Corrupt Practices (19 page)

“And with all that, there’s nothing conclusive,” Ed says. “The evidence is like a fucking shoeprint that might have come from Baxter’s Bruno Magli—or from someone else’s.” Despite his gruffness, he sounds like a top-notch forensic accountant who would make an effective expert witness at trial, and for the moment it doesn’t seem possible that he’s famous for filming well-endowed men and busty women having sex, the hardcore scenes invariably shot in tasteful soft focus and accompanied by a stirring classical music score.

He puts down the spreadsheet and looks directly at me. “At the end of the money trail, millions were wired from Heptagon, Octagon, and Rhombus into a British West Indies account in the name of a company called The Emery Group LLC. That’s a shell set up specifically for these kinds of transfers. And then the money went out again to some anonymous recipient. End of the line.” He punctuates his sentence by pounding his fist on the stack of papers.

“But we need to know who The Emery Group paid the money to. You found nothing?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then, what—?”

“This goes no further than us three?”

“Of course.”

He exchanges looks with Lovely. “You know what I did for a living.”

“Yeah. I’ve known since I was ten years old. What does that have to do with my case?”

“You don’t survive as long as I did in that business without reaching accommodation with a certain class of people. At least, not if you started when I did. There were mutual exchanges of favors. On this Baxter thing, I called in a favor. Because we needed someone who, shall we say, could gather more information than you can find on the Internet or in the documents you gave me.”

“You’re saying that you asked the . . . some Mafioso to get this information? You’re not serious.”

“I wouldn’t use that word, exactly, but . . .” He shrugs.

“If you used illegal means to get information, I don’t want it.”

“A rather holier-than-thou attitude, don’t you think, Parky?”

“I’m a disciple of Harmon Cherry. I honor his legacy by following the rule of law.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “I’m not sure that your vaunted Harmon Cherry didn’t set this all in motion. His name appears in some of these documents, you know.”

“Harmon wouldn’t do anything illegal. But I don’t care if he did or didn’t. I care about what
I
do.”

“
You
didn’t do anything. So stop worrying. You’ve been given a gift. Accept it graciously.”

“It’s not that easy. The Assembly is the criminal organization. We’re supposed to be the ones who respect the law. And there’s something I don’t understand. If what you’re telling me is true, you’ve used up some goodwill with some very dangerous people. Why would you do that for me?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I . . . I asked him to do it,” Lovely says. “I know how important this investigation is to you. I knew you wouldn’t like it, but I thought . . .” Her voice falters and she lowers her eyes, a rare time when she seems truly embarrassed. Only from her would I accept the fruit of a tainted tree.

“What did your source—what did you learn?” I ask.

He takes a couple of deep breaths and then leans in close, as though we’re sitting in a crowded diner rather than an ultraprivate, walled-in backyard. “There were two payments that my sources could trace. One was small . . . well, small by comparison. A transfer in the amount of about five hundred thousand to a US account in the name of Delwyn Bennett.”

“I don’t know that name,” I say.

“Jesus Christ. Don’t you follow politics? You should know what’s going on in your world. Del Bennett is chief of staff to Congressman Lake Knolls.”

“There’s no way that the Assembly bribed Knolls. He’s one of their biggest critics.”

“Do we know it’s a bribe?” Lovely asks. “Maybe Bennett’s scamming his boss.”

“I have no answers,” Ed says. “It’s for you to figure out. But on the same day as the payment to Bennett, The Emery Group transferred out approximately six million dollars to a person or persons unknown. That’s money your friend Rich supposedly took from the Assembly, right?”

“Yeah. The feds say he diverted Assembly funds. But they can’t really prove the money went to Rich.”

“I can tell you this. The six million was transferred out of Emery and deposited into another offshore account in the name of a company called Nonagon Investments, LLC.”

“Who controls that?”

“I have no idea. Maybe Rich Baxter, maybe someone else.”

I deflate. Another shell company with invisible owners. “Not even your connected buddies could find that out, huh, Ed?”

“But I’ll tell you what they did find out,” he says, ignoring the jibe. “The person who was the authorized signatory for The Emery Group’s account was none other than Christopher McCarthy of the TCO. Which means that he or someone acting on his behalf would have had to authorize that six million payment. Doesn’t that float your boat?”

After Ed finishes his report, he pushes back his chair with authority and stands up. “I’ve done my fucking job. You two legal eagles can take it from here.” He walks quickly into the house, as if he’s fleeing a crime scene.

For the next forty-five minutes, Lovely and I sit in the yard and debate the meaning of her father’s revelations. While Lake Knolls’s involvement with the Assembly is the more startling piece of evidence, I know how I’m going to deal with it. I have a history with Knolls. But Christopher McCarthy will never own up to having his name on that account, and I can’t confront him with information that was obtained illegally.

And what, if anything, does McCarthy know about the seventeen million in diverted funds? As signatory on The Emery Group’s account, did he give Rich permission to transfer the money, and if so, why? Did he take the money himself and frame Rich? Is he covering up for someone else in the Assembly?

Lovely raises another possibility, one that I won’t consider. What if Rich stole the money after all? Maybe McCarthy and the Assembly truly are the victims. I still can’t explain the drugs and the false passport that the cops seized when they raided Rich’s apartment.

Lovely checks her watch. “It’s 5:20. Almost sundown. Let’s go inside.”

She summons her father, and he and I sit down at a dining room table that could easily accommodate twelve people. The table is set with a white tablecloth, fine china, crystal wine glasses, a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, and a large unsliced loaf of bread with a twisty brown crust.

“My mother was a challah baker,” Lovely says. “I can never bake it like she did, but I try.”

At Lovely’s mention of her mother, Ed looks sad, but that passes as quickly as the shadow of a scudding cloud, and he just appears irascible again. I remember an old piece of show biz lore about him—despite his sleazy occupation and the temptation all around him, he supposedly adored his wife, to the exclusion of any other woman.
No wonder
, I think. She looked like her daughter.

Not long after Lovely goes into the kitchen, I hear a wicked sizzling—the sound of oil splashing into an over-heated saucepan. The aroma of scorched garlic wafts in, and the smoke alarm begins screeching.

“Shit!” Lovely says from the other room.

I start to get up to help her, but the noise stops.

“My daughter in the kitchen is like a Chicago hog butcher performing brain surgery,” Ed says. “I’m glad she’s going to law school.”

“She’s going to be a terrific lawyer.”

He glances at the kitchen door for a moment and says in an irritated whisper, “Speaking of which, why in the hell did you permit Lovely to take on that obscenity case for the whacko woman from the desert? That case is poison. Isn’t one of your jobs to teach good judgment? Because you both showed bad judgment.”

“I assumed she took the case because of you. Weren’t you convicted on obscenity charges in the early seventies? Badly beaten in an Atlanta jail, from what I read on the Internet? You should understand about someone like Tyler, who—”

“Do not go there, goddamnit,” he says through clenched teeth. “That Daniels woman and I are nothing alike. I made films that exalt human intimacy and passion, that exposed the hypocrisy of this country’s sexual repression. That Daniels woman is a purveyor of filth.”

“This is an important First Amendment case that could make law,” I say, paraphrasing the very argument that Lovely makes to me when I question our decision to handle the case. “Tyler Daniels is entitled to a vigorous defense.”

“Not from my daughter, she’s not.” There’s a clanging of pots and plates in the kitchen, like a warning bell. His face lights up with a forced cheeriness. “So Parky. How’s that mother of yours?” He’s left out the obvious adjective, but it’s implied by his tone: How’s that
crazy
mother of yours?

“I have no idea. I haven’t seen or spoken with her in years.”

“I can fully understand why the two of you don’t have contact.”

“Then why did you ask me about her?”

“Because even when things go bad between kids and parents, time heals.”

“I’m surprised that someone as streetwise as you would use that cliché. We both know it’s bullshit.”

“It certainly is not. Believe me, I know from personal experience.” He sighs. “Parky, back when you were a kid, everyone working on the production was concerned about you. We worried that Harriet . . .”

“What? Worried that she let the director work me to exhaustion despite the child labor laws? Or that she was using my earnings to support her coke habit? Or that she was sleeping with any man who she thought could advance my career and a lot of men who couldn’t? What worried all you grownups, Ed?”

“I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Lovely walks in through the kitchen door. “Sorry you brought what up?”

Ed glances at me, and I think he’s going to pursue this thing about my mother just because he likes to jab with the point of the knife, but he says, “We were just continuing our debate about my tactics in conducting financial investigations.”

“No more talking about work,” she says. “It’s the Sabbath.”

That will be a problem for me because work is all I have to talk about. Even politics and religion now seem like subsets of my job.

“OK,” Lovely says. “I’m going to light the candles.”

“Wait a minute,” Ed says, placing his elbows on the table and leaning toward me confidentially. “So, Parky, you’re a Jew, right?”

“Father!” Lovely says.

“It’s a legitimate question. I mean, you’re about to say a prayer, to go through the candle-lighting business, so . . .” He spreads his arm in mock apology. “I only assumed you were because Stern’s a Jewish name.”

“If you’re talking about religion, I’m not Jewish, and Stern isn’t necessarily a Jewish name. And if you’re talking about ethnicity, the answer is, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

Lovely places her hand on her forehead and shuts her eyes, the gesture of an adult child who can’t control an incorrigible parent. I can refuse to answer, and she’ll understand. But I want her to know.

“My mother never talked about our background. I grew up without knowing who my father was. I still don’t. Maybe she never knew herself. When I was little, she’d make up stories. She told me that he was a war hero who died in a plane crash. Later, she flip-flopped and said he was a revolutionary who was in the Weather Underground. Of course, I was six years old, so I didn’t understand what a revolutionary was, much less know of the Weather Underground. Another time she claimed he was a famous actor who’d come and live with us someday. When I kept pressing for the truth, she got angry and told me that my father’s identity was none of my concern.” I try to make a joke of this, but neither Ed nor Lovely hints at a smile.

“The stories she told about herself were equally outlandish,” I say. “She said she’d worked as a chorus girl on Broadway. Another time, she claimed that she grew up dirt poor on a farm in Ohio, earned a college scholarship, but had to give it up when she got pregnant with me. Once, she said she was the child of former Vaudevillians, which was chronologically impossible because she wasn’t old enough to have parents in Vaudeville. Anyway, when I got old enough to recognize these tall tales for what they were, I stopped asking. I told myself she was like one of those mothers who refuse to share her special tuna casserole recipe with her kids. Finally, when I was twelve, in a rare moment of candor—at least I think she was being candid—she admitted that she grew up in Sherman Oaks. A Valley girl. She said her parents—my grandparents—were both dead. She claimed her maiden name was Stern, that I have her name, but who knows?”

“Have you tried to find them?” Ed asks. “Or maybe there are other relatives?”

“After I started law school, I did a lot of research, but there was nobody. So that’s why I don’t know what my religion is supposed to be or what my ethnic background is. It’s fine with me. There’s something liberating about it. I’ve always felt that I can fit in anywhere or be anyone. Maybe that’s why I did OK as an actor. And as a lawyer.” The wind blows through the white sycamores that frame the yard, and for a moment I want to smile, because the rustling of the leaves sounds like applause.