The Namedropper

Twenty-Five

After granting David Bartle’s instantly sought, and unopposed, application on behalf of Appleton for the divorce hearing to be in closed session, Pullinger adjourned until the following week, citing his need to use the intervening days to ‘tidy the loose ends of this wholly unfortunate beginning’, and once more Jordan and the two lawyers gathered in Reid’s Raleigh office to review the judge’s rejection.

‘We should have known about that goddamned ring,’ complained Reid at once, openly accusing.

‘If I’d remembered it I would have told you,’ said Jordan, no longer deferring to either lawyer, although glad now that he and Beckwith hadn’t split after their earlier disputes. ‘It was exactly as Alyce and I told the court: a stupid joke thing that was totally unimportant. And I can’t – and won’t – believe Pullinger refused the dismissal because of it. That would be ridiculous.’ He looked at Beckwith. ‘I thought you made a convincing submission. Thank you.’

The lawyer inclined his head in acknowledgement and said, ‘It was annoying, being caught out about the ring, but I don’t think that was why Pullinger found against us, either. I think he was thoroughly pissed off by what the other side tried to pull and didn’t want to protract everything further with another possible plea on Leanne’s behalf. This way he’s tied it up in one bundle.’

‘You still estimating any finding against me as high as you did in the beginning?’ asked Jordan.

Beckwith shook his head. ‘We’re way down the scale now. We’ve got to be!’

‘I agree,’ said Reid.

‘Alyce stood up well, until it was all over,’ said Jordan. When she’d been invited to the review conference she had pleaded exhaustion and Dr Harding at once confirmed, after examining her, that medically it would be too much for her to go through any analysis, actually administering some medication in a court ante-room before yet again smuggling her from the building.

‘Now you’re going to be centre stage,’ Beckwith reminded Reid. ‘You think she’s going to be strong enough to stand up to it all? Today wasn’t even a taste of what she’s going to face from Bartle when we get to the full case.’

‘I’m glad of the adjournment,’ admitted Reid. ‘I’m seeing Harding first thing tomorrow. After what’s already happened I don’t want to throw any more medical stuff at Pullinger but I might ask for some relaxation in her attending if Harding tells me it’s necessary.’

‘You intending to have him on hand all the time?’ queried Beckwith.

‘Another reason for seeing him tomorrow,’ expanded Reid. ‘I’m hoping his function at the Bellamy clinic is more administrative than actually practising. If it is he might be able to spend more time than someone with a patient list.’

‘He looks young to be the administrator of an entire hospital?’ suggested Jordan.

‘Local boy made good,’ said Reid. ‘Very good indeed.’

‘What do I have to do now?’ Jordan asked his lawyer. ‘Do I have to be in court the whole time?’ There was a lot more use to which he could put the New York bank accounts.

‘I’ll think about that as things take their course,’ said Beckwith, cautiously. ‘We’re pretty much at the back of the bus in the immediate future. But certainly you should be in court in those early days. I’m sure we’re still ahead, as far as our part of the case has gone. But I don’t want to upset a spiky old bastard like Pullinger by making a move he’d consider disrespectful. And after his reaction to how you make a living I wouldn’t like to argue pressure of business.’

‘I don’t think much of Bartle. Or Wolfson,’ prompted Jordan. Or Reid, for that matter, he mentally added.

‘We knocked both of them way off course,’ said Beckwith. ‘Bartle did the best he could with what he had. Which was why the ring was a nuisance. Without it he really would have been floundering.’ He looked at Reid. ‘Don’t underestimate him next week. He’s got a lot of court ground to recover. Wolfson, too. Alyce is going to be put through a lot of hoops and she already needs a doctor on standby.’

‘That’s what I’m going to talk through with Harding tomorrow.’

‘Shouldn’t there be a specialist on hand, as we had over the chlamydia business?’

‘I told you, that’s what I’m seeing Harding to decide,’ insisted Reid. ‘And I think these after-court discussions are useful. I’d welcome the input continuing.’

I bet you would, thought the unimpressed Jordan. He said, ‘You’re going to need more than discussions like this if your enquiry people don’t move their asses more than they’ve done so far.’

‘The planning conference with them is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. They’re making promising noises. I’ll bring Dan up to speed before we start next week.’

And I’ll bring myself up to speed on Trojan horseback, thought Jordan.

But not here in Raleigh, he decided, recognizing the opportunity again to get back to New York, which he already knew his lawyer intended to do on the first available flight the following day.

Dinner was Jordan’s first reflective opportunity on the outcome of the day and he accepted, without admitting it to his lawyer, that he’d been too optimistic of Pullinger’s dismissal. But as objective as he always was, Jordan at once recognized that there was a potentially protective benefit from him being officially detained in America instead of remaining there of his own volition, which he’d already decided to do if they’d won the day. This way there could be no suspicion of him in any way being responsible or involved in the intended retribution against Alfred Appleton, remote though any such suspicion might be, so carefully – and so far undetected – had Jordan evolved his unfolding attack. But he would be restricted in expanding that attack if he had constantly to attend the Raleigh court. This fact created an uncertainty – a hindrance – in the mind of a man who didn’t like initiating anything about which there was the slightest doubt or difficulty.

Jordan was glad he wasn’t able to get a seat on the same flight as Beckwith, able to travel alone back to New York. So accustomed to working and being always alone, responsible only for and to himself, that, objective again, Jordan acknowledged that the constant presence of Beckwith and Reid – of so many other people – had caused something like claustrophobia in him in Raleigh. It might not have been so bad, he supposed, if things had been different with Alyce: if he’d been able to see her, be with her, sometime during the adjournment. Fragile though she was, she had been magnificent on the witness stand, doing everything that she could to prove he wasn’t guilty or responsible for her marriage collapse under ridiculous Dark Ages laws enacted by Puritans who believed in witches and burned them at the stake. He wanted – needed – to thank her: thank her for enduring the humiliation of actually admitting that it was she who had come on to him before he’d hit upon her, which he’d intended to do the night they’d got back from the prison island visit anyway. Was Beckwith right, that what Alyce had gone through the previous day was a soft prelude to what she was going to be subjected to by Bartle the following week? He didn’t want to be excused the court when Alyce was on the stand. He’d be there every day, supporting her if he could, letting her know if he could that he was there for her. As he would be. Counting. Counting every humiliation, every shitty trick or device that Bartle and Appleton imposed upon her. And by every notch in that count he’d increase the humiliation and shit he’d already started to dump on Alfred Jerome Appleton. Not just an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth: he’d figuratively dismember the man organ by organ, limb by limb, until all that was left for people to laugh at would be a hump-backed, flush-faced head on a spike.

He’d advised the Carlyle the previous night of his return to Manhattan and his retained suite was predictably immaculate, his intrusion detectors in the suit closet and dressing-room drawers undisturbed. He held back from unstabling his Trojan Horses at once, deciding that there was so much he had to cover that he needed to create a reminder list to avoid him overlooking anything. It took him an hour to compose and he was surprised at its length when he finished.

He assumed that Bartle and Wolfson would have returned as he and Beckwith had – maybe Appleton and Leanne, too – but there would have been little opportunity for the lawyers to have updated their computer case files. Working his way patiently through his reminders, Jordan decided that with the exception of DDK Investigations, Reid’s enquiry agency, within whose computers he had so far not embedded a see-all spyhole, he’d probably be premature accessing any of his already burgled sites until the following day.

Jordan was on the point of quitting the hotel for West 72nd Street and whatever mail might be waiting there for him in Appleton’s name when his telephone rang.

‘I wondered if you’d be back here,’ said Alyce.

‘You’re in Manhattan?’

‘I couldn’t stand being in Raleigh any longer. And there were television and cameramen all around the estate.’

‘How are you?’

‘It’s just the court. Once I’m out of it, not in the same room with him, I’m OK.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just here, in the apartment. You?’

‘Just here, in the suite. There’s still time for a late lunch.’ West 72nd Street could wait.

‘That would be nice. Do you know Enrico’s, on 57th and 3rd?’

‘I can find it.’

She was there, looking through her heavy-rimmed glasses at the menu while she waited, when Jordan entered. The black sweater showed off her blondeness and she’d covered the courtroom pallor with more make-up than she normally wore and Jordan thought the lipstick was too bright, almost as bright as Leanne Jefferies’ has been in court. She was drinking mineral water. She seemed to sense his presence before he reached the discreet side booth, shadowed even more than the already deeply shadowed restaurant, and looked up, smiling. ‘Hi!’

Jordan lowered himself opposite her and said ‘hi’ back. She hadn’t completely managed to hide the dark rings beneath her eyes.

‘I know I look a mess,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts.

‘You don’t look a mess and you know it.’

‘I feel a mess.’

‘You’ve no reason to feel a mess, either.’

She smiled again, shaking her head. ‘I don’t believe you. But thanks anyway. The hotel in Raleigh told me you’d gone away until Sunday, so I guessed you’d come back here.’

Jordan said, ‘I’m glad you got me. I want to thank you for everything you said in court.’

‘It was the truth. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Tell the truth. Why didn’t you?’

‘What!’

‘About having once been married?’

Jordan shook his head. ‘All part of the venture capitalist nonsense, too busy for a normal life.’

‘How did it go wrong for you?

‘Rebecca found another guy she liked better.’ She had, but not until he’d tried to drown himself at the bottom of a bottle.

Alyce humped her shoulders, dismissively.

Jordan ordered a gin martini from an enquiring waiter. ‘It still can’t have been easy for you, standing there in front of your husband, saying what you did.’

‘I’m sorry about the ring.’

‘Turned out to be a pretty bad joke, didn’t it?’

‘It was nice at the time. Everything was nice at the time.’

Jordan hesitated, curious at the remark. ‘I thought so, too. I really didn’t notice that you went on wearing it.’

‘I know you didn’t.’

‘Why did you?’

‘I wanted to. I wouldn’t have done it, though, if I’d known everything we did, everywhere we went, was being watched as it was. Alfred’s a bastard; a one-hundred-and-ten-percent bastard.’

‘But we fucked him with the chlamydia lie. Him and Leanne.’ Jordan suddenly remembered that Reid hadn’t made his promised application to the judge for the medical records, if any still existed, of the dead Sharon Borowski. He supposed that it wasn’t so important now.

‘I hope we can catch him out in all the others.’

‘What others?’ demanded Jordan, alertly.

‘I wish I could guess. There’ll be a lot more, believe me.’

Jordan did and wondered if he’d get any leads from the following day’s phishing trips through the computers. ‘We’ve agreed to have daily, after-court conferences, Dan, Bob and me. There’s a lot of us on your side.’

‘I’m glad you are,’Alyce said, smiling at him across the table.

From her study of the menu before he’d arrived Alyce immediately asked for spaghetti with clams when their waiter returned. Jordan, who hadn’t bothered with the menu, said he’d have the same, as well as a bottle of Chianti, eager to get rid of the man.

‘What happened to the ring?’ he asked.

I took it off on the plane. Left it there when I got off. We’d agreed it was over, remember?’

Jordan hesitated. ‘Didn’t you want it to be?’

Alyce shrugged, awkwardly. ‘It was best that it was. Except that it wasn’t over, was it?’

‘Isn’t,’ insisted Jordan, correcting her tense.

Alyce shook her head, positively. ‘Let’s not walk this route any further. You’re still a defendant, possibly going to lose a lot of money.’

‘After showing up their medical reports as we did, Dan doesn’t think it’s going to be anything like as bad as it might have been.’ He was shortening the man’s name, he realized.

‘I don’t see the connection, but that isn’t what I want to talk to you about. I… I mean the family will pay back whatever’s awarded against you. As well as your costs. What’s happened to you is my fault

… nothing to do with you…’

The offer silenced Jordan for several moments, his reactions colliding between anger and gratitude and settling somewhere in between. ‘I don’t want that. Thank you, but no.’

‘It could be a lot of money.’

‘I know. I can afford it.’ How much he wished he could tell her that it would be her husband who paid and in a lot more ways than just money.

‘You’re offended,’ she accused.

‘I told you no. And mean it.’

They were both glad of the arrival of their food. The wine was better than Jordan had expected but Alyce limited herself to half a glass. Seizing the abstinence as a weak excuse to break the embarrassment that had come between them Jordan said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to drink with whatever medication the doctor’s given you?’

Alyce didn’t reply at once. ‘It was just a tranquillizer yesterday. And it’s not regular medication.’

‘You’re going to be under a lot of stress, a lot of pressure, next week.’

‘I know.’

‘Have you talked to the doctor about it?’

‘He says there are things but I don’t want to slow myself down, certainly not when I’m giving evidence. I don’t want to give the bastard the slightest advantage.’

‘Surely…’ started Jordan, his mind on the previous day’s after-court discussion. ‘I’ve forgotten his name…?’

‘Walter,’ she provided. ‘Walter Harding.’

‘Is there a guarantee that Walter will be able to be in court every day?’ persisted Jordan, not trusting Reid to be as thorough as he should be.

‘Bob says he’s going to try to get me excused some of the time.’

Jordan decided against referring to the conversation with the two lawyers. Instead he said, ‘What if Pullinger refuses?’

‘Maybe then I’ll have to take something.’

‘Dan seems to want me there most of the time.’

Alyce gave a half smile. That’ll be something, having you there.’

‘When are you going back down to Raleigh?’

‘Sunday, I guess. It’s not something I particularly want to think about.’

‘We could spend some time together here at the weekend.’

‘Maybe,’ Alyce said, doubtfully.

‘Why don’t I call? We could drive up into the Catskills.’

‘I don’t want to pick up where we left off in France, Harvey. Not

…’ She stopped. ‘I just don’t, OK?’

‘I’ll call,’ insisted Jordan.

Jordan went several times through virtually every word of their conversation, eagerly analyzing every inference and meaning, sure of his final conclusion. The most important of which was that Alyce hadn’t wanted their affair to end in France, which he’d been too stupid then not to realize. But now he did realize it. And decided it wasn’t too late for him to recover. She’d clearly reconciled herself to it being over, her only consideration now the impending turmoil of the coming weeks. But that’s all it would be, just weeks: days and weeks when he’d be with her, doing everything he could to help and support and protect her. And when it was all over… What about when it was all over? he demanded, halting the fantasy. All it could ever be, a fantasy. How could it be anything else, doing what he did, existing every day of his life as he did? Darling, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’m not a professional gambler, any more than I was an investment financier. I’m a crook. I steal people’s identities, rob them – never stripping them clean; just as much as I think they can afford to lose, apart from your ex-husband, who, by the way, is paying for everything it’s going to cost me – I’ve already got close to $140,000 of his money – but we can have a wonderful life together if you can overlook where the money comes from. Impossible, Jordan told himself. He lied to everyone else but never to himself, which was what he was doing – trying to do – now. It was time he woke up from the daydream: remembered who he was and what he did and accept France for what it had been, a nostalgically recalled but passing, thank-you-and-goodbye affair. Except that he didn’t want it to pass, not now. For the first time since Rebecca – unthinkingly, unintentionally – he had developed a feeling, an emotion, he’d never imagined himself capable of again. Still impossible. But not totally dismissable, not quite yet. There were still the next few weeks, a period during which he had no alternative but to stay where he was, with Alyce as much and as closely as possible. Looking after her.

The outstanding loan invitation was waiting for him at West 72nd Street, along with acceptances, with the money already deposited in his account, for each of his four earlier applications. There was still time for Jordan to complete it and personally deliver it before moving along Wall Street to draw upon those already agreed, swopping the amounts between the various safe-deposit boxes to keep the value in each below the legal reporting levels.

Back at the hotel he picked his way meticulously through the trading accounts and internal email stations of Appleton and Drake, the first task always to pick up the slightest indication of suspicion or discovery, before making further transfers to the banks he had so recently visited. Again he travelled further than the already plundered currency trades, moving that late afternoon through the company’s metal division, drawing predominantly from already agreed copper and aluminium futures.

Jordan was at his laptop, showered and with room-serviced coffee beside him, before eight the following day, trawling through his illegal computer emplacements roughly in his order of establishing them. He saw that Beckwith had written himself an aide memoir to bring to the attention of the jury, before whom the full divorce would now be heard, what he labelled ‘a determinedly attempted deception over the initially incomplete chlamydia findings’. On the systems of both Boston venerealogists, in email exchanges and in an already partially written defence to the Massachusetts medical licensing authority, Jordan found written confirmation that the inadequate reports had been prepared under pressure from Appleton as well as David Bartle. There was also a series of email’s between Appleton and Bartle in which the lawyer complained of having to defend Mark Chapman free of charge before any disciplinary body and of the difficulty he might have getting Chapman back into court for the full divorce hearing. One note contained the phrase: ‘your stupid interference that could get the whole lot of us in serious shit, which puts a lot of strain upon our friendship’. Jordan discovered, and saw them as a potential gold mine, some incomplete but hostile emails between Bartle and Wolfson from which the most obvious conjecture was of a falling out between Appleton and Leanne Jefferies. In one message Wolfson wrote of the chlamydia dispute: ‘seriously endangering the agreement our two clients have reached and led me to question my own professional position, as perhaps you should question yours’. That had caused Bartle to write back that: ‘I think any further consideration of this particular aspect should be very strictly restricted to one-to-one, unrecorded discussions between the two of us.’

It was mid-morning before Jordan returned to the communications between his own lawyer and Reid, which were intriguing but again frustratingly incomplete. Reid wrote of his enquiry agents’ investigation being ‘much better late than never’ and of it being couriered to Beckwith, who’d replied, obviously after reading whatever had been uncovered, that Reid might encounter difficulty introducing it into the forthcoming hearing on grounds of ‘applicable admissibility unless you can manage it during cross-examination’. Encouraged by the notes between the two lawyers Jordan broke off from accessing his already established sites to get into his newly established Trojan Horses in the computer system of Reid’s investigators. He was frustrated once more by what had passed between the two of them. There were apologies for delays and appreciation of Reid’s patience but it was obvious that the findings had been provided on hard, paper copy, not transmitted over an Internet link. Knowing that the master copy had to be somewhere on a hard disk, Jordan spent almost two hours – as he had earlier trying to locate the other obviously couriered documents saved on other hard disks – but failed to find it without the necessary in-house, dedicated file name.

Jordan failed, too, to find a possible link when he went back a third time into Reid’s system, but did locate further interchanges within the previous hour with his own lawyer about Alyce. The planned morning meeting with Walter Harding had been delayed, reported Reid. The hospital administrator diagnosed Alyce’s problem to be psychological stress, compounded by having contracted the venereal infection from the man she was now divorcing; although the condition had been completely cured her gynaecologist had found considerable fallopian tube scarring, which made it unlikely that she would ever be able to carry a child full term. Harding had undertaken to attend the court for the majority of the hearing, certainly during the times that Alyce was on the witness stand, both when she gave evidence or faced cross-examination. Alyce’s gynaecologist was prepared to appear to give evidence about the fallopian scarring, and Harding to support any application for her to be excused court attendance. He could also recommend a psychiatrist if the court demanded corroborative evidence about stress, although he knew Alyce to be reluctant to call such an expert witness – ‘because she doesn’t want to sound mentally unbalanced, which she isn’t’ – as she was reluctant to be prescribed tranquillizers throughout the duration of the case. Beckwith had responded recommending that Reid do the best he could to get women on the jury during its selection process and to ‘do everything you can to bring out the fact that because of what Appleton did to her Alyce can’t ever have kids’.

Jordan worked through lunch, not finishing his final computer invasion until gone five. A useful phishing trip, he decided, particularly discovering the disarray among the opposition. But there was far too much at the moment that was incomplete and needed expanding. He’d done well, ingratiating himself with both Beckwith and Reid. It was essential he kept it up – made the sort of practical suggestions that his hacking had already produced – to ensure he was always included in the after-court conferences. There should be enough, from what he’d come up with today.

There was no reply when he telephoned Alyce’s apartment and he held back from leaving a message that would identify his voice if anyone other than Alyce accessed the machine. There was still no answer when he called again an hour later, nor at eight the following morning. On that call he said, ‘It’s me. Call me back,’ and waited in his suite until noon. It was just after when his phone rang, his smiled expectation seeping away when Beckwith said, ‘You all set for tomorrow’s flight?’

‘All set,’ confirmed Jordan.

‘How’s your weekend been?’

‘Not as good as I’d hoped it would be.’