Forced Blooms chapter 2 (partial)

[figureofdismay]

He called Frank and arranged for a jet at 5 in the morning, waking him with no regret and also dumping the meetings he’d had scheduled that week with the producers of the the prospective scifi franchise movie back solely on Franks shoulders over his grumbling protestations and was on his way east by 6:30. The six hours held captive in the well appointed, walnut paneled and leather upholstered tin can of a private jet ground on him with a vengeance he’d rarely experienced. There wasn’t much to do, yet, but he also couldn’t put on his headphones and space out or drink himself numb. There was a clock ticking down over his head and for once it held a hard and fast, real world deadline.

Once it was 9am on the east coast – he was scared enough of her wrath to do the math and time it right – he called Felicity Murdock. She was a lawyer, she’d fixed things for him before, and she exhibited human emotions, unlike Fitch, even though those emotions around him were usually wrath and scorn, and not in a sexy sly way.

After he explained what he wanted, he was met with splutterings of incredulity and exasperation.

“You are aware that corporate tax and liability law is a completely different discipline than trial law, right?” demanded Felicity, after laughing at him. “Not to mention the tremendous conflict of interest. Not to mention the fact that the trial is already underway, which is how you heard about it, and the black widow has her own representation already. I don’t know what you’re on right now, Roman, but you need to pull it together and come back to reality.”

“I’m not on anything!” he protested, a pitchy squawk that probably wasn’t convincing even though it was true, “And she’s not a black widow, she didn’t do it. I know she didn’t. We have to do something.”

"Even if you could somehow devine the innocence of this woman you've never met all the way from the other side of the country like some kind of coked up psychic, this corporate law office has no business interfering in an unconnected criminal proceeding. I don't even know what kind of trouble it would bring down on our heads but it would be a shit storm of laviathan proportions. We don't need to be making an enemy of the DA's office, now or ever. Waystar cannot be involved. Period. Or else."

"First of all, I don't do coke, you're still thinking of the other fucked up boy prince. Second, I do so know she didn't do it. She used to work for my dad when I was a kid. I met her, even, and the dead guy, and the dead guy's stupid turtle, tortoise, whatever the fuck. I know she couldn't have done it," he paused briefly and took a big breath between the airy exaggeration and the total lie, "She's a very nice lady. She couldn't have poisoned him."

Felicity Murdock laughed loudly in his ear, and he prickled at the knowing disbelief he heard. "Gerri Kellman is not a nice lady, Roman," she told him emphatically, he could hear the scoff in it and could picture the sharp-faced, head shaking scorn she would be giving him if he was in the room, "I took her job right after she vacated it in 97 and I have seen her old paperwork. That woman's not nice, she is ruthless and she is clever, and whether or not she got into arsenic plying, her hands are no cleaner than the departed Kellman and the rest of the big old boys."

"What about your icy little hands, Felicity, huh? Are they all squeaky clean? How safe would you be if someone decided to bump off one of the ex Mr. Murdocks for you?"

"I could never be so lucky," Felicity said drily.

"This isn't fucking funny," Roman snapped, all trace of humor gone from him. He felt like the awful, proverbial boy who cried wolf, he could picture it now, the near insurmountable ranks of people he would soon be facing, begging for them to take him seriously, not for his sake but for Gerri's, and their profound belief that he was nothing more than a rich boy clown.

Well maybe he was, but this was something that mattered in the real world and he seemed to be the only one who realized that something had gone wrong. He remembered the scent of roses, the frank gaze of serious blue eyes, the still face of an angry, wronged woman who was refusing to cry for sympathy or soften herself down in the eyes of the jury. He felt his skin prickle with the sense of his own absurdity and ineffectualness. "Gerri's being fucking railroaded in this joke of a trial because that wannabe real housewife has the press wrapped around her finger and that sad old judge would give his wrinkled balls for the blooming bereaved fiance to bat her ethnically ambiguous eyes at him. I don't fucking care what the kellmans got up to for Pop in the 90s, she was nice to me when she didn't have to be, back then, and any idiot could see that if she had wanted the guy dead she would have done it in a way that couldn’t come back on her like this. You have to do something. Anything. I don't care what it costs. Hire a new lawyer for her, get the police to reopen the case, something."

"I don't have to do anything," said Felicity sharply. Then she sighed. "You're probably right about the other thing, though. The woman whose files I took over wouldn’t have left the arsenic under the kitchen sink after she poisoned the bastard, I give you that. There's nothing that this office can do, though. Nothing. If we tried it would make things worse for her, Roman."

"Please, Felicity. Recommend somebody else if you can't, or, I don't know, give me to Fitch, he's gotta have connections, right? If you point me in the right direction, I'll never be mess for you to clean up again, I swear."

Murdock sighed gustily and grabbed onto this avenue to divert him with apparent relief. "Fine. I'll put feelers out and get back to you. But don't get your hopes up. I've been following the case and it's wrapping up. Expect the closings as early as tomorrow, and then it's in the jury's hands."

Roman felt a plummeting sensation in his gut and looked out the plan window to be sure they hadn't taken a nosedive. "Right," he said weakly.

"I don't think the jury's on her side, Roman." Felicity was blunt, but not unsympathetic.

"No, yeah, I got that sense," agreed Roman, in a tone that one might use to say 'I’m already down, stop kicking me.' "I'll be landing soon, get me a name as soon as you can." He stopped the call and slumped queasily in the plush leather airplane recliner. He tugged at his hair until his scalp hurt and then tucked his fists under his thighs, too wound up even to fidget. He considered going into the bathroom to jerk off as emergency stress relief, but though the image of the accused in her narrowly tailored black dress had stirred him with fevered hunger hours before, he felt too ill and full of dread for anything to happen in the cubicle beyond chafing and frustrating himself. The sensation was far from unfamiliar in his life, an angst so deep that no quick endorphin rush could be sought let alone found relieving, but it was surreal that he was in this state not on his own behalf – exactly – but on the behalf of a woman who was a near stranger. Who had been married to someone else through most of his life. Who had probably forgotten he existed. Who probably, if she remembered him at all, pictured a weedy, oily 15 year old with a forced crew cut and a persistent sunburn over his nose and forehead, the product of St. Andrews' morning runs and summer-long tennis and golf lessons, enforced by parental concern about his perpetually weedy and unmasculine state as a teen – he'd tried throughout his adolescence to sprain something well enough to get excused for a month or two, but impulsive clumsiness aside, he never managed it. He'd always taken to exercise well and he always seemed to bounce instead of smashing. He didn't figure Gerri Boscowan would have taken much interest in a big eyed, red faced, nymph boy made of rubber, if she was the kind of person who he thought and not a rich female Humbert Humbert she wouldn't have been, which meant that he had an uphill battle to be taken seriously, not just as a potential helper, but as an adult man who was interested in her, too. But so what. If he got her off, in the legal sense of the phrase, it would be the first, and the most, if not the only, worthwhile thing he'd do in his life.

Not that he'd done much in 30-something years, but this would be a hell of a start.

**

He was in the warm, dark back seat of a service car fighting off the drowsiness of a sleepless night catching up with him when Jim Fitch called his mobile.

“If you had any sense, you would drop this now,” said Fitch when Roman answered, forgoing even a hint of the deferential greeting formally required by his last name. The man’s voice was cool and cultured, with just a hint of the old upper crust mid atlantic that always made him feel like he was being dressed down – and Fitch pretty much only had contact with Roman when the legal office got tasked by Logan to give him a dressing down – by an escaped character from a George Cukor film, “But as you don’t have any, I hope you meant it when you said that price was no object. I know of someone you can call, but he’ll know who you are and what you’re worth and he will expect you to pay accordingly.”

“I don’t care, it’s fine, I have a fuckload of money, I don’t care if he tries to bankrupt me, I’ll put his kids through school, I’ll buy him an island, whatever, as long as he can do something. Is it a lawyer? Because her current ones sure as shit aren’t cutting it. Though I guess Felicity was maybe right about not, like, blowing up her defense mid-stream.”


“Not a lawyer, a private investigator. The police and the D. A. think they’ve got their killer, and a hung jury won’t bring in double jeopardy and get her off – not that such a thing looks likely. If you’re determined to go ahead, your best shot is giving them somewhere else to point the finger. But you can’t get in the middle of this, Roman. You’re not an investigator and you’re not a lawyer, and they absolutely can go after you for obstruction or witness tampering if you try to strong arm or buy your way through this, and I’m sure your know that Waystar and your father will not be standing around helpfully in front of you to take on any public liability. It will be made clear you were working on your own initiative to make yourself a criminal tamperer if such a thing should happen, do you understand?”

“I’m not stupid, Fitch,” Roman asserted, though obstruction charges had been far from any thought on his mind, “I’m not some rich fucking weasel, I mean, not just that. I don’t know much but I do know that I don’t have the clout to– look. Just text me the names, get me into a meeting, fucking yesterday if possible.”

Which is how Roman found himself ushered into a tall brownstone by the river on West 35th at 10 minutes to eleven by a dark haired man about his age and a good six inches taller. The man sized him up with a look that felt condescending, or all too knowing and sly, or something else that made his shoulders start trying to rise up to his ears in a defensive hunch, but the guy did take his coat and tell him that his timing was pretty good, because the eccentric genius was due down any minute from the rooftop greenhouses of exotic plants he tended to every morning from nine until eleven am.

The man who let him in was named Harry Selwyn and he was the leg man for the famous Cicero Phelan who was apparently a well known eccentric brain and PI to the rich and embroiled in crime. Roman had read up on news articles about past cases and puzzled-appreciative profile pieces via internet search after Fitch had sent him the contact info, and the guy sounded like a prize lunatic but he’d also apparently never failed to solve a problem that had been set to him, and times were desperate so Roman had jumped at the chance Phelan represented, however slim. Phelan also conveniently liked money, and would take on absurdly unlikely cases if the client could compensate him richly enough, which seemed to be Roman’s best selling point here.

Harry Selwyn directed him to a red leather chair in front of the big desk that apparently belonged to the big detective, and offered him coffee, milk or a drink from the bar cart, all of which Roman turned down, and then thought again asked for coffee. The sleepless night was wearing on him heavily in a way it wouldn’t have in his 20s and he wanted to be alert to pitch his – Gerri’s – case sympathetically, in case the massive pile of dollar signs wasn’t enough.

[Case summary in Not!Wolfe’s office]

*

[Roman alone – hotel room or would he have kept an empty apartment? How much did he trust he was coming back from LA? Phone call from ex who doesn’t know she’s an ex yet because he forgot he had a dinner date that night. Grace or not?]

*

[link scene next morning with Roman calling Harry for an update and asking if he’ll be able to see/talk with Gerri when the time comes to interview her]

*

Somehow Phelan and Selwyn had allied themselves with Gerri Boscowan’s legal team in the 24 hours they’d been on the case, and with a deep sense of unreality, Roman found himself following Harry into the court house, through a metal detector, and down, with a skeptical guard, into the inner bowels of the place, to interview room where the lawyers could meet with their client. He couldn’t believe that he’d actually gotten away with it, conned his way in to meet the accused. For all that he had the name and the money, none of his schemes and pitches thus far had made much lasting effect on his reality, or had gotten much farther than a few cursory meetings until his leash was yanked or the people on the other side of the table turned him down or his inner conviction failed. He was only 36 hours into this case – he did think of it as his case, even though he wasn’t the detective technically involved – and he’d already piqued the interest of the genius, written a check that would make his lawyer and his accountant yell at him with a vigor, and he was about to meet the woman for whom all this champioing was happening for the first time since he was a teenager. That was a great deal of effect and impact definitely made on his reality and it gave him a feeling of rushing headlong into something he couldn’t see. It was powerful, and terrifying, as if the world had taken notice of his actions for the first time.

Roman had very little idea what to say to her. He could barely explain it to himself, let alone to anyone else, and certainly not to Gerri herself. He doubted that she’d buy the idea of old family loyalty. He also doubted she’d like to hear, ‘I think I’m in love with you, I don’t think I’d mind even if you killed that guy and also we should run away together.’ There wasn’t much explanation he had to offer other than that for sticking himself smack dab in the middle of her genuine life crisis, aside from his total conviction that whatever else she was, she was too smart and too careful to have committed this crime in this way, and too patiently adroit to solve her problems with killing anyway. The adolescent memory of her calm, blue eyed pragmatism hovered over him, but it wasn’t just that. It was the proud, carefully restrained fury in her body as she’d sat at the defense table as the prosecution wrapped up, her neck and shoulders perfectly poised and correct as she she clutched and fidgeted her small, bare hands minutely in her lap, the thin but palpable aura of knowing scorn she’d had for all of them in their persistent disbelief of the facts she’d plainly offered them. She’d never shown a hint of guilt-fear, not once in the trial. Roman would have recognized its dank presence, having stewed in his own guilt-fear or his siblings’ often enough. These vague, squishy observations weren’t going to be persuasive, though, he guessed. Gerri didn’t seem like the kind of person to put a lot of faith in the whims of a stranger’s intuition.

He and Harry were put in a small, square room with an observation window, and a small window to the outside world set high in the outer wall. The walls were painted a muddyish yellow ivory and the only furnishings were sturdy table in the center of the room and three chairs. The lighting was inadequate and sickly, an overhead institutional fixture with half the bulbs out. It wasn’t an inviting atmosphere for a first meeting. Roman was so choked with adrenaline that he felt like his skin was trying to contain electric static and he shuffled and fidgeted as the guard showed them in and saw them seated at one side of the table, but Harry beside him was a cool customer. He eyed Roman with a repressive frown, like he was an unruly kid.

“Settle down, I’ve got a reputation to maintain around here and you’re making me look amatuer. Nothing’s going to happen just now, anyway, this is an exploratory interview to get her side. And don’t get in the way, I know you don’t want Phelan to decide you’re too much trouble after all.”

“Why does everyone just assume I’ll make a scene? I can be, you know, polite and rational. I’m an adult. I’m taking it seriously.” Roman’s voice was too small and shaky to give him much credibility and he didn’t bother to look up to meet Harry’s skeptical eye.

“Of course you are, Mr. Roy,” said Harry lightly, just a little too sincere to absolve it of sarcasm.

Roman took care in smoothing his tie and straightening his jacket as he sat in the hard, uncomfortable, schoolroom-like, institutional chair. He doubted that his appearance would make much impact with the rest of the subject matter their interview would be about, but he couldn’t deny that he wanted to make the best, least bratty first impression he could. He tried to concentrate on what he would actually, literally say to try to get Gerri to trust him, but the proposition was a bizarre one and the sense of the ticking clock working against them was bearing down on him – closings would be tomorrow – and sincerity was verboten in the Roy family. Just the thought of direct, emotional communication made him feel ill. Or maybe that was the heinous combination of low blood sugar and desperate infatuation that were warring within him.

The door opened and Gerri Boscawan was led in by a bailiff in a stiff uniform and a dour expression. Gerri herself was still in the outfit she’d worn in court earlier, a plain, neatly tailored dress with a slightly flared skirt in a dark french blue and another cashmere cardigan, this one a pale dove grey and worn open, its mid length sleeves revealing her neat, trim wrists curving up to perfectly proportioned forearms. Roman could understand for a wild, revelatory moment how the deprived Victorians had gone wild for bare wrists and ankles, the tiniest glimpses of – he cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, trying to sit up straighter. Gerri was watching him curiously with suspicious assessment in her too-sharp, too-clever eyes. For the first time in his desperate scramble of the last few days, he saw not only how badly in over his head he was, but how clearly Gerri herself could see it.

He was trying to do the right thing, he reminded himself, he was trying.

“So,” said Gerri, in that curiously smooth-sharp honey voice that had bewitched him, “Roman Roy. Care to explain just what it is you think you’re doing?”

“I’m trying to help,” he said urgently. It came out sounding like he was making an excuse, which wasn’t what he meant so he tried again after a quick breath that didn’t do much to calm him. Gerri’s skeptical gaze was unwavering. “Sorry, let me start from– Ugh, okay, so. My sister, you remember her right?”

“My supposed goddaughter? Yes, I remember,” said Gerri. Despite the circumstances, he got the sense that she was amused, that she was laughing at him just a bit, which wasn’t quite what he was after but it was still something, not hostility.

“Right. Of course. She told me, she sent me something about your… situation. I’ve been in LA the last few– anyway. Forgive me for being blunt, but nobody in this whole circus seems to think you didn’t do it, which is fucked, because I know you didn’t. So. I guess the primordial vestiges of my conscience said I should do something. After all, half the reason you’re getting screwed on the stand is baggage from us, Kellman working for Pop and getting fired and tanking your career and all… that.”

“Really. A Roy grew a conscience. Well, stranger things have happened, I guess, but do you really think that tampering in my defense is going to help me?”

Harry Selwyn cut in here, directing her attention back to semi-authorized official in the room, “With all due respect, ma’am, your defense isn’t currently working for you. While I agree that there’s an awful lot of reasons why you might not have done it, and the motive just isn’t there, there’s no one else they bothered to find to put in the window for poisoning the guy and you don’t have an explanation for how the stuff was found in your cupboard.”

“Because I didn’t know it was in there! Do you honestly think I would have kept it in my house if I’d been the one to–” Gerri snapped, eyes bright with righteous frustration and fury. It was a beautiful sight, Roman thought, if she’d just let the jury see her like that, sparking and pink-cheeked, with the iron in her spine and the knowledge that she knew better than all of them simmering in her face, they would let her off with apologies for having inconvenienced someone so far above them.

“I know, Ms. Boscowan, we’re on your side here,” said Harry, placatory but unmoved, “But they have the stuff in your house, see, and they aren’t going to care that much that certain things don’t add up because the story for the prosecution is too neat, and right now you’re all they can see. They’re not going to believe it was the pregnant fiance who wasn’t even there, so we need to put someone else in front of them to point at. The one who did it, for choice, but my boss isn’t picky. Our commission from Mr. Roy here is to get you acquitted, Ms. Boscowan, not necessarily to solve the crime, though you can see why it would help. Just letting you know in case you were covering for someone, though in that case I might tell you to drop it because it doesn’t seem to be working for you, but the big genius still might be able to swing it so he or she was also in the clear.”

Gerri shook her head and subsided. “I’m not covering for anyone. I wouldn’t let anyone put me in this position. If someone killed my ex-husband then they probably had their reasons, but there is no reason out there that would make me think I should pay for it instead.”

“I’m very glad to hear that,” said Harry, “It would have been handy if you already knew who it was, but this way’s less prickly in the end, legally speaking.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re here, Roman. You’re not an investigator as far as I’m aware, and you can’t be thinking that getting involved in my case will do you any favors with your father.”

“I’m getting involved because I don’t think you did it,” said Roman in a small voice, as directly as he could. The terror of earnesty was making his palms and underarms sweat. He was sure he looked oily and weaselly as always, but he held himself still and met Gerri’s searching gaze in a way that made his stomach twist. “And maybe this makes me a naive idiot, but if you didn’t do it I don’t think you should go to prison for it. That’s it. That’s all. And like, yeah, I do remember you from way back when as one of the only people around Dad who didn’t treat me like an idiot slug offspring, and yeah, if we get you out of here I’d like to make the argument that you should let me take your out to dinner sometime, or lunch, or fucking… brunch on honeymoon in the Riviera. But that’s not the point, just a potential bonus and not, you know, the basis of, um.” He cleared his throat and reflexively rubbed at the prickling back of his neck watching Gerri’s eyes widen in apparent alarm.

“What? You can’t be serious, you’re one of those? A prison proposer? I guess I should have known. What other kind of person chases a murder trial across the country, hmm?”

“What? No! no, not a proposal, not a proposer, just a tangential offer offerer! A pre-warning of potentially, in the event of, when we get you out of here, if maybe you don’t find me repulsive, and not out of gratitude, I might ask you for a meal. Or something.”

“Brave thing to do, with a suspected poisoner, Mr. Roy,” Gerri said, eyebrow raised archly.

At least she seemed amused at his grandiose rambling and deferent backtracking, not offended anymore. He still felt like he’d disappointed her and himself, though, and tried to compose himself and meet her gaze squarely. “But you didn’t do it, so. Not brave, just hopeful.”

Gerri’s sarcastic little moue of amusement and consternation settled, relaxing away as he held still and willed her to feel his sincerity. She blinked at him slowly. Her mouth shifted as she bit her lip as if in thought and then she sat forward, just a bit, a curious frown, a question in her wide eyes. “You get that it may be a moot point, right? You’re a little late at the gate, kid,” she said, but it wasn’t cold. It wasn’t a dismissal. Her eyes continued asking what, and why, but not with annoyance.

“Yeah, well, my timing is chronically shit, but I’m catching up,” said Roman, leaning forward as well, unable to prevent it. The institutional fluorescents hummed overhead to go along with the blood humming in his ears.

“This is all terribly adorable,” cut in Harry, “In a twisted sorta way. But we’re getting off the point. So, Ms. Boscawen, let’s go over it. Mr. Roy here can make himself handy and take notes.”