by John Decure
“No. I probably shouldn’t.”
“Please.”
I was positioned here to take notes of anything he said that might be … well, notable. But with this guy, the prospects seemed as dim as his personality.
“All right,” he said. “Are you ready for this?”
Yes, jack-off, I wanted to say. We’re ready.
“It’s Rene.”
Therese giggled. “Ooh. Too bad.”
“I know. Believe me.”
“That must’ve been hard for you in school.”
“Please. I used to get my head beaten in every day for having a ‘fairy’ name.”
“Rene Julian,” Therese said like a royal courtesan introducing a king. “It does have a nice ring to it. What’s on the end?”
I could smell the guy’s reluctance. “You don’t wanna know, Nee-co-tine.”
“No, I do,” she said. “I’m an actor.”
“So you said on the phone. How very intriguing.”
“I love good names. They tell me a lot about a character I’m playing … or someone in real life, too. A strong name can convey so much.”
“All right,” he said, sounding it out this way: “what does Ruhnay Julee-onn Da-veed Pasqual convey to you, Miss Nico?”
He was the son of the pornographer, Yves Pasqual. Had to be.
I imagined Therese with her long legs crossed in the booth behind me, displaying some sort of gesture of female domination—say, rolling the tip of her pink tongue over her plump upper lip, or raising her chin like a lioness.
“More than you can know, Rene,” she told him.
The ISO petition hearing against Miles Abernathy was nearly concluded but still curiously lacking something. Certainly not outside attention. He’d retained Roger Turnbull—whom I now realized Abernathy had handpicked to represent Bobby Silver in Silver’s illfated bid for reinstatement. Turnbull is a consummate media masseur, and he’d been stroking the press since the day I filed the fourinch-thick document exposing Abernathy, Alliance Pictures, the investment scams and UPL, and the string of torched former office sites. As a result, the head clerk had moved the hearing down the hall to the largest court department in the state bar court, the one the Review Department uses to hear appellate matters. Reporters from the Times and the Orange County Register were present, as was Deidre Sharpe, the blond amazon from Channel 6. In preparing my petition, I’d had Duke Choi collect a pile of sworn declarations from Mr. Carpio and a host of senior citizens that frequented his Cuban bakery and had been bilked by the annuity scam. They must have chartered a bus from Glendale, because about forty angry-looking white-haired folks made the trip with Carpio and his scowling wife, throwing daggers with their eyes at Abernathy and his counsel every time they uttered a word.
Duke Choi leaned against the courtroom’s back wall, in a shiny navy polyester suit and the same maroon knit tie he always wore, content to blend in with the scenery as much as his cheesy ensemble would permit. The reporters standing near him paid him no notice, but anyone who’d read the petition knew that Duke Choi’s declaration was the cornerstone upon which the entire case was built. I still owed him lunch, but Duke didn’t owe me a thing in return, not anymore.
Skip Greuber didn’t attend. My ISO petition against him would be filed in a few days, but he was already on an administrative leave without pay, courtesy of the chief. About an hour after Julian Pasqual left his interview with Therese Rozypal, aka Nicolette Reed, Greuber used his state bar computer to tap into all the membership-records information he could find on Ms. Reed. The report from the head of the bar’s Computer Services Department hit the chief’s desk before five that afternoon, confirming that Greuber’s involvement with all this carried well beyond that of an unwitting investor. Hewitt was still so burned that a bar manager he himself had brought in could betray the agency this way that he insisted on sitting with me at counsel table for that day’s hearing, something he’d never done before.
Julian Pasqual was a no-show as well. He’d been arrested for arson and second-degree murder by Tamango Perry, the police detective the Glendale City Council had installed as interim chief while it pursued an inquiry into the host of alleged misdeeds perpetrated by newly suspended police chief Nicholas Conforti. Two witnesses had placed Julian Pasqual’s mist green Turbo Saab convertible double-parked in the alley just before the law center had burned, and a search warrant executed upon his Century City apartment had turned up a host of interesting incendiary devices. Pasqual’s attorney also understandably found it difficult to explain away the unsold screenplay his client had foisted on one Nico Reed, aka Therese Rozypal, over a business lunch recently, angling for the young actor’s feedback. The screenplay, entitled “Scorcher,” followed the exploits of a suave-but-deadly arsonist known only by the handle Gastogne. Ham-fisted and overly melodramatic, the script was amateur-hour stuff all the way, redeemed only by a handful of riveting scenes in which the mysterious Gastogne displayed a true insider’s knowledge of fire-starting techniques.
I’d been hoping that the presence of the chief and the Glendale contingent might make Judge Renaldo take the petition against Abernathy that much more seriously. Hewitt felt that Renaldo’s standing as the eldest judicial arbiter on the bench in state bar court presumably made him a decent match for the case as well. But so far I couldn’t get much of a read on how the old judge had reacted to the thirty-eight pages of brief and accompanying attachments I’d filed. Having witnessed firsthand the debacle involving Eugene Podette, his wife Trixie, and the rest of the Von Trapp Family Singers just a few weeks prior, I wasn’t at all confident that Renaldo could resist getting sucked in by the gravitational pull of Roger Turnbull’s spin. Not that Turnbull was saying anything worth listening to beyond the standard my-client-the-misunderstood-martyr crap he’d been force-feeding the TV and press people for days now. I just sensed that the party that would prevail in this battle would be the party that could strike the right emotional chord with the aging jurist.
“This is a cheap political stunt,” Turnbull raved, taking time to turn and level a stare at Chief Hewitt. “And this … so-called prosecutor, Your Honor”—pointing a loaded finger at me—“he’s clearly using this proceeding, this charade, to attempt to lift the cloud of suspicion off himself for playing a role in the fire in that Glendale office.” Looking now at those in the gallery. “A fire that conveniently destroyed files that might have implicated his pal, Mr. Dale Bleeker, a bad-apple lawyer and convict whom the bar had already placed on probation.” The prick obviously had no respect for the dead.
When people feed me bullshit in large doses, eventually I do get full and just can’t swallow any more. When this happens, my ears close off and my mind wanders elsewhere—as in anywhere else. So I sat there, next to Chief Hewitt, watching Roger Turnbull sing the lead in his own little underwater operetta, thinking about the revival-hall sign that Dale Bleeker and I had stared out the window at that first day he came to my office. PRAYER CHANGES THINGS.
I said a tiny prayer for old Judge Renaldo, offering to God my feeble thoughts on the importance of serving the truth.
Do prayers get answered? I won’t know in this lifetime, but I would like to think so, because just then, without warning, the opportunity to turn the whole damn case my way poked its way up out of the chaos and bloomed before my eyes like a rare desert flower. And as so often happens in the practice of law, this brief chance to win it all arose not from any brilliant tactical maneuver on my part, but from a simple mistake committed by the opposition.
“Your Honor,” Miles Abernathy said when Turnbull had finished, “I would like to address the court for a moment myself.”
“Objection,” I said. “That is Mr. Abernathy’s counsel’s role.”
“I agree,” said Renaldo. “Mr. Abernathy, these interim-suspension matters are submitted in the form of briefs with attached exhibits and written declarations. Of course, the lawyers for the parties may make oral argument at the hearing, which your
counsel, Mr. Turnbull, has ably done.”
“But, Your Honor,” Abernathy said, not a wrinkle or crease to be found on his tailored black suit, “I implore you to give me the opportunity to defend myself directly against these spurious charges.”
At this exact moment I saw my opening.
“No objection.”
The judge regarded me with suspicion. “How do you mean?”
“Well, Your Honor,” I said, “the code gives you the discretion to hear witness testimony if you choose. And my thought is, if Mr. Abernathy is allowed to testify, then the state bar should have the opportunity to call a single witness as well. It’s only fair.”
Renaldo ruminated silently, his face a deeper red than usual. “You’re certain you want to do this, Mr. Abernathy?”
“Absolutely, Your Honor,” Abernathy said, ignoring a subtle ixnay hand signal from Roger Turnbull. Abernathy was apparently operating purely on ego now, and he didn’t wait to be invited to testify; he just walked to the witness stand and raised his right hand.
It’s true, I told myself, it’s true: The lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.
Roger Turnbull was clearly unprepared for this, but he is a gifted lawyer and so he had little trouble muttering a few open-ended questions to get his client rolling. Abernathy’s testimony was little more than an extended harangue of me, the chief, and the unspecified “cowards” that facilitate the out-of-control agency that is the state bar. The petition to suspend him was nothing more than a Machiavellian plot to undermine the integrity of a vital disciplinary review probe commissioned by none other than the governor of this state, Burton Webb.
Blah, blah, blah.
When Abernathy finished, I might have scored a few points on cross by asking him a series of specific questions about his handson involvement with both Capitol Consolidators and Alliance Pictures, Inc. But he refused to answer pretty much down the line, alternately citing the attorney-client privilege and his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Renaldo took it all in without expression.
As soon as Abernathy left the stand, smiling as if he’d just shredded my ISO, Roger Turnbull shifted gears on the judge. “May we take a five-minute recess before making closing arguments, Your Honor?” he asked, presumptively sidestepping my right to present a witness of my own.
Renaldo caught it. “We’re not there yet, Mr. Turnbull.”
“But, Your Honor,” Turnbull said, “the bar’s petition is over three hundred pages long, if you count their attachments and exhibits. Surely they don’t deserve to add to this obvious overkill.”
Renaldo’s face seemed drained. This case had gotten a lot of attention, which meant that he would too, especially if he screwed it up somehow.
“Fair is fair, Counsel.” Then the judge turned to me. “Mr. Shepard, you may call one witness.”
I suppose anyone in that courtroom with a legal background would have laid odds that I would call Duke Choi to underline the bar’s evidence with cool, utilitarian efficiency. But the judge had read my petition, and it was straightforward. Something critical was still missing from this case. I sat at the table, pouring a glass of water to buy a few more seconds. Chief Hewitt didn’t squirm or lean closer to inquire with a discreet whisper as to what the hell I was going to do—no, far from it. His spine was straight against his chair back, his eyes fixed on some point behind the bench, unflinching. The message he was sending to Renaldo was simple: I trust my prosecutor, so should you.
Trust—the single element that linked this case from the start. Wasn’t trust what the investment seminars were selling more than anything else? Trust us, this will help your children inherit your estate virtually tax-free. Trust us with all the details, we’ll handle them. And wasn’t trust what the law center fostered in nervous clients when they slapped Dale Bleeker’s name and bar number on a pleading? Not to worry, you’ve forked over a nice retainer and received no results, but look, our in-house attorney is backing the project. You can trust us, the work will get done. The fire? Devastating for us, of course, but trust us, we’ll be in touch as soon as we’re back on our feet.
“Mr. Shepard?”
“Yes, Your Honor, thank you.” I was out of time but ready to make my decision.
The gallery was too full to turn and study each row of faces, looking for my only witness of the day. But he’d called yesterday, promising that he’d be here, saying he felt it was his duty to be present and accounted for in some small way. I hadn’t argued.
“The state bar calls Rudolph Kirkmeyer,” I said, hoping he was back there somewhere. The chief didn’t even turn around, which made me think, if he has the faith that strongly, so should I.
The gallery murmured behind us as the judge flipped through his list of exhibits. “I don’t see a declaration from anyone by that name, Counsel.”
That’s because the day after Big Sur, Kimberley had zipped Rudy back to Seattle with her on the first available flight, making him all but unavailable. Since then I’d sunk back into a miserable losing game of telephone tag, much like the one I had played with Kimberley before she came to reclaim her father. By the time Rudy picked up the phone himself and dialed me, I’d pretty much given up on ever seeing him again.
“Mr. Kirkmeyer is a firsthand, percipient witness to some of the activity at the law center you’ve read about in the petition,” I said. The problem was, I didn’t know for certain how much Rudy had actually seen, or how the revelation that he suffered from a degenerative disease would play to Renaldo in terms of his competency. But Dale’s death had haunted Rudy during his Seattle stay. It was all he had wanted to talk about when he called. And he sounded okay—most of the time.
Renaldo looked up.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. God, was I relieved. As he made his way up front, Rudy Kirkmeyer looked like a tourist stepping off a chartered bus in Vegas: tan leather Top-Siders, checked pants, white golf shirt, and a navy blazer that somehow made the look just formal enough to work in court. Renaldo’s clerk stopped him before he sat in the witness stand to take his oath, and when Rudy held up his hand, his impish eyes appeared more alive than they’d ever been. I hoped this wasn’t how he looked when he was terrified.
I asked him about his age and former occupation, where he lived, how long ago he had retired. Pausing noticeably at times, he recounted his years of water-and-power service, his Glendale roots going back to post—World War II, his retirement three years ago. His wife’s death from cancer less than a year later. At that moment, Judge Renaldo abruptly stopped staring into space and fixed on the witness. Rudy Kirkmeyer noticed the attention shift and sat up a tad straighter. But Rudy could not have known that the old judge had lost his wife under similar circumstances.
“Do you know of a place in Glendale called the law center?” I said.
“Yes, I do. It’s burned down now, but I went there with a friend, Lester Gibson, about three, four weeks ago on a weeknight, to check out a seminar on how to set up your estate so your kids—I mean, your heirs—won’t get taxed to death when you die and your money goes to them. Lester and I thought it sounded too good to be true, so we wanted to check it out.”
“What happened at the seminar the night you attended?”
He shook his head. “It was a strange, strange night I’ll probably never forget. The man running the seminar, name of Bobby Silver, he made all sorts of promises about how they’d figured out a way to beat the estate tax with this annuity life insurance scheme.”
“We know about how that works already,” Renaldo said. “What happened that made it such a strange night for you?”
“Well, Your Honor, quite honestly …”
I held my breath for Rudy as he closed his eyes. If you didn’t know him, you might think he was fighting off a nasty headache.
“Would you like to take a break?” Renaldo asked him.
“No, thank you. Anyway, I’m not the most emotional guy you’d ever want to meet. But that night, I sat th
ere for two hours, watching other people my age getting so gung ho about a deal that sounded fantastic until you realized that nobody running the seminar could even explain the details of it. Now, I don’t know that much about financial matters, but I knew this was one to stay away from.”
“Did you leave then?”
“Tried to,” he said, “but Lester wanted to stick around. So we stayed. I can’t say how long. I’m not so good with time.”
That seemed to raise Turnbull’s eyebrows a hair, and he leaned over to whisper something to Abernathy.
“All I could do was sit around waiting,” Rudy went on. Then he frowned. “It was depressing, sitting there watching other folks get their hopes up like that. I must have looked pretty hopeless. What I didn’t realize at the time was how lonely I’d become since my wife had passed on.”
“What made you realize how lonely you were?”
Rudy shrugged at the judge as if to say here comes the good stuff. “A young lady I met, right there, at the seminar. Name is Angela Ho. I call her Angle.”
“How old is she?”
“Early twenties, I think.”
“What happened with Angela Ho?”
“She was attractive, funny. I was nervous.” He shut his eyes again.
“She showed interest in you?”
“Objection, relevance,” Turnbull moaned.
“Overruled.”
“She stayed next to me the whole night, acted like she saw something grand in me. I was … acting senile, just to save myself the embarrassment, but the more I did, the more Angie seemed to go after me.” He looked at Renaldo. “She asked me a lot of questions. Of course, by then I thought she had to be after my money. I found out later that she talked to Lester. He might have let a few things slip, too.”
“Objection, the witness is speculating.”
“Overruled,” Renaldo said, this time with more authority.
“You mentioned that you thought she was after your money,” I said. “What money?”