Long Knives (21 page)

CHAPTER 48

A
s we were waiting for my car to be brought around, another car pulled up, and Robert and a woman I’d never seen before emerged from it. He saw me immediately and walked over. The woman hung back a bit.

“Hi, Jenna. What a nice surprise.”

“Indeed. Let me introduce you to my date. Robert, this is Bill Nightingale. Bill, this is my mentor of many years at my old law firm, Robert Tarza.”

The two of them exchanged the usual pleasantries and shook hands. Then the woman, who had been hanging back, came forward, and Robert introduced her, too. “Jenna and Bill, this is Tess, who is visiting from France.”

As soon as Robert said “Tess,” I realized who she must be, because when I had called Robert in France, she had answered the phone and said her name. We shook hands all around. Then Tess said to me, “That is a very pretty necklace you wear.”

“Thank you.”

“The design, it is just like my bracelet.” She held up her wrist so that I could see the dangling chain of gold lions biting into prone antelopes. I was speechless, in part at the surprise of the matching designs and in part because I had no idea how to traverse the emotional terrain I had just stumbled into. I assumed that Robert had given her the bracelet, and that it must be pretty obvious he had given me the necklace. I couldn’t read Tess’s face at all, and I didn’t know if she was making light of the whole thing or was going to read something into the necklace that wasn’t there.

Robert tried to solve the problem himself. “You know,” he said, “I inherited both the necklace and the bracelet from my grandmother, who got them on a safari she took to Kenya long ago. I gave one to each of you because, like her, you’re both very special to me.”

“That’s a very special story,” I said, intentionally mimicking his words and wondering to myself if it was true. “I never knew that.”

“I did not know it,” Tess said, giving Robert a look that seemed to mirror my own doubts as to the story’s veracity. At the same time, though, Tess looked more amused than upset.

“They’re certainly unusual pieces,” Dr. N said, no doubt trying to steer the conversation away from who had given what to whom and when.

“Well,” Robert said, “we’re running late for our reservation, so we should get going, but I think the two of you—” he gestured at Tess and me—“would like each other, and we should all have lunch soon. You, too, Bill. But like I said, we’ve got to hustle. So ’bye for now.” And with that he put his hand on the small of Tess’s back and led her toward the entrance. Tess glanced back at me over her shoulder as they went. I wished, at that moment, that I’d worn a different dress.

In the meantime my car had arrived and the valet was holding the driver’s door open for me. “Nice necklace,” he said, and winked as I got in.

“Thanks,” I said, checked to see that Dr. N was in and had fastened his seat belt, then headed off down the street.

“What was that all about?” Dr. N asked.

“Tess is Robert’s new squeeze. She’s French, and he was living with her in Paris before he came back to help me with my legal situation.”

“Were you romantically involved at some point?”

“No, never.”

“I couldn’t tell if she was unhappy or just amused at Robert’s rather awkward attempt to make the whole thing go away.”

“I thought she looked amused. But I don’t know her at all, so I can’t say for sure. Anyway, let’s talk about something else. Maybe she’s as uncomfortable with the whole thing as I am.”

“How about music,” he said. “What do you like?”

“I’m stuck in a past that’s not really my own. I like bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. And I like No Doubt, which is at least more from my own time. What about you?”

“Similar, but I’m at least a little closer in vintage to bands like those.”

We talked about music the rest of the way. We did turn out to have remarkably similar tastes. Unlike me and Aldous, who tended to prefer Wagner. Eventually we pulled up in front of his house. I put the car in park but left the engine running. We had arrived at what I used to call, when I was a teenager, the Moment, although usually I was the one in the passenger seat.

“Well,” I said, “I guess this is it.”

“Uh-huh, I guess so. Do you think a kiss would be appropriate?”

I thought about it for a second. Inviting him to kiss me would be the final admission that things with Aldous were over. I wasn’t quite ready for that, though, despite the fact that Aldous was still at least marginally on my suspects list. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

But I couldn’t really say any of that out loud, so I just said, “Do you know, Bill, that in my head I still call you Dr. N?”

He laughed. “No, I had no idea.”

“Given that, I think probably a kiss on the cheek would be best.”

He leaned over and gave me a quick peck, then opened the door to get out. As he exited, he said, “I’m going to make it my goal to move my name inside your head to Bill.”

I thought he had a good chance of accomplishing that, and getting the kiss, too.

I watched him walk up the pathway and waited until he put his key in the lock and opened the door. Then I drove away and thought to myself that he had learned at least something about me over dinner, but that I hadn’t asked a thing about him, other than an inquiry about what music he liked. Which was rude of me. Maybe it could be excused by my current situation. Or maybe not.

CHAPTER 49

Robert Tarza

Week 2—Tuesday

Y
ou need a place to take a deposition, and the location is usually up to the lawyer who notices the depo. I considered noticing Quinto’s depo for Oscar’s unusual office in Venice but rejected it on the grounds that it would send the wrong message. In the end I opted to schedule it at my old law firm, Marbury Marfan, whose imposing offices occupy the top ten floors of a downtown skyscraper, including the penthouse floor on eighty-five. I hoped the setting would say to both Quinto and his lawyer, “Don’t mess with Jenna.”

As a retired partner in the firm—someone who, in the firm’s lingo, has gone senior—I’m still entitled to avail myself of the firm’s conference rooms and other facilities, so long as no one more important needs them. While trying to book a conference room for the depo, I learned that when you’re senior every other person in the firm is more important.

My first choice was the elegant main conference room on eighty-four—da Vinci, as it’s called—with floor-to-ceiling windows and a sweeping view of the hills to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It had been reserved for the time I wanted it, however, by a second-year associate who would be hosting a meeting of his Los Angeles County Bar Association committee on gender bias in the profession. In the end I had to settle for a small conference room on the seventy-eighth floor that was named Cochise. It had no windows and was being remodeled. Its normal complement of contemporary furniture had been removed and temporarily replaced with stuff inspired by early disco. The small, oblong conference table sprouted like a mushroom from a fluted, white plastic base, and it wobbled. Its top was made of some material that screamed, “I am made from something fake.” The room had only six chairs, which would make for a very snug fit around the table—two chairs on each side and one on each end. Upon seeing the room, I shuddered, but there was nothing else, and the alternative was either to change the date or move the depo to Oscar’s place.

Gwen had been helping me tour what was available after I’d been turned down on Monday for da Vinci and Alligator. When I finally settled on Cochise, she made a note on her ever-present pad and said, “How the mighty hath fallen.”

“What’s with you, Gwen?” I asked. “Once upon a time we were a close-knit team. And this isn’t about me. It’s about helping Jenna.”

“Well, Mr. Tarza, that was then and this is now. And Jenna doesn’t work here anymore.”

“But she’s now a client of the firm, and this deposition is key to getting rid of the ridiculous case that’s been filed against her.”

“Thank you for reminding me about our obligations to clients, Mr. Tarza.”

“This is about Tess, isn’t it?”

“No. I’ve never met her and I’m sure she’s a fine woman. This is about keeping secrets from your team back then.”

“Keeping secret, when I got back from my sabbatical fifteen years ago, that I had had an affair while I was in France?”

“Yes, when you got back from that sabbatical—while you were gone I had to work for Mr. Klug, by the way—I specifically asked you how your sabbatical had gone and you said ‘It was fine. Nothing much happened. I mainly sat in the Tuileries and painted bad landscapes.’ So that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose it was. But it was a lie designed to protect my own sensitive feelings.”

“You had feelings?”

I decided to ignore that. “Gwen, if I say I’m sorry I didn’t tell you way back then, can we enter into a peace treaty?”

“If you say it and mean it.”

“I’m truly sorry I didn’t tell you, and I mean it with all my heart.”

“All right, then.”

After that the frost melted and Gwen became helpful to me in getting ready for Quinto’s depo. Which was a blessing, because I hadn’t taken a deposition in maybe ten years. I was about to find out if it was like riding a bicycle.

CHAPTER 50

Week 2—Wednesday

W
e had set the depo for 2:00
P.M.
That way if we didn’t finish by 4:30, which I didn’t think we would, it wouldn’t be much of a problem to reach agreement with Quinto’s lawyer to resume the depo on another day. Or if no agreement could be reached, to persuade a court to order it to resume. On that later day, I would hope to be better prepared, with more material with which to question Quinto.

At the appointed hour, Jenna, Oscar and I were seated at the table in Cochise, waiting. Jenna was to my immediate left, Oscar farther to my left at the end of the table. The court reporter, who had arrived at about 1:45 with her steno machine, was at the other end. The two seats across from me had been left open for Quinto and his lawyer.

We didn’t know, of course, if they were actually coming. They hadn’t called to confirm that they were coming, but there was no requirement that they do so. If, on the other hand, they wanted to block the deposition as improperly noticed, they had needed, technically, to send me a written objection. They hadn’t done that either. But under the circumstances of so outrageously little notice at the very start of a lawsuit, no court was likely to sanction them if they just plain failed to show up.

“By the way,” Jenna said, “UCLA was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, too. Did we notify them of the depo?”

“I did that,” Oscar said. “And I called their general counsel’s office. They said that UCLA hasn’t yet been served with the lawsuit, so they weren’t going to attend. They’ll just read the transcript of the depo. I said I’d send them one.”

“Did you ask them if they’re at least going to provide me with a defense to this stupid suit? I’m an employee, so they should.”

“I asked them that, too, Jenna. They said they were studying the matter and would get back to us on it.”

We all sat there for a while longer.

By 2:15 I had pretty much concluded that Quinto and his lawyer weren’t coming.

“Oscar,” I said, “when do you want to take us to Dubai for our dinner at the top of the Burj Khalifa?”

“They’re coming,” he said. “The way this town works, you’re not really late for a depo until at least an hour has gone by. Especially if it’s downtown. It’s a bitch to get here.”

Jenna began to rock in her chair, and I put my hand on the back to steady it.

“At least they don’t squeak,” she said.

I was about to respond when the conference-room phone rang. I picked it up and heard the receptionist announce that they had arrived. “Okay,” I said. “Please have Gwen bring them down.”

“Well, I think,” Oscar said, “that, to mix a metaphor, the bet is now on the other foot, Robert, and you should take us to Dubai in early April. I hear the weather is pretty nice there that time of year. Still a bit rainy, but not yet hot.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “We’ll see if Quinto himself is actually here and not just a couple of lawyers.”

A few minutes later, the conference-room door opened, and Gwen escorted Quinto and one lawyer into the room. I’d never set eyes on Quinto before, but he looked pretty much as Jenna had described him to me: young, slight and dark-haired, with a craggy face and deep-set brown eyes. He was wearing a not-very-well-made brown suit, a white shirt and a bright green tie, of a hue that you usually see only on St. Patrick’s Day. His lawyer, by contrast, whose improbable name was Thaddeus Stevens, was tall, thin and blond and was dressed like he might be headed to the beach after the depo—casual, open-collared shirt, bone-white khaki slacks and brown leather sandals, all rather expensive-looking. He was also wearing an iridescent wrap bracelet on his right wrist, made with tiny green stones.

There were handshakes and introductions all around—even Quinto and Jenna shook hands—and the ritual offer of coffee, tea or soft drinks, which were set up on a credenza against the wall behind me. I also introduced Quinto and his lawyer to the court reporter, Hilda Vacarro by name. Treating court reporters like human beings instead of blocks of wood is not only polite but useful. Court reporters have to take down accurately what’s said in a deposition, but if they like you, they can clean up all your ums, uhs and other grunts and pauses. If they don’t like you, they can make you sound like the village idiot.

“Mr. Giordano,” I said, “are you sure you wouldn’t like some coffee before we begin?”

He looked at me, then pointed at Jenna. “Not while she’s anywhere near the stuff.”

There was dead silence in the room.

Jenna’s response was to take a rather noisy swig from her own already filled coffee cup—a very large one that said
JENNA
on it in big letters—that she’d had ever since I first met her. “Whatever,” she said.

Stevens, on the other hand, got up from the table, walked to the credenza, poured himself a cup—black—without any apparent concern and sat back down, clearly ready to begin.

I had looked Stevens up before the depo and discovered that he’d gone to a law school I’d never heard of in another state. But I had long ago learned to take seriously every lawyer who’d managed to pass the California bar—the hardest in the country—without regard to their credentials or their dress code. Caring about those things was a rookie mistake I’d made in my first year of practice, when I’d been drubbed by a lawyer from a no-name school who appeared to own only one suit and tie, and a particularly ugly tie at that.

It was almost three o’clock, and I did have at least two hours’ worth of questions I wanted to get done. I didn’t want them to announce at four o’clock that they had to leave to beat the worst of the traffic. It was time to get started.