Authors: Tareka Watson
I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. He knows what my G.P.A. was in college! I didn’t
even think he knew I was
in
college!
Miss Jerome says, “So your contention would be that your daughter really wouldn’t have h
ad
the time to put something like this together before leaving Colorado.”
“I don’t see how.”
“But it’s true that she was away from the house for hours every day, and you truly cannot say
one way or another what she was doing during those times, who she was meeting or making
plans with while outside the home. Can you?”
Daddy sits in the growing disquiet of her questions, and of his answers. “No, he says, “I
don’t suppose I can say with absolute certainty.”
“There could have been people on campus, students with radical ideas, maybe with siblings
or parents in the military, formerly with the military, with fresh ties to drug sources in the Middle
East, in Afghanistan, for example -”
“I guess with a stretch of the imagination there could have been,” Daddy says.
“There’s no stretch of the imagination required, Mr. Compo. There are over one hundred,
twenty-nine thousand veterans of the Gulf War alone in the fine state of Colorado; another
hundred and forty thousand from the Vietnam era, and thousands more from recent tours in the
Middle East. That’s roughly seven percent of the entire state population. And these are people
who would leave no trace necessarily, conversations in person that couldn’t be verified. It’s not
outside of the realm of possibility, isit?”
My dad squirms in his seat. “Not impossible, I guess.”
“And your daughter’s a smart girl, isn’t she? Bright enough to see the possibilities in such a
set up? She did earn a three-pointfive G.P.A., after all.”
“She’s smart, I can’t testify against that,” my dad says. “Smart enough to do one thing or
another, I really can’t say. I’d say she’s
too
smart to get involved with such things.”
“She majored in business,” Miss Jerome says, “so that would give her enough information to
put such an economic structure together, to understand how it would work. Yet she came out to
Los Angeles with little more than an offer to sublet a room; no solid job opportunities, no real
career plan -”
“We drove her to that,” he says. “She just wanted to get away, as fast as she could, as far as
she could. And we understand that; even if it took us a while to get used to it, to our own part in
it.”
Quinton asks no questions of my dad and lets him step down. Reading my nervous
confusion, he leans very close to me and explains, “He’s already said everything we need.”
Emily is called to the stand, and my imagination scrambles to find anything she might be
able to contribute to the prosecution. I don’t have to wonder about it for too long.
“She came into town acting all innocent,” Emily tells Miss Jerome, and the rest of us. “But I
always suspected she had something in mind.”
“Please be more specific,” Miss Jerome instructs her.
Emily goes on to say, “Well, first of all, she started flirting with my boyfriend right away, I
knew she was attracted to him. I just didn’t know what she was capable of at the time.”
“Objection,” Quinton says, “conjecture.”
“Sustained,” the judge says.
Miss Jerome says to Emily, “You were telling us about your suspicions of Miss Compo’s
behavior.”
Emily nods, scrunching up her little face, eyes going beady and cold. “She kept asking
Quinton what kind of law he practiced, like she wanted to use him as part of some overall
strategy.”
“Conjecture!”
“Sustained.”
Emily adds, “She said she was interested in buying investment property, but I guess that’s the
line she gave everyone.”
A litany of objections and reactions follow as Emily twists and reinterprets everything I ever
said to her, and things I don’t even recall saying. My blood starts to rush a bit, my breath
becoming short. But as I look at Quinton with glances of increasing desperation, he sets his hand
on mine to calm me, a slow blink relaxing my growing anxiety just a bit.
Which isn’t much.
“She comes into town with no money,” Emily says at one point, “suddenly she’s driving
around in a BMW, has all kinds of new clothes. She says she’s got some guy to pay for it all, but
... who’s he anyway? None of it ever sat right with me ... ”
“Objection,” Quinton says, “hearsay.”
“Sustained.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing! After all the encouragement she slammed down my throat
about taking advantage of Randolph, getting the most out of it all; she’s turning it completely
around on me and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.
Yet.
“Once, on the beach,” Emily says a few moments later, “Addie said that she had a secret life,
that she wanted to keep it personal and that it was hard for her to keep things in balance. I didn’t
want to ask too much, she was starting to frighten me a little bit. That’s when our friendship
started to corrode.”
“Erode?” Miss Jerome asks, “do you mean
erode?
”
“When things fall apart,” Emily confirms. Reading the prosecutor’s nod, Emily adds,
“That’s
corrode
, isn’t it? Anyway, she said how nervous she was about things, I could tell that
the pressure was starting to get to her after a while.”
Quinton repeats, “Objection, conjecture
and
hearsay!”
“Sustained,” the judge repeats.
My mind is spinning and my heart pounding.
I -- ? I said that about moving too fast with Randolph, not -
“After a while she mentioned that she had plenty of money saved up,” Emily says, “and that
she was getting ready for a big move. I wondered what she meant, and how she had so much
cash ... ”
A big move?
I have to repeat to myself.
You mean ... back to Colorado?
I lean into Quinton. “All of that is entirely out of context!”
Quinton nods before standing and crossing the courtroom to question the witness himself.
He says, “You and Addison Compo were roommates for how long, Miss Barrish?”
“From July to November of last year; five months.”
“Five months,” Quinton repeats. “And how long were you and I lovers?” There’s a muffled
murmur passing among the officers of the court and the other witnesses before the judge wraps
his gavel halfheartedly to quiet them. “How long, Miss Barrish?”
“We met the previous Christmas, as you well know.”
“At the Santa Monica Pier,” Quinton says with a warm, nostalgic tone. “You were with
some friends, and I’d been stood up.”
“You looked so sad,” Emily says from the stand. “I wanted to take you home and take care
of you. You were so cute.”
“And we fell in love, didn’t we?”
I can see that Emily’s being carried away by her emotions a bit. And I know Quinton doesn’t
like having to do what he’s doing. But this is my future on the line, and she wasn’t bashful about
twisting the truth to get me out of her way.
So I just sit back and watch.
Quinton says to Emily, “We lived together, were about to get engaged. I think that’s
something that should be on the record.”
Emily considers, confusion overcome by enthusiasm. “Oh, well, sure, I mean, I’m not
ashamed; I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.” Emily glares at me from the stand. “It’s her
fault everything went wrong!”
“She broke us up,” Quinton says, “with her attempts to involve me in her growing criminal
empire.”
Emily pouts. “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not, Miss Barrish, I assure you I’m not.” Quinton steps away from the stand, his voice
getting a bit louder, more forceful. “Because this isn’t a game, Miss Barrish. You’re an actress,
isn’t that right?”
“Yes, that’s right, I was on a -”
“But you’re not acting right now, are you?”
“I -no, of course not!”
“You’re not putting on an act. If you seem ... emotional, that’s sincere.”
“Yes, of course it is!”
“Because this isn’t some television commercial, or a callback for a walk-on film role. This is
a person’s life on the line. A person who called you from jail looking for a lawyer, looking for
my professional services at a time of crisis and you hung up without even telling me.”
“I did tell you.”
“It took ten minutes of my having to ask,” Quinton says. “And why? Because you were glad
Miss Compo had this trouble, you wanted her out of the way.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with her being arrested!”
“Objection,” Miss Jerome says, standing, “badgering.”
Quinton says to the judge, “I am not implying any guilt on the part of the witness, only a
predisposition against the defendant. It reflects quite strongly on her credibility as a witness.”
Judge Takimara nods. “Overruled. Continue.”
Quinton turns back to Emily on the stand. “And now you see another chance to get Miss
Compo out of the way, to seek your revenge on her for ruining our lives together.”
“No, no,” Emily says, shaking her head.
“But you
do
blame her for breaking us up, you just said so.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“And you think we’d still be together if she’d never come around.”
Emily looks deep into Quinton’s eyes, as if drawn to him. “Oh yes, Quinton, yes I do.”
“Because you love me, Emily. Say it; say you still love me.”
“No, I ... ”
“You love me the way you’ve never loved another man, the way you’ll never love another
man as long as you live ... ”
“Objection -”
But Quinton ignores the prosecutor. “Even now, you want to be with me, to get back to that
place we were, before everything went so terribly wrong -”
“Yes,” Emily says, almost breathless.
“And you know in your heart and your soul that we should be together -”
“Oh yes, Quinton -”
Quinton turns to the judge. “Your honor -”
Without needing to hear more, Judge Takimara pounds his gavel. “The witness may step
down. Counsel, please approach the bench!”
Emily sits, stunned, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Wait, what’s ... I’m finished?”
The prosecutor guides Emily down from the stand. “I think we all are.” Emily walks back
and sits, still shooting me wicked glances as Quinton and Miss Jerome stand before Judge
Takimara.
“Frankly,” the judge says, “with the property deeds and the cellphone calls, I’m ready to
move ahead with this case right now. But I won’t preside over a circus, and I won’t have you
two showboating with a lot of ineffective character witnesses or blithering brokenhearts.” He
looks at the prosecuting attorney. “Miss Jerome, if you’re counting on the records to win this
case, you’ll be on thin ice; but you’re welcome to take your chances in front of a jury.” He turns
to Quinton. “And you, young man, are in danger of letting this matter go straight to trial, and I
strongly recommend that you zealously implement a more aggressive strategy.”
“This is precisely our intent, Your Honor,” Quinton says, turning to Miss Jerome. “Your
witness, Madam Prosecutor.”
“Very well, you two,” Judge Takimara says, “but don’t let me see you standing before me
like this again.”
I feel a rushof emotion when Miss Jerome calls Randolph to the stand. He’s very
distinguished in a fine JoS. A. Bank executive two-button suit, his hair recently cut and styled.
His personal assistant Sarah remains seated by his empty chair as he crosses the courtroom and
takes the stand. I haven’t seen him since that day I gave him back his car keys, and I’m filled
with conflicting emotions; betrayal, pity, hatred, rage.
By far, nausea is the prevailing feeling as the prosecutor leads Randolph through the events
ofour time together from his twisted perspective. I realize that, to the prosecutor, he’s an
innocent witness. If anything, they’ll play him as being duped by me. They can’t have any idea
that Randolph is the real drug kingpin, the true mastermind behind all this.
But they’re about to find out.
Because if they don’t, I’m going to prison forever.
CHAPTER TEN
Randolph is an effective witness, even
I
have to admit. Why not? He lied to me like a pro,
no reason to think he wouldn’t be bringing his A-game tothis tragic performance. And he’s
getting nothing but softball pitches that lead him directly to the most incriminating and
calculated series of misstatements I’ve ever heard:
“I thought we’d just bumped into one another, by happenstance. I couldn’t have imagined I
was being setup by a worldclass con artist ... It wasn’t long before she had me buying her
clothes. She’d failed to find work, but she talked her way right into a position as my personal
assistant, a
trusted
position ... She pretended not to know anything about real estate, brought me
to see this apartment building she was interested in buying, asked if I could help. Naturally, I
wanted to do what little I could, and it did seem like a reasonable investment at the time. If only
I’d known what she apparently knew about it ... Did the same thing to me in Florida with this
little house she spotted. I can’t believe I fell for it twice, but, I guess I can admit that by this time
I was becoming distracted by her feminine wiles ... She seduced me, plain and simple, even
preying upon my lingering sense of loss over my family, it haunts me to this day ... Now, of
course, my finances are in ruin, my reputation is shot, my career in shambles. But I guess I’m
not the only one whose life was turned upside-down by this woman. What amazes me is how
callous she is, how effective at pretending to be one thing while concealing her true self. She’s
like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I ... I never realized how vulnerable I’d be to that. I’m just
thankful to have the love and support of a good woman to show me that I can still be free of Miss
Compo’s terrible influence.”
Once Quinton gets a hold of Randolph, it’s another story:
“You’re an experienced real estate investor, Mr. MacLeish?”
“That’s correct.”
“And do you often make loans to people without collateral, without adequate credit or
income?”
Randolph smiles a bit, like he knows where Quinton is going with this line of questioning.
He says, “As I said, Miss Compo and I had a more intimate relationship than I would have had
with any normal investor.”
“So you were lovers at the time of the first sale, the apartment building in Atwater Village?”
“Well, no, actually, not at that point. But I think we could both see where things were
heading. I wish I’d taken my own advice.”
“And what advice was that, sir?”