Writ of Execution (23 page)

“About four months after Dan died. Here’s what happened. Mr. Potter introduced himself. I told him how sorry I was about Dan. He said he knew I was Dan’s friend and in the same department at UH and saw him most days. I was kind of taken aback at how much he knew about me.”

Paul pushed away his plate. The girls picked up their packs, meandering off in the direction of the UH campus, displaying not one trace of cellulite although their shorts were scandalous.

“So Mr. Potter said, ‘You never saw him sick those last months, did you?’ I started to say, But I did. Because, see, Dan told me one day in class that he had missed two days of school the week before. He was sick as a dog with some kind of stomach pain and he thought it might be appendicitis. But Potter wouldn’t let me finish. He said”—and Eppley put his hand to his mouth and leaned toward Paul—“ ‘I know your circumstances, Byron. I want to help you today, because you were Dan’s friend. I’m going to leave you a tip that’ll help.’ ”

“How much?”

“Five thousand, cash, in hundreds. He had it ready in an envelope. Well, I’d never seen so much money in my life. I just looked at it. Then I said—okay, this is the bad part, yeah?—I said, ‘Okay, what do I have to do for it?’ And you know the rest.”

“Outline it for me.”

“I had to testify in that court case he brought against Jessie. Swear Dan never was sick, never looked sick, never talked about being sick. The judge was taking notes and never even looked at me. The entire case was over in five minutes. I was surprised Jessie wasn’t there—that was what I had worried about the most—but I knew she’d find out somehow. I paid my tuition but I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I felt like a Hotel Street hooker.”

“Hmm. So what now?”

“What do you mean, what now? What do I have to do?”

“Maybe sign some papers. Maybe take a trip. Maybe nothing.”

“Just keep the university out of it. Nobody in my family ever got even a college degree. I want to teach. Can you do that?”

“No deals this time, Byron,” Paul said. “You have to be straight no matter what or the contempt you feel for yourself is going to make you want to hurt yourself. Drink, do drugs, do anything to forget. You’re lucky I came along to give you one more chance to get your self-respect back.”

Byron took in this speech. He nodded and stretched like he was feeling better. Then his shoulders hunched again and he said, “Potter might do something to me. He ran Jessie out of town.”

“We’ll keep him busy. We’ll do our best.”

“What if he tells my professor?”

“At least you won’t be turning tricks anymore.”

“I don’t know. Now I’m starting to . . .”

“Don’t worry. You won’t forget.” Paul showed him the small tape recorder he had kept running in his lap.

“Shit.” But his voice held resignation.

They left the restaurant and walked back to the parking area out back called Puck’s Alley, where there was a Thai restaurant, a cafe, and Revolution Books with a small group of earnest revolutionaries standing around in the sunshine smoking and chatting and sticking “Refuse and Resist” stickers on their bumpers.

Paul drove Eppley through the maze of palmy streets to the Italian cafe where he worked. As he got out, Eppley said, “Was it a boy or a girl?”

“Huh?”

“The baby. Jessie and Dan’s baby. She told me she was pregnant the last time I saw her. That’s one reason I felt so bad about what I did.”

Baby? Paul hadn’t heard about any kid. Had she miscarried? Better not field this one.

“I’ll be getting back to you.” He handed his card over through the driver’s window.

“Tell her this. I never said one word about her being pregnant to Potter. Not one. He didn’t deserve to know.”

“I’ll tell her.” Go and sin no more, my son, Paul thought as Eppley went to the door and inside. His stomach was flopping around. He was either very excited or the moussaka was going to give him a bad night tonight.

19

“WHAT HAPPENED TO you?” Sandy said the next day as Nina staggered into the office with briefcases in both hands. Nina hadn’t had time even to take a shower this morning, she’d gotten up so late, and her hair had been secured with one of those plastic grabbers that only added to the general dishevelment.

“Little-known fact,” Nina said. “If Deputy Kimura approves of you, you can get a key into the building so you can go to the law library at all hours. Only thing is, Bob was alone again last night. However.”

“However what?”

“I have been talking to myself, Sandy.”

“Uh oh.”

“I have come to realize something about this Potter case, Sandy. It crystallizes a lot of things about law in this country that I have been slowly and painfully learning.”

“Such as?”

“The near-impossibility of beating a guy who is bigger than you. It’s a cliché that the system is stacked against the little guy, but nobody seems to be able to do a thing about it. There are too many fronts. But in this case the display of power is naked. And why has the display appeared without its clothes? Because they are in a hurry, Sandy. They don’t have time to cover things up properly. Paul flew in about an hour ago. He’ll be here at ten. I talked to him briefly while he was waiting for his flight out of Honolulu.”

“And?”

“And we are going on the warpath. We are going to fight.”

“How?”

“Simple. All it takes is a complete disregard for prudence and custom and what is expected. We are up against real power, the Potters and the big business interests. They have attacked and we have circled our wagons, but there are too many of them.”

“If only the Western had never been invented,” Sandy muttered. “What else can we do?”

“We attack back. Take our single-action rifles, go out in the middle of the night, surprise them.”

Sandy moved her lower lip in and out, in and out, the Washoe version of Nero Wolfe.

“I’m tired of running from these jerks,” Nina said.

“Defending. Reacting. Trying to cut losses.” She marched into her office and dumped the briefcases on her desk, then came back out, hands on her hips.

“We’ve gotten too used to it, Sandy,” she said. “In a sense, we play along with it. We’re supposed to be groveling for a settlement right now. Well, I’m not going to do it.”

“Then what are you going to do?” But Nina’s tirade was over, because just then Alex and his mother came in. Nina had forgotten about this appointment.

The boy looked very white, very tired. He walked with difficulty, stooped like an old man. His mother smiled painfully at Nina as they slowly entered her office.

“Good going, honey,” his mother said to Alex, holding one arm, steering him. “That’s the way.” Her forced cheerfulness appeared somewhat out of line with the circumstances, but then Nina had no idea what appropriate behavior under such circumstances should be.

“I want to add something to my will,” Alex said when he was settled.

“Sure. What you want is called a codicil,” Nina said.

“Okay.”

“No problem,” Nina said, waiting while he slowly withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket.

“I actually don’t want him to do this,” the mother said with a tortured smile, sounding just short of desperate, her real feelings already starting to crack through her brittle pose.

Nina read the crumpled slip of paper. Alex wanted to give his body to Stanford University Medical School for use in medical research.

His mother dropped the fake smile entirely. “He can’t do this. I want a place to go,” she said. “To be with him. Where I can bring flowers.”

“I want to do some good,” Alex said firmly. “Maybe some other kid can have a chance. I read about this on the Internet. I called the school. They said I’m over eighteen, I can do it.” Looking at his pinched, exhausted face, Nina saw that he had made up his mind. The mother gave Nina a pleading look, and Nina saw that she was hoping Nina could change it.

“Alex, could you just give us a minute?” Nina said.

“Sure.”

He walked out slowly, waving off his mother’s offer of help, shutting the door. His mother turned agonized eyes to Nina. “I can’t keep any part of him?” she cried. “It’s not right. It’s cruel. I deserve to have him buried. I deserve to have a headstone. They’ll carve him up and he’ll disappear.”

“He wants to do something good for others,” Nina said. “He wants to leave his mark. He’s such a fine kid. I have nothing but admiration for him.”

“But what about me? I’ll have nothing but memories!”

“That’s all any of us get.”

“You’re as cruel as he is. I can’t believe you won’t help me. We’ve talked about our sons—you would let your son do this?”

“It’s a way of fighting on,” Nina said. “Not letting the disease win. He has so little control. This he can control. It’s a disposition of property, a special gift to the world.”

“Please. Help me. Talk to him. I’ve already lost his father. I need this one thing. Don’t I deserve it?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, you deserve it. You deserve so much more. You deserve a healthy child, grandchildren. You deserve to be happy. It isn’t fair. You look around you and wonder how come it wasn’t the family next door, why it had to be yours.”

“Yes.”

“You need support yourself. You’re in pain, too.”

“Yes!” She clenched her fists, held them to her head, squeezed her eyes shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I am going to get you some support.” Nina touched her arm gently. “Okay?”

She didn’t answer. She was weeping without making any sound. Nina imagined her at home in her bedroom, Alex not far away in his room, and this courteous silent weeping going on in the house, because she didn’t want to disturb him. And at breakfast, the smiley face. She needed help, and fast.

Nina got on the phone and called Matt’s wife, Andrea, at the women’s shelter. While Andrea spoke with Alex’s mother, Nina went outside and sat with Alex.

When his mother came out into the reception area, she had a yellow phone slip in her hand with some numbers on it. She held a hand out to Nina. She had recovered the matter-of-fact overlay. “Thanks for your help,” she said. “Andrea’s given me someone to call. She was very understanding.”

“Should I make the changes Alex wants?” Nina asked.

“No.” She put her hand on her son’s shoulder. “We need to talk some more. I don’t think he understands what he’s doing.”

“Mom. I’ve decided.”

“No.”

“It’s my body. I’m going to do it.”

“I said no!” The door closed behind them.

“Now what?” Sandy said. “Poor things.”

“I don’t know,” Nina said.

“He’s your client, he’s an adult, he asked you to do it.”

“I know. It’s going to be hard for him to come here again to sign it too. I guess I’ll wait for a phone call and run it out to him.”

“What if he dies before he can get his mother’s agreement?”

“Then he dies.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I couldn’t do it to her today.”

Paul had driven straight from the airport. His board shorts and the shirt with the grass shacks, banished from their tropical setting, clashed severely with the office decor. “Aloha, my fine feathered friends,” he said. He placed a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts on Sandy’s desk.

“Tweet, tweet,” said Sandy. “You’re gonna make Joseph jealous, giving me presents.” She put her thumb to the turboball and began to whirl and click.

“How are you, Sandy?”

“Busy. Good trip?”

“Excellent. I can’t sit another minute, Nina. Can we walk?”

They left Sandy plying her word processor and went down to the street to the open land where the Truckee marsh trail began. As they crossed the small bridge over the trout stream, Paul took Nina’s hand as though he felt how disturbed she was. Alex’s mother’s agony had affected her deeply. The quiet scene ahead, of bikers and a grassy meadow surrounded by mountains, seemed sad and transient. But it would always be there, and maybe the boy would achieve some kind of immortality, too.

“Where’d you go?” Paul said. “Wherever it was, I can’t follow you. Come back.”

“Sorry.” She came back into focus.

“Ready for the quickie report? I typed it up on my laptop on the plane and I’ll pass it on with the case file and the other documents when we get back.”

“Good news? I’d like that.”

“I’m gonna give you the broad outline first. That judgment is attackable. Potter intimidated the doctor and bribed another of his witnesses, Byron Eppley. Jessie’s story checks out. There was something wrong with her husband, though nobody seems to know just what. Potter spread rumors that if he was sick, it was because she poisoned him. There’s no evidence of that. And he did persecute her.”

Nina didn’t change her pace. “He lost it, Paul,” she said. “His son died, and he had so much power that when he couldn’t accept it as an act of God, he made Jessie a scapegoat and set out to destroy her. Too bad she couldn’t fight it in Hawaii. I could countersue Potter for harassment even now, but then the burden of proof would shift to Jessie. What else did the doctor say?”

“He witnessed the kid in severe pain. But there’s a problem. He never did figure out what was wrong with him. I mean, he doesn’t even have a working theory.”

She stopped to look at a daisy thriving in the shadow of a bush. “Then we don’t have enough to prove what happened to Dan Potter.”

“No, I’d say I can’t produce that. Still, with the witness tampering, we have some very good stuff.”

“I’ll study it. What about Judge Otaru? Anything there?”

“Not enough,” Paul said briefly.

“And the procedural review? Did you find a Hawaii lawyer?”

“Yeah, and this lady produced a ten-page report which says in essence that every ‘t’ was crossed twice and every ‘i’ had dots upon dots. The notice and publication were impeccable.”

“Too bad. But I can’t wait to read your report on Eppley and Dr. Jun. What about Bonita Banks? What did she have to say?”

“That Jessie’s telling the truth.”

Nina nodded. They had crossed the meadow and come to the deserted beach. The sun beat down. The lake stretched before them, endless, detached from human cares, powerful, protected by its mountains.

“It’s brooding,” Paul said. “You get the feeling things move in it at night. Coelacanths, other ancient animals. What about the jackpot front? Did Kenny come up with anything?”

“He’s such a classic M.I.T. boy. I called him last night and he’s been living on the Web, floating around and reading the legal cases and newspapers and financial reports and exposés by disgruntled employees. Hard to say what we have here.”

“Yeah?” He strode along the beach beside her, taking one step for her two. “Explain.”

“Well, the word ‘random’ doesn’t seem to have the same definition in Regulation 14 in Nevada as it has in the dictionary. Kenny’s still working on it. Marlis Djina, who is a Nevada attorney, sent me the applicable regulations from the State Gaming Control Board. I’m reading them. It’s like studying Sanskrit, but between Kenny and Marlis I’m going to figure out what Global Gaming is up to.”

“Is the Greed Machine one of the slots with these microchips?”

“I asked Kenny to find that out. He says he never met a microchip he couldn’t make friends with.”

“I’ll never gamble again.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“No, really. I’ve been investing my nickels in European high-growth stocks.”

Nina smiled faintly. “How much have you lost?”

“Oh, about forty percent of my nickels seem to have disappeared, but at least I’m not gambling.” They stopped and turned again to the lake, watching the gulls waddle across the wet sand. From this small promontory no buildings could be seen. They were alone.

Nina was still disturbed. She realized that she felt guilty about Alex. It was the same feeling she had experienced when her husband died nine months before—guilt at being a survivor, a lucky one. Yet, even while she revisited these painful feelings, she could feel something new in herself, a brightening, a flowing of an old energy, a reconnecting. I’m getting better, she thought, I’m like someone convalescing from a long illness. It was happening in jerks and starts, in awkward movements she kept making back toward life.

So a person could recover. She hadn’t believed it. She had gone to work, gone for walks, slept, ate—but she had been numb inside. She looked at Paul, emptying sand out of his shoe.

“Let’s go back,” she said. As they turned back toward the path, she went back to the thorny problem of Global Gaming.

“They may claim the jackpot was rigged somehow,” she said. “Then it will be assumed the cheater was Jessie.”

“Well, who else could it be?”

“Think about it,” Nina said.

Paul walked on for a while, mulling this over. Then he said, “And so we look again at Kemp. He thought the money should be his.”

“It’s hard to believe, but imagine that Kemp had rigged the machine and then left, as we know he did, just before it hit.”

“I don’t believe that. He wouldn’t leave the machine at the crucial moment.”

“Well, he’s dead,” Nina said, pushing a branch out of the way as they came back to the bridge. “Maybe he screwed up.”

“I hope not. Because that would mean the killer cares about Jessie and her jackpot too. A black knight could be out there, who we know nothing about.”

“I’m so glad Jessie and Kenny are tucked away safely. It gives me the creeps even to think it. Can you stay for a few more days? Follow this murder investigation? And try to figure out what Global Gaming wants to surprise us with?”

“I’ll get right on it,” Paul said. “As soon as I get some clean clothes and a nap.”

“You’re staying at Caesars?”

“Where else?”

They had come to a place in the trail where water from last night’s rain had made a pothole filled with mud. They stopped again and Paul took Nina’s arm.

At Paul’s car out in the parking lot, he took the bag of files out and followed her into the office and set it in the only corner that had any room left, where it leaned heavily against the fig tree.