Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

“He told her she had a sick attachment to the fantasies of their father, and then begged her not to talk about any of this until they did some tests. He said, ‘We’ll get the bones analyzed. Constantin’s bones. We’ll compare his DNA to the Romanovs, but you have to promise me you’ll dump the crazy scheming if there’s no match.’

“She didn’t want to do it, but eventually agreed. He said he’d make the arrangements.”

“They agreed to dig up Constantin Zhukovsky’s bones?” Nina asked.

“Kind of. Alex said he wouldn’t do it himself, but yeah, in essence.”

“They would get the bones to prove Christina was a member of the Romanov family?”

“She was a stubborn fanatic. Alex hoped the result would shut her up.”

“Objection,” Jaime said.

“That last statement is stricken as speculation,” the judge said. “The jury will disregard it.”

“But here’s the thing I should tell you,” Gabe said.

“Go on, Mr. Wyatt,” Nina said, watching for a reaction from Salas, who gave her only his attention.

“I looked into the whole thing, you know, whether she could be the heir? Well, she wasn’t.”

The audience in the courtroom, already agog, backed off like a low tide. So, the story really was a fantasy. What a relief to return to reality, and how sad that reality always turned out to be so mundane.

“Why do you say that?”

“I looked into the history. The tsarevitch had hemophilia. People born with hemophilia back then never lived into adulthood. Christina really was whacked-out crazy.”

“Move to strike the opinion,” Jaime said, although he clearly agreed with it. The judge ordered it done.

Nina said, “This conference, this attack on Christina, and the conversation with Alex took place when?”

“In April, about a week before she died.”

Friday night, April 11, before it was dark, Gabe had arrived at Christina’s door, a fresh business card in hand, curiosity eating away at him. She answered after he knocked twice. “Uh-huh?” she said. She appeared tired and careworn. The cotton shirt she wore looked slept in. In the space behind her, he could see slick mirrors, views all the way to the ocean, neatness.

“I’m in an awful business,” he said.

“What?” She seemed a little more alert.

He thrust a card at her, then stepped back. “I can see this is a bad time,” he said. In Gabe’s experience, women liked his hesitation. It instantly defused their very natural caution, and insulted them just a little.

“Not at all,” she said defensively. She took the card and read it. “A home-security business? I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

“I picked up your card at the Russian conference. I was there talking to a couple of clients and, you know, networking. We install a system called The Bodyguard because it’s so effective. Nobody’s really safe these days. You read the paper.”

She nodded. “Well, it’s not a bad idea. I’ll think about it.”

“Sure.” He let his shoulders fall, and put on his disappointed face. “But this is a one-time offer, a hundred bucks for four hours, top to bottom. Not just some useless analysis of your security needs. No, I’ll install our foolproof system.”

He could see that although she had a cautionary air, she liked his eagerness. A gratifying light appeared in her eyes. “I should probably think.” She started to close the door.

“I don’t blame you for being afraid of me,” he said quickly.

The door cracked wider. “But I’m not.”

“I’m a stranger. Why should you trust me?”

“Good point,” she said, but she was smiling.

Within a few more minutes, he had an appointment.

He showed up the next day with a plan of action for her apartment, which mainly consisted of a few motion detectors and a cheap alarm that was supposed to blow if anyone fiddled with the frontdoor lock. He had fun fiddling with wires, looking experienced. She stayed around while he talked. She listened, growing progressively more paranoid as he fed her stories, some real, some made up, of break-ins, attacks, and other unsavory local activities.

“Best thing,” he said, screwing a white box into the ceiling of a small hallway that wouldn’t do much, but had an official look about it and was supposed to blip in certain unlikely events, “is to defend yourself aggressively, not be passive and sit back and let them take you down.”

“Yeah,” she said. She wore blue jeans and a blue sweater. While he worked she swiped a mop around on the kitchen floor. “That’s my plan.”

He took a second to admire the apartment and to consider that this woman, who lived in this very elegant penthouse apartment, was his half-sister. Again, he couldn’t see much family resemblance, but then, they were only half-siblings. Was it really possible, this story about their father?

He had been reading his Russian history. He knew that most of the last tsar’s family had been found, but that the young tsarevitch’s body had never been recovered. So intriguing. And there had to be millions buried behind that story somewhere, in the jewels they tried to take with them when they escaped, or in money smuggled out before the revolution. How much had the tsarevitch made off with? Had their father managed to hide some away? How much did she have, anyway?

“Women need to be able to protect themselves because men won’t anymore. I believe in bearing arms,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said.

And then the conversation got around to what kind of gun, and what she would carry, given a choice. They groaned about the difficulty perfectly honest people had getting guns for their own protection.

He offered to get one for her.

She thought that was a great idea.

Monday 9/29

MAYBE HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT ALL OF IT. ALL OF IT LED up to the night Christina Zhukovsky had died, and they were returning to that night in the words of the man who had evidently killed her.

Let him talk. From Salas’s rigid shoulders and Jaime’s intent eyes, Nina saw that they had no intention of inventing obstacles. Immersed in the testimony, the entire courtroom seemed to vibrate.

“What did you do after approaching Christina Zhukovsky in the guise of a home-security salesman?”

“The next day, I went to a lawyer. Alan Turk. The lawyer who handled Constantin’s estate.”

“I want every nickel accounted for,” Gabe had told the lawyer. He had dressed carefully in dry-cleaned navy blue slacks and a light blue dress shirt. He didn’t want to show up at a law office looking poor, like he was begging for something. Look powerful, be powerful. Across a shiny desk, Alan Turk played busy man, rearranging the orderly paperwork stacked in front of him, beside him, and behind him on a credenza.

“I’ve got a right to know the terms of my own father’s will, don’t I? As a member of the family.”

“Of course,” the lawyer said. He had listened to Gabe’s story about spying on Christina, about the theory that Constantin Zhukovsky had something to do with the Romanovs, and about how Gabe had offered Christina a gun in order to meet her, with an expression of complete disbelief. Then he had taken the 1973 copy of the marriage certificate of Wanda Sobczyk and Constantin Zhukovsky and read it word for word. Turk didn’t look very interested or very encouraging when he was finished. The lawyer held a folder up, like he ought to be thanked for achieving the bureaucrat’s eureka, the relevant closed file. He opened the file and read. “Hang on. My apologies,” he murmured, “just a second to review.” He scanned quickly.

Gabe looked around the office, at the Chinese vase on its carved pedestal, the silky rug, the display case of netsuke figurines, thinking he would have gone to law school if he’d had the money. He had cracked a few law books recently, since his mother’s little revelation and Christina’s blockbuster surprise, and he could understand most of it. You just had to want to know something.