"I could kill Richard," she said to Maurice, the head of the lab.
"And I will hire the bestavocat for your defense," he said, not smiling. "Do you think he knows where the bird is?"
"Probably. But he'll never tell me. He hated Gerard."
"You're having a custody fight over a bird."
"I'll talk to Nadezhda. But he has probably paid her off."
"Did the bird know your name? The name of the lab? Phone numbers?"
"No, but he memorized the tones for my cellular phone. He used to make them as a sequence of sounds."
"Then perhaps he will call us, one day."
Gail sighed. "Perhaps."
CHapter 045
Alex Burnetwas in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. He hired notorious D.C. attorney Abe ("It Ain't There") Ganzler to defend him.
It turned out that Crowley's taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but Ganzler - as was his custom - tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child's mother as "fantasizing feminist fundamentalists" who had made up the whole thing from "their sick, twisted imaginations." This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley's penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler's rectum.)
It was in the midst of frantic preparation for the third day of the trial that Amy, Alex's assistant, buzzed her to say that her father was on the phone. Alex picked up. "Pretty busy, Dad."
"I won't take long. I'm going away for a couple of weeks."
"Okay, fine." One of the other lawyers came in and dropped the latest newspapers on her desk. TheStar was running photographs of the raped child, the hospital in Malibu, and unflattering pictures of Alex and the kid's mother, squinting in hard sunlight. "Where are you going, Dad?"
"Don't know yet," her father said, "but I need some time alone. Cell phone probably won't work. I'll send you a note when I get there. And a box of some stuff. In case you need it."
"Okay, Dad, have fun." She thumbed through theL.A. Times as she talked to him. For years theTimes had fought for the right to access and print all court documents, however preliminary, private, or speculative. California judges were extremely reluctant to seal even those documents that involved the home addresses of women being stalked or the anatomical details of children who had been raped. TheTimes' policy of publishing everything also meant that attorneys could put gross and unfounded allegations in their pretrial filings, knowing theTimes would print them. And it invariably did. The public's right to know. Yes, the public really needed to know exactly how long the tear was in the poor little boy's -
"You holding up all right?" her father said.
"Yeah, Dad, I'm okay."
"They're not getting to you?"
"No. I'm waiting for help from the child welfare organizations, but they're not issuing any statements. Strangely silent."
"I'm sure you're shocked by that," he said. "The weasel is politically connected, right? Little dickhead. Gotta go, Lexie."
"Bye, Dad."
She turned away. The DNA matches were due today, but they hadn't arrived yet. The samples obtained had been small, and she was worried about what they would show.
CHapter 046
The lightsdimmed smoothly in the plush presentation room at Selat, Anney, Koss Ltd., the preeminent London advertising agency. On the screen, an image of an American strip mall, blurred traffic rushing past a wretched cluster of signs. Gavin Koss knew from experience this image was an immediate rapport-builder. Anything critical of America was surefire.
"American businesses spend more on advertising than any other country in the world," Koss said. "Of course, they must do, given the quality of American products..."
Snickers floated through the darkness.
"And the intelligence of the American audience..."
Mild, muted laughter.
"As one of our columnists recently noted, the great majority of Americans couldn't find their own behinds with both hands."
Open laughter. They were warming to him.
"A crude, cultureless people, slapping each other on the back as they drift ever deeper into debt." That should suffice, he thought. He changed his tone: "But what I wish to draw to your attention is the sheer volume of commercial messages, as you see them here, arranged in space along the motorway. And every vehicle driving past has its radio on, sending out even more commercial messages. In point of fact, it's estimated that Americans listen to three thousand messages every day - or what is more probable, they don't listen to them. Psychologists have determined that the sheer volume of messages creates a kind of anesthesia, which becomes ingrained over time. In a saturated media environment, all messages lose impact."
The image changed to Times Square at night, then Shinjuku, in Tokyo, then Piccadilly, in London. "The saturation today is global. Huge messages, including large-screen video, appear in public squares, along motorways, in tube stations, train depots. We place videos at point-of-sale in retail stores. In toilets. In waiting rooms, pubs, and restaurants. In airport lounges and aboard aircraft.
"Furthermore, we have conquered personal space. Logos, brands, and slogans appear on ordinary objects from knives to tableware to computers. They appear on all our possessions. Consumers wear logos on their clothing, handbags, shoes, jewelry. Indeed, it is rare for a person to appear in public without them. Thirty years ago, if anyone predicted that the entire global public would turn themselves into sandwich boards, walking about advertising products, the idea would have seemed fantastical. Yet it has happened.