know all the facts before you condemn me as the bad guy. The thing is, Marissa threw herself at me when I was feeling really vulnerable. And I…had a weak moment.”

  He swirled his drink around in the glass and looked at me as if he expected me to say it was okay. Just like that.

  It pissed me off. “Seemed like it lasted more than a moment to me,” I said sarcastically.

  He rolled his eyes. “Look, I know what it must’ve looked like, but you need to put it in perspective. I was stressed at work that day. Worst day I ever had, in fact. Turns out one of my associates blabbed to the senior partners about my billing practices. Needless to say, the partners were pissed. Called me unethical. Jim, the prick, didn’t waste any time campaigning for my resignation. Even my disbarment.”

  His expression and tone changed at that point. He seemed worried. Scared, even.

  “Oh, Douglas,” I shook my head, unable to keep from feeling sorry for him. “I was afraid this could happen.”

  His eyes lit with hope. “It makes me happy to hear you way that. It tells me you’re still looking out for me. Because, Phin, I need to ask you for a favor.”

  “What favor?”

  “Jim didn’t waste any time reporting me to the Ethics Committee over this silly nonsense, that rat bastard.” Douglas bared his overly bleached teeth. “He’s drooling over my client book. This is all a plan to sabotage me. It could ruin my career. If I’m disbarred, I’m finished.”

  “Is that going to happen?”

  “The committee is investigating the invoices and billing records. It’s actually been fortunate that you don’t work there anymore and have been out of the country, or else they would’ve gotten to you by now.”

  “It’s fortunate that I lost my job?” I crossed my arms.

  “You know what I mean.” He rolled his eyes again. “Do you have to try to pick at every tiny thing I say and start an argument? Anyway, they’re going to depose you when you get back. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

  I waited for a moment to give him a chance to say the other reason he came. The reason that had to do with wanting me back. But it never came.

  “So, you flew to Costa Rica just to give me a heads up?” I asked dubiously. “Douglas, you told me time and time again that charging the clients the way you instructed was kosher. If that’s true, then what are you so worried about?”

  “I’m worried about my reputation! My career is at stake, don’t you see that? God!” He threw his hands up in frustration. “You sure can be thick sometimes. How many times have I told you that being an attorney is all about appearances. This investigation could leave a mark on my record that could destroy my credibility. You know how small the legal community is—word gets around faster than STDs in a fucking sorority house.” His face was red, and not from the scotch.

  “Jesus, Douglas. Calm down. I still don’t see why you had to come all the way out here just to tell me that. I would’ve found out once I got back. What’s the difference?”

  “It was important for me to talk to you face-to-face because it’s crucial what you say to these people during the deposition. I wanted to go over some of the questions they’ll probably ask you…and what your answers will be.”

  “What is there to go over? I’m not some witness you have to prep. I know you think I’m thick sometimes,” I said, unable to keep my sarcasm at bay, “but I still remember what I did. I only quit less than a week ago.”

  “I know you remember what you did. I need you to forget what you did.”

  “Are you asking me to lie?”

  “I’d never ask you to lie,” he hedged. “I’m asking you to do help me save my career from ruin.”

  “Yes, but by lying. If I lie under oath, that’s perjury! I’d risk any shot I have at getting into law school with that kind of thing on my record.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll take care of you. Believe me, law school isn’t for you. This profession would eat someone like you alive. You can have your old job back. I’ll even give you a big promotion. Head legal assistant. And a raise. You’re overdue for one anyway.”

  I bristled at his less-than-subtle insult. “I never want to work for you again.”

  Douglas looked surprised. Then, he nodded as if he’d figured something out. “Oh, I get it. No need to sweat an awkward office environment. Marissa doesn’t work for me anymore either. She’s a complete airhead. I don’t know why I hired her.”

  It was my turn to snicker. “Probably for the same reason you let her go down on you in your office on our anniversary.”

  “Have you not been listening to a word I’ve been saying?” His face darkened. “I told you it was a mistake, and I said I was sorry. What more do you want?”

  As Douglas’s words replayed in my head, something shifted inside of me. I suddenly became aware that my hand had drifted to the Caro Caro beads around my neck. My voice was quiet when I finally spoke.

  “No, you didn’t,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You never said you were sorry.” I looked him in the eye. “You only said you made a mistake. Even now, you’re not really apologizing for anything. You’re just trying to make amends so I’d agree to lie for you.”

  “That isn’t true. You just don’t understand where I’m coming from.” He gave me a cold look that would’ve normally shut me down. But I didn’t back down this time.

  “Oh, I understand,” I said, keeping my eyes steady on him. “I understand you and where you’re coming from a lot more clearly than I ever did before. You are a selfish man, Douglas. And I can’t believe I never saw just how selfish you could be.”

  “Oh quit being such a martyr!” He pointed a finger at me. “What is it with you women? Always acting like you have to sacrifice yourselves for your men. All I’m asking from you is to do what any reasonable, caring person would do for someone she claims to love.”

  “That reminds me,” I said. “Why didn’t you return my calls? As someone who claims to still love me, you’d think I’d get that courtesy.”

  Douglas seemed taken aback. I’d caught him off-guard by going on the offensive, which I’d never done before since he had always won our arguments. Still, he was quick on his feet.

  “I tried to. But your phone was turned off. When you didn’t respond to my texts, I jumped on a plane to come see you. I think that should more than make up for not returning your calls.”

  “We’ve already established the fact that you didn’t come here to make sure I was okay, or to apologize. You came here to tell me about the deposition,” I argued with uncharacteristic composure and cool. “What if I didn’t want to see you? Did you ever think of that?”

  “I guess I was only thinking of the fact that I needed to talk to you.”

  “You ever notice how most of what you do centers around what you need and what you want? I’ve done a lot of thinking while I’ve been out there. And I think I’ve learned a lot about myself. And a lot about you.”

  Douglas sensed that he was losing ground. “I’m a changed man. You’re going to throw away everything we had because of one mistake? Who do you think you are? Jesus? You’re not perfect either, Phin. Far from it.”

  “One mistake?” I narrowed my eyes at him. My beads grew warmer as I got more heated. What little faith I had in him fell away as quickly as sand through a sieve. “Who is the girl at your house?”

  “What girl?”

  “Once when I called, I heard a girl’s voice pick up right before my calling card ran out. Who was she?”

  He paused for a fraction of a second too long. “My new maid,” the bastard said, looking me straight in the eye. “I finally hired a new one. You know I’ve been meaning to do that.”

  “New maid, huh. Give me your phone.”

  “What for?”


  “Just give it to me.” I held my hand out. “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.”

  Douglas gave me a steely glare as he weighed his options and risks. “Fine,” he said, deciding to play the confidence card. He tossed his cell at me.

  I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I was only listening to the feeling in my gut. I dialed Douglas’s house phone and put it on speaker. Douglas looked decidedly sweaty as it rang. I could tell we were both counting the rings before the answering machine would pick up.

  The call connected. “Dougie! I’ve been waiting all day for you to call. How’s San Francisco?” I recognized it as the same voice I’d heard before.

  “Uh, hi,” I said, snatching the phone up as Douglas reached for it. “This isn’t Douglas. But I found his phone. I was wondering if I could drop it off. Can I leave it with you?”

  “Omigod, Dougie is going to be so upset. He never leaves his phone anywhere. Yes, you can leave it with me. I’ll make sure he gets it back.”

  “Are you his maid?” I looked at Douglas.

  The girl giggled. “No. But you can trust me with it. I’m Marissa—his girlfriend.”

  ***

  Douglas rose from his seat and grabbed the phone from my hand. His face burned red. “Are you through with embarrassing me?” he hissed through his bared teeth.

  “You embarrassed yourself, Douglas. I mean, Dougie.” I stood up to leave, but he grasped my wrist tightly. “You’re hurting me!”

  “I’d sit back down, if I were you.” He spoke in a low and threatening voice.

  “And why should I? I have nothing else to say to you.”

  “I’ll show you why.” Douglas let go of my wrist and reached for the manila envelope. With a sinister grin he pulled out its contents and flipped them onto my side of the table. “There, now,” he said calmly as he sensed that the power was back in his hands. “Why don’t you take your seat again so we can discuss these lovely photos.”

  Numbly, I sat down and stared at the photos fanned out before me. The photos were taken on the night we were at the Aqua Disco. Almost all of them were of me in the arms of the Argentinian.

  “My personal favorite of the bunch is this one here,” Douglas pulled one out from the bottom and set it on top of the pile. It showed me draped over Marco like a limp doll, and Marco’s hand up my dress and in between my legs. “Notice how sharp the focus is despite the dim light. The photographer had talent. The subject matter, though, leaves something to be desired.”

  “What is all this?” I asked.

  “This is what we attorneys call leverage.” Douglas sat back smugly in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table. I’d seen him do this during negotiations. He did that when he felt like he had the upper hand.

  “How did you get these photos?”

  “They were commissioned.”

  “Commissioned?”

  “Yes, it means I paid someone to take them.”

  “Don’t fucking condescend on me, Douglas. Are you saying that what happened the night at the disco—you set the whole thing up?”

  “Set-up sounds so…pedestrian. I prefer the term orchestrated.”

  “You paid Marco to drug me up, molest me in the club, and then rape me?”

  “No, of course not,” he said icily. “I paid him to make you look like a whore and get evidence of it. I left it up to him how he went about it. Gave him creative license, so to speak. One thing you learn fast as a lawyer is you don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”

  “You bastard.” My voice came out as a whisper. “Why did you do this?”

  “Try to keep up, Phin. Like I said, the day before you left for Costa Rica, the Ethic Committee’s investigation began. You are on the top of their list of people to depose, since you were the one handling my billing books.”

  My mind worked quickly to put things together. “So you hired Marco to get leverage against me if I didn’t agree to lie under oath to save your job.” I looked at the man across the table with unbounded disgust. “How could you? How could you pay a man money to violate me that way?”

  “Come off your high-horse, Phin. It’s not like Marco is the only one you hooked up with. I know about your dates with Carlito. You’ll be shocked to know Carlito was very helpful that night. I’d approached him a couple of days ago, but before I could make my proposition, I could sense he didn’t have the balls to do what needed to be done. So, instead, I gave him a shitload of money to do one thing, and one thing only—make sure you were at that club last night by a certain time, and then split town.”

  I stared into the flame of the candle at the center of the table. “Marco wasn’t his cousin. He only knew Carlito’s name because of you. But how did you know about Carlito?”

  Douglas reached into the manila envelope again and flipped another photo onto the table. It was of me and Dez having dinner in La Fortuna with Carlito and Estevan. It was also a photo I’d seen before—on Byron’s laptop.

  “Marco wasn’t the only one I’d hired to take pictures of you during your trip.”

  Although, I’d heard his words and knew exactly who he was referring to, it took me several moments to get over the shock. “Byron was working for you?”

  A sadistic smile spread across Douglas’s face. “You know me, Phin. I only hire the best. Byron Michaels, former F.B.I Agent-turned-private eye, came highly recommended. The guy actually specializes in seducing would-be unfaithful wives, gets proof, and saves men like me a lot in divorce settlements. Can you believe that? I don’t even want to know the story behind the chip on that guy’s shoulder.” He snickered. “All I had to do was feed him a sappy tale and say I needed him to give me proof that my fiancée was the cheating slut I suspected she was.”

  No wonder Byron had accused me of wearing what he’d thought was an engagement ring on the wrong finger. Until I’d set him straight, in his eyes I was just another unfaithful woman looking for a vacation fling. “You paid Byron to have sex with me?”

  “I paid Byron to spy on you and seduce you. Unfortunately, when I wanted him to fuck you and give me photos of it, he resisted. Apparently, his policy is never to sleep with his targets. He was so fucking adamant about it. Said his game is to get indisputable proof that the infidelity would occur, not to bone every bitch who was willing to sleep with him. When I told him that pictures of kisses and hand-holding weren’t going to be enough, I offered to double, then triple his rate to make an exception to his goddamn policy, but he still held out.” He gave me a critical once-over. “You probably just didn’t do it for him. With his looks, he probably bangs super models day-in and day-out. Lucky bastard.”

  I felt my entire body shaking from its core. My mind raced back to the phone call I’d overheard in the parking lot of the Volcano Villas. Was it Douglas on the other end of the line that day? Byron had gotten angry at the person, had declared their “relationship” was over. He could have been ending his business relationship with Douglas because Douglas had wanted him to go too far. But Byron and I had already broken his so-called policy before then. Had he been with me because he’d wanted to or because he was being paid to? I no longer knew whether Byron’s actions toward me had stemmed from his own feelings or whether he was just performing on-the-job duties.

  “Byron would never do that,” I argued, taking a leap of faith. “He wouldn’t break his policy for the likes of you. In fact, I know that he quit working for you days ago. And you’re a pig for asking him to do what you wanted him to do.”

  “That may be, but this pig’s not the one who’s going to squeal when these photos hit the internet.” He smiled cruelly. “Now you’ll know what it’s like to have your reputation ruined by one indiscretion. That is, if you decide to not cooperate.”

  “These pictures don’t show anything except a girl having fun on vacation. Even the ones at the disco don’t really show me doing anything I should be embarrassed about. You’re holding no cards.”

>   “You think these are the only photos I have? Come on, Phin. You know me well enough to know that I save my biggest guns for when it’s time to negotiate the most important terms. You see, right before my Byron reneged on his contract, I demanded that he send me the juiciest stuff he’d captured up to that point. At first he refused, but then he wised up when I let him know I was more than willing to sue him for everything he’s got for breaking his contract. He sent me everything he had. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say the photos depicted you in some very compromising positions.

  “I must say, Phin,” he continued with a malicious grin, “if you’d been half as adventurous with me as you were with Byron, things might’ve lasted longer between us.”

  My blood boiled. I tried to keep my head on straight as my panic and fury rose to nearly debilitating levels. I didn’t want to believe that Byron had either recorded our intimate moments or sent them on to Douglas, but if he hadn’t, then how would Douglas know we’d been together?

  Unless…Douglas was bluffing.

  I’d seen him look this way when he played poker and tried to figure out the cards in the other players’ hands. He was a master at reading people’s faces, just as he was trying to read mine. But this meant he was guessing. Making a bet. It must mean he wasn’t sure of something.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, refusing to give up on the man who had my heart. “Byron wouldn’t have sent you photos of me and him together…” I trailed off as I realized I hadn’t seen all the pictures on Byron’s laptop. Who knew what else was on there? Had he somehow recorded us in the pool that night and sent the pictures to Douglas? Was that the big mistake Byron had alluded to when I went to his villa the next day?

  And then I realized I’d just given myself away to Douglas by confirming that Byron and I had slept together. If we hadn’t, then Douglas couldn’t possibly have anything on me. And this discussion would be moot. But I’d just revealed to him ammunition he might not have known he had. Until now. God, did I really think I could outsmart a lawyer?