of killing his wife.” I thought of Reilly’s careful wording. “Anyway, he maintains it was someone else and we’re going for an ineffective assistance of counsel claim.”
“What’d the lawyer do?”
“Well, I don’t know really. It’s hard to say if he did anything wrong at all. You ever hear of Garrett Andersen?”
Her face squinted with thought. “No.”
“Well, apparently he’s some hot shit trial lawyer. He’s the one that represented . . . our client and, I don’t know, it’s probably impossible to prove he made a mistake.”
“Even the best lawyers make mistakes.”
“Yeah, sure, but I think it would have to be some pretty major mistakes in this case. The evidence doesn’t look good.”
“You think your guy did it?”
“I don’t know. We met with him yesterday and he seemed convincing, but a lot of things don’t add up. I dunno, I just think it’s going to be a tough case to make. I mean, this Andersen guy graduated at the top of his class at Berkeley in ‘78, clerked for Justice Marshall, and is thought of as one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the state. How can you make an ineffective assistance of counsel claim against a guy like that?”
“Hey, y’know Randy Scheffer, the Legal Aid director I was telling you about? He was class of ’78 at Berkeley. They probably know each other.”
“You oughta ask him.” Our food came and the conversation drifted loosely from topic to topic. My concentration drifted with it. I imagined myself standing at the bar across the room and looking back across the restaurant. I’d see two young people dressed in suits, talking their way through their second bottle of wine. He having a filet mignon, she the lobster tail. We wouldn’t seem out of place or abnormal in any way. Just two people in a trendy Westwood restaurant, surrounded by dim light and the sounds of laughter, glassware, and knives on plates.
As I looked across the room at the bar, a man caught my eye. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He wore a dark, discreet suit, and appeared to be by himself. I watched him for a second as he wiped his moustache after sipping his martini and ran his hand over his bald head. He didn’t seem to be doing much of anything besides enjoying a drink and watching the reflection of the restaurant in the mirror behind the bar. I tried to place him somewhere, but nothing came to me. Finally, I looked back at Liz and tried to remember what we were talking about.
“The funny thing,” I said, when I regained my focus, “is how much money there is. I mean, it’s everywhere. They’ve got real Picassos, Jackson Pollacks and Andy Warhols hanging on the walls. I mean, it’s . . . I don’t know, ridiculous.” I felt like I couldn’t really do it justice: the sculpture, the lighting, the marble floors. “It’s just weird. I’m worried about how I’m gonna pay the valet guy because I’ve only got forty-six dollars in cash to my name and there’s a painting on the wall right outside my office that’s probably worth a million bucks. Just hanging there, decorating the office.”
“You should see the art in our offices,” she grinned. “It’s all drawings done by kids at the orphanage we’re providing free adoption services for.”
“Oh, give me a fucking break.” I smiled back and sipped my wine. I was struggling to articulate what was bothering me. “I guess it’s really the people. They’re all these rich kids. They’re all the same. Same schools, everything. It’s like some little club that I clearly don’t belong to. I just feel uncomfortable sometimes.”
“People can’t help that they were born with a head start.”
“I know, but most of them don’t seem to realize they had a head start. I guess that’s what kills me. Y’know, when I’m talking to some of these other summers the old, so-where-do-you-go-to-school question invariably comes up. I tell them UCLA and they seem surprised. I actually had one guy from Yale say to me, ‘Oh, that’s a good school.’” I took a drink, letting the words hang in the air, and slapped my hand on the table. “You believe that shit? UCLA is one of the best law schools in the country and I’m walking around like a second-class citizen. Like it’s so impressive that you got into Harvard when you went to private school your whole life, and daddy paid for college and the prep course for