Eye of the Beholder (15 page)

He finds Riley’s detached garage and the gate into his backyard. He uses Riley’s house keys from last night. First one doesn’t work, second one fails, third time, he’s in.

There’s a sliding glass door on his patio, but it’s not opened by a key. No. Down a stairwell is a door under lock and key that leads to the basement. He stands at the foot of the stairwell, five feet below ground. One of the panes to the basement door window has been shattered and replaced with a piece of cardboard.

Leo slips another key into the door, the first one doesn’t take, second one does, he heads inside with his bag. Good. Good.

Twenty minutes later, he emerges from the house and locks the door behind him, walks back up the stairs and looks up into a vibrant sun. He admits it, yes, it feels good, feels good, but it’s a weapon they use, the weather, turning everyone into smiling, shiny, happy people. Happy, smiling, shiny, ignorant robots.

I can live in your world. I can live in yours and mine at the same time. That’s the difference between me and you. That’s the difference between me and Terry.

He calmly marches back to the gate. Once back in the alley, he picks up his pace, eyes darting about because this would be a time, when it’s nice and shiny and warm, not a care in the world, right, not a care in the world and I’ll be whistling to myself and then you’ll come, then you’ll come when I don’t expect it—

But then he’s on the sidewalk, back to the car, safe, start the car. Calm now, heartbeat normalizes, breathing exercises, blast the air-conditioning, breathe in, breathe out, cold against his wet shirt, try to smile. He passes by the coffee shop, his hat pulled low, and looks through the window, to where he was sitting not a half hour ago.

The woman with the baby is gone.

He looks in the rearview mirror at the cars behind him. He quickly pulls over, forcing the other vehicles to pass him by, the drivers to show themselves, but none of the drivers are thin, blond-haired women with a baby in the back, but then, they wouldn’t be that obvious. He waits, one-two, one-two-three, a break in the traffic, and he pulls the car into a quick U-turn. Turns left at the first street, then another left, then another, driving in a square, eyes on the rearview mirror at all times. Looks okay. But, to be sure, he repeats the process twice more. He’s gotten this far. No reason to let up now.

Tonight, he will know for sure.

J
EREMY LARRABEE crosses his leg after completing a brief summation of the facts of his case to Judge Landis. His client, Josefina Enriques, was an administrative assistant in one of the suburban plants of Bentley Bearings. She’s a fifty-two-year-old Latino woman who filed a workers’ comp claim for carpal tunnel syndrome a year earlier. Three months later, she was fired by my client, Bentley Bearings. The lawsuit Jeremy Larrabee filed on her behalf included claims for discrimination based on race, gender, age, and workers’ comp retaliation. He’s given notice to the court that he will seek to certify a class of all employees who fall within these categories.

Judge Landis turns his tired eyes to me. “Mr. Riley?”

I’m annoyed for two reasons. First, my head is still killing me from being jumped last night. Second, I shouldn’t have to be here. I supervise all litigation involving Harland Bentley’s companies, but I don’t oversee the day-to-day work on these cases. That job belongs to the partners who work under me at my firm. But whenever trial judges call a settlement conference, as Judge Landis has today, they want the “trial attorneys” present, meaning the lead lawyers on each side. So here I am.

Make it three reasons I’m annoyed, because the wound to my pride is almost as bad as the one to my skull. I still can’t believe I got snookered by that lady last night. She batted her eyes at me and my defenses evaporated.

“Oh, I’d be very interested in how Mr. Riley spins this,” says Jeremy Larrabee. Jeremy and I have history, not a particularly amicable one, but I always get a kick out of him. Always wearing his emotions on his sleeve, still with the sixties-era ponytail, the acne scarred skin and deep-set eyes, the bright wardrobe. Today, it’s a lemon yellow shirt, wild purple tie, and chocolate sport coat.

“She was fired because she took two-hour lunches,” I say. “And because she only showered about once a week. We’re not offering a dime.”

Larrabee’s jaw clenches. A vein shows itself above his bushy eyebrows. He’s past sixty now, and, from what I hear, has all but abandoned criminal defense. In fact, I don’t think it was long after he lost the Burgos case that he gave up the practice. Now he’s a plaintiff’s lawyer, working on some civil rights stuff that suits him, and, these days, spending much of his time suing Bentley Bearings, one of the subsidiaries for Harland Bentley’s holding company, BentleyCo. He has no fewer than eleven suits filed against us currently. So far, we haven’t offered anything on any of the cases. He is building up fees and expenses on these cases and looking for seed money—a settlement of at least one of these claims to pay for the prosecution of the other ones.

“I think it might be helpful if I spoke to each of you separately,” says the judge. “Starting with Mr. Riley.”

A common tactic in a pretrial conference—the judge talks to each side separately, trying to scare each party into thinking their case is garbage and they better settle but quick. Judges always try to settle cases to clear their dockets. The last thing Judge Landis wants to hear is a motion for class certification on a bullshit case like this.

Jeremy stands tentatively and looks at me. “Mr. Riley,” he says, and walks out.

I put my head in my hands as the door closes, and it’s me and the judge.

“I noticed a nasty bruise on the back of your head,” the judge says. “Your hand has seen better days, too.”

“You shoulda seen the other guy.”

“How is the governor’s daughter these days?”

He means Shelly. I look up at him and don’t say anything, but my expression betrays me.

“Ah, too bad.” He settles back in his leather chair. “I liked her. She had a real—spirit.”

“That she did.”

“Her loss. Hmm. I see you have Senator Almundo in the Public Trust indictments. Are the screws pretty tight?”

“Any tighter,” I say, “he’d explode.”

“Well, if anyone can pull a rabbit out of a hat ...” The judge nods at the door. “Interesting that Larrabee’s suing Harland Bentley’s company. I mean, with the history.” He shakes his head, like he doesn’t know what to make of it. “Some kind of grudge or something? ”

I shrug. “His client killed Harland’s daughter. What would he have against
Harland?”

Judge Landis drums his fingers conclusively on his desk. He doesn’t know, either. How could anyone understand the erratic mind of Jeremy Larrabee? “Now, Paul, about this case—”

“Not a dime, Danny,” I say. “Larrabee’s a cockroach. We throw him a crumb and he multiplies.”

The judge drops his hands on his massive desk. His chambers are an homage to the hunter. The floor is covered with bearskin and the walls are adorned with various beheaded animals. I’m no hunter, but I’ve played a few rounds of golf with the Honorable Daniel Landis. The only thing I’ve seen him hunt for is a Titleist that he sliced into the woods.

He massages his prominent forehead and then wags a finger at me. “You’re going to give him nuisance money,” he says.

“We’ll give his client a year’s worth of soap,” I say.

The judge’s shoulders tremble as he laughs.

“And we’ll strap a feedbag to her face.”

“Stop.” The judge’s face is red as a beet, a smile planted on his face. He catches his breath. “Ten thousand,” he says. “Your billionaire client spends that on dinner. And the woman gets reinstated.”

“Ten thousand
what?”
I say. “Ten thousand nose plugs for the people who have to work around her?”

Danny likes that one even better. His laughter turns to a cough and he waves me out. His face a bright red, he holds up ten fingers as I close the door to the judge’s chambers.

Jeremy Larrabee is sitting in the empty courtroom, talking on his cell phone. He seems surprised to see me. “Already?” he asks, punching out the cell phone. He needs some work on his poker face. He was hoping for something, anything, from me, and the fact that I spent about sixty seconds in there gives him the answer. I pick up my jacket and briefcase.

“You’re leaving?” he asks.

“I am.” I try to show lawyers every courtesy, but this guy is trying to play one of Harland’s companies and his cases are bogus. He needs to see how little I care about him.

“Give the judge a minute,” I say. “He’s still in tears over the plight of your client.”

“I’m going to get that class certified,” he answers. “Then we’ll talk.”

There is no chance that Danny Landis is going to allow a class action on this case. Jeremy should know that. A good lawyer knows the law. But a great lawyer knows the judge.

“Jeremy.” I step closer to him. “Do yourself a favor and pick another company. We won’t settle a single one of these. That’s eleven trials and you’ll lose them all. That’s a guarantee. Make a good business decision.”

I rethink the judge’s question, why Jeremy would pick Harland’s company to go after. Is he looking for a rematch with me? I’ve wondered that since the first suit was filed, but I’d never ask him. He wouldn’t admit it, anyway.

I walk away but he calls out to me: “Cost of litigation.”

The three-word mantra of any desperate plaintiff’s lawyer.
It will cost you a hundred grand to litigate this case, so give me eighty and we’re all winners.
Sure, Larrabee’s right that it will cost Harland Bentley over a hundred thousand to take this case through trial. That’s what this parasite is counting on, that companies will forgo principle and pay out some cash just to save money on the defense of the case. They aren’t counting on Harland Bentley. Or me.

“Five thousand,” I say, remembering what the judge asked but cutting it in half.

“Five thousand isn’t even close,” Larrabee says. “Her lost wages alone—”

“I meant for all eleven cases.” I push the door open and leave the courtroom.

 

 

McDERMOTT is twenty minutes late to work, but he figures he has it coming after working late into the night on the Ciancio homicide. The desk sergeant says, “Hey, Chief,” as he walks past. McDermott curls in his lips, winks at the guy. The coffee in the Styrofoam cup, dark roast from Dunkin Donuts, is hot in his hand, but he’s betting he won’t have the first sip until it’s cold.

“Morning, Chief.” Kopecky, another detective, hits him on the arm.

“Enough with the ‘Chief’ shit.” McDermott says it loud enough for everyone to hear, but it’s probably a bad idea to sound pissed off with this bunch, it only encourages them. He places the coffee on his cluttered desk, half of which is taken up by the new expensive Dell computer that he can barely use.

“Hey, Chief, Streets and San found a Vicky in a Dumpster.” Collins this time, a big Irish guy like McDermott. “I’m taking Kopecky.”

McDermott lets his eyes wander through the buzzing station house to the lieutenant’s office. The lew must be having a bad day. That’s why Collins is asking McDermott. “Sure, Collins, sure.”

McDermott isn’t chief of anything. The detectives at Area Four, Third Precinct, answer to Lieutenant Coglianese, who has seen better—more sober—days of late. Four months now since the lew’s wife passed away, and the cops at Four could smell it on him the day he returned from bereavement. He’d gone a few rounds with the bottle in the past, like his father, and there was a debate within the detectives’ squad about what to do. They turned to the senior detective, McDermott, who had made the call to get the lew through the next six months, until he had his thirty and could retire full.

Which is fine, but now McDermott has much of the lieutenant’s administrative work to go along with his own paperwork. In between, he’s expected to solve a crime here and there, too.

He looks at the “leader board” and counts the number of unsolved violent crimes. More to come today, starting with the Dumpster girl. Business at Four is booming. The summer months are the best for business. Rapes and muggings double from May to September. Gang shootings triple; some say because of the heat, its effect on emotions. McDermott thinks it’s because of the extended daylight hours. More time for the bangers to look at each other wrong.

“Collins,” he says, opening the lid on his coffee, breathing in the rich aroma. “Where’s the Vicky?”

Reason he’s asking, three weeks ago on Venice Avenue, a gang sniper opened fire on a crime scene, a cluster of at least eight officers and detectives. Turned into a full-scale assault on the Andujar housing project. Since then, most of the detectives have taken to wearing vests, like the patrol officers.

Turned out the sniper was an eleven-year-old kid with a 30.06 rifle.

“East side.” Collins hangs his shield around his neck. “LeBaron and Dillard.”

LeBaron and Dillard. Not a bad area, so reinforcements not needed. “That’s my neighborhood,” McDermott says. “Clean it up.”

B
y THE TIME I get back to my office, I’m relatively sure an army of tiny gnomes has taken up residence inside my head, hacking my brain in search of gold. At ten—eighteen precious minutes from now—I have twelve partners and senior associates waiting in a conference room for our monthly update on every piece of litigation related to BentleyCo or one of its subsidiaries. Last I checked, we have sixty-nine open matters. It will be a long meeting. Yesterday, I had everyone draw up summaries of the cases, so that I wasn’t walking into the meeting cold. I probably should have read them.

I pass a couple of female associates who are chatting outside an office. They call me “Mr. Riley,” which means they are probably among the crop of summer associates—second-year law students from the top schools around the country who spend a summer interning at the firm. By “interning,” I mean that they get taken out to expensive, two-hour lunches almost every day and attend functions at night like baseball games or cocktail parties or boat cruises, all on the firm’s dime. The firm, of course, is wooing them, not the other way around. Each of the ten members of the summer associate class at Shaker, Riley & Flemming will be offered a full-time associate position upon graduation, unless they do something incredibly stupid like have sex with a paralegal on top of a desk after hours. I use that example because one kid, law review from Columbia, actually did that last year after a party we had at some museum.