Brian Freemantle - The Namedropper

‘We haven’t sat through all the evidence yet: don’t know what Alyce deserves or doesn’t deserve to go through,’ refused Beckwith. ‘You’ve got to come back on course – on board – to why and how you’re here, what it could cost you and has already cost you and worry about your own ass, nobody else’s. Not even an ass as cute as Alyce’s. You hearing what I’m telling you, Harvey? Or are you going soft on me?’

Jesus Harry Christ! thought Jordan. Did he really need to hear what his lawyer was telling him! It was as if… He didn’t want or need to know what it was. What he needed – as Beckwith had just told him – was to remember where he was, why he was there and how much in the end it was likely to cost him. ‘I was just trying to be fair,’ he said, lamely.

‘Fairness has got nothing to do with anything,’ said Beckwith. ‘Start getting your priorities in order, OK?’

Harvey Jordan was too experienced at performing, at being, someone else for there to be any outward indication of his shocked realization that he was showing the slightest concern for anyone other than himself, certainly somebody, however inadvertently, who had turned his life on its head as Alyce Appleton had done. He continued the review of the day’s events with the two lawyers in Reid’s office and responded sufficiently in the car returning him and Beckwith to the hotel, but the moment he got there was relieved to escape into the seclusion of his locked suite uninterruptedly to examine and analyze what he started out regarding as an inexplicable lapse.

As such it was unthinkable, virtually beyond comprehension. And there’d actually been previous warnings from Beckwith, before that day’s very necessary and positive rebuke. But it didn’t demand sackcloth-and-ashes penitence, Jordan reassured himself. There was even a partial, acceptable, self-explanation. The situation into which he’d been pitch-forked wasn’t one to which he was accustomed and professionally skilled, unlike the environment – the bank account fraud being the most obvious – in which he knew practically by instinct every move and trick, was able to recognize every manoeuvre. It was because he knew every trick and manoeuvre that he’d adjusted and now had all his electronic spyholes already drilled: and because of them had that very day knocked Appleton’s lawyer flat on his fat ass to end up, so far at least, hopefully with the judge tilting in Beckwith’s – and therefore his – favour.

But it was still different from what he normally did and how he did it. Apart from his dealings with the New York banks he wasn’t playing a part, pretending to be someone else whose identity he would shuck off like an unwanted skin when he’d achieved all that he wanted. In court he really was Harvey William Jordan, doing everything and more to escape an entrapment and its potential cost under an incredible medieval law comparable to the rack or being hanged, drawn and quartered, financially if not physically. So it made good and very practical sense to show consideration to Alyce, to protect her even, because from today’s behaviour she was doing very little to protect herself, with the wheezing Bob Reid scarcely doing much more. Jordan had meant what he’d told her today. He didn’t want to fight her: didn’t feel any animosity towards her for what had happened. He didn’t yet know – and couldn’t anticipate – how he might need her but whatever and however that turned out to be, it was essential that at all times she remained on his side. Essential, too, that she confirmed that France had been nothing more than a holiday dalliance, ending with no commitments and no regrets but most importantly of all, with no alienation of any affections. He most certainly couldn’t risk Alyce turning against him and changing her story – the true and genuinely honest story – if things started to go wrong with her case and her defence.

And Daniel Beckkwith should recognize that. Jordan determined that Beckwith definitely would if the lawyer started lecturing again at any time in the future about how he was treating Alyce. Because he’d spell out to the man the obvious reasons for doing so: let Beckwith know that what he was doing needed to be done solely for his own self-protection. Maybe remind the thwarted cowboy, even, of everything he’d done and suggested already to bring them out ahead in today’s confrontations. For Reid or Beckwith or both of them to imagine that he actually had some lingering interest in Alyce beyond getting as far away from her and everything in which she had involved him was a load of crap. He’d tell Beckwith that, too, if it ever came up between them again.

It had been good to think things through, analyze everything in his mind. And he had analyzed it, subjectively as well as objectively. The two lawyers had got it wrong, perhaps understandably, and he had acknowledged how easily it had been for them to make the mistake. Now it was over, resolved in his mind which was the only consideration because his escape from each and every problem with which he was confronted was all that mattered.

Jordan was first in the bar after his nightly laptop session, freshly showered and changed ahead of either Beckwith or George Abrahams, with whom they’d fixed dinner before quitting the court. Abrahams, the next to arrive, hadn’t changed his clothes but he appeared more relaxed outside both the court and his consulting rooms. Beckwith arrived again in jeans and the bison-figured belt and tooled cowboy boots, hair flowing unrestrained.

The conversation was awkwardly stilted in the beginning, Jordan initially happy to leave the obvious effort to Beckwith and the venerealogist, waiting for something of relevance before intruding himself, alert to an inviting opportunity. It came as he was completing the second drinks order, from a remark from Abrahams. There was an echo of something that had passed between the two lawyers during their earlier, after-court conference but Jordan seized it ahead of his own attorney.

‘Isn’t there an agreed format, a template, in which these types of medical reports are prepared, for presentation to a court?’ Jordan asked.

‘I don’t believe so,’ said Abrahams. ‘It’s not particularly common: this is the first time in over a year, fourteen months to be exact, that I’ve been asked to prepare the sort of assessment I did upon you.’

Jordan looked between the doctor and his lawyer. To Beckwith he said, ‘I understood when I first arrived from England that it was far more frequent than that: that Dr Abrahams was your regular consultant?’

‘Dr Abrahams is the specialist I’ve called upon since I began practising in Manhattan. Twice, I think.’

‘Twice,’ agreed the doctor.

‘So each specialist presents his assessments and findings on a case-by-case basis, in the form of his own choice?’ persisted Jordan.

‘I suppose so,’ said Abrahams.

‘In other situations – I’m not asking you to betray any other lawyer or case confidentiality – have you ever before encountered the sort of omission about antibodies or antigens that was thrown up today?’ asked Jordan, who was unsure if the doctor’s pause following the question was for recall or the man’s reflection upon confidentiality.

Eventually Abrahams said, ‘I’ve come across it once before. It was the first time the venerealogist for the other side had prepared such a court assessment. It was lack of experience, not an intentional withholding.’

‘What are you suggesting the fault is in this case?’ seized Beckwith.

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ bristled the man.

‘It sounded to me as if you were surprised in this particular case,’ said Beckwith.

‘Dr Chapman is a recognized microbiologist in the field of sexually communicable infections,’ said Abrahams. ‘He’s published, to some professional acclaim, two specific papers, one even more specifically upon chlamydia. I would not have expected him to have ignored antibody reference or evidence, either positive or negative.’