Corrupt Practices (18 page)

“Excuse me, Your Honor, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“You said I must dismiss this case, did you not?”

“I meant—”

“Answer my question, Miss Diamond. You did say that I
must
dismiss?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yes or no, Miss Diamond. Stop ignoring my question.”

“But I’m not ignoring—”

“Yes or no. I order you to answer!” Judge Harvey’s voice reverberates off the walls. He’s mastered the acoustics of his courtroom the way a billiards player masters the angles of a pool table.

“Yes,” Lovely says. When the word comes out as a puff of breath, I know she’s defeated.

The judge leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, his thin colorless lips curled up in a self-satisfied smirk. “See, Miss Diamond? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Now, what did you want to say about a motion to dismiss?”

She purses her lips and shuts her eyes in the tragic way of a woman fighting back tears. I’m supposed to be her mentor, but I can’t protect her.

For a lawyer, silence means opportunity, and now Neil Latham jumps up take it. “Your Honor, the government—”

In the early eighties, the Dodgers had this second baseman named Steve Sax—a former Rookie of the Year who inexplicably lost his ability to make the simplest throw to first base. It got so bad that the reporters coined a term for it—Steve Sax Syndrome. The strange thing was that Sax could make the more difficult
bang-bang
throws that depended on reflex and left no time for conscious reflection. I’ve never understood until now how that was possible.

“Pardon me, Your Honor,” I say, rising to my feet. “The government’s indictment is unconstitutional because it abridges my client’s free speech right by seeking to criminalize purely textual material.”

“Your Honor,” Latham says. “I ask that I be heard.”

My voice gets stronger. “Something that’s written down on paper in words with no images is pure thought, and the US government can’t be the Thought Police. Under the law—”

“I was speaking,” Latham says. “The Supreme Court in
Kaplan v. California
—”

“Mr. Latham interrupted Ms. Diamond,” I say. “So we should have a right to finish our argument before he speaks. Now, Mr. Latham did mention
Kaplan v. California
, but since that case was decided in 1973—”

“Enough, counsel,” Judge Harvey says. “This is just an arraignment. Save the argument for your motion to dismiss.”

Latham raises his hand. “Your Honor, I—”

“We’re done, Mr. Latham. I’ll accept the waiver and enter the defendant’s not guilty plea.” He gestures toward his clerk. “Call the next case.”

Lovely’s still standing at the lectern, looking like a bewildered child.

“Let’s go,” I whisper.

She nods. But just before we reach the exit doors, Judge Harvey calls after us. “Miss Diamond, your skirt is much too short. Next time you appear in my court, dress appropriately. Do a better job of teaching your student professional decorum, Mr. Stern.”

“Very well, Your Honor,” I reply in a flat tone, because that’s what the hierarchal difference between a federal judge and a mere lawyer requires me to say.

Lovely’s jaw is clenched with such force that the cords in her neck are visible. I fear that she’s about to lose control and talk back to the judge. I take her arm and lead her out of the courtroom as quickly as I can. We find a private corner at the end of the hall. Only then does the fact that I spoke in open court overwhelm me, but instead of feeling triumphant, I’m shaken, like someone who’s just realized that he nearly tumbled off the ledge of an eighty-story building. My hands begin to shake, and I become so queasy that I want to run to the men’s room and throw up. But I fight it, because I can’t let Lovely see my weakness.

She crosses her arms and turns her back on me, and for a moment I think that she’s going to burst into tears.

“Are you OK?” I ask.

She doesn’t respond.

I take a step forward and make a move to put my hand on her shoulder, but stop myself. “Listen. Cyrus Harvey is a son of a bitch.”

She spins around and faces me. Clouds of fury roil in her eyes, but to my surprise, I see no sign of tears.

“Never again,” she says.

“This was your first court appearance before a difficult judge. You can’t let one irrational judge dissuade you from trial work.”

She straightens her body and clenches her fists. “Never again will I let anyone walk all over me like that. I don’t care if it’s a federal judge or whatever. I’d rather be thrown in jail for contempt than take that kind of shit.”

I want to throw my arms around her. “That’s good. That’s exactly how you should feel. I’m . . . I’m proud of you. But there are ways to defuse the situation without losing your temper. We’ll devote one of our class sessions to learning how to handle asshole judges. I should’ve done that before I let you appear before that old jerk.”

She smiles despite herself. “When you got up to argue . . . It was weird. At first you were so nervous, I wondered if . . . But then when you shut down Latham you were so wonderful.”

“It was just an arraignment, and I talked for all of thirty seconds.”

“No. It’s the way you talked. I’ve seen Lou Frantz argue so many times, and he’s great, but you sounded . . . I hope this doesn’t upset you because of how you feel about what you did as a kid, but you sounded like some great actor on stage.”

“How could praise like that upset me?”

She smiles, averting her eyes. So Lovely Diamond can be shy. She checks her Blackberry.

“I got a message from my father,” she says. “He’s done reviewing the financials in the Baxter matter.”

“Did he find anything?”

“My father doesn’t like to put things in writing. He wants to meet with you. So if you could come to his house Friday at around three thirty—I don’t have classes Friday afternoon—afterward I can make the three of us dinner. If you’re up for it.”

“Absolutely.”

We start toward the exit, but I abruptly drag her into an alcove. “That guy going down the escalator,” I say. “His name’s Brandon Placek. He’s a reporter for the
Times
. An obnoxious little weasel. Let’s wait until he’s gone.”

Ed Diamond lives in Little Holmby Hills, a tree-lined upper-class neighborhood not far from the UCLA campus and only a few blocks away from the Playboy Mansion. Whatever else he might have been, he was a shrewd businessman. There was a lot of money in porn before the Internet made so much of it free. Lovely didn’t grow up poor.

I pull up to an elegant two-story Tudor-style house, the pitched cedar-shake roof and half-timbered second story signaling Southern California wealth. Lovely’s beaten-up copper Honda Accord is parked in the driveway, a relief, because it means I won’t have to spend time alone with her father. The moment I ring the bell, he answers the door.

“Well, well. Parky Fucking Gerald.” He makes a show of checking his watch. “You’re late, Parky. It’s 3:40.” His mouth is twisted in a half-scowl, but from what I remember, that was tantamount to a smile for him. After all these years, his voice remains familiar—the nasal intonation of the intelligent New York artist à la Kubrick or Scorsese, men whom he probably both admires and resents.

I start to tell him that he should call me Parker, but he knows that. When we worked together, the only trace of a sense of humor came when he needled people, often mercilessly. He called me Parky to see if he could get a rise out of me. I say, “It’s been a long time. Do I call you Shane or Ed?”

The near scowl becomes a full-fledged snarl. “What do you think?”

Physically, he hasn’t changed much. Time has ratcheted up his most distinctive features. When he worked as a cost accountant on the
Alien Parents
movies, he always looked as if he’d just tasted something bitter. Now, he looks as if he’s swallowed a rancid meal whole. He still pulls his hair back in a ponytail, but he’s gone gray and bald, so the only hair he has is the ponytail. His blue work shirt, jeans, and boots, which used to seem cool and arty, now make him look like a geriatric hippie.

“Jesus, you have dark hair,” he says. “And a couple of gray ones. And you’re tan and got muscle on your bones. You don’t look anything like that scrawny kid.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“Follow me.”

I step into the entry hall. Lovely has never mentioned her mother, but the interior design must be her handiwork. In contrast to Diamond’s dark personality, the place is warm and bright—light hardwood tongue-and-groove floors, yellow and white enamel walls, vibrant colorist oil paintings, and French doors that open into a large backyard and pool area, calculated to capture the maximum amount of sunlight. A portrait of a beautiful woman hangs over the fireplace—without a doubt, Lovely’s mother.

I follow him back onto a covered outdoor patio. Lovely, dressed in a maroon sweatshirt and tight cutoff jeans, is sitting at a circular glass and wrought-iron lawn table, typing on a laptop computer. When she sees me, she closes the cover. “Hey, Professor.”

“Hello, Ms. Diamond.”

“
Professor
?” Ed says. “
Ms. Diamond
? Holy shit. Who the fuck would’ve thought I’d hear my own daughter and little Parky Gerald talking that way to each other?”

“Dad, call him Parker.”

“What difference does it make what I call him?”

I sit next to her. Ed picks up a stack of papers from a chair, sits across from us, and says, “Let’s get this over with. I hate this accounting crap.”

“Thanks for helping me out on this,” I say.

“I’m helping my daughter out.” He reaches into a manila envelope and takes out a huge spreadsheet, the old fashioned printed kind you rarely see in this computer age.

“Here’s the deal,” he says. “I think there are some idiosyncratic facts here that you’ll find interesting.”

“What about this Emery Group that the IRS says—?”

“Do not interrupt me, Parky. Let me tell this goddamn story my way. If you still have questions when I’m done, ask them then, but do not interrupt me.”

Lovely gives an embarrassed half shrug. “Dad’s a storyteller. He doesn’t like anything to break the flow.”

I close my eyes so that the Diamonds don’t see me rolling them. As much as Ed would like to believe otherwise, I doubt that plot was the strong point of his adult films.

“Please continue, Ed.”

“Whoever set this up was a devious motherfucker. It’s hard to tell with certainty what your friend Rich Baxter did and what he didn’t do. One thing that’s clear is that he had access to all the accounts for the Church of the Sanctified Assembly’s businesses, not-for-profit foundations, and political action committees. This is difficult to analyze, because the Assembly has its hands in such diverse business. Drug rehab centers, battered women’s shelters, thrift shops—it’s very easy to launder money through thrift shops. Hundreds of millions of dollars were funneled through those entities each year. Mind-boggling, the amount of money those pompous assholes have at their disposal. It makes it easy to skim, easy to set up phony accounts or create false invoices or forged checks.” He pauses to take a breath. “You know what the Technology Communications Organization is?”

“The TCO. It’s their propaganda wing. Headed up Christopher McCarthy, a man I know all too well.”

Ed tilts his head forward and rubs the back of his neck, as if talking for even this short time has made him weary. “Well, a lot of the money flowed in and out of that TCO entity. They charge them off as consulting fees—public relations, legal and related expenses. Richard Baxter, on behalf of the TCO, set up an offshore bank account through a Pakistani contact who once worked for a European bank based in the Netherlands. Then the Pakistani opened up an account at that bank in the name of Octagon, LLC. Money flowed out of that account and into a Vienna account in the same bank. The account holder is something called Pentagon Investments, LLC.”

My head begins to spin. “Whoa. Can you slow down?”

“Jesus Christ, do I really have to repeat myself?”

“You absolutely do,” I say. “This financial stuff isn’t my strength. But I know one thing, unfortunately. From the names of those companies you mentioned, they could definitely have been set up by Rich.”

“How do you know that?” Lovely asks.

“Because naming a company after a geometric shape was consistent with our law firm’s MO. Use vanilla names for a corporation. I don’t know why, I wasn’t in the corporate department and never thought to ask.”

“The names don’t mean Rich embezzled, though,” Lovely says. “Or even that he set all of them up.”

“Of course not.”

Ed lifts his eyebrows in annoyance. “Will the two of you please let me continue?” A gust of wind riffles his spreadsheet, and he has to shield it with his body so it won’t blow away. It’s late in the afternoon in January, and as pleasant as the day has been, it’s still winter.

For the next half hour, he leads us through a convoluted series of transactions involving limited liability companies with the names Triangle, Hexagon, Heptagon, Trapezoid, Isosceles, and Rhombus, each of which opened various offshore bank accounts through which the Sanctified Assembly’s hundreds of millions of dollars flowed. He describes the mechanics of electronic funds transfers and the difference between cash receipts schemes and disbursement schemes and the three stages of money laundering:
placement
,
layering
, and
integration
. He details a series of financial transactions as tangled as old computer wire, and then he unwinds them seamlessly. I now fully understand why the feds arrested Rich—many of the transactions are traceable only to Rich and involve accounts that he controlled. And now the Assembly says that the transactions weren’t authorized.