F Paul Wilson - Sims 02 (3 page)

 
          
WESTCHESTER
COUNTY
,
NY

 
          
OCTOBER 22

 
          
“Mr. Kraft wants to see you in his
office,” Maggie said as Patrick passed her desk. The strained look on his
secretary’s face told him the managing senior partner wasn’t requesting a
social visit.

 
          
Patrick’s stomach roiled.
Great.
He was living out of a suitcase, Pamela wouldn’t
return his calls, his clients were either bailing out—like Ben Armstrong who’d
taken Jarman’s business to another firm with no explanation—or giving him
ultimatums: Say good-bye to the sims or say good-bye to us. And now Alton Kraft
was waiting for him.
Just what he needed.

 
          
Well, at least things couldn’t get
much worse. Or could they?

 
          
Patrick laid his briefcase on his
desk and glanced around. His office was small, as was his window with its
limited view of downtown
White Plains
.
But that left extra wall space for his law books. He liked his office. Cozy. He
wondered how long he’d be rating a window if his clients kept heading for the
hills.

 
          
He walked down the hall to
Alton
’s
office, took a deep breath,
then
stepped inside.
A bigger office than Patrick’s.
Much
bigger.
Thicker carpet, bigger desk.
Lots of window glass, and still plenty of space for books.

 
          
“Hi,
Alton
.”

 
          
“Patrick,” Kraft replied.

 
          
No “good morning” or even a “hello.”
Just his name, spoken in a flat tone from the man seated behind the mahogany
desk.
And no handshake.
Kraft was something of a
compulsive hand shaker, but apparently not today. His blue eyes were ice,
glinting within a cave of wrinkles.

 
          
Patrick’s gut tightened. This did not
look good.

 
          
He dropped into a chair, trying to
look relaxed. “Maggie said you wanted to see me.”

 
          
“A serious matter has come up,” Kraft
said, bridging his hands.
“One that needs to be addressed
immediately.
We all know about the recent exodus of your clients—”

 
          
“Just a temporary
thing,
Alton
.
I—”

 
          
Kraft held up his hand. When the
senior managing partner held up his hand, you stopped talking and listened.

 
          
“We’ve been aware of the losses
you’ve been suffering and we’ve sympathized. We were confident you’d recover.
But now things have taken an ugly turn. It was bad enough when it was just your
client base that was eroding, but now the dissatisfaction is spreading to the
partners’ clients.”

 
          
“Oh, hell,” Patrick said. He could
barely hear his own voice.

 
          
“‘Oh, hell’ doesn’t even begin to say
it, Patrick. Two of the firm’s oldest and biggest clients called yesterday to
say they’re having second thoughts about staying with us. They said they’d
always thought of Payes & Hecht as a firm that represented people, a firm above
such stunts —their word, not mine, Patrick—as representing animals. Who do we
prefer as clients, they want to know: people or animals?
Because
it’s time to choose.”

 
          
“The sons of bitches,” Patrick
muttered.

 
          
“They may well be, but they’re sons
of bitches who pay a major part of the freight around here.”

 
          
And account for a lot of the senior
partners’ billable hours, Patrick thought.

 
          
The partners had sat back and watched
with clucks of the tongue and sympathetic shakes of the head as his client base
headed south. No need for immediate concern: The firm adjusted salaries and
bonuses according to each member’s billing, so Patrick’s bottom line would take
the hit, not theirs. But when they saw their own paychecks threatened…ah, now
that was a different story.

 
          
Not that Patrick blamed them. He’d do
exactly the same.

 
          
“I don’t think I have to tell you
what needs to be done,” Kraft said.

 
          
Patrick knew. Shit, yes, he knew.

 
          
“And if I don’t?”

 
          
“I’m already taking heat because of
this, Patrick. Don’t make it more difficult than it already is.”

 
          
Patrick understood. Alton Kraft had
been his biggest supporter for partnership. If Patrick looked bad, he looked
bad. The partners had probably told him to give Sullivan a choice: Stick with
the
sims
or stay with the firm.
Mutually
exclusive options.

 
          
The decision should have been a
no-brainer except for the inconvenient fact that he’d become attached to the
Beacon Ridge
sims
. He enjoyed visiting them, liked the
feelings that rolled off them—probably the nearest thing to worship he’d ever
experience.

 
          
But all that was going to end.
Because on his next visit he’d have to tell them he was dropping their case.
He’d make up something good, and they’d believe him, and they wouldn’t hold it
against him, because Mist Sulliman the best, Mist Sulliman never lie to sim,
Mist Sulliman never let sim down.

 
          
Yeah, right.

 
          
Mist Sulliman feel like slime mold.

 
          
He fought the urge to grab Kraft by
his worsted lapels and shout, Fuck you, fuck the firm, and fuck all its
candy-assed clients!

 
          
Instead, he sighed and nodded.
“All right.”

 
          
He’d lost his house, his girlfriend,
and a shitload of clients. He couldn’t afford to lose his job too.

 
          
“Good man,” Kraft said. He rose and
thrust out his hand. “I’ll tell the others.”

 
          
Now the handshake.
Patrick made it as perfunctory as possible and beat it the hell out of there.
Or maybe crawled was more like it.
Or slithered.
He
felt like he’d just ratted out a friend to the police. If the carpet had been
shag he would have needed a machete to reach the door.

 
          
As he passed Maggie again she cocked
her head toward the waiting room farther down the hall.

 
          
“New client.
No appointment.
Wants to know if you can squeeze her in.”

 
          
“Anew client?
No kidding? What’s my morning look like?”

 
          
“Empty.”

 
          
Figured.
“Then by all means, ‘squeeze her in.’”

 
          
A few minutes later Maggie showed a
statuesque brunette into his office and introduced her as Romy Cadman.
Short dark hair, dark eyes, full lips, and long legs.
Dressed on the casual side in a sweater and flared slacks under a long leather
coat, all black.

 
          
Patrick’s spirits lifted.
Nothing like a new client, and a beautiful one to boot.

 
          
Maggie placed the woman’s card on his
desk: Romy Cadman—Consultant.

 
          
“I won’t take up much of your time,
Mr. Sullivan,” she said as he rose to shake her hand.

 
          
Patrick fixed on her eyebrows, so
smooth, so dark,
tapering
to perfect points. Penciled?
No, just naturally perfect. But he couldn’t find much warmth in the deep brown
eyes below—at least not for him.
All business.
A woman with a mission.
Aconsultant with a
mission.

 
          
“Take as much as you need,” he said,
thinking, I’ve got aaaaall day. He gestured to a seat. “Please.”

 
          
“That won’t be necessary.” Because
she remained standing, so did Patrick. “I understand, Mr.
Sullivan,
that
you’ve come under a lot of pressure from SimGen lately.”

 
          
“SimGen?”
What was she talking about? “No…I haven’t heard a thing from SimGen.”

 
          
“Indirectly, you have. They’ve been
contacting all your clients and either cajoling or coercing them into dropping
you.”

 
          
Patrick decided he’d sit now. It
sounded so paranoid, but only for a second or two, and then it made terrible
sense.

 
          
“How do you know? How can you know?”

 
          
“Not important,” Ms. Cadman said.
“What matters is whether they’re succeeding.”

 
          
“What do you mean?”

 
          
She cocked her hip and released an
exasperated sigh. “They want you to drop the
sims
. Are
you going to stand up to SimGen, or cave in?”

 
          
Cave in…hell of a way to put it. At
least he knew where Ms. Romy Cadman’s sympathies lay. So no way was he going to
tell her he’d decided to do just that: cave in. His eyes drifted to those long
legs. They looked strong.

 
          
“May I inquire as to your interest in
this?”

 
          
“I want to see the
sims
get a fair shake.”

 
          
He glanced at her card again.
Consultant …to whom?

 
          
“Are you with one of those animal
rights groups?”

 
          
“My interest is personal. So what’s
your decision, Mr. Patrick Sullivan, attorney at law?”

 
          
The subtle little twist she put on
those last three words gave Patrick the impression that somehow she’d already
guessed the answer.

 
          
“I haven’t come to one yet.”

 
          
She stared at him a moment, her
expression dubious. Then she put her briefcase on the table and released the
catches.

 
          
“Very well.
If you’re sitting on the fence, perhaps this will tip you toward the sims.”

 
          
She gave the briefcase a one-eighty
swivel, lifted the top, and Patrick found himself nose to nose with more cash
than he’d ever seen in one spot in his life—he’d handled bigger checks, sure,
but this was cash .

 
          
Hoping his eyes weren’t
bugging,
he lifted a packet and fanned it.

 
          
“All twenties, Mr.
Sullivan.”

 
          
“How—?”
The
words seemed to catch in his throat.
“How many?”

 
          
“Exactly twelve
hundred and fifty.
To spare you from doing the math, that’s a quarter of
a million dollars. When I have your assurance that you will continue the fight,
I will deposit all of it into the sim legal defense fund.”

 
          
Patrick eyed the money. This would
take him a long way into that case; and with other contributions he could stir
up during the proceedings, probably all the way through, with maybe a good
chunk left over at the end.

 
          
Tempting…Jesus, it was tempting. The
added prospect of spending time with this woman because of it made the offer
even more tempting. Pamela had been gone for weeks and…

 
          
No. Staying with the
sims
meant being booted from the firm…going solo. He didn’t
care for that idea. Payes & Hecht could be a cutthroat place at times, but
even on the worst days he found a certain level of comfort in having a firm
behind him. Like a security blanket—one trimmed with barbed wire, perhaps, but
still…

 
          
And where would he be after the sim
case, whatever the outcome? Who’d be his future clients? Sims?
Hardly.