Corrupt Practices (24 page)

I’m about to teach my first trial advocacy class in three weeks. Kathleen and Jonathan know only that I was mugged late at night. I see no reason to tell them that the Assembly was behind the beating. Why alarm them when they’re in no danger? Lovely disagrees, but I’ve persuaded her to go along for now.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit has moved ahead rapidly, as it must with a May trial date. We’ve filed our answer and asked the other side for documents and scheduled depositions. During class, I use tomorrow’s deposition of Christopher McCarthy as a teaching tool. We discuss technique and strategize about the best way to organize my questions. I divide up responsibility for reviewing the voluminous documents that the Frantz firm produced. I thought that Frantz would sandbag and hand over next to nothing—that’s what most lawyers in Frantz’s position would do—but he went the opposite route, inundating us with documents. It’s a highly effective technique when facing a lawyer with scant resources—a lawyer like me. In the two million-plus pages of documents that the Assembly has burned onto a DVD, it’s inevitable that very few, if any, will prove useful.

Toward the end of class, I say, “There’s something we have to decide. I’d like to take all three of you to the deposition, but there’s only room for one.”

“I’m going,” Lovely says.

“It’s a bad idea, Ms. Diamond. Given your history with Frantz, I don’t think—”

“That’s bullshit. I’m going to be there. Even if Jonathan or Kathleen go, I’ll fit myself in the room and stand in a corner for nine hours if that’s what it takes. I deserve it after what I . . .” She looks at Kathleen and Jonathan. “Are you guys cool with my going?”

“That’s not fair. Kathleen and Jonathan—”

“Lovely should be the one, Professor,” Kathleen says. “I mean, she gave up her job for the case. And she’s done depositions before. It should be Lovely.”

I look at Jonathan.

“No problem,” he says.

As a teacher, I wish one of them had at least insisted on a coin flip. But selfishly, I want Lovely there.

I’m about to end class when Jonathan says, “Kathleen and I were going to report on the Sanctified Assembly’s orientation meeting that we went to last Saturday. Do we have time for that?”

“Of course.”

“How do I put this,” he says. “The Assembly hates you.”

“Jon!” Kathleen says.

“Well, it’s true.”

“How could you possibly get that from a public orientation?” I ask.

“They had a question and answer session where someone asked about the Baxter case. So this woman from the Assembly starts talking about enemies of truth, lost souls who need to . . . how’d she put it . . . heed the words of the Fount. She said that the lawyer for the Baxter estate was one of those people. That he . . . you . . . lost your way. Said the same thing about Raymond Baxter.”

“Did they actually use Professor Stern’s name?” Lovely asks.

“No,” he says. “All she said was that the lawyer was an enemy of truth who won’t be sanctified in the celestial universe.”

“That’s good news,” I say. “I was afraid I was going to have to spend forever in the afterlife with those freaks.”

“That’s not funny,” Lovely says.

I look at Jonathan. “What did you think about the substance of the presentation?”

“Well . . . Kathleen and I don’t agree on that.”

Kathleen’s already ruddy cheeks turn scarlet. “Jon, I told you not to.”

“What do you think, Mr. Borzo?”

“I think those dudes are flat-out scary. Money-hungry. Reminds me of this pyramid scheme my big brother got himself into a few years back. My brother dragged me to a couple of meetings even though I was a teenager. This frenzied get-rich-quick scheme, where they said that all you had to do is work hard and you could be a millionaire. They had a clean-cut man and a sexy woman leading the sessions. Of course, my brother lost all his money like he always does. That’s what the Assembly reminds me of. The fast-talking con artists with the bogus smiles who ran that pyramid scheme.”

Kathleen stares down at the tabletop.

“You don’t agree?” I say.

“Professor, I don’t feel comfortable.”

“This is what being a lawyer is all about, Ms. Williams. Especially in a trial advocacy class. Stating your position in front of people and persuading them to adopt your point of view. That’s what a lawyer does, no matter what kind of law you end up practicing. We’ve been at this for four months. You should feel comfortable by now.”

She closes her eyes for a moment. When she’s agitated like this, she usually has this nervous laugh, but now she’s serious. “It’s just that . . . OK. You know what? It came as a surprise to me, but I found that the Assembly people had real interesting things to say. We’ve been totally negative about them in this class, and I’m not saying you’re wrong because maybe that’s how lawyers have to be, but the people talking at that orientation seemed sincere and dedicated. They weren’t wild-eyed monsters or anything like that. They were like normal people. Nice. And even funny. And they . . . like, they do all this work on suicide prevention and they fight drug abuse and they have a low divorce rate and—”

“I don’t believe those claims,” I say. “As for suicide prevention, they shun the family of suicides. Innocent spouses and kids. Look what they’re doing to Monica Baxter and her son. He’s two years old. How is that anything but inhumane?”

“So what, if it lowers the number of suicides? I mean, it’s not as black and white as you make it, Professor.”

“I can’t believe you’re buying into that crap, Kathleen,” Lovely says. “If nothing else, you should dislike that group because of their sexism. They think women should stay at home and raise kids. And their position on abortion is disgusting. They’d force a twelve-year-old who’s been raped by her father to—”

“It’s not your turn to talk, Ms. Diamond,” I say in a peremptory tone I’ve never used with her.

Her jaw drops, but she stops talking.

“Ms. Williams, you were at the Assembly’s downtown headquarters, correct?” I ask.

She nods.

“And they took you on a guided tour of some of the facilities?” How easily I’ve taken to using the Socratic method I so despised in law school, when the teachers would ask questions instead of saying what they mean.

“We took the tour.”

“How can you possibly justify the Assembly’s spending their adherents’ hard-earned money on that monstrosity?” The Assembly finished construction on the building nine years ago, during my time at Macklin & Cherry. They invited the entire law firm to the preopening of the facility. Everyone at the firm assumed that I’d boycott the event, but I went out of curiosity. There were slabs of Carrara marble on the main floor and a garish atrium and expensive stained glass windows and gilded main doors carved with images of the place where Bradley Kelly supposedly passed through the crease in the universe.

“For my college graduation present,” Kathleen says, “my mom bought me a plane ticket to Europe. I went with a friend. And when we got to Rome, my friend wanted to go to the Vatican because her mother’s Italian. Anyway, how can you get more lavish than the Vatican, right? But no one seems to complain about the Catholic Church wasting its members’ money. And both places are beautiful. The Vatican and the Assembly’s Grand Temple. Maybe there’s something, I don’t know, exhilarating about having a beautiful place as your center of worship. I mean, the Grand Temple is a work of art, and art is like a gift from God, right?” She goes on to tell us why she finds the Assembly’s religious doctrine fascinating, maintaining that it represents a brand new take on the source of mankind’s ills and tragedies and triumphs. The last person I can remember sounding like her was Rich Baxter.

“Ms. Williams, if you’re so enamored of the Assembly—”

“Geez, it’s not like I joined or anything. I just said I found it interesting.”

“If you’re so enamored, you shouldn’t be working on the Baxter case. You don’t have to, you know.”

She laughs, not that nervous giggle of hers this time, but a derisive laugh. “So much for it being OK to express my opinion, huh, Professor? You’re saying that because I disagree with you I shouldn’t work on the case? That’s hilarious, you know? Lovely disagrees with you all the time about everything, and you’ve never once said anything like that to her.”

I glance at Lovely, who seems as surprised at Kathleen’s words as I am. Jonathan is staring out the window.

“I’m not going to debate this with you, Ms. Williams. I need your assurance that you’re committed to working on this case. I’m fighting formidable opponents. Not only the Assembly, but Louis Frantz.”

“Of course I’m committed. I’m . . . I’m going to be a lawyer, right? And like you just said, that’s what lawyers do—advocate for clients. Even clients they don’t agree with. I get it.”

I study her face, trying to gauge her sincerity. Inconclusive. Kathleen Williams has given me yet another reason to look over my shoulder.

Because I’ll be asking the questions, I get to choose the location of McCarthy’s deposition. When I notice it for a law school conference room, Lou Frantz accuses me of insulting McCarthy’s religious beliefs by selecting a Catholic institution. It’s petty gamesmanship. I’m sure McCarthy doesn’t care one whit about where I take his deposition. But I don’t push back. Instead, I reschedule the deposition for the Law Offices of Parker Stern. Frantz must think I don’t have the stomach to fight, which is exactly what I want him to believe.

Lovely and I arrive early for the ten o’clock deposition. At a quarter of ten, the court reporter arrives, wheeling her laptop and stenography machine on a fold-up handcart. She’s a distinguished woman who looks more like an English professor than someone who preserves a record of petty legal skirmishes and pitched discovery battles. The videographer, a burly man with a scraggly beard, follows her inside, toting two large black carrying cases.

The woman glances around with a bewildered expression. Her eyes fall on me. “My goodness, Mr. Stern. I thought I had the wrong address.”

“You’ve come to the right place, Janine.” When I worked at Macklin & Cherry, she was my favorite court reporter. She records testimony with deadly accuracy, and can make or break your deposition just by deciding whether or not to transcribe your verbal ticks and pauses and stammers. She sits down at the head of the table next to me. The videographer takes his place behind me and to my left so he can focus the camera lens only on McCarthy, who’ll sit across from me.

We wait. Lovely warned me that Frantz would be intentionally late. It’s one way he marks his territory. Early in my career, Harmon Cherry taught me how to handle attorneys who play this game—always give them forty-five minutes to show up before calling off the deposition. Ninety-five percent of the time, they’ll show. If they do, keep them an hour longer at the back end, advantageous, because a tired witness is a poor witness. And be sure to blame the need to go late on their morning tardiness.

At ten thirty, the door creaks open. Lovely takes an audible breath. Christopher McCarthy walks in, followed by Nick Weir, Frantz’s associate. The renowned Louis Frantz enters last. When they see the room, they hesitate, looking as if they’re going to turn around and leave.

McCarthy is dressed in a dark silk suit and expensive monogrammed dress shirt. Good. I might have to play the video of this deposition in court someday, and I want our judge and jury to know that McCarthy is rolling in Assembly money. Although this room is especially dim, he doesn’t take off his sunglasses. Also good. He’ll look either ridiculous or sinister on video, and if I get lucky, both at the same time. The smell of his cologne drifts across the room—the sticky-sweet odor of decomposing roses. We don’t shake hands, don’t say hello, don’t even exchange nods.

Weir is frat-boy handsome—tall, dark, and smug, clearly reveling in his role as one of Frantz’s anointed. He has arrogant eyes, as if he’s a powerful man like Frantz. He has no inkling that he radiates no light of his own, that he’s merely an insignificant satellite that reflects the energy of his superstar boss. He looks right past me and stares at Lovely, a smirk on his lips.

Frantz is about six feet tall, with the fit, wiry body of a long distance runner, impressive for a man of seventy. His hair is thinning, and what remains of it is more white than gray. In contrast to the impeccable dress of his colleagues, his ill-fitting suit hangs off him. His slacks are wrinkled. His face is long and thin, a feature that along with his droopy eyelids gives him a hangdog look. His eyes are clear and remote. He’s no one you’d identify as one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country; no one you’d think could captivate a jury better than anyone else. Until you hear his voice.

“You’re Stern, right? I’m Lou Frantz.” He sounds like the Lord God in one of those old Cecil B. DeMille spectaculars. He makes a show of acknowledging Janine and the videographer and then turns his whole body to face Lovely, an orator’s affectation because he could just as easily have turned his head a few degrees. He starts to say something, but instead just smiles. Her shoulders dip slightly.

He and I shake hands. He has a strong grip.