Tommy and Brand sat another minute with nothing to say. Malvern, Tommy's assistant, had seen him come in and knocked to tell him Dominga was on the phone. She'd probably heard the news about a "dramatic development" in the Sabich case.
"Let me know when Gorvetich reports back," Tommy said as he stood.
Brand's phone was ringing, and he nodded as he picked up. Tommy didn't get to the door.
"Gorvetich," Brand said behind him. He had a finger raised when Molto looked back.
Tommy watched Jim listen. His dark eyes weren't moving, and his face was set in a solemn frown. Tommy was not sure Brand was breathing. "Okay," said Brand. Then he repeated, "I understand," several times. At the end, Jimmy slammed down the handset and sat there with his eyes shut.
"What?" Molto asked.
"They've finished an initial examination."
"And?"
"And the object was created the day before Barbara Sabich died." Jim took a second to think. "It's real," said Brand. He kicked the trash can beside his desk, and the contents went flying. "It's fucking real."
CHAPTER 36
Nat, June 24, 2009
After Judge Yee dismisses the lawyers from his chambers, Marta and my dad and Sandy and I return to the LeSueur Building and end up together in Stern's large office. For weeks the dead man walking, Sandy is now trying to contain his exuberance, for my dad's sake. But there is something in him that would make you say he is his old self. His phone keeps lighting up with calls from reporters, and he tells them that the defense will have no comment for the present. Finally, he buzzes his secretary and tells her to put no one else through.
"They're all asking the same question," says Sandy. "If we think Molto will dismiss."
"Will he?" I ask.
"One never knows with Tommy. Brand might tie him to his chair rather than let that occur."
"Molto isn't going to give up," Marta says. "When push comes to shove, they'll gin up some screwy theory about how Rusty planted this on the computer."
"Rusty has not had his hands on the computer since prior to his indictment," says Stern.
He looks at my father, who is hunched in an armchair, listening but with little to say. For an hour and a half, he has seemed the most shocked and withdrawn of all of us. In psych class years ago, I visited a mental hospital and saw several people who had been lobotomized in the 1950s. With part of their brains gone, their eyes sank back into their heads by several inches. My dad looks a little like that now.
"Any such theory will be an embarrassment to them," Stern says.
"I'm just saying," says Marta. "And the reporters are assuming it's Barbara?"
"Who else?" asks Sandy.
For the last ninety minutes, I have been asking myself that question. I gave up thinking I fully understood my parents-either one of them-a long time ago. Who they were to each other, or in the parts of their lives that never touched mine, is something I won't ever completely comprehend. It's a little like trying to figure out who actors really are beyond the roles they play on-screen. How much is typecasting? How much is pretend? Anna insists it's pretty much the same with her mom.
But the brutal fact when I ask myself if I can really believe that my mother killed herself and set my father up to take the fall for her death-the fact is that some deeply internal apparatus registers that prospect as entirely credible. My mother's rages were lethal and took her to a place where she was largely unrecognizable.
And it all fits. That's why it's only my dad's prints on the bottle of phenelzine. That's why she sent him out for wine and cheese. That's why the searches for phenelzine weren't shredded on his computer.
"But why poison herself with something that could have been mistaken for natural causes?" asks my father. It's his first real contribution to the conversations.
"Well, I believe," says Sandy-he stops for his little sawing cough-"it's far more incriminating that way. And of course, that implicates the Harnason case, which was in front of you and which Barbara knew a great deal about."
"It's incriminating," my father answers, "only if it's discovered."
"Enter Tommy Molto," answers Stern. "Given the history, would Tommy really allow an untimely death of another female who is close to you to pass without a thorough investigation? Barbara surely took Tommy as your pledged enemy."
My father shakes his head once. Unlike his lawyers, he is not completely sold.
"Why not sign her name?" he asks.
"It's just as obvious, isn't it?"
"And if she's going to frame me, why bother bailing me out that way?"
Sandy looks at me at that point, not to see how I'm reacting, but as a demonstration.
"Putting you in the dock again, Rusty, was a fine repayment for your infidelity. But leaving you in prison for the rest of your life went too far, especially when one considers Nat."
My father thinks it through. His mind is clearly moving more slowly than usual.
"It's a trick," my father says then. "If it's Barbara, then there's a trick. It's going to be like invisible ink. As soon as we rely on this, there will be something we don't see."
"Well, Matteus and Ryzard," says Sandy, who alone refuses to refer to the two computer experts as Hans and Franz, "should recognize that."
"They won't be better than her," my father answers definitively.
My dad soothed my mom by paying her limitless compliments. Her cooking. Her appearance. I think he meant all of it, even though he probably resented the fact that the praise was required. But one thing he always said with complete sincerity was, 'Barbara Bernstein is the smartest human being I know.' He is confident now that she will prove to have outthought everybody in the room. I would find that touching if it didn't imply that in the end, my mom's intentions were ultimately nowhere as benign as Stern just suggested. She didn't mean merely to scare him, my dad is saying. She is fucking with him big-time from the grave.
About ten minutes later, Sandy's secretary announces that Hans is on the phone. The experts have finished examining the computer. Even Gorvetich agrees that the card appears legitimate. It was composed the afternoon before my mom died, apparently just minutes before Anna and I arrived for dinner. Stern informs the judge's chambers, and all the lawyers are ordered to court so that the three computer scientists can report to Judge Yee. We head down to the garage and pile into Sandy's Cadillac for the short trip back.
"Bad hair day for Tommy," says Marta. "I'd like to have been there to see the look on their face when Gorvetich told him the card is real."
Everyone in Stern's office had simply assumed that would be the verdict. We all knew my dad never had the time or the technical skill to pull off anything like that.
The courtroom seems like a ghost town when we get there. The place has been jammed for weeks, with not an inch to spare on the spectator pews, but apparently neither the reporters nor the court buffs who roam the halls looking for free entertainment have gotten word about proceedings now. Marta and Sandy go off to meet for a second with Hans and Franz, but they're interrupted when Judge Yee returns to the bench.
Professor Gorvetich is about five feet four, with a froth of white hair arising from various spots on his scalp, a bedraggled goatee, and a belly too big to fit inside his cheap sport coat. He has shown up wearing sneakers, for which I guess you can't blame him given the short notice. Hans and Franz are casual, too. Matteus is older and taller, but they are both thin and fit and stylish, with their shirts out of their designer jeans and their hair spiked. The lawyers have agreed that Gorvetich should speak to the judge-it's his client's ox getting gored. He stands next to the computer down in the center of the courtroom.
The card, he says, is a standard graphics file that opens in association with a reminder that was meant to pop up on New Year's Day 2009. The dating explains why none of the experts detected the card when all the various forensics exams on the computer were run by the prosecution and the defense in early December.