Single Jeopardy (9 page)

While waiting for a thank-you note from G.C., I receive a most encouraging fax from Melvin’s office. In between servings of Thai girl, L. Martin Unger finished my Petition for Reinstatement. Mel’s office filed it with the State Bar, and a hearing date has been scheduled. There’s no indication that Mr. L. Martin is planning on coming back to the States to attend the hearing, but that isn’t a big issue and can be worked out later. I don’t even take time to read the Petition, knowing in my heart that the whole process will probably just be an effort in futility. I don’t want to get my hopes up. After a while you get tired of disappointments.

It’s late Tuesday afternoon, still raining, and now really getting dark. At four in the afternoon I see some outgoing mail on the counter, next to the front window of Melvin’s houseboat. I know that the kid’s e-car doesn’t have side curtains, so I knock on her door and offer to do the mail. She doesn’t refuse, but doesn’t exactly accept either. Instead of responding to me, she turns and says something to the dog that sounds like Chinese. Hearing what is obviously a familiar command, the dog picks up the outgoing mail in his mouth and walks off the boat, probably to the mailbox. He returns without the mail about fifteen minutes later, soaking wet. She dries him with a towel. From this point on I realize that there’s no way I can ever offer any assistance to this kid, because she’s got everything under control. Now if we could only teach the dog how to make some court appearances… but I’m sure she’s probably already working on that.

It’s almost midnight. The wind has blown some loose items off of people’s decks and something is floating in the water banging against my hull. If I don’t get off the boat to pick it up out of the water it’ll probably stay there and bang all night long. As I’m down on my knees, bending over trying to reach a floating kayak oar making that noise, I hear a disappointed female voice behind me. “Oh no… damn! Where is he?”

When I turn around and stand up I see that it’s the doc’s girlfriend Rita, and I realize what has happened. She’s probably returned twelve hours earlier than expected, and while standing there under her little umbrella in the rain discovered her boyfriend and his boat are gone. There’s no choice at that point, so I offer an invitation for her to come onto the Grand Banks to dry out.

As usual, when it comes to doing the wrong thing I’m consistent. Not only does she come aboard, she winds up staying aboard. I know that this is a dangerous thing to do, but after she got out of her wet clothes and into one of my robes, had a few glasses of wine and joined me on the couch to watch the late show on that big plasma television screen, the wine had its affect and then one thing led to another – and then another.

As wonderful an experience as this is, a terrible thought just occurred to me: if it’s possible for
her
to get here earlier than expected, it’s also possible for the doc to come back early and discover us together. In between rounds, we discuss this possibility and come up with a brilliant solution. The plan is for her to wait until early tomorrow morning and then get fully dressed and sit on my boat’s covered aft deck, sipping an iced tea as if she just arrived and is waiting for the doc to return.

The rain is over, the sun is now up, and two amazing things are happening. First, Rita is having a conversation with Melvin’s kid, in English, which means that she’s another person the kid’ll talk to other than me. And second, our plan works perfectly.

Right on schedule, at around eleven thirty this morning the doc’s boat pulls into the basin. As he makes the turn towards his slip, Rita is all smiles, happily waving at him and welcoming him back. Her glee looks so genuine. I wonder how they do that so well.

I’m sure their reunion went just as we planned it. She told him she got in an hour or two early and that their neighbor Peter was gracious enough to offer some refreshment and a place to sit and wait for his return. He shows his appreciation by coming over later that afternoon and invites me to join them tonight for dinner on his boat. I accept. While we’re talking I glance over his shoulder and see Rita standing on the foredeck of his boat, smiling and giving me a ‘thumbs-up’ sign. As we speak, I can’t get his face out of my mind and the feeling that I know I’ve seen it somewhere before.

Here in Southern California, there’s always a possibility that a familiar face you have trouble placing may have been one that you saw in a movie. A lot of people out here have worked as extras. I’ll have to ask him about that some day. The doc and I chat for another few minutes about his return trip from Catalina Island during that offshore storm. He doesn’t mention what must have been the wild ride he had on his boat and I don’t mention the wild ride I had on his girlfriend.

Now I can honestly say my dreams have been answered. I had the greatest all-nighter in the world with the most beautiful girl in the world on my dream yacht. Life will probably be all down hill from here, but it was worth it.

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This evening I arrive at the doc’s boat promptly at seven, and am invited aboard. His boat isn’t as luxurious as the Grand Banks, but he’s arranged a very nice table setting. The eating area in his boat’s saloon consists of an L-shaped settee around a small rectangular table, which is just perfect for three people. After the usual small talk and a few cocktails, he announces that ‘dinner is served,’ and that we should sit down. The settee is arranged so that two people can sit close together on one side, with the third person sitting alongside on the ‘ell’ couch extension. Rita grabs my hand and drags me over to the two-person side. “Come on, Mister Lawyer, I want you to sit close to me.” The doc seems amused by this. I feel a blush coming on, but comply with her request. She maintains her grip on my hand after we’re seated. I’m hoping that this isn’t one of those kinky arrangements where the older boyfriend likes to watch his young girlfriend enjoy herself with another man.

Doc excuses himself for a minute and steps off the boat to get a large bottle of wine out of his under-the-dock-steps wine cooler. Rita comes close to me and whispers in my ear. “You know, he’s not the same doctor Gault you think he is.”

Bang! It just hit me. This is the famous Doctor Sherman Gault. Now I remember why his face looks so familiar. It was plastered all over of every newspaper front page and television screen during his arrest and trial for the murder of his wife!

Most people think that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office blew the O.J. Simpson case due to lack of experience of the main guy upstairs, the district attorney, who was elected to the office and tried to micro-manage the trial. But the people were wrong – he had plenty of experience – in how to blow a good case. Before completely screwing up the O.J. case by making a series of fatal mistakes, like ordering O.J.’s premature arrest before DNA tests were in, moving the case to downtown Los Angeles, assigning two hot-headed arrogant deputies to try it, having a preliminary hearing instead of going the indictment route, not opting for a more competent judge who wasn’t married to a prospective witness, not preparing their witnesses properly, etc., etc. Oh yeah, he had plenty of experience. Unfortunately, most of it was gained from his management of the Doctor Sherman Gault murder case two years earlier. Fortunately, the district attorney lost the next election and we’ve had better luck with the series of new replacements - up until now.

If I remember correctly, Mrs. Gault’s body was never found. Doc supposedly had taken her out with him on a rented fishing boat, and it was a one-way trip for her. The story was that she fell overboard, and because he never learned how to swim, he couldn’t save her. There also were suspicions that she never was on the boat with him at all, but that he hired someone to have her wacked so he could be with some new young girlfriend. And if Rita was the reason, I can almost understand him wanting to do it.

When my ex-wife first joined the district attorney’s office, all she could talk about was how her newly elected boss was someday going to nail that bastard doctor’s ass to the wall for some other crime, to show the public that he’s a better D.A. than his predecessor. She seemed to idolize that idiot boss of hers. As far as she was concerned, he was right and the doctor was guilty of that murder, only getting off on ‘technicalities.’ We defense lawyers call those little technicalities the Constitution, and a fair judicial system.

She still feels the same way. I only gave her one piece of advice, which was a quotation from someone I greatly respected: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” [Sherlock Holmes –
A Scandal in Bohemia
]

Unfortunately for the entire District Attorney’s staff who botched that case, the jury disagreed, and notwithstanding what could have been damaging testimony if brought out properly by the trial deputies, the doc was acquitted amid loud protests from numerous women’s organizations and a stinging commentary by the city’s most noted crusading female attorney. She puts on a red dress and comes out of the woodwork every once in a while for a press conference, to complain about something that someone has done to a woman – all while getting free publicity for her law practice.

Perpetual losers have a strange view of things that is a lot different from the way that winners see the world. A loser always manages to place blame for the loss on someone or something else. It’s never their fault for losing. On the other hand, winners usually credit their victory to the help of others. Our district attorney’s office seems to have adopted a prosecutorial culture handed down from one losing boss to another. They never admit to being wrong. It would be refreshing to see someone actually come out and say, “I really goofed this one up. I made the mistakes and I take the blame.” Former president Harry S. Truman had it right with his desk placard that said “the buck stops here.”

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The assignments are still coming in regularly from Melvin’s office, while I bide my time until the State Bar hearing. They’re getting more lawyer-like, with requirements that case files be analyzed and trial strategies planned. This is a little more than I expected to be doing, but it’s a pleasant change from doing the grunt work of serving eviction notices on people and sitting in the courthouse’s basement archive going through the record books.

As my Bar hearing date grows near I decide to put some effort into a prepared statement, and spend a good deal of time at the downtown Los Angeles Law Library researching cases over the past ten years in which similar charges were filed against other attorneys. They all seemed to have resulted in much more lenient disciplinary sentences than mine, so I’m starting to feel a little better about my chances of getting an early reinstatement to practice.

The State Bar has a rule that requires attorneys to take and pass an ethics examination prior to reinstatement, so I’ve started preparing for it by going over some of the casebooks and outlines used to teach the subject, which wasn’t part of the curriculum at Betty Crocker College of Law when Melvin, Koontz, and I attended. I don’t think you can teach ethics to anyone in law school because by the time they get that far with their education they’ve either got some basic sense of what’s right, or they don’t. However, there are some specific rules concerning the practice of law that have been laid down, so it won’t hurt to become familiar with them. Most of the discipline that the Bar doles out is for mismanagement of trust funds, and I don’t think you have to be a brain surgeon or take courses in law school to know that stealing your clients’ money is not the proper thing to do.

If you drive towards downtown Los Angeles on any freeway between seven-thirty and eight in the morning, you’ll see people alone in their cars, but they look like they’re arguing with someone. They’re not talking on cell phones, they’re actually arguing, but not just with themselves. What you’re actually seeing is a rehearsal of what they intend to argue in court that day. It was practiced in front of the mirror last night and now it’s being repeated in the car on their way to the courthouse. You never lose that habit, so until my Bar hearing, people driving near my car will look over and be convinced I am a nut case. To remedy this almost-correct diagnosis I ride with a visible cell phone earplug in my left ear. That way, I appear almost sane while arguing with the non-existent Bar examiner.

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Rita’s flying schedule is pretty regular, so it isn’t too difficult to arrange not to be around the dock the times she arrives or departs. She managed to get my telephone number from the doc’s Rolodex, so the occasional phone call comes in. Rita flies over the Pacific, so her calls usually are from Australia. I repeatedly tell her to cool it because I don’t want to antagonize the doctor and she repeatedly tells me that he’s no problem, she can handle him, and everything will be okay. The thing that really bothers me is her intention during one of her visits, to openly spend her ‘layover’ on my boat and not on his. Great. This is just what I need. Let a guy who killed his wife to be with a woman see me sleeping with that same woman. As if I don’t have enough problems. I might as well get a t-shirt with a big bulls-eye on it. Koontz and Hansel are probably cooking up another thing to frame me with, the Bar wants me out, Laverne just wants me, and I’m sure that after the burned-out boat caper, my ex-wife wants me dead. If the doc finds out about me sleeping with Rita, then my ex-wife’ll have to get in line to have me wacked. And if Mister L. Martin Unger returns for my Bar hearing, it’s goodbye Grand Banks, hello Foghorn Motel - if I’m still alive.

About the only thing good going for me this week is that Stuart hasn’t called. Come to think of it, the last time we spoke he mentioned a new two-bedroom condo he’s renting. Maybe I ought to be nicer to him: he and his extra bedroom may come in handy during my next emergency.