Compelling Evidence m-1 Read online

  “Can I get you gentlemen a table?’ Wong is back to us.

  “Just gonna have a drink at the bar for now.” With Harry I’ve decided it’s best to take it slow. If we’re careful, he can avoid the social bends. He’s a good lawyer, but when it comes to entertainment his comfort zone is limited to wide spots on country roads, where red neon buzzes “Miller” or “Bud.” Like his practice, Harry’s learned to dodge challenges in the afterhours.

  We negotiate the maze of small cocktail tables near the bar. I’m followed closely by Harry, like Bwana on safari. I scan the bar for any vacant stools, an open space to park our bodies, to recede from public view until I can find a quiet corner to talk alone with Ben.

  The bartender, clad in starched white linen to the cuffs, cruises up and slips a cocktail napkin on the bar before me, all efficiency.

  I look to Harry. He orders a beer.

  “Scotch over with a twist.”

  “Quite a place,” he says. But I can tell he’s uncomfortable.

  “Lotta deals cut here,” I say.

  “I’ll bet. Looks like they all have fleas.”

  I look at him, a question mark.

  “Lotsa back-scratchin’ goin’ down.” This is not the kind of commerce Harry’s used to. I can tell from his tone that he prefers the straightforward pitch of honest crime.

  The starched bartender returns with Harry’s beer and my scotch. I leave an open tab. To pay by the drink isn’t done; that’s the sign of a tourist out for a look at the high rollers.

  The place is peopled with the usual crowd of political hustlers, mostly lobbyists plying their trade. Few lawyers except for the upper-crust corporate set venture here. The freight is too steep.

  The heating trays are being readied for hors d’oeuvres-oyster beef. It was one of the inducements for Harry. “Oysters put lead in your pencil,” he says.

  I take a sip of scotch, turn my head-and I see her. She is dark, a tawny perpetual tan, lustrous in blue silk with pearl earrings and necklace. Talia is thirty yards away at a table with a group, Ben’s empty chair beside her. Conversation floats about her like an ether. She is oblivious. She sits silent, detached, a serene cameo surrounded by animation at the table.

  There’s another, younger man, all dapper in an expensive suit, dark hair slicked down in me style of a Madison Avenue ad, just a hint of five-o’clock shadow gracing sallow cheeks. He sits across from Talia, his cool matching hers. The guy turns his face slightly toward me. I can’t believe it. It’s as if the great giver of all genes had landed one dead-center with a meat cleaver on his chin, the cleft of distinction. Talia’s eyes fall on him. They smile, and for an instant I wonder.

  “Water under the bridge,” says Harry.

  “Hmm?’

  He nods toward the table. Harry knows about Talia; he’s the only person I’ve told.

  “More like my career over the falls,” I say.

  “What’s that I smell?’ He sniffs the air. ‘Is it the aroma of regret?’

  “You bet. Like burnt toast. What can I say? I was stupid.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.” He’s making a careful physical appraisal of Talia, taking it all in-the meets and bounds.

  “She is spectacular,” he says.

  “I’m so glad she meets with your approval.” Talia Potter’s good looks are undeniable, like the theorems and postulates of geometry. Her beauty is the kind that causes both men and women to stop and stare. Along with this, she exudes a sexual magnetism that can’t be ignored. This she has learned how to use to full advantage.

  “Won’t argue with your analysis, though. There is,” he says, ‘a certain degree of dementia involved in shtuppin’ the boss’s wife.” He delivers this in a heavy German accent, a little Freud in his analysis.

  That’s Harry. No sugar coating.

  “But you’ll be happy to know it’s not terminal.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Oh yes. Eight out of ten doctors will tell you it’s just a passing condition. Comes and goes with the cycles of the moon. Sure,” he says. “People in the Middle Ages knew it as Unicorn’s Disease.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Today, the scientific literature refers to it as severe distended horniness. But there’s one problem.” He touches the side of his nose with a finger, about to deliver the final prognosis. “I believe it may be contagious.”

  As we talk, he’s been eyeing Talia’s table. He gestures with his head in her direction. Harry’s intercepted one of her ‘come hither’ looks wafted across the table like mustard gas.

  “The guy with the chipped chin, one of the firm’s associates?’ he asks.

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “Well, me poor man’s suffering from chronic, dissociative, dysfunctional dangling-dick syndrome. She’ll no doubt cure him shortly. Then he’ll be looking for a new job. I think we’re witnessing the outbreak of an epidemic.”

  Harry doesn’t have a high opinion of Talia. To him my fall from the firm was a simple case of seduction. For me it was much more complex. She is, at least from my perspective, not the harlot he supposes.

  “Aside from humping your patron’s wife, what did you do at the firm?’ he asks.

  “That’s delicate.”

  “You want delicate, you talk to your priest. You come to a friend, you get candor. Tell me about the cases.”

  “A smorgasbord. Mostly business stuff, some crimes, a little contracts work-sometimes the two were the same.”

  He looks quizzically at me over his shoulder.,

  “In business all the perpetrators wear business suits and suspenders. They steal from investors with convoluted option clauses and murky definitions of net profit.”

  “Ah.” He says it with relish, as if he’s finally found someone in the world of corporate law he recognizes.

  I tell Harry about Potter’s formative years. Ben had cut his teem as U.S. attorney in the early sixties. He prosecuted some primitive early white-collar scams-a crude Ponzi scheme that ended in bankruptcy. When political fortunes found him out of office he turned to the defense and started the firm. Now the clients are more sophisticated and well-heeled, the business machinations more complicated, some of them even legitimate.

  “Bet it pays well,” says Harry.

  “In a heavy case, defending a corporation or its officers, it’s common that you get a six-figure retainer.”

  Harry whistles.

  “It’s what the polite criminal defense bar calls ‘business law,’ ” I say. ‘And there’s no stigma. If you work it right, it tucks neatly into the folds between the firm’s other more respectable clients.”

  Harry has some difficulty comprehending this. In the last decade the criminal defense bar has taken it politically on the chin in this state. They are painted with the same brush as the clients they defend, passed over for judicial appointments, and generally excluded from polite society and its upper-crust functions.

  Harry catches the bartender going by and orders another drink. ‘V.O. and water,” he says. “A double.” He’s getting serious now.

  Ben always had a saying-“In corrupt commerce confusion is king.” It was the first rule of white-collar defense. If the jury can’t understand it, it can’t convict. The art of defending a confidence scheme was usually projected from a kaleidoscope of confusion, all masking the only common ingredient present in every case. Errors of accounting, the mistakes in payment were never in the other guy’s favor. One of the immutable laws of white-collar gravity. The chips always fall on your client’s side of the table.

  “Tell me,” says Harry, “how does one break into this field-business law?”

  “By being reputable.” He looks at me. We both laugh.

  “Now tell me the truth,” he says. “Did Potter fire ya?”

  “If you mean did he say it, not in so many words. But between his hurt pride and my own guilt there was a gulf large enough to float the Love Boat. He knew Talia was playing around.”


  For a moment I think to myself. It plays like a silent reel in my brain. Ben had talked to me one day over lunch-confided to me as a friend that his wife was having an affair with another man. He was sick to death about it, looking for advice, the counsel of someone he trusted. I sat silent and listened, commiserating, making the right noises, asking the delicate questions. Satisfying myself that he had no details, that he was in the dark concerning the identity of this other man. To my eternal discredit I could not muster the courage to reveal that I was Talia’s lover.

  “What stung him more,” I tell Harry, “was the fact that she was doing it with someone he trusted, under his nose. When he found out, Ben called me in, did a lot of shouting. When he’d vented his spleen, I left, went back to my office, and started packing boxes.” I take a drink. “In the end, I guess you could say I fell on my own sword.”

  Harry laughs.

  I look at him and catch the unintended pun.

  “No doubt about it,” he says. “Should’ve kept it sheathed.”

  “Next time I’ll put a knot in it.”

  “Don’t look now, but it’s time for penance.” Harry’s looking up into the beveled glass mirror over the bar. Ben’s emerged from Wong’s office across the room. Suddenly there’s a knot in my stomach. Potter’s surveying the bar. He sees me, hesitates long enough to tug a little, remove a few of the wrinkles from his sweater vest, then heads our way. The familiar stride, shoulders rounded, knees and elbows akimbo, head down, like he’s leading a marching band across the floor. One of the summer interns coined the classic description of Ben’s expression-“Jewish cool,” the kid called it. Though Potter is as Gentile as Pontius Pilate, the description fit. His look, wrinkles around the jaw and neck, head perpetually cocked to the side, is a strange mixture seeming to verge on and vary between annoyance and boredom. There was a lot of Walter Matthau in the face and manner, a certain curmudgeonly charisma.

  “This may be a little unpleasant,” I warn Harry.

  “I just hope he ain’t packin’,” Harry slips a hand into his coat pocket, makes like a pistol, and winks at me. “It’s OK,” he says. “I’ll be all right. I have a rule. Never come between old friends.” Harry leans palpably, away from me. He’s amused by this.

  “Paul.” My name is spoken softly. Ben has a deep, slow cadence to his voice. I let it break over my back like a wave before I turn. It’s all very casual, like a surprise.

  “Ben.” I smile and extend a hand. I am almost stunned when he takes it. Potter’s expression is an enigma. The sort of smile an insect might expect when examined under a microscope. There’s more curiosity here than warmth.

  I finish the social chores, introductions between Harry and Ben. There’s a quick shake, and Harry’s dismissed as Potter returns his attentions to me. There are a dozen sets of eyes on us from nearby tables. I feel them like lasers probing my skin.

  “Been a while,” he says. ‘After all the years we’ve known each other, thought it was time we talked. Your departure was”-he searches for the right choice of words-“a little abrupt.” Ben is notoriously understated, in his attire and in this case his description of my wholesale flight from the firm. He smiles.

  “Can I get you a drink?” I ask him.

  “Thought we might do that in Jay’s office while we talk.” Potter turns again to Harry. “You don’t mind if I take Paul away for a few minutes?”

  “Oh no. No. Keep him as long as you like.” There’s a knavish grin on Harry’s face, like he’s warning me-telling me to watch Potter’s hands. I grab my glass. Ben turns toward the office. I begin to follow, do a quick pirouette and give a “what-ya-gonna-do” kind of shrug in Harry’s direction. As I turn, Harry’s holding up a slip of paper. Suddenly I comprehend the expression on his face. While I’m cloistered with Ben in Wong’s office, Harry will be drinking on my open bar tab.

  Wong’s office, it seems, is an appropriate setting for my meeting with Ben. It has the hushed earthy tones, the muted indirect light of a tony funeral parlor. An imposing bronze Buddha, larger than life, sits in an alcove behind Wong’s antique desk. Illuminated from the floor, it casts an ominous shadow across the ceiling like some corpulent genie awaiting the order of its liberator.

  Ben leads me to another area of the room, toward two small sofas facing each other, separated by a clear glass pedestal coffee table. He takes a seat on one sofa and gestures toward the other.

  “Sit down.” His tone has lost the veneer of polite finish now that we’re alone.

  He looks at me silently, soulfully, his lips drawn tight, a mail slot to his inner thoughts. I sink into the sofa and wait for his words to bury me, in wisdom-or wrath.

  “Before I forget,” he says, ‘what do you want to drink?’ He picks up a phone on a sofa-side table.

  “Oh, the same. Scotch over,” I say. “This one’s on me.”

  “Nonsense. This is my party;” He says it without humor or much grace, then places the order. Ben’s not drinking tonight. This is no social outing.

  We pass several seconds in idle chatter. He talks about changes at the firm since I left. He asks me how I like the solo practice. He’s killing time, getting my drink, the final interruption out of the way.

  I tell him honestly that it’s a challenge. He admits that he made a mistake in hiring me. I can’t tell whether he intends an insult by this. He hesitates for a moment, then explains himself-that born leaders don’t fit the corporate mold, that I was destined for bigger things than hitching my wagon to someone else’s star.

  It’s awkward, I conclude, being patronized by someone I admire.

  The waiter comes in with my drink, and Potter tells him to put it on his tab.

  There’s a glaze of light off the flat horn-rim lenses Ben is wearing. These are new. I can’t see his eyes clearly. The familiar half-frame cheaters for reading are in his sweater pocket. I can see them sticking out.

  “I’ve done a lot of thinking during the past several months,” he says.

  “That’s two of us. What can I …”

  He holds up a hand, cuts me off. Ben’s not looking for confessions.

  “What’s done is done,” he says. ‘We can’t change it. We can only diminish ourselves by wallowing in past mistakes. I think I know you well enough,” he says. “I think I know how you feel.”

  He leaves no opening for me to respond but rises from the sofa and walks toward the desk.

  “In the end the ancients-the Greeks-always said it best. There really is no witness so terrible, no accuser so powerful as the conscience that dwells in each of us.”

  He’s speaking now almost to himself, his back to me as he puts distance between us, as if absolution is to be my own private, solitary affair.

  I sit silent on the couch, my gaze cast down at the ice floating in my drink.

  “What’s said here, tonight, between us, is an end of it,” he says. “We have an understanding?”

  “Sure,” I say. An easy concession. I have no desire to stoke these coals. What is happening here is necessary if I am ever to be able to look Ben in the eye again.

  “We will never speak of this thing again, then.”

  I nod. He’s not looking at me.

  Then, as he turns slowly in my direction, graceful in his gestures, I notice anew mat Ben Potter is an imposing presence-a counterpoint to Buddha.

  “I can’t begin to describe the pain,” he says, “the hurt that the two of you have caused me.” His voice is not raised in anger. It is as if he’s reasoning, striving to spread the understanding of this thing that has come between us, that has caused his anguish.

  He doesn’t understand this faithlessness, from Talia or from me. He begins to move away from the desk, back toward me. He speaks of his contentment during the first years of marriage, the gratification bred of illusions that youth is a state of mind, that love and fidelity are not rooted in passion. This is the Ben Potter I know. The words tripping off his tongue. The consummate advocate making a case for damag
es. “I stand here tonight,”’ he says, “stripped of such fantasies.” He is suddenly silent, a pause for effect. “This thing has taught me mat much. Maybe I should be grateful.”

  He’s silent again. Absorbed in thought.

  I sit clinking the ice in my glass and take a drink.

  “I want to ask you one question,” he says, ‘and I’d like a truthful answer. Tell me. Who made the first move? You or her?”

  I’m nonplussed by the sudden frontal assault. I nearly soil Wong’s couch with scotch.

  I flood my face with sincerity. “No,” I say. ‘Something like this-what happened between us wasn’t planned, Ben. This wasn’t some conspiracy. We didn’t sit down and plot who would initiate the first act. It just happened. We found ourselves together. One thing led to another and it happened.” I begin to sound like an echo, but it’s all I can say. “To our-to my everlasting discredit-it just happened.”

  He smiles and nods, a gesture of concession.

  “The diplomat,” he says. “A gentleman’s response. It’s what I would expect.” He says it like he’s already formed an opinion on the subject, that my response has confirmed some previously held suspicion on the question of who was most at fault. It’s a disease mat afflicts us from law school, the lawyer’s penchant to fix blame, like confession and absolution.

  “I tell you, Ben, honestly, as truthfully as I can, it happened-it just happened.” I prime my tone with sincerity. For me at least, a valued relationship hangs in the balance.

  “If I could, you must believe, I would go back and undo it, remove the hurt, remove myself from the temptation.” For a moment I weigh whether to reveal that it was his own deed, Ben’s own assignment of my services to the legal spadework on Talia’s real estate ventures that provided the opportunity. Motive was, in the final analysis, a matter of carnal chemistry. But I keep this thought to myself.