Long Knives (15 page)

CHAPTER 33

O
n Thursdays at 10:00
A.M.
I taught civil procedure, a first-year course. That made it different from all the other courses I taught at UCLA. The students were still in their first semester of law school and thus, for a brief moment in time, slightly afraid of their law professors.

The fear stemmed from two facts. The first was that they had all arrived thinking they were smart because, on the basis of their college grades and LSAT scores, they had gotten into UCLA Law, a so-called “highly selective” school that accepts only a small percentage of applicants. The second was that it was only November, so first-year students had not yet received any grades. As a result, they had no way to know how they would stack up against all the other self-designated smart people who sat around them. The first stack-up would soon be measured by the only metric law schools really care about—end-of-semester grades.

As a law professor, I was one of the temporary gods with the power to sort the students at semester’s end by giving them grades. That’s a terrifying power, on both sides. Most of us tried, of course, in the modern academic way, to be approachable and helpful, but in the last analysis we were gods, at least for a little while.

So now I, one of the gods, was standing in front of the gathering class at 9:55
A.M.
, looking like someone had beaten me up. The question in my mind was, Would any one of the seventy students in the class mention it? Would anyone say, “Hey, God, what happened to you?” I was curious about it, if only because, during my first year of teaching, I had turned to eating to cover my anxiety—coffee alone hadn’t done an adequate job—and had porked on fifteen pounds in the first semester, then lost it again over Christmas. No student ever mentioned it.

I waited a moment or two for a few stragglers to hurry in. Unlike a few of my colleagues, it wasn’t my habit to close the classroom doors at 9:59:59 and start talking at 10:00
A.M.
sharp. As I waited, I sipped coffee from my red M&M mug, which I continued to use as some sort of talismanic reminder to the students that once upon a time I was a real lawyer and please don’t forget it.

At 10:03 I began. “Good morning, everyone.” Would anyone, I wondered, say anything?

Jordan Brown, a student in the first row, answered that question within the first few seconds by blurting out, “Professor, what happened to you?”

“Bike accident,” I said.

At that point, of course, I had a choice. I could elaborate, or I could just plunge ahead. I chose a semiplunge.

“Thank you, Jordan, for asking. I appreciate it. The good news is that I wasn’t badly injured. The bad news is that you’ll get to watch my face”—I pointed to it with my right index finger, being careful not to touch it—“turn from its current black-and-blue to a nice yellow over the next couple of weeks. But now, since you were the first to speak today, let me ask you the first question.”

“Okay,” he said, looking a bit rueful that opening his mouth had led to his being called on.

“What is a deposition, Jordan?”

“It’s when, in a civil suit, you take someone’s testimony under oath but before trial and outside of court.”

It was odd how sometimes what went on in the classroom reflected my life outside of it. As soon as I got my legal team fully in place, I wanted to take Quinto’s deposition. There were a zillion questions I wanted to ask him. He’d be under oath, and we might get some straight answers.

“Not a bad seat-of-the-pants definition, Jordan,” I said. “But what does Rule 30 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which governs depositions, actually say?” I was forever trying to train the students to start with the actual rules and their actual language.

He quickly looked down at his notes. “I don’t recall exactly, Professor. I’d have to read it from the book.”

“Let’s do that together.” I flipped a switch on the podium and projected the text of Rule 30 onto the large screen behind me. It said:

Rule 30
.

Without Leave. A party may, by oral questions, depose any person, including a party, without leave of court except as provided in Rule 30(a)(2). The deponent’s attendance may be compelled by subpoena under Rule 45.

I picked up my laser pointer from the podium, turned slightly and aimed its small red dot on the words
Without Leave
. “What does that phrase mean, Jordan?”

“It means that you don’t have to get the permission of the court—the court in which the suit is pending—to take a deposition.”

“Right. Well, when
do
you have to get the court’s permission?”

“There are a variety of circumstances set out in Rule 30(a)(2) when you do.” As he spoke I moved my laser dot to focus on the reference to Rule 30(a)(2).

“Well, Jordan, we don’t have Rule 30(a)(2) projected at the moment, but did you read it?”

“Yes, I did.”

Just as he finished answering, the classroom door opened. It made a squeak, and I jumped. My first thought was, once again, that it was someone with a gun. It wasn’t. It was Greta Broontz.

“Hello,” she said, addressing the class but not me. “I’m Professor Broontz. I’m here to evaluate Professor James’s teaching as part of the ongoing evaluation for her tenure application. Apologies for being late. I’ll just take a seat up in the back row. Please ignore me.”

I was infuriated. No one ever showed up unannounced, let alone late, to do a teaching evaluation. Greta had either intentionally failed to let me know in advance or, most likely, had just made up the whole assignment. Even worse, she hadn’t even acknowledged that it was my classroom. She hadn’t even looked at me.

I could have thrown her out, of course, and maybe I should have. But a little voice in my head said that I could make use of the outrage, and it would be better if I didn’t flip out myself. Instead, I just said, “Well, welcome, Greta,” intentionally skipping the professorial honorific.

CHAPTER 34

I
waited a few seconds for Greta to take her seat in the back row and for the class to settle down from the interruption. I picked up where I had left off with Jordan Brown.

“What would happen, Jordan,” I asked, “if you tried to take someone’s deposition more than once? What does 30(a)(2) say about that?”

“You’re not allowed to. So they probably wouldn’t show up, or they’d ask the court for sanctions, because you can’t take the same person more than once, at least not without the permission of the court. ”

“Very good, Jordan. So, ladies and gentlemen, no matter how familiar you think you are with the procedure, always go back and read the applicable rules over again, so you don’t”—I looked at Belinda Walker in the back row—“so you don’t what, Belinda?”

“So you don’t,” she said with glee, “screw up.”

This brought a burst of laughter from the class. All semester long I had harped on how embarrassing it is to “screw up” through a niggling procedural error because you failed to read the rules. I hoped, by doing that, that in the long professional lives that lay before my students, they would remember that and be better lawyers. It had become such a theme in my civil procedure classes that last year’s class had given me, as an end-of-year gift, an embroidered sampler that said, “Don’t Screw Up.” It now had pride of place on the wall of my office.

“Thank you, Belinda.”

I noticed that Greta had been scribbling furiously in a notebook all during the discussion about not screwing up. She was the sort of academic prig who didn’t appreciate humor in the classroom, and I was sure she’d find some way to object to it in her report—if there really was going to be a report at all.

I scanned the class, moving my gaze from Belinda Walker to the class as a whole. “Now that we have a small piece of the procedural detail out of the way, I’d like to talk a bit about the strategic use of depositions.”

Litigation strategy—the real world—was something I enjoyed talking about. Unlike admiralty law, which I’d had to learn nearly from scratch in order to teach it, civil litigation procedure was at the heart of what I’d used and abused for more than seven years at Marbury Marfan. Unlike a few professors who preferred to skip the practical, I thought I had something to bring to the class that the students weren’t going to get just by reading the cold rules and the court cases that interpreted them.

For the next forty minutes, we had a rollicking discussion of deposition tactics, including how to get around witnesses who stubbornly refuse to answer questions, how to deal with the ubiquitous I-don’t-know answer and whether it’s best to let the deponent—the person whose deposition is being taken—know what you’re going to ask him or her at trial, or whether it’s best to avoid the direct question and save it as a surprise. Usually, it’s best to ask, but there are circumstances when it isn’t.

As the class was coming to an end, I heard the door to the classroom open again—I didn’t flinch that time—and saw Oscar come in and take an empty seat in the front row.

“Well, class,” I said, “we have the honor of a visit by an old friend and colleague, Oscar Quesana, who is one of this city’s best criminal defense lawyers.”

Oscar did a slight bow of his head, as if to acknowledge the praise.

“But,” I added, “he doesn’t know squat about
civil
procedure.”

Oscar looked around the classroom, in which all heads had now turned to look at him. “Well, Professor,” he said, “what have you been discussing?”

“Tactics in the taking of depositions.”

“Have you discussed whether it’s best, if you’re a defendant, to take the deposition of the plaintiff early in a litigation or just before the case is about to go to trial?”

“No, we haven’t, Oscar,” I responded. “Do you think that’s important?”

“Yep.”

I knew, of course, that we would soon face the same question about taking Quinto’s deposition. Do it now or do it later?

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “I think Mr. Quesana has brought up a very interesting question, which we’ll discuss in the next class, after—” I paused—“I have had the opportunity to get the benefit of the wisdom he brings from the perspective of his, um, advanced age.”

Over the general laughter, I said, “See you all tomorrow,” and closed the rule book in front of me. As I did so, I saw that Greta had come down from the back row and was moving quickly toward the classroom door, ready to escape. I jumped down from the podium and caught up to her just as she was starting to leave.

“Greta, I really don’t appreciate your coming to my classroom unannounced. Don’t ever do it again.”

“You must not have gotten the e-mail, dear, or maybe you don’t check your e-mails.”

“There was no e-mail, Greta. This is harassment, pure and simple. The dean is going to hear about it.”

I realized I had no doubt antagonized the Pineapple even more. But since she was already a sure no vote on my tenure committee, there was no reason to care. Not only that, it felt good.

I noticed that a clutch of students had gathered nearby, all of them listening intently. On one level I didn’t care. On another I needed to de-escalate the situation so that it didn’t, judolike, end up bouncing back on me. I stepped to the side, so we were no longer face-to-face and said, “We’ll talk later, Professor.” I stretched out the word
professor
, separated the syllables and let my voice fall an octave, so that anyone listening would have sensed that I might just as well have said
dog shit
.

CHAPTER 35

A
fter Greta had departed, a few students, as almost always happens at the end of a class, came forward with questions for me. As I answered them, Oscar stood politely a few feet back, waiting his turn. When they had gone, he walked up to me.

“Hi, stranger,” I said and started to wrap my arms around him in a bear hug before drawing quickly away. “Ow! I keep forgetting that I’m injured.”

He stepped back and looked me up and down. Had it been anyone other than Oscar, I might have been offended.

“Well,” he said, “you don’t look much different as Professor James than you did back when you hung out on the high floors downtown. Maybe a bit thinner and a bit more toned, from that brief feel of you. And, uh, a bit more black-and-blue.”

I smiled. “Pandy won’t mind your feeling?”

“Not in a hug and, anyway, she’s not the jealous type. I mean, how could she be as wife number six?”

When I had first met Oscar, I assumed his many wives meant he was a womanizer. But I later learned that his first wife ran away with the mailman, the second was killed in a car crash, the third divorced him because he worked too hard, and four and five were women he married—without requiring anything in return—so they could get green cards.

“I can imagine,” I said, “that might make her more jealous.”

“I take your point.”

“You flew in last night?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. I’m staying at my old place. Pandy has a tiny place in Malibu, but she stayed in New York, and my old place is a lot more convenient if I’m going to do some real work.”

“I hope there won’t be a lot of work to be done, at least of the kind of work you do, Oscar. I’m praying this is going to be entirely a civil matter and not a criminal one. But let’s go talk about it in my office. We’ll be a lot more comfortable there.” I looked around. “Plus students from the next class in this room are beginning to filter in.”

On the way to my office, we caught up on things. I told Oscar about my newfound interest in admiralty law and actually going out to hunt for sunken treasure. He told me about Pandy, who, he reported, was a professional psychic. I avoided asking what the difference was between an amateur psychic and a professional one. He also informed me that Pandy was only twenty years younger than he, so he expected it would work out a lot better than his last marriage, which had been to someone who was twenty-five years younger. I refrained from rolling my eyes.

I also told him what Bill Nightingale had said about the sodium azide found on the coffee stain on Primo’s clothing. He said he’d never heard of it but would have his forensics guy check that out, too.

Once in my office, I apologized to Oscar for the lack of coffee. “I bought a new coffeepot, and some new beans, but I haven’t had time to bring them over here and get it set up. We can grab some in the coffee room, though, if you want.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve given up coffee as it’s not very good for me.”

“Oscar, have you given up drinking Manhattans, too?”

“No, never. They’re health supportive. Are you still drinking martinis?”

“Of course.”

He put his hands behind his head, leaned back and said, “Jenna, these reminiscences are great. There are no times like old times. But in light of what you just told me about sodium azide, we should get down to the legal business at hand. Don’t you think?”

“Yes, but first we should talk about the cost of that business. I don’t think, on a law professor’s salary, that I can afford to pay you what you charge. I know you said you’d do the first part for free, but I think it may go on for quite a while.”

“You could be right, but we’ll work it out. But here’s the thing: before I boarded the plane yesterday, I called Robert in Paris. Woke him up, in fact. He called back this morning and said he’d represent you without charge. Call it what friends do for friends. He’ll do the stuff on the civil suit you’ve been served with—although I haven’t gone over all of the details with him yet—and I’ll put in my two cents’ worth and do the criminal, if there turns out to be any. Which I hope there won’t be.”

“I’m both stunned and grateful.”

“In Robert’s case, he’s the one who should be grateful to you for what you did for him five years ago. In my case let’s just say that way back then I started out being dismissive of you, but now know how wrong I was. So it’s my way of saying ‘sorry about that…Professor.’” He leaned forward in his chair and did a small bow.

I was close to tears. Oscar was in many ways the most talented lawyer I knew, and his bow was a great honor.

Oscar waited for me to compose myself, then said, “Let’s talk depositions.”

“Whose?”

“Quinto’s.”

“When?”

“Remember the question I posed in your class—whether it’s best to take a depo of the opposing party earlier or later?”

“Sure. And the answer is that it should almost always be later, after a lot of other discovery and investigation is done, so you know what to ask about. Because you can only depose someone once and…”

“Right, right. But don’t forget that for the first ten days after a lawsuit is served, the defendant has the sole right to notice a deposition. So I say we notice Quinto’s deposition right away, before he notices yours, which will give us priority.”

“But actually take his depo later.”

“No, let’s take it now and find out what this is really all about. Where the map came from, who the Italian company is, who is financing all of this and a whole bunch of other stuff.”

“That’s risky because we may get only one shot at him.”

“We can always ask the court later for leave to take his depo again, and my bet is we’ll get permission, given how weird this case is.”

“Okay. But I thought you didn’t take depos since that’s the civil litigation world, and Robert’s in Paris. He can do the paperwork from there but not the stuff that has to be done in person.”

“I’m not going to take the depo. Robert is.”

“Robert’s coming back from Paris to help me?”

“Yes, he’s coming. In fact, he’s on his way.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I thought you’d be pleased, Jenna.”

“I am. It’s great to be cared about. But now I want to turn to the question of who’s trying to kill me.”

“Okay, but I’m not persuaded anyone
is
trying to kill you. Motive is key, and you haven’t found anyone with a motive.”

“Well, I’ve made a list of everyone who I think might even remotely have a motive.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper on which I had written the names. I handed it to Oscar. He unfolded and read it.

“You have three names here.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know who any of these people are. Let’s go through them.”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Who is Aldous Hartleb?”

“My lover. He’s also a faculty member here.”

“And you’re serious that he’s a suspect?”

“Sort of.”

“What would his motive be, Jenna?”

“His case for tenure looks weak. Mine looks strong.”

“So you’re saying if he bumps you off, he’ll get your slot?”

“No, because tenure isn’t awarded here on the basis of ‘slots.’ If you’re good enough, you get tenure no matter how many people are eligible in a year.”

“So he has no motive.”

I got up from my chair, walked over to the bookshelf, pulled down a volume and handed it to him.

Oscar looked at the book and read the title aloud. “
Social Choice in Leadership
by Gunter John Schmitson.” He opened the book and paged casually through it. “Okay, what’s the point of this? I obviously don’t have time to read it right now.”

“That book is a study by an eminent psychologist. He says that in almost all human communities, if there’s a contest for leadership between two individuals and one of the individuals falls out at the last minute due to some external calamity, the group will almost always choose the remaining candidate even if he’s not qualified, and even though the other one would have won hands down.”

Oscar got up and slotted the book back into the space on the shelf from which I’d taken it. “Let me get this straight, Jenna. You think that if Aldous got rid of you, he’d be more likely to get tenure from the group in power here as a kind of consolation prize?”

“Yes.”

“And because of that he might want to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Is his career the be-all and end-all of his life?”

“Probably not.”

“Do you have any other evidence that he’s the person trying to kill you?”

“Well, come to think of it, there are two other things about Aldous that might point to him. He was in the hallway outside my office when the EMTs were working on Primo, but when we emerged with Primo on the gurney, he was gone. That seemed suspicious.”

“And the other thing?”

“When a dog ran out in the road in front of my bike, supposedly accidentally, Aldous was nearby.”

I had become, I realized, a study in contradiction. If I really suspected Aldous, why had I trusted him and told him everything? I couldn’t explain it, except that when I made the list I had to stretch for suspects. Two hadn’t seemed enough.

I looked over at Oscar, who had gone back to studying the list. “What do you think about Aldous as a suspect, Oscar?”

“I think you’re losing it.”