“I’m not looking for the prince,” Paul said. “Like you women. Besides, you are a world-class spike-heel wearer. What hypocrisy.”
“The difference is that I don’t
have
to wear them. I never wear them if I’ll be standing up for very long. Those women walk miles and miles each shift. Sometimes they go home with blood in their shoes. Why should they have to suffer physically for men’s visual pleasure? The job is to deliver drinks and take orders.”
“The job is to get the men in and keep them in,” Paul said. “The men still have more money to blow.” His smile had faded.
“The clubs don’t need it,” Nina said. “Gambling is a big enough draw. They don’t need the sex.”
“They need to use sex along with everything else to draw the suckers in. Anything to take the men’s minds off how badly the gambling is going,” Paul said. “Topless dancers, free booze, shiny cars as special prizes, sports bars, prostitutes . . . so the waitresses have to wear high heels and smile and look sexy. Big deal.”
“Women in physical pain aren’t sexy no matter what they’re wearing.”
“Okay, Counselor,” Paul said. “You win.” He turned up the sound on the television. The hushed voice of the golf announcer noted that Tiger Woods had missed his birdie putt and was going for par. “Sorry,” Paul said. “I have two hundred bucks riding on this tournament. I’m betting that Tiger Woods will win by more than ten strokes. It’s only the first round.”
“You’re betting on a
golf
game?”
“Look, Nina. Let’s start over. Come here and sit down. Take it easy.” He watched the tall, broad-shouldered young player putt from six feet. The crowd sighed as the ball rolled just past the cup to the right.
“Well, I’ll be. He’s going to bogey. There goes that bet,” Paul said, and after Tiger did just that, he went back outside for another of what he called his “perimeter surveys.”
Nina went to organize Bob into bed.
Eleven o’clock came. They sat there with the phone in Paul’s lap and waited. Eleven fifteen. Midnight.
“I can’t believe this,” Nina said. “I have court tomorrow at eight-fifteen.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Go to bed,” Nina said. “I still have some legal papers to go over before I’ll be able to get to sleep.” In answer Paul pinched the phone cord and pulled it out of the phone.
“Let’s call it a night,” he said. “You have to pace yourself. You’re supposed to show up in the morning ready for anything. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“Kemp could come here.”
“That’s covered. I’ll stay.”
“What if he goes to Jessie’s? The process server found her. I know Sandy warned her, but . . .”
“Trust me, he’s bluffing. Kemp doesn’t know exactly where she is in that neighborhood, unless he’s Washoe himself. And somehow I doubt, from your description, he’ll pass for a neighbor and get lots of information out of the locals.”
Nina thought of the bleached hair and Brit accent and said, “Not unless he’s a very peculiar Washoe.” She yawned.
“Now the sole remaining question,” Paul said, “is— where do I sleep?”
“Oh, Paul. We can’t. Bob wouldn’t—it wouldn’t be right.” She looked at the couch. “I’ll bring you some bedding.” Bob came out at that moment in his oversized T-shirt and baggy shorts, collected a Fruit Roll-Up from the basket on the counter, took a sharp look into the living room and surveyed the situation, then said, “ ’Night, all.”
“He’ll take good care of you in a few years,” Paul said after Bob had gone down the hall. “What is he now, fourteen?”
“Thirteen.”
“Seeing much of his dad?”
“I doubt Kurt will ever leave Germany. I heard he was engaged, but I don’t know anything about her.” Nina had three or four major regrets in life, and Kurt Scott was one of the biggest. She didn’t regret her first precious love affair, and she sure didn’t regret the son that had resulted, but she had handled things badly, denying both Kurt and Bob a relationship they deserved for many years.
“What does Bob think about getting a stepmother?”
“He pretends it’s nothing but I know he’s nervous. He doesn’t want to be number two.” Anxiety came up in her. “What kind of game is this jerk Kemp playing with me, Paul? Why doesn’t he make the call? What could he have to gain by putting me and Jessie through all this anxiety for nothing?”
“Not enough information to tell,” Paul told her. “Run along to bed, now.” She bent over him and kissed his mouth. He held her close and made her do it again, until the kiss took on a life of its own and threatened to drown them both. She pulled away.
“Hurry,” Paul told her. “Or I won’t be responsible.”
Jessie’s faxed papers lay on the bed. Nina, however, had come to the end of her personal marathon. She picked them up and made her eyes move mechanically around on the top sheet, but her brain refused to follow. Sleep rolled under her and bore her away.
She dreamed that she was in a department store looking at a marvelous sleeping bag for professional women who had to spend the night on the job, very neat and official-looking with various compartments. When you pulled on the string, the bag opened out like a chifferobe into a hinged apartment. On one side, which was as big as a room wall, there were drawers for an office, bunk beds, and hanging stairs leading to a complete hanging bathroom, all decorated in Danish Modern.
Finally! How she wanted to move in, but she was out of time, she had to get to court. Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor. She saw an iron and ironing board. She picked up the iron and started furiously ironing her skirt, trying to get those wrinkles out.
10
“WELL, WELL,” SAID Jeffrey Riesner as Nina walked into the law and motion session on Tuesday morning. “What a charming surprise.”
She hadn’t had coffee yet. Her skirt was wrinkled in spite of the dream and her hair was flipping into anarchy. Jessie’s papers were still sitting unread in her briefcase. Her client, Hector Molina, wasn’t needed and she was expecting a quick impersonal in and out. They were in the upstairs Superior Court and Judge Amagosian hadn’t arrived yet. Three or four male lawyers, all of whom Nina knew, clustered around Riesner.
He came right over and took her arm like he owned it. She shook it off. Dominating body language was his specialty. He smelled like a Parisian hair salon and his tie was Hermès. Infuriatingly tall, the hair ever thinner above permanently raised eyebrows, he was extremely successful at his work, which was representing insurance companies and well-heeled defendants in criminal cases. Today his face bore a rancid, mocking look she knew well. “Now, don’t be coy, Nina,” he said. “We need to talk. Or haven’t you seen the papers?”
“I’m busy right now.”
“You seem to have a problem using my name,” Riesner said. “It’s Jeff.” When she said nothing he said, “Can’t we just get along? Why do you hate me?”
Because you’re a phony, Nina thought. Because you are loathsome and deceitful. Because you will do anything in pursuit of fame and money. Because you’ve got the morals of primordial ooze.
She was not in a good mood.
She let him lead her to the back of the courtroom. The bailiff was filling out forms at his desk and she was ten minutes early, so she had time to talk and he knew it. “All right,” she said. “What do you wish to subject me to this morning?”
“So she didn’t give them to you yet. Maybe I ought to let you read them first. But no, that would be too courteous.” He had the exhilarated look of a man about to land a solid punch. “It’s your new client, Mrs. Leung.”
Jessie? What did Riesner have to do with Jessie? She didn’t react. She didn’t want him to see her surprised or ruffled or angry, not ever. Any sign of emotion was like the smell of steak to a man like him, an invitation to feast hearty. “Court’s starting. What is it?”
“My client has a money judgment from Hawaii against your client. We filed the judgment with the clerk yesterday and the clerk entered the judgment.”
“Go on.”
“Mrs. Potter was served yesterday with the Notice of Entry of the Judgment. So was your bank. Oh, by the way. I’m serving you too.” He handed her a number of documents, which looked like replicas of Jessie’s documents, and which she took because she didn’t think there was anything else she could do. “After all, it’s your trust account,” he said. “Just following the rules.”
She held the papers at her side. She wasn’t about to look at them.
“Naturally, my client was concerned that with your record an attempt might be made to withdraw the money before the writ could issue,” Riesner went on. “We couldn’t allow that. We have obtained an ex parte order placing a lien upon the funds until the writ can issue. So don’t even think about it. The funds are frozen.”
“The writ?” Nina said. “What writ?”
“A Writ of Execution. Against your client. To seize the funds to satisfy my client’s judgment. Unfortunately, we have to wait thirty days for that.”
He gave her only a second to register all this. After a plaintiff obtained a judgment in a civil case, the plaintiff could seize the defendant’s nonexempt assets up to the amount of the judgment. The legal pleading which authorized seizure of the assets was called a Writ of Execution.
“I’m listening,” Nina said. “You’re requesting a Writ of Execution based on a money judgment your client has obtained against her?”
“Right. In Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. Honolulu.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Really? You should start talking to your clients. As I said, she was served yesterday.”
“Who is your client?”
“His name is Atchison Potter. She tell you about him?”
Nina bit her nail, noticed what she was doing, and put her hand firmly into her pocket. The ugly surprises had begun, and they were excruciatingly, almost brilliantly, ugly. She thought, Here we go.
“He sued her? For what?”
Riesner said, “Wrongful death.”
“Whose death?” But she knew what was coming.
“Her husband’s. Mr. Potter’s son. Danforth Potter. The police wouldn’t act. He had to do something. So he sued her in civil court.”
“She had a lawyer? She defended herself?”
“She didn’t wait around. She split.”
“She was served with the complaint in the case?”
“She left Hawaii just in front of the process server. They had to serve her by publication. The notice was published four times, as the law demands.”
“Ah. In the Hawaii newspapers,” Nina said. “After she left. Naturally.”
“That was her legal domicile. He made diligent efforts to find her. She didn’t choose to make herself amenable to process.”
“She didn’t know she was sued, she therefore didn’t have a lawyer. And your client picked up a default judgment, do I have this straight? My client never appeared in the action?”
“Mr. Potter presented his evidence at the default hearing, and a circuit court judge granted the judgment. It’s all quite impeccable.”
“It’s all quite easy to vacate,” Nina said. “We’ll file a Motion to Vacate the Judgment. You’ll have the papers in the next day or two.”
“Alas. It’s been more than six months. It’s as final as a lethal injection.”
“Not quite. She just heard about it for the first time yesterday,” Nina said. “There’s an exception to the final judgment rule. The whole case can be reviewed when you try to enforce it in another state.”
“Naturally the State of California will give full faith and credit to the Hawaii judgment.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Riesner chuckled. “You haven’t even read the paperwork yet.”
“It comes from you, doesn’t it?”
He barely winced. He readied another punch.
“Oh. I almost forgot. The court has also granted an ex parte Order for Examination of Judgment Debtor. That’s in the paperwork too. We don’t have to wait thirty days on that. So less than ten days from today I plan to sit down with Mrs. Potter and have a nice chat with her about her assets and debts. And other pertinent information.”
“That’s premature,” Nina said. “Before it is even determined whether a writ will issue? There’s no need for that.”
“Wouldn’t want her running around wasting her assets.”
Nina thought about asking him to do the right thing— to put off the examination until after the hearing she was going to request. But what was the point of asking? All she had to do was look at him to see how much pleasure he was taking in stomping on her toes and sticking bamboo slivers under her fingernails. The cattle prod to the genitalia he hadn’t managed yet, though.
She said, “It’s too soon. I’m sure she’ll want to contest the motion for a writ. You won’t be sitting her down to quiz her about her assets for a—”
“On the contrary,” Riesner said. “You don’t have a ground in the world for protest. I don’t have to wait for the writ. I’m going to sit her down, without you present, as is my client’s right and privilege, and I’m going to take her through every shoddy financial event in her life. She’s not going to get lost again.”
“Your client is a harasser,” Nina said. “What he really wants is to know her address and any other personal details he can glean that will allow him to harass her further. This isn’t about money at all. He hates her. He’s wrong to blame her for his son’s death. She was never charged with . . .”
“Thank goodness, the civil courts of Hawaii stood ready to redress the failings of law enforcement,” Riesner said in that officious slimy tone that always made her want to scream and lower her head and butt him in the stomach, which was about as high as her head would reach on him.
She squared her shoulders. Enough of being pushed around. “Don’t interrupt me again, Riesner,” she said. “Or your head will be even further up your ass than it is now.”
“You’re so cute when you try to play with the big boys. Listen, he’s got the judgment. There’s nothing you can do. That’s the beauty of it,” Riesner said, chuckling, enjoying himself.
The court clerk and the stenographer had come in and sat down, signs that Judge Amagosian was ready.
“All rise,” said the bailiff.
Simeon Amagosian appeared on the bench up front, his white hair and shaven cheeks looking as fresh as sheets of fabric softener, and said, “Well, what have we got today?” Riesner was still standing next to Nina in back, and he was waiting for the question she did not want to ask but had to ask. So she gritted her teeth and whispered it.
“How much?”
Riesner came in close, dousing her in the sickly sweet odor of his aftershave. “The judgment? It’s for eight million dollars,” he whispered back. “Everything she won, plus he can garnish her pay for the rest of her life. I thought you’d never ask.”
Back to the office on Lake Tahoe Boulevard she went, finally set free from Riesner’s presence. The mountain god had ordained a perfect mountain morning. No wind, no haze, no cloud, a filmy blue sky. Transparent wavelets brushed innocently against the shore. A man with calves like small hairy tree trunks jogged in the bike lane, pushing a stroller with big wheels.
She wondered what a vacation felt like.
Leisurely breakfasters jammed the parking lot at the Red Waffle Hut. The town was filled up for the summer season. A kid rocketing by on his skateboard had the stunned, joyful look of Wen Ho Lee the day the Feds gave up.
Nina pushed open the office door with her free hand, the briefcase weighing down her shoulder in the other. Notwithstanding her discussion with Paul about shoes, she was wearing three-inch heels today and could feel exactly where the bunions would erupt in a few years.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said. Her will client, Alex, and his mother had the chairs near the door, and Jessie was already there too, reading one of the Sherman Alexie books Sandy kept at the side table. The gentle samba of Carlos Botelho played in the background, hopefully soothing any savage breast that might wander in. Up against the far wall, behind her desk, Sandy was on the phone. Giving Nina a significant look, she inclined her head very slightly toward Nina’s office. Translation: don’t talk to anybody until I get in there.
“Be right with you,” Nina said, and passed through the door into the relative privacy of her office. The pink slips she had disposed of the afternoon before had reappeared and proliferated on her desk.
Pushing them aside, she pulled the faxed sheets from Jessie from the briefcase and began comparing them to the pleadings Riesner had just laid on her. Riesner had spoken truly. Somehow Atchison Potter had managed to convince a judge for the First Circuit Court of Hawaii to give him an astonishingly large judgment against Jessie. Or maybe that was the going rate for a man’s life.
The legal papers gave a thumbnail sketch of the story.
The Complaint for Wrongful Death and several other causes of action alleged that on or about June first, 1999, Jessie Jo Kiyan, born on September 11, 1979, and Danforth Atchison Potter, born June 27, 1979, had become husband and wife.
The complaint told how the couple established their joint domicile at Kaneohe, Island of Oahu, State of Hawaii, and how Jessie immediately and on numerous occasions thereafter showed great and unusual interest in a trust account established by Plaintiff Atchison Potter in the name of and for the benefit of Plaintiff’s son.
You can allege anything, Nina thought, but she didn’t like hearing this.
Then came the kicker, in the unemotional language of the law: a few paragraphs down, the complaint alleged that on or about February 7, 2000, Jessie had caused her husband to drown in a negligent and/or deliberate manner hereinafter to be shown.
No details, except the bald statement that Dan Potter was in excellent health at the time of his death. There must have been evidence taken at the hearing. The marriage had lasted barely eight months. Dan Potter had been not quite twenty-one years old when he died. It was a tragedy no matter how it had occurred.
As Riesner had said, the summons had been published four times in the newspaper. The Hawaiian Petition To Serve By Publication alleged that Jessie had thereupon left Oahu on or about April 3, 2000, and that diligent attempts to locate her thereafter, which were set forth in detail in the accompanying Declarations, had failed to find her.
Nina looked at the “due diligence” Potter had used to find Jessie. No forwarding address. Military records confidential. Attempts to find local family members. His lawyer had made it look like Potter had moved heaven and earth to find her.
When he hadn’t, the court had allowed him to have the hearing without her. Under the law, she had been “constructively” served.
An eight-million-dollar default judgment against a Marine! They could only have been thinking that the money amount just didn’t matter, since Jessie couldn’t pay any amount.
Talk about luck! Potter must have danced a jig when he finally found Jessie. It must have been the photos. The Honolulu papers might even have reported Jessie’s amazing jackpot. Or could he have somehow learned about Jessie’s Social Security number on the IRS forms?
Or could he have known Jessie was living near Tahoe, found her the night of the jackpot, watched her enter Prize’s, watched her try to hide in the aisle of Greed Machines, watched the win, as she had feared? There would have been just enough time to hire Riesner and get the papers on file.
The date-stamp on the complaint indicated that it had been filed on July 10, 2000, just three months after Jessie’s disappearance and five months after Danforth Potter’s death. Atchison Potter had wasted no time suing her.
Nina went on to the Judgment after Default. The Hawaii lawyer seemed to have done all she should have for Potter. After a hearing on the evidence, the court had, on November 12, 2000, issued its judgment against Defendant In Pro Per Jessie Kiyan Potter in the amount of Eight Million Dollars, plus costs of suit, with interest to run from the date of issuance of the judgment.