Corrupt Practices (4 page)

“Good to have you with us, Ms. Williams. Now let’s talk about what we’re going to do this semester. We’re going to pick a case, and—”

“Before you go on, I have a question,” Lovely says.

“Absolutely, Ms. Diamond.” I try to sound enthusiastic—an olive branch.

“Is it true you’re Parky Gerald?”

And with those words, Lovely Diamond has intentionally or unwittingly exacted revenge for my thinking her name a joke. I begin drumming my fingers on the table bottom, which is tacky with what I pray is nothing worse than used chewing gum.

“I did go by that name when I was a kid,” I say, or rather, confess. I’ve spent my adulthood trying to hide it.

Kathleen considers me with a look I haven’t seen in years—celebrity worship. “Oh my god, that was you, professor?”

“Who’s Parky Gerald?” Jonathan asks.

“A child actor,” Kathleen says. “He starred in that movie
Alien Parents
. And
Alien Parents 2
. And then a soccer movie, I forget what it’s called.”

“I remember that guy,” Jonathan says. “You don’t look anything like him.”

Of course I don’t. I’m thirty-seven years old, not ten. And I have dark brown hair and a swarthy complexion and a stocky build. Back then, they wanted their child star blond and fair and rosy-cheeked and rail thin. They bleached my hair platinum and layered on the pancake makeup so I’d look pale. And there was the rouge and the eye shadow to make my eyes look big and the constant dieting to keep me skinny. The only good thing about that part of my past is the Screen Actors Guild residuals.

Kathleen continues to gawk at me like an obsessed fan. “Wow. When I was nine, I watched your movies on the VCR over and over. You were so cute. Then you were gone. Wasn’t there . . . some lawsuit or scandal or . . . ?”

She looks at Lovely, who shrugs. I bet this Diamond woman thinks she knows exactly what happened to Parky Gerald.

“Let’s leave my checkered acting career for some other time,” I say. “And I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to anyone else. It’s not something I want people to know.” I’m sure that my request is hopeless—law students love gossip.

I summarize what I want to accomplish during the semester. They’ll each be responsible for monitoring a lawsuit so they can get some real-life experience. They’ll work with me and the outside attorney of record. I ask them to come to our next class with a proposed case to handle. I pass out a list of possibilities that I got from an ex-colleague who works at Legal Aid—mostly credit card fraud and slumlord cases for impoverished clients, unexciting but worthy causes that can give them valuable experience. I spend the rest of the session describing the nuts and bolts of a legal case from complaint to trial, something I was never taught in law school. I let them go twenty minutes early. As they’re leaving, Jonathan nods, and Kathleen grins at me like a moonstruck schoolgirl. Lovely walks past me without a gesture of goodbye.

During law school, I’d planned to go to work for a large international law firm. And then I got the phone call from superstar lawyer Harmon Cherry. He told me that the firm was still only a few years old and that I could get in on the ground floor if I joined him. I came in for an interview, and when it was over, he offered me a job. I still don’t know whether my impulsiveness was a sign of wisdom or immaturity, but I took his offer on the spot because he made me feel like he was bestowing a great honor upon me, but also like I’d be honoring him if I accepted. Within a few weeks, he also hired Deanna, Rich, Manny, and Grace Trimble.

Five months into my tenure, Rich Baxter came into my office and gleefully announced that Harmon had brought the Church of the Sanctified Assembly in as a client. It was a major coup for a small firm. I bolted out of my chair, barged into Harmon’s office, and told him I quit.

He leaned back in his chair and waited.

I hadn’t shared my secret with anyone, but now I blurted it out. “I used to be known as Parky Gerald. I sued for emancipation from my mother when I was fifteen years old after I found out she’d taken every penny that I’d earned as an actor. That was public knowledge. What no one knows is that she gave my money to the Church of the Sanctified Assembly. I can’t work at a place that represents that group.”

He looked up at the ceiling, reached across his desk, picked up an unlit meerschaum pipe, and began chewing on the stem. “I get it. But don’t be hasty. You’ve got a bright future here.” He thought for a moment. “How about this? You stay at the firm and I guarantee that you won’t have to come within a hundred miles of the Assembly. You’ll work on other things. There’s plenty to do around here. We’ll set up an ethical wall between you and them.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Think it over. And then say yes. We’ll revisit all of it in six months.”

I gave him my decision two days later. I’d stay at the firm on his terms with an added condition—my compensation would be calculated as if the Assembly wasn’t a client. It would mean leaving a lot of money on the table, but even as a young associate, I refused to profit from the Assembly’s legal work.

He kept his promise. I never had to work on an Assembly matter. And as far as I know, he never revealed my identity to anyone. I haven’t trusted many people in my life, but I trusted Harmon Cherry. And then he killed himself.

Harmon ran our law firm as democratically as you can operate a multimillion dollar business. His wife, Layla, however, considered herself Queen Consort. When she called Harmon, she always demanded that his assistant interrupt him no matter how important his meeting and how trivial her need. A half-dozen times a year, she would order one of the paralegals to ghost write her twin daughters’ school projects. Once, she threatened to have the office custodian fired when he refused to break into a vending machine so she could have soft drinks for her girls’ upcoming birthday party. The few who had the courage to refuse her demands would receive a visit from Harmon, who’d give a defeated shrug, apologize profusely, and tell the naysayer to do what Layla wanted. As far as I know, she was his only blind spot, but she was a big one.

She still lives in their sprawling Hacienda-style house in Hancock Park, an old, upscale Los Angeles neighborhood. Once residents of Beverly Hills, she and Harmon bought the house just so their daughters could live close to their all-girls private school. Deanna hears that Layla has fallen on hard times. I don’t believe it. I’ll bet Layla still buys couture.

I stop to admire the magnificent pueblo door to the courtyard. At a firm party a few years ago, Layla told us about it—knotty pine with a mesquite finish, hand-carved rosette design, bronze clavos costing seventy-five dollars apiece. “That’s for each nail, not for the whole set,” she said. I push the door open. To my surprise, it’s sagging on its hinges, so much so that the bottom scrapes the concrete and makes a sound that jangles my nerve endings. I step into the patio. The trees need trimming, the lawn needs mowing, and a juniper bush is overgrown and half strangled by ivy. It looks like the gardener comes every three weeks rather than twice a week, as when Harmon was alive. Maybe Deanna’s right about Layla’s money woes.

Layla opens the door before I can ring the bell, a broad smile on her face. She’s wearing a chestnut sleeveless blouse and baggy black bloomers. It’s a balmy day, and she’s an attractive woman, but she’s also forty-two years old and dressed like one of her seventeen-year-old daughters.

“Parker.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and gives me three audible air kisses, alternating cheeks. “It’s been too long.” She leads me into the living room, sits down on the sofa, and gestures for me to sit next to her.

“How’ve you been, Layla?”

She takes the question literally, launching into a long narrative about how, since Harmon’s death, her life has been in perpetual crisis. When one of her daughters developed a drug and alcohol problem, Layla had to send her to an expensive boarding school in Montana for troubled teens. She can’t pay her housekeeping staff. She had to sell Harmon’s Lamborghini—she calls it his “Lambo”—and some treasured artwork. She’s in a bitter dispute with the company that issued one of Harmon’s life insurance policies. She’s put their Malibu beach house up for sale for a paltry $8,250,000. And on and on. Throughout her monologue, she flutters her hands and occasionally reaches out and touches me on the knee or arm.

“The Malibu house is a bargain,” she says. “But not a single offer. My broker keeps talking about the bad economy, wants me to lower the price again, but I’m holding out. It’s not the economy that’s keeping the house from selling. It’s because the broker has to disclose what happened there. And no one wants a house where . . .” She doesn’t have to finish her sentence—no one wants a house in which its prior owner shot himself in the mouth. “So if you know anyone looking to live by the beach . . . You live by the ocean, don’t you?”

“Marina Del Rey.”

“Well, if you know of someone . . .” She seems to lose her train of thought. Her eyes flood with tears. “God, I miss him so much.”

“I do, too. Everyone does.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Why would you think—?”

“He pushed everyone at the firm so hard. Especially your class. Sometimes I wondered whether you resented him.”

“We all loved him.”

She stares at me with a forlorn look that makes me think she expects a hug or a comforting touch. I wonder what else she wants from me. My cynicism makes me a good lawyer but often a hard-boiled human being.

She forces a smile. “I’m sorry. I get . . . you said you wanted to talk to me about Rich Baxter.”

“He’s in jail.”

“Oh my god, what for?”

“Embezzling from the Church of the Sanctified Assembly.”

Her eyes narrow into slits. “
Those
people. You know, they even tried to convert our girls? When I asked Harmon why he kept them on as a client, he said they didn’t just put the bread on our table, they provided the whole meal.”

“I’m looking for some documents. I know it’s unlikely, but I was wondering if you kept any of Harmon’s work files.”

“The firm took everything, which was fine with me. The firm and the Assembly. In fact, when Rich went out on his own he insisted I let his people search Harmon’s office. He was kind of an asshole about it. I’m a widow for six weeks, and all he cared about was files. Nowadays, the girls use the office as kind of a rec room to hang out with their friends. Anyway, there’s nothing here.”

I feel a strange combination of disappointment and relief, the way I felt as a kid when I’d lose out on a movie role only to get to stay in school and feel normal for a while longer. “Thanks for your time, Layla. I hope things get better for you soon.”

“That’s it?”

“I told you it wouldn’t take long.”

She grabs my shirt cuff. “Could you stay a minute, Parker? There’s something I want to ask you.”

Reluctantly, I sit back down.

“My fight with the life insurance company. They won’t pay on a five million dollar policy. There was a suicide exclusion. Harmon didn’t kill himself.”

I know Layla has never accepted the fact of Harmon’s suicide, but I didn’t realize that her incredulity has a pecuniary component.

“Someone killed him,” she continues. “There’s no way he would’ve . . . We need that insurance money to survive. Harmon used to say that you were the best young trial lawyer in the firm. We need an aggressive attorney to handle a lawsuit against the insurance company. I can’t pay an hourly rate, but maybe if you took it on a contingency you could—”

“I don’t practice law anymore, Layla.”

“But you’re representing Rich Baxter.”

“Just doing him a favor by talking to you. Besides, it’s been what, a year and a half since Harmon died? You must’ve talked to other attorneys about suing the carrier.”

She lowers her eyes. “I’ve talked to a few others.”

“And what did they say?”

“They . . . none of them wants to take the case on a contingency. They say the police investigation and the medical examiner’s report are conclusive. They’re wrong. I have a report that proves Harmon was murdered.”

“You have—?”