Corrupt Practices (26 page)

Deanna, who was about to leave, stops short.

Weir pulls his shoulders back and raises his chin. “Mr. Stern, we just want to make sure that you’ve complied with California Code of Professional Conduct Rule 3-320.”

That rule says that if a lawyer’s close relative, spouse, or significant other is representing the other side, the lawyer has to share that fact with his client. In other words, if I had a sister who was representing the Assembly, I would have to tell Raymond Baxter about it. We have nothing like that going on in our case.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

Weir leans forward and puts his elbows on the table. “The rule says you have to tell your client if someone on your side has an intimate personal relationship with any of the lawyers on our side. Ms. Diamond and I have such a relationship.”

“That’s not true!” Lovely says.

He leers her. “Are you denying the fact that we were . . .
intimate
. . . just four months ago?”

She glares at him, but says nothing.

“And for the record, I’m not the only one at the law firm to, how shall I put it, have the pleasure of Ms. Diamond’s company,” he says.

Strobe-like pulses of jealousy and anger make everything move in slow motion, leave me unable to form a coherent thought, much less counterattack as I should. Deanna’s power of speech isn’t similarly impaired, and like that day in court when Rich was killed, she comes to my rescue. “Hey, Lou . . . It is Lou, right?”

Frantz gapes at her as if she’s deranged. “Just because you own this place doesn’t give you the right to speak. You’re not part of this deposition.”

“I am now,” she says. “Hey, Lou, did you know that I run a very trendy shop? Zagat rated. The upscale meets the underground, the review says. Part of the reason for my success is that I get to know my customers. Did you know that your wife, Ginny, is a regular?”

“You don’t know my wife.”

“Auburn hair as of last week. Honey blonde before that. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s the only one other than your mother who’s allowed to call you Louie.”

Frantz flinches.

“I didn’t think you knew that she comes in here. Usually at night when you’re working late, which seems to be almost every night. She’s, what, in her early forties? She looks younger, lucky you. Do people think she’s your daughter?”

“Last warning, Ms. Poulos,” Frantz says. “Stop talking and get out.”

“Were you aware that your wife likes bikers,” Deanna says. “You know the type—burly, primitive, dominant, and . . .
hirsute
, that’s the word I’m looking for. Oh, and young. Definitely young. Just two nights ago she left my place with a guy who calls himself Renegade. Quite a hunk, if you like the type, which I do once in a while. Couldn’t have been more than twenty-four, twenty-five years old. Of course, he was probably just being chivalrous, escorting a lady to her car, but . . .” She shrugs.

Weir squirms in his seat. McCarthy leans back in his chair and sets his lips, unsuccessfully trying to hide his admiration for Deanna’s showmanship. The veins bulge out from Frantz’s forehead. “Listen to me, madam,” he says, making the word
madam
sound profane. “You obviously have no idea who you’re dealing with. You have no idea of the depth and breadth and raw force of the misery you’ve just brought down upon yourself. I’m Louis Frantz. You can expect my wife and I to—”

“Oh, give me a break,” Deanna says. “Chris can tell you that back in the day I was a hell of a libel lawyer. Representing the Church of the Sanctified Assembly, of course. You’re not going to sue me. For one thing, truth is a defense. Go home and ask your wife if what I said is true. For another thing, if you sue me, you and your wife’s reputation will be fair game, and rest assured that I’ll use the discovery process to poke around in every nook and cranny of your personal lives. But the best thing is that whatever I say on the record in a lawsuit is absolutely privileged under section 47(b) of the California Civil Code. It doesn’t matter if my words are true or false, I get a free pass. And you didn’t ask to go off the record.”

Frantz sputters, and then looks at Janine, who’s staring downward, still entering keystrokes into her stenograph machine. He pretends to shuffle some papers. Weir leans over to whisper something to him.

“Not now!” he shouts.

Abashed, Weir slides his chair away.

“You’ve made your point, Deanna,” McCarthy says. “Now may we get this farce going so I can get out of here?”

“Nice seeing you again, Chris,” she says. She gestures toward Weir. “As for you, you’re just a flaming asshole. Please put that on the record, too, Janine.”

Janine’s eyes blink rapidly, but her fingers keep moving on her steno machine. Deanna’s words will indeed be on the record, not to mention captured on video.

I glance at Lovely, searching for a reaction, but she stares down at her legal pad, not blinking.

“Can we start?” McCarthy says.

“One moment, sir,” I say, finding my voice much too late. “Mr. Frantz, your position regarding Ms. Diamond is legally untenable because she’s not a lawyer. The rule you cited only applies to lawyers. What you’ve done today is dishonorable, vindictive. Now that you’ve exacted your pound of flesh, I expect that you and your firm won’t repeat this kind of behavior.”

Frantz’s eyes burn with a lupine intensity. “A pound of flesh, you said? Not close. We’re just getting started.”

I study him for a moment. “You know, Lou, you’re the perfect attorney for the Assembly. You pretend to take the high road when all the time you’re wallowing in the gutter. Are you also on board with their extrajudicial methods? The beatings and the even more violent forms of physical intimidation?”

McCarthy scowls at me. I guess I should worry about antagonizing him further, about hastening the Assembly’s decision to do more to me than dole out a bad thrashing, but I don’t care about that now. I’ll just have to stay off dark streets and make sure to lock my doors. I glance at Lovely. I’m not naïve. I don’t for a moment discount Weir’s statements about her. As tough as she is, she can’t hide the crimson flush of humiliation on her cheeks. But my desire to protect her—to fight for her—trumps my jealousy. What right do I have to be jealous, anyway?

She taps me on the shoulder. I lean close to her, covering our mouths with a legal pad so no one can read our lips.

“It wasn’t enough,” she says.

“What wasn’t?”

“What Deanna did. I need you to make McCarthy’s life miserable. Because that’s the only thing that’ll truly make Frantz miserable. He cares more about his lawsuit than his wife. Can you do that?”

I nod. I’ll do it simply because she’s asked me to. No matter how high the cost.

Over the next several hours, I ask McCarthy mundane questions that I hope will lull him into complacency. He claims not to know the names of Rich’s friends and employees, a falsehood because the Assembly keeps tabs on the intimate details of all its members’ lives. Despite Deanna’s admonition, I do ask him about the alleged names of the elders that Lovely found on the Internet. He refuses to answer, of course, and just as Deanna predicted, the questions don’t faze him. He perks up when I ask about the Assembly’s religious doctrine. He loves talking about his religion. His answers are so rambling and long-winded that I often have to interrupt him just to move on to a different subject.

It’s three thirty in the afternoon, the time when even the best deponents are apt to let their guard down because of fatigue or low blood sugar or just an understandable reaction to a particularly tedious brand of stress. Lovely hands me the financial documents retrieved from the hard drive of Rich Baxter’s computer, the ones that her father analyzed for us. I show the documents to McCarthy and get him to confirm that Assembly money traveled a circuitous route until it was deposited into an offshore bank account in the name of The Emery Group.

I put a document in front of him. “I’ll represent to you, Mr. McCarthy, that this is a record of bank transactions involving The Emery Group’s bank account.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t you know? You were the signatory on that account.”

“No I was not.” He’s lying, but I can’t prove it. Not with Ed Diamond’s third-hand information obtained from mobsters.

“Let’s look at a transaction for The Emery Group’s account that occurred on May second. There’s a six million dollar deposit into the account. According to the FBI, that money was later transferred out to someone. Where did the six million go?”

“Richard Baxter stole it.”

“What evidence do you have of that?”

McCarthy rests his arms on a box behind him and leans back like a man luxuriating in a Jacuzzi. “Hmm. Let me count the ways. There’s the fact that he formed all of the Assembly’s corporations and had unfettered access to Assembly financial information. There’s the fact that the IRS traced unusual movement of money to accounts that he, and only he, controlled. There’s the fact that he had a major drug problem and that he was sleeping with prostitutes. Expensive vices, in other words. There’s the fact that he was found with a false passport and a large amount of money, indicating that he was going to skip the country, something that even you can’t explain away, Mr. Stern.” There’s a slight tugging at the muscles in his cheeks, and then a full twitch, and a dot of spittle at the corner of his mouth.

“But neither the IRS nor the US Attorney, with all their resources and experience, could trace where that money went after it left The Emery Group, much less prove it was paid to Rich Baxter, am I right?”

“For once, it appears you’re right.”

“Didn’t you agree to pay Mr. Baxter the six million as a fee for the legal work he did, but when the Assembly elders balked at the amount, you welshed on the deal and framed him?” I don’t expect McCarthy to answer. I just want him to know that he’s a target, too.

“Objection!” Frantz shouts.

McCarthy points a finger at me. “Stern, if you say what you just said outside of this deposition room, I’ll sue you for slander.”

My muscles have cramped from sitting so long on the unforgiving wooden chair, and my ribs throb with a dull pain—a stark reminder of the beating that the Assembly’s thugs gave me. I glare at McCarthy, willing my vision to penetrate his tinted glasses so I can read his stare. Then I don’t need to. I can
feel
the scorching rays of hatred.

“You and your so-called church will do anything to stifle your critics, won’t you, McCarthy?” I say. “Well, you won’t silence this one.”

We glare at each other, fists clenched. There’s a moment of combustible silence, during which either one of us could lunge over the table at the other.

I feel Lovely’s hand on my wrist. “I think we need a break,” she says.

“I certainly do,” Janine says. Without waiting for permission, she gets up and leaves the room. The stunned videographer says, “We’re off the record at 4:32 p.m.,” and follows her out.

We all return from the break subdued, but the underlying hostility remains.

“Mr. McCarthy,” I say, “in our discovery requests, we asked you to look for some notes that Harmon Cherry wrote shortly before his death in 2010. Did you look for such notes? Or a copy on a DVD?”

“We couldn’t find anything like that.”

Lovely hands me McCarthy’s calendar for 2011. Many of the entries, probably for his meetings with Assembly hierarchy, have been redacted on the grounds of confidentiality. I direct his attention to the months of May and June. The three-week period ending June 18 has handwritten lines through it. “Why no entries for these dates?”

“I was on vacation.”

“Have you produced a copy of your itinerary? Because we can’t find one in the documents you provided to us.”

“That’s because they’re not there,” Frantz says. “Where he goes on vacation is his business, not yours. We’re not going to let you invade his privacy.”

“Did you leave the United States?”

“Objection,” Frantz says. “Privacy. Instruct not to answer.”

“What countries did you visit?”

“Objection,” Frantz says.

“What cities did you visit?”

Frantz objects to this and my follow-up questions about the trip, but I ask them anyway just to waste McCarthy’s time.

“All done, Mr. Stern?” McCarthy says when he realizes that I’ve exhausted this line. “Too bad. I was so enjoying this exercise.” He uses the palm of his hand to brush back his hair.

I’m fed up with the preening bird’s threats and lies and stonewalling. So I keep my promise to Lovely by asking, “Let’s see how much you enjoy this next question. Is there now or has ever been an Assembly elder by the name of Quiana Gottschalk?”

Lovely and Weir flip through their respective document stacks, searching for a reference to this person. They won’t find it.

McCarthy removes his sunglasses, and for the first time ever, I see his eyes. They’re round and closely set, framed by deep hard lines etched in sun-damaged skin. Less predatory than I would have expected; small and round, almost porcine. His face registers a combination of confusion and fear. The right corner of his mouth ticks repeatedly.

“One moment,” Frantz says. He huddles with McCarthy. Their frantic whispers reach me as angry, unintelligible hisses. But I get the gist—Frantz wants McCarthy to tell him about Quiana. McCarthy just keeps shaking his head.