Corrupt Practices (15 page)

“So you’ve always said.”

“Then there’s you, Parker. You never give up. Even when you’re down twenty points with a minute to go. That’s admirable most of the time. But not always. You knew that I was letting you stay close, yet you actually convinced yourself that you could win. Am I right?”

I glare at him. The cold wind against my sweaty skin sends a shiver through my body.

“You never had a chance. Just like you don’t have a chance with this so-called Baxter investigation. You’re deceiving yourself into thinking you can win. There’s nothing to win.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it? No pulling punches, Parker. I’m concerned about you. You’re spending your time tilting at windmills on some case where the conclusive evidence is that Rich killed himself.”

“Not tilting at windmills. Looking into a possible murder and a trumped-up autopsy report, and—”

“And you know that the pathology report is phony because Lovely Diamond told you? My God, man, she’s a third-year law student, not a pathologist. What are you doing to yourself?”

“I’m representing a client.”

“I don’t think you’re representing anyone at all. There’s no case. You’re crazy obsessed with the Sanctified Assembly. You always have been. They’re not your law firm’s client anymore, so you can’t claim you’re acting on principle. You should’ve left it behind a long time ago. But instead you’re getting worse, and I think it’s because you’re clinically depressed. It all fits. You can’t work, you can’t even walk into a courtroom. You were pallid as death when you came to court to see
me
argue a case. Until I got you the teaching job, all you did was sit around Deanna’s place and drink coffee. You need professional help. I have some names of people who could—”

“This was what the so-called basketball game was about?”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of any other way to get through to you. I just want to get through to you.”

I don’t know what I expected from him, but certainly not some ridiculous object lesson and a lecture about my mental health. “The only kind of help I need is for you to set up a meeting with Monica Baxter,” I say.

He shuts his eyes for a moment and exhales through his teeth, obviously trying to keep his composure. “Let it go, Parker. Take care of yourself and let it go.”

Even at two thirty in the afternoon, The Barrista is teeming with customers, mostly young working professionals who order prodigious cups of coffee to go so they can stay awake during the afternoon doldrums. I’m hoping that Deanna will do what Manny won’t—convince Monica Baxter to meet with me. For it to happen, Deanna will have to call in a debt on my behalf. Monica owes her.

Rich and Monica met when she was working as a bookkeeper in the Assembly’s accounting department. One of her jobs was to liaison with outside counsel. Six years ago, a company called Elkin Printing sued the Assembly for refusing to pay for some promotional brochures. The amount in controversy was a pittance, maybe twelve thousand dollars, far less than the cost of defense. The case should have been settled, but Rich wanted to impress Monica, so he decided to handle the lawsuit himself even though he’d probably never seen the inside of a courtroom.

He filed a motion, taking the position that the brochures were defective. His exhibits included the purchase order and some invoices. But when Monica gathered the documents, she inadvertently included a top-secret mailing list of the Assembly’s Southern California members. An oblivious Rich filed the mailing list with the court. Only when he sent Monica a file-stamped copy of the motion did she catch the mistake. Monica would have been fired for the blunder, maybe even excommunicated, and the law firm would’ve never worked on an Assembly matter again.

A panicked Rich sought out Deanna. The first thing she did was telephone Elkin Printing’s attorney and demand that he return the membership roster without reading it or keeping a copy. She said that if she didn’t have the list in her possession within the hour, she’d report him to the state bar. She claims that was all she said, but I’m not so sure she didn’t threaten to come over with some of her biker friends and kick the guy’s ass. The roster was back in our office in forty-five minutes. Deanna shredded it herself.

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.”