Client Privilege (24 page)

He stared at me for a moment. “I remember all that, Pops,” I said. “Don’t forget, I was already your lawyer then. We were law school chums.”

“Just setting the scene,” he said. “Marilee and I had been married for five years. Phyllis had just been born. I’m trying to be objective here. I was a dashing fellow. I got lots of attention. Invited to lots of social functions. Marilee couldn’t always go with me. There were always ladies eager to be seen with me. But I behaved myself.”

“A paragon,” I said.

He shrugged and smiled. “Yeah, well, not exactly. There was this young secretary…”

“Karen.”

“Yes. Karen.”

Our waiter appeared. “Another round of drinks,” said Pops. “We’re not ready to order.” He turned to me and paused until the waiter moved away. “Karen,” he said. “She was attractive. Very young, very naive. A pretty girl. Oh, she wasn’t spectacular. Not even the prettiest girl to give me the eye, it wasn’t that. But there was a—a vulnerability about her, an innocence, and—hope you don’t consider this boasting, Brady, I’m just trying to reconstruct it for you—she clearly worshiped me. She had these dark, serious eyes. They were always focused on me, it seemed. Somehow, from this girl, it was wonderfully flattering. I couldn’t help being aware of her, the way she watched me.”

“So you—”

“So I ignored her. For a very long time. Until one night. I was working late. I often worked late. Not many of the others did. Or if they did, they took it home with them. It was very stressful work. Way too much to handle, really. None of us ever felt fully prepared. But most of the A.D.A.s survived by getting the hell out of the courthouse as soon as they could. They did a lot of drinking after work. They lugged briefcases with them. I never did that. I always made a point to leave my work in the office. I was considered a drudge by my colleagues. They figured I was angling for something more, out to make a name for myself. True, of course. But that’s not why I hung around. I just didn’t want to bring my work home. I felt I owed Marilee and the baby my attention when I was there. Anyway, on this particular night I was at my desk as usual. It was seven-thirty or eight o’clock. I was in my shirt sleeves, my shoes off, my feet up on my desk. I was reading law. Old cases. Looking for precedents. And Karen came in. She had a cup of tea for me. I was beat. I’d had no supper. She put the tea on my desk and sat across from me while I sipped it, just looking at me and smiling. We didn’t say much. After a few minutes she got up from her seat and came around behind me and began to massage my neck and shoulders. I should have told her not to. But it felt good. I was tired and hungry and my back and neck ached. She had strong hands. So I closed my eyes and went with it. She was standing close behind me and I could smell her scent. Musky, it was. Somehow, very sexual. Sometimes I smell that scent even nowadays, and it brings Karen back to me. She worked her hands on my neck and around to my face. She sort of urged my head back against her stomach. I could feel her warmth, the softness of her. It was very intimate. Her fingers worked on my jaw and cheeks and temples and eyes and my scalp and I’ll be damned if I didn’t get aroused.”

I shook my head slowly. “So you—”

“So I nothing. After a while she stopped, smiled at me, and left. I’ll bet neither of us said a half-dozen words the whole time. Just ‘Hi’ when she came in and ‘thank you’ when she gave me the tea. ‘Long day,’ and ‘you look tired.’ Stuff like that. Anyhow, I thought about her constantly after that. Made a point to hang around late the next night. Hoping she’d return. But she didn’t. Nor the night after that. But the third night she did. She came into my office, closed the door behind her, locked it, and turned to look at me. She smoothed her skirt on her hips, staring at me, her mouth open a little, licking her lips with her little pink tongue, like it was something she’d seen in a movie, practiced in front of a mirror. Damnedest, sexiest gesture I’ve ever seen. She came over to me, and pushed my chair back from my desk. She stood in front of me, close, so I could smell that scent. She reached down and undid my necktie, then she began to unbutton my shirt. I wanted to grab her hands, tell her to stop. But I couldn’t make myself. Brady, Jesus, it was like I was bewitched. I swear to God, this girl seemed so shy and innocent and unspoiled, and there she was, kneeling in front of me, undressing me, doing these things to me. I couldn’t resist her.”

“If you’re asking me to condemn you, Pops, forget it.”

“I don’t need your condemnation, Brady. I’m perfectly capable of condemning myself. Which I proceeded to do. I avoided her for a week. Started leaving the office at four-thirty or five like everyone else. Figured, okay, I’d bring my work home. But I couldn’t get Karen out of my mind. So—well, you can figure out the rest.”

I nodded.

“I gave in to it. It made my work and my family and my impending appointment seem insignificant. I lived for those evenings in my office. We never went anywhere, never did anything except—you know. We never even talked much. I knew very little about her. Just that she lived at home with her parents, I knew that. She had a boyfriend who wanted to marry her. I sensed that she’d had a rigid upbringing. That she was very inhibited. Except with me. She asked nothing of me. Making love, she did it all, really. I rationalized that I’d been seduced, it wasn’t my fault. That whatever happened with Karen didn’t diminish my love for Marilee and the little one. Karen was separate, unconnected to any other part of my life. She didn’t make me a worse prosecutor or husband or father. Nobody was hurt. It was just a nice, sweet thing, with its own separate little niche in my life.” He smiled sourly at me. “The same old story, huh?”

“It’s kind of a cliché, Pops, yes.”

“A cliché. Well, yeah, it was. Of course. But it didn’t seem like it at the time. It seemed unique. I felt I was special. Blessed by this marvelous girl. Listen, I was a lucky guy. I survived Nam. Zipped though Yale Law. Married the woman I wanted to marry, had a healthy baby, was taking the career ladder three rungs at a time. I just figured this was part of being a special man. I deserved it, somehow. I was young and strong and invulnerable. Then Karen told me she was pregnant. And that didn’t fit in with any of the rest of it. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Somebody screwed up the fairy tale.”

Pops paused and looked around the room. Almost instantly our waiter appeared. “Gentlemen?” he said.

Pops ordered a lamb chop. I had the swordfish. We both asked for the Bibb lettuce with the dill dressing.

After the waiter left, Pops said, “She was different, then, the night she told me she was pregnant. She was hard. I sensed it instantly. She felt I owed her. She wanted me to marry her. I refused. Point-blank. I told her to forget it. I’d never leave Marilee. I told her I didn’t even believe her. And if she was pregnant, how was I to know it was mine? She had a boyfriend. It could’ve been his. I expected her to cry and carry on, or threaten. But she didn’t. She just walked out. That unnerved me. It didn’t fit.”

“I know what happened next,” I said.

Pops nodded. “I stayed late the next night. I figured she’d be back. And she was. Told me she’d filed an application for complaint with the Clerk Magistrate. I felt like someone had slugged me in the solar plexus, Brady. It literally knocked the wind out of me. She was going to charge me with rape. Whether she could’ve made it stick or not was irrelevant. I was ruined. I asked her what she wanted me to do. She said marry her. I pleaded with her. She said, no, she’d thought it over. She’d even told her parents. And I had to marry her. I told her it wouldn’t work, we could never have a marriage on that basis. And she got a sly look, and I realized that she had another agenda. Finally it came out. She had a price. This sweet, seductive little nineteen-year-old girl had a price.”

“Ten grand,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes. Wayne Churchill’s price. Ten thousand dollars. Firm. It was as if she was selling a car. That was her price. Hell, back then ten grand was more than half a year’s salary. It was a lot of money. But I agreed. I came up with it. I had some back pay from the army, I borrowed against the equity in the house, I sneaked some out of our joint account, I sold off some stocks, and I came up with ten thousand dollars. And I felt like I was getting a bargain.”

Our salads arrived. We began to munch them. “Her part of the deal was to withdraw the complaint, quit her job, and never contact me again. Which she did. She was gone two weeks later. I checked upstairs and the complaint was filed away. Buried, as far as I could tell, forever. I heard later that Karen had gotten married within a month. It was assumed that’s why she quit. And until a week ago, that’s the last I heard of Karen Lavoie. Until I got that note in the mail.”

“So why the hell didn’t you tell me all this right then?”

“Embarrassment, plain and simple. I didn’t want you to think badly of me.” He shrugged. “I should have told you. I know. And I suppose I shouldn’t have been so cocky. Karen could have told someone. But there was no proof. I would have denied it all. The word of an eminent judge against hers? I really wasn’t worried.”

“Wayne Churchill came up with that old complaint,” I said.

Pops cocked his head at me. Then he nodded slowly. “I thought of that. Couldn’t figure out how. They’re supposed to destroy those old records. He must’ve been a hell of an investigator. Did he get Karen to talk?”

“No, I don’t think so. He had a girlfriend in the Clerk Magistrate’s office. Another one of the secretaries there—a woman named Helen, I met her—has been there since before Karen left. The office gossip, I gather. She might’ve mentioned something about you and Karen to Churchill’s girlfriend.”

“Nobody knew about us, Brady.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Pops. I bet everybody knew. You can’t keep that sort of thing a secret in an office. Anyhow and I’m just guessing here, I figure Helen told Suzie Billings, and she mentioned it to Churchill. How he learned about that complaint I don’t know. Helen again, maybe. But it wasn’t destroyed, and Suzie dug it out for him, made a copy. Churchill also talked to Karen’s father. I don’t know what he got out of him. He also tried to talk to Karen. She told me she refused to see him.”

Pops shook his head slowly. “That Churchill, you’ve got to give him credit.”

I nodded. “He was a good investigator, for sure. Anyway, I think Wayne Churchill had the story pretty well pieced together. He wanted confirmation from you. He probably had enough without it, but he’d been burned on stories before. So he felt he needed something out of you. Not direct confirmation necessarily. I doubt if he expected a tearful confession out of you. He probably was just looking for some behavior that would assure him he had the story right. That’s why he mentioned that figure to me. Ten grand. He wasn’t actually blackmailing you. He just wanted you to know that he knew what had happened.”

Pops grinned. “It would’ve been a helluva story, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes. Except Churchill got killed before he could write it.”

“I didn’t do it, Brady. Believe me, that never occurred to me. I don’t think that way. Oh, I was prepared to lie. I even lied to you. I would have brazened it out if I had to. I don’t know what it would’ve done to my appointment. Probably ruined it. Not so much what I did. But the publicity. That complaint. I would’ve had to ask Teddy to withdraw my name. But I never would’ve admitted it. For Marilee’s sake, I couldn’t. And when I heard that Churchill was killed, I figured there was a God after all, that the golden boy here still had a little more luck going for him.”

“Even when you knew that I was a suspect.”

“God help me, Brady, I’m sorry. I just knew that you didn’t do it, and I figured you’d work your way out of it.”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and sat back in my chair. “You want to know what I know?”

He nodded cautiously. “Yes.”

“Karen Lavoie married a guy named Peter Roland Gorwacz. They had a son. He’s sixteen or seventeen now.” I arched my eyebrows and smiled at him.

Pops stared at me. “You think—?”

“Yeah, I think. I think the kid was yours. The timing fits.”

“Oh, man,” said Pops, shaking his head. “I figured she’d get an abortion, if she really was pregnant. I just assumed that’s what she did. It never occurred to me…”

“I’ve met her parents,” I said. “I would judge them to be simple folks, good Catholics, who raised their daughter that way.
Roe
v.
Wade
was brand-new law back then. These people would never tolerate abortion, Supreme Court or not. Nor would Karen. I figure she married her high school sweetie quickly by telling him she was pregnant with his kid. So your secret was her secret, too. She had as much reason to keep it quiet as you did.”

“So it had to’ve been that secretary who told Churchill.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was Karen. She’s divorced now. Maybe her husband found out. Maybe she told him. Maybe she doesn’t care who knows about the paternity of her boy anymore. The husband could’ve told Churchill. Hell, Paul, the son, he could’ve, too. I just don’t know.”

“My kid,” whispered Pops. “Jesus!”

“I don’t know this. It’s a guess.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Then,” he said slowly, “who do you guess killed Churchill?”

I shrugged. “My best guess is still you, my friend.”

He smiled at me, shaking his head. “You are a tough son of a bitch, Coyne, know that?”

I shrugged. “You could have set up that little demonstration back there in the parking garage. Make me think, hey, if someone’s trying to shoot Pops, it must be the same guy who shot Churchill. Right?”

He rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said. “I didn’t do it, okay? Listen. I know the law. You know I do. Suppose I told you I did it. Gave you all the gory details. What could you do?”

I spread my hands. “I’d be in a helluva tough spot, Pops. What could I do? In the final analysis, absolutely nothing. I’m your lawyer. I got no choice.”

“Exactly. I know you. You wouldn’t peep a word. You know the ethic. And you’re an ethical man. Besides which, nothing I told you would be admissible. Knowing this, both of us, if I had killed Wayne Churchill, it would be in my best interest to tell you everything. Ironic but true. Lay it all out for you. Every detail. The more I told you the safer I’d be. So I’d have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by not telling you. Agreed?”