The Namedropper Page 12

  ‘You got your head up your own ass, Harv,’ declared Beckwith, taking the macho car up the ramp towards the bridge, the traffic easier going out of Manhattan than it appeared to be getting in from the unmoving, traffic-congealed contra flow. ‘That cost estimate was before we got yesterday’s squeaky clean medical report. Which turned your problems a hundred and eight degrees in your favour: you’re now back on the sunny side of the street. Sit back, smile and enjoy the warmth.’

  ‘No!’ refused Jordan. ‘There are things we need to get straight between us, Daniel! And listen. I use your full, complete Christian name, don’t try to abbreviate it. You want to play out some macho fantasy with the way you dress and the car you drive, that’s fine. That’s your fantasy: get your rocks off. But I don’t like being called Harv, when my name is Harvey. And I don’t like having appointments made for me before I even know they’re being made, what those appointments are for or why, even, they’re necessary. I’ve wiped my own ass since I was about five, without any help from anyone, and hope I can go on doing it without leaving stains on my underwear for a long time in the future. As I intend doing a lot more – everything – for myself in the future.’

  Beckwith snatched another glance as they turned into the La Guardia slip road. ‘Sounds to me like you’ve made your decision about your legal representation. So why you bothering to come down to Raleigh with me today?’

  ‘I have made my decision,’ confirmed Jordan. ‘My decision is that I want to be called Harvey when we talk and that I want to be consulted in advance before arrangements are made on my behalf and that I don’t want to be lectured about losing my temper – because I’ve got that completely on board and totally under control. But I want to continue with your representing me because we’re a long way down the track now and I really don’t want to go back – or down to Raleigh to find somebody else – to start all over again.’

  ‘Which isn’t exactly an overwhelming vote of confidence.’

  ‘Which it wasn’t intended to be. It was intended to tell you how I felt and how I’d like things to be between us from now on.’

  ‘Otherwise …?’

  ‘Otherwise we’ll have another conversation, very similar to this. And I will go down to Raleigh. Which brings us back to your choice.’

  Beckwith took the car into the short stay parking lot, ignoring three available spaces until he found one that he wanted, close to a side wall. He hesitated after they got out to walk side by side with Jordan, still unspeaking, into the terminal. When they reached the departure pier he handed Jordan his ticket, deferring to him to check in first. The flight was already being called and they continued on into the aircraft. On the plane Beckwith stood back for Jordan to choose his seat and as always Jordan took the aisle.

  Finally, when they’d settled in their seats, Beckwith said, ‘You travelled around America a lot, Harvey?’

  ‘Not a lot. Las Vegas, of course. The west coast a few times. New Orleans, before the hurricane disaster.’ It would have been a mistake to acknowledge the name correction.

  ‘Pity we couldn’t have driven to Raleigh and back in one day. Great country.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind about returning to England too quickly,’ announced Jordan. ‘I’ll have to go back sometime, of course. But I want first to make sure everything is on track here: get a much clearer idea how it’s going to work out.’

  ‘Maybe a good idea. It’s your decision.’

  ‘Based upon your guidance.’

  ‘That’s what you’re paying me for.’

  ‘How are we going to do this meeting with Bob Reid?’

  ‘Officially it’s between attorneys. But there’s no reason for you not joining in if you think you’ve got a point to make that we’ve missed.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ He’d corrected the situation to where it should have been from the beginning, Jordan decided. It was a good feeling, the best he’d had for several days.

  Raleigh, the first American state capital Jordan had visited, was hung with direction signs to the sites and events of its early settler history like flags at a victory celebration and Jordan got a tourist’s commentary to each and every one of them from Daniel Beckwith as the lawyer drove their hire car in from the airport, culminating in a brief detour to Capitol Square to see the horse-mounted statues of the three North Carolina-born statesmen who’d risen to become United States presidents.

  They were only five minutes late getting to Reid’s offices, just two streets away from the square, and were ushered directly in. The first person Jordan saw, before the waiting lawyer, was Alyce Appleton.

  She wore a dark grey trouser suit, brightened by a pink sweater, but it still reminded Jordan of Lesley Corbin’s official business uniform. Alyce had on the dark framed spectacles, too, but the thin wedding band was no longer next to the diamond engagement ring. She wore little make-up but Jordan remembered she hadn’t in the South of France.

  Jordan’s initial thought was how difficult it was to imagine the antipathy he now felt towards someone with whom he had so recently – no more than three months, he guessed – made such uninhibited love.

  Looking more towards the two lawyers than the woman, Jordan said, I didn’t understand this was how it was going to be?’

  ‘Neither did I,’ frowned Beckwith, turning accusingly towards the other lawyer.

  ‘It was obviously necessary for me to inform my client what was happening—’ began Reid.

  ‘And I insisted on being here as well,’ broke in Alyce, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

  ‘I saw no legal bar,’ finished the Raleigh lawyer. He was a plump, red-faced, jowly man who needed the tightness of the waistcoat as well as the fastened jacket of his black pinstriped suit to hold in his stomach to prevent himself looking fatter than he was. The owl-round glasses looked precarious on his button nose.

  ‘It might have been better if we’d discussed it earlier between the two of us,’ said Beckwith, cautiously.

  ‘I thought we already had. If your client can be present, so can mine,’ said Reid, an asthmatic catch in his voice. ‘We’re both present to guard against conflicting problems … which I don’t anticipate there being.’ He looked at Jordan. ‘Do you have any objection to Alyce being here?’

  Daniel Beckwith outmanoeuvred before they’d crossed the threshold of a court, thought Jordan, feeling wrong-footed himself. ‘Not if it will achieve more quickly what I want to be achieved. You’re the lawyers, to judge it legally.’

  ‘I want a written, without prejudice, understanding between us,’ insisted Beckwith.

  ‘As I do,’ said Reid. ‘With the attachment of a memorandum of agreement from your client. Alyce has already signed hers. I’ve taken the liberty of having the documentation prepared.’

  Something else done for him without his knowledge or agreement, Jordan recognized, looking at Beckwith, who nodded. Jordan said, ‘OK by me.’ He signed first and while the two lawyers were completing the formality he said to Alyce, ‘Hello, belatedly.’

  ‘Hello.’

  Neither smiled.

  Jordan said, ‘So much for not exchanging addresses.’

  ‘I’m sorry … about all of it … about everything. I really didn’t know … suspect … it’s awful and I really am very sorry … embarrassed, too. Extremely embarrassed.’

  ‘I thought I was going to be sorrier than I already am until late yesterday afternoon.’

  Alyce frowned, shaking her head. ‘I don’t understand …?’

  ‘It wasn’t until late yesterday afternoon that I got the all-clear from the venerealogist.’

  Alyce flushed, visibly. ‘You surely didn’t think?’

  ‘Of course I surely thought,’ Jordan cut her off, mocking her words, close to letting the anger erupt. ‘You really surprised that I surely thought?’

  ‘This wasn’t set up as a fight,’ broke in Reid.

  Jordan switched his attention, his anger locked down, pleased the way the reactions w
ere coming. ‘What, exactly, was it set up for? I don’t believe I should be involved in this situation at all and want to be out of it … don’t want to go anywhere near a courthouse. That’s how it is – all of how it is – as far as I am concerned. Now tell me how I feature as far as you are concerned.’ He’d listened intently to himself, not just to the words but to his tone, and was sure Beckwith wouldn’t be able to accuse him of either losing his temper or his control.

  It was Alyce who responded, ahead of her lawyer. ‘I don’t believe you should be involved or need to go anywhere near a courthouse, either. That’s why I wanted to be here. Just – and only – to tell you that. And to say sorry. Which I already have. Now I’ve said both – and hope you believe me – there’s no need for me to stay any longer if it’s a problem for you.’ She stirred in her seat, as if to get up.

  There was an abrupt silence in the room, each man looking to the other. To his client Reid said, ‘You’re here now. Agreed to the confidentiality. You might as well stay; get some idea, beyond what’s briefly already been said, what’s going to come from Harvey’s side.’

  Talking directly to Jordan, not to her lawyer, Alyce said, ‘What do you want me to do? Get out and stop embarrassing you more than I’ve already embarrassed both of us? Or stay?’

  The embarrassment did surge through Jordan at the awareness of how he’d behaved. ‘Why not stay?’

  Alyce flushed again. ‘What about my apology! Do you believe and accept I didn’t imagine you’d become involved? Or are you determined to stay tight-assed?’

  Jordan stared at her for a long time before saying, ‘Thank you for your apology at my becoming involved. Which I accept.’

  ‘Now what about you?’ Alyce pushed on, positively red faced now. ‘How about an apology from you, for actually believing – contemplating – for a moment that I’d put you at risk from what my bastard of a husband exposed me to! You know what that makes me, your thinking that: it makes me sick to my stomach!’

  ‘Maybe our coming down wasn’t such a good idea after all,’ intruded Beckwith. ‘We’re not achieving anything here.’

  ‘Let’s all calm down. Drink some coffee or something,’ urged Reid. ‘We break up like this the winner’s going to be Alfred Appleton, with us the losers. We’re on the same side, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’d hoped we would be,’ said Alyce. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Coffee or what?’ bustled Reid. ‘Let’s cool down. Compose ourselves.’

  Alyce had tea. The three men chose coffee. Reid led them all away from any formal setting, to an annex to his office. It was fitted with easy chairs and sofas and polished long-leafed plants that seemed to survive in pots filled with wood chippings, not earth.

  There was another brief although less awkward silence. Then, looking between Jordan and Alyce, Beckwith said, ‘OK, you’ve each read the other’s initial statement and we’ve got the medical problem out of the way. So let’s move on from there, shall we?’

  Jordan seized the moment, a lot of questions already formulated. ‘What about the court? Whether it’ll be an open or closed hearing?’

  ‘We want it closed,’ replied Reid, at once. ‘I’ve already intimated that to Appleton’s people. And to the court.’

  ‘To what response?’

  ‘None, positively, not yet,’ said Reid. ‘But Bartle inferred they’d oppose it.’

  ‘Scare tactics,’ judged Beckwith.

  ‘That’s what I think,’ agreed Read.

  ‘We can support your applications, even though we can’t initiate it,’ Beckwith promised. ‘Which we will if I don’t succeed in a pre-trial submission to get Harvey dismissed from the case.’

  ‘Which we’ll support you in,’ said Reid. He looked directly at Jordan. ‘That’s at Alyce’s insistence, before she and I talked about anything else. That’s one of the main reasons for my asking her to be here today.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jordan, uncomfortably, looking between the woman and her lawyer.

  ‘You’re closer to the ground here than I am,’ said Beckwith, talking to Reid. ‘You any indication yet who our judge might be?’

  ‘Not officially,’ said Reid. ‘I’m guessing at Pullinger.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Beckwith.

  ‘That doesn’t sound as if you’re pleased?’ questioned Jordan, gauging the tone in both lawyers’ voices.

  ‘Judge Hubert Pullinger prides himself on having the strongest and loudest moral voice not just in the county but in the entire state of North Carolina; far beyond that, even,’ explained Reid.

  ‘Whom I remember from when I practised here makes early, preconceived judgements from which he can rarely be persuaded by contrary evidence or argument.’

  ‘Can’t you apply for an alternative judge?’ asked Alyce.

  ‘He’s also the senior judge on the circuit,’ said her lawyer. ‘It would be about the worst move, politically or tactically, to try to make. If he gets the case, we have to live with it.’

  ‘Why are you guessing he’ll get it?’ asked Jordan.

  ‘He has first pick. And this is his sort of case,’ said Reid.

  ‘I want to know something: something very important,’ demanded Jordan, coming to another query on his long list. ‘We’ve gone past – never touched upon, even – what the hell criminal conversations are. Will someone set it – or them – out for me, beyond saying that they’re expensive!’

  Before deferring to Reid, Beckwith briefly, but with a hard-faced stare, looked at Jordan and Reid intercepted the look. The local lawyer coughed a hollow cough and said, I guess that’s a question for me?’

  ‘It’s a question to anyone who can answer it,’ said Jordan.

  Reid coughed again. ‘In layman’s language, criminal conversation is judged as an injury to the person. Appleton’s in this case, committed by you. It’s what’s technically known as a short liability tort, whereby it is only necessary to prove and establish that sexual intercourse took place, which both of you admit. It’s also necessary to establish that a valid marriage existed. Which it did. And that the suit is brought within statutory limitations. Which – once more – it is …’

  ‘It is not a defence that the defendant – you – did not know that Alyce was married, that Alyce consented to the act of sex, that Alyce was separated from Appleton, that Alyce seduced you or that the marriage was an unhappy one. Or that the spouse – Appleton – had been unfaithful,’ completed Beckwith in a breathless rush, anxious to prove he knew the legislation as well as the other lawyer.

  It took several moments for Jordan to absorb it all and when he spoke he was still not sure that he had, not completely. Shaking his head in disbelief he said, ‘This should have been spelled out at the very beginning! While I was still in England. From what you’ve just told me, the two of you, I’ve got absolutely no defence whatsoever against the claims that are being brought against me!’

  ‘You asked for the law, which you got,’ said Beckwith. ‘My job – Bob’s job, in Alyce’s case – is to advance arguments that fit your specific circumstances and persuade the judge that my interpretation of that law is in your favour. Which I think I can.’

  ‘As I think I can,’ came in Reid.

  ‘I sure as hell hope you can,’ said Alyce. ‘You haven’t set out the law as specifically as that to me, either, until now.’

  ‘I think I have,’ said Reid.

  ‘I don’t,’ refused Alyce.

  ‘Appleton’s surely the guiltier party!’ said Jordan. He looked hesitantly at Alyce. ‘I’m sorry about this, talking as if you’re not here, but he has to be the person who gave Alyce chlamydia. And admits to two affairs.’

  ‘There were more, I’m sure,’ said Alyce. ‘All that time he spent by himself in Manhattan! He wasn’t by himself in bed.’

  ‘My first pre-trial submission is going to be a court order for Appleton to undergo a venereal examination,’ said Reid. ‘And our enquiry people are trying to find other women. The more we get the
more Pullinger will come towards us.’

  ‘I’ve now undergone two medical examinations,’ said Jordan. ‘And I’ve been told by both specialists that it’s a curable infection. What if he’s had treatment: that there’s no trace of his ever having had it?’

  ‘I’m also going to apply for an order that his side produce his complete medical records, if they won’t do it voluntarily,’ said Reid. ‘And I’ve already asked Bartle for them to be volunteered.’

  ‘What about Sharon Borowski and Leanne Jefferies?’ demanded Beckwith.

  Reid shifted in his seat at the insistence. ‘Sharon Borowski’s dead: killed in an auto smash eleven months ago; she no longer features. Leanne Jefferies is another commodity dealer, although not with Appleton’s firm. Works for Sears Rutlidge. Thirty, single. As far as our enquiry people can discover it really was a short relationship, as Appleton says it was. No indication of their still being together. But we’re issuing criminal conversation claims against her, of course, as soon as I get the name of her lawyer. That’s going to be another court application, as soon as I get a judge.’

  ‘The bank records are selective,’ Beckwith pointed out.

  ‘Already noted,’ said Reid, at once. ‘I’ve filed for consecutive statements.’

  ‘What about the money you gave him?’ Beckwith queried, looking at Alyce. ‘There must be a paper trail, from your statements?’

  ‘Withdrawn in cash, handed over to him in cash, in tranches of varying amounts, not a lump sum,’ said Alyce. ‘Like being repaid in Mercedes cars, he told me it was better taxably for it all to be done in cash.’

  ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that you were being conned?’ asked Jordan, the expert.

  ‘Let me tell you about my husband,’ said Alyce, quiet-voiced, analytical. ‘When I married him I thought he loved me, which I don’t think he ever did, not at any time. It’s difficult now for me to believe that I loved him, but I think I did. He’s got a good act. I certainly trusted him, another mistake. It took me a while to recognize him as a manipulating bully. Realizing that he was a cheat – a cheat in every way – took even longer: long after he persuaded me to relinguish my position as chief executive of the parent Bellamy Foundation.. You want the analogy, it’s easy if you’ll allow the cliché. Alfred Jerome Appleton is a Jekyll and Hyde, everybody’s friend, everybody’s helper, the first with the biggest charity cheque, all for the big reputation and the big benefit it’ll bring him. Cross him and he’ll run right over you – squash you into the ground and enjoy doing it. But no one knows that, suspects it, even. And won’t believe that it’s possible for him ever to be like that, if we don’t get a closed court. It’ll be all my fault, all my lies. That’s why he’ll be happy with an open court. It’ll be a stage for him to perform on. That’s what he does, every day: performs, puts on an act to appear someone other than who he really is.’