“Don’t you want to know how I want you to change it?”
“Nope.”
“Not interested at all?”
“The report was accurate.”
“Says you. Trust me, Doctor, you’ll change it.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll subpoena you as a regular witness, not an expert witness. Do you know what that means, Doctor?”
“Tell me, Mr. Stark.”
“You won’t get paid for your time.”
I said nothing.
“I’ll tie you up for weeks, Mister Delaware. I’ll toss ethical charges into the mix, file and postpone and re-file and re-postpone. You’ll end up sitting on those hard benches in the court corridor until your ass turns blue.”
“Doesn’t sound like fun.”
“Far from it, Doctor. Far from it. So do we have an understanding?”
“Hmm,” I said.
“When can I expect—”
“Expect nothing.”
A beat. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? I warned you.”
“Well,” I said. “Give it your best shot. Asshole.”
Click.
Never heard from him again.
By the time Dr. Constance Sykes sued her sister, Cherie Sykes, for guardianship of Rambla Pacifico Sykes, a minor female child, age sixteen months, I thought I’d seen it all.
But right from the start, this one was different. As a non-parent, Connie had no rights in family court, no legal avenue to seek custody. The creative solution, per her attorney, was to seek guardianship in probate court, based upon Cherie’s unfitness as a mother and the fact that Cherie’s “dumping” the baby on Connie for a three-month period was tacit admission of such on Cherie’s part.
I’d never worked a probate case, got the referral because Judge Nancy Maestro was the sister-in-law of now retired Judge Stephen Yates and he’d given her my name. The setup I had in family court would transfer easily: As an impartial probate investigator, I’d be working for the court, not the parties.
The case sounded interesting so I agreed to a meeting with Judge Maestro. I was already downtown, wrapping up a week of deposition on a multiple homicide Milo had closed last year. The trip from Deputy D.A. John Nguyen’s office on West Temple to the Mosk Courthouse on North Hill was a five-minute stroll.
I found Maestro’s court easily enough, well lit and empty, with chambers to the left rear of the bench. Entry was blocked by a broadly built bailiff in sheriff’s beige. Thick arms crossed his chest. His eyeglasses were slightly tinted — a pale bronze just dark enough to block out sentiment. As I approached, he didn’t move. My smile did nothing to melt his impassiveness.
H. W. Nebe on his badge. Mid- to late fifties, white-haired, a heavy, sun-seamed face that could’ve been avuncular had he chosen to un-clamp his lips.
“Dr. Delaware. I have an appointment with Judge Maestro.”
The news didn’t surprise or impress him. “I.D., please.”
Scanning my driver’s license elicited a second visual circuit. “Why don’t you take a seat, Doctor.”
The previous year a judge in criminal court had been stabbed in his office after hours. Rumors abounded about a love triangle but the case remained open and I supposed Deputy H. W. Nebe’s caution was justified.
I settled in the front row of the courtroom — where I’d be stationed if I was a defendant. Nebe took his time with a two-way radio. A muttered conversation out of earshot led him to rotate his bronze lenses toward me and curl a finger. “Okay.”
He ushered me through a door that led into a small anteroom. An inner door was marked Chambers in chipped black lettering.
Nebe knocked. A voice said, “Come in.”
Nebe turned to me. “Guess that means you.”
Steve Yates had scored an impressive, oak-paneled inner sanctum, exactly the kind of retreat you’d imagine for a Superior Court judge. Nancy Maestro’s chambers consisted of a twelve-by-fifteen, drop-ceilinged, white-walled space set up with paint-grade bookcases, a wood-grain desk with chipped metal legs, unaccommodating side chairs, and a laptop computer. The view was downtown grime under a sky struggling to produce blue.
She got up and shook my hand and sank back down behind the desk. A plump, pretty brunette in her early forties, she favored a broad swath of mauve shadow above each inquisitive brown eye, dabs of peach-colored rouge on the apples of prominent cheekbones. Full lips were glossed glassy. The room smelled of White Shoulders perfume. Two black robes hung from a rack in the corner. She wore a powder-blue suit, an off-white silk scarf draped loosely across her chest, pearl earrings and necklace. Two cocktail rings, one per index finger, but no wedding band.
“Hello, Dr. Delaware. So you’re the one.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“The smart one. That’s what my brother-in-law calls you. He also calls you a few other things.”
“The aggressive one.”
“That’s a fair approximation,” said Nancy Maestro. “And maybe that makes you just what we need on this mess. We’re talking two total loony-tunes, the one I feel sorry for is the baby.”
“Rambla.”
“Rambla Pacifico. Know what that is?”
“A road in Malibu.”
“You know your geography, Dr. Alex Delaware.” She sat back, drew a couple of mini Hershey’s bars from a jar on her desk, offered me one. When I shook my head, she said, “Fine, I’ll have both.” Chewing daintily, she folded the wrappers before tossing them into an unseen trash basket. “A road in Malibu where the kid was conceived. That’s the only fact the two loonies can agree on.”
She eyed the candy jar, pushed it away. “Rambla Pacifico. Commemorating the moment. Kid’s lucky it wasn’t Schmuckler’s Bar and Grill.”
I laughed.
Judge Nancy Maestro said, “That’s the last funny thing you’ll hear me say about the case. What do you know about probate court?”
“Not much.”
“Most of what we do is uncontroversial. Clearing paper on wills and estates, conservatorships for obviously impaired individuals. Child guardianships arise from time to time but most are uncontested: people happy to ditch their kids, schizophrenic parents, drug-addict parents who can no longer cope, criminal parents with long prison sentences, so control obviously needs to be signed over to grandparents, aunts, uncles, whatever. See what I’m getting at?”
“It’s not like family court.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough to work family, I’d rather do gang felonies than deal with the crap that gets slung when people decide to sever the knot.”
She glanced to the side. “How do you do it?”
“It’s not my entire professional life.”
“You also do therapy.”
No sense getting too specific. I nodded.
“Anyway,” she said, “let me fill you in on Sykes Versus Sykes. Which is really a custody case in disguise and therefore something I wish I could send straight back to family. Better yet, to the circular file. Because it’s garbage.”
“Then why accept it?”
“Because the law says I have to.” She rolled an inch forward. “Can you keep a little secret? Sure you can, you’re a therapist. I’m behaving myself because I’m banking on a promotion. What seems like a lateral transfer to Criminal Courts Division. But it’s not lateral at all because I’ll be supervising huge financial trials. Major banking and investment shenanigans. Money cases are my first love, I worked them as a prosecutor, tried the opposite side of the room for a while as a white-collar defense attorney, then I got appointed to this job. With the understanding that if I rounded out my experiential base, I’d be prioritized for serious corporate felony cases. The last thing I need is controversy — appeals or God forbid reversals. So I accepted damn Sykes Versus Sykes and now I’d like you to help me get through it as cleanly and quickly as possible.”