Corrupt practices, p.11
Corrupt Practices, page 11
Retrieving the roster from opposing counsel was the easy part, but the document was in the court file and now belonged to the public. Stringers from the news media loiter around the courthouse and troll for newsworthy pleadings. Everyone from the shady blogger to the mainstream press would want to see a membership list of the enigmatic Sanctified Assembly. Deanna pulled an all-nighter, doing research and drafting legal papers. The next morning, she camped out on the courthouse steps until the doors opened. Somehow, she convinced a judge to take the unprecedented step of sealing the court record. Judges just don’t remove publicly available documents from the court file. To this day, I think the order is illegal. Neither the news media nor the Assembly found out. In fact, Deanna didn’t tell anyone about the incident herself until she revealed it to me during a vulnerable moment after a night of lovemaking.
Now, I corral a frenzied Deanna and ask her to set up the meeting. She narrows her eyes and takes a half-step back, as though I’m about to make her the butt of some practical joke. When she realizes I’m serious, she bursts out laughing. “Monica Baxter hates your guts.”
“I have to find out what she knows.”
“I don’t want any part of it. Go ask Manny to set it up.”
“I did. He was an asshole. He told me to stop obsessing about the case and see a shrink.”
“He’s right.”
“Come on, Deanna.”
“It would be awkward.”
“She owes you, right? Elkin Printing?”
“I should never have told you that story. I don’t want to call in a favor that she’ll never do anyway because it involves helping you.”
We stare each other down in silence. With her crossed arms and squinched eyes and tattoos and nose rings, she looks like a petulant tween gone punk. I can’t stifle a laugh.
“You find me disarming, huh Parker?”
“Not a bit.”
She grins impishly. “Dude, did I ever tell you the story of my thank-you dinner with the Baxters?”
I shake my head.
“Remember that woman I was seeing back then? Roseanne?”
“The tiny girl with the buzz cut and the peach fuzz moustache?”
“Rosie didn’t . . . Yeah, her. That girl was outrageous. After three or four glasses of wine, she leaned over to me and whispered that she wanted to see how a couple of homophobic Assembly devotees would react to a couple of dykes making out in the middle La Serre.”
“You didn’t.”
“With tongue.”
“And you think I disrespect the church.”
“Monica was livid. Kept looking from side to side. Remember how Rich would get these red splotches all over his cheeks and neck when he got embarrassed? He looked like a neon sign on the Sunset Strip. They would’ve walked out for sure if I hadn’t saved both their butts. The rest of the dinner was more than a little tense, though.”
“Sounds to me like Monica still owes you a favor.”
“Parker, no. She won’t do it. I can’t help you.”
We banter back and forth like the litigators we were, but she holds firm, finally ending the debate by pleading work duties. I sit at my usual table in the corner and read for a while, but I can’t concentrate. I take out my computer and surf the Internet as a diversion, looking for something inspirational, or at least something to give me a bit of psychic energy, because the three cups of espresso sure haven’t done it. I search the names of famous lawyers—Bailey, Belli, Darrow, Root, Kunstler, Thurgood Marshall. I seize on a quotation from Clarence Darrow: “lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.” The old-fashioned sentiment recharges my enthusiasm for continuing the Baxter investigation. Then I search further and find that Darrow never said that at all, that the quote came from a Depression-era crime novel by a British writer named Ethel Lina White and then was ripped off by Frank Capra in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and I see the quotation for what it is, Hollywood fluff, and it doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I consider looking through some of the financial documents that the IRS seized from Rich’s apartment but don’t see the point because I can’t really follow them. I shut down my computer in disgust and order a fourth cup of coffee and watch the patrons wander in and out of The Barrista.
Around five o’clock, the shop empties out and Deanna comes over to my table. She smiles a smile that’s self-consciously feminine. She usually sits across from me, but now she brings the chair right next to me. She rests her head on my shoulder and says in her sultriest voice, “I’ll come by your place tonight after work.”
We’ve never refused each other, not in the years since we started this dance—one of the many peculiar traditions that develop in relationships like ours. And yet I say, “Not tonight. I just want to be alone tonight.”
She lifts her head from my shoulder and slides her chair away from me. “You’re not serious.”
I nod my head.
“And this is because I won’t try to set up a meeting with Monica Baxter?”
“That’s not why.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s got nothing to do with the Baxter case.”
She studies me for a moment, as if searching for an answer. When she finds it, she says, “I can’t sit around all day shooting the shit with you. I have to do some work.”
“Deanna, I—”
She abruptly stands and walks over to a table of three women, and in a remarkable transformation smiles broadly and says something to them. They all laugh, charmed. I take a last sip of coffee and leave.
I drive back home to the Marina. The coffee has kicked in, and I’m jittery and hot, so I down a beer and then another, which just leaves me jittery and buzzed. I go out on the balcony and try to read, but I have no patience, so I turn on ESPN and pay half attention to a college basketball game. When I lose interest in that, I shut off the television and lie on the bed and listen on my iPod to the self-referential male alternative rock music that I loved when I was in school—REM, Pearl Jam, Counting Crows. Dinnertime passes, but I have no appetite, so I keep the ear buds in while I grab another beer. I walk around from room to room, aimless. The alcohol doesn’t relax me, and I realize that I’m restless because this place feels less like home than The Barrista does.
I drink a fourth bottle of beer—it’s unusual for me to have more than one—and when the caffeine high subsides, I crash on the living room couch. The doorbell awakens me. I glance at the clock—11:30 p.m. I can’t believe I’ve slept that long. Still fully clothed, I lurch off the sofa, and my arm gets tangled in the wires from my ear buds, sending the iPod to the floor. Without retrieving it, I go to the door and look through the peephole.
When I see Deanna, I deflate. The last thing I want is a heart-to-heart, or worse, some sort of faux-lover’s quarrel. But I can’t bring myself to ignore her, so I open the door.
She’s not someone who embarrasses easily, but when she sees me, she blushes. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I just came by—”
“The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
“I know. I get it.” She glances down at her shoes for a moment, then whispers, “She’s beautiful.”
“It’s not like even like that. She’s my student and . . .”
She looks at me for a long time before speaking. “When I said I couldn’t help you connect with Monica Baxter, I wasn’t telling you the truth. I can’t lie, Parker. I can help you.”
When Deanna visited my apartment two nights ago, she confessed that a few weeks after Rich died, Monica Baxter showed up at The Barrista on a Thursday afternoon at three o’clock—the precise time when my trial advocacy class starts. It wasn’t a coincidence. Monica told Deanna that she knows that I hang out at the shop and that she timed her appearance so I wouldn’t be there.
“The very first time she showed up, I told her how sorry I was about Rich,” Deanna said. “She didn’t react. It was like Rich hadn’t died or she didn’t know him or he didn’t matter to her. She talked about her toddler and the Assembly.”
“They always talk about their precious Assembly.”
“Most of the time she was smiling with that condescending look they all get, like they’re in the hands of a higher power and you’re not. But when she left she asked if she could stop by the shop the next week. As if she needs my permission to buy a cup of coffee. Then, when she was about to leave, her expression changed and she said, ‘Please don’t tell Parker Stern I was here.’ She’s afraid of you, Parker. Like, really terrified.”
“Why would—?”
“Just let me finish. She’s getting these harassing e-mails from someone claiming they knew Rich. She thinks you’re sending them. She also blames you for Rich’s death.”
“She thinks I murdered Rich? You’re not serious.”
“No, she thinks . . . I don’t know what she thinks. Something about your getting him in over his head. I told her she was full of shit. The weird thing is, she keeps coming back. Every Thursday at three. Like she wants to hang out with me all of a sudden, which doesn’t make sense given the way the Assembly views gays and lesbians. But I think things have been different for her since Rich died. I think she’s been ostracized because of how the Assembly feels about suicide. You know, the way some people used to feel about HIV, still do, shunning not only the victim, but the victim’s family? So she comes in and nurses her cup of coffee and I keep her company. Like I said, I doubt she’ll talk to you, but if you want to come around Thursday at three . . .”
So I canceled today’s law school class and now sit hiding in a dark corner of The Barrista, lying in wait like an alley thug and hoping that when Monica sees me, she won’t spit in my face.
She walks into the shop at precisely three o’clock, pushing a stroller. Rich told me the child’s name—Josh. Two years old, now. The next few minutes play out like a silent movie. She orders coffee and a scone and a cup of milk, finds a table, and lifts the wriggling child into an industrial highchair. She fills a yellow plastic cup with the milk and hands it to him. He shakes it a bit, then drinks, dribbling milk on his chin. After wiping his mouth, she tears off a piece of the scone and feeds it to him—a surprise, because the Assembly’s dietary guidelines forbid the consumption of refined sugar, especially for young children. Deanna walks over to the table and sits down. The women chat for a while, Deanna smiling often and Monica mostly stone-faced, smiling only when attending to her son. At one point, she reaches into her bag and hands him a velvet-green stuffed turtle, which the boy takes with obvious delight. Deanna talks to the toddler and makes him smile. She leans forward and places her hand on Monica’s wrist, whispering something. Monica purses her lips in a tight frown and scans the coffee shop. When she sees me, her face darkens with a mixture of anger and fear. She tries to stand, but Deanna keeps a hand on her wrist. From where I sit, it looks like Deanna is physically restraining her.
Back at the law firm, Deanna pled her cases like an evangelist. Now, she’s talking nonstop. Monica keeps shaking her head and glancing over at me and turning away and half-standing, only to sit down again when Deanna leans in closer and says, I can’t imagine what.
Deanna releases Monica’s wrist and gestures for me to come over. I stand up, walk across the room on wobbly legs, and sit opposite Monica. She won’t meet my eyes. She’s still attractive, but the muscles of her face and neck are taut. She has uneven circles under her eyes from crying or lack of sleep or grief.
The child, well-behaved for a two-year-old, seems engrossed in his toy turtle. He looks like his father—blond hair, green eyes, pudgy cheeks, and a ruddy complexion. Deanna stands up and takes the boy out of the highchair.
“Come on, Joshy,” she says. “Let’s go see where we make all the coffee and hot chocolate. And where we keep the cookies.”
“Mommy, no!”
“Mommy will be right here, sweetie,” Monica says, her voice quavering. “Deanna won’t take you far.” She points to the pastry counter. “Right over there. Mommy will be sitting right here, and you’ll be able to see me all the time. And Deanna will give you one cookie. But only one.”
This pacifies him. Deanna takes him over to the counter. He keeps looking our way to make sure his mother is still there. Why shouldn’t he fear letting her out of his sight? His father left one day and never came back. But maybe all two-year-olds act this way. How would I know?
“It’s been a long time,” I say. “I’m so sorry about Rich.”
Her cheeks are flushed. “They say you and his father just want Rich’s money. I don’t know why I’m doing this.”
“Why are you, then?”
“Because of what Deanna said. She told me you found something in the autopsy report that shows that someone . . . that Rich didn’t kill himself. If that’s true, Joshy and I . . .” Her voice trails off, but I now understand why she agreed to speak with me. If Rich didn’t commit suicide, then under Assembly dogma, he wasn’t diseased after all, and neither she nor her son could be contaminated with the same illness. She’s hoping I can offer absolution.
“Did you send those horrible e-mails?” she asks.
“Absolutely not.”
“Then Rich’s father.”
I shake my head. “I realize that you don’t know him very well, but there’s no way.”
“I don’t know him at all. I only know that he hates me.”
Each time I try to make the slightest eye contact, she looks away. I see no sign of the Monica I expected—the calculating femme fatale, no better than a temple prostitute who lured an innocent like Rich Baxter into a nefarious cult. This person just seems frightened and grief-stricken.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” I say.
“Of course you would. You’re a lawyer.”
“What do the e-mails say?”
“They’re so scary. Written by a defective. They say that the person who stole the Assembly’s money also killed Rich. And Harmon Cherry. They say that Joshy’s life and mine are in danger. That I should go to the police; that I should hide; that whatever I do there’s no escape. That I shouldn’t trust the Assembly elders. That I shouldn’t trust anyone. That the Assembly’s involved in a worldwide conspiracy . . . and on and on and on.”
“Whatever would make you think I sent those?”
She finally looks me in the eye, and I feel as if she’s slapped my face. “Because you have contempt for our beliefs. Because you dislike me, even though you don’t know anything about me. Because you got involved in this with Rich, and I don’t understand why.”
Now I’m the one who looks away.
Her words come quickly now. “Because Rich said he was working with an outsider. He wouldn’t say who it was. It was too dangerous for him to tell, he said. But when he hired you as his attorney I figured it must be you. It was you, right? You’re the one who got him into that stupid investigation about embezzlement and Harmon Cherry, the reason he got arrested, and then . . .” Her eyes fill with tears, and I think she’s going cry, but instead she smiles broadly, an act so eerie that I feel as if an icy finger is tracing curlicues down my spine. Then I realize that she’s forcing the smile for Josh, who’s waving to her. She waves back.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “The first time I spoke with Rich was when I met with him at the jail. What did Rich tell you about this . . . this outsider?”
“He discovered financial irregularities and he needed help in analyzing them. That kind of work wasn’t his strength. I offered to help—I worked in accounting, you know—but he said it was too risky, that he had to keep me out of it. I wanted him to go to Chris McCarthy, but he said he had to work with someone outside the Assembly, because he thought the embezzler was inside. I didn’t believe him, but he insisted. That’s when he rented the place in Silver Lake, because he said what he was doing was dangerous, that he couldn’t have an outsider coming to our house. He was always talking about how good a lawyer you were, so I assumed . . .”
“You knew about the Silver Lake apartment?”
“I knew he had a safe house. I didn’t know where until after.”
“Do you know that . . . that the FBI and the building landlord say . . . you must know that they say he was bringing women there. And that he was found with drugs.”
“You’re rude to bring up those lies.”
“If I’m going to get to the truth, I can’t sugarcoat my questions.”
She shakes her head so hard that her straight brown hair swishes back and forth across her shoulders. “Rich wouldn’t go with prostitutes. He was always faithful to me. And he wouldn’t take drugs. The Assembly forbids drug use, and so he wouldn’t. He’s—he was—a good husband and a devoted father. He was using the apartment to meet with the outsider and investigate the financial irregularities.”
I’ve always assumed that on her side, the marriage was one of expediency, not love, and that the Assembly arranged the marriage. Did I have it wrong? Or did she learn to love him? Whatever the truth, I’m not going to try to convince her that her husband consorted with whores.
“Where did the drugs come from? And the false passport?”
“They must’ve been planted. Maybe he thought that the murderer . . . I don’t know. But there has to be an explanation.” Now she sounds just like her estranged father-in-law.
I pose a few follow-up questions, but she can’t tell me anything more. When I ask to see the anonymous e-mails, she balks. I’m sure that Christopher McCarthy or one of his subordinates instructed her to have nothing to do with me. But after some prodding, she agrees to leave copies of the e-mails with Deanna.
“I have to get my son home,” she says. “I really shouldn’t have talked to you. Just know that nobody from my church would harm Rich. We’re devoted to peace and curing the defects in man that lead to war and violence and disease and unhappiness.” Monica nods at Deanna, who walks Josh back over.
“He’s such a good boy,” Deanna says.
“He’s a wonderful boy,” Monica says, straightening his clothing. “So are all the children of the Fount.” She places him in the stroller.
