The Namedropper

Eighteen

There was a palpable tension between the three of them in Reid’s office annex on that deserted Saturday. Dividing them, on Reid’s desk, were the finally supplied medical reports on Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies, as well as covering letters and copies of the woman’s rebuttals to Alyce’s criminal conversation damages claim. There were, also for the first time, photographs of Appleton’s supposedly brief mistress. Jordan was not surprised that, although older by six years, Leanne closely resembled Alyce in appearance and physique, confirming the adage that men always chose lovers that reminded them of their wives.

Reid gestured towards the documentation and said, ‘So there it all is, as far as my cases are concerned. A heap of shit.’

‘Not helped by continuing cosy hotel meetings between you and Alyce,’ came in Beckwith, whose criticism of Jordan’s Carlyle dinner with Alyce had concluded the review meeting in advance of the forthcoming court hearings. They’d flown down on the first available flight and this time there hadn’t been any tourist detours, just a fifteen-minute delay booking into the Hilton hotel. Reid had alerted them that Appleton intended to stay at the Sheraton during the hearing.

‘Let’s right now get some of that unnecessary shit out of the way to concentrate on what’s really important,’ demanded Jordan. ‘I don’t see and won’t concede that Alyce and I having had an innocent dinner, before or after which nothing occurred to resume our affair, could be any great big deal. Neither do I see the necessity to volunteer it to the court. I volunteered it to you so you wouldn’t be caught out. Neither of you will be under oath to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth if this goes the whole way. I will be. Alyce will be. If it gets brought out, it gets brought out. Let’s deal with it then. I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t meet her as I did and I still don’t. And I don’t – and won’t – believe either of you haven’t sat on your hands in the past about something you knew but didn’t want to come out in court and therefore didn’t say anything about. You both still with me?’

‘And wish I wasn’t,’ said Reid.

‘I’m not your immediate problem,’ insisted Jordan, waving his hand towards the separating desk and what was on it. ‘Those medical reports are your immediate problem. What does Alyce say about them?’

Both lawyers had fixed expressions on their faces, but only Beckwith was visibly flushed.

‘What she’s said from the beginning,’ replied the heavily breathing Reid. ‘That she’s only had sexual relationships with her husband and with you. Which has-’

‘OK,’ stopped Jordan. ‘So what do your enquiry people say? I know you’re employing them, because you’ve told me. What you haven’t told me is anything that they’ve so far discovered to help, in any way whatsoever. Appleton’s people failed to find any proof of Alyce’s cheating, until France. At the moment your opposition snoops are doing more for you than your own people are doing for you, don’t you agree?’

‘I’ve no reason nor cause to defend those I’m employing,’ rejected Reid, awkwardly. ‘But as you’ve raised it again I certainly intend bringing out Appleton’s failure to discover any lover other than you.’ The man looked sideways, to the other lawyer. ‘But I don’t intend mentioning the Carlyle dinner. Alyce hasn’t told me about it; you have. We’re co-operating for mutual benefit, not disadvantage, and at this precise moment I don’t need any more disadvantages than I’ve already got.’

‘I’m listening to what everyone’s saying,’ assured Beckwith, dully. ‘Maybe I won’t volunteer the Carlyle episode either. But can we establish here and now – ’ he turned to include Reid – ’and you get the specific undertaking from Alyce, that there’s no more social meeting, not even if the Pope is in the same room with you. I don’t care if you think it’s a childish insistence, or whether Alyce thinks it’s a childish insistence, or what the fuck either of you think about the divorce statutes of North Carolina. Like it or not, they are the statutes, the rules, by which you’re being judged.’

‘I think we went through this yesterday, in New York,’ dismissed Jordan.

‘And before yesterday in New York we very specifically went through it down here in Raleigh. And you – and she – ignored the advice,’ persisted Beckwith. ‘It happens again, I’m definitely withdrawing.’

This time Jordan didn’t respond with the direct challenge of the previous day.

Instead, he said, ‘So what about the most immediate problem?’

Turning again to the other lawyer, Beckwith said, ‘To get Harvey dismissed I’m obviously going to have to call Alyce on Wednesday. And hit her as hard as is necessary to prove she’s both promiscuous as well as being prepared to lie.’

‘I’ve already told her that – told her the impossible position these medical reports put her in,’ said Reid. ‘I thought it was the way to get an admission about who else she slept with and who gave her the infection.’

‘What did she say?’ asked Jordan, disregarding any professional protocol. There was an incongruity – yet another nagging inconsistency – hovering in Jordan’s mind but it wouldn’t harden into a positive thought.

‘I already told you,’ snapped Reid. ‘She insists there’s only ever been two men, her husband and you.’

‘She can’t maintain that in court, confronted with this medical evidence,’ said Beckwith.

‘I told her that, too. And late last night I heard from Wolfson. He’s filed for Leanne’s dismissal; he told me he’s subpoenaing Alyce. He’s obviously going to use Leanne’s medical report.’

‘I think your client’s going to be massacred,’ said Beckwith, unsympathetically.

‘I think so, too,’ agreed Reid.

‘Isn’t it your job to prevent that happening?’ demanded Jordan.

‘The moment she tells me the truth I’ll start trying,’ said Reid, just as belligerently.

‘You’ve got two days to persuade her,’ Beckwith told the other lawyer. ‘Until you do convince her your case isn’t worth a bucket of piss.’

‘It still won’t be, even if she does change her story,’ said Reid.

‘You’ve got three days,’ corrected Jordan. ‘She told me at the hotel she was coming down this weekend, which gives you tomorrow, Sunday, to talk to her if she’s already arrived.’

Reid looked casually at his watch. ‘Maybe I’ll give her a call when we’re through.’

The man was giving up before any fight began, looking for a mitigating escape, just as he was, Jordan decided. ‘What about the Carlyle meeting? If you both decide not to mention it in court, unless she or I are directly challenged, you’d better tell her not to say anything about it either, hadn’t you?’

‘I’m definitely not going to mention it now,’ confirmed Beckwith, talking not to Jordan but to Reid. ‘You’d better do what Harvey suggests.’

‘Of course I’ll warn her!’ said Reid, irascibly.

‘What about those missing three years after Appleton’s graduation?’ pressed Jordan, already knowing there was no computer correspondence between the lawyer and any enquiry agency, although accepting that it all could have been done by written letters, formal reports and telephone calls. He began concentrating upon what lay on the separating table. As nothing there was directly linked to him he didn’t have the automatic legal right to copies of his own. Reid had only paraphrased everything, not offering facts he could study and memorize in detail. All he could make out were the different names of the supplying venerealo-gists and their different addresses, both of which were in Boston.

‘What the hell good is anything that long ago going to provide?’ demanded Reid, repeating his earlier objection.

‘You won’t know until you find out, and from where I’m sitting you don’t seem particularly anxious to find out.’

‘I don’t need to share these conferences with you!’ retorted Reid. ‘Get out!’

‘You sure you don’t?’ said Jordan, not moving from his chair. ‘The way I recall it I’ve so far thrown most of the positive ideas into the pot.’

‘You know fuck all!’ erupted Reid.

‘Which is what you’re complaining about, knowing fuck all,’ said Jordan. ‘Maybe you need to change the direction of your enquiries as well as changing the people you appoint to make them for you.’

‘And maybe you need to do what I’ve just told you and get the hell out of my office and my building!’ said Reid. ‘We’re through, all three of us!’

That night the local television station finally broke the story of the divorce between the thirty-one-year-old member of one of North Carolina’s earliest settler dynasties and that of the scion of one of the founding New England families. As well as still photographs of both Alyce and Appleton – two from their wedding – there was archival TV footage of Appleton competing in yacht races off Long Island and at the Cowes Week regatta in England’s Isle of Wight. The story was based upon a court submission to be made in the coming week on behalf of a cited co-respondent in Alfred Appleton’s case against his wife, alleging criminal conversations. Harvey Jordan was mentioned by name but there were no photographs.

Jordan waited until after seven in the expectation that Daniel Beckwith might make contact but decided against calling the lawyer’s room in the floor above, wanting an uninterrupted evening. He ordered dinner from room service, glad his photograph hadn’t appeared on television, reminding himself to call John Blake again at the Marylebone apartment block the following day, to check once more about media approaches. Glad, too, that he’d brought with him the laptop and all the copied correspondence to which he was entitled, in addition to the names and Boston addresses he’d memorized that afternoon in Reid’s office. He didn’t know, but he guessed he was going to need it all to satisfy whatever it was that was nagging in his mind.

Reid had promised it was the best seafood restaurant in Raleigh, one that he didn’t know from when he’d practised there, but Beckwith had been disappointed. He was uncomfortable, too, that the local lawyer was already on his third gin martini, very dry and straight up, without any diluting ice. Beckwith was still on his first.

‘You should dump the motherfucker now,’ insisted Reid. ‘He’s so fucking smart, what’s he need a qualified lawyer for!’ The man had pushed his lobster aside, scarcely touched.

‘You fully up to speed to argue against Leanne’s dismissal?’

‘I will be by the time it gets before Pullinger.’

‘Jordan’s a pain in the ass and I suppose I should apologize for today as he’s my client, but nothing much – nothing that seriously contradicts or undermines anything Appleton’s filed against Alyce – seems to have been turned up.’

‘Tell me anything better that your guys have found!’ demanded the other man, with drunken truculence.

‘The cases are different,’ Beckwith pointed out. ‘All I’ve got to argue with is North Carolina law… and unfortunately the morals of your client, now that we’ve got all the test reports. We’re admitting the adultery. We didn’t have any alternative.’

‘I’m going to speak with the enquiry agents on Monday. Put a burr up their ass. And seeing Alyce tomorrow. How the hell can I prepare any sort of a defence – a case – until she starts being straight with me! She’s the plaintiff who initiated the divorce proceedings, for Christ’s sake!’

Reid gestured with his empty martini glass for a refill. When the waiter responded the man looked enquiringly at Beckwith who ordered Chardonnay, a glass, not a bottle.

Beckwith said, ‘You don’t have enough time, if Wolfson gets his hearing at the end of the coming week. Even if she comes straight tomorrow there’s still whatever might come out under my cross-examination on Wednesday which you’ll have to go through with her all over again. You need to apply for a delay; it was a sharp move for Wolfson to file for dismissal right on the back of my application.’

‘You think you’ll get judgement in your favour?’

Beckwith accepted his wine from the returning waiter, reflectively cupping the glass between both hands to consider the question. ‘Depends what I can bring out from Alyce. Now we’ve got the medical proof that Appleton and Leanne can’t have been the cause of Alyce’s infection, my strategy has got to be that Alyce entrapped Harvey as the fall guy, intending to name him herself to cover up for her unknown lover, whoever the hell he is. Or they are. But didn’t have to, because of the entrapment Appleton already had in place for her. Before the medical clearances, I reckoned my chances of dismissal were less than fifty percent, thirty tops. Now I’m still only giving myself fifty percent, with a son of a bitch like Judge Herbert D Pullinger.’

‘Everything depends on what Alyce says. Or doesn’t say,’ said Reid, more maudlin than reflective.

‘What time are you seeing her?’

‘We fixed ten.’

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. We could brunch somewhere after you’ve met with her?’

‘I’ll call.’

Harvey Jordan continued to be troubled by the uncertainty that came to him during the acrimonious – and therefore distracting – meeting with the two lawyers, and still hadn’t resolved it by the time he finished the uninteresting room service meal, which he abandoned half-eaten and pushed on its delivery trolley out into the corridor to give himself as much space as possible for what he intended to do, regretting, along with a lot of other things, not having asked Suzie to book a suite. Changing to one was his first priority on an already long list for the following day.

Daniel Beckwith’s courtroom ability remained worringly untested, although Jordan was hopeful. He wasn’t at all hopeful about Robert Reid, whom he suspected to have taken Alyce Appleton’s case more for its inherent benefit to his reputation for representing such a prestigious North Carolina family than trying too hard contesting an incontestable case in an American state governed by archaic divorce statutes. And Jordan’s concern for Alyce wasn’t at all altruistic. It was, as always, to save himself. Which was why he needed – as Harvey Jordan always needed – to know everything with which he might be challenged before any challenge occurred.

Whatever was nagging him from that afternoon’s encounter had to have some connection with something that had preceded it. But what? He had first to examine the official, printed-out and accusing material, Jordan decided. After that, he’d go through all the illegally accrued correspondence from each and every carefully collated source from all his invaded computers. After that Jordan wasn’t sure where else he would look or explore, apart, as always, his burgeoning Appleton bank accounts. And by then he didn’t expect to still be as unsure as he was, because by then he would have found the elusive inconsistency. If he didn’t find it the first time he’d have to go back – and back again – until he did.

Harvey Jordan was a necessarily methodical, analytical man and decided to begin his search in reverse, setting out in sections upon his bed all that he’d memorized from what had been haphazardly strewn over Reid’s desk, and continued moving backwards through all the court papers with which he had been formally supplied, right back to the original stultifying, stomach-wrenching opening letter from David Bartle at Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein informing him of his being cited as co- respondent in a financial damages-seeking divorce action. There was far more material than he’d anticipated and, aware that repeated reading of already familiar material could result in self-hypnotic oversights, Jordan further sub-divided his already separated divisions. He then settled unhurriedly to read. He did so, totally concentrated and without pause for an hour, at the end of which he’d failed to isolate any incongruity or anomaly.

Irritated, because he was sure the key to what he wanted had to be somewhere in there, Jordan started all over again, creating further sub-divisions until virtually all of the bed space was occupied. And still he found nothing, this time after searching for another full two hours.

Jordan allowed himself a contemplative break, moving from the uncleared bed to his laptop, scrolling through every downloaded exchange from every invaded computer. He was well into the initial correspondence between Daniel Beckwith in Manhattan and Lesley Corbin in London, insisting upon the first venereal examinations by the avaricious Dr James Preston when the long-sought answer began to formulate in Jordan’s mind. He forced his cramped body up from his chair to walk stiffly to the bed display, still not able to be completely sure because all he’d been able to memorize that afternoon were the names and addresses of the Boston examiners, not their specific findings or conclusions.

But they were very definitely set out in the results of his own, second examination in New York by George Abrahams. This convinced Jordan that he was taking the right path. Just as he remembered now – and didn’t have the slightest doubt whatsoever – that despite their detailed discussion about the medical findings, there had been no reference to anything Reid had done – or rather hadn’t done – to get any medical or autopsy result analysis on Sharon Borowski to ascertain if she might have been a chlamydia sufferer.

Jordan only realized the time had gone midnight when he saw it on his own watch as he reached out for the telephone, halting the move to pick it up to ring Beckwith on the floor above. The fact that the following day – or this day, to be precise – was Sunday didn’t preclude his hacking into the computers of the two Boston venerealogists to counteract the still hovering uncertainty. His challenge would be far more effective – unchallengable in return – if he could prove what he could only so far suspect.

Jordan guessed the following day was going to be even more fractious than the one that had just passed. And didn’t give a fuck. Reid probably would, though. And Beckwith. He’d funded his five New York banks from the accounts of Appleton and Drake that morning and didn’t expect there to be anything he hadn’t already read to have been added over the weekend, so he decided the long postponed revisit could wait until the following day.