Long Knives (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

T
he better strategy was to let him tell me his story, cluck sympathetically and then politely usher him out.

“Primo, where do you believe the
Ayuda
sank?”

He turned his head and looked around the office, first left, then right, then at the ceiling.

“What are you looking for?”

“Hidden microphones.”

I laughed. “Well, if they were hidden, you couldn’t see them, could you? But there aren’t any recording devices of any kind here. In any case, what’s the big secret? Everyone knows where that ship sank—just west of Catalina.”

“No, it is much, much farther west.”

“That can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“The Spanish records say it went down off Catalina after foundering on a reef. It’s listed as being there on every treasure-hunting website.”

“What we have discovered is that those records are not right. The ship is out farther.”

“How much farther?”

“More than two hundred miles.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“My grandfather, he found the navigator’s survivor account in the old Spanish archive.”

“In Seville?”

“Yes.”

“Primo, dozens of serious treasure hunters have pored over those archives for hundreds of years. No one has ever reported finding such a thing about the
Ayuda
.”

“I will show to you the survivor account he found. But I must ask you to sign first an agreement of confidentiality.”

“I’ll think about that, but I’m likely to say no. It would be very awkward for me, as a law professor, to enter into a binding contract with a current student, and that’s exactly what a confidentiality agreement is—a contract.”

“I understand,” he said.

I had begun to worry that I was being recruited into some sort of scam. What Primo was saying made no sense. A navigator in 1641 couldn’t possibly have calculated the exact location of his ship when it sank. Back then they couldn’t even measure longitude accurately from a ship on the open ocean. I had just finished explaining to the students in my seminar how terrible navigation was in the seventeenth century. It was one of the reasons there were so many shipwrecks.

Primo, who had been in class the day we discussed that topic, must have sensed my disbelief. “My grandfather,” he said, “took the story of the survivor and calculated approximately where is the ship. You must believe this.”

I didn’t think I needed to believe it. “When did your grandfather figure that out?”

“I am not sure. Perhaps it was in the early 1980s.”

“How deep is the ocean where you think the ship is?”

“Many thousands of feet.”

“Primo, I’m now totally disbelieving. Until the late 1980s only the US military had the technology to locate wrecks in thousands of feet of water.”

“We started a company,” he responded. “With family and investors. Two years ago we paid to have a sonar array towed over many miles of ocean bottom.”

“Where?”

“Where we thought the wreck could be. After many, many weeks of searching we found the wreckage
precisamente—
precisely.”

“How precisely?”

“It is spread over many meters of ocean floor. But we know where is that area.”

“Well, that makes more sense as a matter of theory, although you would have needed millions of dollars and a good bit of luck to pull that off.”

“We did. We spent many millions to find it. And we need now money to go down and seize the treasure from the bottom.”

“What cargo do you expect to find when you get down there?”

“Gold and silver coins.”

The whole conversation had begun to feel more and more unreal. A galleon that wrecked off Catalina would have been on its return voyage from Manila. Inbound from Manila to Mexico, the ship would have carried only trade goods to sell in Acapulco. Instead of challenging him in detail, I said, “There wouldn’t have been gold and silver coins on that voyage. Or at least not very many.”

“You are right,” he said, “but Chinese porcelains are there, and they live well in the water of the ocean, even for centuries. Plus many gold and silver jewelries made in China. Also of great value.”

It would soon be time to get Primo out of my office and leave him to his fantasy. And I had no intention of helping him find another lawyer to assist him. Before he left, though, I did want to find a way to finagle a look at the supposed survivor account—if it really existed. That did intrigue me. But if I had to sign an agreement to see it, I’d just pass.

A small tone sounded, indicating the coffee was now ready. I grabbed two mugs from the bookshelf behind me. “Do you take sugar?”

“Again, I am Italian. So of course.”

I removed the carafe from the warmer, poured the coffee into his mug and set it on my desk. Then I opened the bottom drawer, where I keep sugar for those who take their coffee adulterated, and took out a spoon and the sugar bowl.

“Two spoonsful or one?”

“Two, please.”

I dished in the sugar and set the mug in front of him. “I’d give it a minute or two, Primo. It’s probably still too hot to drink.”

As I was about to pour my own cup, my cell phone rang. Or actually, it played “Yankee Doodle,” which is what I had set it to that week. I glanced at the number and saw that it was from the 650 area code—Palo Alto. That meant it was probably someone from the
Stanford Law Review
, calling about my article. It was a call I didn’t want to miss. I set the carafe back in its warmer and picked up the phone.

“Jenna James here…Yes, I can talk now. But can you hold on a moment?”

Primo was starting to get up. I put the phone against my thigh to mask my voice. “Primo, just stay here, please. This will be quick, and I can take the call in the empty office across the hall. Enjoy the coffee. Please pour yourself some more if you finish that one.” I got up, came out from behind my desk, walked across the hall into the empty office that was directly across from mine and shut the door behind me. I’d try to get a look at the survivor account when I got back.

CHAPTER 3

T
he call took longer than I expected. The
Stanford Law Review
editor—for reasons lost to history, scholarly law journals are for the most part edited by law students—was insistent that my article needed additional footnotes to support several points I had made. We argued back and forth for a while until I caved. Then he went on to tell me about his recent ski trip to Mammoth—he was a great skier, in his opinion—and seek my advice on which summer law-firm clerkship he should accept. During the whole thing, I was feeling guilty that Primo was sitting in my office, waiting. At least he had great coffee to drink.

I finally got the guy off the line, dropped the cell into my pocket and dashed back across the hall. I was by now utterly desperate for my own first cup of coffee of the day, which the gods seemed to be conspiring to deny me.

To my surprise, my door was now closed, even though I knew I’d left it open. When I tried to reopen it, it was locked, which was even stranger, because it’s a door that doesn’t lock automatically when you close it unless you push in the little button on the side. Which I had for sure not done. What’s worse, my keys were still in my purse, which was inside my office. I knocked, but there was no answer. Then I knocked louder. “Primo, are you in there?” There was no response.

Crap. He had no doubt gotten tired of waiting and left, not that I could blame him. Probably closed and locked the door as a courtesy.

I plucked the cell from my pocket and called campus security. They said someone would be there shortly to open it with a master key. Sure enough, only a few minutes went by before a skinny guy wearing a UCLA security uniform came walking down the hall.

“Good morning, Professor,” he said. “I’m George Skillings from security. You lock yourself out?”

“Yeah. Kind of embarrassing, but I did, and my keys are in my purse, which is in my office.”

“Happens all the time,” he said as he unhooked a heavy ring of keys from his belt, chose one and inserted it in the lock. He turned the key, depressed the latch and pushed open the door. “There you go.”

As the door swung open, the first thing I saw was Primo, slumped in his chair. His head lolled to the right, while his entire body also listed sharply in the same direction, held upright only by the chrome arm of the chair. His right arm drooped over the side, his hand almost touching the ground. He looked as if he might topple over at any moment.

“Jesus,” George said, as we simultaneously moved in front of Primo.

From the front he looked even worse. There was drool coming from one side of his mouth, and he was breathing rapidly, with a horrible rasping sound escaping with each breath. His eyes were open but glassy.

I was frozen to the spot. George reached out and tried to straighten him up in the chair, then took two fingers and put them to Primo’s neck. He held them there a few seconds while looking at his watch. “His heart rate’s almost 180 per minute. Tachycardia.” He punched a single number—clearly a speed dial—into his cell phone. I heard a click as someone picked it up on the other end. “It’s George Skillings from security. I’m over at the law school. There’s a guy in distress in Professor James’s office. Possible drug overdose, heart attack or stroke. We need the UCLA ambulance here ASAP. We’re in the southeast corner of the building.” Then he gave them the room number, put the cell back in his pocket and turned to me. “Help me get him on the floor. It will help his breathing.”

I nodded my assent. George moved up to the chair and put his hands under Primo’s armpits. “Professor, why don’t you get his legs, and we’ll see if we can move him without dropping him? On my count of three, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, as I moved over and grabbed Primo’s feet.

“Okay, one, two, three!”

I lifted his feet while George lifted Primo’s heavier upper body, and we managed to lower him to the floor without dropping him or hitting his head.

George tilted Primo’s head to the side and reached into his mouth to try to clear some of the drool. “Don’t want him to inhale his vomit if he throws up,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for him until the EMTs get here with the ambulance, which should only take a couple of minutes. They’re based on campus at the UCLA police station.”

“What do you think is wrong with him?” I asked.

“No idea. Could be a reaction to drugs. Could be a heart attack or a stroke. Who is he?”

“Primo Giordano. A student in my seminar. He was meeting with me. But I got a phone call and took it across the hall so he wouldn’t have to clear out. I told him to have some coffee and I’d be right back.”

“How long were you gone?”

“I’m not sure exactly. Maybe six or seven minutes, maybe a little longer.”

“Did you close the door when you left?”

“No.”

“Weird.”

Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a man and woman in crisp blue uniforms with patches on their shoulders that said UCLA Emergency Medical Services. They were pushing a red gurney loaded with a green backpack and other equipment I didn’t recognize. From the look of them, they were students.

The guy, whose badge said his name was Carter Sullivan, looked at Primo and asked of the room in general, “What’s going on?”

I repeated the story I had just told George Skillings. As Carter listened, he inflated a bag under Primo’s legs and simultaneously cradled his head. Meanwhile the woman EMT, whose badge said her name was Susan Suarez, took a piece of equipment off the gurney, which I recognized as a blood pressure cuff tethered to a machine with a video screen. She wrapped the cuff around Primo’s arm. As the cuff first inflated then deflated, she looked at the screen and called out, “Pulse is 190, pressure is 80 over 40. Really shocky.”

Carter looked up at me. “What’s his name, Professor?”

“Primo Giordano.”

“Thanks.” He put his mouth close to Primo’s face. “Do you know your name?”

“Primo,” he answered, but in a whispered voice, almost inaudible. Then Carter asked him, “Do you know where you are?”

“Law school.” Again, it was hard to hear him.

“What happened, man?”

There was no response.

“What day is it?”

Again, Primo made no response.

While Carter spoke to Primo, Susan produced from somewhere a large, black radio phone with a stubby antenna and pushed a button. “Dispatch, this is Number 59. We’re at the UCLA Law School. We have a white male law student in his twenties with shocky vitals. Essentially unconscious. No known cause. How long will it take the fire department paramedics to get here?” She paused and listened. “That’s too long. We’ll take him to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center as a Code 3.”

“What’s a Code 3?” I asked

“Means we’re going to use the siren.”

“You’re not going to wait for the paramedics?”

“No, they’ll take about ten minutes to get here. With the siren we can get him to the ER at Reagan in two or three.”

Carter was still down on the floor with Primo and had put an oxygen mask over his face. At that point I realized that the door to my office was still open and a small crowd of people had gathered in the hallway, watching. I saw four students I knew, plus my faculty colleagues Aldous Hartleb and Henrietta Gomez, and a third person I didn’t recognize. I reached out and pushed the door shut. I don’t think anyone else inside my office noticed that I had done it. They were all focused on Primo.

“Let’s get him on the gurney,” Carter said, looking up at Susan. “Sir,” he said, addressing George Skillings, “can you assist?”

“Yes, I can.”

Carter collapsed the gurney down to floor level, and the three of them hefted Primo onto it, blood pressure cuff still attached and oxygen mask still on. As soon as Primo was settled, Susan buckled him in with three leather straps, brought the gurney back up to chest height, reopened the door and began to pull the gurney backward out of the room. I followed them into the hallway. As I left the office, I glanced back and noticed for the first time that the red mailing tube Primo had been carrying didn’t appear to be there. Or maybe it was just out of my sight line.

The group outside the door parted as we moved through, the faces of the crowd a mix of shock, concern and plain curiosity. I noticed that Henrietta was still there, but Aldous had gone.