Brian Freemantle - The Namedropper

‘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.’