Читать книгу Private Lives - Karen Young - Страница 12

“Have you got a minute, Curtiss?”

Curtiss Leggett looked up from a seemingly vacant perusal of Houston’s skyline and motioned Ryan into his office. He swiveled in his chair so that he faced forward as Ryan quietly pulled the door closed behind them, ensuring privacy. “How’d it go?”

“Hetherington awarded joint custody to Austin and Gina. They’re to share holidays and vacations. They’re to work out an amicable plan together.”

Leggett grunted. “What about child support, palimony?”

“Her request was modest. Hetherington doubled it. Austin’s hit for about four thousand a month unless the two of them can come to an agreement for less.” Ryan frowned. “I thought he would have called you by now.”

Leggett’s laugh was brief and without humor. “He knows better than to bring up the subject of that woman with me. He should never have moved in with her. I know it’s the thing to live together now, but wouldn’t you think he’d choose someone of his own class? She’s trailer trash, that’s an apt description. I’ve been after him for years to send her packing.” He drew a disgusted breath. “I never could understand what he saw in her.”

“What about Jesse?”

Leggett turned his face, avoiding Ryan’s gaze. “Another mistake. Why the hell he didn’t make her abort is another mystery to me.” Shaking his head with more disgust, he said, “The whole thing has been distasteful to me from the beginning. I’m just glad to see the end of it. Of course, I’ll talk to Hetherington about reducing the money. Four thousand’s ridiculous. What does she expect, to be kept in the style of a real ex-wife? You’ve got to have a marriage for that. Steering clear of matrimony was Austin’s only smart decision.”

Ryan felt himself doing a slow burn. He’d felt no particular affection for Gina D’Angelo while representing her ex-lover, but she seemed a decent person. She’d made some bad choices in her life, but, hell, didn’t everybody once in a while? But she wasn’t trailer trash and she didn’t deserve the treatment Leggett father and son would no doubt cook up for her.

“Something else emerged during the hearing,” he said, wishing hard that he was on the golf course. He found he couldn’t sit down. He was too close to telling this bigoted old fart where to get off. “I know you were concerned about the firm’s reputation and any scandal that might grow out of the hearing…or out of Austin’s involvement with Gina.” He paused, giving Leggett a chance to be reminded that it wasn’t only Gina who was to blame for the situation. “There is some exposure, I think.”

Leggett was in the act of reaching for an elaborate humidor where he kept his stash of Cuban cigars. He stopped now, giving Ryan a keen look. “In what way?”

“Gina and her character witness, Elizabeth Walker, made some serious accusations about Austin. Do you have any knowledge of abuse in their relationship?”

“Abuse? Not sexual? Nothing about the little girl, eh?” He barked the questions out, like bullets.

“No.” Jesus, why would he even think that? Ryan watched him lift the lid of the humidor and select a cigar, taking his time. Did he know what was coming next? “They claimed Austin was often physically abusive, that he made a habit of beating up on her. That he had an ungovernable temper and when it went out of control, Gina was the victim.”

“Preposterous.” Leggett busied himself preparing his cigar. Looking at it, not Ryan, he meticulously clipped the end, moistened it by rolling it round and round in his mouth, then he picked up a sterling silver lighter. Now, holding the cigar in his teeth, he put the flame to it and puffed energetically until the immediate area around his head and shoulders was thick with smoke. Only then did he look up at Ryan, his eyes squinting against the acrid cloud. “What kind of evidence did they have for that?”

What kind of question was that? Ryan wanted to shoot the words back at him. It was as if Leggett accepted it for the truth, but lawyerlike was seeking a way out. “They didn’t produce any evidence,” Ryan told him. “That was the reason the judge went with the joint custody thing. If they’d had a hospital report or a police report, or if they managed to come up with an actual eye witness when Austin did what they claimed, it would have been much worse for him. As it is, only Elizabeth Walker, Gina’s friend and godmother to Jesse, claims to have seen bruises. She was a sort of way station when Gina would go into seclusion.”

“Bullshit.”

“Maybe.” Ryan was beginning to have grave doubts about the character of his client. “But if Austin’s smart—and there is some grain of truth to what both women claim—he’ll need to be very careful around Gina and his daughter in the future. It wasn’t a closed hearing, Curtiss. There were some students there, law school types from Rice, I think. And the usual courtroom junkies that hang around just to watch the legal system in play. But hear this. The person who really concerns me is Lindsay Blackstone, a television personality at WBYH-TV. She heard everything. My paralegal tells me that there was a series on her show last year about the escalating violence against women from husbands and lovers. I just hope she wasn’t there doing more research for a follow-up. I don’t think so, as there was no camera, but you never can tell.”

“Goddamn it!” Leggett rose abruptly from his chair, his frown thunderous. “Why didn’t you see to it the hearing was closed, Paxton? That’s why I chose you to handle this…mess.”

“If I’d suspected what Austin was going to be accused of, I would have,” Ryan said in an even tone. Did he have to remind the old coot that he’d walked into this case blind? And whose fault was that? The first rule in defense was to come clean with your lawyer.

Leggett grunted and puffed furiously on his cigar while he thought. He then gave Ryan a sharp look. “You think anything’ll come of it?”

“Only if Austin gets stupid and hits her again.”

Ryan was out of Leggett’s office and on his way to his car when he realized what he’d revealed in his parting remark to Austin’s old man. Leggett clearly was unsurprised to hear that his son was accused of beating up on a woman. That was disgusting enough, but what was just as disgusting was the absence of any shock and sympathy on Leggett’s part for the victim. The whole thing left a bad taste in Ryan’s mouth. He wished he’d never gotten involved.