Corrupt Practices (37 page)

“No.”

“Christopher McCarthy never shared that information with you?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“And he never told you that Grace Trimble frequently visited Mr. Baxter’s apartment disguised as a prostitute?”

“He didn’t.”

“And he never told you that Grace Trimble was Rich Baxter’s former law partner and girlfriend?”

“No.”

“And he never told you that Ms. Trimble was excommunicated by the Church of the Sanctified Assembly some years ago?”

“No.”

“And I take it that means you don’t know that Ms. Trimble is an expert in the law of corporate finance?”

She looks over at McCarthy and frowns. “No.”

Of course, neither Frantz nor McCarthy told the FBI about Grace. Grace’s involvement threatens their theory of the case, or at least makes it more complicated. I had a different reason for not talking to authorities—I think Grace is innocent, and so I wanted to get to her before the cops did so she could tell me what she knows. I don’t like offering her up as a suspect now, but my obligation is to the client, not her.

I can’t help glancing at McCarthy. I’m not sure, but I think he’s trying to suppress his nervous twitch. I take a few steps away from the lectern and ask, “So, now, Agent Holcomb, we have two persons other than Mr. Baxter who might have been involved in the embezzlement scheme—Mr. McCarthy and Grace Trimble. Do you agree?”

“I don’t agree with that, Mr. Stern. And your theories are inconsistent.”

“I don’t have to be consistent,” I say. “My side doesn’t have the burden of proof.”

“Objection,” Frantz barks. “Argumentative. Not a question.”

“Sustained,” Schadlow says. “No more, Mr. Stern.” The frostiness in her tone means that I can’t cross the line again today.

“As a law enforcement officer, Agent Holcomb, would you have liked to have known about Grace Trimble?”

“Yes, sir. I would.”

I look over at the jurors. Most of them are leaning forward in their seats. I haven’t come close to discrediting this witness, but I’ve gained a bit of ground back.

“One final question, Ms. Holcomb. You said that the cash and the false passport found in Mr. Baxter’s apartment were evidence of guilt. Couldn’t those items also be evidence that Mr. Baxter feared for his life and thought he would have to flee for his own safety?”

“No, sir. If he was innocent and wanted protection, he could have come to us.”

“You think the Feds could have protected him?”

“Absolutely.”

“If that’s true, Agent Holcomb, then why was he found hanging by the neck in a federal jail? Why did he die on your watch?”

Manny joins us for lunch in the attorneys’ lounge. After we finish eating—I force down a sandwich of canned tuna and dry multigrain bread—I swallow a tranquilizer and prepare for the afternoon session. Lovely keeps her distance.

Just as we’re about to return to the courtroom, my cell phone vibrates. Caller ID says it’s from Deanna. When she tells me why she’s called, my body fills with a mixture of exultation and disbelief. I make her repeat the information twice more before I truly believe it.

“That was Deanna Poulos,” I say. “She’s found Grace Trimble. I’m meeting them both at The Barrista at midnight.”

“Shut up!” Lovely says.

“For real?” Jonathan asks.

Raymond’s eyes widen in surprise.

“What did Deanna tell you?” Lovely asks. “Will Trimble testify?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Deanna didn’t want to talk over the phone. She’d only say that Grace is paranoid and scared shitless.”

“What else is new,” Manny says.

“Yeah, but Deanna says that this time, she has every right to be.”

I can barely concentrate during the afternoon session. Fortunately, Frantz’s witnesses are straightforward and uncontroversial. Nick Weir examines two bank officers and an Assembly bookkeeper, who merely authenticate the documents that reflect the bogus transfers of money that Agent Holcomb discussed in detail this morning. Weir, a ponderous questioner, puts the jury to sleep. Frantz then calls one of the FBI agents who arrested Rich, but he just repeats Holcomb’s testimony. At four thirty, we adjourn for the day.

I return to my condo and do my best to prepare for tomorrow, but it’s hopeless. At eleven thirty, I leave my apartment for the meeting with Grace. As soon as I pull out of the underground garage, a light drizzle coats the windshield—June gloom a week early. I turn on the wipers, which leave grimy smudges that obscure my vision. I expect the fog to lift when I get farther inland, but the droplets keep coming in a fine mist the entire trip.

Will Grace be lucid, or will she be delusional and strung out on drugs? Can she tell me what happened to the money? Did she hear that I implicated her in the embezzlement scheme? Will she come to trial?

The car radio is still tuned to one of Lovely’s favorite stations. It’s playing a Green Day song called “Good Riddance,” about a man sending a message to a woman who just broke up with him. The song makes me long for a reconstructed world in which I could abide failings in others. If Lovely were with me, I wouldn’t be so frightened.

I arrive at The Barrista and find a parking space directly across from the shop. When I get out of the car, I zip up my thin nylon windbreaker. Melrose is empty—just like that last time. Few things are as eerie as when a normally busy thoroughfare is deserted; I always think of the neutron bomb. The drizzle has created a moist sheen on the surface of the street, making it slippery even in my running shoes. The roadway lamps and traffic lights cast shimmering oblongs of red, green, and amber on the slick asphalt.

I jaywalk across the street, my hands stuffed into the pockets of my jacket, less from the cold than to prevent myself from running. Deanna told me to come around back to the storeroom door, but I want to avoid doing that if I can, so I go to the shop’s front entrance. The blinds have been pulled down over the doors and windows. I cup my hand to my face and peer through a crack in the blinds. There doesn’t appear to be a light on in the main room. Still, I try the front door handle. Locked. As a reflex, I rattle the door to see if it’ll open. No luck.

I pull the collar of my jacket around my neck and head down the street. How could it be so cold in May? I reach the corner and stop short. The entrance to the alley is a hundred feet up the street where the beating took place. With my first step, my teeth start chattering. I force myself to walk. The buildings fronting Melrose Avenue border the alley on the right; an ivy-covered Cyclone fence separates the homes on the left, the ivy an excellent hiding place for vermin. The area often attracts the homeless, and I look to see if anyone’s lurking or sleeping against a building, but it’s pitch black, except for a bare incandescent bulb halfway down the alley over the back door to The Barrista. In the daytime, the shop never seemed this far from the side street, but now that light seems miles away. I take a deep breath and walk toward the light, gingerly navigating past the pots piled outside the ceramics studio next door to Deanna’s shop. The asphalt is full of potholes and slick from the drizzle. I slip, stumble into a rut, and twist my ankle. Why aren’t I one of those handy men who always have a Swiss Army knife strapped to their belts and a powerful mini-flashlight hooked to their key-chains? Luckily, when I test the ankle, I can walk. When I reach The Barrista, I start to knock, but stop myself and try the doorknob. The door opens. The overhead fluorescent lamps are off. The only light comes from the bulb over the alley door. I take a step inside. I don’t see anyone. I’m about to call out when my left foot slides on something wet and tacky, and I think that maybe someone spilled a syrupy caramel concoction on the concrete floor and the clean-up crew missed it, and I lose my balance and almost do a split and fall hard on one knee, sending a jolt of pain up my femur. I’m about to curse when I realize that I’ve slipped on a pool of blood and am kneeling over the lifeless body of Deanna Poulos.

With quivering fingers, I search for her carotid artery, hoping to find a pulse. Nothing. Only the instinct for self-preservation prevents me from shrieking in horror and despair. I stand, warily make my way across room, and feel for the light switch. Is the assailant still here? No, because then I’d already be dead. I turn on the lights and look for Grace Trimble’s body. Nothing. Just Deanna on the other side of the room. I lock the door separating the storeroom from the rest of the shop and call 911. Then I go back to her.

She’s lying in a fetal position. She has multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Her black T-shirt is heavy with blood. Her head is turned slightly upward in my direction. Her eyes are open, her mouth an oval void, the last vestige of surprise and pain. There’s something else in her expression, or more accurately, the artifact of an expression—the look of someone who’s been betrayed.

If I hadn’t pursued the Assembly, Deanna would still be alive. In the cold language of the law, my actions are the
proximate cause
of her death. I know I shouldn’t touch her again, but I reach out and stroke her hair.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, tears flowing down my face.

After a lengthy interview with the cops—which, when they notice my blood-streaked jeans, becomes for a harrowing forty minutes an interrogation into whether I had a motive to kill Deanna—I somehow manage to drive home.

Sleep is out of the question. I go to the pantry and pull out a bottle of mastika she gave me one Christmas long ago, 90 proof. It’s unopened because I promised her we’d drink it together when one of us had something big in life to celebrate. I uncork the bottle, pour myself a shot, chug it down, and then pour myself another. I find my one Metallica CD and put it in the player, not because I like the group, but because Deanna did. I keep replaying that night six months into our legal careers when she barged into my office and ordered me to draft jury instructions on a dog-shit case of hers. Who was this brash girl to tell me what to do? After we finished at two o’clock in the morning, we collapsed onto my office sofa (who seduced whom?) and made love for the first time. Though we later called it sport-fucking, it
was
making love, because sexual intimacy leaves an indelible mark no matter how vehemently one denies its meaning.

I down a third drink and for some reason think of my mother. When I was a toddler, she read Shakespeare to me at bedtime. Like everything else she did, the reading was calculated to advance my career as an actor. She wanted to instill in me a sense of the dramatic and a feel for the rhythms of speech. She favored Jaques’s famous monologue from
As You Like It
, the one that begins with the line, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” No wonder—Harriet Stern was the archetypal stage mother, so what could resonate more strongly for her than a speech equating life with acting? But life’s not a play or a movie. It’s a dark cybergame rife with ominous repetition and fragmentary success and taunting moments of self-delusion when you think you’ve conquered the world only to find that you’ve bumbled into a fatal trap. It’s a place where you rescue a beautiful princess only to discover that she’s something else entirely. It’s a series of street battles with multidimensional ghouls that blend chameleonlike into a prefabricated landscape, all bent on destroying you for no discernible reason. And the worst thing is that when you die, you’re not just an avatar whose pixels gently flicker out. You can’t push the reset button and start over at Level One. No one beats the game.