MD01 - Special Circumstances

by Sheldon Siegel

  We find a parking space in front of Joel's house. You know the stars are really lining up right when you find a place to park on the street on a weeknight. It's warm and the sun is still out. Winter may be ending.

  The news vans are parked in every driveway on Joel's street. The neighbors will be furious. Rosie pushes me toward Rita Roberts. "Go ahead," she says. "Say something nice about Joel and your renewed faith in the criminal justice system."

  Rita sticks the microphone in my face and asks me how it feels. I utter banalities about how pleased I am that justice has been served, that a good and innocent man was set free and how the criminal justice system worked. I also prattle on about how proud I am to be a lawyer. I take the obligatory gratuitous swipe at the press for attempting to try the case in the media. I make a plea that they respect Joel and Naomi's privacy and give them an opportunity to put their lives back together. Rita nods solemnly. To me, it sounds like "blah blah blah justice, blah blah blah legal system, blah blah blah media, blah blah blah privacy." Rosie grabs my arm and we push our way toward the door.

  The party is already in full swing when we enter. Joel gives me a big hug and puts a cold beer in my hand. Naomi kisses me. Alan and Stephen come running down the hallway. Alan leaps up and gives me a bear hug. Doris has a glass of champagne in her hand and we toast each other. High fives and more hugs. The owners of Shenson's deli on Geary are members of Rabbi Friedman's temple. They have sent over huge trays of corned beef, pastrami, roast beef and turkey. Naomi gives me a sandwich and I devour it. I'm hungry for the first time in weeks.

  I see my mother in the living room. Her eyes sparkle. "I'm proud of you, Michael," she says.

  I'm glad she's having a good day. "Thanks, Mama. It means a lot to me."

  About thirty people jam into Joel and Naomi's living room to watch the early news. There's wild applause when the announcer gives the verdict. I get an odd feeling when I see myself on TV. Rosie screams, "Mike, you look like shit." Roars of laughter.

  I see myself talking to Rita Roberts. Then I'm talking to the serious-looking Vietnamese reporter from Channel 5. The anchors on Channel 7 joke that I must be having a great day. I watch myself on three different channels. Then I catch Mort interviewing Skipper on Channel 4.

  "So, Mr. Gates," Mort says, "do you feel like Marcia Clark?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Goldberg. We're disappointed with the result, but we respect the process and the jury system."

  Mort rolls his eyes. I watch him spar with Skipper for five more minutes before I leave the throng in the living room and make my way to the back porch, where I find Joel sipping a beer.

  "Getting some air, Joel?" I ask.

  "Yeah." He pauses. "By the way, thanks for everything. I don't know if I would have made it without you."

  "You're welcome. You would have been okay, one way or another."

  He looks unpersuaded.

  I look out at the small patio. The garden has fallen into a state of disrepair. "Joel," I say, "if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you something. Man to man, attorney-client, just you and me."

  He takes another gulp of beer. "Sure."

  "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

  "Fair enough."

  "You probably know what's coming."

  He nods.

  "Well, here goes. Was justice served today?"

  He takes a long draw from his Samuel Adams. He looks me in the eye and doesn't blink. "Yeah, justice was served today."

  "I thought so. I just wanted to be sure." Then I ask, "How are you and Naomi doing?"

  "One day at a time, Mike."

  "Maybe you could get some counseling."

  "That's probably a good idea."

  "I know some people who might be able to help you."

  "I thought I'd call Dr. Kathy Chandler." A pause. "Just kidding. Give me a few days, I'll call you."

  I wonder if he will. I take a deep breath of the unseasonably mild air. "Thought about what you'd like to do next?"

  "I haven't given it much thought. I've had a lot on my mind. I think maybe I'd like to try teaching for a while."

  "You'd be good at it."

  "Maybe. Naomi thinks I should write a book."

  "Really? A law book?"

  "Nah. I've always wanted to write a novel. Legal thriller. You know. John Grisham."

  I laugh. "Forget it. It's harder than it looks. And every lawyer I know is writing a novel. It's been done to death."

  He grins. "You're probably right." Then he says, "What about you and Rosie? You guys are so good together. You're more married than most married people. Why don't you try it again?"

  Tough question. No good answer. "We talk about it every once in a while. I think we finally figured it all out. We work great together. We love each other very much. We have a great time when we're together." And, Lord knows, the sex is terrific.

  He interrupts me. "There's a big ‘but’ coming, isn't there?"

  "Yes. Do you know any people who are really nice, wonderful people, but when they get together with somebody in particular, they become obnoxious jerks?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, the same concept sort of applies to Rosie and me. We're nice people and we get along great. But when we try to live together, we lose it. I can't explain it. We're fundamentally incompatible. And we take it out on each other. She's careful about money. I don't have a clue. I'm neat. She's not. She likes everything to be scheduled. I don't. We drive each other crazy."

  "Maybe the status quo isn't so bad after all, Mike."

  "I guess. One of these days, she's going to find a guy and I'm going to get really jealous."

  "Maybe not for a while. You never know. People change."

  Rabbi and Mrs. Friedman walk onto the back porch. They each give Joel a hug. Then, to my surprise, they each give me a hug.

  "Michael," says Rabbi Friedman, "thank you for all that you've done." He pauses to clear his throat. "I'm sorry I may have underestimated you. You're a fine attorney."

  "I'm glad everything worked out, Rabbi," I say. We all go back into the house.

  At seven-thirty, Wendy and Pete walk up the steps and enter to another round of wild cheers. They look bushed. Wendy comes right over to me and gives me a big hug. "You did it, Mike!" she shouts.

  "We did it, Wendy. And we couldn't have done it without you."

  Pete's beaming. "You son of a bitch," he says. "We heard it on the radio in our cab."

  "How the hell did you get the banker to talk?"

  Wendy says, "Pete's very persuasive. He held him by his ankles from the window of his office. It's on the tenth floor."

  I look at her. She's a good liar. "You're kidding, right?" I ask.

  She grins. "Yes, I'm kidding."

  Pete tells me, "Actually, Wendy came up with the plan."

  "Uh-oh," I say. "Wendy, you didn't sleep with him, did you?"

  "Of course not, Mike. That would be crude. My methods of persuasion are far more sophisticated."

  "So how'd you do it?"

  "I offered to sleep with him."

  "Really?"

  She laughs. "No. It's Pete who had the really sophisticated plan."

  Pete smiles. "Bankers don't like pain, Mike," he says.

  Oops. "You didn't hurt him, did you?"

  "Not much. No broken bones."

  Jesus.

  Wendy beams. "And Mike, there's one other thing.

  Guess what? Pete and I have spent a lot of time together the last couple of months. We've decided to get married."

  Jesus. Shit. Great. I think. How do you tell a woman her taste in men still leaves a lot to be desired? How do I tell my brother I had dibs on Wendy? I know these people too well. I feel too close to them. I know all their flaws. There's no purpose pointing them out now. Wendy shows me the engagement ring they bought in Nassau. "That's great, you guys," I say. "I'm very happy for you." I raise my hand and shout at the top of my lungs that Pete and Wendy have an announceme
nt to make. Wendy holds up her ring finger and the room bursts into cheers. I see my mother in the corner of the room, her face glowing.

  At eight-fifteen, I'm on the back porch. The sun has gone down and a cool breeze is beginning to blow. After two beers and a glass of champagne, I'm starting to get lightheaded.

  "Hi, Mikey." Doris grins at me. "You did a helluva job. I knew you'd pull it out."

  "I couldn't have done it without you, Doris. Like always."

  "You're a helluva lawyer."

  "Thanks. Now will you come work for me?"

  "I'll have to think about it."

  "I might be able to afford you now."

  "I'll let you know."

  We look out into the evening sky.

  "So, Doris," I say, "let me ask you something."

  "Anything, Mikey. It's your night."

  "You won't get mad at me, will you?"

  "Of course not."

  "Good. Well, there are a couple of things I've been wondering about for a while now. Maybe you can help me piece them together."

  She drinks her champagne. "Sure."

  "Well, for one thing, could you explain how you managed to get back upstairs after you ran your security card through the scanner and made sure the security camera showed you leaving? That was the key, right? To be certain that you had witnesses who saw you leave."

  There's a pause. She sets her champagne flute on the railing. Then she says, "I don't know what you're talking about."

  I don't say anything. I feel my jaws tighten. I wait.

  The silence finally gets to be too much for her. She fingers her glasses. "I could lie to everybody else, but I never could lie to you, Mikey," she says. "You figured it all out, didn't you?"

  "I think so."

  "When?"

  "Just this afternoon. When I found out Jenny was going to get the money from the International Charitable Trust. Bob was trying to amend the trust. That's when I realized there was a big financial stake for Jenny in all of this. It gave you a motive."

  "Are you going to turn me in?" she asks.

  I take a deep breath. I think of the day she came by and gave me the hundred-dollar retainer check that's hanging in a frame in my office. "No, Doris. I can't. I'm your lawyer and you're my client. Everything we say is privileged." I look directly into her eyes. "It doesn't mean I'm happy about it."

  She's trying to hold back tears. "Good," she whispers.

  There's a big lump in my throat. I swallow hard. "You killed two people, Doris," I tell her.

  "I know." Tears roll down her cheeks.

  We stand in silence for a few minutes, staring at the trees in Joel's backyard. I think of Doris's daughter, Jenny. I think of Diana Kennedy and her mother. I realize I'm standing next to a woman who has murdered two people, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.

  The pain at the bottom of my stomach is excruciating. I'm speechless. I can't stop thinking about Diana's mother. And Joel. And Naomi and the kids. Lives forever changed. Finally, I manage to say, "But you framed Joel. How could you do that to an innocent man?"

  She grimaces. "I didn't mean to. I didn't know I had. That's not what was supposed to happen."

  I wait.

  "It was such a perfect plan, Mike," she bursts out. "I'd really read up on investigative techniques, planned it all out so carefully. I thought of everything to make it look like suicide. Bob's fingerprints on the gun. A close shot, so there'd be residue from the gunpowder on his hands and shirt and tattooing around the entrance wound. Typing the suicide E-mail on his computer. I didn't miss a thing. And it would have worked, except for Joel. No way I could have predicted all the goofy things that pointed toward him."

  True enough. "But you were willing to ruin his life for something he didn't do," I tell her.

  "I know. I'm truly sorry about that—believe me. But I was trapped. Hell, if he hadn't made such an ass of himself when he called Diana that night, they probably wouldn't even have brought charges. And then he went and picked up that damned gun—how could I have guessed anyone would do something that stupid?"

  She's right about that. I even think she means it when she says she's sorry. But it doesn't change anything, and I still can't put it together.

  She's watching me uneasily. "Look," she says, "it was always supposed to be a suicide. That's the way I planned it. And even with Diana turning up, it would have worked if it hadn't been for Joel. It was such a standard script. She and Bob were sleeping together and he was a jilted lover. Plenty of reason for him to kill her and then himself."

  "Were they sleeping together?" I ask.

  "For a while. But she'd dumped him."

  I need to backtrack. I've got the how— some of it, at least—but the why is missing. It doesn't make sense. No matter how much of an asshole and a bastard Bob was, Doris had endured him for twenty-two years. What in Christ could have brought her to decide on murder—cold-blooded murder? And it isn't as if she did it on impulse. She'd organized it like a military campaign: reading up on it, getting all her ducks in a row. Nothing can alter the atrociousness of two deliberate killings, but I think somehow it will help if I can only understand why.

  That's going to take a while. I know Jenny's got to be at the heart of it but I'll wait on that. Best to begin with the timing.

  I say, "How long did you plan all this?"

  "For several months," she says. "I didn't pin down the time when I began, but I knew I had to do it."

  "And that night Beth served Bob with the divorce papers, the time had come? You figured he might change his will? Maybe write Jenny out of the trust?"

  "Yes." She's crying now.

  Okay, I have the when. I decide to fill in the rest of the how. "How did you get back upstairs?" I ask again.

  This time she tells me. "I took the freight elevator. There's no security camera there. After I made sure everyone saw me leave at eight, I went downstairs to the Catacomb and took the freight elevator up to the new construction area on forty-nine. I just waited there until one in the morning. I figured everyone else had probably left by then."

  "How did you know Bob would still be there?"

  "I didn't—I just took a chance he might still be finishing up on Russo's deal. If there was anyone else around, I wasn't going to do anything. I'd have just gone home."

  "And after you went to Bob's office, then what?"

  "I told him I came back to work on his bills. I started giving him a back rub, like I always do—did. Then I whacked him on the side of the head with one of those heavy Plexiglas bookends on the shelf behind his desk chair. You know: the ones with the scales of justice on them that say, ‘Jusnce, Equality and Mercy.’ I'd put on gloves so there'd be no fingerprints. He just sat slumped over in his chair after I hit him, quiet as a baby. Then I put the gun in his hand and brought it up to his right temple, and I was set to make him pull the trigger…"

  "And Diana walked in."

  I see her shoulders sag. "And Diana walked in and fouled everything up." She swallows. "She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happened in a flash—I didn't even stop to think, I just aimed at her and shot. And then I went back and made Bob shoot himself."

  The bloody photos of the bodies flash before my eyes. I shake my head trying to get rid of them. I can't. She's keyed up too, remembering. "I was shaking all over," she tells me. "I couldn't keep my hand under control. The gun was jiggling when I pressed his finger against the trigger. I wanted to get a clean fingerprint on it, but I didn't. I was too upset about Diana. I meant to press his finger on it again but I had to finish everything up—type the E-mail message with my gloves on, wash the bookend to get rid of any traces of blood—and I forgot about it."

  The smudged fingerprint—I have all the how now, except for all the keyboard evidence that pointed toward Joel. "What about the keyboard?" I ask. "Was it Bob's?"

  "How do I know? I assumed it was. It must have been."

  "Then how did it get switched?"

  Sh
e says she doesn't know. But Art and Charles were certainly eager to pin it on Joel, and even get him to confess before the case ever got to trial. "Maybe Charles switched them or got someone else to do it," she suggests.

  "You didn't move it?"

  "Swear to God, Mike."

  "Well, you almost pulled it off," I say. "If it hadn't been for Joel…"

  "Yes. If Joel hadn't screwed it up, it would have gone down as a murder and a suicide. And that's what I wanted: the suicide verdict on Bob." Then she says "Suicide" again, so emphatically that I'm startled. "That's what mattered most."

  Well, sure, I think—that would have ended it then and there, unlike a charge of murder, which never closes until it's solved. But so what? Doris was never under suspicion. It was Joel who was the unwitting victim of that foul-up, but she was clean. Why is she so fixated on suicide? I'm at a loss.

  "Doris," I say, "what difference does it make now? Sure, the official cause of death is murder and that means they can reopen the investigation at any time, but I don't think you're in any danger. I've told you everything we've said here is privileged."

  "I know that." She sounds impatient. "You don't understand. That's not the reason the suicide verdict was so important."

  I look at her blankly. Her eyes are on fire. "Don't you get it, Mike?" she asks. "It's the key-man policy. The suicide clause. I wanted Bob dead—Christ did I ever!—but I wanted the whole damn firm wiped out too. Just as dead as he was. Stone-cold dead."

  I'm stunned. The venom in her voice is palpable. I don't understand it. Sure, Bob treated her like shit for years. And there's Jenny to protect. But killing two people because she hates him? Bringing down the firm because she hates him?

  It doesn't make sense. All I can manage is a barely audible, "Why, Doris?"

  "Because I hate them all—every last one of them. They're all scum. I knew they were in trouble. I wanted to be sure there was nothing to save them. I didn't want them to get the twenty million from the key-man policy. I hope they all go to the poorhouse and rot in hell."

  I keep trying to bring some semblance of reason to all of this. I can't. I tell her she may get her wish about the firm—after the verdict, Skipper said Art told him they were going to shut down because they'd lost too many partners—but there's still a chance of their getting the insurance money. "The official cause of death is still murder," I remind her.