“I don’t like clothes shopping with you. I like shopping with Daddy,” Ruby said as I disentangled a sweatshirt with a sequined collar from her copper curls.
“What’s wrong with shopping with me?” I made my voice sound nonchalant, but really my feelings were hurt. This was our special time. The time I’d set aside just for Ruby, per the instructions in every parenting manual I’d ever read. She was supposed to treasure these moments of my undivided attention. I’d been promised by those pediatricians and psychologists who seemed to be primarily in the business of inducing feelings of guilt and failure in overextended mothers like me that special time was the glue that would hold the rest of our lives together.
“Because Daddy never looks at the price tags.”
No wonder we never managed to save enough in our house fund actually to buy a house. My darling husband was spending his entire income on miniature flared jeans with unicorns embroidered on the seat, and pastel-colored, high-heeled sneakers. “You know, Ruby, it can be fun to look at the price. Isn’t it neat when we get a bargain?”
Ruby looked at me with a combination of disgust and pity, and flicked disdainfully at the pile of fleece sweatshirts and miniskirts I’d plucked from the sale rack.
“These are preschool clothes. In kindergarten we have to wear jeans. And belly shirts like this one.” She held up a metallic green scrap of fabric that she’d somehow managed to smuggle into the dressing room with us.
“Belly shirts?”
“You know, the ones that show off your belly button.” Were the other kindergarten mothers really letting their daughters go to school looking like lip-synching nymphets from a Destiny’s Child video?
I looked at the price tag and gasped. “I’m not spending forty dollars on half a shirt.”
“That’s okay. Daddy will.”
“No he will not.” Special time. What a delight. “I have an idea,” I said, faking a smile. “How about we get some lunch?”
By the time we’d finished eating, Ruby and I were friends again. Maybe it was because I made no objection to her chosen meal of French fries and a chocolate milkshake. Au contraire—I shared it with her. In my first trimester, I try to consume as much sugar and fat as possible. They’re the only things that don’t make me feel like vomiting.
Ruby had no school because of one of the many in-service, out-service, parent-teacher, teacher-teacher conference-meeting-seminar days that her school instituted specifically to destroy any hope I had of getting in a decent day’s work. I could afford to blow my morning on outfitting a miniature Las Vegas street walker, but I’d received a summons to appear that afternoon before Raoul Wasserman himself to update him on the status of our investigation, and so some arrangements had to be made. I’d never managed to find a decent babysitter after one disastrous early attempt, so I’d tried to prevail upon Peter to reschedule his own afternoon meeting. He had reminded me that studio executives don’t take kindly to last-minute cancellations, and my suggestion that he take Ruby along had been greeted with a gasp of horror. He had asked me if I really thought he should remind the money men that he was old enough to have a kid her age. Peter harbors a neurotic fear that there are hordes of postadolescent screenwriters yapping at his heels, eager to steal his ideas and take his assignments. Given the glorification of youth culture endemic in Hollywood, where nineteen-year-old film school dropouts get million-dollar multipicture deals while middle-aged Oscar winners can’t get a job lettering cue cards, his paranoia may not be that unreasonable.
Al was working a fraud investigation for a new client, a courier company convinced that its employees who were out on disability and workers’ comp were actually shirkers. He was due to spend the next few days following burly men and women around with a camera, waiting for someone to pick up a heavy box, or go windsurfing, or do cartwheels on the front lawn. Meeting with Wasserman was my responsibility, anyway. It was the least I could do, since in about seven months I was going to be even more nonexistent a partner than I already was.
So Ruby came with me. I packed a bag with gel pens and black paper, a Walkman with two hours’ worth of story tapes, and enough gummy worms to choke a flock of robins. I ignored the glare of the receptionist, and cleared a few glossy magazines off the coffee table in the waiting area outside Wasserman’s office. I laid out Ruby’s supplies and poked the straw into her juice box.
“Okay, honey,” I said. “I’ll be back in half an hour. When the big hand is on the six.” I pointed to the ornate clock hanging on the wall over the receptionist’s head.
“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
“Just ask the nice lady. She’ll tell you where to go.” I smiled at the receptionist, a sour-faced young woman with short, spiky hair dyed platinum blond. A silver chain dangling across one of her eyes connected the ring in her nose to the one through her eyebrow. Ignoring me, she flicked open a compact and examined her goth makeup in the mirror. She pushed aside the chain and scraped an invisible trace of kohl out of the corner of her eye with a long pinkie nail polished in black with a tiny, silver death’s head appliqué.
“You don’t mind showing my daughter the way to the ladies’ room if she needs it, do you?” I asked her. The receptionist shrugged and murmured into her headset.
“Mr. Wasserman will see you now,” she said.
“Okay, Rubes. I’ll be right back. You behave yourself.”
Rubes nodded and put her headphones on. She pulled out a piece of black paper and began drawing with her fluorescent pens. Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best, I followed the receptionist’s pointed finger down a long hall.
Raoul Wasserman’s office contrasted sharply in its Spartan décor with the oriental carpets and faux antique furniture of his waiting room. His desk was a vast expanse of burnished steel. It was empty except for something that looked like the controls of a jumbo jet, but might have been only a telephone. He directed me to a couch with a steel back and armrests, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d left Ruby with the pierced young thing out in the waiting area. I could only imagine the short work she and her pens would have made of the white leather seat.
I sat down and Wasserman joined me, folding his lanky body into something that looked more like a metal mesh basket than a chair. His knees poked up on either side of him, and when he leaned forward, they were about level with his shoulders. It couldn’t possibly have been comfortable, but his athletic grace made it seem the most natural of seating positions.
“So, Ms. Applebaum, you are a friend of Lilly Green’s,” he said.
“I am.”
He leaned back in his chair, resting his large hands on his jutting knees. “I don’t normally allow my clients to tell me which investigator to hire.”
I felt a tiny bead of sweat forming on my brow. What had I expected? Of course the man was going to resent having been forced to hire me. “I can understand why Lilly’s request might have bothered you. After all, you surely have investigators you normally use.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I have three investigators whom I employ on a full-time basis.”
This was a big firm. Normally, criminal defense attorneys hire independent private investigators on a case-by-case basis. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Wasserman was the most important criminal lawyer in the city, maybe even the state. Of course he had enough investigative work to keep three people busy full time.
“Mr. Wasserman, let me assure you, my partner and I understand that we work for you. My friendship with Lilly is the reason she feels comfortable having me here working on her brother’s behalf, but it will have nothing to do with how I do my job. Our role in this case is to gather information for the penalty phase of the trial, if there is one. That’s what we plan to do.”
He looked at me appraisingly, and I got the sense that he appreciated my deference. “Thank you, Ms. Applebaum. I appreciate that.”
“Please, call me Juliet.”
He smiled for the first time, and it was a broad, friendly smile. Suddenly, he looked more like the amiable basketball player he must have been, and less like the superstar lawyer by whom, I’ll admit, I was pretty intimidated. “The truth is,” he continued, “we have a number of cases that are keeping this office quite busy. I’m happy to have the help. My investigative team has been preparing for trial, but they had not yet begun the mitigation work when Lilly made her wishes known. Your presence frees them up to work on other things.”
I leaned back in my seat and felt myself relax. I hadn’t even realized I’d been so tense.
“I understand from my associate that you were once an attorney,” he said.
Once? Wasn’t I still? I always thought that once you passed the bar, you were a lawyer until your dying day. It was like being Jewish. Or Catholic. You might convert, practice another religion or profession, but in some inner core of your being, you remained a member of the tribe. “I was with the federal public defender’s office.”
“The practice of law didn’t agree with you?”
“No, it wasn’t that. I left work when my daughter was a baby.”
“Ah,” he said, and nodded with a kind of condescension I recognized so well—it had been a constant theme of the movie industry parties that had come to make life on the fringes of Hollywood so unbearable to me. Before I’d quit my job, I had enjoyed regaling people with my tales of life among the bank robbers and gang bangers. The studio executives and agents had no stories to compare with those, and even the directors and writers were interested—more than one had tried to pick my brain for ideas for a movie. I would still find myself talking to empty air if even a minor television actress walked into the room, but at least among the hangers-on I could hold my own. Once I traded in courtrooms for changing tables, however, I became a pariah. The low moment came when a supercilious female producer who was compelled to chat with me only because of her desire to hire Peter for a project said, “Oh, you’re a mommy! How sweet. I just wish I weren’t so ambitious and successful. It would be so nice to be able to be satisfied with spending the day just playing with my kids.” I stared at her, mouth agape, trying to think of a biting rejoinder, but managed only to come up with, “It’s not all fun and games.” She smiled patronizingly, as if to let me know that although whiling away the hours with a pack of children would be a waste of the abilities and talents of someone like her, she was sure it was a fine life for someone like me. It added insult to injury that I could have worn her black miniskirt as a leg warmer.
Wasserman’s smile inspired in me the usual rush of humiliation, and I winced at the thought of the blush that was surely creeping up my neck and face. When was I going to stop being so defensive about staying home with my kids? Why wasn’t it enough for me to know that I was a competent, educated person who had made a reasonable, even worthy, decision? Why did I feel like I needed to prove that to everyone else? The insecurity that now seemed a defining feature of my personality hadn’t been so obvious before I quit my job, when I was getting daily validation of my professional skills and intelligence. Once I became a stay-at-home mother, I lost whatever self-assurance I’d had. Maybe it was because I had serious doubts about my own competence as a full-time mother and had never had any about my abilities as a lawyer.
I reminded myself that I was a fine attorney and an able investigator and mustered up some confidence. I launched into a description of the course of our investigation into Jupiter Jones’s life. I had rushed the kids to bed the night before so that I would have time to type up my notes on my conversations with Polaris, Dr. Blackmore, and Molly Weston. I briefly told Wasserman what we’d accomplished thus far and handed him a stack of impressive reports. He skimmed through them, and as he turned the last page, I saw a little round circle stuck to the back of the document. A Cheerio. So much for any appearance of professionalism I might have managed to fake. I reached over and, excusing myself, peeled the remnants of Isaac’s breakfast off the page. Wasserman frowned, and I muttered, “Cheerio,” holding it up for him to see. Then, not seeing anywhere to throw it away, I raised it to my lips. He frowned, and blushing again, I put it in my pocket.
We talked for a few minutes about the investigation, and I managed to redeem myself by providing a cogent assessment of each potential mitigation witness I’d interviewed. Then I asked, “Do you have a trial date?”
“I think we’ll go in about two months. If we go.”
“If? Is Jupiter considering a plea?”
The lawyer leaned back as much as his basket-chair would allow. “It’s always a possibility.”
Jupiter had insistently proclaimed his innocence to me, but I knew that it was possible that he would, nonetheless, plead guilty. Virtually everyone pleads guilty, especially if the prosecution has amassed significant physical evidence. The fact that Jupiter insisted he hadn’t committed the murder didn’t mean he’d necessarily be willing to risk a trial, especially one which could result in him getting the death penalty.
“Have you talked to the prosecutor about a plea?”
He shook his head. “I don’t ever approach them. I let them come to me.” He never approached them? I couldn’t help but think of all the times I’d groveled before the Assistant United States Attorneys, begging for a plea agreement that would spare my clients at least a couple of years. What would have happened if I’d adopted his approach and never went to them on bended knee? Would my clients have fared as well as his did? Or would the prosecutors have thrown the book at them, not even granting the minuscule adjustments that were the usual results of my suppliant beseeching?
“In this case, even if the prosecutors do come to you, they’re not likely to do more than take death off the table. If they’re willing to consider a plea at all,” I said, probably more because I wanted him to know that I knew what I was talking about than because I thought he really cared about my opinions on his chances for a plea bargain.
“Perhaps. It depends on the strength of our case.” He leaned back in his basket.
“Has something come up?” I asked, hoping to hear that there was some exonerating evidence.
“The judge granted our discovery motion, and yesterday we received the victim’s financial information, including bank statements.”
“And?”
“And there are some curious entries.”
“Curious? How?”
“Chloe made a series of large cash deposits during the few months before her death.”
“How large?”
“Two deposits of fifty thousand dollars apiece.”
I whistled. That was large.
“Who were the checks from?”
“They were banker’s drafts drawn from a numbered account in a Latvian bank.”
“Latvian?”
“It’s the latest thing in offshore banking. We might be able to trace the account holder, but it will be a challenge.”
“Is there any indication of who the money came from?”
“Not so far. In his witness statement, Polaris Jones denies any knowledge of the deposits. One of my investigators is working on the case, but it would be helpful if, as you interview witnesses, you asked them about the deposits. You may be able to turn up something.”
“No problem,” I said, glad he felt comfortable giving me an assignment. Perhaps Al and I would do such a great job on this case that we’d impress Wasserman. Maybe he’d hire us again, maybe even recommend us to other lawyers. Then we’d really be in business! I put the brakes on my overactive imagination, and said, “Polaris may know more about the deposits than he admits. We’ve heard some stories about him.” I told Wasserman what Jupiter had said about Polaris’s abusive behavior.
“My client could be lying,” the lawyer said.
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully.
“Let me know what you find out.” He put his hands on his knees, readying himself to rise.
“What about the issue of bail?” I asked.
He paused and looked at me, frowning. “What about it?”
“Jupiter is having a difficult time in jail, as I’m sure you know. I was wondering whether you’d planned on submitting another bail application?”
Wasserman’s jaw tightened, and I had the sinking feeling that I’d squandered the goodwill I’d managed to acquire over the course of our meeting. “Our bail application was denied, as was our appeal. Frankly, I didn’t expect it to be granted. Jupiter has a history of drug use, and of residence in foreign countries. He has no home and no source of income other than his father. His ties to the community are tenuous at best.”
I nodded and almost left it at that. Then I remembered Jupiter’s bitten nails and torn lips. “What about an inpatient drug treatment facility? Couldn’t you arrange to have him released to rehab?”
Wasserman frowned again. “I’ll look into it.” He looked pointedly at his watch.
“There’s just one more thing.” I told him about the death of Lilly’s mother. “She died in an accident of some kind. Polaris refused to provide details of it, but I’m going to try to find out what happened.”
Wasserman shook his head. “Don’t bother. An accident thirty years ago doesn’t have anything to do with this case.”
“It might,” I insisted. “Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe she was murdered.”
He shrugged. “Even so. Jupiter was a child when that happened. Chloe wasn’t even born yet. It’s irrelevant. Don’t waste your time, or our client’s money.” I began to protest, but he silenced me with a raised hand. “It’s a waste of time, Ms. Applebaum.”
“But it might shed some light on the motive for Chloe’s murder!”
“I doubt it. Now, if that’s all, I have a court appearance that I must prepare for.”
He hoisted himself up out of his basket chair, making the awkward maneuver look easy, and waited for me to follow. I gathered my things together, fuming over his refusal to consider the possibility that there might be something worth looking into in Mexico. Suddenly, it dawned on me why he didn’t care: He was convinced of his client’s guilt. He was looking only for evidence, like the bank deposits, that would muddy the waters. If he could find enough dirt on Chloe to make the prosecutor worry that a jury would find her unsympathetic, Wasserman would be able to convince them to offer Jupiter a plea. Jupiter would plead guilty, he’d get a sentence of something less than death, and Wasserman would be seen as the white knight who plucked victory from the jaws of defeat.
And it was entirely possible that that was the best outcome for Jupiter. Unless it was true that he hadn’t harmed his stepmother. If he was really innocent, then any sentence was too long. I realized at that moment that I might be the only person who was willing to believe Jupiter’s protestations of innocence. Unless, of course, Lilly believed him, too. I hoped she did, since she was the one signing the checks.
Wasserman opened the door of his office for me, and as I followed him out to the reception area, he said, “I’ll have my associate Valerie show you the bank records . . .” His voice trailed off when he saw Ruby lying on the couch with her head hanging over the side, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. It might have been his own receptionist who was the cause of his consternation, however. She was similarly draped over her desk, mouth agape. Her tongue had a grommet through it. She stood up when she saw us, which involved rolling off the desk and landing with a thud that made Ruby burst into gales of laughter.
“I had some childcare problems,” I said.
Wasserman shocked me by smiling warmly at my daughter. “Don’t worry about it. I have four of my own.”
“Four?”
“Four-year-old twins, and two daughters about your age.”
“I’m betting you never have to bring them to work.”
He laughed. “Only my oldest.” He pointed to the sign over the receptionist’s desk. I read the words WASSERMAN, HARRIS, ROTHMAN & WASSERMAN. The first name was about twice the size of the other three. “Susan is a partner in the firm.”
My age and already a partner. In her father’s firm—but still.
Ruby was perfectly content to amuse herself with the receptionist, who turned out to possess the unlikely name of Tiffany. Being saddled with that Dynasty-vintage name was surely what had inspired her adoption of the skateboard punk aesthetic. As I made my way to Valerie’s office, I thought about Ruby all grown up. Would she set off metal detectors? Or did something worse await me? I tried to imagine a fashion less appealing than staples through your tongue. Chopping off parts of your body in a kind of voluntary amputation like a Western Yakuza? I shuddered at the thought.
Valerie was busy at her computer when I knocked on her door. She waved me in without looking up. I leaned against the door jam to wait for her to finish typing and tried not to be too obvious as I looked her up and down. I was impressed by her carefully tousled hair. I’d once attempted a haircut like that, sure that it was the answer to my blow-dryer phobia and morning time-crunch. It turns out, however, that it takes hours to achieve that precise level of nonchalance. I was lucky if had time to put pants on in the morning, let alone painstakingly put my hair into precise disarray.
Finally, Valerie looked up and caught me peeking at her shoes. “Please have a seat,” she said coldly, and I jerked my head up from where I had bent it, trying to see under her desk. Whatever warmth had been engendered by our shared experience in the jailhouse bathroom had dissipated. Conscious that I was doing so just to crack the young woman’s frosty veneer, I smiled brightly and said, “So, it turns out that I’m pregnant after all!”
Her face lit up instantly. “Really?” Her voice was suddenly warm and welcoming. “How far along are you?”
“Almost eight weeks. How about you?”
“Nine. We’re so close!”
“But you don’t look like you’ve even gained an ounce.” It wasn’t merely a venal compliment designed to soften her up.
“Thanks. I’m really working on it. I’m going to the gym every morning, and I’m following a strict high-protein diet.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to keep her eyes from glancing at my obvious belly. That morning I’d pushed every piece of clothing that buttoned or snapped to the back of my closet. I was already deep into elastic waist territory.
“I should try that,” I said. “But French fries and ice cream seem to be the only things that keep me from throwing up.”
She sighed sympathetically. “Isn’t it awful? My doctor says he can prescribe something for it, but I’m afraid to take anything that might hurt the baby. I don’t even drink coffee.”
I thought guiltily of the glass of red wine I’d allowed myself at dinner the evening before. Maybe I should cut that out. But coffee. How could I live without coffee?
“Raoul asked me to show you the Jones discovery,” Valerie continued, pushing a thick stack of papers across the table. “It’s mostly nothing, but there are a few curious things. Did he tell you about the bank deposits?”
I nodded and leafed through the first couple of pages.
“I had my secretary make you copies,” she said.
I put the papers into my bag.
“I’m glad you’re pregnant,” she said. “I don’t really know anyone else who is. I’m the first one of all my girlfriends. It’s nice to have someone to talk to about it.” She blushed then, as if she were surprised at herself for confiding in me.
“It’s nice for me, too. It’s always fun to complain to someone who can really sympathize,” I said, and I meant it. I love talking to other pregnant women, or women with kids. If I ever stopped to consider that I was actively enjoying an entirely unironic conversation about the relative merits of Huggies versus Pampers, I might have bemoaned my lost intellectual life, but honestly, who has the energy for that kind of self-analysis? I’m too busy swapping intimate details about my weight, sex life, and my children’s bowel movements with total strangers I meet in the playground. It’s one of the beauties of being female. The only damper on all this confidence sharing is the sport of competitive mothering in which all too many women engage. Nothing can ruin a good hen party like hearing about someone’s recipe for sugar-free spelt cookies shaped like letters of the alphabet.