Long Knives (11 page)

CHAPTER 23

A
fter dinner, Tess and I took a walk along the Seine, which was something we did often. It was a cool evening, with a slight drizzle. I was wearing a light wool topcoat, the kind that sheds the rain if the drizzle isn’t too heavy, and a dark fedora for which I had paid much too much. No one paid me the least bit of attention. Tess was wearing black midcalf boots, dark wool pants, a blue navyesque pea jacket with gold buttons and a red knit cap. As usual, she turned almost every head.

After we had walked awhile, we stopped briefly to admire Notre Dame in its flood-lit glory, then headed for our favorite café, a place we often stopped at the end of our walks. Since it was raining, the tables had been put up, and we went inside. Tess moved toward a small table for two in the back corner, which was relatively isolated from the other tables. I knew that, with privacy, she was about to reopen her inquiry into Jenna.

“
Alors
,” she said, once we were seated, “who is this Jenna…exactly?”

“Exactly, she was an associate in my law firm.”

“She was only associated with it? She did not work there?”

“No, sorry. An associate is an employee of a law firm. I was a partner—I still am, technically. The other lawyers who work there—who don’t own a part of the firm—are employees and are called associates. I don’t know why they’re called that, but they are.”

“This is confusing still.”

“Think of it this way, I was Jenna’s boss.”

“Ah, there are many types of bosses in this world.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, a waiter appeared and took our order. Tess ordered an espresso. I ordered a brandy. I thought I might need it. After the waiter departed, I tried to follow up on her comment about bosses.

“What did you mean when you said there are many types of bosses in this world?”

“When I had twenty years of age, before I commenced my own company, I worked for a small company and had a boss.
Patron
is the word we use. The
patron
, he squeezed my ass every day.”

“I never squeezed Jenna’s ass.” Which was absolutely true. I could have joked that it was tempting, but I decided that saying that, even in jest, would complicate our conversation.

“Did you squeeze anything, Robert?”

“No. Look, Jenna and I were never romantically involved. Not even a little. We worked together a lot. I was her mentor.”

“We have this word in French, too. It is like a teacher, no?”

“Exactly.”

“But a teacher, he also squeezed my ass.”

Just then the waiter arrived with the espresso and the brandy. He must have overheard Tess’s remark about the teacher, because he gave us both an odd look as he set down the cup and the glass. And the bill. French waiters in cafés always leave the bill at the start.

“It sounds,” I said, “like your ass was constantly at risk.”

Tess picked up her cup, sipped it and just smiled at me over the rim of the cup. “Yes. But when I was
le patron
, it was not.”

“I have no doubt of that. But Tess, why do you care so much what my relationship was with Jenna? Even if we had had a romantic relationship—which we did not—it would be over. I was married, too, once upon a time. You’ve never been jealous of my former wife.”

“I am not jealous of this Jenna girl. It is just that when you spoke on the phone, at the end your face lit itself up. Like you spoke to a lover you had lost.”

“I didn’t think my face lit up.”

“It did.”

“Well, if it did, the look said only that I was once fond of Jenna and hadn’t talked to her in a long time.”

“Ah, and why not?”

“She left the firm to become a law professor, and I was super pissed off at her for leaving.”

“You did not think she was permitted to leave? Like she was a slave?”

“No, of course not. It was just that the two of us had been planning to open a new practice in our firm—a high-end, white-collar criminal defense practice. We had worked hard on the plans for months. We had persuaded the firm to support the idea and presented the plans at a firm meeting. We had even persuaded Oscar to join us.”

“And then?”

“She waltzed in one day and told me she had an opportunity to teach at UCLA, and she felt she couldn’t pass it up, that it was something that wouldn’t come her way again. Of course, it was an opportunity she had, quite clearly, aggressively pursued. In secret. It didn’t just fly in the window and land on her desk.”

“What did you say to her then, Robert?”

“Not much. I was so angry I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the time she was at the firm. And I’ve continued to be angry. I didn’t even invite her to my retirement party last spring.”

Tess picked up her coffee cup, took a sip and leveled her gaze at me across the top. “Do you imagine this was the good way to behave?”

“No. It was childish of me.”

We sat for a couple of minutes drinking our coffee and not saying anything. Finally, Tess said, “In this time before you were angry with Jenna, you were not ever with her in a romance, and you do not wish to be, is this correct?”

“Correct.”

“So she will not interfere with us? Like your firm interfered with us fifteen years ago, when you went back to it? Your firm was like a wife.”

“She will not interfere.”

“Good. Because I have jealousy sometimes, you know.”

“I do know. You look annoyed when I even look at other women.”

“You look at other women? I am shocked!” And then she burst out laughing, so loud that the others in the café turned and looked at us.

“Seriously, Tess, there’s no reason to be jealous of Jenna. Jenna and I did six long civil trials together. That means we were together almost constantly. And it means I taught her many things, but she also taught me a lot of things. She is, among other things, a tougher negotiator than I am.” I paused and thought how best to sum it up. “Tess, Jenna was like a daughter to me, really.”

“More than the daughter you have? The one you do not talk about? Or to?”

“Yes, much more than that one.”

“But she is now a second daughter you do not talk to—or, until tonight, about. This is a problem for you, that you throw daughters out of your mind.”

I smiled. “We would say ‘put daughters out of mind.’”

“Whichever you would say, do you not think it is time to be less like a child?”

“Yes. You are right. And now she’s in some kind of trouble and I should help her. Much like she helped me when she represented me in the criminal trial.”

“I thought it was Oscar who helped you.”

“He was the lead, but Jenna figured it out. She’s the one who truly saved me.”

“I understand now,” Tess said. “And if you wish to help her, I will wish to help her, too.”

“That’s kind of you, Tess. I don’t know what you can do to help, though. But I appreciate that you said it. And to repeat, she is no threat to you and me.”

Tess held up her cup. “To you and me and for you and me to help your friend Jenna. And, as we say in French, from the Bible, ‘
Maintenant que je suis un homme, j’ai fait disparaître ce qui faisait de moi un enfant
.’”

“Meaning ‘the time has come to set aside childish things’?”

“Oui.”

I picked up my brandy glass and touched it to her cup. “To all of that.”

CHAPTER 24

Jenna James

Week 1—Late Tuesday Afternoon

N
ow that Robert had given me Oscar’s phone number, there seemed no reason to put off calling him. But Oscar is a what-exactly-do-you-want sort of guy, so I tried to think through what I really did want from him, other than the comfort of a competent voice in my ear. I composed in my head what I wanted to say and punched in his cell number. The phone rang for a long while, and I had begun to assume my call would go to voice mail when he answered.

“Oscar Quesana.”

“Hi, Oscar. It’s Jenna.”

“A pleasant surprise indeed. But I thought I was well hidden. How did you track me down?”

“Robert gave me your number.”

“That’s the damn problem when you’re forced to let a telephone live in your pocket. Anybody can give out your number, and then someone else can call you up anytime they want.”

“Am I just anyone?”

“No, no, of course not. You’re a person I like. But I haven’t talked to you in what, three years? So you aren’t likely calling to invite me to a garden party. What might you want?”

“I’m in trouble.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want you to be in trouble. I apologize for my abrupt manner. It’s just me getting used to being so reachable. What kind of trouble are you in?”

“Well…”

The tiny pause I had injected in the conversation by saying
well
gave me time to take a blank piece of paper that had been sitting on my desk and fold it in half. “Two kinds of trouble, Oscar. First, I’ve been accused of stealing a map of sunken treasure from a third-year law student named Primo Giordano, and I’ve been sued for the return of that map. Which, by the way, I’ve never seen and I don’t have.”

“You need a civil litigator to defend you, which I’m not. In any case, you should be able to get your insurance company to hire one for you, at least to cover the defense costs.” As he spoke, I folded the paper in half again. I’m fortunate in being able to talk and fold at the same time. I’ve been practicing since childhood.

“You’re right, Oscar, except the insurance company won’t take care of my second problem.”

“Which is?”

I folded the paper in half a third time. “There seems to be a bizarre rumor going around that I killed Primo by poisoning him. He died yesterday.”

“Well, you know my usual first blunt question in a criminal case. Did you do it?”

“No.”

“Did you poison him?”

“No.”

“Kill him in some other way?”

“No.”

“Harm him in any way at all?”

“No.”

“Do you know if someone else did kill him?”

“No.”

“Do you know someone who wanted to kill or harm him?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“Do you know what he died from?”

I folded the paper in half a fourth time. How did I want to answer that question?
Had
the coffee killed him?

“No to that, too.”

“You paused slightly before answering that one. Is there something more?”

“No, I was just distracted by something here.”

“Okay. Are the police investigating you?”

“I’m not sure. A UCLA cop was in my office looking around, and someone from campus security bagged up the coffee cup the student had been drinking from.”

“With your coffee in it?”

“Yes. Freshly made.”

“At some point I’ll need to hear the whole story, but it’s clear you’re already being investigated as a suspect, if not a target. Anything else you know of going on in that investigation?”

“Yes. The UCLA cop who was in my office is Detective Drady. Used to be on the LAPD and was one of the cops who arrested Robert on the plane. He testified briefly in the preliminary hearing.”

“Can’t say as I recall him.”

I was staring at the much-folded paper as we spoke. Folding it in half a fifth time is always hard, particularly if you want the folds to be nice and crisp.

“Tall and fat with a red face.”

“Oh, yeah, I do remember him now. But he’s a cop, so the media never called him fat. They used some more friendly euphemism like ‘beefy.’”

“Probably.”

“Jenna, why does anyone suspect your coffee?”

“I don’t really know if they do yet, other than that it smelled bad, Primo drank it and he died a few hours later.”

“What else?”

“I dumped the leftover coffee on a plant yesterday, and by today the plant was well on its way to being dead.”

“Do the police know that?”

“Not yet. But sooner or later they’re going to analyze the coffee sample they have and figure out that it’s poisonous.”

“And since it was in your office, they’ll conclude you’re the one who put the poison in it?”

“Yes, but please consider, Oscar, that whoever poisoned the coffee may well have been trying to poison
me
.”

“That seems unlikely. What was their motive?”

“I don’t know. I mean, what was the motive to kill Primo?”

“We don’t know enough about Primo to even speculate about that, but there no doubt is one.”

“Maybe.”

“Jenna, you know a lot about your own life and you just said you can’t come up with a motive that would make you the target. So what we need to focus on is moving the police away from the idea that you could be Primo’s killer.”

Oscar’s response was exactly the problem, of course. Everyone was going to suspect that I tried to kill Primo by poisoning his coffee in order to get the effing map. Whereas my gut told me that because the poison was in the pot, someone had tried to poison
me
.

While I was listening to Oscar and thinking those thoughts, I had managed to fold the paper over for the fifth time. I smoothed it down really hard with my thumbs. It was crisp enough, although not perfect.

“The good news,” Oscar was saying, “is that it’s a pretty circumstantial case against you. Not to mention that it makes no sense. If someone as smart as you wanted to poison this guy Primo, you wouldn’t do it and then leave the poison sitting around in your office.”

“Yes. The whole thing is bullshit.”

“As you well know, even bullshit cases can take on a life of their own. And I hate to say it, but both the LAPD and the DA’s office likely still remember you left them with egg on their faces after Robert’s case. They might trump something up just to get even.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Detective Drady even brought up Robert’s case in a not-so-friendly way, and he mentioned that I’ve now been associated with two dead bodies.”

“That’s ominous. But Jenna, let’s go back to the civil case for a minute. If the student is dead, who’s suing you for return of the map?”

“The student’s alleged brother and some mysterious company in Italy.”

“So this is already very complicated.”

I looked at the folded paper and decided not to attempt folding it a sixth time. It was certainly doable, but it always looked gross unless you used a really, really thin piece of paper to start with, which I hadn’t.

“Yeah, Oscar, it is.”

“You want me to represent you in the criminal investigation?”

“Yes, if there really is one.”

“There is one already.”

“Okay.”

“It will be awkward to charge you a fee.”

I smiled. “Then don’t.”

“Tell you what: for the initial investigation and consult, I’ll do it gratis, except for expenses. In exchange, you can take me and Pandy to dinner.”

“Pandy’s your new wife?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’ll like her.”

“Well, congrats on that, and I’m sure I will. Is that her real name?”

“No, it’s Pandora, but, as you can understand, she’s kind of sensitive about it.”

“Uh-huh. I get it. So when can we get together?”

“That’s going to be awkward to do in person right away, because I’m living in New York. Pandora has a really nice place here.”

“When will you be back in LA?”

“Don’t know.”

“All right, let’s play that one by ear, then.”

“Okay.”

“One more thing, though, Oscar.”

“What’s that?”

“Will you represent me on the civil end, too? The two things are obviously connected.”

“I don’t do civil stuff anymore. No longer know how.”

“But it’s a perfect fit. Since there’s really no discovery to speak of in criminal matters, we can use the discovery in the civil case to find out what’s going on on the criminal side.”

“Yeah, that can work sometimes, but I’m not your guy for that.”

“Who would you recommend?”

“You must know a zillion civil lawyers, Jenna, and, like I said, the insurance company will probably appoint someone to represent you.”

“I want my own lawyer, too.”

“Ask Robert to do it. He needs to get out from under that Tess woman for a while.”

“I’m reluctant to do that.”

“Are you and Robert on the outs?”

“Kind of. He was pissed when I left the firm. Didn’t even invite me to his retirement party.”

“I wondered why you weren’t there.”

“Now you know.”

“I asked after you, Jenna, when I was in Paris visiting Robert, and he explained that he was angry at you, not just because you left the firm but because you sneaked around about it and ended up cratering the new department he was trying to set up—one that I was going to join and you were going to run, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Why did you do that? Sneak around about it?”

“Because I was afraid if I told Robert about wanting to go teach, he’d talk me out of it, using brilliant, persuasive arguments. Probably presented on flip charts.”

“Oh, okay. Knowing you and knowing him, that makes some sense. Well, in any case he’s perfect for advising you about the civil suit. Since he’s retired he might do it for free. I suggest you two make up.”

“Maybe that’s already happened. When I talked to him to get your number, he said he was willing to help if he could do it from there. And although he didn’t ask me to, I’m going to fax him a copy of the complaint.”

“Good. I think he’s just the right person for it, but he’ll have to come back. I sensed he’d like to be in the States for a while anyway. Now, let me give you some additional guidance on the criminal end of it. First, don’t talk to the police.”

“Oscar, I can’t decline to talk to them. The guy was a student in this law school. And he died. I can’t refuse to participate in the investigation and hope to keep my job.”

“All right. I take your point. But say as little as possible.”

“Okay.”

“Good. In the meantime, buy yourself a computer that UCLA hasn’t paid for, stop sending e-mail about this stuff via the university’s servers or Wi-Fi, even if it’s through your own private e-mail account and use a cell phone that you paid for and with monthly charges that aren’t paid for or reimbursed by anyone else.”

“Is the new stuff to have some restricted use?”

“Yes. Use only that new cell phone to call me or your other lawyers. Don’t give anyone else the number and don’t call anyone else on it. Use the new computer to write up any notes related to this matter and put ‘prepared in anticipation of litigation/attorney client privilege’ at the top of every page. Don’t type anything else on it. Use the new computer to set up a new e-mail address, and use that e-mail only to communicate with your lawyers. Put the same heading on every e-mail.”

“Wow. You’re really up on your technology these days.”

“Pandy made me go to an introduction to the Internet class, and I could immediately see that all of this stuff is a prosecutor’s dream.”

I laughed out loud. “I see.”

“I don’t see what’s so funny about it. But once you get clean equipment, write up the details of all of this and send it to me. Did Robert give you my e-mail address?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good-bye.”

“’Bye.”

After we clicked off, I tossed the folded paper into my purse so as not to leave it behind in my office. Aldous had come in one day and noticed fifteen or twenty folded papers in the wastebasket. He’d been teasing me ever since about being OCD. There was no point in leaving him further evidence to support his diagnosis.