September
The Grove, Nina’s mother called her school, and whenever she thought of that name later on she naturally thought of rows of ripe apples and oranges, as though when she was six years old she had lived a country idyll. But it was only a hilly neighborhood in California, and the elementary school was really called Pacific Grove Elementary, a functional name without romance. Nina had gone to first grade there.
On the playground, little girls swung around a long metal bar about three feet off the ground. Little boys were not allowed to do this exquisitely exciting thing. One leg pushed off from the ground, the other draped over the bar, hands holding the bar, over and upside down she went, at every recess and after school when she could swing all alone. When she got her rhythm right she could somersault ten or twelve times continuously, and get dizzy and watch the hills and trees turn upside down, becoming other forms in an ever-changing world.
The first important thing in her life happened at The Grove. One day, all alone after school, she swung around and around on the bar, and after a while a thought swung into her head: I am me.
She had never had this thought before. As a matter of fact, she had never been aware of her thoughts before. I am me. My name is Nina and I live down the street. I swing on the bar. I am me! Wildly excited, she turned furiously upside down. The hills were the same hills now, just upside down.
Once this thought entered her head, she was never the same. She became aware of things she had never noticed and that was a loss, because she had been mindlessly free before, but there was also the joy of seeing how things fit together. She made discoveries about where she fit into this new orderly world, into her family especially, Mommy and Daddy and baby brother Matty.
And at school her teacher taught her rules. Follow the rules to keep away confusion. Follow them to keep things in order. Line up when the bell rings. Raise your hand to go to the bathroom. Little girl bathroom, little boy bathroom.
The second important thing happened toward the end of the year, after school again. Nina should have been heading home, a block away, but the heat made her thirsty, so first she had a long drink of water from the girls’ water fountain. Little girls’ fountain, little boys’ fountain over by their bathroom, that rule was clear.
While Nina watched, a mother and a little boy came up to the little girls’ water fountain.
And to her horror, the little boy started to take a drink from the little girls’ fountain. Nina ran right up to tell him he couldn’t do that and tried to explain. But the mother, ignorant and uncaring, brushed her aside and told him to go ahead. And he, who must have felt confused, decided to do what his mother said, but Nina now blocked the way, arms out, defending the fountain. It’s the rule! she said, but the tall grown-up bent down and told the boy to drink up, and he gave Nina a little push to get her out of the way.
So Nina slugged him. That stopped him. He sat down on the concrete and cried, holding his hand over his eye. Nina breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction, but then along came a big teacher with the mother and made her go into the office and called Mommy and said she did a bad thing! And no one got it, that her defense had saved the fountain and the rules and maybe the orderly world itself, that she was a champion of the girls’ fountain. She had done the right thing and was punished for it.
To be so completely sure, and then have the system go topsy-turvy on her! She decided, and this was the most significant decision of her life, that from what she knew, she was right to defend the fountain and they were wrong because rules had meaning and purpose. What meaning and purpose, she didn’t know yet. But rules made sense out of her blurry world.
In high school about ten years later, Nina went to Monterey with her class to watch a trial. The scruffy-looking, confused man on trial had done something very bad, maybe. Everybody was against him. But one person stood up for him and held them all off, making sure the rules were followed. And as she watched, she understood. This champion was not just defending that poor underdog but a system that kept the world sane.
How do people with different values, religions, economic status, and hopes coexist in peace?
Law provided a method.
And so at age sixteen she decided to become a lawyer.
T HAT THURSDAY IN early September billowed up blue and white, as breezy and innocent as a picnic, the air filtering through shimmering sunlit leaves. But during the afternoon, the true Sierra atmosphere showed its face in a ferocious summer storm, ruthless, unpredictable, and dangerous.
And because the storm dislocated all sorts of human arrangements that night, or because life is a mist of error, or perhaps just because she had been working too hard and couldn’t deal with one more thing that day, Nina Reilly made a small, critical mistake that changed everything.
The day began at eight-thirty sharp with the Cruz custody hearing, now in its second day and going fine, if anything could be fine about a family splitting up. Lisa Cruz, Kevin’s wife, took the stand, and she loved their two kids, no doubt about that, but she had some very strange ideas, too.
“I’m a full-time mom and a professional with a deep spiritual side,” she said from the witness box, gazing at Jeffrey Riesner with large, earnest, liquid eyes that seemed to beg for further help. “I depend on the great philosophers for guidance.”
Kevin began an astringent, whispered commentary. “Moving right along from Jim Beam, to pills, to marathons, and onward into religion,” he muttered.
Lisa had a pale, heart-shaped face and a tentative, breathy voice. She wore a structured jacket and creased slacks and looked fragile, but Kevin had told Nina that Lisa could run five miles without breaking a sweat; had no compunctions about kicking him when he was down; had an extensive, X-rated vocabulary; and bore unswerving allegiance to nothing and no one except their kids.
Lisa adjusted her body, as she had frequently during Riesner’s questions, raising one leg over another, then deciding against it. She was not a woman who enjoyed sitting still. “I studied philosophy at the community college,” she said.
“She took one course, and quit before the final,” Kevin whispered to Nina.
“I consider myself a truth-seeker and scholar. Of course, I work hard to impart the right values to my children: hard work, healthy diet, goal-setting.” She had a lot to say about vitamins.
More whispering. “She’d use a cattle prod if she thought she could get away with it. She’s fanatic about physical fitness. Those kids don’t get a moment’s peace, between the death marches up and down mountains and the bogus mind crap she feeds them.” Kevin had arrived at court very emotional, as always. Nina had to watch out for him when she should have been giving all her energies to watching Jeffrey Riesner, the attorney representing Lisa. She shook her head sharply, her eyes closed, and Kevin understood and stopped.
Nina and Riesner went way back, but not to good places. They had a long history of conflict, which had begun almost the day she had arrived in the town of South Lake Tahoe and set up an office as a sole practitioner. A partner in Tahoe’s most prestigious law firm, Caplan, Stamp, Powell, and Riesner, Riesner viewed her as an out-of-town upstart who had barged into his territory and seduced away several good felony defendants. Nina saw him as a relentless greedhead who held grudges and hated women, her in particular.
She watched him playing Lisa now, playing the judge, playing the court, as homey in a courtroom as you could be without moving in a couch and pillows. How he warmed their hearts with little stories of Lisa’s generosity and kindness. The smallest smile was calculated, a warm nod to the judge, practiced. She could never understand his reputation for success in the courtroom. Apparently, judges and juries could not see through the tall, smooth-talking, Armani-clad exterior to his squirming, wormy insides.
Under Riesner’s careful handling, Lisa went on for quite some time, modestly recounting her achievements as a parent and a volunteer firefighter with several exciting stories to tell. Slowly, Riesner built up his Wonder Woman. Her mother, who lived nearby, watched the children for her during fire emergencies, when volunteers were called out. She attended church, raised money for good causes, met with teachers for conferences, and loved her children.
What interested Nina most was not what she said, though, but how, whenever Lisa started to show real emotion by raising her voice or letting a little vehemence enter, Riesner gently steered her back to calm, like a fairy-tale hero sparing her the scary, dark woods. After several minutes, having wrung all the good he could from his client, he turned back to his table and sat down, but not without first casting a victorious sneer Nina’s way.
Nina stood. She had thought a long time about how to cross-examine Kevin’s wife. Lisa wasn’t a bad mother, just as Kevin wasn’t a bad father, but both parents couldn’t have the children. Many had tried to split custody, and the only parents who succeeded were parents who respected and liked each other after the divorce. Lisa and Kevin didn’t like each other anymore.
Emotional volatility was Lisa’s weakness. She sat in the box, hands neatly folded, like a female Buddha. Nina needed to get around that pseudoserenity.
“Mrs. Cruz, you describe yourself as a seeker,” Nina said. “Could you tell us a little more about what you mean by that?”
Riesner cleared his throat, considering an objection, probably. The phlegm went no farther than his esophagus and lodged there, to judge from its sudden halt. He didn’t like the question, but must have decided to let it ride.
“Well,” Lisa said, any ease she had developed during Riesner’s questioning now gone. She hesitated, tongue-tied, staring at Nina with a half-fascinated, half-repulsed expression on her face, drumming her fingers on the rail in front of her.
“Mrs. Cruz?” Nina said.
Lisa finally spoke, although the words sounded forced. “Life has a deeper meaning than just-this,” she said.
A few observers in the audience looked around the earth-toned, windowless courtroom and chuckled.
“I don’t mean just this moment,” she said defensively, “although every moment is significant. And this one certainly is, since it involves the future well-being of my children. But to answer your question more broadly, I would say I’m interested in the big picture. Taking responsibility for your actions. Accepting blame when you do wrong.” Flat brown eyes followed Nina’s every move as if she expected Nina to jump her at any moment.
“You are a religious person, I understand.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You take your children to church every Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“I understand your religion forbids blood transfusions?” Nina asked.
“I haven’t lost my senses just because I joined my church,” Lisa said. “I’m open to advice from conventional medical doctors, and would take Kevin’s wishes into consideration even after our divorce is final, as I always have before. You know, I don’t limit myself when it comes to a personal philosophy to live by. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we should live as well as why we live and I’ve drawn some conclusions.”
“What conclusions?”
Lisa sat back in her chair, considering the question seriously. “Oh, there’s a level we operate on in this country-hey, I’m not knocking anyone else, okay? But I don’t want my life bogged down by trivia and reduced to a long series of tasks to be done. I try to keep my life spiritual, focused, and tranquil.”
Nina knew Lisa had balked and complained bitterly for years about the changes in her life since having children. She had no more time for her personal pursuits, felt limited in her important volunteer work, and unduly burdened by the dragging weight of child rearing. Some of Kevin’s resentments percolated around his wife’s stubborn refusal to contribute to the normal running of their household.
“You have two children,” Nina said. “Surely there are many chores that need to be done? Surely there is a great deal of trivia?”
“Of course. Children make messes. That’s their job.”
“And tranquility isn’t really a normal state of affairs in a young family, is it?”
“No. Tranquility is an aspiration. It doesn’t come easy.”
“Isn’t one of the big surprises about becoming a parent finding out how little we control the dynamic in the household and how quickly the most basic things can get out of control?”
“I’ve adjusted,” Lisa answered dryly, understanding the direction Nina was taking. “Of course I do chores. Big ones, little ones. Petty ones. Many, many chores.”
“You make sure your children have clean clothing?”
“Yes.”
“You have a regular laundry day?”
“I do it when the basket is full.”
“Whenever the basket is full?”
Lisa had begun to fidget. The questions about her domestic routine bored her. “Yeah, whenever,” she said, looking at Riesner, who treated her to some serious eyebrow action. “Because what’s the difference if I do it on Monday or Friday as long as it gets done eventually? You know, people don’t realize how they try to re-create Victorian standards of living without the kind of help people had then. Yes, our standard of living is higher than ever, but just because you have a dishwasher, does every dish need to be done that minute? Just because you have a vacuum, should you be expected to vacuum every day?”
“‘Eventually’ you do the laundry?” Nina persisted. “Would that be once a week or twice a week?”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Probably once every two weeks, if you were to average it out.”
“Do you feed your children regularly?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Of course I feed them regularly.”
“How would you define the term regular?”
“Well, breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” she said, lips curling with disdain at this truly degraded level of conversation. “Am I missing anything? Oh, yes. Snacks after school.”
“What did you make them for breakfast this morning?”
She shifted in her chair. “This morning I was in a rush. Look, Joey and Heather are seven and nine, plenty old enough to get themselves cereal. The days of a home-cooked breakfast are pretty much gone.”
“Why is that, Mrs. Cruz?” Nina asked.
“Who has time?”
“Do you like to cook?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite thing, but I know how to put together a healthy meal.”
“Your petition says you are at home full time, except during fire emergencies, because your children are young and need you there.”
“That’s true.”
“What did they eat for breakfast this morning, Mrs. Cruz?”
Stony silence.
“Do you know?”
“No. Although they ate for sure. There were dirty dishes in the sink.”
“Did they get up before you?”
“No. I’m the first one up. I run in the mornings.”
“You always run in the morning?”
“Most days.”
“You don’t make them breakfast.”
“Not when I run.” Again she adjusted herself in her chair, found a position, changed it, and frowned.
Nina had never seen a witness so ill-suited to spending a long time idle, although her excessive energy might serve her well as a mother and in her work, Nina had to admit. “Did your husband make breakfast for the children when he was still living with you?”
“Sometimes, I guess.”
“Isn’t it true he always made breakfast?”
She sighed. “You know, I’m a mother, but I’m also a professional who needs to stay fit and strong for my work as a firefighter. I’m in the business of saving lives.” She glared at Nina. “I don’t think it hurts my children to get a meal for themselves once in a while. And low-sugar cereal with milk is a fine, healthy breakfast for children, anyone can tell you that.
“I only run five miles. Half the time they don’t even know I’m gone. And my mom lives really close.”
“And when you come back from the run, you take a shower?” Nina was reading from the deposition of Lisa Cruz taken some months before.
“So what if I do?”
“Who dressed the children for school? When you and Kevin were still together?”
“Kevin basically got them off to school. Okay? I have to run.”
“Who gets them off to school now? Now that Kevin isn’t around?”
“They’re older now. Jeans, T-shirt, grab their books, out the door. They don’t need me.”
“And after school?”
“My mother. I told you. I spend every single evening with them.”
“Except, let’s see, Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday all day.”
“Those are my prayer-meeting evenings.”
“Mrs. Cruz, how often do you do your housecleaning?”
“Regularly,” Lisa Cruz said, mocking Nina’s earlier line of questioning, this time enjoying the reaction she got.
Nina laughed along with Judge Milne, dropped her smile, and repeated her question.
But as time went on, as Nina continued grinding at life’s petty concerns until the small issues had been hammered to dust, the atmosphere of the courtroom changed. Lisa didn’t care about the trivial details of her children’s lives, however much she cared about their salvation. She got bored. Her answers became careless. Her composure slipped into irritation.
The judge listened to the boring, trivial questions, the fidgety answers, giving no clue about his thoughts. Riesner objected as often as he could, but Nina’s questions, while mind-numbing, were relevant to Lisa’s mothering skills, so Judge Milne continually ruled against him. Lisa looked to Riesner for help, squeezed her lips tightly, and exposed an utter lack of interest in or skill at housekeeping, a preference for her own needs over her children’s needs when it came to school activities, a chronic inability to pick the children up on time after school, lack of knowledge about her children’s current schoolwork, and adamant opposition to any organized sports for her son, Joey, who really, really wanted to play soccer.
After nearly an hour spent on trivia, petty concerns, and the most mundane, rude mechanics of life, including toilet-scrubbing, Lisa was visibly fuming. Her hair had unpoufed and her crisp suit jacket looked wilted. Five miles couldn’t make her sweat, but Nina’s long journey through life’s ordinariness had worn her to a frazzle.
“I’m good in the ways that matter,” Lisa said in answer to a question about Joey. “I care about helping my kids grow up right.”
“Does that include punishment when they do wrong?”
“I discipline them, of course.” Nina heard tightness in her voice.
“What methods of discipline do you use?”
“That depends on what they do. How bad they’ve been. Like, say they talk back or use bad language, well, I might explain that’s not allowed, that we respect each other and I must be respected as a parent. Then I might send them to their rooms.”
“You don’t like them to use bad language?”
“No.”
“You don’t use bad language?”
“I don’t condone it, no.”
“You don’t use it?”
She had to answer honestly or risk impeachment, although her reluctance was palpable. “Very rarely. It’s a poor way to communicate.”
“Do you spank your children?”
“No.”
“You don’t ‘smack them on the butt’?” Nina asked, quoting from the deposition.
Lisa remembered what she had said. She answered carefully. “Rarely, and only if they intentionally disobeyed me in some major way. Crossed the street without me, or did something dangerous. But never hard, never to cause pain. Only to get their attention.”
“Does your husband smack or spank the children?”
“He’s pretty poor at discipline.”
“Does he smack them?”
“No.”
“Spank them?”
“No. In my opinion, he lets them get away with way too much. I have to go back and do the correcting he doesn’t bother to do. I have to be the bad cop, while he’s Mr. Fun.”
“Do you yell at them?”
“I don’t think you should yell at your kids.”
“Do you yell at them?”
“I’m sure I have. I’m not going to lie. But I try to be patient and thoughtful.”
“Does your husband yell at them?”
She thought about the question. “No, he doesn’t, not at the kids. Like I said, he plays the nice guy and I get stuck with the trouble after.”
“Can you really describe yourself as a patient person?”
Anyone with eyes could see the restless, jumpy woman in front of the courtroom this morning was anything but.
“I try to be.”
“Would you describe yourself as a happy person on the whole?”
Lisa looked down at her hands, then back up. She refused to meet Nina’s eyes. “I don’t see life that way. Life is a vale of tears. There are such sorrows-” She stopped herself, changing direction. “Happiness is not an end in itself. If you’re lucky, it comes along now and then.”
“Mrs. Cruz, you’ve stated in your deposition that you were very close to your father and took his loss hard. Do you think that has affected your parenting since his death last year?”
Lisa stared at her, and Nina saw what she had been looking for, pushing for, serious anger flickering behind the shadowy brown eyes. She did not like this question. “No.”
“You were seeing a therapist?”
“Yes, but I’ve done that for several years. That’s part of the growth process.”
Nina consulted her notes. “After he died, you took to your bed for three weeks?”
Lisa struggled, then said in a voice fat with distaste, “Yes.”
“Who watched your children during that time?”
“My mother. And Kevin.”
“How long before you recovered from your father’s death?”
“I’ll never get over my father’s death. That doesn’t stop me from functioning. I may not be a barrel of laughs every day.”
“In fact, yesterday on the stand the mediator in your divorce case described you as a ‘restless, troubled person, who blames other people for her unhappiness.’ Do you think that’s accurate?”
“That’s not me.” She shook her head. “I’ve had plenty of joy in my life. Plenty. Just not lately.”
“Your own doctor said you’ve had ongoing problems with depression.”
“I’ve got that licked now,” she said. “I’m off the meds. Joining my church has helped with that a lot.”
“There was another time you took to your bed, wasn’t there?”
“I don’t like that way of putting it.”
“Went into your bedroom and locked the door for several days, wouldn’t talk to Kevin or the kids, ate very little and didn’t feel able to cope?”
“I don’t remem-”
“In Seattle? When you and the family lived there?”
“That was a long time ago. Kevin got in trouble at work. The kids were little, screaming all day. We lived in a small, noisy apartment. I didn’t have a decent stroller that would hold both of them. No washing machine, kids to drag everywhere I went, every single thing I did an ordeal. So, yeah, I’ve had some hard times. I’m stronger for getting through them.”
“Your husband stayed home to take care of you that time, didn’t he?”
“A few times,” she said grudgingly.
“He went to work late and left early?”
“I don’t remember.”
“And lost his job as a result?”
“He lost his job because he screwed up at work. My problems were caused by his problems, not the other way around!”
“Mrs. Cruz, what happens the next time a problem comes along that you can’t solve? Who will be there for your children?”
“My mother helps me a lot. I’m not perfect. I need support, just like anybody. Anyway, right now, my life is going just fine, if I could only settle this thing with Kevin.” Lisa’s arms crossed into the classic defensive position, almost as if she were trying to rein in all the nervous tension she exuded.
Nina decided the time had come.
“Mrs. Cruz, you don’t like to cook, you don’t like to clean, you don’t like chores, yet you admit children are messy; when things get tough you take to your bed; by your own admission, you haven’t gotten over your father’s death; you’re moody, changeable, unpredictable in your discipline-”
Riesner stood up. “Objection!”
“Ms. Reilly, what’s your question?” the judge said.
Nina’s attention never veered away from Lisa Cruz. “-can you really, in good conscience, describe yourself as a good mother?” She held Lisa’s gaze, made her want to open her mouth, made her want to answer, to tell her off, to stop Nina from nipping at her like a bedbug. The fire Lisa had been trying to hide burst into her dark eyes.
Riesner stood quickly. “Your Honor, I-”
But Lisa would not be gagged anymore. “Who do you think you are,” she said, directly addressing Nina. “You-fucking-hypocrite. Are you home with your kid today? I hear you have one. Shame on you. I do my best to have a life and do well by my children. But your job is to distort truth to serve your purposes. If you were defending me, I’d be your golden example, wouldn’t I? It’s so sickening.”
All the time she spoke, Riesner tried to speak louder to shut her up. He waved his hand as if to dissipate the aggression she was finally hurling at Nina.
“Mrs. Cruz! Control yourself,” Judge Milne said finally, taking up his dusty gavel and pounding it once. He looked startled at the noise.
But Lisa ignored him. “Instead I come off here as a selfish bitch, a creature you invent out of some weird bullcrap about my housekeeping, for chrissake. None of that shit matters when it comes to kids, and you know it! They need someone with something more on the ball than a Gestapo-tidy house and three servings of beef a day, which is what Kevin seems to think is required. They need somebody who cares about their souls!” She slapped her hand down on the railing in front of her. “You dare to talk about my father. About my grief. I know all about you. I see right through you, right down into your rotten heart that doesn’t care who gets hurt!”
She stopped, her mouth still open, breathing hard, as though she’d just come in from one of those big runs.
“Do you lose your temper like this with the children, Mrs. Cruz?” Nina said.
“Get off my back!”
“I’m going to adjourn this court for ten minutes,” Judge Milne said as Lisa fell into her chair, shaking, pushing her hair back. “Mr. Riesner, get your client under control. You hear?” He stepped down. Chairs scraped and voices rose behind Nina. The bailiff, Deputy Kimura, had appeared at Lisa Cruz’s side. He took her arm and helped her step down and walk past Nina’s table and didn’t let her slow down for a second. Riesner followed her out.
Kevin’s eyes followed his wife. He turned back to Nina. “You did it,” he said. He didn’t smile.
“I’m sorry,” Nina said. “It had to be done.” And she was sorry, too. Lisa may have had a foul mouth and some weaknesses as a parent, but Nina sensed the depth of the love she felt for her children in every intense word. She was fighting for her life.
“She’s going to have a rough night. You hit hard.”
“Kevin,” Nina said, “something’s going on here. Why was she attacking me? Is this something about her father?”
D URING THE BREAK, Nina tried to get Kevin to talk, but he needed to make a nervous trip to the rest room. On her way to the ladies’ room, she ran into Stamp, a senior partner in Riesner’s firm. A tanned, fit, superb-athlete type, a man who would always be more comfortable with a tennis racket or golf club in his hand than a briefcase, he did not brush past her in his usual fashion. “Hey,” he said, coming to a dead halt. “Nina Reilly. It’s been a while. Haven’t seen you since that casino-gambling case.” He pushed a hand into hers for a firm handshake.
“Well, hello!” The artificial enthusiasm she rallied was designed to obscure the fact that she wasn’t entirely certain of his first name and wasn’t about to call him Mr. Stamp. Wasn’t his name Michael?
“Yeah, you banged us up good in that one. Rumor is, Steve Rossmoor was impressed, so impressed he approached you to represent his casino. Rumor is, others might follow.”
“You know better than to listen to rumors.”
He liked her answer, but wasn’t ready to let go yet. “You’d have to pass the Nevada bar,” he said thoughtfully. “But I venture to guess you’re too busy for that, trying to keep a solo practice afloat.”
“That’s so true,” she said. So Stamp was worried she wanted the casino business. That would cut him where it hurt, right in the wallet. Might as well put him out of his misery. “ California ’s big enough for me at the moment.”
He had his hands in his pockets, and seemed ready to settle in for a nice chat.
“Listen, I’m sorry,” Nina said. “I’ve got to run.”
“Sure. Good to see you. Give me a call sometime when you’re not so rushed.” She felt his eyes crawling over her back as she continued down the stairs. In the bathroom, she looked in the mirror for any signs of femme-fatality and found none. So, take the man at face value. He was worried she was after the casino business. She wasn’t. Now he knew, which was the purpose of their conversation. She decided to like him for having the character to compliment her for winning against his firm, and for flattering her by worrying about rumors that reflected well on her. Riesner certainly never would.
After the break, Riesner took a crack at rehabilitating Lisa Cruz, who apologized to Judge Milne for her outburst and regained her poise, but the damage was done. He was brief, then returned to his table. Riesner, who did not like watching his nicely crafted case sink to the bottom of the ocean, stared down at the table in front of him. This time, when he finally looked toward Nina, fury glistened in his eyes like oil slick.
Nina had really worried about Kevin, who had temper problems of his own. But Lisa’s example had taught him something. When he finally took the stand, he made an excellent witness. Nina had hoped he would have the advantage of plenty of experience testifying because of his work as a police officer, and it seemed he did. He looked relaxed and low-key up there, a nice guy, his legs splayed comfortably, his big body relaxed. Handsome, clean-shaven, with fuzz for hair and even white teeth that he used to good advantage, he spoke warmly about his children, his job, what fatherhood meant to him.
He told Judge Milne that he loved his children. His changing schedule wouldn’t create problems because he had a good support system of local family and friends. He loved to cook, was a methodical person who was trying to teach his kids organizational skills. He had coached his son’s soccer team until Lisa made Joey quit, saying he did not have enough time to finish homework.
“Did you agree with your wife?” Nina asked.
“Sure sounded like he had a lot of work, and she really talked it up. On the nights he was with me, I didn’t see so much, but she told me it was much worse the nights he was with her. Made me wonder what the world is coming to, when a seven-year-old has too much homework to play sports.”
He netted several sympathetic looks at that.
“I wanted to talk to Joey’s teacher, but Lisa asked me not to.”
“Why?”
“She admitted the homework wasn’t as bad as she made out. She doesn’t really like Joey playing soccer anyway, or any sport. She’s afraid he’ll get hurt, and doesn’t want the extra driving. I offered to do more of the chauffeuring, but she didn’t want that either.”
Although he was not a churchgoer himself, he wanted the children to go to Sunday school at his church instead of Lisa’s. “They ought to know what’s right and wrong, and the Bible’s a great resource and comfort to some people. What I don’t like is too much talk of hell and damnation. That just scares kids, does them no good.”
He knew every subject his children were taking in school, knew their teachers well, and could quote from their report cards. He showed pride, pleasure, and a caring attitude.
When Nina finished with Kevin, Riesner got up and brushed off his lapels, as if he’d already started the dirty work.
“You’re a police officer, aren’t you, Mr. Cruz?”
“Yes.”
“A risky job.”
“It can be, but I’m well trained in my work, Mr. Riesner. I work hard at defusing potentially dangerous situations before they get serious.”
“Uh huh. Yet this is your third position as a police officer, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you leave those other two positions?”
“The first one up in Seattle -I was fired. I was young, we had two little kids, I felt pushed and pulled in a lot of directions. There were family demands, and my family came first.”
“And then there was that little trouble about an old man who ended up in the hospital after you beat him and left him in the gutter?”
Kevin looked at him calmly. “You make it sound like I put him in the hospital. I didn’t. I also didn’t beat him. And I left him propped against a building in a seated position, to set the record straight.”
“You were accused of using excessive force while attempting to arrest a known, chronic alcoholic who was seventy-two years old.”
“He was belligerent. I used the force I needed to use to stop him from attacking me. Then I left without arresting him because I felt sorry for him. He ended up in the hospital because he was drunk and fell down after I left him.”
“You were fired for that?”
“Mr. Riesner, I did nothing wrong. An internal investigation exonerated me but the damage was done to my reputation. Every time I came in late, it was noted. I was held to higher standards than the other officers, and because of the demands I had on me, with two young children and a wife that was having some emotional problems at the time, I couldn’t keep up. It was decided that I should go.”
Very respectable, the way he didn’t blame Lisa for his problems. Nina liked that, and she thought Judge Milne would, too.
“Records show that the internal investigation did not exonerate you. They merely did not find enough evidence to prove the charge,” Riesner went on.
“That’s right,” Kevin said. “It was never proven because there was nothing to prove.”
“So you went to work in Marin County.”
“Right.”
“It says here”-Riesner waved a paper-“you signed on for a permanent job but only lasted six months.”
“We discovered pretty quick we could never afford to live decently there. Lisa would have to go to work and Joey was still very young to leave during the day then. I was offered a good job here, so we moved up to Tahoe.”
“You quit without notice, didn’t you?”
“I had to think of my family first. Tahoe wanted me right away.”
“Not very responsible, was it, leaving your old job without notice?”
“I explained that,” Kevin said.
“It must have been hard on your family, moving around all the time?”
“We didn’t move all the time.”
“Three times in the past five years?”
“The kids were too little to care much, although it was stressful at times, yes.”
“You don’t stay in one place long, do you?”
“I was looking for the right place. I’ve found it now.”
“You know that after less than a year?”
“That’s right.”
“You think this one’s going to stick when the others haven’t?”
“I’ve been promoted once already. I think I’m doing well.”
“Not all that well, actually. I understand you failed the detective exam when you took it this summer?”
“I put a lot of time in with my kids. I guess I just haven’t put my energy there.”
“Are you going to take it again?”
“I’m planning on it.”
“You’ll have to study nights for it?”
“I’ll make sure Heather and Joey come first.”
“Of course, if you happen to pass it this time, that will mean you spend even more hours on the job, is that correct?”
“Probably, but now the kids are in school, that should work okay and the extra money will come in handy.”
“Or you’ll flunk it again and move on to some new town?”
“No. I’m settling here.”
“Now, you say that money would come in handy, Mr. Cruz?”
“Yes.”
“Do you resent the child support you’ve had to pay pending this hearing while the children were with their mother?”
“No.”
“You’ve paid late three months out of nine months. Is that what you call being financially responsible?”
“There was some kind of foul-up. It’s corrected.”
“The kids didn’t get the money they needed, and it’s just a foul-up to you?”
Kevin’s face hardened. “I love my kids.”
“You’d rather spend the money on, let’s see, new bowling shoes the first month you were late, and, oh, in August there was that trip to Vegas.”
“It was one weekend. The child support was only ten days late.”
“So what comes first?” Riesner said, taking a long step toward the witness box and sticking his chin out.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You know, bowling shoes and Vegas seem to come first. The kids can wait.”
Kevin put his hand up to his mouth. “I-”
“Move to strike that last malicious comment by counsel,” Nina said.
“I’ll withdraw it, Judge. How’s your temper, Mr. Cruz?”
“Well, I think I’m holding on to it pretty good, considering how you’re talking to me right now.”
That got a relieved laugh from the audience, and Nina thought, he’s going to get through it.
“Tell us more about your schedule, Mr. Cruz. How do you intend to put in the time it takes to raise your children when you’re never home?”
Kevin kept his cool, got a few more chuckles, even one from Judge Milne, kept smiling, and looked confident.
Nina was satisfied. Aside from the vague and unproven trouble on his first job, which did not reflect badly on his abilities as a parent, and the late child support, Kevin had the edge. He was never violent with his kids. He wouldn’t even spank them. Even Lisa had admitted that.
At lunchtime, Judge Milne adjourned the hearing until the next day. Kevin made a mumbled excuse and ran out ahead of Nina before she could speak with him.
Feeling like she’d had all her teeth yanked out of her jaw, the usual feeling that the court clerks, the other attorneys, and the witnesses milling around her in the hall probably shared as they made their way toward the exit at noon, Nina hurried out. As she left the courtroom in the crowd, Jeffrey Riesner sidled up behind her, brazenly close, brushing against her, walking in step, mimicking her short, swift stride for a few moments. She forced herself to ignore him. Thinking back to the case, hustling away, she refused to dirty her mind with rank images of what lurked underneath the gray silk slacks he had pressed so noxiously close.
In the hallway, where the other courtrooms were adjourning for the break, she felt a hard push to her shoulder and whirled around, prepared to confront him. But instead of Jeffrey Riesner, Officer Jean Scholl now stood behind her, uniformed, a skyscraper to Nina’s low bungalow, six feet tall if she was an inch. “Ms. Reilly,” Scholl said, her voice a slow drawl. “So sorry to jostle you like that, but you got right in my way.”
“I don’t believe I did,” Nina said firmly, standing her ground. “Look, if you have something you have to say, why not just spit it out?”
“Okay,” Scholl said, a hand on her hip. By now several other police officers had paused to watch. “Stay out of my face. I don’t appreciate the way you handled the Guitierrez case. You made me look bad, when I was just doing the best job I can. I like to think we both serve justice, but when it comes to someone like you, I wonder. Now, you and I both know he stole that T-Bird and wrecked it.”
“The judge saw it differently,” Nina said. “Obviously, since he let the man off.”
Scholl leaned in until Nina could feel the heat of her breath. “We didn’t read him his rights because the rotgut he was drinking left him comatose. He wouldn’t have understood them anyway.”
“He has the right to a defense. He got it.”
“Technicalities be damned,” Scholl said. “Did you ever think about the kid who spent six years restoring that car? He came into our offices crying. But you don’t give a damn about that, do you? You don’t think about all the harm you cause, setting bad guys loose.”
“Are you done?” Nina asked.
Stepping back slightly, Scholl nodded. “Look forward to seeing you in court again real soon, Counselor.”
Nina fled for the outdoors.
Caught in a rush of wind, her friend Betty, a deputy clerk, sighed, “A big one coming up.” The trees around them rattled and Nina watched clouds massing over the Sierra Nevada to the east. Betty ran for her car. Clutching her blue blazer around her, Nina ran for Paul’s new Mustang, parked in a no-parking zone right out front.
“Let’s blow, otherwise you’ll get a ticket for sure,” she told Paul as she climbed into the passenger’s seat. “There were at least ten police officers in the hall with me. Some big drug case. Jean Scholl was in there. She’s a real old-timer in the department, been there eight years at least and also has a lot of support in the sheriff’s department. She blew up at me in front of everybody. She’d love to lay a ticket on us.”
Paul backed out.
“I don’t know why, but lately it seems like she’s involved in every case I defend. I think she’s taking it personally.” Nina consulted her watch. “I’m exactly four hours into my day. I had to take a witness apart and it was damned unpleasant. Jeff Riesner was opposing counsel. I had to sit passively through his nasty cross of my client. Then Officer Scholl gave me a push and a warning. A morning like this makes me wonder why I do it.”
“Hello to you, too, Beautiful,” Paul said.
She exhaled the breath she had been holding and all the poisons of the courtroom went with it. She smiled, shook her head, said, “Sorry.”
The man deserved her full attention. Ah, how she adored him. Tall and blond and hers at the moment, Paul van Wagoner worked for her as an investigator now and then. She had spent the past several weeks at his home in Carmel playing house, making love, and jumping ocean waves with him. Now they were back to their real lives, his in Carmel and hers in Tahoe, and, although the geographical separations hurt, Nina felt more tightly bound to him every day.
Using his left hand, he pulled out of the lot. His right arm circled her, pulling her close to him.
Taking in the fresh smell of his leather jacket, she kissed his cheek, letting the physical tensions of the morning slip away in his comforting presence. “The farther we get from the courthouse, the better.”
“Good. Let’s go all the way out to the Y and eat at Passaretti’s. You have time?”
“Kevin Cruz’s hearing was adjourned for the day. We start up again tomorrow.”
“Trouble?”
“Besides what you’d expect in a full-scale custody battle?” She paused, reviewing the morning, which chugged through her mind in a blur of questions, answers, and lightning judgments. “Riesner’s odd lately.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “I really don’t know. Just more at me than ever.”
“Family-law cases are the worst,” Paul said. “Give me a good old corporate dispute, partners gouging out eyes, stabbing each other in the back, but, hey, it’s just business. Next week they’ll be toasting the next great joint venture.” He turned left onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard.
“Anyway, it’s over until tomorrow and I’m going to put it out of my mind. And concentrate on you.”
“I like that,” Paul said. He ran a finger down her cheek. “Love me right and I’ll love you right back.”
She kissed him again. “It’s so great when you’re here. I wish you could stay forever.”
“Come live with me in Carmel. You know that’s what I want.”
He popped that out as casually as popping a beer. It was the ongoing struggle between them. How could they possibly create something strong and permanent living 250 miles apart?
“I know.”
“Luck was with me this morning,” Paul said. “I got the two witness declarations you wanted signed. Wish you had been able to drive Highway 89 with me up to Tahoe City. Whitecaps starting up, the sky that sensational transparent blue that you only see when it’s swept clean and a storm’s blowing in. Fall announcing its imminent arrival. The file’s in the backseat.”
Nina disentangled herself and twisted back, retrieved the file, and set it on the floor in front of her. Otherwise she’d never remember it. Curling herself against Paul again, she said, “I hate it that you have to leave.”
“Job’s over,” Paul said. “I’ve got an office in Carmel crying for my attention. You could always come down again this weekend.”
This reminder that he led a life complete and separate from her gave her a pang. The nights without him were hard. She missed the rise and fall of his chest, the rhythm of his breath. “You know I want to, but I’ve got an office in Tahoe crying for my attention too, and Bob needs new shoes and the house is a wreck.” They drove along the lake under a lowering sky. Wind flattened the water way out and threw up ruffled whitewater closer in. One last sailboat tacked into the Keys harbor, the sail taut and the two people inside pulling hard at the ropes, their yellow life jackets bright in the half-light.
“We better get you on the road fast,” Nina said. “You should just drop me at the office.”
“No way will I miss lunch with you. It’s too early in the year for snow. What’s a little rain?”
“You’ve seen the mountain rainstorms,” Nina added. But she didn’t really want him to leave so she didn’t ask again. While they ate at Passaretti’s, the light rain turned into a downpour. By the time Paul kissed her good-bye in the parking lot of the Starlake Building, the skies were delivering a four-star one-for-the-books drenchfest.
Inside, she barely had time to fold up her umbrella and prop it in the corner of her office before the afternoon steamrolled her. Her assistant, Sandy Whitefeather, was in and out on errands, leaving Nina mostly on her own to answer the phone and handle emergencies. Two old personal-injury clients soaked up time without resolving anything. An interpreter slowed down a complicated phone call to the Vangs about a settlement offer in their insurance case.
Then, to cap off an already crowded afternoon, sisters named Brandy and Angel told her a harrowing story about witnessing something on a camping trip that had ended with a suspicious death the next site over.
She took notes, thought fast, kept her eyes on the tasks at hand, tried to keep track of everything. Between the phones and the thirteen other cases that needed attention in the interstices of the main appointments, she drank her bottled water and hung in there. She let the rough morning go and decided she had had a good day because Paul was in it.
Outside, dark came early and water flowed down the street. The lights flickered once or twice. Inside, Nina kept right on trying to fix people’s problems and bring order back into the chaos that afflicted them. She thought once or twice about the Cruz custody case. Paul was right. Custody disputes between two more or less competent parents who both loved their kids were the most painful cases for the lawyer as well as the parents, because no just solution existed. You couldn’t saw the kids in half. They had to spend most of their time somewhere.
She felt bad for Lisa Cruz, for what she had done to her.
When the last client had left and she was finally alone, she washed most of the hardened crud off the coffeepot, turned out the lights, packed her briefcase, and slung her purse onto her shoulder. Umbrella in hand, she headed down the hall not feeling anything at all except the desire to get home. She made it only a few steps at a normal pace from the office door before immense raindrops, ballooned into drunken saturation, reduced her hair to string and her boots to sodden. A gust of wind turned her umbrella inside out.
Abandoning all dignity, she ran for protection. She threw open the Bronco’s door with such force that it seemed for a second it might break off. Safely inside, she tossed her briefcase and broken umbrella to the floor of the backseat and waited. The sky could only dump so much water. For a few minutes, she watched heavy branches ripping and scattering like twigs in the force of the storm. Freshets of water cascaded down Highway 50. Cars pulled over to the side, wipers going like mad, as the street became a brook, a river, a lake.
She let the drumming on the roof occupy her consciousness. Bob had probably made it home from school by now, and Sandy should be safe at home. Paul would be over Echo Summit and down in the Sacramento Valley by now. The briefcase on the backseat floor held her most pressing client files, the ones she would take to bed with her to read and consider.
Sharp pellets struck the roof. Hail. People on the streets scurried for cover like mice escaping a marauding cat. “Just ducky,” she muttered as the streetlights blinked out all at once. Across the street, the neon flicked off on the Mexican restaurant’s sign.
The whole town went dark, and this time the lights didn’t come back.
A mountain town without power isn’t a town at all, but an animal hideout under the trees, like a deer nest or bear cave. They saw it all the time up here, the facade of civilization casually torn away by snow, wind, storms, not to mention the raw human emotions uncovered after losing everything at the all-too-civilized casinos on the Nevada side of town. Scylla and Charybdis, and humanity reduced to headlights in the din.
Now what? She gave it another minute, pulling for civilization, but nature had the town firmly in hand. No lights, rain lashing the windshield. She fumbled for her car keys, which were supposed to be clipped with a metal carabiner to her purse strap, but they weren’t there. She must have dropped them somewhere. She clicked on the overhead lights, which ran on the battery, and looked through her keys on the ring. House key and office key, check, mystery key, check, Bob’s spare bike-lock key, yep, but no car key.
She hadn’t seen the doggone key since she’d parked at the office at eight that morning. Sandy had dropped her off at the courthouse and Paul had picked her up.
She should go back into the building and look for the key, a very daunting thought right now, but she was already half out the door again when she remembered that she had an old plastic key in her wallet, which the auto association had sent her for use in an emergency.
The fan on the heater at home wouldn’t work without electricity. Bob would be making a fire and enjoying the process entirely too much. She should hurry before he burned the cabin down.
She would find the key tomorrow. Tonight she couldn’t go back in there. She fished out the plastic key and turned it in the ignition, hoping the flimsy white plastic wouldn’t break.
The Bronco started up with a mighty roar.
She crept down Pioneer Trail in four-wheel drive, sending up fin-shaped, watery plumes and jouncing over the forest trash. A few stalled cars surprised her in the middle of the road, one with the driver’s-side door hanging wide open, its driver too concerned about getting home to care about water damage.
A branch from the sugar pine next to the porch sprawled across her downsloping driveway. She crunched over it, ran up the steps to the wooden porch, and unlocked the front door, noticing a pair of mountain bikes pushed together under the eaves. Two bikes, not one.
In the entryway, stripping off her boots and socks, she could see just a corner of the orange Swedish fireplace, and all she could think about was dinner.
A muffled commotion in the living room and scrabbling paws over the wood floors gave her warning of Hitchcock just before the big black dog rushed her. “You’re supposed to hear me before I come in the house, you silly animal.” She kissed the dog’s head and pulled gently on his ears. “Bob!”
In the living room, the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the backyard was inky-no one had pulled the curtains-and the wood stove was cold. She groped for the lights, and when that didn’t work, she reached above the refrigerator for matches and lit the big candle on the coffee table.
“Right here,” Bob said from the couch a few feet away. In the flickering light, another tangle of jeans and hair emerged next to him. Nina recognized Nikki, Bob’s bandmate, three years older and three centuries wiser, she of the sly brown eyes. Nina knew Nikki well, well enough to distrust her. An ex-client, sixteen years old, she had the anarchy-of-spirit thing down pat. Nina did not like her sitting there on the couch, feigning innocence, or the skinny hand clasping Bob’s.
“Hi,” Nikki said, then, as if cued, disengaged her hand from Bob’s. She picked up a can of cola and drank deeply. Bob watched her drink.
To cover a spasm of alarm, Nina turned her back on them, went to the fridge, and uncorked the half bottle of Clos du Bois, forcing herself to pour a glass instead of taking the swig she so fervently desired at that moment.
“We were trying to do homework, but the lights went out,” Bob said.
“I see,” Nina said. She took two sips and two deep breaths, walked back into the living room, and drew the curtains shut. While Bob and Nikki sat primly on the couch, she crumpled newspapers, tossed them on the grate, and dug out some kindling from the basket.
“I’ll do that, Mom,” Bob offered. He got up.
“Good idea. Nikki, there are more candles in the kitchen above the dryer. Would you mind getting a few? It’s still too dark to see.” And unwelcoming, to say the least, she thought.
“Cold, too,” said Bob, who had apparently not previously noticed. He took the poker from Nina, jabbing the burning sticks in the wood stove. Nina sat down on the carpet, held her glass, and waited for the fire to flare up and send warmth her way. The sleeves of her blouse were wet, her very soul was wet, but she was damned if she was going to go into her bedroom to change and leave these two alone.
Nikki’s bony knee came and went through a gaping hole in her jeans as she set candles around the room. The forlorn face and familiar defiant, ready-for-rejection expression inspired Nina’s pity, exasperation, and righteous motherly fear.
“We were just going to practice a new song I wrote,” Nikki said. “I brought my guitar. It was all very structured. But you can’t play without electricity.”
“Uh huh,” said Nina.
“Well. I’m outta here,” Nikki said, heading for the door, reading Nina’s mind. “Have a good night.”
“It’s pouring out there. Does your mother-?” Nina started.
“I left a note, but she’s not home anyway.” Nikki found her parka on the floor. With the hood pulled tight around her face, she looked like an orphan boy.
Bob said, “I’ll ride you home.” He got up.
“Not necessary,” Nikki said.
“Back in half an hour,” Bob told Nina.
“I can take care of myself,” Nikki said.
“Don’t be stupid. When are you gonna get a good offer like that again?”
“Then I’m stupid.”
“Wait. I’ll drive you,” Nina said.
“No. It’s not that far. Stay here and enjoy your supper.”
Nina almost invited Nikki to supper right then, she looked so much like a starving hound dog who hasn’t eaten for a week, but there were limits. She wanted Nikki to go home, Nikki was heading out the door, and Nina wasn’t going to stop her.
“Later,” Nikki said, strapping her guitar on her back. She flipped a hand at Bob and went out the door.
Bob went to the window and looked out. “We should have made her stay,” he said.
“Haven’t you got homework? You’re not supposed to-to-”
“To what?”
“Never mind. Do me a favor, honey. Just let me sit here for a second and drink my glass of wine in peace.”
Bob shrugged, went into the kitchen, and came out with a turkey sandwich and a Gatorade. “Supper is served,” he said, then went into his room and shut the door, not too loudly.
On an ordinary night, at this point in the course of events, she would cook, then tackle the files she had brought home, but the fire continued to burn, Bob had his sandwich, and the rocking-chair pillow lured her with its softness. She sat down to stare into the orange and red, listening to the whine and howl of wind outside. The briefcase was in her car. She was in no mood to stuff her warm feet into stone-cold boots and throw a coat on so that she could fight her way back through the damp, freezing night. She could allow herself to spend an hour this Thursday evening dozing here, stroking her dog.
She yawned and flashed to a memory of Bob as a toddler. They were still living on the Monterey Peninsula, where she worked as a law clerk during the day and studied law at night. His preschool teacher called her in the middle of a meeting. “Bobby won’t lie down for naps,” she said. “We’ve tried everything, Ms. Reilly, but I’m afraid you’ll have to come and get him and take him home. He’s a disruptive influence on the other chil-dren.”
She hadn’t known what to do with him then, and she didn’t know what to do with him now. But for now he was safe and warm, and she didn’t have to worry.
She woke from a doze and checked her watch. Already nine o’clock! Down the hall, holding a candle like a Victorian to light her way, she opened the door and saw Bob retired safely under his covers, flashlight glowing, his French textbook open beside him.
Hungry, she made herself a grilled-cheese sandwich and poured herself another glass of wine, telling herself that up to twelve ounces actually helps your heart. Scanning the newspaper by the last of the firelight, she yawned again and pushed it into the brown recycling bag in the kitchen. A hundred small tasks in that room drew some spotty attention. She wiped, closed cupboards, listed groceries needed. It was late and too dark to work, but she still should go get her papers out of the truck.
The kitchen lights crackled and died again. She hunted in the cabinets for the big flashlight for a long time, even exploring the dreaded laundry area. Giving up, she felt her way upstairs and down the hallway. Once in her own room, she tossed her clothes on the floor and climbed into bed, pulling the comforter up to her neck. Her files would be safe enough in the Bronco until morning.
But they weren’t.
Routines. The first slap of cold water on the face, the scalding-hot shower. The lick and promise of lotion over rough spots on her feet; the peppermint of toothpaste. Bob rummaging for cereal, the clink of his spoon as he ate. The radio flipping from pop to talk and back again.
Friday morning rushed along, the storm over, the world outside steaming and sparkling, Bob late, Hitchcock barking for a walk before she had shaken off her nighttime coma and having to settle for a trip into the backyard, eggs needing to be cooked. The power had been restored and a multichrome rainbow of sunlight drenched the kitchen.
She loved the part where she walked out the door in the morning, loved the blowing leaves, the smell of wood smoke, and heart-piercing mountains all around. Another day awaited, full of large frustrations and small triumphs and more fresh coffee, if she was lucky. Her office was her second home, and Sandy and Sandy’s son, Wish, were her second family. Her heart felt full; she felt sharp and cool; her son was ready for school; she had a full day ahead.
But that morning when she went out to the driveway all dressed up in navy blue for morning court she stopped cold in her tracks. Two long seconds of unreality struck before she could collect herself and make sense out of what greeted her.
An empty driveway.
Her car wasn’t there.
Stupidly, she walked up the driveway to the street and looked left and right as if it had somehow moved itself in the night. Had it rolled into the backyard? No, she had let the dog into the yard earlier. No Bronco there. She tried to think. Yes, she had definitely driven it home last night, she remembered clearly.
Nikki? Her mountain bike was gone. Anyway, although she bemoaned the fact, Nikki didn’t have a license to drive last time Nina heard. Neither did Bob.
The key! The white plastic key still sat in her wallet. But-
A lost vehicle isn’t like a lost dog. You can’t run around the neighborhood calling for it. Some jerk had stolen her truck right out of her own driveway. Nina went back inside and got Bob, who came out to stare in disbelief at the spot where the Bronco usually sat. Then she called the South Lake Tahoe Police Department and her office. Then she remembered the files.
Her heart fell to her shoes. She had definitely locked the truck, she remembered what a hassle it was with that stupid plastic key…
She counted the files in her mind. Three: the Cruz custody battle, the Vangs and their insurance claim, and-oh no, the new one, the campground-murder case, with the sisters, Brandy and Angel.
Confidential files. Her most sensitive cases, the ones with information no one should see, stuffed inside her briefcase on the floor of the backseat of the Bronco.
Out there somewhere, in someone’s sweaty, thieving paws.
W AITING ON THE DRIVEWAY for the police, Nina walked up and down rubbing her neck, and when that didn’t take the rigidity out of it, she rotated it a few times. She had made the mistake that everybody makes once in ten thousand events. Nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine correct decisions, one mistake, and with any luck at all, you don’t get called on the mistake. You leave something important in the car, smack your forehead in the morning when you realize it, run outside, and find all is well.
Across the street, her neighbor climbed up a steep ladder to his roof and fiddled with green shingles.
He could fall, she thought. He could die. Every day presented new opportunities for catastrophe.
She decided not to wave at him.
A mud-spattered patrol car pulled up in front. Gleaming pines and firs dripped all around, but the asphalt steamed in the morning sun, rapidly drying. Bob, ready to take the bus, ran up behind her begging for money, lunchless because she had been hunting for the extra copy of the Bronco registration and the title. She shoved several crumpled dollars she had in a pocket toward him, leaning out for a kiss on the cheek as he passed.
“Good luck, Mom,” he said, running down the street to the stop where his school bus was already loading.
Two officers, a man and a woman looking like carpenters with all the tools hanging from their belts, hauled themselves out of the car, leaving the police radio on loud to make sure all the neighbors would know there was trouble at the Reilly house. “Counselor. How you doing,” said the tall woman.
“Officer Scholl. Thanks for coming.” Great, Nina thought. Of course they would send Jean Scholl. She didn’t feel thankful, she felt annoyed at her rotten luck, but she had no choice but to accept the help on offer.
Scholl stared at her for a minute, tightened her lips, then looked away. She didn’t offer to shake and neither did Nina. Her gray eyes raked the empty driveway, looking for traces, suddenly all business.
“Good morning,” Dave Matthias said, introducing himself. Newer in the department, he was narrow-jawed and short on hair.
A major drawback of doing criminal-defense work in a small town was that sometimes Nina had to try to discredit the work and the motives of local cops for the sake of her clients. Some cops lied and some were biased. Whatever the negative attitude, they didn’t appreciate being called on it in court. Scholl’s outburst on Thursday showed that. The best Nina hoped for from these two would be wary reserve, so she was pleasantly surprised when they listened intently and worked the information like pros. To her relief, Scholl had apparently decided to put their differences aside for the time being and do her job.
Nina spent an hour with them, retracing her trip home the night before, where exactly she had parked, handing over copies of the truck papers, which she had made on the home fax copier. They all went down to the driveway and looked for bits of glass, footprints in the still-damp pine needles in the cracks in the asphalt, anything. The driveway had no conspicuous clues to yield.
“You’re sure you lost your car key sometime during the day yesterday,” Officer Scholl said at least five times.
Nina had spent the past few minutes reliving the night’s activities in excruciating detail. Her car key was gone. That was a fact. “I can’t find it in my purse or the pockets of the clothes I was wearing.”
“But you don’t think the key could have fallen between the seats. Or something.”
“I don’t know. What I’m saying is that I locked the doors of the Bronco last night with my spare key. So nobody just came up and was searching through an unlocked car and just happened to find my key. Either they broke in and hot-wired the Bronco or they somehow have my lost key.”
“No one could have used your spare key. The plastic one.” The monotonic, carefully nonjudgmental voice made Nina feel worse.
“It was in my wallet in the living room. I always lock the house up tight and turn on the alarm. It was right there. This morning I found it in the wallet where I left it.”
Officer Matthias gave the gate an experimental kick, as though this might make it give up a hint.
Nina went on, “It was the storm. It’s a quiet neighborhood. I meant to go back out right away but I got distracted.” Thank God, the house and office keys hadn’t been on the same keychain. Nina closed her eyes for a moment, recalling a recent conversation with Paul in the Long’s Drug Store parking lot as they had watched a man get out of his car and go into the store, leaving his motor running. “If someone drives off in that car,” Paul said, “he’s doing that ass a favor. They oughtta arrest him as an accessory, teach him a lesson.”
The officers wrote down what Nina told them about the three files. “Legal files,” she said.
“Client files?” Scholl asked, scribbling on a notepad.
She bit her lip. “Yes.”
“Names on the files?”
“Yes. The files were labeled.”
“I get that. But what were the names?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You won’t give us the labels on the files? How are we supposed to identify them if they’re found in a trash can behind some house in Meyers?”
“Call me and I’ll come down and look at any legal-sized manila folders you find.”
“And what if one of the people in your files decided he wanted them back? How are we going to question him if we don’t even know his name?” Scholl asked, putting her pad down for the moment, letting only a glint of irritation enter her eyes.
“I can’t help you there.”
“Kind of a drawback to our investigation.”
“Yes. It is.”
“What’s in the files?”
“Pleadings.” Those she could reproduce, with copies from the clerk’s office. Those were public documents. The Decree of Dissolution with the attached Marital Settlement Agreement in Kevin Cruz’s case, for instance. “And business correspondence,” mostly boring. Innocuous or technical lawyer letters from the other side. Transmittal memos to the court.
“And?” asked Matthias. Both officers now stood side by side waiting to hear the rest. They already knew, but they wanted her to say it.
“Confidential material.”
Officer Scholl wrote. “That would include what?”
“My attorney work-product, including my legal research notes, my notes of consultations with experts. Confidential.”
“Uh huh. Like what?”
“Like my client-intake notes. I can’t give details. Most of it is protected by the attorney-client privilege.”
“Written documents?”
“Right,” Nina said, picturing the client-intake forms in her mind. Addresses for people who did not want to be found. Figures for a hefty insurance settlement that would make some people sit up and take greedy notice if they knew about it. Kevin’s secret.
The ramifications rushed at her like a Roman phalanx. Kevin Cruz was a local cop. He would hear about the auto theft and the files and would want to know if his could be involved. He would be concerned.
The custody hearing continued at eleven-thirty this morning.
How could she manage this catastrophe? She had to get into the office, talk to Sandy.
“Because what I’m wondering…” said Officer Scholl, digging around in a pocket and putting on expensive-looking mirrored sunglasses against the glare of sun. She faced Nina directly: “Is the auto theft ancillary? You know? Did this thief want your files?”
“How could anyone know I’d be taking them home last night? I don’t often do that,” Nina said.
“You don’t take files home?”
“Well, yes. But these particular files-”
“Could someone have seen you leave and followed you home?”
“I didn’t notice anyone, but I wasn’t looking either.”
“This young lady, Nicole Zack. She left after you had arrived.”
“I’m sure she had nothing to do with it.”
“Maybe. But it’s raining, it’s dark, she’s supposed to be biking home. Maybe she opens the Bronco door-”
“It was locked. I locked it.”
“Maybe. But maybe she sees a key on the seat. You dropped it there. Maybe she decides to borrow the Bronco just to get herself home.”
“She’d have to break in, because as I keep telling you, the Bronco was locked with my spare key.”
“You were tired. Maybe you just thought you locked it,” Officer Matthias put in.
“Talk to her if you want,” Nina said. “But it wasn’t her. I locked the doors. I didn’t hear anything.”
“Well, but, you know? Nikki Zack, right here last night, walking along this very driveway on a noisy, stormy night. We know her. You defended her once.”
“I know what you’re thinking, but she was acquitted. She was proven to be innocent of that crime.”
Scholl sighed. Here police butted heads with defense attorneys daily. “Maybe she was proven innocent of that crime,” she said. “But, speaking generally, involvement with the law, meaning us, gets to be a bad habit. Like cigarettes.” She smiled in an overly friendly fashion. “People get hooked before they know it. They can’t quit.” Below his own sunglasses, Matthias’s pale mouth wiggled in response to her joke.
“That may be the opinion around the good old police department,” Nina said, knowing better but unwilling to conceal her disdain, “but she’s a friend of my son’s, and I trust her.” She didn’t, but they didn’t have to know that.
“She know any of the people whose files got stolen? Any people who might be mentioned in the files?”
Nina thought about her cases. “No. Look. This is simple auto theft. I believe that, but it’s an emergency for me because of the briefcase. The files. This is urgent, Officer.”
Scholl snapped her notebook shut. “We’ll give it the same urgent attention we’d give any theft of property.” She delivered the news in that same controlled officious monotone that made Nina think paranoiacally of all sorts of things: whether she was more unpopular than she knew with law enforcement, whether they might actually put the theft on the back burner to cause her further discomfiture, whether Scholl was laughing at her problems behind those unfashionable glasses, for starters.
“I have to get to my office,” Nina said. “I have to call a taxi. I-”
“Call me if you find your files at your office,” Scholl said, handing Nina her card.
“I won’t. They were in the truck.”
“Check anyway.” Officer Scholl asked for Nikki’s address and phone number and Nina gave the information. As soon as the two officers pulled out, Nina got on the phone to the taxi company. Another half hour passed before she arrived at the Starlake Building and rushed down the hall to her office, feeling naked without her briefcase, stripped, vulnerable, mad, and frightened all at once.
“Three questions,” said Sandy as Nina came into the office. “These points and authorities on the summary-judgment motion…”
“I have one for you,” Nina said, tossing her things into her office and turning back to face her secretary. “Did I by any chance leave a pile of files on your desk last night?”
“You always leave a pile.” Sandy pointed to a stack of paperwork Nina had left. Sandy Whitefeather, a member of the local Native American Washoe tribe, had been working with Nina ever since Nina had left her marriage and job in San Francisco and moved to South Lake Tahoe several years before.
“Not those.” But she rummaged through the papers on Sandy’s desk anyway.
“Whoa, Nellie,” Sandy said, putting a smooth brown hand with short nails and a heavy silver wristband down on the stack of files just in front of her. “You lost some files?”
“I lost the Bronco.”
“What?”
“I lost the entire Bronco, and my briefcase happened to be in it.” Sandy’s eyebrow rose perceptibly as she tapped her fingertip against the tip of her nose, listening while Nina told her in a few words what had happened. “I know, I know,” Nina said. “I never should have left them sitting there on the floor of the backseat. That was foolish. I can’t believe my rotten luck. The Cruz case. That’s up in the air, and there’s something strange going on with Lisa Cruz, who went nuts on the stand yesterday. The third day of Kevin’s temporary-custody hearing is in two hours. He wants those kids and she gives him a hard time about letting them visit.”
“He’s been waiting a long time. He’s not gonna let you put it over.”
“No, he won’t. He shouldn’t have to.” Interject a massive guilt attack into the hellish clash of emotions she was feeling. “But Kevin told me something in strictest confidence. It’s on the client-intake form, information that could ruin his chances to get joint custody of his kids if-if-”
“If his wife finds out. Can you handle the hearing without the file, that’s what I wonder.”
“Of course that’s my biggest concern at the moment. The basics-most of the prep work for the hearing-we have the computer file.”
“I’ll make you a printout.” Sandy started hitting the keyboard keys as they talked. The printer clicked and hummed and sucked in a sheet of paper. They watched the paper fill with words.
“What about the exhibits?” Sandy asked.
“Kevin was bringing the originals to court. I only had copies in the file. This hearing I can manage.”
“What about the others? Kao Vang and the two sisters?”
“All those files contained were my client-intake notes. But they are crucial. Oh, this is such a mess. It’s the same as with Kevin’s file. Those notes contained material that can’t get out.”
Sandy heaved herself out of the tight black swivel chair. “Well, before we get all panicked, let’s look around here. Car key. Briefcase. Three files.” She moved around the two rooms, sandals light-footed, long blue cotton skirt swaying, long glass earrings tinkling.
Nothing showed up in Sandy’s stack or on Nina’s desk.
Sandy searched through the cabinet behind her. Nina moved over to the client area and restacked magazines, checking for anything that didn’t belong. They let the voice mail pick up the ever-ringing phone.
“Where’d you see the briefcase last? Maybe we can apply the eighteen-inch rule. Whatever you lost is almost always within eighteen inches of where you saw it last.”
“I saw it on the floor in the backseat of the Bronco.”
“And the key?”
“That’s a tough one. I keep it on a separate keyring and keep it handy because I use it all day long. I know I used it when I drove to the office yesterday morning.”
“Yesterday, during the day, when it was out in the parking lot, was the Bronco locked?”
“No. The CD player broke six months ago and we just took it out so I’ve been a little lax about locking up.”
“So. Could you have left your main car key in the Bronco yesterday?”
“It could have fallen just as I got out. You’re saying anybody could have been nosing around out there and found the key. But why not steal the truck then and there? Why wait until I drove it home?”
“Okay, then maybe you lost the car key somewhere else while you were running around town. Where were you?”
“At the courthouse. In Paul’s Mustang. Passaretti’s at the Y. The office. That’s it.”
“I’ll call the court administrator and get hold of the janitors. I’ll call Paul and have him search his car. And the owner of the restaurant. Have him search the place.”
“Yes. Thanks, Sandy.”
Sandy straightened up, turned, and put her hands on her hips. “Guess we’ll have to get out the old eighteen-inch ruler another time.”
“Check the library for the files one more time before we give up, will you?” Nina searched her office again. She went down the hall to the bathroom and looked around, or maybe she just went in there to catch her breath, regroup, because it had acted as a haven from turmoil so many times in the past for her. She walked outside to the parking lot, analyzing every step even though by now she was positive the briefcase had gone home with her and the car key was in someone else’s pocket.
The files were gone. Might as well quit wasting energy. She felt the cold edge of panic.
Nevertheless, a half hour later Nina was examining the closed files for the third time when Sandy touched her arm and said in a softer tone than usual, “They aren’t here.”
Nina sat in one of the orange client chairs. “Well, I’ll be doggoned. I will be doggoned. I have been robbed, Sandy.”
“Now what?”
“Soldier on. The Cruz hearing is in exactly”-she squinted at her watch-“one hour and fifteen minutes. Before you do anything else, Sandy, would you please call Kevin and ask him to bring his entire file? He’s got copies of all the main stuff. Dog-eared, coffee-stained, scribbled-on, ask him to bring it. I’m going into my office to try to reconstruct my closing argument.”
“You can take my car when you go.”
Nina got up.
“It’s an oldie but a goodie,” Sandy said. “Watch out for the transmission, though. It doesn’t like shifting gears.”
When she arrived at the courthouse, Nina called Sandy on her mobile phone. “Did you call Kevin Cruz?”
“He’ll meet you by the rocks.”
“Good.”
“His wife’s lawyer faxed us a supplemental witness list three minutes ago. You know who.”
Sandy had worked for Jeff Riesner once and loathed him so much she refused to say his name. In agreement with Nina about the insidious poison of the man, she even kept some compromising material she had on him in a safe place for self-protection, like an antidote to snake venom.
Nina had been trying not to think about Lisa’s attorney. Once again, his routine consisted of violating normal ethical standards, his version of a walk in the park. “He can’t do that! The hearing’s in an hour. Who’s on this list?”
“Just one new witness. I never saw the name before. A woman. Name’s Alexandra Peck. I just looked her up in the phone book and checked some Net directories. There are some Pecks in Tahoe, but her name is not listed.”
Nina said, “Oh, boy,” and rubbed her forehead. “This is not good. This is bad.”
“I figured it might be.”
“Does Riesner share even the barest bones of testimony he expects her to give?”
“What you’d expect. Matters relating to the ability of Respondent Kevin Cruz to care for the minor children.”
“I’ll talk to Kevin about her before court. Riesner has such diabolical instincts, Sandy. He knows Kevin won’t wait another day to get this settled and won’t let me ask for a continuance.”
“Who is this witness?” Sandy asked.
“I’ll deal with it.”
How could Riesner know about Ali Peck? Had he known for some time? Was he pulling a Riesner special, trying to kill her case with a last-minute, high-voltage shock? Or had he somehow learned about Ali within the past twelve hours, from her client-intake notes? Anything was possible. Riesner had means that put Nina’s to shame, and ends that would shame a squid.
A fantasy bloomed in her mind-Riesner following her home in the storm in his sleek black Mercedes, creeping around the Bronco, his dapper Italian loafers squishing through the puddles, stealing her car like a street thug. Almost funny, if you left his face out of the picture.
Or what about Lisa Cruz? She had been very, very angry at Nina in the courtroom the day before. Did she pick up Nina’s car keys?
Nina put aside her suspicions. She couldn’t find her vehicle right this minute. She needed to move on to a more immediate problem, discussing the unfortunate reappearance of Ali Peck with an overwrought client who was heading into the courtroom to face one of life’s decisive moments.
“That man better not be pulling something,” Sandy said, referring to Riesner.
“Our old buddy,” Nina said to Sandy. “Never far from our hearts.”
Sandy’s wrathful snort carried over the miles.
B ECAUSE SIXTY-FOOT-TALL FIR and pine trees towered over the two-story structure, the familiar brown and rustic El Dorado County Courthouse building sat in what seemed like perpetual shade, the better to cast a muted mood over its denizens. In the same building were housed not only the courtrooms and clerks and judges’ offices, but also the jail. Next door was the plate-glass window of the South Lake Tahoe Police Department. Across the courtyard another low building held various offices connected with county law enforcement, health, or the judicial system, including the Tahoe offices of the El Dorado County district attorney and the public defender’s office.
Locking Sandy’s car carefully, Nina tramped across wet grass to reach the mass of granite boulders erected to honor two Tahoe pioneers. Kevin Cruz sat in a tiny patch of sunshine on one of the large rocks smoking a cigarette.
“Hi, Kevin,” Nina said.
“Hi.”
They sat down on the bench and talked, Kevin firing up every two minutes, Nina wondering how to approach the bad news she carried and full of questions for him about Lisa.
Kevin had bulked up since his wife left him six months before. Like Officer Scholl, in perennial cop fashion, he wore impenetrable shades over his eyes. He didn’t look good today. He must have been to the barber, because his hair was so aggressively trimmed Nina could see pink scalp under the fair hair. His court clothes, a sport coat and slacks, looked unfinished without his usual nightstick appended. One of those men who look hopelessly phony in a necktie, he had settled for an open shirt under the jacket.
“You were brilliant yesterday,” Kevin was saying again.
“Kevin, there’s something you haven’t told me. Lisa’s got something personal against me.”
“Hey, you got what you needed to get out of her,” he said. “She got mad. She looked bad. She showed what a witch she can be.”
“Kevin. C’mon.”
“Okay, okay.” He stamped out one cigarette on the ground and rummaged for another. “I didn’t see any point in telling you,” he started. “Ah, shit. Okay. She holds you responsible for her father’s death.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story, but I’ll give you the short form. Her dad ran a small logging company that did a lot of cutting up near Wright’s Lake. Sound familiar?”
“Maybe.”
“Remember Richard Gardener? Client of yours? Guy who lost his leg in a logging accident.”
She remembered.
“You helped his worker’s-comp lawyer get him a big award, then you went after the company for shoddy safety practices and won a bunch more. Well, her old man ran the logging company, and that lawsuit wiped him out. He died shortly after it folded, heart attack. She blamed you.”
She remembered the bankruptcy, the notice she had received of the death.
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Why did you hire me, Kevin?”
He flushed, embarrassed. “She was always on about how tricky you were in court, how smart-ass. I didn’t know you, Nina, I just knew I wanted a damn good lawyer. You fit the bill. I never liked her dad. He was such a sleazeball, and to be honest, it always sounded to me like your guy deserved the money.”
Nina thought about that for a while. Realizing she was in the situation too deep to climb out, she decided to accept it. “It’s a big day for your case,” she said finally. “We’re winding things up. Are you ready?”
“I’m not ready for any of this. You know, I never hit Lisa, never scared the kids, always supported the family, always came home after my shift. But I know I made mistakes.”
“We have to talk about that,” Nina started, but Kevin rushed on.
“I think you were right yesterday, when you pointed out that her dad’s death hit hard. He cherished her and spoiled her. She isn’t as close to her mom.” He shrugged. “Who knows why? But she was never a happy person. Since her dad died she’s in a permanent state of, I don’t know what to call it. Confusion? Despair? She’s like a speed freak out to find a cure. She grabs at anything that might give her a moment’s peace. Heather and Joey are so confused, they forget how to tie their shoes right.”
“Kevin, listen.”
“But the firefighting will go the way of all her other fads. She’s probably already losing interest, talking about throwing it up to train as a nurse. Or an optometrist. Or a dancer. Or a skydiver, maybe.” He sighed. “She’ll never be happy. She’s a terrible influence. Thank God I’m going to get those kids away from her before she wrecks them.”
“Kevin-” Nina put her hand on his arm.
Reading something in her expression, he shut up.
“They know about Alexandra Peck.”
Only two weeks before, during one of two panicky, weepy, middle-of-the-night phone calls to Nina, Kevin had told Nina a secret. After a big argument with Lisa, she had kicked him out of their bed and he had started sleeping with a seventeen-year-old police cadet.
In one of those programs that are nobly conceived but loaded with hazards, high school students rode around with patrol cops on evening shifts to observe, learn, and assist. Like police officers, they wore uniforms and looked like adults, but these were kids, half of them girls, while the cops they rode with one-on-one were almost all adult men.
Kevin, raised in a small Catholic New Mexico town, had married Lisa at twenty. When he met Alexandra Peck, he didn’t know what hit him. “It just happened,” he said, and the shame in his voice over the phone only magnified the banality of his words. “We rode together for three months before I touched her. I fought it for a long time, but-Ali had no compunctions. She said she had fallen in love with me, and God, how that girl came on to me. I was so lonely. Nobody cared about me but her. In the end I couldn’t resist.”
Next he would be telling her that the girl was very grown-up for her age. Nina didn’t want to hear it. “How did it end?”
“She bolted,” Kevin said, “right after I asked her to marry me.”
“How is she now?”
“I don’t know. She dropped out of the program. She lives with her parents, so I don’t feel right about calling.”
No, Nina had thought. He wouldn’t. As he talked, she thought about affirmative action, about bringing women into male-dominated professions, about human nature, about the victims of this particularly ill-conceived experiment in social engineering. Disgusted and disappointed in her client, she allowed a few cynical thoughts about the naiveté of the police-department human-services staff who had dreamed up this program, but she kept her opinions to herself.
Kevin’s confession rearranged the balance of blame for the failure of the marriage, if Nina had cared to think about that, but she was Kevin’s advocate, not his judge. Kevin had assured her during that late-night phone call he had been very careful and that no one knew, not Ali’s parents, not his chiefs, and especially not Lisa.
Up to now, the story had stayed hidden in Kevin’s file, existing only in Nina’s scribbled notes on yellow legal paper.
Now Nina put a hand on the cold granite rock and told Kevin that Alexandra Peck had been discovered.
“Of course we can object to the late notice,” she said. “But Kevin, suddenly the case is complicated. The recommendations might change.”
His latest cigarette had burned down his finger. He dropped it.
“There’s more.” Steeling herself, Nina told him her Bronco had been stolen the night before and that his file had been inside it. “It’s possible-I mean, we have to consider whether whoever took my truck read your file and somehow, for unknown reasons, informed your wife or her lawyer about the contents.”
“Wait a minute. How’d you find out they know about Ali?”
“I got a fax in my office just a short time ago.”
“You think this has something to do with your lost files?”
“I just don’t know. It’s suspicious. On the other hand, they could have known about her for some time and waited until the last minute to spring it on us.”
“But how else-” Kevin stopped. “Is she going to testify?”
“Yes. She’s been subpoenaed. She may be here today.”
“Then they knew about her yesterday, right? Before your files were gone.”
“Possibly. But it’s also possible they got her in on very short notice.”
“My God. The kids. We’ve got to stop her!”
“I will object, but if the judge decides to let her take the stand, I’m afraid we can’t,” Nina said. “All we can do is hope she’s fair, Kevin, and hope the judge can put the relationship into perspective, as part of who you are.”
“Lisa did it,” he said. “You saw her yesterday. She’s pissed at you, and believe me, she doesn’t hold back when she’s got an issue. She can’t stand to be criticized, and you really let her have it. They can’t steal my damn file and use it against me, can they?”
“I will object,” Nina said again. “It’s wrong. But I have to give you the heads-up.”
“You let them take my file from you?” The news finally reached him.
Nina said, “I don’t know who took my truck. I don’t know if they found out about Ali from my file.”
“Don’t try to defend yourself,” Kevin said. “Don’t put a spin on it. Don’t give me a song and dance. Jesus!” His mouth contorted. “I’m gonna lose the kids over this! You have to fix this!”
“Listen, Kevin. We can continue the hearing, give ourselves some time to sort this out. If they want to put Ali Peck on the stand on this notice, we have a right to prepare for it. Let’s continue the hearing. That’s my advice.”
“Continue it? For how long?”
“It depends on the judge’s calendar.”
“I waited nine months for this hearing, which is only a temporary-custody hearing anyway. It’s almost over. Today’s the last day. So you tell me. Can you keep Ali out if we continue the hearing?”
“I don’t think so,” Nina said. “The purpose of the continuance would only be to allow us to prepare for her testimony, you see?”
“She’d definitely testify?”
“Yes.”
“We wait God knows how long and then she takes the stand anyway? Why are you suggesting this to me? Object today. Stop it.”
“I can try. But if we don’t ask for a continuance-”
“My kids are growing up! A continuance is only going to drive me crazy, you understand, Nina? Nine months I’ve waited, while Lisa jacked me around on the visits. Ali or no Ali.”
“It’s time. We should go. Can you stay calm, Kevin?” Nina didn’t feel very calm herself. Riesner’s missile had launched and now zoomed through the air toward their flimsy bunker.
N INA AND HER CLIENT entered the familiar doors of the courthouse, passed through security, and turned right, taking the stairs up, Kevin moving fast. With her heavy bag in tow, Nina had to struggle to keep up with him. Setting it down for a moment to rest her arm at the top of the stairs, she looked around, seeing no sign of a girl in the hall. She allowed herself a happy thought: Maybe we’ll luck out and Ali’ll evade process or fight it. Sometimes the lawyers kept the cases right on track, and sometimes the cases oozed in unexpected directions, along with the witnesses.
Inside the courtroom, Kevin took his place at the table beside Nina, his face set and his eyes averted from her. She smiled first at her good friend Deputy Kimura, the bailiff today, who was on the phone as usual, then nodded at Judge Milne’s clerk. Praying for the glint of a car key, she sneaked a quick look under the table. Nothing there.
Just to their right, Jeffrey Riesner took his place alongside Kevin’s wife and whispered into her ear. Lisa Cruz inclined her head toward her lawyer, listening. When he finished, she turned toward Nina and stared, holding still, all frantic activity ceased for the moment, almost frightening in her cold disgust. Eventually, she turned back to the table. She had a stiffer look today-her long hair sprayed into a twist, tiny pearl earrings, smooth white skin.
Lisa’s long-fingered hands eventually settled down on the photo of her children on the table in front of her that had kept her company throughout. Riesner finished his intermittent whispering, then got up and approached Nina. She stood to meet him, tensing her muscles to prevent herself from flinching.
Of course he noticed. Stretching to emphasize the whopping height difference between them, he plastered on a fake smile for the onlookers. “We should chat.”
Kevin excused himself to go back into the hallway momentarily for some water, leaving the two lawyers alone at Nina’s table.
“Why?” she asked.
Riesner nodded. “Outside.” Seeing her expression, he chuckled a nasty chuckle. “In full view of the glass front door of the police department. That way there’s no chance you’ll lose control. Get violent. Or something.” Although he overtly referred to an actual physical altercation they had gotten into during another case a few months earlier, the subtext was, as always, sexual.
“No,” Nina said. “I don’t think so.”
They both kept their voices low so the conversation, already bursting with tension, held an intimacy that made Nina recoil.
“Am I supposed to coax you? Don’t worry, I only eat what tastes good. You’re too sour to bite.”
“You already bite,” Nina said. She gave herself an immediate, silent tongue-lashing about not giving him the satisfaction. A cringe, a flinch, a flash of anger-he lapped up her emotional reactions like Dracula lapped blood.
The slightly upturned corner of his mouth twitched with pleasure. He had shaken her already. Success. “My client has a settlement proposal.”
“You better be serious.” Nina looked at her watch. Court convened in seven minutes. She indicated the back of the courtroom with her head. She wasn’t going to get out of Deputy Kimura’s sight this time.
Riesner followed her to the back wall and leaned against it, arms crossed. His eyes were green, the same color as fungus on the rotting stump in her backyard. “Well?” she asked.
“Mom gets sole physical custody. She’ll agree to joint legal custody. Under the circumstances, she’s being generous. Supervised visitation. He can have Christmas. She doesn’t celebrate it, so she doesn’t give a shit. And the kids go to her church.”
Sole physical custody meant the kids would live with Lisa. Kevin would have visitation rights. Joint legal custody meant Kevin would have to be consulted regarding important issues such as the kids’ educations and health.
The offer wasn’t much. Lisa couldn’t get a better deal even if she won in court. Plus Kevin had already rejected the whole idea of Lisa taking physical custody of the kids.
But Ali altered the topography of the case. Could Kevin lose even joint legal custody? Nina thought about it briefly, then decided. When in doubt, give nothing. “Too bad,” she said.
“What do you mean, too bad?”
“You weren’t serious.” She began to walk away.
“Last chance,” Riesner said. His celebratory tone stopped her. “Personally, I’d just as soon drag this thing out, rack up fees, and end by humiliating you. That would be a pleasure.”
“Why should my client consider this offer?” Nina said. “Give me one good reason.”
“Don’t you remember sweet Ali?”
“Go on.”
“I faxed the notice in advance, as you well know.”
“Too late under the rules.”
“Just learned about her myself. Ask for a continuance if you want. Heck, let’s both make more money on this thing.”
“How did you learn about Ali Peck?”
Riesner blinked. “Such an attractive young lady. Such a young, young lady.”
“If you don’t answer my question right now, this discussion is over.”
An innocent look. “As I will be happy to tell the judge, I received a call about six this morning at my home.”
Nina steeled herself and asked, “Who called you?”
“Ali Peck, stricken by a guilty conscience?”
“I don’t believe you,” Nina said. “I’m going to object.”
“Of course you will. I told my client you would.”
Nina didn’t know if Riesner already knew her files had been stolen and she recognized her need to tread extremely carefully. Just keeping her face straight stressed her out at the moment. “Where is she?”
“Oh, she’s here somewhere, trailing her subpoena, rarin’ to go.”
“If she came forward, why is she under subpoena?”
“I don’t have time right now to get into all that. Suffice it to say that Lisa now knows all about her husband’s adultery. Suffice it to say that she’s not taking it well.”
Adultery. The word recalled red letters, pulpit-thumping, and that old-time religion. Nina tried for a noncommittal expression.
“Cruz folds. He pays my fees,” Riesner said, moving away from the wall and putting an open hand out as if making a generous gesture. “He can even have a payment plan.”
Nina said through gritted teeth, “I’ll speak with him.”
“Do that.” He smiled at her, one hand in his pocket, projecting suave. “Save the little girl from the witness stand and all those sordid details about that big bad cradle-robbing client of yours.”
“Is that it?” Nina said. She looked at the clock on the wall.
“He looks chipper today,” Riesner said. Again he laughed. “He puts on a good front. Maybe that’ll make it easy for him to do the smart thing.”
“Don’t concern yourself with my client.”
“Now, there’s some damn good advice.”
Back at the table, in a hurry now, she leaned down to give Kevin a brief rundown of the conversation. He fixated on one thing. “Where’s Ali?” He looked around the court.
“Probably waiting outside by now. Riesner’s keeping her out of sight until the last second so we can’t talk to her.”
He ran a hand across the fuzz on his skull. “She worried that it might come out more than I did. I’d hate for her to go through this. Oh, man.”
“Kevin, joint legal custody gives you a lot of say, and I would make sure the visitation was generous. But it’s not the result we wanted.”
“I’m sick that this is going to happen, but I’m not going to give up. Like you said. Maybe the judge can see past Ali. I have to get Heather and Joey away from Lisa.” He shook his head. “No, we have to win. We have to fight.”
“Of course the choice is yours.”
He turned to look at Lisa and Riesner, then looked back at Nina. “I’m the better parent.”
“We still have a strong argument,” Nina said. “We’ll work around Ali. We have to.”
“Good. Thanks for not telling me to give up.” Nina felt a pang. He sure shouldn’t be thanking her when she might be part of his problem.
Nina looked over at Riesner and gave her head a sharp negative shake. He shrugged and bent to Lisa’s ear.
They all stood while Judge Milne entered the room and took his seat. Judge Milne, a tall, imposing man, had a deep golf tan and an untroubled brow. He trusted himself, that was his secret. He made his decisions and then never thought about them again. Luckily, if you appealed to his pragmatic side, his judgment was pretty good.
And luckily, he seemed to have a soft spot for Nina. She played to that. There were limits to high-mindedness.
After the preliminaries, Riesner, straightening an imaginary bend in his faultless tie, stood at his table.
“I would like to call a final witness,” he said.
“Objection, Your Honor.” Nina leafed through the pitifully small pile of papers relating to the case just to give herself another second to construct her reaction to this unsurprising news. “There are no further witnesses on his list, Judge. It’s improper and should not be allowed.”
“I see that,” Judge Milne said. “What’s going on here?”
“Your Honor, I have provided the court with a copy of a supplement to the witness list, duly faxed to counsel as soon as the witness was discovered and filed this morning. I just received some information about Miss Reilly’s client that has bearing on his fitness as a parent. I apologize that I was unable to give reasonable notice to his attorney, but this information came to me through a third party early this morning. I took Miss Reilly aside just before court and advised her again of the circumstances, so I hope we aren’t going to have a show of disingenuous surprise.”
“Inadequate notice, Your Honor.”
Judge Milne found the supplemental document. “Oh, here it is. A supplemental witness. Affidavit in support thereof. Ms. Reilly. You are requesting a continuance?”
Kevin shook his head. No.
Credit the judge for giving her a full ten minutes to argue her objection for the record. She realized from his expression almost from the beginning that he would allow Peck to testify. Finally he raised a hand to stop her. “I’ll continue it if you need additional time, Counsel. Otherwise, we’ll proceed.”
Nina sat down, already moving her mind on to the testimony. No sense letting this lost skirmish knock her off-balance. Judges were notoriously lenient about allowing evidence when it came to custody hearings. There was no jury to confuse and they wanted as much information as possible.
As Riesner escorted a young woman into the courtroom, Kevin no longer looked the confident father. He murmured something unpleasant and started to get up. Nina clamped a hand on his shoulder and shoved until he sat. “Settle down,” she whispered.
“I can’t just sit here and let them screw me!”
“Shh,” Nina said.
The buff-looking girl clumped up to the stand in jeans and hiking boots, her pink cheeks complemented by shiny black hair. Kevin clearly favored athletic women, Nina thought, as Ali swore to tell the truth. Riesner got right to it, rushing through the boring preliminaries and dallying in the salacious details.
An older version of the girl sat in the back of the courtroom, wincing. Ali’s mother.
“We went together for about three months,” Ali said in answer to a question.
“How often did you engage in sexual relations?”
She lowered her head. “A few times a week.”
“And you were seventeen at the time.”
“Yes.”
“Not even old enough to vote or drink a glass of wine, were you?”
“Objection,” Nina said. “She was seventeen. We get it.”
“Sustained.”
“And where did you have these sexual relations?” Riesner asked, steepling his hands on the table.
“Different places.” Her voice had a note of anger in it. Resentment at being hauled over here today? “Sometimes on a blanket in the woods.”
“Anywhere else?”
“In his car.”
“His patrol car?”
“No, his regular car. Never in the patrol car. We had a rule.”
“Anywhere else?”
She flushed a deeper red and didn’t answer.
“Did you ever have sex with Mr. Cruz at his home?”
Although Kevin seemed ready to explode, Nina put her hand on his arm and sat calmly. No point in objecting. Riesner would insist on this one and the judge would allow it.
“Yes.”
“Please tell the court how that came to happen.”
“We had finished for the day.”
“You mean, the youth cadet program?” he asked, with the emphasis on youth.
“Right. We were done for the day. We stopped at his house on the way to my house and, uh, we got carried away.”
“Where did you get carried away?”
“Uh, in their bed?”
“‘In their bed.’ ”
“Your Honor,” Nina started.
“We can hear, Mr. Riesner. No need to repeat,” said the judge.
“And where were the children?”
“Where do you think they were, asshole?” Kevin whispered. “Standing there watching?”
“I think they were gone somewhere. Yes, they weren’t there. We just got carried away. Kevin wouldn’t have-Kevin kept me away from his kids. I never met them.”
“Were there any other such incidents?”
“You mean did we do it in his house again?”
“Yes.”
“No. We didn’t. Except kissing once out front on the porch.”
“Where were the children that time?”
“Oh. They were supposed to be asleep but that one kid, the boy, he woke up. Kevin had to put him back to bed.”
Kevin jabbered into Nina’s ear. “Joey never saw anything, I swear it, Nina. We had no privacy-things got out of hand, but we were so careful. The door, that one time at our house, it was locked and the kids weren’t even home. I would never harm my kids, never expose them to anything like that.”
When Nina’s chance came to cross-examine the girl, she took only enough time to clarify the issues. The girl had entered into the relationship willingly and had, in fact, initiated it. The Cruz marriage had already broken down. Kevin Cruz had always shielded his kids from knowing anything about Ali. Nina kept her questions short. The longer she stayed up there, the worse things would be for Kevin.
Although Kevin tried to talk her into it, she decided not to put him back on the stand. Refuting the details of Ali’s statements might work just to etch sordid details of the relationship into the judge’s mind. And anything Kevin said now might be used against him in the further complications that were sure to develop due to Ali’s age. She had to protect him from incriminating himself.
Besides, what could Kevin say in his own defense?
Riesner made a powerful closing argument, holding forth on the virtues of Lisa Cruz, pooh-poohing the doctor’s report on her ongoing depression except to say that she was “striding toward a healthy future with her children.” He spoke glowingly of his client with zeal and warmth Nina knew was affected but seemed absolutely real. Now that he had Nina back where he wanted her, in the weaker position, he seemed assured and smooth, his old self.
“Your Honor,” he continued, “there’s been some effort on the part of the respondent to use religion as a factor in this case. Doctrines that have to do with the celebration of Christmas and birthdays or participation in voting or military service have been held to be outside the realm of religious views that could be considered as a danger to a child’s mental or physical health when it comes to deciding custody in a divorce proceeding.”
“I have your citations, Mr. Riesner,” said Judge Milne.
“Mrs. Cruz has stated that she does not know what she would decide in the sad event that a blood transfusion was recommended for one of the children but that she would be open to the input of medical professionals in addition to the opinion of Mr. Cruz. Her community activities as a firefighter and fund-raiser for good causes should be seen not as a distraction from her mothering, but as a shining example to her children, and must be considered in the light of her overall excellence as caretaker to these precious children. She’s a superior mom and commendable human being, that is clear.
“Mr. Cruz, on the other hand, with his spotty work history and reprehensible immorality, brought his adulterous behavior right into his home. The best interests of these little children are to remain with their primary caregiver. Not to cast this as a morality play, Your Honor, but consider the character of the players. Consider Mr. Cruz. Moral turpitude, Your Honor. Sexual misconduct. A crime. Mr. Cruz may end up in jail, jobless. He committed statutory rape. I will of course be compelled to turn this information over to the district attorney’s office.”
Nina’s turn.
She started her own list, a list of Kevin Cruz’s practical virtues. “A careful review of the testimony given in this case shows that Kevin Cruz would make the better custodian of his two minor children.
“Lisa Cruz’s religious activities, while admirable, are extremely time consuming. To make up for the time she spends away from home looking for converts, she told the court she would take her children along with her door-to-door. We have previous testimony that this activity, while not necessarily harmful in itself, can in time generate painful conflicts between her and the children.”
At this point, she skidded hard into the mental-health problems suffered by Lisa Cruz, recapitulating the testimony of Lisa’s own doctor, hammering home his words “chronic depression,” and reminding the judge that her own doctor said Lisa Cruz’s chronic condition was likely to come and go for the foreseeable future and could be considered a lifelong disability.
“Now, as to Ali Peck. Mr. Cruz was in fact worrying about his children and did keep her away from them, as she testified. The point is, his children were not affected in any way by this affair. His marriage was in trouble. He was lonely. He made a mistake. What’s important, Your Honor, is that this affair lasted only a short time and is long over. A single misstep should not in any way overshadow the mediator’s recommendation and finding that overall Mr. Cruz is better suited to have physical custody.”
After she sat down, she caught her breath and, by chance, caught another unsettling glare from Lisa Cruz. After Lisa turned away, Nina scrutinized Judge Milne, trying to read him.
The judge was looking at Ali, who had taken a seat in the back row, probably picturing sweaty embraces observed by little kids. Nina almost saw the decision forming like a cloud over his face. He turned back to his notes. He had decided that an excess of spiritual seeking was better than an excess of lust.
They had failed. Ali, the trim little cadet, had dispatched Kevin directly into the lonely hell reserved for loving fathers without custody.
Okay, that wasn’t fair. Kevin had put himself there.
Her client had also spent the past few minutes studying the judge. One glimpse of his white, balled knuckles was enough to tell Nina he knew what she knew. After court adjourned, he stood in the doorway shaking, curling and uncurling his fists, apparently waiting to punch somebody out. Nina nudged him through the door safely, but once they got outside he ran after Lisa, who was walking with swift steps toward the parking lot.
“Wait right there. I want to talk to you,” he said.
Nina ran up behind him. “Kevin, no.”
“Leave me alone, Kev,” Lisa said. “I’m warning you. Stay away from me.”
“You stole my file, didn’t you? You talk ethics night and day, but you know what? I know the real you under that sanctimonious bullshit. You’d do anything to keep Heather and Joey. You’d lie, cheat, steal-anything. But now hear this. I won’t let you have those kids.”
“You have no choice, do you? Just had to have your little girlfriend. You cheated on me, and you cheat your kids, behaving that way, like an animal. You have nerve even talking to me today.”
Her composure pushed Kevin right over the edge into the abyss of his fury. “Watch your back, Lisa!” he yelled, shaking a fist at her. “Those kids are mine!”
Nina held his arm. “Don’t touch her. Please don’t,” she said.
“Don’t threaten me, you loser,” Lisa said. “I’m not afraid of you or your dipshit lawyer. I’m the one in control now. And you’ll be living with that for the rest of your days.”
Kevin looked at his fist, put his hands at his sides.
Lisa turned to Nina. “As for you? I’m not surprised you crawled out of the woodwork, that’s bound to happen with vermin. Maybe it’s a good thing. I finally can tell you exactly what I think of you. You disgust me. You’re a disgrace as a human being. Why am I not surprised you get your jollies out of hurting another mother?” With that parting shot, she pulled open the door to her car and drove away.
“T HREE FILES,” SANDY said back at the office. “Our trickiest cases.”
Five P.M. The end of the day had arrived. Unlike every other day, when they would leave the door unlocked until they actually left, this Friday they had locked the door promptly and turned on the voice mail. The public business of this calamitous day had ended.
Nina had already reviewed Kevin’s hearing and its probable outcome with Sandy, who had reacted with initial restraint at the news that Nina had probably lost. Now Nina stood beside Sandy’s computer and pointed to a sheet of lined yellow paper. “These weren’t complete files, so I’ve tried to outline what I know was there in some detail over here.”
“What’s this?” Sandy said, her beringed finger hovering over a small dark blob on the sheet.
“Jelly,” said Nina promptly.
“Is not. You cried.”
“I never. But I know I shouldn’t worry so much. My files are as dry as dead beetles to anyone but another lawyer. They’re in a trash can somewhere, dumped by the delinquent who stole my car. The courthouse is always swarming with criminal defendants. If you tried to think of the worst place to drop your car keys, try the place where car thieves spend half their lives.”
“Whoo-wee.” Sandy examined the list.
“The client-intake notes are my biggest concern. People are forthright with me, and of course, like a good schoolgirl, I write it all down. And as I’m listening, I’m scribbling my thoughts and impressions.”
“Not to mention doodling all over the page. Let’s start with Kevin Cruz.”
“The secret’s out. Ali Peck testified. The result isn’t going to be pretty.”
“Quite a coincidence, her showing up at the last minute. Her name’s in the missing file.”
“I know. They might have found Ali without the file, but the time frame-”
“Anything we can do?” Sandy asked.
“Not about the hearing. It’s too late to do anything about that,” Nina said.
“That man’s gonna win,” Sandy said, referring to Riesner. “And we were five and O!”
“I wasn’t keeping score. This isn’t about-”
“You can bet he was.”
Nina stuck to the point. “Kevin was having a relationship with a young girl. Milne isn’t a prude, but, boy, she looked young up there.”
“Well, don’t sound so guilty. He slept with her, not you, for Pete’s sake,” Sandy said. “How’d they say they found out about her, anyway?”
“In court this morning, Riesner said he got a tip at home early this morning. Implied she called him.”
Sandy frowned. “He claims he just found out about her but it’s my policy never to believe a word he says. Maybe he knew months ago and sprang it on you. However. Maybe he did get a phone call. From a car thief.”
“Exactly what I’m afraid of.” Nina noted with clinical interest that her throat seemed to be closing up. She went over to a client chair and sat down and knew she was finished for the day. Time to go home.
“Wish knows Kevin. Says he’s seen him around the community college. Says Kevin comes down hard on the druggies.” Sandy’s son, Wish Whitefeather, helped around the office, studied criminology at Lake Tahoe Community College, and now drove Paul’s old van. He idolized Paul, and made a good sidekick when Paul needed help on his Tahoe work for Nina. “So. Moving right along. Number two-the arson case-the Hmong. The Vang family.”
Nina went to the window. The purple mountains’ majesty didn’t soothe her as much as usual. A Sunfish with its tricolored sail hoisted high glided into view on silver water toward the Tahoe Keys Marina in the distance. False tranquility, Nina thought. Too beautiful to be true. She remembered someone telling her once there might be bodies lingering on the bottom of Lake Tahoe, perfectly preserved in the melted snow.
She said, her back to Sandy, “The Hmong. Nobody, but nobody, knows about the insurance claim I filed.”
“It’s a pitiful story. What was the worst thing in the file?”
“Kao Vang’s address. He didn’t want to give it to me but I insisted. Kao said, he warned me, that his family would be in danger if the news got out that he might recover a settlement from the fire. People might get angry.”
“Angry enough to do what?”
“I don’t know. The Vangs won’t talk about it.”
“What should we do?”
“I don’t know.”
Nina’s voice must have told her assistant to leave things at that, because the usually exhaustively thorough Sandy moved briskly forward. She scribbled a note in pencil, then went back to the list. “Brandy Taylor and Angel Guillaume.”
“Witnesses to a murder. Deeply buried, until I wrote it all down for our thief. I have to get Brandy and Angel to the district attorney and get them protected. How I hate unknown quantities. Those two are about as unpredictable as my cooking, especially the younger one, Brandy. She got dragged here by Angel in the first place. They could get hurt, Sandy. My intake notes-I listed Angel’s address here in Tahoe, and maybe even Brandy’s in Palo Alto. Along with the whole story they told me.”
“Yeah, it’s bad. I read your notes while I was making up the file.”
“Anyway. The weekend is starting. I’m taking a run down to the Monterey Peninsula tomorrow morning, and I plan to ask Paul to come up here as soon as he can next week.”
“Wish could help out in the afternoons.”
“We could use his help. Could he come in next week?”
“You kidding? He’ll make time.”
Nina already felt better.
“The A-Team,” Sandy said. “Back together again. Last time was, I think, the Nikki Zack case.”
“You know, Sandy,” Nina said, “believe it or not, I saw these cases as a symbol of our success. We were helping ordinary people in the worst trouble of their lives who heard such good things about our work, they trusted us to do a good job.” She found herself unable to continue with the thought. “Let’s finish here quickly and go home. I have to see everyone on Monday.”
“Maybe you should wait longer.”
“I can’t. I’m not feeling good about even taking the weekend. I have an ethical duty to tell these clients promptly that there’s been a possible breach of confidentiality. Monday’s as late as I can wait. If the files turn up, great. Maybe the police will find the car with the files intact. But I have to give myself the weekend. I have to think and talk to Paul, and the insurance company. And-” She stopped.
“Two days to pray.”
“Exactly.”
Sandy said, “Things were rolling along so great. For a minute there we had so many clients we almost had the money for bigger offices. If this gets out, we’ll be lucky to keep the fig in Miracle-Gro.” They both looked over at the plump-leafed tree, which, in spite of the misfortune of living in a law office, thrived in its sunny corner. “Look. Let’s get some perspective here. Some skunk is banging around in your Bronco, having a whee of a time. He has zero interest in a briefcase full of papers lying on the floor in the backseat under his empty beer bottles.”
“The Bronco bunged up and the papers ignored-that would be the ideal outcome, and I never thought I would feel so casual about my truck. I love my truck.”
“Question.”
“Yes?”
“You pay that legal-malpractice-insurance bill I put on your desk a couple of weeks ago?”
“Sent it out last Thursday.”
“Good.” She punched her lip with a pencil, thinking. “So we went down today.”
“It’s not a football game, Sandy. Like I said.”
“He makes a lot of money.”
“Yeah, he does.” Nina had had the distinct displeasure of visiting Riesner’s leather-swaddled, mahogany-bedecked offices a few times in the past.
“I’ll tell you something about him and money. He’s also a cheapskate. When I used to work there, he gave the most pathetic Christmas presents. Instead of bonuses. Stuff he makes down in the basement at his house. Spice racks, lazy Susans, wood bowls.” She made an impolite sound. “We’d have to admire his talent. What we would have really admired was a big gift certificate from Macy’s. His ego is the size of Cave Rock. I still have one of his bowls. The dog admires it when he drinks his water. Yeah, he’s a prick, no way around it.”
“Sandy, you’re going to have to find another description for Riesner. I find that term objectionable.”
“You offended? You never said that before.”
“I’m not offended. It’s just objectionable.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to make a couple of quick calls before I go.” Nina opened the door to the inner office and went in, leaving the door open.
After a few minutes, Sandy called, “So what’s your objection? Why’s it objectionable?”
“It’s not offensive enough,” Nina said, and was rewarded by a dusty chuckle from the outer office.
Sandy said, “I’ll call Angel Guillaume tomorrow morning to set up the appointment. How do I get hold of Brandy Taylor?”
“I think she’s still at her sister’s.”
“And Kao Vang?”
“Call his friend Dr. Mai. He gave me his phone number in Fresno.”
“If it’s okay with you, I gotta go right now. Joe and I are on the committee to organize a powwow down by the lake two weeks from now. So far, lots of discussion and nothing getting done.”
“Sounds like my life. Go get ’em, Sandy.”
“Yeah, we’ll ruffle some feathers tonight. Don’t forget to lock up. And.”
“And?”
“Stay cool.”
“Yeah.”
As soon as she heard the outer door slam, Nina punched in the number of her malpractice insurer, Lawyer’s Fidelity. No answer. The company had gone home for the weekend. She should have called earlier.
She called the Lake Tahoe Police Department and asked for Officer Scholl or Matthias. The officer on duty took her message and told her the Bronco hadn’t been found yet.
She called Paul.
“Van Wagoner Investigations.”
“Hello.”
“Hi!” She always forgot his voice, so warm and full of life.
“Paul, I changed my mind. I have a big problem up here I need to discuss with you. And I miss you. I can be there about four tomorrow. Okay?”
“Sure. I was just on my way out the door. Big football game tonight at Carmel High School. Can you tell me what’s up right now? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. It’ll wait until tomorrow.”
But Paul made her give him the outline, and from the long silence on the end of the phone when she finished she knew he, too, was grappling with what to say.
“You go on,” she said. “You’ll miss the game. And I have to get home.”
“Wait, Nina. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to call an old buddy of mine who happens to be certified to practice in the state-bar court. All he does is lawyer-discipline cases. He can help us sort this out.”
From the new relief she felt, Nina knew he was on the right track. She needed information. “That sounds great. But is this attorney good? You know this person well?”
“He’s been around. Left private practice two years ago and does this exclusively now. Lives in SF and loves to come down to the Monterey Peninsula. Big talker, big ego, but you see plenty of that in your business.”
“What’s his name?”
“Let me call and see if he’s available first. Meanwhile, pack light. My big plan for the evening won’t involve dinner clothes.”
Nina’s bed did not offer its usual comforts that night. Instead of resting, she journeyed bleakly through times she had screwed up or swerved into the windy side of the law. Green sunglasses-two years ago, she had hidden this evidence of one client’s presence at a crime scene. Hypnosis-she had assured another client it would remain private. She had been wrong and Misty Patterson had almost been convicted of murder because of it. Bob’s No Fear cap, recognized by her at another crime scene-she had never told the police about that. And then there were the pieces of a dead man out there buried under the pine trees of Tahoe-a murder had been committed to protect her and Bob.
She had thought of herself as a good lawyer, good enough to look for the spirit behind the letter of the law sometimes, looking for the real rule that ought to govern the situation, trying to be brave about applying it.
She had been accused of recklessness many times, but she had always managed to pull the right result out of the situation before. Sometimes, she had to admit, she had taken risks that were more suitable to a horse track than a law practice. All in the service of the clients, she told herself.
Last night? She hadn’t even identified the risk in advance. She had been careless and lazy.
How hard would the clients get hit?
How hard would she get hit? For the first time, she let her most private, selfish fears loose, and the thought came:
Fuck! I could get disbarred!
And then what would I be?
She opened a bleary eye to the green clock light at 2:30 A.M., then rolled and tumbled until dawn in the twisted sheets. Gut-wrenching self-doubt, the whole night long.
“Y OUR BAG?” PAUL said, peering into the backseat. He must have been watching for her, because he had appeared the moment her car pulled up. Paul lived in a neighborhood called Carmel Heights at the top of the hill high above the ocean. Dry fir trees around his townhouse condo whistled and creaked in a hot wind. Behind them lay the hills that led to Carmel Valley a dozen miles inland from the central-coast community of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Beyond the trees of his parking area, the Pacific twinkled in the sun. Even in the shade the air felt heavy with heat.
“This is it.” She shouldered a small duffel. She had stuffed it with her weekend needs early in the morning: a toothbrush, a nightie, swimsuit, and a few other items, imagining herself as Grace Kelly in Rear Window, reaching into her minuscule designer case to pull out a fluffy negligee, making Jimmy Stewart’s eyes bulge. She unzipped a corner and showed him a bit of transparent chiffon.
“Ah.”
His eyes didn’t exactly bulge, although he gave her a squeeze that made her jump. “You won’t even get a chance to put it on,” he promised.
“No, no, I insist that you tear it off me.” Satisfied, she stuffed her nightie back into the bag. “Is your friend coming?”
“We’re driving down to Big Sur with him for lunch tomorrow.”
Inside, he pulled the door shut behind her and did exactly what she had imagined he might do during the long drive from the mountains to the ocean, lifting her off her feet until their faces matched, kissing her with the passion she found so moving.
She licked his neck, lounging in the spot where his hair curled slightly, and ran her hand down the dip in his back as far down as she could reach. They swayed in the doorway for some time before he set her gently down.
“I have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the fridge. Do you know that you can take the cork out of that thing and let it sit all night and the next day it’s still fizzy? It’s a wonder. Let’s get started. Even if it is four in the afternoon.”
“I’m hot. Long drive.”
“The towels are clean in there.”
She went into the bathroom, stripped down, and jumped into the shower. Paul’s decor followed his stated principle about himself: What you see is what you get. Simple and direct with a touch of whimsy in the forties’ posters of guns and molls, the room had white walls, a black-and-white-tiled floor, and white towels.
She heard Paul pop the cork off the balcony deck. He had put on the Michael Hutchence CD they both liked and was humming along. He was happy to see her. The evening would seem to stretch on forever, and that was how she wanted it: dinner, drinks, talk, lovemaking, a swim in the condo pool, late night on the balcony, his arms around her as she fell asleep.
She needed this night away from everything. Just this one night, she told herself. So it always went with Paul. “You’re already married,” he would tell her. “To your briefcase.”
As she hung the damp towel neatly on its rack, she admitted something to herself: Their relationship had changed forever on the day, just a short time before, that she realized that Paul had saved her life by killing a man who was trying to kill her. She trusted him now in ways she didn’t trust anyone else, even her brother and father. In the face of his extraordinary act, she had surrendered much of her resistance to him. She felt bound to him in some primitive way that she had better sort out fast. Coming to him now, when she was so vulnerable, felt natural and right.
She needed him. Before, he had needed her. Her need for his solidity, his loyalty, was beginning to overwhelm all those other conflicts between them.
This feeling is new, she thought to herself, looking in the mirror. Was weakness driving her so urgently to him now?
Did it matter?
Sun poured through the window. She looked at the black teddy. It wouldn’t do. The 1950s were dead, R.I.P. Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart, but viva the new century! She would at least skip the underwear.
Pulling her shorts and tank top out of her duffel, she dressed swiftly, giving one final glance to the woman in the mirror, the physical one that seldom communicated with the cyborg of the office, the one with nipples obvious under the thin material of her top, the one with tangled brown hair and bare feet. This woman could be irresponsible without dire consequences because she knew it-Paul would never hurt her. She could relax into a blur of sex and pleasure with him, if just for tonight, sleep dreamlessly in his arms, and store up power for Monday.
Out on the deck, Paul grilled teriyaki tuna and steamed asparagus with butter. She fed the blue jays, letting them do the chattering. They ate at a patio table covered with a red cloth, the candle flame flickering in the breeze. As the sun moved west across the ocean and the moon revealed herself, splendid and yellow, Nina ended up on Paul’s lap. They moved right along into the bedroom and Paul finally revealed the rest of his big plan.
As she walked toward the living room late on Sunday morning, she heard the low rumbling of masculine voices. His lawyer friend must have arrived. The man stood up when she came in and took a step toward her, his hand coming up and then hanging in the air, along with his mouth.
She stopped, her mouth frozen in the polite smile.
“Oh, no. No, Paul,” she said.
“What’s she doing here?” her ex-husband, Jack McIntyre, said at exactly the same time.
They both turned to Paul, who sprawled in his chair, long hairy legs stretching out from his khaki shorts. “You both would have said no. You’ll both thank me later. Get you something, Nina?” he said.
“I’ll get it,” she said, retreating into the kitchen, trying to figure out what in the world she felt, seeing Jack again. Shock, definitely. They hadn’t met since before their divorce, not since the day Jack walked out on her and their place in Bernal Heights.
She walked slowly back out, holding a soda. Apparently not a word had been spoken. Jack held a beer to his mouth and appeared to be draining it. Beer on Sunday morning. That was new.
“Well,” Paul said. “Ha, ha. Jack, Nina. Nina, Jack.”
“Hello, Nina,” Jack said. He raised his eyebrows, shrugged, smiled slightly. “Believe me, although I should have suspected he was up to something, I didn’t.”
“Hello.” She sat down on the couch, keeping her legs together, and crossed her arms. “What’re you doing here?”
“I was invited,” Jack said. “It’s been a couple of years now, hasn’t it? Amazing. I meant to call Bob more often.”
“He’s been busy. Like you, I’m sure.”
“You always did fit into a T-shirt just right,” Jack said.
Nina crossed her arms.
Jack broke into a broad smile. “Paul, you old fox.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, buddy. This is business,” Paul said.
Jack ignored him. He did look fine, if pale from the years in high-rise San Francisco and away from the beaches. Shorter than Paul, he was brawny, although leaner than he looked, something you only saw when he took his shirt off. He had reminded her of a teddy bear when they met, a hairy Big Sur guy who brooked no shit but had a ready smile and a kind word for everyone.
Nina was remembering her last phone conversation with Jack. He had urged her to hurry up and sign the papers so he could marry his girlfriend. She had reacted, well, with a certain lack of gentility. The old anger hadn’t had time to rise up yet and all she felt was nervous and curious. She looked again at Paul, who cleared his throat, stalling, as if waiting to see how she would react.
“He’s the state bar defense lawyer?”
“I hear he’s good,” Paul said. “Of course, I hear that from him.”
Jack said, “Ah ha. The pieces begin to come together.”
Odd, to be in a room with two men she had slept with. She had no urge to compare them, then suddenly found herself doing exactly that. Apples and oranges, she thought. Onions and leeks. Cucumbers and bananas. She giggled. Nerves.
“What’s so funny?” Jack asked.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
“I haven’t even started my song and dance yet, and you’re smiling.” He turned to Paul. “Did you tell her about Eva? Is that why she’s smiling?”
“Tell me what?”
“She dumped my ass,” Jack said. “Two months ago.” He looked hurt when he said it.
“Really,” Nina said.
“I didn’t even see it coming. She moved out and served me the next day.”
“She does move fast,” Nina said. Jack’s new wife had also been the attorney who represented Jack in his divorce from Nina.
“Go ahead. Tell me I deserved it.” After a pause pregnant with Nina’s silence, Jack said, “Well. You get a gold star for restraint. Here I am, battered and blue. So, Paul, you going to tell me what’s up?”
Paul got up. “Let’s save that until we’re on the deck at Nepenthe. It’s a forty-five-minute drive and I’m already hungry.”
Jack and Nina continued to sneak looks at each other. She decided he was as intense and brash as ever but he had a new aspect today. He looked wounded, maybe. Chastened.
Improved. Definitely improved.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Sure.”
They took Jack’s green Chrysler Sebring, top down. Paul sat in the rear seat, his legs digging into Nina’s back. The fog had drifted out to sea around the Highlands Inn and the twisting road revealed glimpses of deep blue sea on their right around every turn. Vacationers blew past them as Jack stuck to the speed limit. When the houses grew sparse, the road hugged a cliff that stretched high above them on their left and down a thousand feet, to the crashing surf far below.
“Awesome!” Jack shouted over the noise of the engine. “I always forget.”
As they crossed the Bixby Creek Bridge, Paul leaned forward to touch Nina’s shoulder, because she had a very bad memory of that place that had to do with her mother’s death many years before. They swerved past the Point Sur Lighthouse, where the navy was on the lookout for terrorists these days. The world had changed since Nina’s childhood, when VW vans full of bell-bottomed kids had traveled this beautiful road.
At the thick redwood forests of Pfeiffer Big Sur they dipped into shadow. Jack told them about how his wife had taken their hamster with her and how he had seriously considered filing for custody. Solemnly, he laid out his legal strategy, even citing some cases, probably invented but nevertheless credible and detailed. Some people in trouble turned to counseling; Jack turned to storytelling. His disasters always evolved into deadpan comedy skits, which was his way of controlling and reshaping his psychic traumas.
They parked in the driveway at the foot of the concrete staircase that led to the Phoenix Shop and Nepenthe. “Haven’t been here in years,” Jack said. “Lots of good times here. Remember that Halloween party in, let’s see, I forget the year. Who was it wore the pumpkin head? Probably Paul.”
Paul took Nina’s arm as they went up. They both puffed, but the hike was worth the wait because Nepenthe possessed a spectacular view. Under the enormous, shifting sky, miles and miles of ragged cliffs collided with the ocean.
“There are seven wonders, but are there seven wonderful views?” Jack said as they arrived at the top. “There ought to be. Put this one at number one.”
They sat on the outside deck and ordered burgers and margaritas. Paul and Jack had fallen into the old banter Nina remembered from years ago when she had first met them. She had been a law student clerking at Jack’s firm in Carmel, and Paul-incredible! Paul had still been a cop. Bob was a toddler then. Her mother was alive.
So much had happened since, too much too fast. Another marriage, another loss…
“I was sorry to hear about your husband, Nina. What a sad way to die. How terrible for you and Bob.”
Jack had wormed his way into her heart, just like old times. She never knew what to say. “Thank you.”
“How’s the law practice up there in the mountains? I look east sometimes outside my window on the thirtieth floor in the Financial District and I think of you in your cozy town and I think, you finally figured it all out-”
Nina gave a short laugh. “Right.”
“She needs to talk to you professionally,” Paul said. “So straighten up. Go ahead, Nina, dive in.”
“I’m still thinking about it,” Nina said. “Jack, are you really a certified specialist in state bar matters?”
“At your service, fair lady,” Jack said. He stood up suddenly and pretended to sweep a cap off his head and bowed. “I’ve been hoping Paul dragged me down here just to get us talking again, actually.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” Paul said. “Actually.” He put his hand over Nina’s.
“So you guys are lovers?” Jack said, Jack-style, no pussyfooting around. “She’s with you?”
Paul pulled Nina close. Jack’s eyes flickered.
She felt vaguely like a sack of flour being weighed by two merchants. “Paul and I aren’t your business,” she said.
“Maybe. Still, I find myself absorbed by the implications, and just a little aggravated. Paul, you could have said something. I’ve talked to you on the phone many times. We went climbing this summer at Pinnacles. We hit Vegas last month. You never once mentioned Nina.”
“No time like the present.”
“Well, well, well,” Jack said. “Coffee for me,” he told the waitress. “Nina? Anything?”
“I’ll have the chocolate mousse,” Nina said.
“That’s right. Chocolate in times of stress. I remember that. You have need of my services, I take it,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear it. That’s the first thing I always tell my clients. I also tell them it’s inevitable. Happens to every one of us sooner or later. Complaint from a client. Ceiling caving in. It’s the grand old practice of law these days.”
“I’m looking for some advice. Some information. About malpractice,” Nina said.
“Okay,” Jack said. He folded his hands. “You get a complaint against you? Malpractice?”
“Not yet.”
“‘Not yet.’ A wallop awaits behind those two little words. What happened?”
Nina told him. She didn’t spare herself, telling about the missing key, her stolen truck, her sleepiness, the fact that she often brought files home. Jack shook his head and Paul narrowed his eyes. Then she got to the worst part.
She talked about Jeff Riesner’s new witness in the Cruz case and her fear that Kevin’s file had been read. “These particular files-they are seriously confidential. The ones where-the clients could suffer severe harm if the files are read by the wrong people. That may already have happened in the Cruz case. I don’t know for sure.”
“Hard luck,” Jack said. Putting his hands behind his head, he expelled a long breath.
“Well?” Nina said.
“You want to know, are you going to get into trouble with the California State Bar? You could get sued, too, in a civil action, but let’s put that aside right now. It’s your license you’re worried about right now, not your fortune. Or have you got a fortune these days?”
“I’m paying the bills. I put a down payment on the cabin where Bob and I live. I’m not rich.”
“You talked to your malpractice insurer?”
“Couldn’t reach them. Monday.”
“Talked to the clients?”
“Not in the other two cases. Monday.”
“Current status of the police investigation?”
“I called this morning before I even got out of bed. No Bronco, no files, no progress. They’re already tired of hearing from me, and I wasn’t popular before.”
“Hmm. First. Paul did right, coming to me. I do this stuff all day long.”
“Thanks for listening.”
“No problem. Pick up the tab and you can write the whole dinner off. It’s a legal consult now. Hire me.”
“What?”
“Okay, I’m hired. Pay to be worked out later. This is now an unassailably privileged conversation.”
“What about Paul?” Nina said. “He’s not a lawyer.”
“You’re not here, buddy. Never forget that.”
Paul nodded.
“Okay. Second thing. I have never heard of anybody getting disbarred for losing some files, for a single act of carelessness. You have to work at it to get disbarred. A pattern of dipping into the trust funds, sure. Conviction of a felony. Taking off, address unknown, with the retainers and leaving the clients twisting in the wind. Mostly it’s money stuff.”
“There was-a complaint some time back.”
“Oh?”
“Jeffrey Riesner got annoyed with how I was handling a case. The bar slapped me on the wrist, verbally, of course.”
“No harm done, then. Tell you a big secret.” He leaned his head close to Nina’s. “They’ll reinstate just about anybody after a few years. There’s no such thing as disbarment for life. You can always lay low and do community work and try again later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“I can’t imagine that happening to me. I’ve been a lawyer for years, Jack, and for that privilege I slaved for four years in night law school, working days at Klaus’s firm. It’s all I know and all I ever wanted.” There was a catch in her throat.
“So you’ve never heard of a disbarment for lost files,” Paul said, prodding him.
“I’ll tell you what concerns me. The state bar prioritizes, you know. They get more complaints from the public than they could ever start to handle. So they look at the complaint, and the main thing they want to know in almost every case where it isn’t just summary disbarment, where you killed your wife and you’re out, buddy, the main thing is the extent of the harm to the client. That’s the criterion. And that’s my concern here. It’s not just, ah shit, I lost some paperwork, I’ll just run down to the courthouse and get duplicates. Or incorporation documents or even a contract dispute. Right?”
“Not these cases, no,” Nina said.
“These are people who have something privileged they have told you, and it’s gonna shake their world if somebody reads your notes and talks to the right people?”
“Exactly.”
“Anybody gonna commit suicide if the story comes out?”
“Oh God, I hope not!”
“There’s that potential?”
“I can’t say.”
“Extortion?”
“Could be.”
He tilted his head. “How bad is it? Is it possible one or more of these people might be physically harmed by someone else if the news gets out?”
She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“So, you feel seriously compromised. If the worst happens, that one innocently careless act might result in irreparable harm,” Jack said slowly. He thought for a while, scratching his thumb back and forth along the wooden table. “My advice to you is, when you get back think about what you can do to prevent the clients from getting hurt.”
“The first thing I’m going to do is disclose everything to them,” Nina said. “My indefensible carelessness. The whole thing.”
“No, no, no. No sackcloth and ashes. They don’t need that. Just tell them somebody stole your truck with the files in there, and definitely tell them immediately.”
“I might be able to maneuver better if you don’t tell them right away, Nina,” Paul said. “Tiptoe in there and find a few things out before they’re warned.”
Jack didn’t get it at first, then he said, “I don’t know, Paul.”
“What’s not to understand?”
“Looks to me like you’re personally involved here,” Jack told him, frowning.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
“A job like this requires extreme subtlety, quiet smarts. Maybe-”
“I’ll quietly smart you,” Paul said, grinning. “I’m on to you. You’re jealous.”
“Well, she is my wife.”
Nina interrupted. “I was your wife, Jack. Past tense, over, and let’s not forget it because so far, that has worked for me.”
Paul’s smile grew.
“Of course I want your help, Paul,” Nina said. “Thanks.”
“Obviously,” Paul said.
“But I plan to take Jack’s expert advice. I’ll tell them tomorrow, if possible.”
Now Jack smiled.
Paul shrugged. “I can live with that.”
Jack steamed forward. “Okay. That was the good news. It’s not the usual disbarment situation. Also on the plus side, Nina, your truck might still be found with files intact. Or nothing comes of this for whatever reason, and nobody complains to the state bar, so no process gets initiated. Now let’s talk about the bad news. Let’s assume a client does complain.”
“Okay,” Nina said, bracing herself.
“Let me lay some startling statistics on you. Solo practitioners are about twenty-three percent of the lawyers in California. That’s sizable. About one out of four out of one hundred seventy thousand lawyers. Now. Fifty-four percent of complaints, which are called inquiries, are filed against solos. You get twice as many complaints filed against you, you solos, proportionately. You get that?”
“Yes. Why’s that? It doesn’t seem fair.”
“I’ll get to that in a minute. You think that’s unfair, listen to this-seventy-eight percent of the cases the state bar takes through the disciplinary-hearing process to completion are solos. Damn near four out of five, although solos only constitute a quarter of the lawyers. What does that tell you?”
“It tells me something’s wrong with this picture,” Nina said.
“Now. Let’s skip the small-firm practitioners with fewer than ten lawyers in the firm. They don’t get off easy, but don’t do nearly as badly as the solos. Let’s compare what I just said about solos to the big-firm lawyers. Lawyers in firms with more than ten people. About forty-four percent of the lawyers in California are big-firm lawyers. But guess what percentage of inquiries concern them.”
“I won’t even try,” Nina said.
“Only twenty-eight percent. And guess what percent of the cases the state bar prosecutes to completion are big-firm lawyers.”
“What?”
“Two point eight percent. Less than three percent, compared to seventy-eight percent for the solos.”
“No,” Paul said. “You’re kidding.”
“No lie. Of you solos, four out of five are going all the way. If you’re big-firm, one out of forty is going all the way.”
“That’s got to be illegal,” Paul said. “Targeting the little guys.”
Nina sat there, stunned.
“So you don’t, repeat, don’t, want to get close to the system. It’s a whale. Sucks in the little krill, avoids the sharks.”
Nina gathered her wits. “But that’s discrimination. Deliberate or institutional, I can’t believe my colleagues would allow it.”
“Who knew?” Jack said. “There were rumors for years, and we finally got a law passed to force the bar to keep the statistics and make a public report. It’s called the State Bar Report under Senate Bill 143. Read it and weep.”
“But what are they going to do about it?” Nina said.
“Not a goddamn thing. They report the stats because they have to, then they apply a thick coat of whitewash. The whitewash goes like this: It’s the fault of the solos because they don’t make as much money, don’t have lots of clerks, don’t have other lawyers around to make appearances when they’re down, operate under more stressful conditions. They say the solos are more dishonest, basically, more likely to dip into the trust account. I say bullshit to that. I don’t think that’s what happens. I’ve represented enough lawyers in these proceedings that I’ve got the real picture.”
“And?” Nina said.
“It’s two things,” Jack said. “First, when one of their own gets in trouble, the big firms pay off the client. Poof, the problem goes away. And second, the state bar disciplinary procedure is totally different from regular courtroom procedure. The mines are buried in different places. The solos in trouble often can’t afford a lawyer. They start thinking well, shit, I’m a lawyer, I’ll represent myself. Boom, they make a minor technical mistake and they’ve lost their profession and their livelihood and incidentally their reputation and often their marriages and they don’t even know what hit them. It’s ironic. They’re babes in the woods just like the pro pers who get slammed around all day in regular court because they don’t have lawyers.”
“I see,” Nina said. She stared at her plate.
“But you’ve got me,” Jack said, smiling. “You want me to represent you beyond this consult? I’m willing.”
“I could represent myself,” Nina said. “In spite of what you just said. I’m a good trial lawyer. It can’t be that different. If it comes right down to it.”
“No. No, you can’t do that. Let me give you just two reasons among many why that would be a big mistake.”
“I’m listening.”
“First, here’s a small thing, subtle. If you represent yourself, you don’t get to be called Counsel. You’re Ms. Reilly, and the other guy, the state bar lawyer, she’s ‘Counsel.’ You’re a second-class citizen. You don’t get any respect. You argue your brains out, the judge is looking at you thinking, well, it’s her ass on the line, can I trust this citation she’s giving me? See?”
“I’m still listening.”
“And second, much bigger. You’re your own lawyer, you’re on double trial. You’re trying to make a point, and the judge is watching you, saying, she did all right with that one, or she’s an exaggerator, or she’s all over the map on that one. You see? You incriminate yourself every time you open your lovely mouth. Your every flaw is blown up for the judge’s viewing pleasure, as big as in the movies.”
“That’s a good point,” Nina said.
“And I didn’t even mention the xenophobia. These people are as ingrown as my right big toenail. You sound like an outsider, you can’t help it, you don’t know the right approach, the lingo. The judge’s nose twitches, you give him a headache with your foreign ways. You need me.”
“What would you charge, Jack?” Nina said.
“Half price. One fifty an hour.”
“I do want the benefit of your counsel even if this goes nowhere, Jack. But it has to be at your regular rate.”
“I’m trying here,” Jack said. “Will you please let me make nice? For old times’ sake.”
“Don’t overdo it,” Paul said.
“I’m on to you, too,” Jack said. “Who’s jealous now?”
Paul held Nina’s shoulder in a death grip and scowled at Jack. Jack leaned across the table, practically snarling back. Nina nestled into Paul’s arm, furtively enjoying the posturing of these two rival males. The primitive female in her felt hugely gratified.
But back to business. They were all professionals. This hormonal dustup would settle down fast.
She reached her hand out and shook with Jack. She had a lawyer, even if everything he had told her so far discouraged her.
They moved on to topics that didn’t piss anyone off, heinous murders, extortions, securities fraud. Paul gave them the rundown on his latest conquest, locating an in-house theft ring at a local restaurant that included a stockpiled warehouse of fine wines and frozen gourmet pizzas.
Six o’clock came and went, and the waiters went around lighting the candles. Beyond the redwood railing the faraway cliffs softened as evening fog rolled in here and there. Suddenly feeling anxious, Nina thought about the long drive home, Bob waiting to be picked up, the dog at Matt’s, grocery shopping to do before starting her week. “I have to hit the road, gents,” Nina said, rising. Both men stood up, too.
They drove back to Carmel, Paul in the backseat again, Jack holding forth in the driver’s seat. The waves below reflected the gold of the setting sun and Nina lowered the sun visor in a useless effort to stave off its assault on her eyes. She wouldn’t be home until ten and she would be tired, but she felt better. She knew there were others supporting her. Like a general, without precisely realizing it, she had spent the weekend mobilizing that support.
This time she accepted a hug from Jack in the driveway, feeling some of the tension ooze away as she hugged him, but pulling away quickly.
“It’s been so wonderful to see you, Nina. You’re more beautiful than ever,” Jack said.
“Give it a rest,” Paul said. “I’ll see you in a couple of days, Nina. Call me.”
“Better yet, call me,” Jack said. “Or I’ll call you. See how it’s going with the clients.”
Her kiss good-bye to Paul was perfunctory because she didn’t want to precipitate any more dissension in the ranks. She left the two men standing side by side, her soldiers preparing for war, she hoped not against each other.