The Holdout, page 18
“Miss Seale?” came the voice, returning to the line. “Mr. Silver suggests that you come by the office at nine tomorrow morning. Would that be all right?”
Maya said that it would.
She spent the next few hours trying to interview registered sex offenders, but none of the others would speak to her.
* * *
—
SHE HAD THE afternoon to take the scenic route back down the coast. The winding road had been etched into the cliffs, perilously high above the beaches below. Just beyond the shoreline, waves crashed against rock outcroppings in beautiful white sprays. She wanted the time to think through everything she’d learned. And to relish what might be her last views of the ocean before she went to jail.
This was the first time she’d driven this stretch of Highway 1 since she’d moved to L.A. Staring out at the radiant water, she remembered the conversations she’d had with Hunter on their trip from San Francisco. On the rare occasions that she thought of Hunter, it amazed her how infrequently she did.
They’d broken up not long after the trial. But not because of her affair. What had happened with Rick had been a tragic mistake she’d already regretted. The person who stood between them, according to Hunter, was Bobby Nock.
“Could we talk about literally anything else for once?” Hunter had fumed two weeks after she’d returned home. “Hasn’t that asshole ruined enough lives? Now he has to ruin ours too?”
They’d gone out to dinner, but someone had recognized Maya at the restaurant. A woman in dark leggings and chunky jewelry had walked up to their table and said, “You were on the jury, right? I hope you’re happy.” Then the woman’s embarrassed friend had grabbed her wrist and pulled her away.
Date night had disintegrated from there: a tense silence, some insultingly insignificant comment about random bullshit, another tense silence, a waiter’s refilling of the water glasses, the crack of the ice cubes as they melted.
“I just want to have a good time tonight,” he’d said.
What had he wanted to talk about instead? To this day, she wasn’t sure. She’d asked him then, but he’d deflected, put it on her: “Anything else.”
“I’m not your cruise director,” she’d said in one of those fights, she couldn’t remember which. They all blurred together in her memory. “It’s not my job to keep you entertained.”
“You’re obsessed,” he’d said. That was definitely from a later fight, after she’d told him she wanted to go to law school. Maya thought it ironic that while her lack of “direction” in life had previously been a subtle source of tension in their relationship, her decision to go to law school seemed only to upset him more.
“What,” he’d said, “you’re going to become a lawyer so you can get Bobby Nock off the hook for murder? News flash: You already did.”
“No,” she’d tried to explain, “I’m going to become a lawyer because people like Bobby Nock and Jessica Silver both deserve a fair shot at justice.”
Every day in this city, someone murdered. Every hour someone raped. Every minute someone stole. The police were arresting people left and right and some of them were innocent and some of them were not, but what did Hunter want her to do, sit on the sidelines? Finish some stupid novel that no one cared about anyway? Or write a memoir about how badly the justice system had treated her?
No way. She was not a helpless victim of a heartless system. She was not an innocent bystander.
Hunter could never understand that becoming a lawyer wasn’t about endlessly reliving the trial. It was about embracing the most difficult and traumatic events of her life and owning them.
She’d left the old Maya behind in that courthouse. She was someone else now. And this new person, Ms. Seale, had been born in those rooms. She was at home there.
Hunter was married now. He lived in Portland. According to his Facebook photos, he cared passionately about the brewing of craft IPAs.
She made good time on the road until she hit rush-hour traffic around Malibu. The sun had just gone down, and the glow of a new downtown owned almost entirely by one man loomed in the distance.
* * *
—
MAYA HAD ENCOUNTERED Lou Silver exactly once since the trial. A few years ago, she’d been in the Palisades at a climate-change fund-raiser sponsored by a beauty company. She was Crystal Liu’s plus-one, and she was enjoying the rare anonymity. “I’m Maya, I work down the hall from Crystal,” she’d said to the other attendees. That was all she was for the evening: another lawyer sampling oil-flecked crudités and the next season’s fragrances.
Until she saw Elaine Silver across the room. For a second, their eyes met. Instinctively, Maya turned away. She couldn’t be sure that Elaine Silver had actually seen her, or whether it had even been Elaine. She tried to convince herself that the elegant, sixty-something woman at the other end of the room was a different billionaire philanthropist and high-society maven. Then Maya wouldn’t have to keep looking over her shoulder.
The feigned ignorance worked until the end of the evening. Maya was standing beside Crystal at the valet line and felt someone jostling behind her, a little too closely.
There was Lou Silver, ushering his wife toward the town car that was waiting for them.
“Miss Seale,” he whispered as he passed.
And that was it. The Silvers got into the car without another glance in Maya’s direction.
“So,” Crystal said a few minutes later as they sped off into the night. “Meet anybody interesting?”
* * *
—
LOU SILVER’S VARIOUS companies occupied adjacent floors in his Century City complex’s southern tower. Each block of floors represented a different area of his interests: real estate, insurance, private equity, “innovation,” whatever that meant. The Elaine and Lou Silver Foundation had half a floor among the finance people. His personal offices were at the top.
Lou looked older than Maya had imagined he would. People described old age as a gradual descent, but with Lou it seemed to have been a steep cliff. Ten years ago, at fifty, he’d looked middle-aged. Now he no longer parted his hair to hide the balding, and the dark liver spots on his hands were prominent. When he walked across his corner office to greet her, she noticed the deliberation in every step.
His face had the same weary expression.
“You’d think,” he said, “that we’d have done this before now. Hi. I’m Lou.”
She accepted his handshake. “I didn’t think we’d ever do this.”
“Why?”
“Because you told The New York Times that my mother must have dropped me on the head a lot as a baby.”
He took in her candor and reciprocated it. “Well. You set free the man who killed my Jessica.”
“This is going well.”
He smiled. “Better than I thought it would, honestly. Will you sit?”
He gestured to a pair of couches. From one wall of windows, Maya could see to the ocean. From another, the Hollywood Hills. From a third, the skyscrapers of downtown, and even the Inland Empire beyond.
“So,” Lou said. “You called me.”
“Why did Rick Leonard give your phone number to a sexual predator who lives in a town called Miracle?”
Lou didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, okay, good. I was wondering where you’d gotten that private number. Rick gave it out because it was the line to my investigative services.”
“You have investigative services?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” Clearly, this was not the response he’d expected. “Well, for the last few years, Rick Leonard has essentially been my investigative services.”
“He worked for you?”
“Two years ago, thereabouts, Rick came here to see me. He told me all about his own investigations into Bobby Nock. He was convinced that he could prove Bobby’s guilt, but he’d need time, manpower, resources. He was practically broke. I’d read his book—I knew he was on the right side. I gave him everything he asked for.”
Maya was surprised by Lou’s forthrightness.
He looked at her. “Were you expecting me to try and hide these things from you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why should I?”
His point was confoundingly reasonable.
“You’ve heard about Rick’s death,” she said.
“Just evil.”
“Rick was?”
“Bobby.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Bobby Nock murdered Rick.” He made it sound as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Maya didn’t think it was even plausible. “You’re convinced of that?”
Lou seemed offended. “Bobby Nock killed my daughter. After you, in your infinite wisdom, set him free, he has spent a decade hiding from the justice owed him. Rick Leonard, bless his soul and with the blessing of my help, had been digging into Bobby. Rick discovered evidence against him. So Bobby killed him for it.”
“Do you realize what you’d have to believe in order to argue that Bobby Nock killed Rick?”
“Do tell me what I believe.”
“Bobby would have had to know, first, that the reunion was taking place. Then he’d have had to know exactly where the reunion was taking place. Then he’d have had to find a way in to the hotel without being seen—by any of us: dozens of people who’d recognize him in an instant. And then he’d have had to know that Rick was going to be in my room, and when, and that I wouldn’t be there.”
“Perhaps one of the essential differences between me and you is that I don’t put anything past Bobby Nock.”
In fairness, Maya thought, this was probably an accurate description of their situation. “You know the cops think I did it?”
“I do.”
“But you don’t?”
“No.” He paused. “The thing that’s going to be hardest for you to accept right now is that I am likely the only person who believes you’re innocent. Which means that even though I’m sure that you’re the most gullible, pigheaded person in the entire Golden State, I might be the best friend you’re going to get.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I know,” he said. “Strange bedfellows.” He sat back on the couch, spreading his arms out like the wings of an angel.
Lou’s hatred of Bobby obscured everything else in his field of vision. There was no implausibility too far-fetched to believe, so long as it implicated Bobby.
“So what did Rick find?” she asked. “With all of your muscle behind him?”
Lou’s face clouded with disappointment.
“Not good,” he said. “Not good.”
“What?”
“I was hoping you knew.”
“He didn’t tell you?”
Lou sighed. “Rick was very clever, and highly motivated. There’s nothing like apostasy, you know, to spur a man to greatness. I wanted justice because of what Bobby did to my daughter. But Rick wanted justice because of what Bobby had made him do to himself.” Lou leaned in toward her. “At least Rick admitted his mistakes. Unlike some of us.”
Maya stopped herself from taking the bait. She reminded herself that the last thing she needed was to get into a debate about who’d killed Jessica Silver. Especially not with the girl’s father. What she needed—the only thing she needed—was information that served her defense.
“Are you really still so sure?” he asked, as if annoyed by her composure. “All these years later? After everything that’s happened? One almost has to admire the consistency. Almost.”
“If Rick was working for you, you must have access to his notes. His files on Bobby.”
Lou clucked his tongue. “I do. They’re not hidden—he gave them to the TV producers as well.”
“I’ve seen what they have.”
“So you understand. There is no big revelation in those files. He didn’t tell me, either. Oh, I asked him. Many times. I can show you a hundred emails. He just kept saying that he had something good, really good, tremendously good, but that the timing had to be perfect. We fought about it.”
Everything about this sounded insane. “Why would Rick find something incontrovertible, then hide it from you? Of all people?”
Lou tapped a single finger against his lips. The gesture seemed vaguely scholarly. “It’s nice, isn’t it? That you and I are finally asking the same questions.”
Lou took in the skyline beyond his windows. “Jessica always liked the water.”
Maya followed his gaze—all she could see was miles of cityscape. “Okay.”
“Ever since she was little. Most babies hate bathtime? Not Jessica. Loved it. When she was older, swimming lessons. Then swim team. Every weekend she’d go to the beach with her friends. I’d be here. Right in this office. I worked too much. I still do, but now, what else, you know? I would see her at night, her long hair was still wet. I could smell the salt water. I’d say, ‘Jessica, you have swim team all week and then on the weekend you just swim in the salt water?’ She said it was meditative. That’s the kind of girl my daughter was. She would say a thing was ‘meditative.’ ”
Maya didn’t know what to make of this. Or what to say in response.
“I wish I could have met her,” was the best she could come up with.
Lou shook his head. What she had to say was irrelevant. “You know what Elaine keeps telling me? ‘Punishing Bobby Nock won’t bring Jessica back.’ ”
“You disagree.”
“I keep telling Elaine, let’s try. And then we’ll see what happens.” He placed his hands on his lap. “That’s why I’m going to help you.”
“How?”
“I know where Bobby Nock is.”
Maya didn’t believe him.
“Rick figured it out a month ago,” Lou explained. “And that information, thankfully, he shared with me. I’ll share it with you.”
“Why?”
Lou smiled. “Because if I tell you where Bobby is, you’ll go and talk to him. To exonerate yourself, you need to figure out what Rick had on Bobby. He might have an inkling.”
“Why not go yourself?”
Lou shrugged. “What am I going to do?” His frame shook as he rose. “And more importantly, what are the chances that Bobby talks to me? Or my people?”
“Not high.”
“But what are the chances that he’ll speak to you? His misbegotten savior?”
The cold logic by which Lou was able to calculate everyone’s respective interests, and to employ only those that aligned with his, was impressive. After years of negotiating with opposing counsels, she’d learned to identify a manipulative personality when she saw one. But Lou was a different breed. It was as if he knew the secrets to crafting a Rube Goldberg machine made only of base human desires.
Perhaps, Maya thought, this was how he’d become a billionaire. Not by exerting his will on others, but by organizing others into exerting their wills on one another. Everyone was working for Lou Silver, whether they knew it or not.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll bite. Where’s Bobby Nock?”
“Before I tell you where he is, there’s something I want from you.”
“What?”
“I want you to tell me the truth.”
Maya was confused. “When have I lied to you?”
“You avoided my question earlier. Now I want to know. Are you really—really—still so sure that you were right ten years ago?”
After all the people who’d tiptoed around this question over the years, she appreciated that Lou had the temerity to ask it outright. If he almost respected her consistency, then maybe she almost respected his candor.
“Or maybe,” he said, “just maybe…could Bobby have killed my Jessica?”
Lou’s face seemed gaunt with craving.
She knew why he cared about her answer. She understood what it was like to have argued for so long that the result of the argument no longer mattered—the only thing that provided any relief was not being right, but showing that from the very beginning you had been right. That’s what Lou really wanted. It was too late for justice. He’d never find peace. So the only satisfaction he could hope for was to hear her admit that she’d been wrong.
Maya wanted to tell Lou that the thing he craved was going to torture him for the rest of his life. The fate they would all have to live with was the hardest one to accept—that they would never know for sure. Their punishment for being people who demanded answers was that they would be forced to go on in perpetuity with their doubts.
In courtrooms all across this city, Maya had seen people get verdicts they’d wanted, and she’d seen just as many get ones they didn’t. But the verdicts had nothing to do with truth. No verdict ever changed a person’s opinion. Juries weren’t gods. The people who went into those courtrooms looking for divine revelation came out bearing the fruits of bureaucratic negotiation.
Maya wanted to tell Lou that this need for vindication had become the mire of their whole petty country. Every day, they woke up fervently hoping for the headline that would prove, definitively, that their guys were the virtuous ones and the other guys were the absolute worst. But news of that certainty would forever elude them. Every new revelation that seemed to damn the people with whom they disagreed would be followed by a new rationalization. For every failed prediction, there would come a mitigating circumstance. They would double down on their most weakly held convictions because the alternative felt unbearable, and the bums across the aisle would follow suit. She wanted to say that the only thing worse than being wrong was having a bottomless need to prove that you never were.
But she didn’t tell Lou any of that.
