Kitabı oku: «Once A Liar», sayfa 3
NOW
Harrison is standing at the Four Seasons bar, waiting impatiently for me to arrive. Every time I see him, I have to actively suppress the memory of him humiliating me after the Stu Bogovian trial. I don’t like Harrison, and I never have, but over the years, he has been hounding me to be his friend, even going so far as to offer me jobs with outrageous perks and benefits at the district attorney’s office. He’s not trying to make up for what he said after the Bogovian trial; he’s trying to keep my mouth shut.
When I spot him at the bar, I see two empty glasses sitting in front of him while he works on his third drink. I cross the room, nodding hellos to men in suits at various tables. Some leggy supermodel-type stops me before I reach Harrison, kissing my cheeks three times. She must be one of the French ones. I grasp her by the waist and then release her, barely stopping to take the time.
Harrison pulls me in for a strong handshake.
“I’m having vodka. I think it’s my third or fourth by now, not that anyone’s counting. What are you gonna have, Pete?”
I recoil and wipe my hands on a handkerchief. Instead of allowing him to place my order, I lean behind him and ask for a single malt scotch from a bartender I know but whose name I have long forgotten.
The only reason I am here, as I tried to explain to Sinan earlier, is to remind Harrison that I have all the ammunition I need to take him down and ruin his reelection bid, and that it’s in his best interest to stay in line. So, I play with him now and again. I know he’ll get drunk and ask me to come to the DA’s office, his typical move to try to settle the bad blood between us. He wants me in his pocket. With me as his underling, he would gain control, and I won’t allow him to take away the power I have over him.
He thinks if he shows me affection and professional courtesy I’ll forget what he did to me, and I’ll forget the things I know. But I have no plans of joining the DA’s office and becoming complicit in Harrison’s dirty work.
I lean against the bar and look anywhere but at him and his droopy, drunken eyes. He is tuned into my every move, like a schoolgirl with a crush.
“Pete, Pete,” Harrison is saying. I ignore him, not even bothering with one-word answers, sipping my drink and scanning the room for more interesting company.
“Nice work on that assault case last week, by the way. Didn’t think you’d be able to pull that one off, not even you.” He plies me with faux sincerity and compliments. I’m beginning to feel nauseous.
“Not even me?”
“I mean, the guy had the gun in his possession, right? With her blood on the handle? You really have a way with overcoming physical evidence.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I swirl the ice cubes in my drink.
“Pete, I asked you here tonight because we’ve got to talk about my offer. I need you now more than I ever have.”
Harrison is covering his ass, and I can see right through him. When he gets worried that I’ll jeopardize his career ambitions, he invites me out and tries to entice me into submission, but he can’t acknowledge this. If he admits that he’s scared of what I know, he’s essentially admitting he has something to hide. It’s amusing for me sometimes, keeping up this cat-and-mouse game, watching him squirm.
“I’ve said it before, but clearly you don’t listen, so I’ll say it again.” I don’t even bother to look at him. “I am not, ever, going to work for you at the DA’s office.”
But again, he isn’t listening. “Pete, I’m up for reelection. You know this. The campaign is strong, but I need someone like you—some soulless bastard like you—who can win cases without even getting out of bed in the morning. Use your talents to clean up the streets. Put the bad guys behind bars instead of defending them. Come on. What can I do to convince you?”
If I work at the DA’s office, then I’ll be complicit in his illicit dealings, and I won’t have a leg to stand on if I want to roll over and expose the things I know.
I laugh right in his fat face. “Nothing, Harry. There’s nothing you can do to convince me. If I were to go to your side, I would take your job. I’m not working under you or anyone else. We’ve been having this argument for years and I’m tired of it.” Already sick of his drivel after just one drink, I throw my black card onto the bar behind Harrison’s hulking form.
Harrison tries to steady himself on the corner of the bar and instead his elbow slips, and he barely catches himself on the seat of a barstool. “Jesus, Harry, you’re in public.” I quickly scan the room for onlookers, trying to ensure no one sees me with this classless mess. “People know me here. They know you, too. Pull yourself together.”
As the bartender hands me back my card with the tab, I flick away the plastic Four Seasons pen and draw a Montblanc from my jacket pocket. I leave an enormous tip, hoping to keep the bartender’s mouth shut when it comes time to gossip about drunken bigwigs.
“I need you, Peter. The ADAs have no fight in them, no spark. It’s all perfunctory. No one grabs the bull by the horns like you do. I can guarantee you’ll take my position when I retire. I only want one more term, make it five total.” Harrison pulls my lapels. “Come on, Peter, whatever it takes.”
His desperation is becoming revolting. “Get home and get some sleep, Harry. You’re never going to get me away from criminal defense, and you’re never going to get me to work under you.” I gently slap his hands away from me and lead him down the stairs.
“I’ll fix the Bogovian thing,” Harrison proclaims. “Now that he’s getting out, it’ll be in the media again. I’ll make amends publicly, righting whatever wrongs may have come to you, and then I can announce that you’re coming to work for me. I mean with me.”
I glare at Harrison with raised eyebrows. I knew he would offer me some kind of recompense to sweeten the deal, but I didn’t think he would dare bring up Bogovian.
“No,” I manage to growl.
Harrison sways and bobs and I reach a hand to his elbow to stabilize him. A man of his size should learn to handle his liquor.
“Charlotte.” Harrison shakes a perceptive finger at me. “I know you have a thing for her.” He pulls his arm away from me and stares me squarely in the face. “Come to the DA’s office, and I’ll give you Charlotte. What more could you possibly want?”
Both bemused and taken aback, I let a smile stretch across my face. His expression remains cold. “You’ll give me your daughter? How could you possibly do that?” I laugh incredulously and walk down the wide steps in front of me.
“I’ll give you my blessing, to—you know—sleep with my daughter.” Harrison stays two steps above me, leaning against the banister, certain this offer will be what turns me.
“I didn’t need your blessing, Harrison,” I sneer through gritted teeth.
Harrison’s face registers shock before sliding into understanding. Of course I’d already slept with his daughter.
With a laugh, I saunter down the steps. Still grinning when I reach the landing, I look back up to Harrison. He’s walking back toward the bar, unruffled, appearing completely sober.
THEN
Marcus and I had rented office space for Rhodes & Caine, LLP, in downtown Manhattan on Church Street, just north of Leonard. I walked to work from my loft in Tribeca, and as I strolled to the office one morning when the trial preparations for the Bogovian case were just beginning, I thought back to home for the first time in a long time.
I had lied to Juliette about where and how I grew up, and although I didn’t quite regret it, it was becoming clear to me that she was more than just a girlfriend and maybe she should know the truth. I had buried my past behind a curtain of carefully designed lies, and I never pulled back that curtain.
Juliette believed I spent my childhood moving from one European city to the next, but in reality, I grew up in Vermont. Not the only child of an art dealer father and sophisticated mother, as I told Juliette, I was raised by my uncle Tommy and his wife, Lee, amid the chaos of their already overstuffed home and family. Lee was pregnant with her fourth child when they reluctantly took custody of me. I was only eight months old. As my uncle frequently reminded me growing up, they took me in because he loved his sister, not because he loved or wanted me. My mother was deemed unfit by the courts to care for me, and she was never married to my biological father, who disappeared after I was born anyway. So, Tommy was my only option.
I have memories of my mother coming around the house sporadically, always looking for a handout, some compensation for what she considered to have been a raw deal in life. She would complain that the state had taken her only child, but as far as I could see, she never made an effort to clean herself up enough to win me back. The visits always ended in Lee demanding my mother take me back or help to support me, which would send her into a tailspin of self-pitying and hysterics.
While Tommy kept me fed and clothed, and implored his children to include me and treat me as a member of the family, they all saw me as an intruder. In their eyes, I was a thief stealing food from their mouths, taking up time and space that would have otherwise been theirs.
Tommy was never really a father to me and certainly not a role model. He was a man who just wanted to get by, to fly under the radar; living a simple life, hopefully ending in a simple death, leaving a simple body to become a simple ghost.
The apathy was thick, and I felt suffocated. My whole childhood, I felt I was living in a house with strangers I didn’t know and who didn’t know me. I didn’t fit in with these people. They didn’t have friends, they didn’t have opinions and they didn’t have ambitions. I, on the other hand, longed for success. I wanted greatness. To be noticed, to be known, to be respected. I was steeped in so much nothing in that house, that I yearned for anything to fill the void. No one asked anything of me, so I asked everything of myself.
To me, the point of life was to be the best. Not second best, not in the top ten: the best. I wanted to have the best house, the best life and be the best at my job. Nothing less would ever be enough for me. I wanted to be respected by everyone. This became the only thing that mattered to me. This was how I protected myself. Be the best at everything I do and be in control of everything else. Everyone would respect me and adore me if I were the best.
And Marcus was just the man to lead me to the promised land I was looking for.
Marcus was savage in his ruthlessness. His pursuit of excellence seemed impossible to contain, and he stopped at nothing to become the best. Not only was he the top defense attorney in New York, he also led a personal life that I idolized. He managed to keep himself head and shoulders above the reputation garnered by most lawyers in criminal defense and was counted among the high-society sect. He attended exclusive New York City social events and was a sought-after guest at major benefits and galas. He led a full and ambitious life and earned his prestigious standing. He was exactly the person I wanted to emulate.
I saw my reflection in the glass windows as I arrived at my office building, and I could see that I was poised to take my place at the top. If I could follow in Marcus’s footsteps, I could be the son he never had, and he could be the father I always wanted. I would finally find the place where I fit, and I could leave my humiliating past behind me forever.
Once I arrived at work, Marcus invited me into his office to discuss the details of the Bogovian case. We had already had two meetings with Stu Bogovian to hear his side of the story and start working out what kind of tactics we would use.
“I’m glad you’re going to be at the helm of this one,” Marcus said to me. “It’s the perfect high-profile case to get your name in the papers.”
“I’m ready for him, but he’s a scumbag, Marcus. Going to be hard to make him look good.” I arranged my notes in front of me, ensuring everything was well organized.
“No one’s arguing that he isn’t a piece of shit, and neither will you. In fact, you’re better off acknowledging that he’s a piece of shit. All you need to do is show that the girl is lying. Out for a payday.”
“But all the physical evidence clearly corroborates her story,” I began, hesitant to go to trial for what seemed to be an unwinnable case. The intern had run directly to a precinct and told the cops what had happened. Bruises, bite marks, ligature marks on her wrists; it all fit with her story.
“It also fits a story about two people having some good old-fashioned kinky sex, Peter.” Marcus looked at me with disappointment that I wasn’t immediately willing to challenge the girl’s story.
“You want me to say she’s lying?”
“Of course you say she’s lying.” He leaned over the table and growled at me.
“But he’s guilty. We should be working on damage control, a settlement, something out of criminal court.”
“We don’t settle, Peter. And if you tell me your conscience is getting the better of you, then I was wrong about you from the beginning. These aren’t people, Peter. They’re cases. Cases to be won, not to be settled out of court. How’re you going to make a name for yourself if you let your conscience dictate?”
The last thing I wanted was for Marcus to have second thoughts about our partnership. I shook the notions of settlement and loss out of my head. I wanted to assure him that he had made the right decision by bringing me on as his partner, and my conscience was not going to be a problem. My professional standing was far from established, and now that I had had a taste of the life I wanted, I was willing to do almost anything to stay firmly on the right path. I had been dealt a disastrous hand with the Bogovian case, but I needed to impress Marcus and he wouldn’t accept anything less than a win.
At first, I struggled with demolishing the accuser’s credibility. She may have been a perfectly good girl, and a terrible thing happened to her. But Marcus reminded me again and again that our job was not to care about the alleged victims—that was for the psychiatrists. Our job was to know every minute detail of the law, inside and out. Ethics and personal principles didn’t have anything to do with criminal defense. I had to suppress my better judgment. I had to develop a thicker skin. This was when my morals had to get flexible, when my natural charm took on a whole new application. Peter Caine wasn’t really born until the Stu Bogovian case began.
It’s not that I changed when I went to work with Marcus; it’s more that I was shown that some of my natural proclivities would be more useful than others; inclinations toward behaving callously, with sarcasm and disregard for emotions. Kindness and sympathy had no place in the legal world we operated in, and Marcus helped me to squelch those tendencies before they interfered with my career.
This is why he invited me to open a partnership while I was so young and still impressionable. This is why he pulled me aside that night at the Columbia Law mixer. This is how he knew that I would be his prey.
NOW
After Claire had returned from work, she spent the evening running up and down the townhouse preparing for Jamie’s arrival. She had gone to sleep past midnight, her hair wrapped in a polka-dot handkerchief like the ghost of Rosie the Riveter. I went to the office before she woke up but left her a note on a piece of Rhodes & Caine letterhead, something that I thought she might find special: Now you get to be a mother. I signed the bottom of the page with my favorite Montblanc pen. I knew using the word mother would have a deep effect on her.
Claire had always wanted to have children of her own. She looked after her three little sisters as if she were their mother when their own mother was no longer able to care for them. She used to put her sisters to bed, and then listen at the top of the stairs while her parents fought. She heard her father gaslighting her mother—convincing her that she was losing her mind, imagining the things she clearly saw. He destroyed her with his cheating and lies. When her father got angry, especially when he was caught in a lie or left evidence of another woman, he would turn completely cold. He wouldn’t speak to Claire’s mother, not even a word, for days at a time.
Claire invented stories for her sisters to help get through it—her only outlet to deal with what she was witnessing—and she would call the stories the Princess and the Ice Man. In the stories, the Princess always managed to escape the clutches of the Ice Man and lived happily ever after with her three little fairies.
In reality, Claire’s mother found a different kind of escape; she jumped in front of a northbound R train.
Claire had begged me for years to have children, but I was finished. Jamie would be my only child, and I made it clear to Claire that if she wanted children of her own, it wouldn’t be with me. In our arguments about having children, she told me she dreamed of having the chance to do it better. To be the kind of mother she never had. The kind who stands up to a philandering husband. The kind who won’t allow herself to be destroyed.
Now that Juliette is gone and Jamie needs a mother, he is her opportunity to be the parent she always wanted to be. It’s almost too perfect—Claire gets to be a mother, and I don’t have to deal with a teenager I hardly know.
I can’t be bothered to pick Jamie up and bring him to my house, so instead I send an embarrassingly large limousine. Katherine’s staff will be sure to help him load his belongings into the limo. Of course, I’m hoping to not be home when he pulls up in front of the house on Twenty-First Street. I called home earlier and instructed the housekeeper to welcome Jamie and apologize that I won’t be there. I told her to make up whatever story she wanted about my absence, forgetting that Claire would be home from client meetings by the time Jamie arrived. Claire could have managed a suitable lie with no problem.
As it turns out, I mistime my return home, and I see from the corner of Twenty-First Street that his limo is just pulling up as I’m making my way toward the townhouse. I duck behind a boxwood topiary in front of an apartment building and watch Jamie exit the car. The driver pulls his suitcases one by one from the trunk, arranges them on the curb and carries them up the steps with Jamie lumbering behind.
Claire answers the door almost immediately and embraces him as he stands at the top of the stoop, pinning his arms at his sides. They walk inside, and I decide to head to a bar I go to when I’m not ready to play house.
I never wanted to have children so playing the dad role is always a burden. Juliette had wanted to be a mother, as I find most women do, and she and her father pressured me into it.
It seemed my family-man role mediated my professional reputation; clients often told us that they admired my ability to create a work-life balance. Little did they know I balanced nothing. After Marcus died and Juliette and I got divorced, no one was around to insist I play daddy, and it’s not like I couldn’t afford the child support payments. Jamie existed, and so did I, and until today, I hardly had to know about him.
I check my watch—6:43 p.m. I throw a fifty on the bar and trudge east toward my house. On my way up to my bedroom, I find Jamie and Claire sitting in the living room together, a room I hardly ever go into. They both startle and jump to attention when they notice me in the doorway.
“Don’t leap, I’m not a monster,” I say, attempting to soothe their fright with a joke.
“Hi, honey,” Claire squeals as she walks over to me. Jamie nervously tugs at the hem of his shirt, looking down at his sneakers, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Claire wraps her arm around my shoulders and kisses my cheek. This isn’t normally how she greets me, and although I’m not sure why she’s chosen to put on a show for Jamie, I’m all the more relieved that she’d rather fake it than face the awkwardness of the situation.
“Did you have a good ride over here?” I ask Jamie, not knowing what to say to him.
“Uh, yeah, thanks for sending the limo.” Jamie peers up at me to respond, and then quickly returns his gaze to the floor.
“Sit down, Jamie. You can relax in my house. I mean, in your house.”
“Our home,” Claire corrects. “You should feel comfortable in our home.” She returns to her seat and makes a display of taking off her shoes and kicking her feet up onto the couch. They both have twitchy, uneasy eyes. They’re looking at me like children with their hands in the cookie jar, and I can’t see any reason for either of them to behave like this.
“Is anything wrong?” I ask, although I couldn’t care less about their responses.
“I thought you’d be home earlier,” Claire softly confesses.
“Yes, so did I, but I got stuck at work. Had to go over a million depositions for this trial I have coming up,” I lie.
Neither of them responds. As I stare hard at Jamie, I see his eyes dart up at me and a flush coming over his cheeks. He knows I’m lying. I look into his face, trying to feel something. Trying to see if the presence of my son in my home will stir up any emotions.
I once again can’t reach down far enough inside myself to pull up anything more than insensitivity. Jamie knows I’m lying, and I just don’t care.
