No Accident (4 page)

“Yeah, we do. But the bottom line is, I gave you money, I need it back now, and you say you can’t give it to me. That seems like a problem.”

Del gave Alex a hard look. Alex wasn’t intimidated
—just insulted that his own brother would try this
Godfather
crap on him. He reached out and grabbed Del’s T-shirt. “Don’t come in here and talk to me like one of the knee-cappers who you say are—”

Del slapped Alex’s hand away. “You don’t believe me?”

It took a lot of effort for Alex not to react in kind. “I never doubt your ability to get into trouble.”

Alex had been a decent older brother, he thought, not unusually mean to Del when they were kids. Their mom blamed Del’s troubles on their father, but Alex saw them as an overgrowth of Del’s strengths. Del was always heedless and bold, willing to take great risks for a chance at a great reward, for a chance to distinguish himself among Alex and his older, stronger friends. As his older brother, Alex had encouraged Del’s fire. On the basketball court, Del would always try to take the ball to the hoop, even when the result was slapstick failure. By the time Del reached college, his athletic skill was no laughing matter, and Alex was so proud of the little brother who had exceeded his own success in sports. But Del flamed out after a year and a half
—he couldn’t focus his energy. He had to be number one at everything—on the court, with girls, with money, which of course he didn’t have, with drinking—and he wasn’t number one. And then he wasn’t on the team, and then he wasn’t in school and then . . .

Del finished the beer in one long draught and set the bottle on the counter. He looked at Alex and shrugged.

“That’s fair, I guess,” Del said. “But I thought being family still meant something.”

“I’m not Mom. So spare me the guilt trip.”

Del’s fingernails worked the label off his beer bottle, working inward from the edges. “Do you hate me that much?” he asked without looking up. “I mean, not returning my calls—fine, you’re a busy guy, I can accept that. But all this cloak-and-dagger shit, pretending not to be home? It’s like you’re obsessed with giving me the room to fail.”

No
, Alex wanted to yell,
you’re obsessed with yourself
. Instead, Alex took the bottle from Del and put it in the sink. “The so-called cloak-and-dagger shit has nothing to do with you.”

Del cocked his head. “What, then?”

Alex sighed. “If you must know, I’ve got bill collectors of my own to worry about.”

“You think bill collectors can’t find you in the dark?”

“They can’t find me if they don’t know where I am, Del,” Alex said. “I keep the house dark, and you didn’t see my truck in the driveway because I park on another street.”

“But the mailman still comes, right? What about your mail?” Del seemed genuinely interested in the logistical details.

“P.O. box,” Alex said. He didn’t enjoy being on the other end of an interrogation. “Nothing but junk mail comes to the house.”

“And they never catch you coming out the door?” Del said.

Alex sighed again. “I come and go through the back yard.”

“What do your neighbors think?”

“My neighbor is a very sensible young man who understands the effect that a foreclosure on
my
house would have on
his
property value.” Alex took a beer from the fridge. “Plus, I walk his dog every morning.”

Del laughed. “Dude, you’re extreme,” he said. Then he added, “But you’ve got good technique.”
Great
, thought Alex.
Maybe next we can trade pointers on blackjack strategy
.

“How long you been doin’ this?” Del asked.

“Too long.”

“Does Mom know?”

Alex said nothing.

Alex thought he saw the hint of a smile on his brother’s face. “I know
—it’s embarrassing,” Del said.

This time Alex didn’t try to hide his anger. “Don’t patronize me, little brother. I’ve got my own problems, but y’see, I make sure they stay
my
problems.”

“So not repaying my investment, that’s keeping it all
your
problem?”

Alex answered him with a look.

“Aren’t you even going to ask me how much I need?” Del said.

“Aren’t you listening? It wouldn’t make a difference.”

“You know, your bill collectors go home at night, but the bill collectors I’ve got aren’t going to go away.”

“You’d know that better than I would.”

Alex’s voice was tired and flat. Del recognized the finality in it and clapped Alex on the shoulder and pretended to smile. “You know, the trip down here wasn’t a total waste.” He took another beer from the fridge and shoved it into the jacket pocket, then started walking toward the front door. Alex followed him. “Because I learned something,” Del said.

“What’s that?”

“That there’s no difference between us. Till now I always thought it was that you’re more responsible, more stable. But that’s just what Mom and the others tell themselves, so they don’t have to admit our generation is a total flop.” Del opened the door. “Here you are sitting in the dark hoping your mistakes don’t catch up to you.” Del stomped a foot deftly on the back end of his skateboard, and it flew straight up to where his hand waited to catch the front axle. “You’re just like me, Alex, you’re just a little luckier, that’s all.”

“Is that right?”

“Just a little luckier. Thanks for the beer, by the way.”

Del closed the front door behind him and, seconds later, Alex heard the chime of a bottle cap bouncing on the street, then the gritty treble buzz of skateboard wheels rolling over asphalt. Other people had trouble seeing past Del’s bravado, but Alex could tell that Del was more desperate than other times he had gotten behind with hi
s bookies. This time Del seemed . . . scared.

Alex took his nearly full bottle of beer back to his chair, where the Cummings file waited for him. He tried to read the police report again, but his heart wasn’t in it. He kept thinking about what Del said, that they were both failures. If his little brother was trying to get a rise out of him, it was working. Alex was in denial. He knew that. About everything. It wasn’t just the five houses and the bill collectors looking to bleed him dry. It was his priorities. Here he was, chasing foolish ideas about the Cummings crash, just like he’d chased the idea of easy riches in real estate. Both led to the same place. Anyway, who was he to think he could rescue Roberta Cummings from the damage her ex-husband’s reckless driving had caused? She had never even asked him for help. What could he do for her? Let her live in his vacant house? That house was close to foreclosure
—and if Roberta Cummings couldn’t afford her own mortgage payments, she couldn’t afford to pay rent to Alex.

Alex knew he needed to focus on keeping his boss happy and keeping his job, not wasting time in a cockeyed quest to save Roberta-freaking-Cummings. Shit, he couldn’t even save his own brother.

No, the worst thing about riding the bus wasn’t the delay, Brad Pitcher decided. The bus schedule in L.A. was an optimistic fiction, and whenever you really needed to be on time, that was the day it seemed a wheelchair boarded at every other stop. That was bad enough. So was the dirt, the noise, not finding a seat and, for that matter, actually finding a seat, especially when the seat was next to, say, a brooding homeless guy, or a teenage mother with a colicky baby, an active sex life and unlimited minutes on her cell phone.

No, for Brad the worst thing about riding the bus was the time he wasted on the bus. It was dead time. The bus was too crowded for paperwork, so riding the bus left Brad with lots of time and no distractions. That forced him to think, and today his thoughts turned to how his career had gone wrong.

He saw with clarity just
when
he had gone wrong. That would be last week, when the cantankerous federal judge downtown granted a motion that effectively killed Brad’s biggest case, a nationwide class-action lawsuit that he brought alleging gender discrimination by a chain of home improvement stores. If the judge had ruled in his favor and certified the class of plaintiffs, the case—even if it settled—would have made Brad rich.

That would also be a year ago, when Brad decided this case had so much promise that he would work full time on it and let his busy criminal defense practice dwindle.

Oh, and that would also be a few months before that, when Cindy, sweet Cindy, came into his office almost in tears, humiliated by the way that a tool salesman talked down to her and then sold her a more expensive power drill than she needed, and had asked Brad, looking at him with big round eyes the color of milk chocolate, “Shouldn’t the law put a stop to that?”

And today Brad remembered an even earlier step in his downward path
—the day Walt Peters showed off his new 7 series BMW to everyone in the office. That was the day Brad decided that if Walt, who graduated from a law school that advertised on TV, could afford a 7 series, then Brad should be able to afford one as well. That was the day that Brad’s entry-level 3 series ceased to be good enough.

In a sense, Brad mused, that last problem had solved itself
—his 3 series had been repossessed a month ago.

Brad looked up to the front of the bus to see a very elderly woman searching her purse for change to pay the fare. Searching very slowly. And her hands shook.

He didn’t have
time
for this. The bus was still a block away from his stop, but Brad exited anyway. Now, he was sure, the bus officially had no more Harvard Law graduates on board. With his BMW gone, it was like he was fifteen again, taking the bus and bumming rides from friends. The only thing that tempered Brad’s humiliation at taking public transit was the fact that no one on the bus knew he was a lawyer. Lawyers didn’t ride the bus. Nobody rode the bus in L.A.

Brad’s office was in a small commercial building on the outskirts of downtown whose principal virtue was being within walking distance of the courts. Brad shared the space with Walt Peters and two other lawyers. They split the rent and Cindy’s salary.

Brad entered the building lobby and ascended the central staircase to the second floor. Before opening the door marked “Law Office,” he ran his fingers over his head to smooth down his curly red hair. Behind the door he found Cindy at her desk in the foyer, holding the telephone to her ear and patiently listening to a client vent his frustrations. Cindy was great at screening calls.

Brad picked up his mail from a tray on the other side of Cindy’s desk. Cindy promised the person on the phone that she would pass along his message, then she hung up the phone. Before Brad could even say good morning, Walt swept out from his office and called out to Brad in his booming baritone.

“You look like you’ve been out jogging, Pitcher. Was your bus late again?”

Brad smiled playfully at Cindy as he responded. “If you’re wearing a suit, they make you get out and push.”

Brad hoped his little joke would make Cindy smile, but instead she gave him a reassuring look and said, “You’ll get your car back.” Pity—she viewed him as pitiful now. Brad had liked it better when Cindy smiled at him, bantered with him, batted her eyelashes at him once in a while, way back a month ago when he had a car.

“Save those nickels, Brad,” Walt said loudly. “Rent’s due in a week.”

Brad smiled at Cindy—smiling now required exertion—then passed into his private office and closed the door. He had to be in court in an hour—a crappy drunk driving case, but it was a start on rebuilding his practice. Brad draped his jacket over the back of his ancient leather desk chair and rolled up his sleeves. He sat and tried to read the documents for the drunk driving case, but he couldn’t concentrate.

Instead he thought about his father, smiling in a photograph that hung on the wall. He thought about the new Cadillac his father bought his mother for Christmas
—
Jesus, I need a car
, he thought. His father, the firefighter, who never read past the sports page, who had a pension after twenty years. Not to mention the great benefits, his mother repeated like a mantra, the great benefits for firefighters.

He thought about the seedy indignity of criminal defense work
—mostly the opposite of the lofty fantasies that led him from Harvard Law School to his first job in the public defender’s office. Instead of freeing the innocent, he continually found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with swaggering, unashamed criminals, pounding the table to win them a few months of freedom out of a longer sentence. Was he too old to become a firefighter? No—but he was too smart.

He was also too smart to fall for the allure of the one big sexy case that would make him rich and famous. At least, he was too smart to fall for that a second time.

Cindy entered without knocking. This time, smiling at her felt like lifting a bucket of rocks with his cheek muscles . . . but he did it.

“A Miss Hubbard?” Cindy said. “She has a 10:30 consultation, remember?”

Brad had forgotten. “I’m preparing for court. Make an excuse and reschedule, OK?”

Cindy stole a backward glance toward the door and then leaned in toward Brad. “I think you should see her,” she said in a hushed but urgent voice. “Walt is out there chatting her up right now, and it looks like she can pay her bills.”

Brad heard that loud and clear. He quickly rolled down his sleeves and buttoned his cuffs. He pressed a palm along each sleeve to flatten out the wrinkles and noticed new stains on his tie—where had those come from? Better no tie at all than one that made him look like a slob. Brad groaned and tugged the tie out of its knot and off his neck with two strong pulls. He let it fall carelessly under his desk.

With great effort he imagined he was not at all worried about paying his rent, and then put on an open, confident smile in anticipation of his visitor.

* * *

“Let’s not start off lying to each other,” the woman said. The words set off a nervous twinge in Brad’s chest. Her name was Sheila Hubbard, and her husband was divorcing her.

“I only meant that my experience includes a few divorce cases,” Brad said. Based on thirty seconds’ acquaintance, Brad couldn’t see why any man would let her go. She was intense and haughty, but undeniably very pretty.

“Look, if you were any good I wouldn’t be here,” she said calmly. “My husband is cunning, and he’s managed to get all the good divorce lawyers in the city conflicted out of representing me, so now I’m left with
—”

“Our profession’s emerging talents,” Brad said.

“Yes,” she said, surprised but not angry at the interruption. She was well dressed, in an expensive-looking dark jacket worn over a lighter sweater, and she sat up as straight in her chair as if she had been standing. A thin gold chain around her neck drew out the color in her blonde hair. Cindy was right—Sheila Hubbard looked like she could pay her bills.

“My dispiriting search led me to a lawyer who claims that you are ‘pretty good’
—those were his words. Are you ‘pretty good,’ Mr. Pitcher?”

“I’m better than that, trust me.” Brad made a note to look at her shoes. Plenty of women owned one decent suit, but their shoes showed whether they were just playing dress up.

“Funny, your partner—Walt, I think his name is—suggested you were not the best choice.”

“He’s not my partner,” Brad said. “We just share office space. He’s
not as bad as all that, though . . .” Brad spoke without really planning to, rambling. He knew he must sound like an idiot. Brad had danced over bullets from some of the toughest judges around, but for some reason this woman’s intensity unsettled him.

Her blue eyes narrowed and she looked at him in silence for an increasingly uncomfortable few seconds. “Where did you go to law school?”

“Harvard?” Out of habit the name came out with an upward intonation, like it was a question.

She chuckled without embarrassment. “Are you sure?”

“The diploma’s right there,” he said quickly, and flung a hand toward the wall behind her. She grasped the arms of her chair and twisted her head around, trying in vain to make sense of the Latin lettering partially obscured by the coat rack. Brad carried on talking while she did so and leaned forward to try to catch a glimpse of her shoes. He couldn’t see them, but her handbag looked like the real thing. His mind scrambled trying to come up with what to say.

“I have a pretty general practice
—family law, criminal, tax—which actually is an advantage in a case of any complexity given the various . . . complexities that can arise, and I don’t know if there are children involved, but I have experience in—”

She whipped her head back around. “The only child involved is Luke Hubbard, my husband of twenty years.” She smiled when she said it. She had straight white teeth. She was distractingly pretty. Married twenty years
—she didn’t look that old.

“You mean, Luke Hubbard, the CEO of Liberty Industries?” Brad asked.

She ignored his question. “Mr. Pitcher, I’m not interested in your experience. As I said, the lawyers in this town with the experience to help me are not available. So as a threshold matter, what I’m looking for is someone who shows up on time and takes instruction well.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And who projects an acceptable image. Stand up.”

He did, and she looked him over. She scanned his fleshy face like she would the cover of a magazine. He didn’t smile. Her gaze fell to his open collar and then to his wrinkled white shirt. The shirt billowed from his hunched shoulders down to his belt, which collected the fabric in untidy pleats. Her eyes lingered for a moment at his pudgy belly, which had no jacket to hide behind. Her eyes went no farther. She didn’t smile or nod or sigh.

“Put on your jacket,” she said.

Eager to finish with the inspection, Brad took the jacket from the seat back, swept it like a cape over his shoulders and pushed both arms through the sleeves in one ungainly, improbable motion.

“What size is it?”

Brad’s hasty move had bunched up his shirt sleeves inside the jacket, making it feel a size too small. He felt more ridiculous than ever. “Thirty-eight regular,” he said loudly.

She gave him another quick, appraising glance. “You’re a short, not a regular,” she said. “Buy a new suit.”

Brad ignored her criticism. Instead, he bit his cheek to stop his mouth from twitching into a smile. People didn’t bark orders at lawyers they didn’t plan to hire.
Call me short, call me fat, just pay my rate
, he thought.

“Clear your schedule for Thursday morning,” she said. “I’m giving a press interview then and I’ll want you there. I’ll call you. Cut your hair and be sure to comb it.”

She took her purse from the floor and turned as if to leave.

“Mrs. Hubbard, there’s the matter of my retainer?” Brad said, again like it was a question.

“I’m going to pay you on contingency—ten percent of every dollar you get for me above my husband’s initial offer.”

“That’s, um, a creative idea, but unfortunately contingency fees aren’t allowed in divorce cases.”

She sighed, clearly annoyed. “All right, boy scout, what’s your retainer?”

Brad felt a rush of adrenaline.
Five thousand
, he thought.
No, ten—or twenty, or—remember the handbag!

“Fifty thousand for a case of this magnitude,” he said. For the first time, he spoke as evenly as if he was reading off a menu.

“That’s ridiculous.”

Brad put on a look of piteous disappointment. “Look, Mrs. Hubbard, I’d like to help you, but I’m very busy and
—”

“Fine,” she said. “You’ll bill that much for me soon enough, anyway.”

Brad smiled coolly back at her and said nothing.

“You want it today?” she asked with surprise.

“It’s . . . customary at the beginning of an engagement,” Brad said, then, thinking that too brusque, quickly added, “but you can pay when we meet on Thursday, too—really, it’s no problem.” He thought he saw her face redden, but if so, the moment passed as fast as it had come.

“What kind of car do you drive?” she asked.