The Namedropper

Ten

There’d been the familiar quickening of his hearbeat upon landing at JFK, going through the airport formalities and choosing the Triboro bridge route in preference to the tunnel to get into Manhattan; there was never an alternative to entering New York above ground to see the snaggle-toothed skyline sketched out before him as he crossed the East River. But today Harvey Jordan felt different from how he had felt before. On this trip – hopefully – he was going to regain some control of and over his life, his anonymity, instead of being jerked constantly around at the end of someone else’s demanding, manipulating strings. Dear God, how much he wanted that! He guessed he was wishing too much too soon, but he couldn’t prevent himself hoping.

Jordan believed he’d finished the week ahead, which was where he always had to be: ahead, choosing the moves and the routes instead of following those where others tried to lead him. He’d ducked and dived for more than two hours after his last meeting with Lesley to reach Hans Crescent, where he found two bank documents from Royston and Jones that needed his immediate signature and, believing he remained unwatched after so much evasion, carried them at once to Leadenhall Street to hand-deliver them and to have any further correspondence held until his return from America. Then he’d crossed from the administration to the securities division to collect, in full, the ?75,000 advance to which the American lawyer had agreed. He hadn’t been able to fit all of it into the Marylebone safe so he’d taken the overflow with him to gamble that night in a much more downmarket, but conveniently myopic, casino in Tottenham Court Road and added?3,200 to what he was increasingly regarding as a war chest. When he’d delivered the?75,000 to Lesley Corbin she said she wished she was coming to New York with him and fleetingly Jordan wished she were, too, although his current entrapment had driven even the remotest thought of personal relationships out of his mind, more so than he usually felt when he was working. He considered himself to be working now, as hard – harder even – as he had had to before in order to rebuild his first destroyed life. He’d asked Lesley why she didn’t come some other time, because this looked like the first of several trips and she’d said maybe, if she could gain access to the court when the actual hearings began to experience an American court in action and Jordan regretted his glib responses, not having initially believed she was serious. He regretted, too, talking to her about the man in the car outside the Mayfair club because he hadn’t had the slightest suspicion in the Tottenham Court Road casino or anywhere else – certainly not on the outward flight to America – that he was being watched and feared now he’d made himself look stupid. Having restored his pride, Harvey Jordan hated making himself look stupid.

Jordan’s triple-glazed suite at the Carlyle was further distanced from the donkey-bray wail of emergency sirens by being back from East 76th Street and, although he didn’t then feel tired, having fitfully dozed in his first-class sleeper-bed during the last BA flight of the day out of London, Jordan went directly to bed after an omelette from room service, not having eaten on the plane. He was determined against any overhanging jet lag during his Monday meeting with Daniel Beckwith. Despite his noise precautions Jordan slept badly, sub-consciously always aware of where he was. And why.

Since the stomach-lurching letter from Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein he’d actually thought little of Alyce Appleton, beyond her ever present name. But in a dream-cluttered half sleep his mind perfectly pictured her hunched over the official-looking papers in the Carlton lounge in Cannes and again, in the bikini wisp that had made it necessary for him to briefly remain in the sea, off the He St Marguerite, and most vividly of all of her lounged naked, languorously offering herself, on the bed of their tower suite at the St Tropez hotel. She’d said something to him then, something he couldn’t now remember but wanted to because he thought it was important and therefore something that he should recall. Jordan finally awoke, completely, still trying to recollect the remark she’d made. But couldn’t.

Daniel Beckwith was a towering, hard-bodied man well over six feet tall whose blond hair Jordan guessed to be longer than Lesley Corbin’s. A thrown-aside tie lay on top of a carelessly discarded jacket puddled in a side chair to expose on the lawyer a check shirt more at home on the ranch than a lawyer’s office; the large, three-pinned oval buckle of the man’s embossed leather belt was actually centred with the head of an animal, a bison maybe, and Jordan wondered if there were stables somewhere in the building for the lawyer’s horse. The man was halfway across the office as Jordan entered, hand already outstretched in greeting. Jordan tensed expectantly and just managed to avoid a wince at the knuckle-cracking shake.

‘Good of you to come, Harv: very good. Got a lot talk about.’

‘After speaking tc Lesley and you I didn’t think I had much of a choice,’ said Jordan, taking the chair to which the lawyer gestured. Jordan thought there was a tinge of an unidentifiable accent in the laid-back, measured voice. Jordan’s right hand actually ached.

‘There was a choice and you made the right one,’ assured Beckwith. ‘You want to toss your coat, make yourself comfortable, go right ahead.’ He jabbed an intercom key, declared, ‘When you’re ready, Suzie.’ And clicked off before there was any response from the other end. He smiled a perfectly sculpted, white-toothed smile and said, ‘Coffee, to help you stay awake after your trip over. Drink it all the time myself.’

‘I’m OK with my jacket. Coffee would be good, though.’ Jordan had begun work immediately after the bad night at the Carlyle, walking the length of Wall Street to identify conveniently grouped banks for what he intended in the immediate future – and avoided any alcohol – and isolating three possible short-lease apartments. His favourite was on West 72nd Street. Despite the exertion he’d slept badly again and been awake since five so he welcomed the coffee, which arrived on a tray with two mugs and a pot holding at least two pints. The titian haired girl whom Jordan guessed to be Suzie wore a clinging red sweater and a tight cream skirt to display pert breasts and rounded slim hips to their best and obvious advantages. She said ‘Hi’ to Jordan as she passed on her way out.

Beckwith said, ‘We keep Suzie on the payroll as a warning to clients what they’re allowed to think but not do.’

Jordan heard the girl laugh behind him at what he guessed to be a well rehearsed joke, wondering if it didn’t constitute sexual harassment. He smiled because he knew he was expected to and accepted the coffee the lawyer poured, mildly impatient at the irrelevance. Or was it irrelevant? he asked himself, remembering the American’s warning against losing his temper.

Beckwith patted the dossier on his desk with a heavy hand and said, ‘Got all your stuff. And Lesley tells me she’s set up an escrow account with the deposit.’

‘I don’t understand how you can move that much cash without fulfilling some financial regulations.’ Jordan hadn’t expected to talk about money so soon but was glad the lawyer had introduced it early on. As always it remained one of the foremost questions in his mind, the more so after his bank identification the previous afternoon.

‘There are regulations and they will be fulfilled,’ guaranteed Beckwith. ‘And we’re not transferring it all at once. I draw upon it, as and when it’s necessary, supported by a federal bank agreement to prove to your English authorities that it’s a bone fide, government agreed exchange for legal purposes upon the sworn oath of Lesley’s firm and my own. All expenditure and receipts have to be exchanged between the Fed and your Bank of England. But it’s between firms, not individuals. So your name never appears. It’s covered by multinational trade legislation but we qualify under it. And there’s nothing in the legislation requiring duplication with your Inland Revenue and our IRS. I guess there will be one day, when the loophole’s discovered, but at the moment you’re lucky we can utilize it.’

‘I’m glad it exists for the moment. And that I can draw on it. I’d like an initial cash advance of $25,000.

The lawyer frowned. ‘That much?’

‘I’m thinking of some working trips to Atlantic City. Maybe Las Vegas even.’

He’d carried just short of $10,000 into the country and wished it could have been more, although the immediate intention didn’t include casinos.

‘OK,’ agreed Beckwith reluctantly.

‘Let’s hope my luck holds.’ Jordan was sure that in addition to it preventing any discrepancy between his income tax submission and the money he was making available here was Beckwith’s need to ensure he could afford to pay for his defence. Jordan made a mental note to check the scheme when his current problems were finally over. There might be an advantage he could use, although he couldn’t at that moment imagine what it might be.

‘You’ve got to depend more upon me than upon luck,’ warned the lawyer.

‘I know that,’ accepted Jordan. ‘I can’t believe how I’ve come to be caught up in all this.’

‘People can’t – or don’t – until it happens to them.’

‘Can we cut to the chase, right now?’ urged Jordan, finally giving way to his impatience. ‘You know from Lesley how it happened: my side of the story. What are my chances of being dismissed the action?’

Beckwith laughed at the question, pouring more coffee. ‘There are too many things I still have to hear and learn and question before I could even begin to answer that. And even after I do hear and learn and question, I don’t think I’d like to try an answer, even then. At this point I haven’t had the individual statements of claim from Alfred Appleton’s side, specifying the grounds for those claims against you. Or what I need from Alyce Appleton’s lawyers. This meeting is for us to get to know each other, maybe exchange a few thoughts. We’ve got a long way to go.’

The same warning that Lesley had given him, Jordan remembered. ‘How can we get any thoughts together until we know their case… cases?’

‘I said exchanging a few thoughts, not finalizing our side.’ Beckwith reached to his right, turning on a tape recorder. ‘So let’s start doing that right now. Who made the first move down there in sunny France, you or Alyce?’

‘You mean who spoke first?’

‘You tell it your way.’

Jordan hesitated for a moment. ‘She spoke first. I’d been reading in the hotel lounge. Remembered a phone call I had to make. She stopped me as I was crossing the room and told me I’d left my book behind. I said I was coming back…’

‘Did you make the call?’

‘Up in my room.’

‘I thought you were in a suite?’

‘I was. Up in my suite. Do we really need to be as pedantic as this?’

‘Harv, I need to be so pedantic I know the colour of your underwear… maybe Alyce’s, too if I’m going to be able to undermine what might be put against you. I ask the questions, any question, you answer them, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘So you made the call?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who to?’

Shit, thought Jordan, anticipating the follow-up question. ‘A restaurant overlooking Cannes harbour. I wanted to eat there that night.’

‘So there’ll be a record of the reservation in your name, the restaurant will be able to confirm the call?’

‘No,’ said Jordan, seeing his way out. ‘The line was engaged. I tried twice but then gave up. I walked down that night and managed to get a table without a reservation.’

‘With Alyce.’

‘No,’ refused Jordan again, the relief moving through him at the unchallengable escape.

‘Having given up trying to make a connection you went back downstairs?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I stopped on my way back to where I’d been sitting, thanked her for trying to stop me losing my book. On the way out I think I’d asked her to watch that it stayed safe.’

‘And?’

‘She’d been writing, earlier. It looked like a lot of documents, in a large envelope. She’d stopped by the time I got back. The envelope was beside her in a chair, along with a lot of her other stuff. It was the only chair at her table so I invited her across to where I was sitting, for a drink.’

‘So she spoke to you first but you hit on her?’

Jordan sighed, heavily. ‘I didn’t hit on her! She’d tried to do me a favour, I thought I’d buy her a drink to say thank you.’

‘I don’t care how long you stand in the box in court or how much you’re exasperated, I don’t want to hear a sigh like that again.’

Fuck you, thought Jordan. Aloud he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You will be, if you get caught out by another lawyer to make you lose your temper and it shows. I warned you already.’

‘I won’t forget again.’

‘I’m not going to let you forget. What happened next with you and Alyce?’

‘We’d talked about books, the first day we began speaking. I knew The Man in the Iron Mask was based on a true story of a prisoner once being imprisoned on one of the islands off Cannes and invited her on a trip the following day, without telling her what it was or where it would be. I rented a catamaran and took her there. We-’

‘Stop!’ demanded the lawyer. ‘Where are we now, first or second day?’

Jordan had to think. ‘Second. We spent all day together.’

‘What about the night?’

‘And the night.’

‘This has got to be exactly how it happened. So tell me – exactly – how it happened. Let’s go back to the first day you began talking.’

There’s nothing much to tell about that first day. After lunch I went into town, had dinner, alone, at the harbour restaurant and then went back to the hotel.’

‘Was she there?’

‘I didn’t see her.’

‘Why didn’t you invite her to dinner with you overlooking the harbour?’

Jordan shrugged ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t.’

‘Did you think something might develop between you?’

‘Not particularly. I was alone, she was alone. Everything was relaxed and easy.’

‘The second day you went on the catamaran trip to the island?’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Jordan.

‘What time?’

‘I don’t…’ stumbled Jordan. ‘In the morning. We had lunch on the boat, after looking at the jail.’

‘How did you manage that?’

‘Manage it?’ questioned Jordan, confused.

‘When did you rent the catamaran?’

‘The first afternoon. After lunch I went into the town, found some yacht charterers and booked the catamaran and had it provisioned for the trip.’

‘So you set up a pretty big expedition?’

‘I chartered a yacht for a one-day cruise. To take Alyce somewhere I thought she’d be interested in seeing.’

‘You went out on the catamaran, you saw the jail where the man in the iron mask was held? Then what?’

‘We swam.’

‘Naked?’ Beckwith asked.

‘In costumes. The catamaran had a crew.’

‘And a cabin?’

‘Of course it had a cabin.’

‘Did you change together?’

‘Separately.’

‘Who changed first?’

Jordan had to think again. ‘I did.’

‘What sort of costume did you wear?’

‘What?’ queried Jordan, not understanding.

‘Trunks? Boxers? What?’

‘Boxer shorts.’

‘What about Alyce?’

‘A bikini.’

‘A brief bikini? Or a two piece?’

‘A brief bikini.’

‘How brief?’

‘Very brief,’ said Jordan, remembering his delay in getting back on to the catamaran.

‘So she was coming on to you?’

‘I guess you could say that.’

‘Harv, we’re not guessing here! We’re trying to keep your ass as far away from the burner as we can. You’re being accused of stealing Al Appleton’s wife literally from under him, causing him physical and mental damage and making his business – and income – suffer from what you did. There have been jury awards well over the $1 million mark on just one such criminal conversation claim and you’re looking at a damned sight more than just one. And the courts – and the judges – have the power to add on punitive damages, too. You understand what I’m telling you? How much it could cost you?’

‘I understand.’ Jordan didn’t welcome being treated like an idiot any more than he liked consistently being called Harv. But it certainly seemed that he needed training. And much more help than he’d imagined up to now.

‘Go on,’ ordered Beckwith.

‘We got back to the harbour around six. I’d taken the hotel car to get there but Alyce said she wanted to walk back: it’s not far. I asked if she wanted dinner but she said she wasn’t hungry after the lunch we’d had on the boat, that she was tired and wanted to go straight to bed.’

Beckwith came forward across his desk. ‘Go to bed around six in the evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do? Say?’

‘I didn’t finish telling you what she said. She said she wanted to go to bed but not alone.’

Daniel Beckwith began to smile. ‘Tell me the actual words.’

‘“I want to go to bed. But not alone”,’ quoted Jordan. Why, he wondered, was he feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed?

The smile widened. ‘Alyce Appleton spoke to you first, in the hotel lounge? Alyce Appleton wore the very briefest of bikinis, to show you what was on offer? And Alyce Appleton told you that she didn’t want go to bed alone?’

‘It didn’t…’ started Jordan but stopped. Then he said, ‘Yes. That’s how it was.’

‘She chased you,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘You didn’t chase her: seduce her.’

‘We both knew what was happening.’

‘Harv! For fuck’s sake when are you going to start listening to me! What you’ve just told me, was that how it was? How it happened that you came to be in bed with Alyce Appleton?’

‘Yes.’

‘She made it easy for you? Invited you?’

‘If you-’

‘Harv!’ halted the lawyer, warningly.

‘Yes.’

‘We’re getting there, Harv. At the moment you’re not making it easy for either of us but we’re getting there.’

‘I’m not trying to make it difficult, for either of us! Me most of all. I didn’t understand the direction you were coming from.’ Why hadn’t he? Jordan demanded of himself. It surely wasn’t that obscure?

‘Trying to stop you getting skinned alive is the direction I’m coming from, Harv.’

‘Lesley said she thought I might have been set up, by Alyce and her husband together,’ said Jordan. ‘You think I could have been?’ Jordan felt humiliated even by asking the question.

‘It’s a way I might be tempted to go. Depends on the papers when I get to see them. Even as it is, you’ve got the beginnings of a defence if we can get the court to accept what you’re telling me.’

‘It was a holiday affair, for Christ’s sake!’

‘This is a divorce, with more damages accusations than I’ve ever encountered before,’ said Beckwith. ‘Two very different things that so far you haven’t got your head around.’

Jordan was suddenly swept away by a disorienting tiredness, for the briefest of moments his actual awareness ebbing and flowing. ‘Is there any more coffee in that pot?’

‘You OK?’ enquired Beckwith, pouring the dregs.

‘I’m fine,’ exaggerated Jordan. ‘We haven’t talked about the actual hearing. Will the court be closed or open?’

‘Depends upon a request from the plaintiff or defendant. There needs to be an application for a closed court from one or the other.’

‘I’m a defendant, aren’t I? Can’t I make the application?’

‘ Primary defendant,’ qualified Beckwith. ‘Which you’re not. And I don’t see it coming from Appleton.’

‘So we’re dependent upon Alyce for the hearing to be private?’

‘If she wants it to be. How serious is your problem with an open court, public hearing?’

‘As serious as it damned well can be! I don’t want to be publicly identified as a wife stealer. Because I’m not.’ The coffee was cold and too bitter and Jordan put it aside.

‘I may get some indication from pre-trial hearings.’

‘What about those pre-trial hearings?’ seized Jordan. ‘Surely we can argue for my dismissal from the proceedings, before it even gets to court?’

‘I’m going to file for dismissal, of course. But I’m not going to hold out hopes that I don’t have.’

‘This is a fucking travesty,’ exploded Jordan, despite all the warnings against losing his temper.

‘Travesty is a word invented for the law,’ said Beckwith. ‘My job is ensuring you’re not a victim of it.’

More my job that yours, thought Jordan.

Jordan was glad when almost at once Beckwith closed the meeting by announcing that the first of the exchanges from the other lawyers had been promised by the middle of the week and suggested a second session on the Thursday. Relieved, too. Jordan didn’t believe he’d handled himself well – maybe not even convincingly – during this first encounter with the American: the remaining, disorientating jet lag might have contributed a little to how ineffectual he considered himself to have been, but he couldn’t find a reason or excuse for the rest. He should, Jordan supposed, be encouraged by Beckwith’s argument that Alyce had been the instigator of the affair, but he wasn’t. He hadn’t had to exaggerate or lie answering the lawyer on how it had begun but there was no way of proving it to be the truth, so it came down to his word against hers. He wished he could remember what Alyce had said lying naked on the hotel bed in St Tropez. And that the questions crowding in upon him at this moment had come to mind when he’d been with Beckwith instead of now, when it was too late.

Finally, objectively, Jordan confronted a hovering feeling he could identify. He hadn’t regained control of or over his life today and he was scared. Shit-scared.