Reckless Disregard (38 page)

“When was that?”

“The late nineteen seventies.”

“Who else was in his acting class?”

He names twelve more people, three of whom went on to have successful acting careers. It’s a helpful response, because in one sentence he both bolsters his credentials and confirms that he has the keenest of memories. Then he pauses—for drama, I hope, but then I begin to worry, because he’s scanning the room as if confused—until his eyes fall on Bishop. “Also in that acting class was Paula McGrath. Better known as Felicity McGrath.”

The spectators shuffle in their chairs, trying so hard not to react that at some point there’s a collective exhalation of air that sounds percussive. I haven’t taken my eyes off Bishop since I asked the question. He’s staring at Gold not with malevolence but with a kind of basset-eyed embarrassment, and now he looks exactly like hangdog Lou Frantz, who’s sitting in his chair fuming, ineffectual. Lovely Diamond is looking up at me with what I interpret as reluctant pride. Or maybe that’s how I want her to react, to have her think I’m the primal male who’s overcome her resistance by sheer force. And then I catch Bishop silently mouthing some words to Gold.

“Your Honor, Mr. Bishop is trying to communicate with the witness during my direct examination,” I say. “I object to any attempt to intimidate Mr. Gold.”

Frantz jumps out of his chair and shakes a finger at me, but before he can speak, Gold says, “Billy . . . Mr. Bishop . . . wasn’t threatening me, Mr. Stern.”

“Then what was he doing?” I ask.

“I’d rather not say.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to.”

He looks at me with disappointment, but takes a labored breath that seems to make his whole body shudder. “He mouthed the words ‘Please, you don’t understand.’”

“How do you know that’s what he said?”

“My hearing has deteriorated over the past years. I can see facial expression and body movement, still hear emotional intonation in voices, but sometimes the words are unclear. I’ve learned to lip-read.”

I question him in more detail about Bishop and McGrath, establishing that they often arrived at and left acting class together, that they performed on stage as partners, and that they played love scenes opposite each other. As was Gold’s wish, I don’t ask him to speculate about an actual romantic relationship. I pass the witness.

Lou Frantz’s cross-examination can make a saint look like a serial killer, and he won’t hold back because of Gold’s advanced age. But this time, he makes not a scratch in Gold’s pristine testimony. His attempt to make Gold seem like a disgruntled has-been, bitter about Bishop’s failure to help him, backfires when Gold testifies that he turned down offers to act in three Parapet Media movies because he didn’t like the scripts. Frantz tests Gold’s memory with rapid-fire questions about the past, but the answers only confirm that Gold has an acute mind. When Frantz suggests that Gold has come to court and lied about Bishop because he wants the media attention, Gold bursts out in a phlegmy laugh and says, “I was a working actor seen by millions of people for five and a half decades, Mr. Frantz. You can still see me on the classic movie and TV cable stations once or twice a week. I’m eighty-seven years old. The last thing I need or want is more fame, not to mention that I wouldn’t perjure myself to get it.” With a lilt in his voice he says, “In fact, I wouldn’t perjure myself for any reason.”

Frantz finally gives up, one of the few times I’ve seen it. He leans over and confers with Lovely. When she slides him a Post-It note, he nods and asks, “Mr. Gold, when was the first time you communicated with Mr. Parker Stern, Poniard’s attorney?” It’s an afterthought question, one that Lovely probably suggested only because I scored points asking something similar of Boardwalk Freddy Frederickson.

Gold says, “Well, I e-mailed Mr. Stern through his website and then he came to my studio, and . . .” He pitches forward and gropes for his cane, which falls to the floor outside the witness box. An alert Brenda retrieves it for him. Leaning on the cane for support, he looks at me, stricken.

“Did you understand my question, Mr. Gold?” Frantz says.

Gold sits and waits, his eyes glued to mine. If I thought he looked old before, now he looks a hundred.

My brain compresses and throbs, my past and my future two sides of a vise crushing the present beyond recognition. I wish I had that cane because I’m about to swoon. But I brought Gold here, exposed him to this question, and I’m not going to have a good man perjure himself for me. Even though we could get away with it. So I force myself to say in as firm a tone as I can muster, “Please answer Mr. Frantz’s question, Mr. Gold. Fully and accurately.”

He nods in gratitude. “I first met Mr. Stern in nineteen eighty or nineteen eighty-one. His mother brought him to my acting studio. He was at the time a working child actor who went by the name Parky Gerald. He later became a big star.”

As the years have gone by, I’ve tried to convince myself that the public has forgotten me, that my efforts to hide my past have been unnecessary acts of egotism. The reaction in the courtroom—the
omigod
s, the
isn’t he dead?
s, the
holy fucking crap
s—prove otherwise. Clifton Stanley Gold remains on the witness stand with eyes closed, as if not seeing me will shut out the noise and the guilt. Marina Shalamitski still scowls. Bishop and Frantz huddle together, undoubtedly trying to find significance for their case in what Gold just revealed. Lovely Diamond gapes at me with her beautiful mouth half-open, her eyes filling with tears.

Brenda puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not sure what’s going on. You were the kid in
The Boatman
?”

Without taking my eyes off of Lovely, who’s looking back and wiping away the tears, I nod.

There’s a loud boom up front, and the room quiets down, all eyes searching for the bomb. Judge Grass, who doesn’t have a gavel on the bench—most judges don’t these days—slammed a thick volume of California Rules of Court on her desk as hard as she could, and she’s poised to do it again.

“There will be silence in this courtroom, or I’ll call the bailiffs to clear it,” she says. She looks at me. “Let me get this straight, Mr. Stern. You were the child actor Parky Gerald? The kid who divorced his mother and disappeared?”

“That would seem to be an accurate statement, Your Honor.” I still can’t bring myself to simply answer yes.

“Heavens,” Judge Grass says, her sparrow’s face suddenly moony and girlish and wistful, emotions I thought genetically beyond her reach. “My sister Julia had such a crush on that kid, posters in her room, fan magazines. I was two years older, but even I thought he was . . . Julia passed four years ago, and I . . .” She gathers herself and says in her normal peremptory voice, “Any further questions of the witness, Mr. Frantz?”

“Not at this time, Your Honor,” he says in a gruff, yet befuddled tone.

“Mr. Gold, you’re excused,” the judge says. “We’ll take a ten-minute recess. When we come back I expect that everyone will have settled down. I won’t tolerate any further noise or outbursts. We have a trial to finish.” She leaves the bench and disappears into chambers before we can stand.

Brenda waits for our opponents to exit the courtroom, says she has to follow up on something, and leaves as well. I sit at counsel table for a minute, two minutes, five, pretending to make notes and to thumb through court pleadings. Finally, I stand and turn toward the gallery. Not a single spectator has left the courtroom. The reporters, the regulars, the clerk, the bailiff, the cosplayers, Ed and Brighton Diamond—they’re all staring at me.

Throughout the ten-minute break, which turns into twenty minutes, reporter Brandon Placek taunts me mercilessly with questions about my childhood. Turns out he’s the right age to be a fan but wasn’t. It doesn’t stop him from searching the IMDb website and asking me about all my flops, about my “divorce” from my mother, about my whereabouts between my disappearance at fifteen and my starting law school. This is the real reason why I hid my identity all these years—I don’t want anyone to associate me with Quiana Gottschalk and the Church of the Sanctified Assembly. Ed Diamond, who’s sitting two rows in front of Placek, finally turns around and tells him to shut the fuck up.

Brenda almost sprints in, her pumps clacking on the industrial linoleum.

“Where have you been?” I ask.

“Talking to . . . come into the jury room.”

“We’re about to start.”

“Come with me now!” She grabs my arm and pulls me up. Alone in the jury room is Professor Nate Ettinger, sitting in a plastic shell chair with aluminum handles. He stands when he sees me, tugs on the sleeves of his coat, tightens his bow tie, and snaps to attention.

“I want to testify and tell the judge what I know,” he says.

Brenda, who’s twirling a strand of black hair around her index finger, tries to suppress a grin.

“Look, Mr. Ettinger, you shouldn’t testify just because my assistant pressured you to.”

“Brenda didn’t pressure me to do anything. I approached her. That’s why I came down to court, to see if maybe I should . . . And then Clifton Stanley Gold gets up there, and as elderly and frail as he is, faces down Bishop. I . . . I couldn’t live with myself if I walked out of this courtroom still a coward. It’s time to stop hiding from that man. Too many years.” He makes an effort to meet my gaze, to appear steadfast, but his irises wobble with indecision. He could make a disastrous witness. I dislike his academic arrogance, his puffed show-biz credentials, his contrived professor’s wardrobe, and Judge Grass will probably dislike him for the same reasons. Lou Frantz smells fear like an alpha coyote, and he’ll destroy Ettinger if he detects even a trace of trepidation.

“We’re doing too well,” I say. “I don’t think—”

“Don’t deprive me of the chance to redeem myself,” he says. “I beg you.”

“Poniard would want you to put on the strongest case possible, right, Parker?” Brenda says. “He’d even want you to gamble. That’s who he is, right?”

“You don’t win a lawsuit by gambling,” I say. “That’s why people like Poniard hire lawyers.”

“Well, let’s do an analysis of the evidence then,” she says. “Sure, you proved Bishop to be the liar we knew him to be, proved that he knew Felicity, but it’s like you’re always telling me . . . a liar isn’t a murderer. Nate . . . Professor Ettinger can talk about
The Boatman
, about all the threats and stuff. He can establish motive.”

“Brenda, I—”

“I’ll come through,” Ettinger says. “I owe it to myself and to Felicity McGrath. I’m an effective speaker in front of an audience. I’m always lecturing, of course.”

That’s what I’m afraid of. Still, Brenda is right—we do need more evidence. And Harmon Cherry would preach that the evidence always trumps instinct. “OK,” I say. “We’ll try it. But if things aren’t going well, expect me to cut it off.”

As we’re about to go back into the courtroom, Ettinger grabs my sleeve. “You know, we worked on a movie together,” he says. “Not just
The Boatman
. I associate produced and did some second unit direction on
Climbing Panda Hill
, though you probably wouldn’t remember me. You were good. I knew your mother very well.”

“You and a hundred other guys,” I say, rolling my eyes. That’s another reason why I don’t like him.

When we get back into the courtroom, Judge Grass has already taken the bench. Bishop, Frantz, and Diamond are in their places, looking listless and wrung out.

“You’re late, Mr. Stern,” the judge says. “Unacceptable.” Despite the words, this isn’t the same Judge Grass as before the recess. Before, her eyes radiated a harsh fluorescence whenever she looked at me, but now that light is softer, more diffuse, more ambiguous in its judgment. The happy events of childhood take root in our core and return not as memory but as emotion, raw and immediate. Anita Grass the girl was star-struck by Parky Gerald; Anita Grass the woman still is.

I apologize and explain that Ettinger is another last-minute impeachment witness. A cowed Frantz doesn’t bother to object. Ettinger takes the stand, but unlike the courageous Clifton Gold, looks everywhere but at Bishop’s cyber-knife stare.

All I have to do is ask a few foundational questions, and Ettinger launches into a wonderful lecture on the joint Bishop-McGrath production of
The Boatman
—how he worked on the film as an associate producer, how Bishop produced and starred in the film, how Felicity McGrath wrote and directed it though Bishop took all the credit. Like my mother did, he describes the movie as a modern version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth about a down-and-out musician who goes through hell, sees the light, and becomes a prophet. He adds important new information that triggers shocked
ahhs
and titters through the gallery and starts Bishop’s bowed head shaking continually: the actors engaged in hardcore sex on camera and ingested actual illicit drugs, just like the “Orpheus & the Wise Guy” curse said. Bishop insisted that the movie pay homage to Andy Warhol and The Factory, according to Ettinger. He recounts how production shut down suddenly and how Howard Bishop threatened to harm anyone who talked about the movie. He testifies about the rumored long-term affair between Bishop and McGrath. Brenda did well in lobbying me to call him to the stand.