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CHAPTER 003

Barry Sindler,divorce lawyer to the stars, shifted in his chair. He was trying to pay attention to the client seated across the desk from him, but he was having trouble. The client was a nerd named Diehl who ran some biotech company. The guy talked abstractly, no emotion, practically no expression on his face, even though he was telling how his wife was screwing around on him. Diehl must have been a terrible husband. But Barry wasn’t sure how much money there was in this case. It seemed the wife had all the money.

Diehl droned on. How his first suspicions arose when he called her from Las Vegas. How he discovered the charge slips for the hotel that she went to every Wednesday. How he waited in the lobby and caught her checking in with a local tennis pro. Same old California story. Barry had heard it a hundred times. Didn’t these people know they were walking clich?s? Outraged husband catches wife with the tennis pro. They wouldn’t even use that one on Desperate Housewives.

Barry gave up trying to listen. He had too much on his mind this morning. He had lost the Kirkorivich case, and it was all over town. Just because DNA tests had shown that it wasn’t the billionaire’s baby. And then the court wouldn’t award him his fees, even though he had cut them to a measly $1.4 mil. The judge gave him a quarter of that. Every damn lawyer in town was gloating, because they all had it in for Barry Sindler. He had heard that L.A. Magazine was doing a big story on the case, sure to be unfavorable to Barry. Not that he gave a crap about that. The truth was, the more he got portrayed as an unprincipled, ruthless prick, the more clients flocked to him. Because when it came to a divorce, people wanted a ruthless prick. They lined up for one. And Barry Sindler was without a doubt the most ruthless, unscrupulous, publicity-hungry, self-aggrandizing, stop-at-nothing son-of-a-bitch divorce lawyer in Southern California. And proud of it!

No, Barry didn’t worry about any of those things. He didn’t even worry about the house he was building in Montana for Denise and her two rotten kids. He didn’t worry about the renovations on their house in Holmby Hills, even though the kitchen alone was costing $500K, and Denise kept changing the plans. Denise was a serial renovator. It was a disease.

No, no, no. Barry Sindler worried about just one thing-the lease. He had one whole floor in an office building on Wilshire and Doheny, twenty-three attorneys in his office, none of them worth a shit, but seeing all of them at their desks impressed the clients. And they could do the minor stuff, like take depositions and file delaying motions-stuff Barry didn’t want to be bothered with. Barry knew that litigation was a war of attrition, especially in custody cases. The goal was to run the costs as high as you could and stretch the proceedings out as long as you could, because that way Barry earned the largest possible fees, and the spouse eventually got tired of the endless delays, the new filings, and of course the spiraling costs. Even the richest of them eventually got tired.

By and large, husbands were sensible. They wanted to get on with their lives, buy a new house, move in with the new girlfriend, get a nice blow job. They wanted custody issues settled. But the wives usually wanted revenge-so Barry kept things from being settled, year after year, until the husbands caved. Millionaires, billionaires, celebrity assholes-it didn’t matter. They all caved in the end. People said it wasn’t a good strategy for the kids. Well, screw the kids. If the clients cared anything about the kids, they wouldn’t get divorced in the first place. They’d stay married and miserable like everybody else, because-

The nerd had said something that jogged him back to attention.

“I’m sorry,” Barry Sindler said. “Run that by me again, Mr. Diehl. What did you just say?”

“I said, ‘I want my wife tested.’”

“I can assure you, these proceedings will test her to the limit. And of course we’ll put a detective on her, see how much she drinks, whether she does drugs, stays out all night, has lesbian affairs, all that. Standard procedure.”

“No, no,” Diehl said. “I want her tested genetically.”

“For what?”

“For everything,” he said.

“Ah,” Barry said, nodding wisely. What the hell was the guy talking about? Genetic testing? In a custody case? He glanced down at the papers in front of him, and the business card. RICHARD “RICK” DIEHL, PH.D. Barry frowned unhappily. Only assholes put a nickname on the card. The card said he was CEO of BioGen Research Inc., some company out in Westview Village.

“For example,” Diehl said, “I’ll bet my wife has a genetic predisposition to bipolar illness. She certainly acts erratic. She might have the Alzheimer’s gene. If she does, psychological tests could show early signs of Alzheimer’s.”

“Good, very good.” Barry Sindler was nodding vigorously now. This was making him happy. Fresh, new disputed areas. Sindler loved disputed areas. Administer the psychological test. Did the test show early Alzheimer’s or not? Who the fuck could say for sure? Wonderful, wonderful-whatever the test results, they would be disputed. More days in court, more expert witnesses to interview, battles of the doctorates, dragging on for days. Days in court were especially lucrative.

And best of all, Barry realized that this genetic testing could become standard procedure for all custody cases. Sindler was breaking new ground here. He’d get publicity for this! He leaned forward eagerly. “Go on, Mr. Diehl…”

“Test her for the diabetes gene, breast cancer from the BRCA genes, and all the rest. And,” Diehl continued, “my wife might also have the gene for Huntington’s disease, which causes fatal nerve degeneration. Her grandfather had Huntington’s, so it’s in her family. Both her parents are still young, and the disease only shows up when you’re older. So my wife could be carrying the gene and that would mean a death sentence from Huntington’s.”

“Umm, yes,” Barry Sindler said, nodding. “That could render her unfit to be the primary caregiver to the children.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m surprised she hasn’t been tested already.”

“She doesn’t want to know,” Diehl said. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance she may have the gene. If she does, she’ll eventually develop the disease and die writhing in dementia. But she’s twenty-eight. The disease might not appear for another twenty years. So if she knew about it now…it could ruin the rest of her life.”

“But it could also relieve her, if she didn’t have the gene.”

“Too big a risk. She won’t test.”

“Any other tests you can think of?”

“Hell yes,” Diehl said. “That’s just the beginning. I want her tested with all the current panels. There are twelve hundred gene tests now.”

Twelve hundred! Sindler licked his lips at the prospect. Excellent! Why had he never heard of this before? He cleared his throat. “But you realize that if you do this, she will demand you be tested, as well.”

“No problem,” Diehl said.

“You’ve already been tested?”

“No. I just know how to fake the lab results.”

Barry Sindler sat back in his chair.

Perfect.