Once A Liar. A.F. Brady

up to Harrison. He’s walking back toward the bar, unruffled, appearing completely sober.

       THEN

      Marcus and I had rented office space for Rhodes & Caine, LLP, in downtown Manhattan on Church Street, just north of Leonard. I walked to work from my loft in Tribeca, and as I strolled to the office one morning when the trial preparations for the Bogovian case were just beginning, I thought back to home for the first time in a long time.

      I had lied to Juliette about where and how I grew up, and although I didn’t quite regret it, it was becoming clear to me that she was more than just a girlfriend and maybe she should know the truth. I had buried my past behind a curtain of carefully designed lies, and I never pulled back that curtain.

      Juliette believed I spent my childhood moving from one European city to the next, but in reality, I grew up in Vermont. Not the only child of an art dealer father and sophisticated mother, as I told Juliette, I was raised by my uncle Tommy and his wife, Lee, amid the chaos of their already overstuffed home and family. Lee was pregnant with her fourth child when they reluctantly took custody of me. I was only eight months old. As my uncle frequently reminded me growing up, they took me in because he loved his sister, not because he loved or wanted me. My mother was deemed unfit by the courts to care for me, and she was never married to my biological father, who disappeared after I was born anyway. So, Tommy was my only option.

      I have memories of my mother coming around the house sporadically, always looking for a handout, some compensation for what she considered to have been a raw deal in life. She would complain that the state had taken her only child, but as far as I could see, she never made an effort to clean herself up enough to win me back. The visits always ended in Lee demanding my mother take me back or help to support me, which would send her into a tailspin of self-pitying and hysterics.

      While Tommy kept me fed and clothed, and implored his children to include me and treat me as a member of the family, they all saw me as an intruder. In their eyes, I was a thief stealing food from their mouths, taking up time and space that would have otherwise been theirs.

      Tommy was never really a father to me and certainly not a role model. He was a man who just wanted to get by, to fly under the radar; living a simple life, hopefully ending in a simple death, leaving a simple body to become a simple ghost.

      The apathy was thick, and I felt suffocated. My whole childhood, I felt I was living in a house with strangers I didn’t know and who didn’t know me. I didn’t fit in with these people. They didn’t have friends, they didn’t have opinions and they didn’t have ambitions. I, on the other hand, longed for success. I wanted greatness. To be noticed, to be known, to be respected. I was steeped in so much nothing in that house, that I yearned for anything to fill the void. No one asked anything of me, so I asked everything of myself.

      To me, the point of life was to be the best. Not second best, not in the top ten: the best. I wanted to have the best house, the best life and be the best at my job. Nothing less would ever be enough for me. I wanted to be respected by everyone. This became the only thing that mattered to me. This was how I protected myself. Be the best at everything I do and be in control of everything else. Everyone would respect me and adore me if I were the best.

      And Marcus was just the man to lead me to the promised land I was looking for.

      Marcus was savage in his ruthlessness. His pursuit of excellence seemed impossible to contain, and he stopped at nothing to become the best. Not only was he the top defense attorney in New York, he also led a personal life that I idolized. He managed to keep himself head and shoulders above the reputation garnered by most lawyers in criminal defense and was counted among the high-society sect. He attended exclusive New York City social events and was a sought-after guest at major benefits and galas. He led a full and ambitious life and earned his prestigious standing. He was exactly the person I wanted to emulate.

      I saw my reflection in the glass windows as I arrived at my office building, and I could see that I was poised to take my place at the top. If I could follow in Marcus’s footsteps, I could be the son he never had, and he could be the father I always wanted. I would finally find the place where I fit, and I could leave my humiliating past behind me forever.

      Once I arrived at work, Marcus invited me into his office to discuss the details of the Bogovian case. We had already had two meetings with Stu Bogovian to hear his side of the story and start working out what kind of tactics we would use.

      “I’m glad you’re going to be at the helm of this one,” Marcus said to me. “It’s the perfect high-profile case to get your name in the papers.”

      “I’m ready for him, but he’s a scumbag, Marcus. Going to be hard to make him look good.” I arranged my notes in front of me, ensuring everything was well organized.

      “No one’s arguing that he isn’t a piece of shit, and neither will you. In fact, you’re better off acknowledging that he’s a piece of shit. All you need to do is show that the girl is lying. Out for a payday.”

      “But all the physical evidence clearly corroborates her story,” I began, hesitant to go to trial for what seemed to be an unwinnable case. The intern had run directly to a precinct and told the cops what had happened. Bruises, bite marks, ligature marks on her wrists; it all fit with her story.

      “It also fits a story about two people having some good old-fashioned kinky sex, Peter.” Marcus looked at me with disappointment that I wasn’t immediately willing to challenge the girl’s story.

      “You want me to say she’s lying?”

      “Of course you say she’s lying.” He leaned over the table and growled at me.

      “But he’s guilty. We should be working on damage control, a settlement, something out of criminal court.”

      “We don’t settle, Peter. And if you tell me your conscience is getting the better of you, then I was wrong about you from the beginning. These aren’t people, Peter. They’re cases. Cases to be won, not to be settled out of court. How’re you going to make a name for yourself if you let your conscience dictate?”

      The last thing I wanted was for Marcus to have second thoughts about our partnership. I shook the notions of settlement and loss out of my head. I wanted to assure him that he had made the right decision by bringing me on as his partner, and my conscience was not going to be a problem. My professional standing was far from established, and now that I had had a taste of the life I wanted, I was willing to do almost anything to stay firmly on the right path. I had been dealt a disastrous hand with the Bogovian case, but I needed to impress Marcus and he wouldn’t accept anything less than a win.

      At first, I struggled with demolishing the accuser’s credibility. She may have been a perfectly good girl, and a terrible thing happened to her. But Marcus reminded me again and again that our job was not to care about the alleged victims—that was for the psychiatrists. Our job was to know every minute detail of the law, inside and out. Ethics and personal principles didn’t have anything to do with criminal defense. I had to suppress my better judgment. I had to develop a thicker skin. This was when my morals had to get flexible, when my natural charm took on a whole new application. Peter Caine wasn’t really born until the Stu Bogovian case began.

      It’s not that I changed when I went to work with Marcus; it’s more that I was shown that some of my natural proclivities would be more useful than others; inclinations toward behaving callously, with sarcasm and disregard for emotions. Kindness and sympathy had no place in the legal world we operated in, and Marcus helped me to squelch those tendencies before they interfered with my career.

      This is why he invited me to open a partnership while I was so young and still impressionable. This is why he pulled me aside that night at the Columbia Law mixer. This is how he knew that I would be his prey.