Unfit to Practice (20 page)

“People ought to restrain themselves, under the circumstances. Maybe you could have talked to me. We were still new together, only two years into it. Maybe our marriage was salvageable at that point, if you hadn't—”

“You cheated. You lied. You blamed me for everything that went wrong—”

“Nina,” he said softly, “did you ever love me? Did you ever really love me?”

The question brought her up short. She couldn't think of an answer. She had married Jack for a million reasons: his sense of humor, his passion for his work, his devotion to her and Bob. They had such fun fantasizing a life together in San Francisco.

Bob needed a father.

She needed someone.

“Yes, I loved you. But you made me so lonely.”

“I was lonely, too,” he said. “What a shame neither one of us had the guts to deal with the problem without all that drama.”

Emotion swept over her. “Worse than that. It was melodrama.”

“We both screwed up,” he said.

Admitting her role in the breakup was hard. The time had come to make peace. Maybe she knew from the first time she set eyes on Jack again they would arrive at this moment, the chance to nail down the coffin lid on their marriage. “Yes,” she said finally, “we both screwed up.”

“I regretted it right away, you know. I married her, and I knew it was a mistake from day one. I wish you and I had tried harder.”

Did she regret the end of her two years of marriage to Jack? The answer came quickly. Not anymore. If she had stayed with Jack, she would never have married a man she had loved with all her heart. After his death, she would never have found her way back to Paul.

“While we were drinking margaritas at Big Sur,” Jack continued, “I had a fantasy that you and I might fall into each other's arms again.”

“Then you saw me and thought again,” she teased, ready to lighten up.

“I saw you and I saw him. I saw the whole damn thing.”

“Jack, I'm sorry about the way it ended.”

“Me, too, Nina-Pinta. Me, too.”

Papers shuffled over the phone on his end as she closed her eyes and sighed deeply.

“So,” he said, in one of those rapid turnarounds that made him so successful in his work, “moving on.”

“Oh, sure. Of course. We have work to do.”

“What were we talking about?” he asked thoughtfully. “Oh, yes. Your abilities as an attorney. To go on, I'm sorry you're running into the usual snags, and I know you won't let it get you down. 'Cause you're one of the good ones, Nina. Destined to debate. Well-intentioned. The old-fashioned, go-for-real-justice kind of person our profession needs. Unlike me.”

Not quite as fast to recover from their earlier exchange, she said shakily, “Oh, you're not so bad.”

“I am. I am proud to be bad. Luck or talent, I don't care what helps me win, as long as I do. And I'm not afraid to get dirty just for the sake of winning. It's detestable, but it's me.”

Suddenly the compliment looked less complimentary, as if Nina had a weak, feminine side that prevented her from dirtying her skirts.

“That's why people are smart enough to hire me and I'm up to my neck in lucrative trouble,” Jack went on arrogantly. “P.S., did you know Paul considered law as a profession?”

“What? No.”

“Yes, indeed. We took the LSAT at the same time, but he blew it. Hates tests, our Paul. Won't be judged by people he doesn't admire, and those he admires are few and far between. So, keep that in mind when he begs you to join him in Carmel to live a life of leisure as his concubine. He flirted with the law and it slapped him down. Don't let him sabotage you. You're too good to fritter yourself away like that.”

“You are so out of line.”

“I love the guy. He's my best friend. He has many fine qualities. His relationship with the world isn't one of them. He's brilliant sometimes at his job, but partly that's because he never follows any rules but his own. He made a lousy cop because of it, and I don't trust him as a P.I. because of it.”

“Shut up, Jack. I don't want to hear this.”

“Be wary and be smart if you insist on hanging with him. That's all.”

“Do me a favor. Stick with the legal advice. I don't need you for personal advice.”

“Okay. All right. Live with him and be his love, but call me if things don't work out, deal?”

“Enough!”

“Sure. Back to business. All right? Put all that aside for now?”

“Back to business.”

“Give the Vangs their money. Potential exposure is that Mr. Vang will be so pissed off that his wife got half that he'll file a complaint with the bar that you withheld the money by a couple of days. He won't look good and you will. I say you have no problem there.”

“I'll send it on Monday.”

“Don't wait. Do it right away,” he said. “As your attorney, I advise you to get this one out of your hair immediately.”

She opened her side drawer, looked at the checks, shut it, and opened it again. “Okay, Jack,” she said, angry. She should never have mentioned that she was waiting to courier the checks. That had been an unconscious slip, a desire to get his stamp of approval. Predictably, he had picked up on her delaying strategy. He knew her too well. He didn't want to know why she wanted to put it off, he didn't want justifications, he just wanted a clean slate. Was this what it meant, having an attorney? Taking unwelcome advice? Doing things that made you queasy?

Yes. She put the checks on her desk. She would get them on the road before she left today, like an intelligent client following the expert advice of her attorney over her own instincts.

“The sisters. Brandy and Angel,” Jack said. “There's more exposure. This suspect, what's his name, Stinson, assaulted the girls on the beach. An argument can be made that Cody heard from the possessor of the files that the girls saw things. But who knows why Cody got on 'em? Maybe some other camper told him something. I can't see a complaint from them going anywhere.”

“I know the timing makes it look that way. But let's just stop right here. Listen, Jack. I want you to tell me what you really think. Did the theft of my files cause these innocent people to be threatened?”

Jack gave his answer some thought. No lawyer likes to tell what he really thinks. “Frankly, I don't believe it. I think old Cody found out some other way, from a fellow camper, maybe. I think Kevin Cruz's wife found out about Cruz's girlfriend on her own, too. And I see no evidence any outsider has made any mischief in the Vang case.”

“You're not just trying to make me feel better?”

“I think you can rest easy. I don't mean that. Don't rest easy. Be vigilant. Take care of business. But I don't believe you're being set up. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't stay in close touch with me. Every lawyer in California ought to be in close touch with me. You're all gonna get complaints sooner or later.”

“But not this time.”

“It'll fade. You lost some files. You had to run around. There was worry, but nothing is gonna develop. You know what Mark Twain said. ‘I've been through some awful worries, and some of them actually happened.' ”

His tone comforted her. He always could comfort her. She had always relied on his strength, his assuredness. “Thanks,” she said. “It's a relief to hear you say that.” She wanted to believe him.

“Only the Cruz case is still a concern. We'll stay on it. We should get together and have dinner alone sometime, Nina.”

“What for?”

“What for? You have to ask? We're old friends back in touch, aren't we?”

“Ex-spouses back in touch,” Nina said. “There's a world of difference.”

“Let's erase that old garbage, okay? We're past that now. Let's not discuss it again. I'm curious about your life, how you're getting along. I'd like to see old Bob. How about if I come up on the weekend? We'll go for a bike ride.”

“I don't think so.”

“You'll be astonished how much fun we can have. Come on. Don't be that way.”

“Jack—”

“Is Paul jealous of me? Because obviously he has no reason to be jealous,” Jack said, sounding irritated. “I think I've made that clear.”

This jarred her, and she thought, I also remember how he used to drive me crazy, cutting from one emotion to the other like now, confusing me, never really listening. All she said was, “Gotta go.”

She left the office and drove home, thinking about the men passing through her life. Kurt Scott, Bob's father. Jack. Collier Hallowell, her husband for a very short time. Paul. All of them incomprehensible, when you looked deep. Every one so alike on the surface, so impossibly complex within.

What does Jack want with me? she wondered. To get my defenses down, then take revenge? Show me what I missed because we broke up? Wile his way back into my heart for sport?

17

L
YING IN BED
at the Menlo Park Inn early on Friday morning, forty miles south of San Francisco, half-dreaming, Paul came to a conclusion. He had reached that sensitive state in which a man has to do what a man has to do. An entire workweek had passed, five days, and he and Nina had met like professional cohorts, on courthouse cement, in offices, in rapid-fire telephone conversations that did not contain his preferred content and did not usually end in a satisfying manner.

His frustration was not bearable and, worse, was not necessary. He needed to touch her, to hold her, to smell her shampoo. He needed to see her tonight and convince her to love him forever, to marry him, to run away with him, to make a life with him. He wanted to make love with her and open up a new universe.

To start with, he opened an eye.

To cartoons. Rocky, high-pitched voice of reason, and Bullwinkle, idiot savant, cavorted through an episode loaded with Cold War innuendo three feet away.

“Turn it off,” he told Wish distinctly. He might have to share a room, but by God, he would not watch cartoons first thing in the morning.

“Okay,” Wish said, wandering off toward the bathroom, toothbrush foaming in his mouth, the television untouched.

In this episode, Boris once again plotted Rocky's downfall. He knew who held the real power. Natasha, as always, went balefully along. Paul pulled a pillow over his head, otherwise powerless to resist. He and his sister used to watch this same cartoon. She played Natasha and he was always Rocky, the intelligent do-gooder, although something perverse in him identified more closely with Boris. “I said turn it off,” he shouted through the flimsy brown door.

“Uh, okay,” said Wish, returning clean-shaven and freshly scented to press a button on the remote.

After Paul took his turn in the bathroom, they asked at the reception desk for a recommendation and ended up at Ann's Coffee Shop on Santa Cruz Avenue for breakfast.

“So old-fashioned,” Wish pronounced, lighting into an impressive pile of pancakes. “People don't hardly eat like this anymore.”

“No, they don't,” Paul said, making headway through his plate of deliciously greasy potatoes and eggs.

“Great to get a decent night's sleep for a change,” Wish said, yawning. “Remind me again why we had to go rushing off to Palo Alto instead of back to Tahoe last night?”

“To find Brandy's boyfriend,” Paul said.

Spearing a pie-shaped chunk, Wish nodded. “I guess over the weekend I'll have time to make up some assignments before next week starts.”

Paul grunted, not knowing. Of course, Wish's classes were important, but what came first for him was the current pressing issue of the day: Bruce Ford, fiancé manqué.

“Where are we meeting Brandy?”

Did Paul imagine it, or did Wish's ears seem redder than usual?

“I told her we'd meet her on University Avenue. Her boyfriend works near there.”

Wish had never, in the two or three years Paul had known him, shown anything but enthusiastic curiosity for any subject at hand. This time, Wish frowned. “You think we'll find him?”

“That's the plan.”

Wish sipped orange juice. “Yeah.”

“Funny,” Paul said. “I get the impression maybe you don't want to find him?”

“Yeah.”

“Brandy is pretty, isn't she?”

“Yeah.”

They paid for their breakfast and went out into the warm fall weather, directing the car toward Palo Alto, the next town over. “Why couldn't we stay there?” groused Wish as they passed the grand, landscaped Stanford Park Hotel. “Too expensive?”

“Full,” Paul said. “Some name-brand politician is giving a lecture at Stanford.”

“Oh.”

“Plus Brandy said Bruce's mother always stayed where we stayed and that maybe Bruce Ford would think of the place. Too bad we didn't get to try the Hotel California over on California.” Wish's oblivious reaction to the suggestion told Paul that he did not even know the song. Paul remembered that Wish was twenty and he was twice that. His good mood evaporated.

“So did you talk to the manager at the inn?” Wish asked.

“I did. No sign of Bruce. He said he'd get in touch if he saw him.”

They made a left off El Camino onto University and drove down the tree-lined street until they crossed over Hamilton and parked. They walked south until they came to a three-story building that looked like a church. Wish checked the address, nodded, and in they went.

Brandy sat on a concrete bench near the pebbled stone entryway. She stood up to meet them, all pink and cream and gentle languor. “Bruce wasn't at home, and I already checked his office,” she said. “He isn't there either. By the way, thanks for coming.” She seemed subdued.

“You're welcome,” he said. “Can we see his office?”

“Okay.” They took an elevator to the fourth floor. Bruce Ford shared a receptionist with four other loosely associated professionals. The receptionist hadn't seen him in days and had nothing more to report than that “a man came by” before Bruce left. As to the identity of this man, she couldn't say. She described him as “rough” looking, a description that certainly fit Cody Stinson.

“What exactly does your boyfriend do?” Paul asked as they walked the long hall toward a front office.

Brandy sighed hard. “Didn't you know? He's a tax lawyer.” Sticking a key into the lock, she swung the door open.

A flatscape of houses with the San Francisco Bay beyond unfolded outside Ford's office window. A walnut desk piled with folders sat in front of the wide window, waiting to be rifled. Brandy went to a small photo on the desk and showed it to Paul and Wish. “Our engagement party.” She had worn pink. He had worn a white tux. The man, who was much taller than Brandy, had curly black hair, too long for someone in serious business, and grinned like a winner. His hair blew out in strawlike tendrils from under the breezy arbor.

“Look wherever you want,” Brandy said. She sat down on a chair across from the desk. “I don't expect you to find much. Bruce is careful.”

Paul started on the tabletop while Wish picked through the contents of the drawers. While Brandy sighed and stretched, Wish's eyes straying her way every minute or two, they conducted a thoroughly professional search of the office.

In the bottom right-hand drawer, exactly where you might expect to find it, Wish unearthed a day diary and started to read it out loud, but as Brandy's brows furrowed, Paul took it away from him and shut it. “We have what we need. Let's see where your boyfriend has gone.”

“My fiancé,” Brandy corrected, looking conflicted. “We're supposed to get married in June.”

“Right,” Paul said, tucking the photograph of Brandy and Bruce into his pocket.

He let Wish slip a picture of Brandy from the credenza into his pocket without remark. In the photo, she wore a demure red bathing suit, not a bikini, but the effect was obviously irresistible. Well, what harm could it do? Wherever Bruce was, he didn't care at the moment, and neither did Paul.

They walked up to Il Fornaio for caffeine, coming out slightly brighter-eyed. “Shouldn't we go through his diary?” Brandy asked. “I figured that might tell us where he would be. If he's got another girlfriend, I might as well find that out right now.”

“On the relevant day,” Paul said, looking at the right page but keeping it well out of her line of sight, “he planned to attend a lecture at Stanford, then go to a French film at someplace called Aquarius.”

“He studied French in college. I never did.”

“Where did you go?” Wish asked, his notebook and pencil poised.

“Why does that matter?”

“You never know what might be important,” he said.

“I went to Mission College down near San Jose. He went to Santa Clara University and got a law degree. Now, are you going to tell me or not? Was he alone?”

“He was meeting someone,” Paul said.

“A woman?”

“Someone named Kirby.” That sounded safe. That was a male name.

The lines in her forehead cleared. “Oh, Kirby! Let's go talk to him! Of course, I called him already when I called all Bruce's friends. He said he didn't know anything, but he's a pal. He'd lie for Bruce. He's from back when they used to make student films and Bruce was planning to become an auteur.”

“I thought you didn't know French,” Wish said.

“I only know one line,” Brandy said.
“Aimez-vous les pique-niques?”
She said it artlessly, with no awareness of the impact of her words. Paul propped Wish up to make sure he could get out the door without fainting.

Kirby lived only a few blocks away, on a wide residential street lined with soldierly groups of luxuriant trees, in a compact thirties bungalow with a sky-blue-painted porch and generous front yard. Brandy led the way. “Kirby works nights, so he should be home.”

“Nice little place,” Wish observed. “I might like living in a neighborhood like this.”

Brandy laughed. “After you've made your first five million. This house would set you back at least a million.”

“How do people make that kind of money?” Wish asked, staggered. “And why would they spend a million of it to live in a house that's half the size of my mom's?”

“Kirby owns a chain of twenty-four-hour printing shops and he lives here because—oh, this is a great location. Between two major airports, beautiful weather, money growing on trees.” She sounded tired. “What more could you want?”

“Bruce likes this area?” Wish asked.

“Yeah.”

“What about you?”

“Where we live isn't the problem between me and Bruce.”

“Then what is it?”

Brandy cast a cold eye on Wish, then Paul. “It's personal.” She pressed the doorbell.

A small, sandy-colored man on the sunny side of thirty answered the door after several minutes, his eyes opened only halfway. “Brandy?”

“Sorry to wake you up, Kirby, but it's important.”

He opened the door to let them inside, but didn't move past the entryway. Brandy made introductions. After inspecting Paul's license at great length and asking Wish a longer-than-polite series of questions about his role in all this, Kirby invited them to sit in the living room. “You're still looking for Bruce, I take it.”

“Do you know where he is?” Brandy asked. “Because I really need to find him.”

A white-paneled door to the right of the fireplace opened. “Hi, Brandy,” said Bruce.

Bruce Ford, wearing thin black-rimmed glasses and hair trimmed and tamed since his photograph, was taller than Paul, which made Paul want him to sit down. Kirby excused himself shortly after Ford's arrival, which left Bruce at one end of the room, Paul in a chair by the dining-room archway, and Brandy and Wish aligned in chairs by the fireplace, which held an ornate iron grille and tall candles instead of a fire.

Paul couldn't figure out a way to get Bruce down, so after a moment or two, he stood and leaned against a squat pillar.

Bruce seemed to be waiting for something from Brandy, who finally realized it and got up to kiss him at the same time as Wish seemed to find something mesmerizing about his shoelace.

“As you can see, I was worried about you,” Brandy said, disengaging from Bruce's grip.

“You hired a private investigator to find me?” Bruce asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, are you going to tell me why you took off like that, without a word?”

“I'll get to that,” Brandy said. “Let me just tell you how we got here first, okay?”

He folded his arms and listened. When she got to the campground story, the agitation began. “Brandy, you owe me an explanation.”

“I know but . . .”

“You run out on me, then waltz in here and tell me you've been mixed up in a murder!”

“I'm not waltzing.” Brandy folded her arms, too. “And I tried to reach you but you left your phone at home!”

“My phone's broken, so I left it behind. And, in case you're wondering why I'm here and not home, it's because your campground friend came around to my office and scared the hell out of my staff.”

His staff? Paul thought. She must be some dazzling part-time receptionist. “Cody Stinson came to your office?”

“That's the name he gave.”

“What did he say?” Paul asked.

“First off, he was loaded on something and didn't make a whole lot of sense. Second, he's not the type we get in our offices usually. Not an easy man to talk to. He said that we were trying to get him thrown in jail for something he didn't do. Well, when he got to the part about not strangling someone, I cut the conversation short. I got him out of there and came to stay at Kirby's until things settled down. That seemed like a logical response, considering a very strange person with a scary story had shown up in my office.” He turned back to face Brandy. “I called Angel's, assuming you were there, but I got the machine.”

“Sam's out of town with the kids,” she said.

“Then I called your mobile, and got more mechanical messages. You need a decent message system! You've got to keep that thing charged up! I've been frantic, worrying about where you were and what was going on!”

“Bruce, I've been trying to call you everywhere! I went to meet that guy, thinking it was you!” By now, Brandy was in tears.

“Brandy, this is awful,” Bruce said. “No more fighting. C'mere.” He held out his arms, and she walked into them. “I'm so glad to see you.”

“We need to talk in private,” Brandy said, sniffling, to Paul and Wish.

Paul and Wish returned to the car to wait.

Wish took out his notebook and took his lip between his thumb and pointer finger. “So what have we learned so far?”

“We found him. I guess that makes her glad.”

Brandy stayed inside for a long time. Through the glass of the Mustang's front window, Paul and Wish could easily follow the overall thrust, if not all the details, of the argument.

“Brandy is saying that she hasn't been fair with him,” Wish reported, leaning his head out of his open window to hear better. “Bruce wants her to come back, but she's not willing to live there again unless—unless they don't sleep together anymore. Bruce hollered when she said that.”

“What does she say?” Paul had jazz on low, trying to obliterate the background brawl, which reminded him of moments in his two past marriages he preferred not to revisit.