Alibi (29 page)

It was, without question, the most amazing sight David had ever seen. In fact, he and Sara were so taken aback by the spectacle before them that they failed to see the man approach them from the left. A tall, olive-skinned man in a $5,000 Armani suit and teeth so white they appeared to the part of the black and white décor extraordinaire.

“Counselor,” said Roger Katz, extending his manicured hand to David.

“Roger,” said David through gritted teeth.

“Miss Davis,” said Katz, now taking her hand and raising it to his lips, his eyes absorbing her from head to toe, making David angrier by the minute. “You look stunning as usual. And I read about your recent little victory, by the way. Well done! She’s beautiful and blessed with beginner’s luck, hey, Cavanaugh?” He smirked, now turning back to David. “You’re a lucky man, Counselor.”

“I was,” said David. “Up until about a minute ago.”

“Roger,” interrupted Sara before David could go any further, “this is my brother Jake.”

Katz turned to shake Jake’s hand. “Not another lawyer in the mix?” he said, the sarcasm flowing just as fast as the water that gushed in the huge marble fountain at the front of the room.

“No, sir,” said Jake. “I work for Credit Suisse.”

“Ah,” said Katz, and David could not help but wonder why the ADA was so damned amicable tonight—a quality that, at least on Katz, always made him nervous.

“Well, it’s a pleasure, Jake. But I must say, I would never have picked you two for siblings. Well, obviously. But I did read somewhere, did I not, Miss Davis, that you were adopted?”

David had had enough. “Forgive us, Roger, but I can see my boss and his secretary at the front. We’re a little late and I want to check in.”

“Of course,” said Katz. “Don’t worry, Counselor, I am sure you’ll make partner one of these days and won’t have to raise your hand for roll call.” Katz raised his right hand in mock schoolboy fashion, his monogrammed cuff links catching the light of the crystal chandeliers.

But David didn’t respond, just took Sara’s hand and walked as quickly as possible toward the bar at the front of the room.

“Jesus,” said Sara.

“What a wanker,” said Jake.

“I need a drink,” said David.

Roger Katz could not contain himself. He was floating in fucking bliss!

It was almost as if the universe had aligned itself, as if everything he had ever wanted was slipping into place and feeling every bit as rich as the black label whiskey that now slid down his throat like liquid velvet, warming his ambitions and firing his desire to make the most of every single second of it . . . right down to kicking Cavanaugh’s middle-class ass in front of his dark-skinned girlfriend and her Benetton commercial brother.

Cheers!

Moments before he spotted Cavanaugh and his United Nations companions, he had hung up a call from his so-called boss Loretta Scaturro—the MIA DA who, as luck would have it, “could not see herself returning before the end of the year.”

Better still, Attorney General Sweeney was expected at this shindig momentarily, giving Katz the perfect opportunity to mention the extension of Scaturro’s embarrassingly long leave before updating him on the progress of his now “firing” prosecution of the Jessica Nagoshi case.

McKay had promised to alert him by seven if there was a problem at hand, and given it was almost eight, and given the stars were fucking fixed over his goddamned head this evening, and given he felt so freaking good and looked even better, he saw nothing but success in his future—a success that would begin with the wall-to-wall coverage of Matheson’s arrest in tomorrow’s papers and grow with the Nagoshis’ eternal gratitude (although Katz would be sensitive enough not to bring up the issue of district attorney campaign donations until at least the beginning of the trial), and consolidate itself with his victory in one of the most high-profile cases this state—hell, this country—had ever seen.

And then, as if another sun had decided to slide into his perfect procession of personal endowments this evening, Katz saw John Nagoshi enter at the back of the hall—his son at his right, his lawyer at his left, the Japanese-American now the center of attention as he shook hands and bowed to the many similarly bobbing sycophants around him. Seriously, he didn’t understand how those people managed to avoid banging heads—the trivial thought had popped into his head like a happy little aside. Katz had had to duck and weave at least twice at their past few meetings and the ridiculous social custom seemed, at least to him, to appear both comical and . . . a touch effeminate. Still, tonight was his night and he would bow if he had to, he thought as he swallowed the last of his aged double malt in a flourish. It was a small price to pay.

“Anyway,” said Heath Westinghouse, now downing his fourth imported beer in the past half hour, “so then Wes corners me after lunch and asks me what my intentions are. He said Charity’s designated fat ugly friend told him I had cut his grass—that I had moved in on Charity before they broke up.

“So then I told the jerk to go fuck himself, and that if I was as fucking ugly as him I would count myself lucky to have slept with someone as hot as Charity in the first place.”

H. Edgar took a breath. Westinghouse was getting drunker by the moment—slipping into that moronic freshman vernacular that was, in all honesty, incredibly immature and way beneath him.

“So then . . .” Westinghouse went on after finishing his beer, his right arm gesturing at his stunning date across the other side of the hall who had been “mingling” with the VIPs for most of the evening so far. “Then he says he didn’t give a crap because Charity was nothing more than a puck fuck, lacrossti tute.” Terms H. Edgar knew referred to girls who only slept with guys on the hockey or lacrosse teams. “And then I said he was nothing but a full of shit asshole who . . .”

“Jesus, Westinghouse,” said H. Edgar, who was now getting more than a little worried about his friend’s hastened state of inebriation. He knew Westinghouse was hyped after today’s rather intense negotiations, but he didn’t think his friend would be stupid enough to get pissed in front of this loaded crowd—no pun intended—especially one that included their beloved benefactor John Nagoshi and the goddamned ADA.

“Tone it down, will you? There is nothing to worry about. By now James is in custody and, with any luck, will be released by morning. The money is in the bank, Barbara will confirm his alibi and we’ll be sitting pretty. Just don’t blow this by acting like a lush.”

H. Edgar paused then to shake hands with one of his father’s retired corporate friends before leading Westinghouse off to the side of the bar and looking him directly in the eye.

“Look around you, Westinghouse. This room is filled with opportunities. These are not the people you party with but the people you impress. ‘Puck fuck, lacrosstitute’—what the hell is that? You are selling yourself short, Westinghouse. Now act your age and sober the fuck up before ADA Katz comes to shake your hand for being the fine upstanding citizen that you are. Don’t embarrass me, Westinghouse. Pull yourself together.”

And then he saw it, if only for a second, the slightest slither of anger in his blue-eyed friend’s expression. It was there, and then it was gone.

“I know what you’re saying, H. Edgar. But I gotta tell you. This doesn’t sit right. It’s clever, brilliant, fucking genius even, but something inside me says . . .”

“Shut up, Westinghouse,” interrupted H. Edgar. “Katz is on his way over. Just do up your jacket, focus on standing straight and let me do the talking.”

“I hate to admit it,” said Arthur, now fidgeting with the bow tie around his crisp collared shirt, “but this isn’t too bad. If they had mentioned the Australian beer on the invitation I might have been more enthusiastic from the outset.”

“If they had mentioned Katz was gonna be treating this shindig like his own personal push for DA party, I would have gone to Melbourne for the original,” said a smiling David who, in the very least, had calmed down enough to see the humor in the blatant campaign of self-promotion Katz was currently conducting from one end of the room to the other.

“Hey,” said Jake, obviously following David’s line of vision. “That’s them—with the ADA,” he said.

“That’s who?” asked Sara, accepting champagne from Nora who had taken two cold glasses from a passing waiter.

“James Matheson’s two creepy friends.”

“Katz and Matheson’s friends?” said David. “I wonder why he . . . ?”

“David,” said a voice from behind.

“Tony,” said David, turning to shake the hand of his fellow Boston College grad. “You know Arthur, Nora, Sara, and this is Sara’s brother Jake Davis.” There were handshakes all around.

“If your eyes were daggers, the Kat would have just lost one of his nine lives,” said Tony Bishop, patting his friend on the back, and David was happy to see his friend was looking a lot more like himself than he had a few weeks ago.

“Have you been watching him?” grinned Tony. “He’s been working the room like a teenage boy at a supermodel convention.”

“Yeah,” said David, with a furrow in his brow.

“Who are the kids?” asked Bishop.

“Law students,” replied David.

“Then why is he wasting his time with—?”

“The Kat never wastes his time,” interrupted David.

“Yeah, well,” said Bishop, accepting a beer from yet another passing waiter. “Ten bucks says the Ivy League twosome are about to be dumped for the much bigger fish that just swam in the doorway.”

The group all turned toward the back of the room.

“The attorney general has arrived, ladies and gentlemen and . . . Jesus, watch him go,” said Tony just as Roger Katz swung about as if a sixth sense had him “smell out” a bigger opportunity some fifty yards south. “You gotta hand it to him. The guy is slick. He couldn’t have made that maneuver faster if he had been driving at NASCAR.

“Looks like he and Sweeney are tight too,” he said, as Katz reached the AG in record time and shook his hand with fervor—Katz leaning in to whisper something into Sweeney’s ear and prompting both of them to nod in agreement.

“He’s up to something,” said David, now watching the AG introduce the Kat to a series of VIPs from the AG’s office beside him.

“Who gives a . . . ,” said Tony, taking a long drink of his beer. “As long as it has nothing to do with you. Right, my friend?” Bishop smiled. But David was focused on Katz and his overzealous mingling with the AG’s entourage.

“David?” said Sara, her brow now also showing the slightest trace of concern.

“Ah, yeah. Sorry,” said David, turning to face the group again.

“Is anything . . . ?” she began.

“No.” He smiled, putting his arm around her shoulder. “What do you say to another champagne? Mrs. Kelly?” he asked, including Nora.

“Don’t mind if I do. Thank you, lad,” said Nora.

“Come on, Bishop,” he said, grabbing Tony by the arm. “You can accompany me to the bar.”

“Jesus,” said Joe Mannix, pounding his fist on the steering wheel as he hit yet another red light. “This traffic sucks.”

“Take it easy, boss,” said McKay. “As my wife always says: ‘With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin.’ ”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” asked an obviously frustrated Mannix as he took a left off 128 into Worcester.

“No idea,” said Frank. “Just sounded like the right thing to say at a time like this.”

“Skivvies and satin, McKay. I’m beginning to worry about you.”

“No need, Chief,” said Frank who, Joe noticed, had started his own beat of nervous tapping on the car door armrest. “Besides, we’re almost there. If the Wentworth girl’s mother is right, they should be only a few minutes ahead of us, and our uniform backup is about the same behind us.”

Joe said nothing, taking another sharp corner on Oakland along the main stretch leading to Deane’s historic front gates. The traffic started to slow, as some of the later limousine arrivals reduced their speed to enter the grounds of the historic university.