Corrupt Practices (33 page)

“That’s not fair, Raymond.”

“Isn’t it? I knew you had a hard-on for those Assembly people for some reason, which was fine. I thought that would make you a better advocate for my side. But you’re not better, are you? You’re scared shitless.”

“If you just give me a chance to—”

He sets both fists on the seat of his chair and uses his arms as levers to hoist himself up, teetering at the top like older people do when they suffer from poor equilibrium. He turns and shuffles away.

“What’re you going to do?” I call after him, but my words are drowned out by the suddenly loud volume of the patrons’ voices and the clanking of dinnerware. I watch him walk out the door.

I sit at the table sipping my drink, one of those rare times when I don’t try to formulate a strategy. A minute later, the waitress brings our food. The heavy smell of charred ground beef turns my stomach. Or maybe it’s not the burgers at all. Maybe what’s making me sick is my own shame.

In the ensuing weeks, I take the depositions of FBI agents and accounting experts and the employees of the federal detention center who found Rich’s body. I depose the medical examiner who performed Rich’s autopsy, not asking him about the fractured hyoid bone. I’m saving that for trial. I haven’t hired my own pathologist—I don’t want Frantz to learn through a deposition that the ME made a mistake.

Two witnesses keep ducking me—Congressman Lake Knolls and his chief aide, Delwyn Bennett. They’re in from Washington, DC this week, so a couple of days ago I called Knolls’s secretary and told her that if I didn’t get in to see them within forty-eight hours, I’d serve deposition subpoenas and take my case to the media. The secretary called back an hour later and set up a meeting for today.

I drive through a dense fog, the precursor of a smoggy afternoon. At ten o’clock, I arrive at the Westwood office building where Knolls maintains his headquarters. I take the elevator to the sixth floor, where the doors divide to reveal a drab waiting room and a bored receptionist. On the back wall hangs the Great Seal of the United States, under which the words
Representative Lake Knolls, 54
^th
District
appear in bronze lettering. A marshal dressed in a blue blazer and khaki pants stands near the corridor with hands folded in front of him, a two-way headset in his left ear, a service revolver visible under his coat.

At a quarter past ten, the receptionist calls my name and leads me down a long corridor and into an office overlooking Bel-Air and the Santa Monica Mountains. Knolls sits behind a desk reading a document, or pretending to. He remains the leading man despite the wrinkles near his mouth and at the corners of his eyes. His hair is still dark brown, except for a few strategically placed gray streaks, the purpose of which is to fend off allegations of vanity. His high, almost bulging forehead gives an impression of intelligence that I’m not sure he really has. On screen, he seemed to have the ability to change the hue of his eyes, sometimes to a cobalt blue that conveyed raw power, other times almost to a turquoise that gave him a sense of masculine vulnerability. Now, they’re cobalt blue.

Delwyn Bennett stands peering over Knolls’s shoulder. He’s tall and thin, with fair skin, a Roman nose, and long delicate fingers. Intelligent brown eyes. Both men are impeccably groomed and both wear expensive suits. The scene feels badly staged, kind of how I remember the first day of filming on that awful movie that Knolls and I starred in together.

Knolls glances up, stands, and smiling broadly walks around the desk to greet me. At five feet eleven, he’s got only an inch on me, but his imperial posture makes him look taller. He reaches out and shakes my hand with a politician’s pump, placing his left hand on my forearm. “Well, well. Parker Stern from Harmon’s firm. Long time.” His powerful voice resonates even in this acoustically challenged government office. He acts as if he’s genuinely glad to see me, though I know he isn’t. He’s an excellent actor and politician, but an elusive human being. He doesn’t bother to introduce me to Bennett.

He motions for me to have a seat and then sits back down behind his desk. In a tone that sounds as if he’s reminiscing with a fraternity brother about their misspent college days, he says, “You know, Parker, you really hung me out to dry with that sorry performance of yours in the
Repulsion
lawsuit. After I replaced you, I ended up settling that case for several million more than I could have before you dragged me down with a loss in court. The new lawyers recommended I sue you and your firm for malpractice. If it hadn’t been for my political campaign and my great affection for Harmon, I would have.” He’s still smiling. Harmon Cherry warned me years ago that Knolls has a unique ability to disarm and intimidate by coating serious accusations in sugary tones.

“You would’ve lost, Lake,” I say in an equally flippant voice. “And if you paid that much to settle, it was your new lawyers who gave you bad advice, not me. We only lost the opening round. I don’t quit after one round. If you would’ve stayed with the law firm, I would’ve taken the case to trial and won it for you in front of a jury.”

“And now you want to talk to me about some lawsuit involving the Church of the Sanctified Assembly.”

“I have reason to believe that the Assembly has paid you or your chief of staff half a million dollars. Unreported.” I shouldn’t let on that I know this, but I have no choice. It’s the only way to convince Knolls that I have some real dirt on him.

“That’s absurd, not to mention defamatory,” Bennett says. His voice is tinny, like two empty soup cans clanking into each other. “The Assembly has poured millions into campaigns to defeat the congressman. I’m sure you know that. And we also believe you have a conflict of interest because you once were the congressman’s attorney.”

“I’m not here to talk to you,” I say. “I’m here to talk to Lake.” I turn to Knolls. “To set your mind at ease, there’s no conflict because I never represented you on anything that had to do with my case against the Assembly. And there’s no conflict because you and I aren’t adversaries.” I wait a beat. “We’re not adversaries, are we, Lake? Because the news media would be very interested in hearing that you’re taking the Assembly’s side in my lawsuit. Especially with a highly publicized trial about to start in a couple of weeks.”

My threat isn’t lost on him. “No. We are not adversaries. How can I help you?”

“But I’m not so sure that Delwyn and I aren’t adversaries.” I glance at Bennett. “It’s OK if I call you Delwyn, isn’t it?”

“
Mr. Bennett
is my chief of staff and his interests are aligned with mine,” Knolls says. “Now, tell me what you think this is about so I can ease your mind and move on to other things. Like passing the nation’s laws.”

“I represent the estate of Richard Baxter. You might remember him as a corporate lawyer at the law firm.”

“I do remember him. I’m told that he was found hanging in a jail cell some months ago. Killed himself just like his mentor did, ironically.”

“How Rich and Harmon died is open to question.”

Knolls arches one brow, a signature mannerism in his movies.

“Rich represented the Assembly after the firm broke up,” I say. “On May 2, 2011, after a series of money laundering transactions, six million dollars of Assembly money was paid out by a company called The Emery Group. No one knows who got the money. As I’m sure you know, the Assembly has sued Baxter’s estate, accusing Rich of embezzling that money. But it’s not true. I want to know where that money really went.”

“And what does any of this have to do with me?” Knolls asks.

“On the same day and from the same bank account, The Emery Group paid your chief of staff here half a million dollars.”

“There was no such payment,” Knolls says.

“Christopher McCarthy of the Assembly’s TCO wing was the signatory on the account out of which the money was transferred. You know him, don’t you Delwyn?”

Bennett folds his arm across his chest. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His eyes are impassive, almost lifeless. I used to see Assembly types visiting my law firm, dressed in their Brooks Brothers suits, all with the same automatous expression on their faces.

“I’d like to speak to you privately, Lake,” I say.

Knolls breathes from the diaphragm, an actor’s technique of calming himself down. “That’s not going to happen. I have a busy schedule, and I’m losing patience with your nonsense.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.”

Knolls puffs out his chest. “You’ve overstepped your bounds. But you’ve done that before, haven’t you? Now, get out before I have Del call the marshal.”

“Hey, Lake, do you ever see Billy N. these days?”

Knolls sputters, but nothing comes out.

“Billy
Ness
was his full name, remember? Claimed to be a distant relative of Elliot Ness, the guy from
The Untouchables
?”

In the 1980s, William Ness sold coke, weed, Quaaludes, and more exotic drugs to half the people in Hollywood. He also furnished women, men, boys, girls, or all of the above, depending on kink or sexual preference. People called him The Tinsel Town Pusher. Although there was gossip at the margins during Knolls’s election campaign about possible drug use and sexual peccadilloes, there were never any witnesses or specifics. I could be a witness; I could give specifics.

“Leave us alone, Del,” Knolls says to Bennett, who was in the process of picking up the phone, but now freezes.

“But—”

“I said, get out!”

Bennett reacts as though his beloved parent has just slapped him in the face. But he sets his jaw and walks out with his nose in the air, his pomposity still intact.

Knolls leans forward, his forearms resting on the desk. There’s fear in his eyes, the startled-animal kind, and that makes him dangerous. “Who the hell are you?”

“Billy N. supplied my mother with drugs, too. You might remember her. Harriet Stern? I believe the two of you got high and slept together when we were on location shooting
Fourth Grade G-Man
. A movie we’d both like to forget.”

He looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time. He slowly shakes that head. “You can’t be that kid in that awful picture. You don’t look anything like him.”

“I was Parky Gerald.”

“Why didn’t you say anything when we met at the law firm?”

“I had no interest in that old life. I still don’t. The only thing I’m interested in is finding out why the Assembly paid your chief of staff half a million dollars and where the other six million went.”

He lowers his head and shuts one eye, as though lining me up in his gun sights. Every move he makes is expressive, wonderful to watch. “Billy Ness is dead, you know. Shot many years ago in some drug deal gone bad in a house up in Laurel Canyon. A messy, vindictive business. His murder was probably the best thing that ever happened to my political career. He’d have sold his soul to the tabloids.”

“Are you threatening me, Lake?”

“Didn’t you just threaten me?”

“I’m not interested in hurting your career. But I will subpoena you and question you under oath about your relationship with the Assembly.”

“You do what you have to do. I’ll resist the subpoena in court for as long as I can. And if I do have to testify eventually, you won’t get what you want from me. You see, you only know about my past. The Assembly controls my future. I’m far more concerned about them than I am about you.”

I fight not to squirm in my chair. A sitting member of Congress, a man who seems destined for even higher office, has just admitted that he’s beholden to the Church of the Sanctified Assembly—or even worse, an Assembly member. “Stay cool even when they strike you squarely in the jaw,” Harmon would say. “Then at least tell me whether Rich was involved.”

He shakes his head. “We’re done.”

I read his expression. There’s no chance of getting him to cooperate. I stand up to leave.

“Wait a moment, Parker.” His tone has softened. “I was wondering . . . how’s Harriet? I do remember her, of course. She was really quite something.”

“Expect a subpoena,” I say. “The trial begins in two weeks.”