The Best Defense

by A. W. Gray

  Sharon frowned and tilted her head as the over-the­shoulder image came on, because she didn’t recognize either of the talking heads who now appeared on Koppel’s monitors. There were two men shown, and Sharon wondered if Koppel’s guests had somehow wandered into the wrong studio. The guy on the left looked familiar, a handsome mid-forties energetic type, and Sharon was wondering where she’d seen him before as Koppel said, “With us tonight we have Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti.”

  The handsome man nodded, smiled, and answered, “Glad to be here, Ted.”

  Jesus Christ and all the angels, Sharon thought, what’s that guy doing on the show? His office isn’t even prosecuting the case. Then the answer dawned on her, as long as the hearing was to be held on his turf, Garcetti was exercising the host team’s right to comment over the networks.

  “And also appearing,” Koppel went on, “we’re privileged to have Darla Cowan’s local L.A. defense counsel, Mr. Preston Trigg. Mr. Trigg, thanks for being with us.” The camera zoomed in on the right-hand monitor.

  And Sharon thought, Who?

  The talking head, a smooth-faced man with short hair, answered. “Good to see you, Ted.”

  Criminy, Sharon thought, it is Preston Trigg. Jacque the hairdresser had gone ballistic with the clippers, and Trigg’s new do no more resembled Brad Pitt’s haircut in Seven than Sharon’s own hair. The sides of Trigg’s head were practically bald, pinkish skin showing through, the hair on top stuck up like porcupine quills. Shaving the mustache hadn’t helped; the absence of facial hair called attention to the fact that Trigg was buck-toothed. God, Sharon thought, he looks like Bucky Beaver.

  “First I’ll ask Mr. Garcetti,” Koppel moderated.

  “This sudden reversal, the calling for a hearing, has this caught the prosecution unawares, or is it something you feel you can deal with?”

  Garcetti assumed a thoughtful pose. “Well, Ted, heh, heh, as you know, we don’t have primary responsibility for this case. This is a Texas prosecutor’s office arguing in a Los Angeles courtroom, of course, so we’re actually not calling the shots here. But I’ll say that such delaying tactics never work in the long run. It’s just not as big a deal as the defense is letting on.”

  “Oh?” Koppel seemed to mull things over. “What’s your response to that line of reasoning, Mr. Trigg?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Ted,” Trigg said, assuming a knowing look, “I believe in playin’ ‘em close to the vest. So I’m not going to tip my hand here, but if the prosecution wants to think I don’t know what I’m doing, that’s all the more to my advantage. I’ll just say I never do anything without my client’s best interest in mind.” He looked into the camera and winked.

  Sharon’s eyes widened in astonishment. She wondered if there was something wrong with her ears. One session with the Hairdresser for the Stars had transformed Preston Trigg, junked auto battery in his reception area and all, into the Bobby Fischer of the courtroom. That’s Hollywood for you, Sharon thought—one day the car wash, the next day the moon. She wondered if there were two lawyers in America who knew less about the case than the current guests on Nightline. Maybe she should leave the room and come back in. Of all the…

  “Can we assume from that,” Koppel chided, “that we’re in for surprises during this hearing?”

  Trigg smirked like a football coach in a pregame interview. “All I’ll say for now, Ted. All I’ll say.”

  The camera angle switched to the standard head-on shot of Koppel behind his desk. He grinned at the audience, a parting smile which conveyed the message that Preston Trigg, in the host’s opinion, was totally full of it. “And with that I’ll have to add that it’s all I can say,” Koppel boomed, “because we’re out of time. Good night. Thanks for tuning in.” Koppel’s image faded from view, and more film clips began.

  Sharon forced Preston Trigg out of her mind and concentrated on the screen, wanting to memorize as best she could the damaging scenes from Darla’s movies aired over the networks. If it came down to an injunction, she needed a list. The closing shots on Nightline, however, were pretty tame, and consisted mainly of news clips of Darla and David Spencer taken during their lovebird period. One showed their arrival at the Oscars; another featured the happy couple tossing a volleyball back and forth on the beach. There was the usual footage of Spencer in Spring of the Comanche, a steely-eyed horseback pose, followed by a clip which Sharon had never seen before. Comanches wearing war paint watched in the background as Darla gave Spencer an affectionate peck on the cheek. Spencer was in frontier garb, and Darla wore slacks and a pullover. Two guys in nineties dress were on the right-hand fringe of the picture, and both looked familiar. Sharon zeroed in the one in the foreground. Her upper lip curled.

  She’d seen the man only once, in a TV studio back in Dallas during Rob Stanley’s promo tour, but she’d never forget the face. Curtis Nussbaum in the flesh, Mr. I-can-use-someone-willing-to-exhibit-some-skin, the genius of all geniuses at dodging child support. Rob had found his agent through Darla’s intervention and David Spencer’s referral. Lucky old Rob, Sharon thought. Nussbaum, in fact, had signed the check which Rob had given her at the restaurant, and which now rested in her handbag. Just before the image dissolved from the screen, Sharon had a glance at the blondish man who stood on Nussbaum’s left in the background.

  She blinked. She sat bolt upright. She stood. “Mr. Gray?”

  The Englishman’s chin bobbed. “Yes, Miss Hays.”

  Sharon’s heart raced. “How many VCR’s are in this house?”

  “Not sure, miss. Everywhere there’s a telly. One in the bedroom where you’re sleeping, another in Miss Melanie’s room … the guest room where Miss Cowan’s been bunking … four or five.”

  Sharon stood away from the couch. Yadaka looked at her as Mrs. Welton straightened her recliner with a thump. Sharon said, “They all have remotes with freeze-frame buttons?”

  “Certainly. Only the latest in equipment here,” Gray said.

  Sharon walked over to the VCR on which Gray had recorded Nightline. She hit the stop switch, the machine clicking to a halt, then depressed the rewind button. The reels whispered and spun. She turned back to Gray. “I’ll need some assistance, Mr. Gray. To set something up, do you think you and Mr. Yadaka could do that for me?”

  By the time Gray and Yadaka had lugged two table­ model TV’s and two VCR’s from other parts of the house and set them up, Sharon had the image on the big-screen exactly as she wanted it. The remote had required some getting used to, and she’d done a lot of fast-forwarding and backing up, but she finally had Darla and David Spencer frozen in time as she’d kissed his cheek on the set of Spring of the Comanche. The warriors sat on horseback in the background, and Curtis Nussbaum and the blondish man stood off to one side.

  As Mrs. Welton watched from the sofa, Sharon pulled two videos from the bookcase and checked their labels. She handed one cassette to Yadaka and the other to Gray. The Englishman had placed one small TV and one VCR on top of the big-screen set, and he now clicked in the tape as Sharon stood by with folded arms. This video contained the eleven p.m. news which had aired just prior to Nightline. She waited patiently as the Englishman fast-forwarded through the Bosnian Serbs, through clips of Bill Clinton making a speech and Paula Jones giving an interview with her lawyers on either side, until he finally reached the portion of the news featuring the Darla Cowan case.

  “Slow down, please,” Sharon said.

  Gray complied, letting the tape run at normal speed through brief clips of Darla answering the judge’s questions, of Sharon stopping the actress in mid­sentence and whispering in her ear. Finally the scene appeared where Sharon and Preston Trigg hustled down the courthouse steps toward the limo. “Slo-mo, Mr. Gray,” Sharon said. “Can we do that?”

  The Englishman thumbed a switch, and the action slowed to a snail’s pace. Sharon watched intently. “Right …
there,” she said. Gray hit another button, and the scene froze to a standstill. Sharon blinked in satisfaction. Gray had stopped the imagine just as Sharon had excuse-me’d her way around the handsome blond man, the one whom she was certain she’d seen before. Sharon backed away and turned. “Now yours, Mr. Yadaka, if you would.”

  The Oriental had positioned his TV set and VCR, one on top of the other, on the floor to one side of the big-screen. Now he squatted on his haunches and rolled the tape. The scenes in this video seemed in the far-distant past—God, Sharon thought, was it only last Friday?—and featured the amateur clips taken in front of Planet Hollywood. There was Darla charging out of the restaurant with Spencer on her heels, the pretty-boy staggering drunkenly as he grabbed her arm and yanked her backward. And then—ta-taa, Sharon thought—there was Supersharon to the rescue, her calves flashing like pistons as she charged into the picture and shoved Spencer down in a jumble of arms and legs. Darla hightailed it for the limo as Sharon stood over the fallen actor, her expression vacant as she looked into the crowd for an instant. “Freeze­ frame, please,” Sharon said softly. Yadaka stopped the action. Sharon said, “Perfect,” and then returned her attention to the big screen.

  She moved up for a close look of the man standing beside Curtis Nussbaum on the movie set. Then she stood on tiptoes and surveyed the courthouse-steps scene, and squinted to look at the handsome blondish guy she’d sidestepped just before her encounter with Jacque the hairdresser. And finally, using a steadying hand on Yadaka’s shoulder for support, she knelt on the floor beside the Oriental. Yadaka’s VCR had caught the over-the-shoulder view, freezing Sharon just as she made eye contact with a man in the crowd in front of Dallas’s Planet Hollywood. The man wore a fringed buckskin jacket and wide-brimmed hat, Crocodile Dundee style. The day after the murder Sharon had watched this same video in the FBI offices, and had thought at the time that public exposure would embarrass the man in front of friends and family. She narrowed her eyes and looked at his face. Then, just to be certain, she stood for another look at the man on the courthouse steps, and at Curtis Nussbaum’s sidekick on the movie set.

  Air came out of Sharon’s lungs in a sigh of certainty. Absolutely no question. All three pictures. Same freaking guy.

  She looked excitedly around at the security trio, and pointed in turn at each of the TV screens. “Is it possible to get stills of those?” Sharon asked. “To carry around with me?”

  Gray and Yadaka exchanged shrugs. Gray looked to Mrs. Welton. “Olivia?”

  The trim fiftyish woman stood from the couch and appraised the television images with a practiced eye. “Take some .pushing up.”

  Sharon looked helplessly from Gray to Mrs. Welton and back again.

  “It’s a photographic process, mum,” Mrs. Welton said. “You shoot with a low-speed film, pumped through the camera at a higher rate. Eliminates the need for a flash, which would reflect from that glass on the tellies and distort the image. I can do those nicely, I think.”

  Sharon was excited. “When can I have them?”

  Mrs. Welton’s forehead tightened in thought. “I’ve a darkroom. Three different speeds of film. I fancy in the morning early.”

  Sharon looked around the group in respect. “Gee,” she said. “You guys come prepared.”

  Gray chuckled, pleased with himself. “Part of it, miss. In our line of work you learn all sorts of things.”

  18

  The phone blasted Sharon awake at six-thirty in the morning. She blearily read the time, then struggled across the mattress to pick up the receiver. If this was less than a national emergency, someone was in for a dressing-down. She mumbled hello.

  “Morning, Muffin. How’s it going?” Rob’s tone was sickeningly sweet.

  Sharon flopped onto her back. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Not that early. I’ve already had a session with my trainer.”

  “If you don’t let me go back to sleep,” Sharon said, “you are going to have a session with your demon.”

  Rob’s laugh was straight out of Acting 101. “Listen, I was wondering. Mind if I drop the little one off a bit early?”

  “Yes, I do,” Sharon said, then sat bolt upright as she had a flash of panic. “Is Melanie all right?”

  “Oh, great, great. We did the whole nine yards. Ate in the studio cafeteria. I introduced her around.”

  “How nice of you.”

  “But listen, I’ve had this thing come up. An emergency.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I can have her over in a half hour.”

  “No, you can’t. I’ve got a million things to do today, one of which is to put Melanie on a plane home. I’ve had four hours’ sleep. I can’t hack it, Rob, unless you cooperate. Make it around ten.”

  He was suddenly petulant. “We’re having an early shoot.”

  “Tell them to do the perps’ scene first. Where the guys are scared shitless, waiting for you to bounce them off the walls?”

  Rob said, “I have someone to see.”

  Sharon watched the ceiling. “You are getting more limp-wristed by the minute, Rob-oh.”

  There was static-punctuated silence. Rob said, “Don’t start that again, Muffin.”

  “Sharon. And it’s something you started yourself. Thirteen years ago. Hope the brief mind-blowing ecstasy was worth it to you. Not a second before ten, Rob.”

  “Muffin—”

  “Sharon, dammit. Maybe after my press conference you could play one of Ellen’s off-the-wall homosexual hangers-on. Make a lot of jokes about how some guy’s ass happens to look.”

  Rob blew air into the phone. “What about my breakfast meeting with my agent?”

  “Melanie will love to go.” Sharon twisted the phone cord around her index finger. “You’re breakfasting with Curtis Nussbaum?”

  He sighed. “He was my agent last time I checked.”

  “Sure. You met him through Darla. David Spencer referred you.”

  “At least you’ve kept up with my career.”

  “Not through any breathless daily scanning of the trades. Just something Darla mentioned over dinner.” Sharon released the phone cord and touched her hair.

  “I saw Mr. Nussbaum’s picture last night. Listen, Rob. I may ask you to identify someone from a picture for me. Could be a help in Darla’s defense.”

  “What someone is that? I can’t afford to be getting involved in Darla’s criminal charges, if that’s what you’re leading up to.”

  Sharon gritted her teeth. Darla was responsible for Rob’s big break, but he couldn’t afford to be involved. “That’s what friends are for, right?” she said. “You’ll get involved if I ask you to, if it takes a subpoena.” She tightly shut her eyes. When they’d lived together, Rob had had his faults, but she’d considered him a sensitive person. Stardom had reduced him to a typical Hollywood prick, a real me-first kind of guy. “Is Melanie there?” she said.

  “Yeah. The kid’s been wanting to talk to you.”

  “You mean our daughter? Put her on.”

  There was a series of rustling noises, after which Melanie said, “Mom?” Her voice had matured to the point that Sharon could swear she was talking to herself.

  Sharon said, “Did you have a nice time?”

  “I met Jerry Seinfeld.” Melanie was in ecstasy. “My dad knows everybody.”

  “Quite an operator, isn’t he?” Sharon stumbled out of bed and trudged over to the glass doors, carrying the phone. She looked down on foamy surf and an expanse of beach. “Did you get to see any TV news, sweetheart?”

  Melanie’s tone was all at once sad. “Some. Is Miss Cowan going to prison?”

  “Not if I can help it. You’ll know, then, that I’m going to have to stay in California a few more days. You’ve got school, and I’m flying you home today to stay with Mrs. Winston.”

  “D
o I have to? Can’t I be with my father?”

  “Now that you’ve made contact, we can come back occasionally.” Sharon mentally crossed her fingers in the hope she was telling the truth. She didn’t want to resort to blackmail in order to get Rob to see his daughter again, but wouldn’t hesitate in doing so. “I have to be in court by ten, Melanie. I won’t be here when your father drops you off, but I’ll have your things ready. Mrs. Welton will take you to the airport.”

  Melanie hesitated. She’d be trying to think up arguments in her own behalf, but Sharon had intentionally made her tone one of finality. Melanie said, “Is that that?”

  Sharon felt a surge of guilt. “It has to be, sweetheart. I’ll have you packed, okay?” She paused. “I’ll make it up to you. Promise.” Then she hung up and drummed her fingers. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or horrified over Melanie’s ecstasy. Having a relationship with Rob could be good for Melanie, but in the long run it could screw up her life beyond repair. A teenager needed two full-time parents rather than one far-distant dad and one mom who was often too busy for her. Thus far there didn’t seem to be any unusual quirks in Melanie’s personality over her parental situation, but according to Sheila, problems of childhood became full-blown during the teenage years. As Sharon hustled into the bathroom, she took in air in desperate gulps.

  Mrs. Welton had done a corker of a job. Tiny parallel lines ran across the TV screens in the photos, but the stranger’s face in all three images was just as clear as it had appeared in the videotapes. Mrs. Welton had made multiple copies. She sat across the table, looking pleased with herself, as Sharon collated the copies into four sets and talked to Sheila Winston on the phone. “American Flight 1156,” Sharon said, “lands at DFW at two fifty-four your time. She’ll come down with a bout of school-itis in the morning, claiming the trip has drained her energy or something, but don’t let her get away with it. She can’t afford to miss any more.”