The Last Word (19 page)

“A way for you to shave a decade or two off your prison sentence,” Ort said. “Testify against Dr. Sloan.”

She shook her head. “I haven’t committed a crime and neither has he.”

Ort stood up and gathered his papers. “Everyone else has turned against you to save themselves. He’s the only one who hasn’t.
Yet
.”

The agent went to the door, opened it, and looked over his shoulder at her as he was stepping out.

“Think about it,” he said.

She did. And the conclusions that she reached terrified her.

The law firm of Tyrell, Dinino, and Barer specialized in representing very rich people who committed very sordid crimes. The firm’s offices occupied three floors of a building at Wilshire Boulevard and Beverly Drive, the heart of wealth and power in Hollywood.

Successfully defending actors, supermodels, rock stars, and professional athletes for brazen acts of violence and depravity had turned founding partner Arthur Tyrell into a celebrity himself. Tyrell was a big man—in stature, girth, and personality—who commanded and enjoyed attention, whether in front of a jury or television cameras. In fact, he’d been spending more time lately on Court TV than in court, much to the consternation of his partners.

The problem was that much of Tyrell’s reputation was based on an almost unbroken string of courtroom victories, which he doubted he could sustain.

It wasn’t that he’d lost confidence in his legal and persuasive skills, but he knew a big reason for his success was that most juries would let celebrities get away with just about anything, regardless of DNA, fingerprints, eyewitness testimony, or even a signed confession. It wasn’t the actor, singer, or quarterback on trial; it was all the unforgettable characters they’d portrayed, all the classic songs they’d sung, or all the incredible plays they’d made on the football field.

But that was changing. Thanks to the explosion of tabloid journalism in print, on TV, and all over the Web, as well as ubiquitous celebrity “reality” shows, the public was beginning to realize that stars weren’t gods. The celebrities were just as lustful, jealous, petty, stupid, and greedy as everyone else, but they made a lot more money and were recognized on the street by strangers.

One of the major turning points in public sentiment came with the Lacey McClure case. She was the movie star Tyrell successfully defended against charges that she murdered her husband and his starlet lover. Those charges were built, in large part, on evidence gathered by Dr. Mark Sloan.

Tyrell put Mark, Steve, and Amanda on the stand and eviscerated them in front of millions of television viewers. And in doing so, he also castigated and embarrassed the LAPD, the district attorney’s office, and the entire criminal justice system. He managed to get the case thrown out at the preliminary hearing, only to have his victory snatched away when Mark tricked Lacey into admitting, on live television, that she’d murdered someone else.

It shook the public’s faith in actors, in the courts, and in celebrity criminal attorneys. Tyrell’s caseload evaporated. He managed to get a gig for a few months as a commentator for Court TV during Lacey’s subsequent murder trial, but after that his practice, and his TV career, suffered enormously.

Which was why he relished what he saw unfolding on the evening news that night on the sixty-five-inch flat-screen television in his office. Dr. Mark Sloan was getting his comeuppance.

According to the news, two of Mark Sloan’s closest colleagues at Community General had been arrested by the FBI for intentionally infecting donor organs with West Nile virus, thereby causing five deaths and leaving three people in comas. It also sparked a frenzied nationwide recall of the skin, tissues, bones, and other body parts taken from two donors before they ended up in more people. The CDC, the NIH, and the FDA were coordinating that effort.

But the scandal didn’t end there.

The FBI also arrested Dr. Amanda Bentley, the adjunct county medical examiner, for running a massive organ-theft ring out of the hospital morgue with the help of two local mortuaries. More than a hundred bodies intended for burial or cremation may have been deboned and gutted, the valuable body parts sold with forged documentation on the black market.

The Community General transplant program and the two local funeral homes were shut down. The FBI hinted that more arrests were in the offing.

DA Neal Burnside immediately spun the scandal to his advantage, making a statement to the press on the steps outside of City Hall.

“These horrifying crimes are a direct result of grossly irresponsible decisions by Chief Masters and his predecessors, giving unprecedented law enforcement authority to a civilian,” Burnside said. “The chief has allowed Dr. Mark Sloan, and the two doctors charged with multiple counts of murder today, to enjoy unsupervised and unrestricted access to LAPD resources. It was Chief Masters who, among others, succumbed to Dr. Sloan’s back-channel lobbying to have an adjunct county morgue set up in
his
hospital and run by
his
protégée, Dr. Amanda Bentley, who now stands accused of organ theft. It was Chief Masters’s negligence and Dr. Sloan’s hubris that created the lawless environment that made these tragic deaths and unspeakable desecrations possible.”

Tyrell had leveled many of the same charges at Mark Sloan and the LAPD during the Lacey McClure case. Although Lacey turned out to be guilty, that didn’t change the fact that the LAPD’s relationship with Mark and his unrestricted access to the morgue were legally and ethically questionable.

But somehow that all got forgotten in the media frenzy that followed Lacey’s second arrest for murder and the subsequent trial.

What people remembered was that Lacey was guilty, that Tyrell was wrong, that the DA’s office bungled its case, and that Dr. Mark Sloan was right all along.

For those reasons alone, it was nice to see Mark getting trashed.

Even so, Tyrell had surprisingly mixed feelings after watching the newscast. For one thing, Tyrell intensely disliked Burnside and hated the idea that the DA had found a way to use the scandal to gain political points in his mayoral bid.

The scandal also promised to be the biggest story of the year in Los Angeles and was certain to garner national, if not international, attention for weeks.

The worst part was that the most Tyrell could hope to get out of it was a chance to give a sound bite to CNN about his experiences with Mark, Burnside, and Masters. If he was lucky, it would add up to thirty seconds on some late-night broadcast.

All of this was on Arthur Tyrell’s mind when his secretary buzzed him on the speakerphone.

She informed him that he had an unscheduled guest outside his door who insisted on being seen immediately.

“Who is it?” Tyrell asked.

“Dr. Mark Sloan,” she said. “He says you know him.”

Arthur Tyrell smiled to himself, glanced up gratefully to the heavens, and said, “Send him right in.”

The Commons in Calabasas was a shopping center designed to look like a village in France, except for the Ralph’s supermarket and Rolex clock tower.

Tanis Archer sat at an outdoor table in the shadow of the clock tower, a set of iPod earphones plugged into the laptop open beside her. She was sipping a latte and eavesdropping on Tony Sisk, who was having dinner at an Italian restaurant fifty yards away, when Steve sat down across from her.

“I never knew this corner of the Valley existed,” Tanis said. “I’m still not sure that it does. Look at these people, Steve. They all look as if they were manufactured at a mannequin factory.”

It was true. The people were too attractive to be real. But Steve wasn’t in the mood for people-watching or idle chitchat.

“Has Sisk said anything about Sweeney?” he asked.

“Nothing besides having his junior lawyers file the necessary paperwork to keep the habeas corpus hearing on track for next week,” Tanis said. “Are you ready to relieve me from this arduous duty?”

“We’re done,” Steve said.

“We’re on assignment until the chief says we aren’t,” Tanis said.

“Not anymore,” Steve said. “The Web site will tape every conversation whether we’re here to listen to it or not. We have other priorities now.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting Amanda, Jesse, and Susan out of jail,” Steve said. “And catching a serial killer who has murdered five people already.”

Tanis yanked the earplugs out of her ears. “You sure know how to get a girl’s attention. Would it be asking too much for you to give me just a few more details?”

Steve told her everything. As he was getting to the end of his story, Tanis started typing something on her laptop.

“Am I boring you?” Steve asked.

“They’ve got free WiFi here,” Tanis said.

“If you’re checking your e-mail, I’m going to throw that laptop into the street.”

“I’m logging on to the Anti-Terrorism Strike Force computer, tough guy. I’m going to get you the names of the funeral homes that were raided and find out everything there is to know about the people who own and operate them.”

“You can do that?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Steve said, “yeah.”

“One of the few perks of working in Anti-Terror is that, in the wake of 9/11, law enforcement agencies are supposed to be sharing intel. We do it mostly by sharing databases. It makes it easier to identify possible terrorist cells and for unscrupulous cops like me to snoop where I don’t belong.”

“Can’t you get caught?”

“Getting caught is inevitable,” Tanis said. “If that wasn’t true, we’d both be out of a job.”

“We may be anyway,” Steve said.

“Your doom and gloom are distracting me.” Tanis held out her empty cup to Steve without taking her eyes off her screen. “Get me a latte and a raspberry tart. This may take a while.”

 

Tyrell listened to Mark’s story as if he were hearing it for the first time. It was different from what he’d learned from the newscast, and a bit more detailed. Tyrell made a few notes, but mostly he studied Mark, taking his measure.

Did Mark Sloan meet the criteria for being a client of Arthur Tyrell’s?

First and foremost, a client had to be well-known and well-off.

Mark wasn’t a celebrity in the usual sense, but people certainly knew who he was. And if they didn’t before, they knew now. At this isolated moment in time, Mark Sloan was poised to be the most famous man in Los Angeles. It was a title he could easily hold, in the absence of another major scandal or a Tom Cruise movie, for weeks.

As far as wealth, Tyrell assumed that Mark was a man of some means, though hardly at the same level as his previous clients. Could Mark Sloan afford him? Probably not. Ordinarily, that would be the end of any consideration for clienthood. But these weren’t ordinary times.

“I’ve used my home and Steve’s restaurant as collateral to secure their bail,” Mark said, passing some papers to Tyrell from the bail bond company. “As long as the bail amount for Amanda, Jesse, and Susan combined doesn’t exceed three million dollars.”

Tyrell set aside his legal pad and pen. “Why me, Dr. Sloan? After what I did to you, your son, and Dr. Bentley, I should be the last attorney you’d ever want to hire.”

“It’s precisely because of what you did to us that I want you to represent them,” Mark said. “The case against Lacey McClure was as strong as any I’ve ever made. The preliminary hearing should have been a mere formality, the first step on her journey to prison. If she’d had any other defense attorney, it would have been. But you tore the case apart. You put me on trial instead and you won. I need that brilliance on my side this time.”

“You’re just appealing to my ego because you can’t afford me,” Tyrell said.

“Is it working?”

Tyrell looked Mark in the eye. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“Not much,” Mark said.

“Just so we understand each other, I believe everything I said in court about your hubris,” Tyrell said. “It’s amazing to me that you’ve been able to get away with dabbling in homicide investigations for as long as you have, and set up that little crime lab for yourself at Community General, without anyone noticing how outrageous it is.”

“This could be that moment,” Mark said.

Tyrell smiled. “I can’t have you second-guessing me or my strategy. We do everything my way or I walk.”

“Fair enough,” Mark said.

“No one talks to the press but me. Too often my clients try to convince the public through the media that they are innocent. That’s not what the media are there for.”

“What are they there for?”

“To be used, Dr. Sloan. They are there to be manipulated as necessary to achieve whatever goals I may have at any given time,” Tyrell said. “Do I have your word that your friends will agree to my terms?”

Mark nodded.

“I’ll need a $150,000 retainer,” Tyrell said. “But with three clients and two complex cases, I will go through that pretty fast.”

Mark took out his checkbook, made out the check, and handed it to the attorney. “You haven’t asked me if they’re guilty.”

“I never will. It’s a meaningless question. My clients know if they are guilty or not,” Tyrell said. “All that matters to them and to me is that I win.”

At first Amanda was shocked when Arthur Tyrell walked into the interrogation room, introduced himself to Ort as her lawyer, and sent the FBI agent out of the room.

Tyrell was the man who had eviscerated her on the witness stand, on live television, during Lacey McClure’s preliminary hearing. But then, remembering that, she was able to see the perverse logic behind Mark’s thinking in hiring the man.

It didn’t stop her from hating Tyrell, though.

“Are you sure you’ve got the right person?” she asked. “I’m not rich, famous, or guilty.”