The Gray Zone (18 page)

“They’ve set up attorney-client privilege and the confidentiality laws for a reason. You can talk to me.”

Kelly smirked. “But I haven’t hired you … yet.”

Jake hopped off his desk and handed her the phone. “Go ahead. Find yourself a better lawyer.”

Kelly picked up her Sidekick and pushed some buttons. Jake looked surprised, but listened attentively while she talked.

“Hello, Hol—Yes. Is everything okay there?” Kelly exhaled, and a sheet of tension slid from her body. “No. I’m still going to be a while. Thanks. Don’t worry. Thanks for everything. Give them my love. I’m fine, really … Thank you. Thanks, Hol. I don’t know, another week, maybe two? Oh, thank you. I couldn’t do it without you guys … I love you too.” She hung up.

Jake teased, “An accomplice?”

Kelly smiled at him charmingly. “You could call it that.”

She leaned back in the leather chair, suddenly sapped of every bit of energy. She kept her eyes closed. “I’ve got to go somewhere and sleep a little.”

“Where are you planning on going?”

“Hotel?”

“You can’t.”

Kelly’s eyes flew open. “Excuse me, but who died and made you my prison guard?”

There was an awkward pause as they both realized what she had said. Kelly faltered for a moment and opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out except a sighing sound, something like the
aaahhhh
of someone who’s been punched in the stomach.

Jake wanted to fold her up in his arms, but he reached out and cupped her shoulder instead. It was trembling. Her chin dropped to her chest.

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

Gently he said, “Actually, the judge made me your temporary guardian. Not your prison guard.”

Kelly was silent.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jake whispered.

“Why do people always say that?” She looked up at him.

“I’m going to help you make it okay.”

He said it with such conviction, Kelly almost believed him. “Porter trusted you.”

“Yes, he did.”

“He trusted me, too.”

“Apparently.” Jake tried to say it matter-of-factly, without bitterness. He nearly succeeded.

“There aren’t many people I can trust.”

“I promise I’m not going to let you down.”

Like a child surrendering to an adult, Kelly gave in. “Where do I go now?”

“My place. I have a nice guest room. A bath for you. A cup of tea, or something stronger if you like. Then you talk—you tell me everything.”

Kelly grimaced. “I think I can handle the nice room, the bath, and the tea.”

UNLIKE HIS OFFICE, JAKE’S APARTMENT WAS sterile, like the rooms in a furniture catalogue, probably because he never spent any time there and the housekeeper came twice a week. It was in a high-rise on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, overlooking the Pacific. The pier with its Ferris wheel and roller coaster was down the vista to the left. Up to the right was Malibu.

Kelly came out to the living room wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe with
FOUR SEASONS BANGKOK
stitched in a gold circle over her left breast. Her hair was noticeably darker when wet. She was barefoot, and Jake saw that her toenails were unpainted—unlike most of the pedicured feet that normally traipsed through his apartment on the ends of the long legs of his girlfriends.

“Looks like you get around.” Kelly shrugged at the insignia on the robe.

“God only knows how some of these things end up in my closet.
Where’s that one from?” Jake leaned forward for a closer look, and Kelly held her hair out of the way.

“Bangkok. Don’t remember it at all.”

“I’ll bet you don’t,” Kelly said.

“Name your poison,” said Jake.

“Mineral water. Followed by a very dry martini.”

While Jake fixed the drinks, Kelly put her feet up on the coffee table next to three books. They were stacked, their spines aligned.
Arch
,
Wood
, and
Stone
, read the titles. A green glass bowl of smooth black rocks sat near the stack. Jake handed Kelly her drinks, and she drank the water quickly, in just a few gulps.

After a while she picked up the martini and sipped it silently for a while, watching Jake poke at the fireplace. He seemed like less of an arrogant asshole kneeling there, fumbling with the wood chips and the poker. He had changed out of his suit into jeans and a dark green T-shirt. He looked younger. Kelly tried to picture Porter and Jake hanging out together in law school. The more she tried to picture them as friends in their professional lives, though, the harder it was to imagine. Porter was so vibrant and open, such an optimist and a dreamer. He could talk for hours, literally, about laws he was writing, about history, geopolitics, parenting and love, movies and food. He dealt with everyone openly and generously.

Kelly eyed Jake’s toned back muscles beneath his T-shirt. He was so much more direct, so much more intense. He seemed to be constantly analyzing, processing, predicting—his superfine mind noticing and filing everything away for future use. Yet here he was, too hasty to build a long-lasting fire. Kelly watched him until she couldn’t stand it a minute more.

“Let me do that.” Kelly tightened the belt on her robe as she walked over to arrange the kindling on the fireplace grate. The flame
caught instantly, and she crossed the room and climbed back onto the couch. Jake sat across from her diagonally in a club chair and grinned.

“You may be shocked to hear I was never a Boy Scout.”

“Porter was.”

“Not just a Boy Scout. An Eagle Scout, and didn’t we all know it.” Jake picked up his shot glass, threw back the tequila, and tapped the glass on the palm of his hand, surprised at the surge of anger he felt. Mad at Porter? Jealous?

Jake had decided not to pussyfoot around with Kelly. There was something unnerving and electrifying in the way she went from vulnerable to seductive to calculating, just by tilting her head. He had been with many sensual women in his life—actresses, models, call girls—but never had he met a woman so attuned to every cadence of conversation, every plane of a room, every molecule of scent. It was as if she already knew all his secrets and predilections, and each of her comments and movements was calibrated with that information in mind. He had to watch his step. But it was pissing him off.

“Is that where you want to start? With Porter?” He tried to keep his voice neutral, and failed.

“Porter and I were in love. That’s all there is to it.”

“It didn’t bother you that he had a wife and kids? It doesn’t seem that you had the best intention for his family.” He hit hard, waiting for her reaction.

“Best intention for his family,” she repeated. Her mind wandered to the first time Porter had brushed his hand against hers, that morning at the Vegas coffee shop as he reached out to pick up Kevin’s toy that had fallen at his feet. She could never forget the puzzled look they’d each had in their eyes at the recognition of an unavoidable magnetic force. Their hands touching and his gentle voice had warmed her spine.

“I got it,” he’d said. They had both laughed as he joined her and her kids, as naturally as though they belonged together. Somehow she had known that love was inevitable.

“His wife didn’t love him, and I made sure I didn’t come between him and his kids. I was satisfied with the crumbs. It wasn’t ownership. It was about love.”

Jake knew that could have been true. He decided to retract. “Did you get a chance to say good-bye?”

Kelly paused and then spoke carefully. “You know, I was with him right before he died. He didn’t know it was a final good-bye, but I left town that night after I saw him. I was on my way to Mexico—with the kids. When I heard the news, about his, um, death, I came to LA instead. I had to be at the funeral. It was all too sudden.”

Jake looked confused. “You were there? I didn’t see—”

Kelly reached out and grabbed his right hand in hers. “We all need friends, Mr. Brooks,” she said in a voice tinged with a British accent.

Jake jerked away as though her hands were a hot frying pan.

“That was
you
?” He gaped at her. Throwing on a Marilyn Monroe costume was one thing. Completely embodying an elderly woman at a funeral was something else. Maybe she
was
more dangerous than she appeared. Maybe …

Jake became aware of an earthy chime, like a marimba. Kelly was laughing. Her mouth was wide open and she was drawing in breath like a drowning person, laughing without restraint.

“That was really you?” he asked again, unable to keep from smiling.

“I’m a woman of a few unusual talents, Mr. Brooks.”

“Obviously.”

“Your face … that was priceless. You want my whole story? Get me another drink and I’ll feed your curiosity.”

“I’m your lawyer, you know,” Jake said pedantically. “Everything you tell me is privileged.”

“Yes, I realize that, counselor. And I’m sure by now you’ve figured out how deeply I trust attorneys.” She laughed some more. Like everything else about her, it was sexy and unique, but tinged with sadness and a tone of danger.

Jake mixed another martini, and Kelly started at the beginning. She told him about finding her mother dead in a pool of blood. How she hated her father for taking her mother away. How, after he was imprisoned, she ended up in foster care. She described the many homes she was passed around to and finally described life at the Gordons’. She skipped the details of the abuse, instead lifting her robe above her knee to show him a couple of scars that told the story for her. She told him about all the times she ran away, sometimes making it for a few days or more on the street before she was brought back. The severe beatings when she was returned.

Kelly paused and looked at Jake. On his face was a mixture of anger and compassion. She smiled.

“You might need another drink for this next part.”

Jake shook his head. “I’m okay,” he said. “Lay it on me.”

“Well, it started like any love story. I was living on the street in Houston. It was ideal for a teenager, actually. Lots of freedom, interesting people to meet, things to learn—like how to get dinner out of a garbage can and how to steal tips from the change jar at Starbucks. Then Prince Charming arrived one day and swept me off my feet. Bought me a steak-and-baked-potato dinner, even went all out and treated me to a milk shake. I went home with him that day, married him on the day I turned sixteen—he wrote eighteen on the marriage license. Oh, and we had the best honeymoon. He raped and sodomized me, then kept it up until I left him. We have two kids. That’s about it. You know most of the rest.”

Kelly looked at Jake provocatively. He tried to smile, intrigued and saddened by her sarcasm. He decided to get off the subject for a while.

“Tell me about this bank scam. Why were you impersonating an old lady?”

Kelly exhaled. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I really enjoy playing Who’s Fooling Who with you, but the truth at this point might be a little more effective.”

“The truth?” she repeated, chuckling as if the idea of it was funny.

Jake nodded.

“Okay, I’ll back up a little, run through the story once more. I ran away from my husband about two years ago and set myself up in Vegas. Not long after I got there, I met Porter. The last thing I planned on was falling in love with anyone, especially a public figure. Like I told you, on the night Porter was … on the night Porter died, I was leaving town again. I had everything packed and ready to go after the show. I had to escape the fishbowl. It was getting too dangerous for both him and me. My plan was to see Porter one last time after I performed, and then leave with the kids in the middle of the night.”

“You put on a hell of a show that night.”

Kelly smiled. “Some of the customers can be such arrogant voyeurs,” she said. “It’s as if they think they can strip and penetrate you right on the stage.”

Jake grinned, pleased he had made such an impression and that she was smiling about it. He nodded for her to continue.

“I was headed for Mexico.”

“Because … ?”

“My vulture of a husband had found me. He was coming after me—us—again. I can always sense when he’s on my tail.”

Jake clenched his jaw. “Your life is filled with vicious animals, voyeurs, human vultures, assholes, rats … Go on.”

“I was taking the kids to Mexico. I was hoping that this time we could just disappear. I was already in Arizona when I heard that
Porter had been killed. It was such a shock. I had said good-bye, but it wasn’t supposed to end like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“After the show I went to see Porter at his hotel. Like I said, I had planned it to be our last time together, but he didn’t know that.”

“You didn’t tell him you were running away?”

“It was for his own good. I didn’t want him to lose momentum in the last few weeks of the campaign. But I did tell him we needed to stop seeing each other. He was pissed about that. We got into a huge fight, actually. We both said things we didn’t mean, words that stay stuck in your gut forever … When I found out he’d been killed, I had to go to his funeral. I had to say a proper good-bye.”

Jake thought again of Kelly’s extraordinary disguise at the funeral. There had been no doubt in his mind that Lydia Haines had been an old woman. She had even … Jake suddenly wondered about her coughing fit and her abrupt departure from the gravesite.

“What was the coughing performance at the funeral, then? A little acting authenticity thrown in?” Jake smiled.

Kelly stared at him coolly. “Surprise, surprise. My husband, Mr. Midas Touch, was at the funeral. I had no idea he would be there. I had to get out of there fast, before his gold fingers put a lock on me. You actually helped shield me from him.”

Jake’s mind raced. Her husband? At Porter’s funeral? He thought back to the scene. Who was standing there? With a jolt, Jake saw the picture in his head. Randy Carlen, the hotel mogul. He had been standing between Jake and Suzanne. Kelly had had to pass him as the old lady Lydia Haines, maybe even shake his hand. When Kelly had started coughing, Jake had put an arm around her, inadvertently hiding her from view, and put her in a taxi.