The Advocate's Devil (16 page)

“No, what is it? Some kind of curfew thing?”

“Pretty much the opposite.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the Lakers’ wives were accompanying the husbands on road trips, and it was getting the other players uptight. You
know, wives stick together and that sort of thing. The action guys were nervous that the traveling wives would report what
they
were doing on the road back to their wives.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So it was beginning to affect their play on the road—their nervousness and all.”

“So what did Riley do?”

“He went and banned all wives from road trips, and the Lakers started winning again on the road.”

“How did the wives react?”

“Some of them had a cow.”

“So?”

“So Riley tells them, ‘Look, wives don’t score points, players do, and players have to be loose.’”

“Goes to show that sex on the road is good for morale.”

“As long as it’s not with your wife,” Rendi added. Patsy joined in the laughter as they both ordered another drink.

“There’s a guy in New York I’m really hot for,” she confided, leaning over while trying to avoid the smoke from Patsy’s cigarette.

“Yeah, who?”

“Campbell, the big white guy.”

“You and half the borough of Manhattan. He’s the best-looking spook in the NBA.”

Rendi hadn’t come across the word
spook
in her research, but it didn’t take much imagination for her to figure out that its ghostly reference was to Campbell’s white
skin in a league where most of the players were black.

“A girl can fantasize, can’t she?” Rendi responded.

“Ain’t much for fantasizing, when you can’t touch and feel.” Patsy giggled. “It may be a whole lot safer.”

“That Magic stuff has certainly put a damper on the fun,” Rendi said.

“Not so much here in Boston. It’s never been as wild here as everyone said it used to be in L.A. and Chicago.”

“Oh, for the good old days, when all you had to worry about was getting knocked up or a dose of the clap.”

“You got nothing to worry about with your heartthrob, baby. He’s very selective, very discreet, none of this Wilt Chamberlain
‘I’ve screwed everyone in California’ stuff with Campbell.”

“What else do you know about him?” Rendi asked, her voice in near perfect California modulation.

“Not much. I know he’s shy. He reads a lot. Carries a portable computer with him sometimes.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, one thing that should help
you.
He doesn’t go for the very young ones so much—the teenyboppers. He likes mature, serious women. At least that’s the rep.”

“Is he kinky?” Rendi asked, not showing even a hint of embarrassment.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been with him. I do know one girl who says she has been with him.”

“What do you mean, ‘says’?”

“Oh, you know. There’s a whole lot of bullshit around. Some girls get off by just bragging. Didn’t you get some of them types
in L.A.?”

“I don’t know—yeah, sure, maybe…”

“Are you sure you know this scene?”

For a moment Rendi feared her cover might be blown. “You know—I’m a little older than you. What are you—twenty-five, twenty-six?”

“I’m twenty-seven, like I said.”

“Well, I’m older,” Rendi declared. “We older girls weren’t as brave as you kids. Things were less blatant earlier on. You
know, rock star girls got all the attention for a long time—the competition wasn’t so fierce.”

“Yeah. It’s so competitive nowadays that some of the girls even make stuff up.” Patsy pointed in the direction of an older
woman with flaming red hair, sitting alone in the rear of the bar. “Do you see Cynthia, over there? Don’t look, just peek.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s one of the bullshitters. Hardly ever gets it on with anyone anymore. Anyone important, I mean. Yet she brags about
everyone—even some guys who never do it. Nobody believes her.”

“Who’s the lucky girl you know who made it with Campbell?”

“Says
she made it with Campbell,” Patsy cautioned. “It’s a woman named Chrissy. Doesn’t hang here. Doesn’t really hang anywhere.
I haven’t seen her around for a while.”

“I’d love to talk to her. Just for the thrill of hearing what it’s like to be with Campbell.”

“She
says
she’s been with Campbell. Remember that you can’t believe everything you hear in this scene.”

“Do you have any idea where I could find her?”

“Nah, I never much liked her. We hardly ever talked. Once or twice. Now Bev over there”—Patsy pointed to a tall woman deep
in conversation with a former-jock-now-corporate type—“she knew Chrissy real well. Maybe she can help you.”

Rendi kept her eye on Bev while continuing to talk with Patsy. When Bev got up to go to the ladies’ room, Rendi quickly followed.

As Rendi expected, the ladies’ room was a face and body repair shop with indirect lighting that flattered the faces of the
five women who were helping themselves to the ointments and toilet waters lined up in designer label perfume bottles. Rendi
positioned herself next to Bev at the mirror. The other woman was dressed completely in red and was touching up her scarlet
lipstick.

“Hey, Bev, haven’t seen Chrissy around much lately. I’ve got a message for her, and I haven’t run into her.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Bev replied without even glancing up. “Chrissy got married. To some jerk in the meat-packing business.
Big bucks, big muscles, big jerk.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. Stan something. Maybe Kowalski or Karin-ski, something Polish. I do remember his company is called Merit Meats.
I remember that because she once had him send me a package of free steaks, before they got married. Haven’t heard from her
since she moved to the burbs.”

“Which suburbs?”

“I don’t know, south shore somewhere. He has a boat. Maybe Cohasset or Marshfield or somewhere.”

“Thanks, Bev.”

“Hey, you’re not gonna call her with some message from some guy from the scene? That could cause complications. I don’t think
her Stan knows how deep she was into the scene before she regained her virginity for him.”

“Nah, don’t worry. It’s a message from an old girlfriend of hers.”

“Yeah. Who?”

“It’s private, Bev, sorry. You understand.”

“What do I give a shit. Just don’t tell her you got the info from me.”

Rendi made a zipper motion across her mouth and walked out of the bathroom and the bar. She needed some air. She wanted to
go home. Her work for the night was done. Now all she had to do was find a woman named Chrissy, married to a Polish guy named
Stan, who owned a meat company called Merit and lived on the south shore with his boat.

Piece of cake, Rendi said to herself as she drove toward Cambridge.

C
AMBRIDGE
—
M
ONDAY
, A
PRIL
10

“What have you got for us, Rendi?”

Abe had arranged a joint debriefing with Rendi and Justin in his Cambridge office. Rendi disliked Justin, as much as he was
put off by her. She regarded the tall, good-looking young lawyer as a spoiled brat who did not deserve the enviable opportunity
of apprenticing for Abe. “Why him?” she had demanded when Abe told her he had selected Justin from the thirty-five Yale, Harvard,
and Columbia applicants.

“Because he’s so different from me. He’s really a prosecutor at heart. He’s better at seeing the other side of the issue.
I need a different perspective. The rest of us—me, you, Gayle—we’re all so much alike.”

“How can you work with a wire strung as tight as Rendi?” Justin had once asked Abe. She scared him. He had never quite met
anyone like her. He was fascinated and a bit repelled by her, but he was also in awe of her energy and impatience.

Justin loved to tell “Rendi stories” around the office. “You know the ketchup commercial—the one about how slow it drips out
of the bottle? I swear, Rendi told me it drives her crazy to watch it drip so slowly. Why would anyone want a slow-pouring
ketchup? For her the quicker the better. I can just imagine her in bed.” One day Justin came out of the bathroom laughing
hysterically. “Rendi went into the adjoining ladies’ bathroom the same time I went into the men’s room. As soon as she got
in, I hear her flush. So when we came out, I asked her, and she told me she flushes as soon as she starts to go, so that the
flush will finish when she finishes, and she won’t have to waste an extra second. The woman is nuts. A terrific investigator,
but a weird person.”

Now the investigator was reporting on the follow-up to her bizarre evening. “I’ve got a lot of gossip, but nothing hard,”
Rendi said, spreading out her notes. “I found this woman named Chrissy Kachinski. She used to date Campbell—at least she says
she did. Seems to be telling the truth. Nothing unusual. Slutty type. A couple of one-night stands with Campbell here in Boston.
One weekend on Martha’s Vineyard. Nothing kinky. She says he seemed bored by the sex. They left early. He was upset.”

“Anything more?”

“Not from Chrissy. She told me about another woman he went out with named Darlene Walters. A Boston financial type. Worked
as a bond analyst with First Boston. Chrissy got a call from her after she saw her out with Campbell one night at the Ritz.
Warned Chrissy about Campbell’s violent side. Chrissy thought Darlene was just jealous, because she never saw that side of
Campbell, but she kept Darlene’s name and number just in case.”

“So, did you follow up with Darlene?”

“I tried, only she didn’t want to talk to me.”

“Dead end?”

“Abe, you know there are no dead ends with Rendi Renaad.”

“So what did you find out?”

“I spoke to several of Darlene’s friends. Mostly they wouldn’t talk. One woman named Margie told me something quite interesting
that Darlene had confided in her.”

“What?”

“It seems that Campbell couldn’t get it up with her. Darlene really liked Campbell, but he didn’t just leave early, like he
did with Chrissy.”

“What did he do?”

“I’m not sure. Margie didn’t know the details. Or else she wasn’t prepared to get down and dirty with me. All she would tell
me was that it was very unpleasant for Darlene. She had some black-and-blue marks on her legs, and she cried when she talked
about it.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing specific. It certainly didn’t make your client look good.”

“Pretty vague. Maybe Darlene likes a little bit of rough stuff and it got out of hand. Not pretty, but I can handle it if
the state finds out.

“Justin, how about you?” Abe continued. “What have you got from the computer stuff you’ve been working on?”

“My stuff is also a bit vague and circumstantial. I’m afraid that an ugly little picture is beginning to emerge.”

“Paint it for us,” Abe said.

“Okay. As I’ve already told you, I suspect, though I can’t prove, that Campbell may have punched up the Dowling sexual harassment
cases sometime before he claims he ever met her. Whenever he punched it up, we know—and this we know for sure—that he didn’t
just search for her name. He searched for
all
names and cases under a broader category involving false sexual allegations.”

“So, my friend, what’s the explanation?”

“I can think of several, none of them good.”

“How bad?” Abe asked with a worried look.

“Bad is the best I’ve got,” Justin replied. “From there it gets worse.”

“That good, huh?” Rendi interjected.

“That good.”

Abe quoted Shakespeare: “‘The worse is not, so long as we can say, “
This
is the worst.”’” Then he shook his head. “You guys are perennial pessimists.”

“Okay.” Justin took up the challenge. “Possibility one, Campbell lied about when he first met Dowling. He actually met her
before March tenth, made the Boston date, and
then
punched up the story, like he told us.”

“Could be,” Abe said. “But why would Campbell lie about
that
date? Dowling would probably be able to prove—by her friends, office mates—when she first met him. And what the hell difference
would it make if he
had
met her earlier? That one’s not so bad. Okay, what’s next in your list of possible disasters?”

“I guess we’re up to possibility two—‘worse.’ Well, worse is if Campbell is telling the truth about when he first met Dowling.”

“Why?”

“Because then—if I’m right about when he punched up her case—then it would seem that he may have punched up her case before
he
really
met her.”

“What do you mean, ‘really met’ her?”

“Well, it’s possible that he had seen her before—at a party or something. Maybe she didn’t even remember him, yet he remembered
her. Maybe a friend told him about her, and they hadn’t actually met—yet. He punched up her story in order to check her out,
and then he met her
again
, and they made a date.”

“Okay. That sounds plausible. And it’s also not that terrible from a jury’s point of view.”

“Remember, Abe, he didn’t punch up information only about her. His search was for a broader category.”

“What’s your explanation, then, Justin?”

“It seems pretty obvious. Campbell probably cross-checks that category periodically, to make sure that none of the women he
wants to date are the kind who go around falsely accusing people. Remember what he told you about how much he values his reputation
as a gentleman.”

Rendi nodded. “That does sound logical—”

“My God,” Abe broke in, “have things gotten so bad out there that guys have to check their dates out in advance to head off
false accusations of rape?”

Rendi ignored Abe’s question as she continued to explore the thought she had begun. “Logical—but not certain,” she said slowly.

“What do you mean?” Justin asked.

“There is another possible explanation.”

“Better than mine?”

“No,” Rendi replied somberly, “much worse.”

“Okay, we’re up to possibility three—worser,” Abe said, and winced.