Impact (6 page)

“Will he buy it?”

“He buys anything that comes wrapped in a check. And you don't care if he does or doesn't.”

“Why?”

“Because he won't be around in two years.”

“Who's going to beat him?”

“Maxwell.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then we should toss some money his way, too.”

“We have.”

He kisses her forehead. “Next.”

“Night shuttle to Boston; a ten
A
.
M
. hearing on objections to your petition for attorneys' fees in the Logan crash.”

“What am I asking?”

“Two million two.”

“How's the judge?”

“Sympathetic. We did a lot of groundwork for him in that case and he knows it. If the engine guys hadn't agreed to contribute thirty percent of the settlement, the whole mess would have gone to trial and it would have taken ten years to get a civil case onto the calendar in Boston for the rest of this century.”

“Do I have a fallback position?”

“You hang tough. We accepted half of what we were entitled to under our fee agreements in the Chicago DC-10. That's our charitable contribution for this year.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Afternoon flight to LA. Booked at the Bonaventure. Hearing the next morning to choose the chairman of the plaintiffs' committee in the Barstow crash.”

“How do we look?”

“We have eleven cases. A couple are sure seven figures, a couple are kids, three are nondependents, the rest are marginal. Haroldson has the most: thirty. Scallini has a dozen at least, and he'll be loaded for bear: He's tired of getting competition from another Californian in the races for lead counsel. Vic is still inclined to remind you that he was trying aviation cases when you were trying to tie your shoes.”

“The man is so greedy he drools, for God's sake.”

“You know that and I know that, but Judge Hallett doesn't know that.”

“He will the first time Vic opens his mouth,” Hawthorne predicts. “Who got that—what's her name?—the widow of the president of Keefer Instruments?”

“Scallini.”

“Damn. I thought she liked me.”

“She did; her lawyer didn't. He and Scallini had some preexisting relationship. Political stuff, I think, from back when Vic decided he wanted to be governor. That one was over before you laid eyes on her. Plus, I heard Vic agreed to kick back half his fee for the referral.”

“The guy better get
that
little incentive engraved on the steps of city hall.” Hawthorne laughs. “Poor Vic. He just won't quit, will he? Not till he knocks Ed Haroldson off the top.”

“Neither will you. Or have I been wasting my time for ten years?”

Though Martha is gazing at him intently, Hawthorne is far too tired to debate the trajectory of his career. “So who's not committed?” he asks.

“Mostly, the Japanese. Tour group of seventeen. You have a meeting with their representative at the Bonaventure when we get in. I've sent fruit and flowers to his room, and I have sketches of the memorial we propose to build at the crash site with a portion of our fees if we're their counsel. Grass and rocks and flowers; a plaque, no monument. Don't worry; he'll go for it.”

“I'm not worried, I'm just tired.”

“No you're not. When you're tired, I can't do this.”

Unzipping his fly, she makes a fist around his sex and transforms it into a dowel. He kisses her lightly, tasting greased lips and inhaling perfume.

“Shall we?” she asks, gazing idly at the fleur-de-lis that bespeckle the far wall. Hawthorne wonders if they remind her of when she was a Scout.

He considers her offer, knowing she would refuse him nothing, knowing also that the act will be quick and meaningless. “Let's wait for Boston. Take in a show, get all hot and bothered, then go back to the Ritz and do things that run afoul of half the ordinances in the city.”

“Fine.”

The word is without affect. Hawthorne takes it at face value. It would be equally fine with Martha if they took concurrent vows of chastity. With Martha, allure and perversity are congruent.

“Should I stop or keep on?” she asks.

As he considers the question, the phone rings. When it peals a second time, Martha glances at her watch. When he nods, she goes off to answer it. She listens, says, “You know the drill. I'll call with any special instructions,” then hangs up.

After arranging her underclothes, Martha goes to the closet and selects a simple dress and steps into it. Taking a legal pad and silver fountain pen from her briefcase, she sits at the elaborately ornamented desk, crosses her legs, and says, “A Hastings just went down.”

Hawthorne scoots back against the headboard. “The new one?”

She nods.

“Where?”

“Woodside.”

“What airline?”

“SurfAir.”

“The shuttle?”

She nods.

He leaves the bed and begins to pace. “Tell Dan to get to the airport, talk to the people meeting the plane, get names if he can. Tell them not to sign anything or talk to anyone, especially Hawley Chambers. Tell him—”

“Dan knows what to do.”

“Right. Is Ray going to the site?”

“If he can get there.”

“Send someone to the SurfAir offices in LA, bird-dog their people, get a passenger list, whatever else they put out.”

“That won't be easy. It's the new age, remember. Just board with your credit card and ring up the fare. The records probably all went up in smoke.”

“Jesus. It'll take a year to figure out who was on the damn thing.”

Martha waits for more. Hawthorne circles the room, issuing additional orders as familiar faces begin to crowd his mind—crash victims he has represented in the past, once more begging him to
do
something. But he is never able to do what they want most, which is to rewind time.

His eyes begin to sting. Doing the best he can, he dictates more instructions. Martha records them silently. Despite the hour Hawthorne is fully awake, electrically charged, oblivious to all but the disaster he has just been dealt. He is launching a war, and he loves it as helplessly as Patton.

“Hi, Mr. Tollison. How'd it go?”

“Hi, Sandy. Another controversial triumph. How come you're here so late?”

“I like to end the week with a clean desk, is all.” She looked away. “Plus, I like to be down here after dark sometimes. It makes me feel professional and everything.”

He smiled. “Well, don't make a habit of it or your mom will be all over me again.”

He watched the freckles on her face make room for a smile. “Anything I should know about?” he asked as she unwrapped a chocolate ingot dug from within her desk.

“Lots.”

He sighed and detoured to the waiting-room couch.

Sandy swallowed a bite of nougat the size of a walnut and looked at her shorthand book. “Mrs. Rushton's son—she said
her
mother used to do some kind of piecework for
your
mother?—was arrested last night. He stole a car. He's still in jail, because he can't afford bail and she won't post it.”

Tollison resisted a lecture on the presumption of innocence. “Public defender.”

Sandy shook her head. “She wants you. I told her our fees and she says she can pay. But you don't have to do anything right away. She thinks it will do him some good to spend a night behind bars.”

“The last mother who thought that ended up at a funeral. While her son was learning his lesson, his cellmate slit his throat.”

Sandy's countenance darkened to the shade of her Snickers bar. “Well, she wants you to talk to him.”

“Okay. Next?”

“Hugh Vickery wants to change his will.”

“What's it this time?”

Sandy read from her pad: “‘A Styrofoam container, sealed with duct tape, painted red, white, and blue, and tossed off the Golden Gate Bridge on the first equinox following his death. Toward the ocean side.”

“Jesus. What was it last time?”

“Scattered over the ninth green at the country club. The time before that he wanted them mailed to the secretary of state.”

Tollison shook his head. “I don't know why Hugh can't let himself get boxed and planted like the rest of us. Well, you know what to do.”

Sandy nodded.

“Next?”

The demand was more abrupt than he intended, since a review of his active cases inevitably made him churlish, but after his quick apology, Sandy's grin returned. “Mr. Wilson wants to know if the contract's ready; Mrs. Hanley wants to know if she can take her baby to Florida without the judge's permission; Charley Hoover wants another chance to persuade you to run for city attorney.”

“The answer is no. To each of them. That it?”

“No. Mr. Golding called.” Sandy consulted her notes. “He says Mr. Cosgrove won't agree to paragraph nineteen of the property-settlement agreement.”

“Which one is that?”

“The golf dubs.”

Tollison swore. “I
told
him if he turned down my offer we were going for half of everything. Well, you draft a letter to Stephen Golding, Esquire, and tell him half means half—my client insists that she be awarded the even-numbered golf clubs in the set her husband acquired during the marriage, and that includes the sand wedge. Without the clubs we go to court.”

Sandy nodded and made a note.

“Anything else?”

She shook her head.

“Okay. Get Brenda for me if you can, then call the jail and see if they'll have the Rushton boy ready in an hour. I'd better get him out of there, so get his mother on the line so I can tell her the facts of life in the county lockup. The boy got a job?”

“I don't know.”

“Probably not—no one under thirty has a job in this town. Except you. Call my mother and tell her I'll stop by and see her in the morning. If I don't have anything to eat in the refrigerator, order something for me before you leave. I'll get that Wilson thing done tonight.”

“You have the dance, remember?”

He nodded. “I brought my suit in this morning, so I can go straight to the dance from here. By way of the jail, I guess.” He glanced at his watch. “After I've talked to Mrs. Rushton, you can take off.”

“Thanks.”

Tollison watched as she reached for the phone book. She was young enough to be his daughter, and he often experienced the pleasant sensation that Sandy was precisely that. “You still dating Travis?” he asked quietly.

She scattered her freckles once again. “Sort of.”

“I like Travis.”

“I know.”

“I think I like him better than you do.”

“I do, too.”

“Just because I like him doesn't mean you have to date him.”

She reddened. “You're a nice man, Mr. Tollison. But no one's
that
nice.”

They exchanged winks, and Tollison trudged into his private office, tossed his coat onto the battered Chesterfield, and collapsed into the chair behind his desk. Like its occupant, the room bore a rumpled aspect that with a little work could have been distinctive.

Most of the furnishings were abused and unprepossessing, but a few were treasures—the library table had been built by Quaker craftsmen in the previous century and bequeathed to him by his father, who had acquired it from his. The pictures on the wall were a set of Goya etchings purchased during his only trip to Europe, a ten-day fling taken after an employment-discrimination case had yielded him a five-figure fee. A more active art collection hung from pegs behind the desk—a set of Giants caps, one of every style the team had worn from the past of John McGraw to the present of Chili Davis, some so moth-eaten they were disappearing right before his eyes.

Except for the hats, style had been sacrificed for the convenience of disarray. The office was littered with paper—briefs, notes, phone messages, rough-draft pleadings, research data. Atop the paper a dozen law books lay facedown, splayed open to appellate opinions that at some point in time had been relevant to Altoona. The rest of the place, as Tollison's mother often pointed out, was just a bunch of junk.

Gazing thoughtfully at the tousle on his desk, he reached halfway down a stack of file folders and pulled out one marked “Wilson.” He was about to open the file when the telephone rang. When he heard who it was, he said, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How's your day been?” he asked.

“Lousy. Herm wants me to handle the yearbook next year.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him no way.”

“And?”

“He told me if I didn't, there wouldn't
be
a yearbook next year.”

“I thought that was Balderstone's project.”

“He went three hundred over budget last time. Plus the kids snuck some dirty language by him.”

“How dirty?”

“Does the word
cooz
mean anything to you?”

“A portion of the anatomy popular with gynecologists?”

“Yes, well it didn't mean anything to Mr. B., but it meant a lot to Terri Winthrop's mother, Terri being the possessor of the hottest cooz in the senior class, according to the Altoona High School
Tidings.”

“Jesus.”

“The principal's word, exactly.”

He paused. “You're going to do it, aren't you?”

“I imagine so. I seem to have lots of time on my hands these days. Or haven't you noticed?”

Brenda Farnsworth's voice had taken on an edge designed to etch the word
neglect
on his conscience. “I ran into Laura Donahue today,” he evaded, then immediately wished he hadn't.

“I thought you were in court.”

“I was. I saw her after. While I was walking back. She wants a ride tonight.”

“To where?”

“The benefit. We're going, aren't we?”