Once A Liar

“Your father?” I balked. I should have known; her smile seemed so familiar. I was almost jealous. I looked up to Marcus, nearly regarding him as a father figure, much more so than my actual father. I almost felt that I wanted to keep him for myself and not share him with Juliette. “He didn’t tell you he was starting a new partnership? You couldn’t have thought it was a coincidence?”

“No, he doesn’t involve me in his business life. I had no idea he was starting something new.” She shook her head, seeming disconnected.

“I’m sure I’ve mentioned his name before today. Didn’t you know I was talking about him?”

“Honestly, no. When you told me he left a card with no number, that sounded like a move my father would pull, but I didn’t know for sure.” She ate her salad as if this realization were no big deal, while I felt like the news was prodigious. I was working with Marcus Rhodes and dating his daughter. This was the world I was supposed to be in. Everything was beginning to feel right.

“I can’t believe you’re Marcus’s daughter,” I marveled. “What a serendipitous coincidence.”

Still seeming a bit uneasy, she agreed, amazed that the world could be so small. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing getting involved in a case like this with my father?”

“Yes, absolutely. I’ve always wanted to have a mentor like your father, and I’m certainly ready to take on whatever Harrison Doyle throws at me.”

Juliette held her glass up to me as if to toast my goals. I didn’t think twice about her question as to whether or not I was prepared to take on the case. I felt unstoppable, and I was sure I could handle the DA.

Harrison Doyle was in his first term as district attorney, and he put a viper of an ADA on the Bogovian case, making sure he made a splash in the headlines right off the bat. That viper went by the name Eric Gordon, and he was intolerable. Both Gordon and Doyle seemed obsessed and pulled out all the stops, ethical and unethical, to ensure a win for the prosecution.

I allowed my professional ambitions to cloud my better judgment. Had I known what was going to happen, I never would have tried the Bogovian case, and I never would have developed the bad blood with Harrison Doyle.

NOW (#u6589a2b9-2b55-5642-ba4f-7e0824597b39)

Harrison is standing at the Four Seasons bar, waiting impatiently for me to arrive. Every time I see him, I have to actively suppress the memory of him humiliating me after the Stu Bogovian trial. I don’t like Harrison, and I never have, but over the years, he has been hounding me to be his friend, even going so far as to offer me jobs with outrageous perks and benefits at the district attorney’s office. He’s not trying to make up for what he said after the Bogovian trial; he’s trying to keep my mouth shut.

When I spot him at the bar, I see two empty glasses sitting in front of him while he works on his third drink. I cross the room, nodding hellos to men in suits at various tables. Some leggy supermodel-type stops me before I reach Harrison, kissing my cheeks three times. She must be one of the French ones. I grasp her by the waist and then release her, barely stopping to take the time.

Harrison pulls me in for a strong handshake.

“I’m having vodka. I think it’s my third or fourth by now, not that anyone’s counting. What are you gonna have, Pete?”

I recoil and wipe my hands on a handkerchief. Instead of allowing him to place my order, I lean behind him and ask for a single malt scotch from a bartender I know but whose name I have long forgotten.

The only reason I am here, as I tried to explain to Sinan earlier, is to remind Harrison that I have all the ammunition I need to take him down and ruin his reelection bid, and that it’s in his best interest to stay in line. So, I play with him now and again. I know he’ll get drunk and ask me to come to the DA’s office, his typical move to try to settle the bad blood between us. He wants me in his pocket. With me as his underling, he would gain control, and I won’t allow him to take away the power I have over him.

He thinks if he shows me affection and professional courtesy I’ll forget what he did to me, and I’ll forget the things I know. But I have no plans of joining the DA’s office and becoming complicit in Harrison’s dirty work.

I lean against the bar and look anywhere but at him and his droopy, drunken eyes. He is tuned into my every move, like a schoolgirl with a crush.

“Pete, Pete,” Harrison is saying. I ignore him, not even bothering with one-word answers, sipping my drink and scanning the room for more interesting company.

“Nice work on that assault case last week, by the way. Didn’t think you’d be able to pull that one off, not even you.” He plies me with faux sincerity and compliments. I’m beginning to feel nauseous.

“Not even me?”

“I mean, the guy had the gun in his possession, right? With her blood on the handle? You really have a way with overcoming physical evidence.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I swirl the ice cubes in my drink.

“Pete, I asked you here tonight because we’ve got to talk about my offer. I need you now more than I ever have.”

Harrison is covering his ass, and I can see right through him. When he gets worried that I’ll jeopardize his career ambitions, he invites me out and tries to entice me into submission, but he can’t acknowledge this. If he admits that he’s scared of what I know, he’s essentially admitting he has something to hide. It’s amusing for me sometimes, keeping up this cat-and-mouse game, watching him squirm.

“I’ve said it before, but clearly you don’t listen, so I’ll say it again.” I don’t even bother to look at him. “I am not, ever, going to work for you at the DA’s office.”

But again, he isn’t listening. “Pete, I’m up for reelection. You know this. The campaign is strong, but I need someone like you—some soulless bastard like you—who can win cases without even getting out of bed in the morning. Use your talents to clean up the streets. Put the bad guys behind bars instead of defending them. Come on. What can I do to convince you?”

If I work at the DA’s office, then I’ll be complicit in his illicit dealings, and I won’t have a leg to stand on if I want to roll over and expose the things I know.

I laugh right in his fat face. “Nothing, Harry. There’s nothing you can do to convince me. If I were to go to your side, I would take your job. I’m not working under you or anyone else. We’ve been having this argument for years and I’m tired of it.” Already sick of his drivel after just one drink, I throw my black card onto the bar behind Harrison’s hulking form.

Harrison tries to steady himself on the corner of the bar and instead his elbow slips, and he barely catches himself on the seat of a barstool. “Jesus, Harry, you’re in public.” I quickly scan the room for onlookers, trying to ensure no one sees me with this classless mess. “People know me here. They know you, too. Pull yourself together.”

As the bartender hands me back my card with the tab, I flick away the plastic Four Seasons pen and draw a Montblanc from my jacket pocket. I leave an enormous tip, hoping to keep the bartender’s mouth shut when it comes time to gossip about drunken bigwigs.

“I need you, Peter. The ADAs have no fight in them, no spark. It’s all perfunctory. No one grabs the bull by the horns like you do. I can guarantee you’ll take my position when I retire. I only want one more term, make it five total.” Harrison pulls my lapels. “Come on, Peter, whatever it takes.”

His desperation is becoming revolting. “Get home and get some sleep, Harry. You’re never going to get me away from criminal defense, and you’re never going to get me to work under you.” I gently slap his hands away from me and lead him down the stairs.

“I’ll fix the Bogovian thing,” Harrison proclaims. “Now that he’s getting out, it’ll be in the media again. I’ll make amends publicly, righting whatever wrongs may have come to you, and then I can announce that you’re coming to work for me. I mean with me.”

I glare at Harrison with raised eyebrows. I knew he would offer me some kind of recompense to sweeten the deal, but I didn’t think he would dare bring up Bogovian.

“No,” I manage to growl.

Harrison sways and bobs and I reach a hand to his elbow to stabilize him. A man of his size should learn to handle his liquor.

“Charlotte.” Harrison shakes a perceptive finger at me. “I know you have a thing for her.” He pulls his arm away from me and stares me squarely in the face. “Come to the DA’s office, and I’ll give you Charlotte. What more could you possibly want?”

Both bemused and taken aback, I let a smile stretch across my face. His expression remains cold. “You’ll give me your daughter? How could you possibly do that?” I laugh incredulously and walk down the wide steps in front of me.

“I’ll give you my blessing, to—you know—sleep with my daughter.” Harrison stays two steps above me, leaning against the banister, certain this offer will be what turns me.

“I didn’t need your blessing, Harrison,” I sneer through gritted teeth.

Harrison’s face registers shock before sliding into understanding. Of course I’d already slept with his daughter.

With a laugh, I saunter down the steps. Still grinning when I reach the landing, I look back up to Harrison. He’s walking back toward the bar, unruffled, appearing completely sober.

THEN (#u6589a2b9-2b55-5642-ba4f-7e0824597b39)

Marcus and I had rented office space for Rhodes & Caine, LLP, in downtown Manhattan on Church Street, just north of Leonard. I walked to work from my loft in Tribeca, and as I strolled to the office one morning when the trial preparations for the Bogovian case were just beginning, I thought back to home for the first time in a long time.

I had lied to Juliette about where and how I grew up, and although I didn’t quite regret it, it was becoming clear to me that she was more than just a girlfriend and maybe she should know the truth. I had buried my past behind a curtain of carefully designed lies, and I never pulled back that curtain.

Juliette believed I spent my childhood moving from one European city to the next, but in reality, I grew up in Vermont. Not the only child of an art dealer father and sophisticated mother, as I told Juliette, I was raised by my uncle Tommy and his wife, Lee, amid the chaos of their already overstuffed home and family. Lee was pregnant with her fourth child when they reluctantly took custody of me. I was only eight months old. As my uncle frequently reminded me growing up, they took me in because he loved his sister, not because he loved or wanted me. My mother was deemed unfit by the courts to care for me, and she was never married to my biological father, who disappeared after I was born anyway. So, Tommy was my only option.

I have memories of my mother coming around the house sporadically, always looking for a handout, some compensation for what she considered to have been a raw deal in life. She would complain that the state had taken her only child, but as far as I could see, she never made an effort to clean herself up enough to win me back. The visits always ended in Lee demanding my mother take me back or help to support me, which would send her into a tailspin of self-pitying and hysterics.

While Tommy kept me fed and clothed, and implored his children to include me and treat me as a member of the family, they all saw me as an intruder. In their eyes, I was a thief stealing food from their mouths, taking up time and space that would have otherwise been theirs.