The Big Exit

by David Carnoy

  “Good luck with that, Hank. Happy hunting.”

  As she hangs up, the sedan pulls over and comes to a stop behind her. A petite young woman emerges from the passenger side and gets out. Then Marty Lowenstein and his trademark shock of frizzy gray hair emerge from the driver’s side. He flashes a warm, welcoming smile.

  “Hello, Ms. Dupuy,” he says. “Thank you for meeting us on such short notice.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Lowenstein.”

  “Marty,” he says, extending a hand. “Call me Marty.”

  23/ CROSSED-UP

  LEAVING THE CARS PARKED WHERE THEY ARE, THEY SET OFF ON FOOT back to Sand Hill, heading up the pedestrian path a couple hundred yards to the entrance of the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

  The young woman’s name is Ashley and she reminds Carolyn a little of Tina Fey. She’s no dead ringer, but change up the glasses and Carolyn thinks she’d get a few double takes. Turns out she’s been working up in the city with Forman, who’s been volunteering the past few weeks at the Exoneration Foundation. At least that solves one mystery: the Lowenstein connection.

  When Lowenstein called just before noon, she’d figured he was fishing for information on what Beth was saying. But after dispensing with the introductions, he quickly asked whether she didn’t mind meeting him at her earliest convenience—preferably later today or early tomorrow—at the scene of “the accident.” He said he was hoping she could answer a few questions for “background purposes.”

  It was an odd conversation. Despite being abundantly polite and complimentary, in his own peculiar way he seemed to be challenging her. To what end, she wasn’t quite sure, but it bothered her, and instead of saying she’d get back to him in a little while, as she’d initially been inclined to do, she ended up pushing to meet earlier. After all, she was nearby, and it behooved her to try to get a sense of where things stood with Forman. Oh yeah, and she was just a little curious to see him in the flesh.

  He turns out to be a little taller than she’d expected. He’s always struck her as someone who’s cultivated his vaunted status pragmatically and prudently. He probably could have gotten even more exposure, but her impression is that he’s deliberately avoided becoming a media slut, knowing that doing so would diminish him. TV builds you up but it can also water you down. Lowenstein seems to have found a happy medium.

  “We saw this driving down,” he says, stopping in front of the faded white cross planted beside the pedestrian path: “I’m always fascinated by roadside memorials. There’s an immediacy to them even years later.”

  He stoops to take a closer look at the memorial. It’s pretty understated—no ribbons, laminated pictures, or wreaths of any sort. The initials of the accident victim are written on the vertical part of cross and RIP is notched neatly into the wood horizontally. Lower down, on the front of the cross and on the sides, people have carved short messages in small letters. Most appear to be from friends or relatives, though could have been written by strangers.

  “How did the parents feel about the outcome?” he asks, standing again and talking more loudly so his voice carries over the sound of passing cars. The traffic along Sand Hill alternates between sporadic and steady; when the light at the intersection is green, which is most of the time, the cars zip by pretty quickly, probably pushing sixty.

  “Outcome of what?” she asks.

  “The trial. Richie’s conviction.”

  “They were religious people. They’d put their faith in God. So, in that sense, I think they were willing to accept whatever resolution the court gave them.”

  “The victim had a brother and sister?”

  “Yes. They were more vocal in their desire for a conviction. They were incredibly angry. They would have been heartbroken if he’d walked.”

  “I think that’s one of the more brilliant things you did, Ms. Dupuy.”

  “What?”

  “The subtle way you got it into the heads of the jurors that if they didn’t convict Richie Forman, no one would be convicted. You managed to raise the stakes.”

  Damn, she thinks. The great Marty thinks you’re brilliant. She feels her face redden, a smile involuntarily creeping onto her lips. But then she catches herself: He’s trying to soften you up. Don’t go mushy.

  “Like you, I pride myself on my rapport with juries,” she says. “You know what I tell people who say they don’t want to serve? I tell them, ‘Hey, you’re going to want to see me in action. You don’t want to miss this.’ People want theater. They want to be entertained. That said, the evidence in the Forman case was very solid. The one big unknown was how he’d play on the stand. Therefore my main focus was to undermine his credibility, even just slightly, because the evidence was so strong. He actually gave me a little more than I was hoping for.”

  “Ashley took a look at that evidence,” Lowenstein says. “It was solid but not overwhelming. There were holes that the defense failed to exploit fully—or at all.”

  “Such as?”

  “Mr. McGregor was never examined. His injuries were never documented. The detectives made a few notes about his condition, but he was never examined by a doctor. And the way the crime scene was processed was lackadaisical. Everybody was under the assumption that Forman was the driver, so the investigation was tarnished by that assumption.”

  Ashley: “It’s also unclear that the injuries sustained by Forman were consistent with someone who was seated in the driver’s seat.”

  Carolyn feels her nostrils flare. This Ashley looks like she’s fresh out of college. “And that’s some sort of great revelation? I’ve been through all this before. We called our experts. They called theirs. If you want to play Monday-morning quarterback and tell me you would have got Forman off, go right ahead, but I don’t really have time for that now.”

  Lowenstein dismisses her indignation, motions for Ashley to hand over a yellow folder she’s carrying. He takes it and opens it, leafing through the various pieces of paper until he gets to a set of photos printed out on photographic paper. Most are eight by tens but a few are five by sevens and four by sixes. He removes them from the folder and hands the folder back to Ashley.

  “I take it you’ve seen these.” Pictures of the accident. He holds one up and glances over it. “This one seems like it was taken just a few feet from where we’re standing.”

  “Where’d you get those?”

  “Ashley’s very good. She’s been making some inquiries in her spare time.”

  “At whose behest?”

  “We were doing a background check on Rick for the foundation and I got curious,” Ashley explains.

  “Rick?”

  “Yes, Richie goes by Rick now,” she says. “I told him I was looking into his case a bit and he seemed somewhat ambivalent about it but didn’t object too strenuously. He didn’t think there was much point in it.”

  Carolyn has a flashback to handling a similar assortment of photos years ago. “A lot of those are official police photos,” she says. “How’d you get them?”

  Ashley: “I contacted the accident victim’s family and, well, they didn’t want to have anything to do with me. But I had more luck with the friend, the woman who was in the car and injured in the accident. She lives up in the city.”

  “Dawn?” Carolyn says, suddenly remembering her name.

  “Yes, Dawn Chu. She’s had a rather rough go of it. I don’t suppose you’ve kept track of her.”

  “No. I actually have my own problems, which I’m sure you’re aware of given your apparent crack investigative skills.”

  “She works at Centerfolds, over on Broadway.”

  Centerfolds. Sounds familiar, but she can’t remember why. Then it hits her. “The strip club?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?” She pauses briefly to consider how a woman with an advanced physics degree ended up a stripper. “Well, I guess the only upside is she must be fully recovered physically. I took a pole-dancing class once. That shit is hard.”

&nbs
p; “She’s still nearly blind in the one eye,” Ashley says. “And she still has memory issues.”

  “And she had the photos?”

  “Yes, she’d asked the police for anything they had on the accident. As disturbing as some of the pictures were, she wanted them. She told me that she had a premonition that someday someone would come asking about the accident.”

  “And there you were.”

  “There I was.”

  “That’s not all,” Lowenstein says. “Apparently, she’s had some contact with Forman.”

  “Contact? What kind of contact?”

  Lowenstein glances over at Ashley, queuing her to answer. “Well, as part of the settlement, he had to pay restitution,” she says. “There was a larger settlement of hundreds of thousands but then he was supposed to send a check for one dollar on the anniversary of the accident for each year of her life.”

  “Yeah, I remember that. To the parents.”

  “And Dawn. Anyway, she says that along with the check each year, he’d also been sending a note, which wasn’t required. She showed them to me. He’d always say that on this day, the anniversary, he was thinking about her and her friend and how sorry he was for what happened. And then he’d write about himself and how he was doing. Some of it was quite personal. You know, he was sexually assaulted in prison.”

  “I’d heard that,” Carolyn says. “And that he’d taken a sharp object to the jugular of one of his attackers. Nearly killed him. If I were still a prosecutor, I’d—”

  Ashley’s eyes narrow, bearing down on her. “How’d you feel about that?”

  “About what?”

  “That he was assaulted.”

  You entitled little bitch. “What I felt is irrelevant. But to fulfill your curiosity, I felt bad. Mr. Forman’s sentence was heavy enough as it was. More importantly, did she write back?”

  “No. She said a friend advised her not to write back. He said Forman was just trying to suck her in, manipulate her. That’s what people in prison do.”

  “But she saw him after he got out?”

  Ashley nods. She explains that Dawn found out Forman was doing these Sinatra gigs, and she went to see him at one. Afterwards, she saw him up at the bar and introduced herself. But she gave him her stage name, Toni. She had some work done after the accident, so he didn’t recognize her.

  “She has these big fake boobs now,” Ashley goes on. “Wears her hair short and spiky and talks with a Texas accent.”

  She told Forman she’d been a Dallas Mavericks cheerleader for a while and that she worked at the club and he should come by sometime and say hello. A few days later, he dropped a hundred bucks on a lap dance and then she hooked up with him a week or two later “back at his apartment, free of charge.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Carolyn says, stunned. “And she doesn’t say anything the whole time, doesn’t reveal who she is?”

  “Nope. But she gets him to talk about how he went to prison and how his friend switched seats on him and all that. She seems to take some weird, perverse pleasure in him not knowing it’s her. Says it was the best sex she ever had.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Carolyn glances over at the cross, then turns and looks out onto the intersection where the accident took place. She can’t believe what she’s hearing and where she’s hearing it.

  She looks over at Lowenstein, who seems to be enjoying her agita. “Why are you telling me all this, Marty?” she asks.

  “Did Ms. Hill tell you anything about somebody blackmailing her husband?”

  Carolyn almost falls into Lownstein’s trap, but then backs away at the last second.

  “So that’s why we’re here, eh? I’m not sure we had to meet by the side of the road if you were interested in discussing my client’s statements.”

  Lowenstein smiles, unruffled. “You’re an insider here, Ms. Dupuy.”

  “Carolyn.”

  “Yes, sorry. Look, you’re an insider here and I just showed up four hours ago and I’m trying to get my head around a lot of stuff. I’m looking for a little help. My client is the one locked up at the police station, not yours. But I do get a strong sense that Ms. Hill is not telling the entire truth about what happened and where she was yesterday.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I’m a fast learner. And by that I mean that I learn things quickly from people. One of the good things about being a celebrity attorney is that folks are more apt to meet with and talk to you, even by the side of the road. Because they’ve seen you on TV before, they think they know you, and more importantly, they have a tendency to be accommodating.”

  “Everybody’s a starfucker.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “So you think Dawn was somehow involved in blackmailing McGregor?”

  “So you are aware that someone sent a note to McGregor saying they had evidence he was driving the car and wanted two hundred fifty thousand dollars to keep quiet?”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. I was not aware that she was suspected.”

  “She isn’t. Not by the police anyway. But a copy of a photograph apparently was attached to the note.”

  “What did the photo show?”

  “We’re not sure. The Sunnyvale police aren’t saying. But McGregor seems to have claimed it was altered. Photoshopped.”

  “I only knew about him reporting something to the police. I wasn’t aware of the photo, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “And you saw all the photos from the crime scene? Did any bystanders take additional pictures? Or police officers or firefighters? I know the technology wasn’t what it is today, but most cell phones had cameras back then.”

  “If you’re asking whether any photos were suppressed, the answer’s a definitive no. We may be inept by your standards, but we’re not corrupt.”

  “I didn’t say anything about ineptitude.” He turns around and points up to the traffic light. “So these lights didn’t have any cameras in them at the time of accident?”

  “They still don’t. Well, not the kind that would have helped document what happened. They have something in there that measures the speed of passing cars. That’s it.”

  “And the Linear Accelerator had no video?”

  She looks over at the guard station, a good fifty yards away up an inclined driveway. While they’re standing next to the turnoff to the Accelerator, the guard station—and real entrance—is up the hill a bit, away from the road. The cluster of office buildings is even further up the hill, well beyond the guard station.

  “They had video of the guard station—and the cars going in and out—but the camera back then didn’t go all the way down to the road. I believe it does now. Someone’s probably watching us, wondering what the hell we’re doing here.”

  Lowenstein glances over at Ashley, who’s just finishing getting everything back in order in her folder.

  Lowenstein nods, seemingly satisfied. He says, “Well, thanks. I appreciate you coming out and meeting on such short notice. I don’t want to keep you any longer.”

  He extends his hand to say good-bye.

  “Come on, Marty,” she says, not accepting it. “Cut the shit. You give me something, I’ll give you something. Let’s go. Is Forman going to sell Hill out?”

  She actually seems to catch him off guard. For a brief moment, he’s taken aback. His mouth moves to say something, but nothing comes out. A beat, then: “You always this aggressive?”

  “Yeah. But being jacked up on fertility drugs probably doesn’t help. So let’s go. You turn a card, I turn one.”

  Lowenstein seems to consider his cards and which one he’s going to turn. After a moment, he says:

  “Has your client told you about this hot-tub place they went to?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s she told the police about that?”

  “Nothing. But they know. They got tipped off.”

  “And what did you plan on doing about it?”
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br />   “Honestly, I’m not sure. She spoke to the police initially. I wasn’t there for the first round. Now we’re in a little hole.”

  “How’s the truth look?”

  He squints a little, peering at her more closely. He doesn’t hide the fact that he wants to see her reaction to this one and glean something from it.

  She smiles. “The truth? I was actually thinking about it before I came over here. It reminds me a little of an iTunes card with the scratch-off code on the back. I got one of those the other day and started scratching the film off with a coin and I somehow screwed up and it turned into a mess. I couldn’t figure out what a couple of numbers were. Or maybe they were letters. How ’bout you? How’s it look on your end?”

  “I can read the code but I may have some trouble redeeming it if someone’s already redeemed it herself.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, I’d take anything she’s got that helps Rick. Short of that, I’d take anything that won’t hurt him.”

  “No votes for insanity? I hear he’s been in character the whole time. Thinks he’s Sinatra. Or playing like he does.”

  “Just a defense mechanism. Helped him get by in prison. No one fucks with ‘Frank.’ Right?”

  “They want her to come in, Marty. They’re pressing pretty hard to get her in there.”

  “You can go in but it doesn’t mean she has to say anything.”

  “True. While I’m her attorney, my obligation is to her, though.”

  “You say that as if you’re not confident you’ll remain her attorney.”

  “Well, until nine o’clock last night I was mothballed, contemplating a career change with a pit stop at motherhood. So I’m not exactly certain about anything.”

  She half expects him to ask whether this is her first time trying to get pregnant and whether she’s married. But he just says: “You seem in fine form.”

  “I feel rusty.”

  “Well, you know where to reach me if you want to talk. Ashley will text you her number, so you have that, too.”

  She looks at Ashley, who’s been quietly listening the last few minutes, then turns her attention back to Lowenstein, who seems as calm as ever. Or does he? Is that a touch of self-doubt that she sees in his eyes? What’s bothering you? she thinks. Me or something else?