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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