Swindlers (28 page)

The driver had just turned onto California
Street, on the way to Nob Hill. The city was all lit up, the
stores, the windows, full of decoration, painted in the bright
cheerful colors of Christmas, December scenes of falling snow in a
place where it never got cold enough for anything but fog and rain.
We passed a cable car, full of giddy tourists, chugging up the
shiny iron tracks to the top. Danielle tapped on the glass.

“I’m not going to the hotel. You can drop us
both at Mr. Morrison’s building.”

It was only after the car was gone, after we
had slipped through the lobby and the elevator door had closed
behind us, that I started repeat what in my lame attempt to make
her feel better I had tried to say before. But now I did it because
I was confused and worried, and more than little angry, that she
had waited until after the verdict to tell me that apparently
nothing she had told me had been the truth.

“You said it happened because of that look he
had on his face, that look he had after he finished with you in
bed; that look that said he could do whatever he wanted and there
was nothing you could do about it! Are you telling me that wasn’t
true? – That it wasn’t the reason you killed him, that it was
something else?”

Every conceivable emotion – anger, defiance,
pride, and then hurt, regret, fatigue, and even sorrow – ran one
after the other through her marvelous eyes in a losing race to
dominate, take control, give her, if only for a moment, a clear
sense of who she was and what she really felt. I could not escape
the feeling that some part of her was almost desperate to tell me
the truth, but that another part of her, stronger and more
disciplined, and I think more instinctive, would not let her.

“What was it?” I pleaded. “What really
happened that night? You owe me that much, after what I’ve
done.”

The elevator shuddered to a stop. She did not
say anything – she did not even look at me – until we were inside
the apartment, and then it was only to tell me that she was not
going to answer.

“Let’s not talk about anything. Let’s make
love and then sleep and then make love again.” She looked at me
with a strange, wounded expression, like someone forced into an
ordeal that was still not over, that might never be over. “Whatever
happens, when I told you that I might be falling in love with you –
that was true. I am falling in love with you. Remember that,” she
said as we started toward the bedroom door. “Whatever happens
later, remember that.”

CHAPTER
Seventeen

The next morning, before I left for the
office, we agreed to meet that night for dinner. In a few days,
Danielle would be going back to New York to spend time with her
son, but after I finished the next trial I had, we would meet
somewhere and decide then what we wanted to do next. It seemed a
very good idea, given everything that had happened, to take our
time and let things take their course. We would find a place -
Danielle mentioned an island in the Caribbean – where we could have
all the privacy we needed. For the first time in a long time -
since, really, the day she asked me to defend her - I felt
confident and relaxed, certain about the future, or as certain as
anyone can be. I was almost looking forward to the trial that was
coming up, getting back to my normal life.

An hour after I started I had finished going
through the case file, the same one that just a few days earlier I
had not been able read even two pages without losing concentration.
Everything fell into place. I began to make a list of witnesses,
prosecution witnesses, with a short summary of what they could be
expected to say and what I thought would be the weak points of
their testimony by which I could discredit them. My mind was clear.
I could see in advance everything that was going to happen: every
question I was going to ask and every answer I could turn to
advantage. I worked without any awareness of time, lost in what I
was doing, the next trial, the only trial that mattered. I did not
hear the buzzer on the telephone, and did not know my secretary had
something to tell me until her hand was on my shoulder.

“There’s someone here to see you.”

Tall, taciturn, with a strict devotion to
work, Stella Summerfield knew my habits better than I knew them
myself. When I was getting ready for a trial, there were no phone
calls, no appointments, nothing that would interrupt what I was
doing. Telling me that someone was here to see me made no sense at
all.

“I told him you were busy and that he needed
to make an appointment,” she explained when my only response was a
blank, incredulous stare. “He says it’s about the St. James
trial.”

The blank expression on my face turned to one
of puzzled annoyance. That was the last reason I would see anyone,
and she knew it.

“He was a witness, a witness for the
prosecution,” she said with her usual calm efficiency. “He says he
has something to tell you he thinks you should know.”

“Did he tell you his name?” I asked, vaguely
interested.

“Rufus Wiley.”

“Rufus Wiley!” I exclaimed, astonished as
much that he was here, in San Francisco, as that he had something
to say to me. “Yes, all right; send him in.”

There was none of the smug complacency, the
irritating condescension, which had so much marked Wiley’s demeanor
when I had first watched him take the witness stand in court. He
moved with a cautious, almost hesitant, step as he came toward my
desk and took the wing back chair in front. I did not get up, did
not reach out my hand, as perhaps I should have done. I was too
surprised that he was here, too intrigued by why he might have come
to see me this soon after the trial, to remember courtesy; and
besides, I did not like him. Whatever the reason he was here, it
was not likely to be pleasant.

“You said you wanted to see me,” I said,
watching him, as it were, from a distance. “Something about the
trial?”

Wiley bent his head to the side. There was a
pensive, and oddly troubled, expression on his round, smooth
face.

“Yes, about the trial…, that business about
Nelson killing himself.” He tilted his head farther to the side. A
nervous smile started onto his mouth and then as quickly
disappeared. “You didn’t know she was going to say that, did you? –
until she said it on the witness stand.”

It was none of his business, but that was not
what got my attention.

“You were there – in the courtroom - watching
the trial?”

He seemed to study me for a moment, searching
my eyes to see if I meant it. He smiled, not like before, narrow
and cramped, but broadly and with what, if I understood it right,
seemed like relief, though at what, or for what reason, I could not
have guessed. Suddenly, he glanced around my office and made a
sweeping gesture with his hand.

“It’s like this room. If you closed your eyes
and I asked you to describe it, I’ll bet you couldn’t tell me the
color the walls are painted.” That thought seemed to lead to
another, an escalating sense of analysis. “You wouldn’t notice if
you came in one morning and all the paintings had been removed, all
the furniture taken away, and all the books stolen, so long as you
had that desk and chair, a place you could work. That’s why you’re
so good at what you do, Mr. Morrison: perfect concentration, or as
close to perfect as I have ever seen. I admire you for that. It’s a
gift I wish I had. Yes, I was there, watching the trial; seldom
missed a day of it after I was finished as a witness. But you
didn’t see a thing, did you? - didn’t even notice me there in the
crowd. As I say, I’m not surprised.”

“But why did you?” I asked, deeply
curious.

“Because of you, Mr. Morrison. You see, I was
certain she was going to be convicted, but then – well, I saw what
you could do, and I wasn’t so sure anymore.”

He was older than I, twenty years or more, a
lawyer all his life and a man not given to praise. One leg crossed
over the other, his hands held together in his lap, he spoke with
the tempered judgment of a senior partner drawing on a vast,
accumulated experience.

“That question you asked right at the end,
whether Nelson, the last time I talked to him, had not seemed
depressed: that was brilliant – a stroke of genius, really.
Everyone said you were good, but I had no idea you were as good as
that. One question, and you had everything you needed; or rather,
all she needed.”

He laughed, as at some private joke, a low,
muffled laugh followed immediately by a rueful smile. He seemed
certain I would understand.

“That must have been when she first thought
of it – when you suggested it as a possibility – the story she
could tell, the one that gave her the best chance to save herself.
You didn’t know, did you? – You didn’t know, and then you had no
choice when she took the stand and started telling that made-up
story of hers.”

I could not see the point to this. Why was he
here? It had been obvious from the moment he had taken the stand as
a witness for the prosecution that he disliked Danielle. I did not
need to listen to him tell me that again.

“You wanted her to be convicted, didn’t you?
Was that reason you stayed around: to see the look on her face when
the jury found her guilty?”

He ignored me, dismissed my remark as somehow
irrelevant to the reason he was there. He was so intent on what he
had come to say I am not even sure he had heard me.

“That was a brilliant performance,” he went
on; “not just yesterday – though that closing argument of yours was
as good as anything I’ve seen, - but all the way through. I thought
you might win, after what you did with me on cross-examination, but
until she took the stand and told that lie of hers, I have to
confess I wasn’t quite sure how you were going to pull it off. Even
with what she said on the stand, if you hadn’t been her lawyer, if
she’d had anyone else….”

Wiley fell into a long, brooding silence.
Streaming through the curtained window on the other side of the
room, the morning light made the slightest movement of his eyes
seem furtive and full of secrets, as if he knew more than he wanted
to; more, even, than he should.

“You made quite a point of the legal
difficulties Nelson was in,” he said presently; “that being
indicted must have weighed heavily on his mind, added to the
depression he must have felt over the failure of his marriage. Did
you really believe that she knew nothing about the kind of business
Nelson was in? I was his lawyer,” he added, quick to put some
distance between himself and what his client had done; “I was not
his accountant. I didn’t know what he was doing with all his
different financial schemes and transactions. But she was married
to him, and she’s much too intelligent – much too shrewd – not to
have known what he was up to. Every time someone visited the yacht,
every time Nelson brought someone on board to discuss what they
were going to do next, she was there to greet them. You were there,
Mr. Morrison, on the Blue Zephyr – you met Nelson, and you’ve now
spent months with her. Which of them do you think was smarter? Do
you really think she didn’t know?”

Wiley searched my eyes, subjecting me to a
scrutiny suggesting culpability on my part. Either I was a fool for
not having believed she could be involved in her husband’s criminal
acts, or a liar for denying it.

“I don’t know anything about the things St.
James might have done – or what his wife may have known. But even
if I did,” I added, wondering why I felt the need to explain myself
to him, “you know as well as I do that I can’t discuss anything my
client may have said.”

“She never mentioned it, never said a word
about how he got all that money – nothing about how he stole it?”
he persisted, ignoring what I had just told him. “Never told you
how the money was the real reason she killed him? Never said
anything about how killing Nelson was the only chance she had to
keep it all for herself?”

This was crazy; none of it made sense. Wiley
had been at the trial; he could not have forgotten.

“‘
The chance to keep it all
for herself’? - She doesn’t get anything! He changed his will – you
did it, you made the changes! There was no divorce, so she doesn’t
even get what she would have had under the pre-nuptial agreement
you insisted she sign! If money was what she wanted, the last thing
-”

“Was to have him dead – Yes, I remember what
you told the jury. But you left something out: the will. Almost
everything now goes to their son, but he’s just a boy and his
mother will be the trustee. Yes, that’s correct: the woman you
convinced the jury would get less from her husband’s death than she
would have gotten in a divorce ends up in control of everything.
Why do you think she’s going back to New York? Because now that
she’s been acquitted of Nelson’s murder, there are certain papers –
papers I have to draw up – transferring ownership from his name to
hers.”

“She’s going back to New York to see her son.
She probably doesn’t even know she’s going to be trustee for the
money he inherits.”

Rufus Wiley rose from the chair. He looked at
me, pitying the deception of which he seemed certain I had been the
victim.

“Is that what she told you: that she was
going to New York to be with her son? He’s been in a private
boarding school in Switzerland for the last two years. And as for
not knowing she would become the trustee, with full power to do
with the money what she likes, she called my office first thing
this morning and made the appointment to sign the papers. It’s
really quite ironic. If Nelson had lived, it would not have
mattered if he had stayed out there on the Blue Zephyr, a fugitive
from the law, or come back and been convicted at trial: the
government would have taken everything, all the houses, all the
money, even the yacht. There wouldn’t have been anything left for
Danielle, not the house in the Hamptons, not the million dollars a
year, nothing. I rather imagine she knew that, understood right
from the beginning that Nelson was finished, and that her only
chance was to make sure he died before the government started
proceedings against everything he owned.”