Long Knives (32 page)

CHAPTER 71

O
scar pointed to one of the papers lying on the table, which was stickered with one of the purple Post-its. “If you look at Rule 62”—he stabbed at it with his finger—“it says that the Charges Committee procedure is informal.”

“Right.”

“Let’s call Dr. Wing. See what he has to say.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I regard systems of rules as things to be used and manipulated to the benefit of my client. If the rules call for informality, fine. I can work with that.” As he said it, he unbuttoned his collar, pulled his tie askew and rolled up his sleeves. “Wing’s direct-line number,” he continued, “is right here on his CV.”

Oscar punched the speakerphone button on the handset and dialed Dr. Wing’s number. It was picked up on the second ring.

“Rex Wing here,” the voice said. It was a rich baritone, betraying not a hint of age.

“Dr. Wing, this is Oscar Quesana. I’m the attorney for Professor Jenna James. I have my speakerphone on. Professor James is sitting here beside me.”

“Charmed to meet you both, Mr. Quesana. What can I do for you?”

“Professor James has just received from the law school dean a copy of the grievance—or charge, I’m not sure exactly which it is—that was filed by Professor Broontz.”

“I just got that grievance yesterday myself. Peculiar one. Not the dean. The charge.”

“Well, since the procedure is informal, I wondered if I could come over and talk with you about the whole thing.”

“No reason why not. Bring Professor James with you, if you like.”

“I may well do that.”

“Out of curiosity, Mr. Quesana, is your goal to get the Charges Committee to dismiss the whole thing?”

“That would work.”

“We might just be willing. The entire matter sounds like something to be handled by the police. Of course, it’s also up to the other two professors who are going to be on the panel.”

“Do you know yet who they’ll be?”

“Oh, sure. There aren’t many available right now. Several of our roster are off campus on sabbatical, and we have to ex-out the two law profs. That leaves us with five people to choose from, in addition to me. I’ve already put in a call to two of them—who were chosen by lot—and they’ve both accepted.”

“Who are they?”

“One is Paul Trolder. He’s an economist. Very good insights, that guy. And easygoing. I like my panels to be laid-back.”

“And the other?”

“Samantha Healey. She’s a philosopher. Kind of an odd duck, that one. Never says much. Mutual friends tell me she thinks deep thoughts. Maybe she does, but at the very least she doesn’t get in the way of smooth sailing.”

“Thanks,” Oscar said, as I madly looked up Trolder and Healey to see what I could learn about them.

“Well, Mr. Quesana, when would you and Professor James like to come over and visit with me? I think a prompt sit-down with both sides would be useful in getting into the bone and sinew of this whole thing.”

“How about tomorrow, Doctor?”

“Hmm. I have procedures scheduled tomorrow and the next day. How about in about an hour? I’m just doing billing today, and a whole bunch of other boring administrative garbage that takes me away from both teaching and the practice of medicine. This sounds a heap more interesting.”

I looked at Oscar and started vigorously shaking my head back and forth in a big no.

“I think that sounds perfect, Dr. Wing. We’ll try to be there in about an hour. Can you tell us which building you’re in and your office number?”

He told us and then hung up.

“Hey,” I said, “I was trying to signal you to say no about meeting today. It’s way too early.”

“Sometimes, Jenna, clients don’t get to make all the decisions. Doing it now gets
informal
rolling. We may never get another chance, and I’m going to take advantage of it. I’m planning to use informality in a proctological fashion on your friend Professor Broontz, and on your dean as well.”

An unladylike image popped into my head but quickly dissipated.

Oscar went back to his chair at the end of the table while I worked the keyboard. After a few minutes, I said, “Oscar, I’ve looked up the details on all three of those people. Trolder, the economist, has a CV that’s mostly just his economics articles over the years. Nothing relevant to law or dispute resolution. No picture. I’d guess from his CV that he’s in his fifties. U of Chicago undergrad, grad work at Yale.”

“High-floor universities.”

I ignored the comment and said, “He doesn’t, so far as I can find, have a Facebook page.”

“What about Healey, the philosopher?”

“Lots of philosophy articles on her CV, including one called—get this—
Deep Philosophy among Indigenous Tribes in the Basin of the Orinoco
. There’s a fuzzy picture on her Facebook page of her standing next to a guy who’s decked out in feathers. I’m guessing she’s about my age, but it’s hard to say what she actually looks like because she’s wearing baggy tropical fatigues and high jungle boots and most of her head is covered with some kind of mosquito thing. Can’t say how old the guy beside her is, although he’s not wearing much beyond a loincloth and the feathers.”

Oscar got up again and came around to stand behind me so he could see my computer screen. “Huh,” he said, “that’s really something. The feathered guy must be the philosopher. I gotta read that article.”

“Seriously?”

“Hell yes. When I’m in front of a new judge, Jenna, I try to read everything they’ve written. Especially if it’s weird. Most judges actually wanted to be something else, and if you can find out what that something was by reading their writings, you can get ahead with them. What did you find out about our chairman, Dr. Wing?”

“He’s been connected to UCLA like forever. He did his undergrad work and med school there, then his internship, residency and fellowship. He started as an assistant prof right out of the fellowship and is still here as a full professor of medicine.”

“So Dr. Wing’s been at UCLA since he was eighteen.”

“Seems like,” I said, “and it also mentions that he went to University High School, which is in West LA, about a mile-and-a-half away as the crow flies.”

“Does it say anything about his tenure on the Charges Committee?”

“It says he’s done various tours on both that one and on the Committee on Privilege and Tenure and has served a total of twenty-seven years on one or the other. What do you make of that, Oscar?”

“He’s a judge.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning he’s a guy who gets off on being an elder in the tribe, and UCLA is his tribe.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Jenna, if we can persuade him that the whole charge against you is crazy and bad for UCLA, he’ll want to get it dismissed and taken somewhere far away, where no one will ever hear of it again. Perhaps he’ll ask Professor Healey to take it with her the next time she goes south and suggest she bury it somewhere along the shores of the Orinoco.”

“You’re awfully upbeat for you, Oscar.”

“Well, I should also have mentioned the other possibility.”

“Which is?”

“Dr. Wing will conclude the solution is to have you buried along the banks of the Orinoco.”

CHAPTER 72

B
efore we left to see Dr. Wing, I suggested to Oscar that we get in touch with Robert and bring him up-to-date. “Perhaps,” I said, “he’s found something in Seville that will be useful.”

“Well,” Oscar responded, “he called me yesterday from Seville—it must have been very late evening his time—and said he’d learned some useful things, and he wanted to tell me what he’d found. But I was kind of busy, so I suggested that since you were no longer the focus of the criminal investigation, he just wait until he got back.”

“He agreed to that? That’s not like him.”

“He did. But he did fax me an archaic Spanish document from 1641 that he got in Seville. I speak Spanish, but I can’t make out the handwriting. I’ll give you a copy, and we can talk to him about it when he gets back.”

“When will he be back?”

“Late Wednesday I think is what he said.”

“Maybe we could call him, now that this idiocy with Greta Broontz has arisen, and see if what he found out will be useful now.”

“I don’t think we can, Jenna. He said he was going to Madrid for two days of R&R and was going off the grid.”

“Off the grid?”

“He’s turned off his cell phone and his computer and didn’t tell me where he’s staying.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He’s a lawyer with an active case. He must be entering a second childhood or something.”

“Could be. But it is what it is.”

“Maybe Tess knows how to reach him.”

“No. When you called me so upset, I figured something bad had happened and that we ought to plug Robert into the conversation. So I called Tess right before you got here to see if she knew how to reach him. He told her the same thing—he’s off the grid until his plane lands here late on Wednesday.”

“Shit.”

“She also said she had an important lead, but it was ‘not yet at an end.’”

“On what?”

“On your case. I think that was her way of saying she hadn’t quite nailed it down yet.”

“I can’t imagine what she could find, but I guess we’ll find out later what it is.”

“Jenna, let’s go see Dr. Wing.”

Which is what we did.

We found Dr. Wing’s office without too much difficulty, considering that it was inside one of the dozens of medical buildings, many connected by tunnels or pedestrian bridges, that festoon the southern portion of the UCLA campus. Some of the buildings are such rabbit warrens that new interns have been known to disappear for hours trying to find their way. We knocked on the door—there was no secretary or receptionist outside his office—heard someone say “come in” and went in.

When we entered it was clear we weren’t in a clinical office where Dr. Wing saw patients but in his professorial office. The walls, like those of most professors, were filled with books. Several shelves, however, held unrecognizable medical instruments that looked ominous. There was also a large whiteboard on one wall, with a tray running along the bottom filled with dry-erase markers in various colors.

“Good afternoon,” Dr. Wing said. He was lying half-prone in a large, red leather recliner with the footrest up. As a result, it was a little hard to tell how tall he was, but I would’ve guessed well over six feet. He had a large nimbus of fine gray hair. He was wearing a long-sleeved, checked sport shirt in blue, dark khakis and black loafers.

“You’ll excuse me,” he continued, “if I don’t heave these old bones out of this chair to greet you, but it’s been a wearisome day. As you must have guessed, given the name on the door, I’m Dr. Wing, but no title’s necessary. Just Rex will do,” he said, looking at me, “for a fellow member of the faculty. And you get to ride along on that informality, Mr. Quesana.”

“Just plain Oscar will be fine, too.”

“And I’m Jenna,” I said.

“Good, good. Plop yourselves down on that couch there.” He pointed to a black leather couch, much cracked from long wear, which looked to me as if it had been around since Dr. Wing started at UCLA as an undergraduate.

We sat ourselves down, as instructed. The couch was so huge I felt swallowed up in it. My feet actually failed to touch the ground unless I sat far forward toward the front edge. I suspected the couch was installed before women were much in evidence in the medical school.

“Well,” Dr. Wing said, “would either of you like something to drink?”

Oscar politely declined, and although I would have loved a cup of coffee, I decided to decline, too. I was anxious to get to the heart of the matter.

“I assume,” Dr. Wing continued, “that you two have come to try to persuade me that we shouldn’t pass this case on to the Committee on Privilege and Tenure, or P&T, as we call it.”

Oscar responded. “At bottom, that’s right.”

“Good, good. Well, I just got off the phone with the complainant, Professor Broontz. I tried to suggest to her—gently, of course—that the whole thing seemed a tad premature, that the better part of valor might be to put this matter on ice and let the police investigation proceed awhile. She was quite adamant that she didn’t want to do so. If she persists in her adamancy, we’ll be forced to confront the issues here.”

“Well,” Oscar said, “that’s actually okay with us. Professor James—Jenna—doesn’t want this hanging over her head.”

Dr. Wing looked at me. “Jenna, do you want to speak for yourself here? It’s fine, of course, to bring your lawyer—great American right and all that—but I like to think that these proceedings are more like a conversation among friends than some sort of adversarial proceeding, all tangled up with law and lawyers.”

While he was finishing his pitch for me to, in effect, ditch Oscar for now, I thought about how we should respond. On one level, the old let’s-just-talk-among-friends thing was attractive. On the other hand, it was a trap. No one at UCLA was currently my friend.

“No, Dr. Wing,” I replied, “I’m really quite comfortable having Oscar speak for me. He’s not just my lawyer but an old and trusted friend.”

“All right, then,” Dr. Wing said, “let’s get to the heart of it. And do call me Rex, please. I meant that.”

“What do you see as the heart of it, Rex?” Oscar asked.

“At the heart of it is the question of whether Jenna killed someone.”

His statement kind of hung there in midair, reminding me what this was all about.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” I said. Why exactly I had the need to reiterate that every time it came up was unclear to me. Surely everyone understood that I denied it. And yet I needed to say it.

“We agree with that, Rex,” Oscar responded. “One hundred percent.”

Dr. Wing unlimbered himself from his chair and lumbered to the whiteboard. The guy was huge. Six foot six perhaps, and at least two hundred and fifty pounds. As I watched him, I wondered if his CV had left off some kind of football career as an undergrad.

“So,” Dr. Wing said, picking up a marker from the tray, “on the one hand, we have an unsettling death, likely a homicide.” He wrote MURDER in large red letters in the middle of the board, dropped the red marker back into the tray and picked up a blue one. “And over here, we have a supposed disruption of campus tranquility.” He wrote
DISRUPTION
in very small blue letters to the right of MURDER.

He tossed the marker high into the air, watched it turn several times and caught it perfectly on its return. “And you can understand, certainly, how murder might cause campus disruption.” He drew a quick, slashing arrow from MURDER to
DISRUPTION
.

He dropped the blue marker back into the tray and turned to face us full on. “And so, class, are we going to try to focus on whether there’s a disruption? No, not very much, because in a university who cares if a professor causes disruption? The very nature of the university is to be disruptive. No, the question is what has
caused
the disruption.”

I had the sense we were watching a master teacher who probably held his students in thrall.

“We couldn’t agree more,” Oscar said.

“And would you agree, Oscar,” Dr. Wing asked, “that if Jenna caused the disruption by murdering her student, that’s a problem for this great university?”

“Of course.”

“So the focus of our inquiry must be, must it not, whether Jenna killed her student?”

“Exactly,” Oscar said.

“And yet,” Dr. Wing said, “how in the world does our small committee, or P&T, for that matter, if we send it on to them with a finding of probable cause, have the resources, the expertise or the acumen to investigate a murder?”

There was a small silence in the room. The obvious answer was that the committee had no business at all investigating a murder.

Finally, Oscar asked, “What’s the bottom line?”

“The bottom line, Oscar, is that if Jenna doesn’t want to go forward with this, I’m sure my two colleagues on this committee, Professor Trolder and Professor Healey, will be easily persuaded to rule that this is not an appropriate case for us to consider. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Oscar said. “If we ask you to do it that way, the matter will be over for you, but not for Jenna. Her tenure decision will still be delayed, and the cloud over her head will remain. And that’s true even though the police no longer suspect Jenna of the murder.”

“But apparently,” Dr. Wing responded, “that information has not reached other people on the campus, particularly not Professor Broontz.”

“Apparently not,” Oscar said.

“Just to be clear, then,” Dr. Wing said, “you want us to consider the crime, not just whether there’s disruption from the allegation.”

“Yes. Jenna didn’t do it. And there’s no evidence that she did.”

“All right,” Dr. Wing said, “we just need to discuss where and when we’re going to do this crazy thing.” He chuckled. “You know, this reminds me of the start of a joke.”

“What joke is that?” Oscar asked.

“Well, I don’t know the punch line, but it’s one of those jokes that begins, ‘A doctor, an economist and a philosopher walk into a bar.’”

I sat there and thought to myself that the punch line in this case would likely be that later they wished they had skipped the bar and gone to a pancake house instead.

We then all tried but failed to come up with a good punch line for the joke, and I decided not to volunteer the pancake-house version. After our failed effort, which certainly did seem collegial and informal—even fun—we returned to the serious business at hand. Dr. Wing gave us a choice. He said we could either start the hearing the next day—Tuesday—or wait until the following February, which is when he’d be back from some mini-sabbatical he was taking to Finland.

Oscar and I went out in the hall to discuss it. My initial reaction was that it was a setup and a trap, because if Greta Broontz and the rest of the Charges Committee were ready to start any time, as Wing claimed, that meant she and the dean—and maybe Wing, too—had been plotting this for a long time. Oscar said we were going to win, that they had no evidence, and we should get it over with, that if we waited months, it would get more complicated and more difficult. He also said that Wing had practically promised us they’d listen to the evidence, decide it was nonsense and not send it on to P&T. I acquiesced, although I wished Robert were around to weigh in on the decision. But he was off the grid somewhere, the asshole.

We went back in and told Dr. Wing we were good to go for Tuesday. He looked, frankly, kind of shocked that we had chosen to do it so soon. Maybe Oscar was right.