Unlucky in Law (32 page)

“Hey, no. I prefer my mom's hand-me-down Taurus to her Escalade. I like going forty-five because it won't go any faster on hills. Of course I was damned jealous.”

“What happened then?”

“This conference happened. The Russian one that Christina organized.”

Nina continued to ask open-ended questions. Gabe went on with his story.

Gabe Wyatt went to the conference on post–Soviet Russia at Cal State. In spite of what he had recently learned about his father, he didn't care about Russia. He had a different agenda, to follow Christina. Unlike their father, she was alive. He understood Alex. Now he wanted to understand her.

He had ruminated upon the fact that she had grown up with their shared father, and that she and her brother were somehow the favored ones, being legitimate in the eyes of the world, while he and Stefan were the ugly secrets. It was almost worse than before, when at least he could fantasize that his father loved him.

The lack of money mixed in with the lack of love. Too late on the love front. Maybe he could still get some of the money, do something big with it, something important. He had waited all his life for a break. Maybe this was it.

At the opening ceremony, Christina introduced the keynote speaker. From the second row, Gabe studied her, listening for a familiar note in her voice but discovering none. He looked at her blue eyes, and thought maybe they looked like Stefan's. Certainly, nothing about this woman reminded him of himself. She was a complete stranger who had gotten between Gabe and his father.

Getting antsy to see if she recognized something in him, he tested her a few times, trying to catch her eye, walking close by that first day. During lunch, he sat down beside her on a bench briefly while she ate. But she didn't notice anything unusual. She didn't seem any more connected than he did. She faded into the woodwork after the duty of introductions, a forceful but quiet intellectual woman.

“So you followed her around without her knowledge at this conference?”

“Right. I got kind of obsessed. I couldn't figure her out.”

“Did she have any repeated contacts with any of the attendees?”

“Sure. A Russian Orthodox priest, Father Giorgi. Plus her brother Alex was there. She spent a lot of time in little sessions outside with both of them. And a man I figured for an ex-boyfriend, judging by the way she reacted to seeing him lurking around. Very blond. He figured out I was watching her, but he didn't do anything.”

“And did you learn the name of this man?”

“Sergey Krilov, supposedly an economist from St. Petersburg, at least that's how he was listed among the participants. He didn't know a euro from a hole in the head. I knew something was up, and it didn't have anything to do with the Moscow stock exchange.”

“Did you come to realize what this something was?” Nina said.

“Well, Christina was such a busy bee, hitting people up for money, secretly meeting with this priest from San Francisco. She talked to Krilov, but didn't look happy about it. Then she'd sneak off somewhere to talk to her brother.”

“So you were suspicious that the conference was—what?”

“Rigged. A front.”

“For what?”

“She organized it to raise money for a pet cause of some kind. I never got details, because they were very discreet, but I think it had to do with some scheme she had . . . and then Christina was attacked. It was late in the first day of the conference. She had just left a presentation and walked by herself toward her car with a heavy briefcase. I followed her. It was getting dark. To tell the truth, I had made up my mind to talk to her. I was starting to feel foolish, and I had a lot of questions. I—”

“Hold on. You say she was attacked?” Nina asked.

“A heavyset bald man, big as a grizzly, came around the corner and took hold of her from behind. I didn't have time to think, much less do anything about it. If he had really meant to kill her, I couldn't have gotten to her. He held her tight and whispered something into her ear, something that scared the hell out of her. Then Krilov popped up, jumping him from behind. I don't even know where he came from. He did something to this man's neck that made him scream. He dropped his hold on Christina and took off. Krilov dusted off his hands like he'd been handling something dirty and tried to talk to Christina, but she wanted nothing to do with him. She brushed him off.”

Nina took a second to go to the table. Stefan wanted information, but she shook him off with a finger to the lips. She drank water and tried to think. A big bear of a Russian man? She didn't know if Gabe was telling the truth or inventing folk tales to distract attention.

But the jury members were listening. Just as she did, they wanted to know who in hell had killed Christina Zhukovsky. Maybe not Sergey Krilov, if he had been so keen to defend her from attack. She decided to let Gabe run with his story until somebody, the judge or Jaime, shut her down.

“That's quite a tale, Mr. Wyatt,” she said, putting the glass down, looking at the jury. Santa Ana definitely didn't believe a word of his testimony so far.

“You know what? I've been wanting to tell what happened,” Gabe said. “But I was afraid. You'll get why in a minute.”

“Do you know who this attacker was, as you sit here today?”

“No. Although later I overheard more about him.”

“What did Christina do then?”

She was tough, Gabe gave Christina that. She talked sharply to Krilov, sent him away, then she walked uncertainly a few more steps to an old wooden building and made it inside, but reappeared soon after with her brother Alex. Gabe stood back behind the building, watching them, listening.

“I tried, but couldn't hear anything in there, but they came out after a few minutes and stood by his Cadillac, and she told him everything, why she was attacked, why she went to Russia, the whole thing.”

The judge leaned over, saying, “Mr. Wyatt, do you know where Alex Zhukovsky is?”

Up to now, Nina had taken in Wyatt's story like a computer spreadsheet took in data, making lists in her mind: this goes here; that goes there; now how does it add up? Salas had other concerns.

“I remind you of your rights,” Salas persisted, not specifying them again because of the jury's presence.

“No idea,” Gabe Wyatt said. “None.”

“All right. Continue, Counsel.”

“What exactly did you overhear at that place and time?” Nina said. Jaime and his assistant scribbled furiously.

“Okay. Alex was really worried about her injuries. Christina said, ‘I knew this was a dangerous game to play, stalling them, putting them off. They can't stand it that I'm my own woman now, and I won't be a puppet. It's time, Alex, time for the world to hear about me. Tell the papers. That's the only guarantee I'll be safe.'”

“Did she explain exactly what the world should hear?”

“She said . . .”—he smiled as if embarrassed—“she was heir to the throne of Russia.”

One of the jurors giggled.

“I laughed at first,” Gabe said.

“Go on,” Nina said.

“She said, ‘Our father, Constantin Zhukovsky, was the tsarevitch, the only son of Nicholas the Second, the last tsar of Russia.'”

“How did her brother, Alex, respond to the information?”

“He flipped. At first he just asked her what kind of brainwashing they did on her while she was over there. Then, when she wouldn't back down, he said she was talking like a madwoman. She needed psychological counseling. I agreed with him, by the way.

“Alex said, ‘So Krilov was just using you.' I think that upset her a little, like he wouldn't have gone for her otherwise, but she did agree. She said she broke with him when she found out Sergey wanted her to get in with some people he knew, not because they could do good for Russia, but because they could make money with her as a figurehead, or even just as a backer. That it was greed, not the power to do good, that motivated him and his group.

“Meanwhile, Alex had been thinking. He told her that if she went public, their family would be humiliated, meaning him, I guess, since she didn't seem to care. He said that without proof she was putting herself in harm's way for nothing, that everyone in the world would hear about it and if they weren't laughing too loud, they might feel threatened by her, thinking she was making a power grab. She would put herself and Alex in danger for a ludicrous pipe dream.

“She said it
was
a power grab, in a sense. She had dreams of a better Russia, a new regime. They argued. He said that Constantin never claimed to be anything but a page. She said the people who took their papa out of Russia swore in an affidavit—that Krilov showed it to her—that Constantin was, in fact, really the young tsarevitch, son of Nicholas the Second.

“Then she asked, ‘What about what I told you—how when I was young, Papa showed me a little blue egg.'”

Another giggle from the jury box came from someone who found all this silly. Nina, trying to catch with both hands the information flowing out of Gabe fast as mucky rainwater down a gutter spout, couldn't look around. “An egg, you say,” she repeated, feeling as idiotic as she sounded.

“A jeweled egg. Blue. She described it, saying she remembered it and had found a picture of it on the Web. She called it the tsarevitch egg.” He looked apologetic, recognizing how preposterous it all sounded. “Said Fabergé made it especially, when the tsarevitch was very young.

“Alex said where the hell was this mystical egg, then, and she told him that their papa must have lost it or sold it or something.

“He told her she had a sick attachment to the fantasies of their father, and then begged her not to talk about any of this until they did some tests. He said, ‘We'll get the bones analyzed. Constantin's bones. We'll compare his DNA to the Romanovs, but you have to promise me you'll dump the crazy scheming if there's no match.'

“She didn't want to do it, but eventually agreed. He said he'd make the arrangements.”

“They agreed to dig up Constantin Zhukovsky's bones?” Nina asked.

“Kind of. Alex said he wouldn't do it himself, but yeah, in essence.”

“They would get the bones to prove Christina was a member of the Romanov family?”

“She was a stubborn fanatic. Alex hoped the result would shut her up.”

“Objection,” Jaime said.

“That last statement is stricken as speculation,” the judge said. “The jury will disregard it.”

“But here's the thing I should tell you,” Gabe said.

“Go on, Mr. Wyatt,” Nina said, watching for a reaction from Salas, who gave her only his attention.

“I looked into the whole thing, you know, whether she could be the heir? Well, she wasn't.”

The audience in the courtroom, already agog, backed off like a low tide. So, the story really was a fantasy. What a relief to return to reality, and how sad that reality always turned out to be so mundane.

“Why do you say that?”

“I looked into the history. The tsarevitch had hemophilia. People born with hemophilia back then never lived into adulthood. Christina really was whacked-out crazy.”

“Move to strike the opinion,” Jaime said, although he clearly agreed with it. The judge ordered it done.

Nina said, “This conference, this attack on Christina, and the conversation with Alex took place when?”

“In April, about a week before she died.”

Friday night, April 11, before it was dark, Gabe had arrived at Christina's door, a fresh business card in hand, curiosity eating away at him. She answered after he knocked twice. “Uh-huh?” she said. She appeared tired and careworn. The cotton shirt she wore looked slept in. In the space behind her, he could see slick mirrors, views all the way to the ocean, neatness.

“I'm in an awful business,” he said.

“What?” She seemed a little more alert.

He thrust a card at her, then stepped back. “I can see this is a bad time,” he said. In Gabe's experience, women liked his hesitation. It instantly defused their very natural caution, and insulted them just a little.

“Not at all,” she said defensively. She took the card and read it. “A home-security business? I've seen you before, haven't I?”

“I picked up your card at the Russian conference. I was there talking to a couple of clients and, you know, networking. We install a system called The Bodyguard because it's so effective. Nobody's really safe these days. You read the paper.”

She nodded. “Well, it's not a bad idea. I'll think about it.”

“Sure.” He let his shoulders fall, and put on his disappointed face. “But this is a one-time offer, a hundred bucks for four hours, top to bottom. Not just some useless analysis of your security needs. No, I'll install our foolproof system.”

He could see that although she had a cautionary air, she liked his eagerness. A gratifying light appeared in her eyes. “I should probably think.” She started to close the door.

“I don't blame you for being afraid of me,” he said quickly.

The door cracked wider. “But I'm not.”

“I'm a stranger. Why should you trust me?”

“Good point,” she said, but she was smiling.

Within a few more minutes, he had an appointment.

He showed up the next day with a plan of action for her apartment, which mainly consisted of a few motion detectors and a cheap alarm that was supposed to blow if anyone fiddled with the frontdoor lock. He had fun fiddling with wires, looking experienced. She stayed around while he talked. She listened, growing progressively more paranoid as he fed her stories, some real, some made up, of break-ins, attacks, and other unsavory local activities.

“Best thing,” he said, screwing a white box into the ceiling of a small hallway that wouldn't do much, but had an official look about it and was supposed to blip in certain unlikely events, “is to defend yourself aggressively, not be passive and sit back and let them take you down.”

“Yeah,” she said. She wore blue jeans and a blue sweater. While he worked she swiped a mop around on the kitchen floor. “That's my plan.”

He took a second to admire the apartment and to consider that this woman, who lived in this very elegant penthouse apartment, was his half-sister. Again, he couldn't see much family resemblance, but then, they were only half-siblings. Was it really possible, this story about their father?