Face Value Read online

  Face Value

  A Laura Di Palma Mystery

  Lia Matera

  1

  I watched Steve Sayres walk into my office-warming party. Maybe he thought he was obliged, as senior partner of the firm I’d recently worked for, to pretend to wish me well. Maybe the sentiment was even sincere; after all, he’d gotten what he wanted. He’d turned my mentor, Doron White, against me. He’d gotten me fired a few months before my partnership vote.

  Sayres looked around, a smile curling his lips. The Law Offices of Laura Di Palma were on a half-empty floor of a renovated box. I shared a waiting room and two secretaries with a five-person public-interest law firm whose partners were long-ago radicals and whose associates did just enough workers’ comp to keep solvent.

  My office, across the hall from theirs, was large but ugly, with industrial carpets and leased wood veneer furniture. It had a view of traffic creeping toward the freeway from Market Street. It was many blocks from the financial-district suites White, Sayres & Speck occupied.

  My conference table and desk were spread with trays of cheese and cold cuts and crudités; nothing fancy, nothing catered. The lawyers from across the hall were drinking so-so wine with good humor. They seemed pleased to have me as a neighbor.

  They doubtless approved of my last client. Dan Crosetti had been a bellwether activist accused of shooting his best friend, who’d turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. I’d lost my job over that case.

  Sayres had gone to Doron White, founding partner, previously my ally, and made his argument: I was doing pro bono work without the firm’s consent, Crosetti’s controversial politics might offend our corporate clients, and I had again placed the firm under the jeweler’s eye of publicity.

  Doron had agreed.

  I’d made the firm a lot of money. I’d made the firm famous. But all it took was one refusal to back down, and I was out the door.

  I’d been forced to choose between what mattered and what looked good. I’d chosen not to become Steven Sayres.

  Crossing my unimpressive new office, Sayres wore his smugness like an expensive coat. He was tall and stylishly fit, his emaciated body pumped with stringy muscle. His face was lightly tanned, with lines of harried ill temper etched around his eyes and into his forehead. His graying hair showed comb lines, as if he’d just left the sauna. His suit looked custom-made, his usual dark blue, with a wild print tie now that no other kind would do.

  “Hello, Laura.” He stopped farther from me than was strictly polite. I was glad.

  “Steve.” I kept my tone friendly, but I didn’t extend my hand.

  “I wondered if you’d open your own office. Frankly”—he glanced at my relatively ill-dressed neighbors, making lunch of cheese and cold cuts—“I couldn’t have given you much of a reference if you’d tried to join one of the big firms here.”

  I felt a smile chill my face. “A reference from you would have been superfluous, Steve. Everyone here knows me.”

  “That’s right.” He slid his hand into his suit pocket. “And everyone here knows how Doron died.”

  Doron White had suffered a series of anginas that severely damaged his heart. A late-night encounter with a friend of Crosetti’s—an encounter in my then-office—had triggered Doron’s final and fatal heart attack.

  A group of beautifully outfitted people stepped into the room. They were White, Sayres clients, formerly my clients—bank vice presidents, mostly. One, in-house counsel for Graystone Federal, waved at me before smoothing her Lauren Bacall hair. The others looked around, showing their surprise. No expensive paintings here, no tree-sized arrangements of exotic flowers.

  I watched Steve. A hot redness spread up his neck and over the slack skin of his jaw. Without motion or overt distress, he’d flamed into a fury. That’s how it had begun with Doron, a sudden flush betraying his anger.

  The bank clients were upon us now, hand-shaking and well-wishing, smiling at Steve to show they approved of his magnanimous visit. Of course he’d known they’d come; of course he’d had to come, too. If I let him, he’d position himself as Daddy, looking in on his little girl. He’d minimize me because he hadn’t been able to sabotage me.

  “Steve was just blaming me for Doron’s death,” I said. “And because Doron and I were close, and I resent it, I’m about to ask Steve to leave.”

  Steve’s face drained of color. Behind me, conversations stopped. Two of Steve’s clients stepped back, as if my honesty might sully them.

  “I don’t work for you anymore, Steve. I don’t have to play this game. If you want to insult me, do it out loud for everyone to hear. Don’t stand here looking like Lord Bountiful while you complain in my ear that you didn’t get a chance to blackball me.”

  He looked at his clients, formerly my clients. His brows were pinched into a mask of pitying chagrin. He used that face in court whenever he could. The clients had seen it there. But they had their own versions of it. I was the rule-breaker here.

  That’s why I was on my own in an office unfashionably south of Market. That’s what Dan Crosetti had done for me. I blessed him silently as I said, “I asked you to leave. Play cute with your clients somewhere else.”

  “Well”—a bank client turned the word into a hearty sigh—“actually, Steve, if you’ll let me walk you back, I should be moving on.”

  Steve continued looking sad and paternal. “Let me buy you lunch, Bill. Margaret, Harry, can you join us?”

  I took Harry’s hand and shook it. Did the same to Margaret’s. “Thank you so much for coming,” I said. “It was good to see you.”

  Margaret stared at me, openmouthed. Bill put his hand on Steve’s arm. “Let’s try the new place around the corner. Maybe they can still seat four without a reservation.”

  Only Margaret seemed to hesitate, her skull-thin face crimped into a silent But … She finally joined the chorus of good-byes and good-lucks.

  I watched two major banks and a mortgage brokerage walk out my door. They would spread the word, no doubt: Laura Di Palma was being hysterical. Maybe radical. She’d been gone almost ten months, no one was sure where, not practicing law, having some kind of mid-life crisis, probably. She hadn’t gone back to big-firm practice, she’d gone solo—and not even at a good address.

  I turned to join the left-wing lawyers from across the hall. My practice, assuming I developed one in time to pay my lease and meet my small payroll, would not cut into Steve Sayres’s.

  That was fine with me.

  “You look like you could use a glass of wine. White or red?” Dennis Hyerdahl, known for some colorful conspiracy theories, circa 1968, handed me a plastic glass.

  “White.”

  Hyerdahl, slacks too low and tie too short over his middle-aged belly, poured the wine. One of the firm’s associates, a small blonde in a linty black suit, grinned.

  “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you, to tell the truth.” Pat Frankel’s voice retained a hint of Larchmont, and her face was tanned almost to premature leatheriness. A sailor, probably. A preppy who’d taken a sharp turn left. “We heard you could be pretty, um, blunt.”

  I’d gotten a lot of press defending a man who’d assassinated two United States senators. In the process of getting him acquitted, I’d developed a reputation for being aggressive. I supposed that was what she meant.

  I took a quick swallow. “In my business dealings. When it’s appropriate.”

  Hyerdahl laughed. “Blunt, I love it. God, yes, give me blunt.”

  Frankel elbowed him. “Diplomacy is hardly your problem.”

  “Oh, Ms. Tactful here. Did I not hear you call your client a whiner this morning? Hmmm? Patricia?”
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  A joking wince. “Her organization. Besides, she’s not my client.”

  “Anymore, ha-ha.” He seemed to have no desire to follow up, to check up. If I’d had a boss like that, I wouldn’t be here now.

  “You know, Laura”—Frankel’s eyes shined a manic blue—“I should refer her to you. If you do First Amendment stuff.”

  “Yes.” I do anything that pays the rent, right now. Anything that underwrites malpractice premiums and my share of Hyerdahl’s common-area expenses. Anything that pays for use of his law library and secretaries, his Xerox machines and voice mail. Even on the cheap, opening a practice had depleted my savings and exhausted my credit.

  “She actually has an interesting case.” Frankel leaned against the desk, coattails nudging the Brie. “I just got a little impatient with her. She’s part of a group I did some pro bono work for, but eons ago. She’s still back in the Call-Me-Ms.-Tibbs era of feminism, as if we haven’t moved way beyond— No, I should shut up and refer her to you, let you make up your own mind. I’ve definitely got baggage on this one.”

  In commercial practice, one did not acquire baggage. It was impossible to care that much about a bank.

  I looked around my new office. It wasn’t the dramatic array of red leathers and accent pieces my last office had been. It lacked a view of flower vendors and street quartets and scrubbed stone highrises. But these people were across the hall now, not Steve Sayres. And I chose my own cases.

  There were things I missed too much to think about. But those were the early days under Doron’s wing, when I’d been thrilled with the status and the responsibility. It had gone inalterably sour. That had happened to a lot of lawyers, except they remained in their purgatory of overwork and underappreciation.

  Thank you, Dan Crosetti.

  2

  My windows and door were open to create a breeze. I poured sweating curls of cheese into a trash bag and brushed crumbs off the desktop. I was watching a videotape on a television hidden in a corner cabinet. It was a compilation of news footage about the two cases that had put me on the map. It had arrived giftwrapped with a “Congratulations on Your New Job” greeting card. The card was bare of salutation or comment and was signed simply “Aunt Diana.” I was sure she hadn’t made the tape herself. “Uncle” Henry (my father’s second cousin, as close to him as a brother) had probably forgotten it with his post-divorce leavings.

  Though Diana would ordinarily have loved gloating about a famous relative, she loathed me. She couldn’t be overt about it—I added to her stature, after all. Hence, a gift not of her making and a merely civil card.

  I tossed the card into the garbage. She could have added a line about her son.

  Hal and I had grown up in mutual dislike and conflict. When we fell in love decades later, we discussed little. Any subject might become a mine field of old jealousies and irritations. We spent four hard years together. Three months ago, he left. Just gave up on us and left. Funny I could miss him so much and yet find life without him a relief.

  I’d traced him to Alaska, to an artsy little nowhere called Homer. Diana might have let me know whether the family had heard from him.

  On my television screen, I explained a defense strategy to reporters who’d consistently mischaracterized it.

  The image in the box didn’t match the one in my mirror. The mirror gave me back a slim woman, obviously of Italian descent: nose a little large, lips full, Joan Crawford brows over green eyes, few white hairs among the brown. Yet the Dorian Gray on my television looked disconcertingly heavier, older, unflatteringly strident under her ice. I listened to my explanation of the “television syndrome” defense: that television creates a reality more powerful than personal experience. I watched, measuring the truth of my argument by the battering my self-image was taking.

  A voice interrupted. “Laura? I took a chance on finding you in.” .

  “Margaret.” I was surprised to see Graystone Federal’s in-house counsel at my door. She’d registered in my consciousness this morning only as part of a group I’d written off.

  “Do you have time right now?” Her gaunt face seemed unnaturally tight. Not a face lift? She was about forty, about my age; surely she was too young? She blinked rapidly, anchoring a smooth wave of hair behind her ear.

  “Please come in.” I clicked off the television, letting the videotape wind on. I’d seen enough.

  I motioned Margaret into a cheap chair. There were round aluminum trays on my desk, bare of their Safeway cold cuts. I placed them on the floor. “Is this social? Or a bank problem?”

  I tried not to get my hopes up. She probably couldn’t hire co-counsel without a vice president’s approval. And Graystone’s VP, as far as I knew, was a White, Sayres loyalist.

  “It’s a personal problem.” She was seated now, as long and flat as a ribbon in the hard fabric chair. With her belted knit dress and sleek forties hair, she looked like a fragile film-noir heroine. I remembered her as having an edge-of-the-chair, health-club vitality. Her languidness surprised me.

  “Tell me about it.” I sat back, expecting to hear about a botched lease or a minor car accident.

  “For the record”—she fixed me with bright eyes— “I’d like to hire you. I’d like you to be my lawyer.”

  For the record: telling me the lawyer-client privilege was kicking in.

  “My fee is ten percent lower than what I billed at White, Sayres. Is that all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have an agreement typed up and sent to you. This consultation is on me.”

  “Thank you.” There was a quality in her look that startled me. I didn’t know how to read it. Fear? Shame? “I’ve been walking around with this for days, not knowing who to contact. I can’t imagine going to any of the firms I know. I know so many people.”

  She knew me. Why was I different?

  “The rumor is you went off to Seattle or someplace, Laura. Is that right?”

  “Northern California. Up near the Oregon border.”

  “And you didn’t practice at all?”

  “My … cousin was sick. I stayed with him.” It wasn’t a lie, but it came nowhere near the truth. Hal had been battling right-side weakness from the flare-up of an old Vietnam War injury. But that wasn’t what we’d hoped to heal, in our country cabin.

  “And you didn’t go back to White. I guess I need to think you’ve been going through this lawyer thing like the rest of us.”

  “Lawyer thing?”

  “Did you see in California Lawyer that seventy percent of the lawyers they polled hate their careers and want to leave?”

  “No. I’ve been out of the loop.”

  “You’re lucky. I haven’t had a real vacation in seven years. If Graystone had its way, I’d do nothing but work. Work and work out—all the firms offer gym memberships now. So we’ll look good, look healthy so the stress won’t show. Maybe outsiders can’t tell. But it’s clear to all of us, isn’t it?”

  I was a little off balance. “That lawyers aren’t happy?”

  “We’ve given away all our free time for as long as we can remember—all the things we cared about: family life, political commitment, travel, spirituality. We put all that energy into work. And working out so we’ll be fit enough to work so much. You know what I mean?”

  Her voice spiraled in pitch. This was obviously a problem she was far from solving.

  “There really is a kind of seven-year itch in this profession, Laura, don’t you think? About the time we make partner we realize we blew off all the stuff that really mattered to us. I know at least a dozen lawyers who couldn’t stand it anymore, who ran off to climb some mountain in Nepal, or up and became roofers or something.”

  “Those people come back. Usually to the same firm for less money.”

  “I know. I know that. That was part of it. I’ve known for a long time I
was unhappy, but I didn’t want to do a mid-life-crisis kind of thing. I didn’t want a consolation prize—a red Beamer or a sailboat or a trip. I wanted something real.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. It’s easy to think the things you don’t have are more “real” than the things you do. Some are; most aren’t. I’d found that out the hard way with Hal.

  She continued, “I was raised a Lutheran. They always told us, ‘work hard and judge not.’ But ‘judge not’ was just an aphorism on a plaque. What they really meant was ‘be like us because we’re good.’ You weren’t supposed to think or question beyond that. It’s perfect training for being a lawyer: work and conform, nonconformity is sin.”

  Welcome to mass culture. But then, I guess ideas are made profound by their relevance to a person’s situation. This had nothing to do with me.

  “I found a teacher, a real spiritual mother. Master, I mean.” She lost her look of dull enervation. Her cheeks suffused with color.

  “A master?” Growing up under Hal’s mother’s thumb, I’d longed for the day I could be free. I couldn’t conceive of wanting a master.

  “I can tell that offends you.”

  “No.”

  “You can be honest, Laura.”

  Not if it meant getting personal. “You found a master,” I prompted.

  “He’s wonderful. Totally unlike anyone else. I heard about him through a case I had. One of our debtors was a devotee. I started hanging out with the group, and suddenly it was like I was back in college. All-night conversations, brilliant people discussing the philosophy of science and the nature of reality.” She clenched her fists and stared at them. “This part’s hard. I don’t want to go into the philosophy and all that. Not that it isn’t up-and-up—it’s very scientific. He’s a physicist, quantum physics, on the cutting edge of computers and holographic-universe stuff. But that’s just detail.”

  I was glad my client was a lawyer. I didn’t have to sift chaff.

  “In terms of why I’m here”—she reddened, looked increasingly uncomfortable—“we got into exploring various aspects of ourselves. ‘Energies,’ Brother Mike calls them. Especially negative energies, you know, things we get hung up on that become insidious, that become the basis for actions that should be independent of them.”