Corrupt Practices (50 page)

I struggle to my feet. “We have to go. They’re coming for us.”

Lovely and I sit at my usual table in the back of The Barrista. Deanna bequeathed the shop to those employees who’d been with her from the start, though I hear her estranged family intends to contest the will. I’ve volunteered to represent the employees pro bono if they need a lawyer. Meanwhile, Romulo’s done a good job of keeping the place afloat.

It’s been three days since Grace Trimble shot Manny Mason to death. I’ve spent them undergoing treatment for my broken nose, talking to the cops and the FBI, and just trying to deal with the terror of that night. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to spend some time talking with Lovely.

Though she knows the basic outline, I now recount in detail the events of last Friday night—the abduction in the garage, the drive to Venice, the shooting on the canal. I describe how after Manny mentioned Nonagon, Grace had left the house and parked her car up the canyon, waiting. She was sure that Manny would immediately recognize his mistake and come after us. When he drove after me, she followed. When I asked her why she didn’t just call the police, she said she hadn’t carried a cell phone since the night Deanna was shot, that she feared the killer would use the phone to track her location. Besides, she doesn’t trust the cops. Grace Trimble logic. She made a point of telling me that she shot Manny with the same gun she was carrying when she was arrested for trespassing on Lake Knolls’s property. “See, it really was for protection,” she said in a self-satisfied voice.

I take a drink of my macchiato and say, “You know, when I joined Macklin & Cherry it was the first time in my life that I didn’t feel alone. It was only a law firm, but I fooled myself into believing it was my family. So long as Harmon Cherry made me feel like his favorite son—and he certainly did that while my court victories were piling up—I closed my eyes to the firm’s sinister side. I stayed at the firm when he agreed to represent the Assembly. I should’ve quit. I refused to see that he’d dumped so much work on an unstable Grace that she shattered, or that Rich got to take the lead on the Assembly because he was glib and charming and malleable, competence be damned. And when Harmon treated Manny as nothing more than a journeyman lawyer who—”

“Mason was a psychopath,” Lovely says. “A sane person doesn’t lie and cheat and steal and kill because he’s upset about his compensation level.”

“But the Assembly’s very existence as a firm client brought out the worst in us. As for me, because of my dislike for the Assembly and my love for the firm, I viewed Manny as above suspicion and didn’t save my friends.”

“No one could’ve known he was a killer. So if you’re blaming yourself—”

“The evidence was there all the time. In that house in Malibu and in the financial documents. If I’d been more careful, maybe Rich would still be alive. Deanna
would
be alive. The day she was killed I announced that I was going to meet Grace at The Barrista. Manny was observing the trial that day. He was with us in the conference room. If only I’d kept my mouth shut, she . . .” I take a couple of quick breaths. “I slandered poor Kathleen Williams. I spent all my energy proving that some blurry figures in the Assembly killed Rich, that maybe my own m—” My voice mercifully breaks before I blurt out the rest.

We sip our coffee in silence. Then Lovely says, “Have you turned in your grades for the trial advocacy class?”

“You’re not seriously worried about that now.”

“Absolutely. I have the reputation of being a grade grubber, you know.” She tilts her head. “I’ll tell you what. How about you give me an
A
and in return I’ll sleep with you. Deal, Professor?”

“You’re not funny.”

“I so
am
funny.”

I take her hands in mine. I won’t be the first to let go.

“There’s something I have to ask you,” she says. “How did you get a copy of Christopher McCarthy’s itinerary? And The Emery Group wire transfer to Bennett?”

“Lovely, I just can’t.”

She pulls her hands away and looks past me toward the back wall. Then she reaches down, picks up her knapsack, and gets up to leave.

“Wait. Please sit down.”

She sits.

I shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and heft for the last time the agglomerated burden of my secret. “Let me tell you the story of the First Apostate
.
”

I pull the door handle so hard that the clatter echoes down the hall and flushes a grizzled US Marshal out of hiding.

“Is everything OK, sir?” he says in a gruff cop voice.

“I have a trial starting in Judge Harvey’s courtroom at ten. I haven’t been in a courtroom for a while. I just wanted to get reacquainted with the feel of it.” It’s been about a year since the Baxter trial ended.

“It’s only nine o’clock. They don’t open the doors for another forty-five minutes.” He gestures down the corridor. “There’s an attorneys’ lounge across from—”

“Thanks. I know where it is.”

I head toward the lounge but stop at the elevators. I consider going upstairs and watching some of the hearing in
United States v.
The Church of the Sanctified Assembly
, but then I think, why bother? Once Manny was exposed as the murderer and thief, the media stopped believing that McCarthy acted alone when he arranged for the bribes to foreign officials. Now, everyone thinks he was just following orders when he carried out the bribery scheme. I’m sure they’re right. But he’s taking the fall on the Foreign Corrupt Practices violations so he can protect his church. Lake Knolls has avoided indictment altogether by blaming his underling Delwyn Bennett. Maybe Knolls’s fellow representatives will punish him, but I doubt it. His party needs his vote.

Victor Galdamez was arrested for his role in the murder of Rich Baxter. So were two former inmates of the Metropolitan Detention Center, both members of the Etiwanda Lazers. It’s a tough case to prove. Manny’s cell phone records are the best evidence against them.

I walk down the hall to the attorneys’ lounge and find an empty conference room, which smells of Lysol and dust. Ten minutes later, the door opens and Grace Trimble walks in, dressed in a dark suit and white blouse and looking like the powerhouse lawyer she was when she first started at Macklin & Cherry. She’s followed by a frightened Tyler Daniels. After weeks of pleading and negotiation, Grace agreed to replace Lovely Diamond on Tyler’s defense team. She only said yes after I convinced her that I couldn’t handle the case alone despite my success in
Baxter
. She still won’t give me her address or phone number. I can only contact her through a Gmail address.

Grace accomplished what neither Lovely nor I could—she persuaded Tyler to attend the trial. When I asked how she’d managed it, she would only say that she understands how Tyler’s mind works.

“Hello, Mr. Stern,” Tyler says in her southwestern drawl. “Oh God, I don’t think I can do this.” Her complexion is pallid and rosy at the same time, depending on which cheek you look at. She appears on the verge of collapse. She reaches out and holds onto a chair back.

Grace takes her arm. “Sit down, Tyler. Everything will be OK. Truly, it will.”

Tyler falls heavily into the chair. “No it won’t, Grace. No it won’t.” She begins to cry, a harsh wailing sound from deep in her chest.

I don’t feel sympathy for Tyler. I don’t like her, and I despise her odious short stories. In her case, I care little about the principle that representing an abhorrent client serves justice. Let someone else be Tyler Daniels’s Defender of the Damned. I’m here only because of my promise to Lovely.

“Give us a minute,” Grace says to me.

I leave the room. Through the glass partition, I watch Grace kneel down beside Tyler, hand her a stack of tissues, and whisper in her ear like a compassionate school nurse comforting a distressed child. Tyler soon stops crying.

After a few minutes, Grace beckons me back in. “Everything’s cool,” she says.

For the first time since Tyler arrived, I take a good look at her. She’s wearing a cheap, ill-fitting silver pantsuit that she must have bought third-hand on eBay. The drab color makes her persimmon red hair appear more ridiculous than usual. The jury will know she’s creepy just by looking at that hair.

“I’m very frightened, Mr. Stern,” she says. “The trip took so long I thought I’d never get out of that car. And then the traffic jams and this huge building and all these people, why . . . I miss my home.” She sits down and folds her hands on the table. “Oh, I wish Lovely was trying this case. She knew all the facts and the law and understood why I wrote my stories. And she’s so smart and well-spoken. No offense, sir.”

Grace speaks to her in a calm voice. “We’ve talked about this, Tyler. You’re in great hands.”

“Will Lovely be here?” Tyler asks.

“She’s second-chairing a trial on the second floor,” I say. “Prosecuting a bank robbery case. She promises she’ll try to sneak in during breaks and sit on our side of the courtroom, no matter what her boss thinks.”

This makes Tyler smile.

After Lovely finished the bar exam, she looked for a job. None of the top firms would grant an interview to an ex–porn actress. And she wouldn’t settle for less than a job with a top firm. Then Neal Latham, who knew about her past, asked her to interview with his office. It was an almost unprecedented opportunity for someone fresh out of law school. Yet she refused, saying she didn’t want to work for the man who was persecuting Tyler Daniels. After several days of arguing and cajoling, I finally convinced her that the two best ways to prepare for trial work are to train as an actor and to work at the US Attorney’s office. But when she was offered the job, she had an immediate conflict of interest: her new employer is trying to convict Tyler of the crime of distribution of obscene materials. She said that she’d accept Latham’s offer only if I agreed to defend Tyler in her stead.

Over the next half hour, I remind Tyler yet again that Latham will try to shred her into confetti on the witness stand, branding her a monstrous pedophile; that he’ll read her stories out loud and project them on high-def monitors in large letters; that her own words will horrify the jury. I urge her for maybe the fifth time in the last month to plead guilty in exchange for a token fine and no jail time, a deal I know I can get from Latham.

“I’ve told you over and over,” she says. “I did not do anything wrong. I will not plead guilty. Do not bring this up again, sir.”

I shrug. “You’re the client. As long as you know the risk, it’s your call.”

Grace jumps out of her chair. “Oh shit, Parker, we’re five minutes late.”

“Run ahead and tell Judge Harvey we’re on our way.”

She hurries out of the conference room. I gather up our papers, and Tyler and I walk down the now-deserted corridor. When we get to the door, she hesitates.

“I’m so scared,” she says.

“Don’t worry. Grace and I will get you through this.”

She studies my face for a moment. “You look a bit peakish yourself.”

“It’s just the adrenaline. It happens before every court appearance. I’d be worried if it didn’t.” I take a deep breath and open the heavy door to the courtroom.