Rough Trade (22 page)

“Sure, but only under one condition,” replied my secretary.

“What’s that?”

“That you won’t let them intimidate you into quitting either. You are ten times the lawyer of anyone else in this firm, and if they don’t know that, then they’re even stupider than I thought.”

Making my way to Skip Tillman’s office, I had the all too familiar feeling of being summoned to the headmaster’s office. Even so, Cheryl’s pep talk had helped, and the closer I got, the more determined I became to not let myself get lynched. I had already faced down one ugly, angry man and walked away relatively unscathed. I wasn’t going to let Tillman get the better of me either.

Doris was back at her post. She punched the intercom button and announced my arrival in the hushed tones appropriate in the presence of the condemned. Tillman rose to his feet from behind his personal acre of polished mahogany, and she closed the door quietly upon us.

He did not smile. His face was pinched and puritanical. He had always fancied himself a father figure, and his disappointment therefore carried with it something of a paternal air. He shook his head sadly in a small gesture of shock and disbelief. He cast his eyes at me as if to say that what was coming would be all the worse on account of his deep affection for me.

I knew it was all bullshit.

“Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you,” he demanded, sounding like my father on prom night—actually, prom morning to be more accurate— after I’d wandered in sometime after breakfast, hung over and reeking of dope.

“Milwaukee,” I replied without elaboration.

“I figured as much. Ned Bergstrom called and woke me up this morning. As you can imagine, he and the rest of the partners in Milwaukee are extremely upset.”

“Why? Because they’ll lose their seats on the fifty-yard line if the Monarchs move to Los Angeles?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady,” he snapped. “You don’t think the fact that our firm name is now linked to the most heinous incidence of civic treason in Milwaukee history is an issue of legitimate concern? Ned said he’s afraid to go to lunch at his club for fear of what people will say to him! Not only that, but he had to read about it in the newspaper. I can’t believe that you would knowingly involve this firm in a controversy of national proportions without consulting anybody. May I remind you that no matter what you seem to think, this firm is not your private fiefdom—”

“Is that what this is about?” I cut in incredulously. “Ned Bergstrom being too ashamed to have lunch at his club?”

“I know it seems hard to believe that you could be the cause of an even more serious problem than the Monarchs’ mess, but apparently your reputation for being a lightning rod for trouble is nothing if not well deserved.” He paused to emit another sigh, steepling his fingers together and laying them on the desk in front of him in a schoolmasterly gesture.

“Well, are you going to tell me what I’m supposed to have done,” I demanded, “or do I have to ask the secretaries?”

“Avco has fired us for cause. We received written notification this morning that they are actively seeking representation elsewhere.”

For a minute the earth actually moved and Tillman’s patrician office seemed to rock beneath my feet. Under the terms of our agreement with Avco, if they fired us for cause, then they were no longer bound to pay us. Providing that they had a valid reason, the firm would lose in excess of a quarter of a million dollars in fees for work already performed.

“Of course, with a matter of this magnitude I have no choice but to bring it formally before the management committee,” continued Tillman. “Gil Hendrickson is in New York and not due back until late tonight, that’s why I’ve scheduled it for ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Naturally, you will be given an opportunity to present your explanation of events at that time.”

Stunned, I stood there for a fraction of a second before willing myself to make my way toward the door. There was a rushing sound in my ears, like surf, that drowned out everything else. It took me a minute to identify it, but when I did I realized that what I was hearing was the death rattle of my career.

I would be lying if I said that one of the attractions of what I do isn’t the risk, the fact that there’s nothing like standing on the high wire to keep you focused, to prevent your mind from straying into the messy gray areas of your personal life. Of course, the downside is that sometimes you fall.

The trouble was that what was happening both with Avco and the Monarchs was no longer just happening to the client. It was happening to me. It would be as if Claudia, who gets her kicks from her heroic feats of surgical legerdemain, suddenly felt herself being pulled from the wreckage and about to go under the knife.

I went back to my office and thought briefly about storming out, or feeling sorry for myself, or calling Stephen and seeing if I could lose myself in sweaty sex. But I’ve never had much appetite for self-pity, and when I called Stephen, all I got was this year’s assistant telling me that he was in a meeting that was expected to last for the rest of the afternoon.

After that I did what I always do. I sat down at my desk and got to work. I did not call the Brandt brothers and beg them to take us back, though I had no doubt that’s what Skip wanted me to do. Frankly the only consolation in the whole mess was that I’d never have to speak to them again. I didn’t call Stuart Eisenstadt either. His strategy of building himself up with the clients by tearing me down had backfired when—surprise, surprise—they showed no compunction about screwing us both. What I did do was call Paul Riskoff. He seemed surprised to hear from me, no doubt since we were busy suing each other, but as far as I was concerned, this was my day to deal with the thugs in my life. I figured I might as well get it all over with in one lump.

That done I pulled out my disc player, slipped on my headphones, and tackled the ramparts of work that now obscured every square inch of surface on my desk. I was determined that with Avco, however ignominiously, out of the way, the time had come to get the Monarchs’ troubles sorted out. As Matchbox 20 sang about shame, I read through every scrap of material I’d been given about the Monarchs. Then I wrote a letter to Mayor Deutsch setting out what I saw as his alternatives, and explaining exactly why I was the only person on the planet in a position to make him a hero.

It was a sign of how far from normal things had strayed that Elliott Abelman sidled into my office unannounced. I was so absorbed in what I was doing that when he finally moved into my field of vision, I leapt from my chair like a cartoon housewife who’s just seen a mouse. I think I may have actually said “eek.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, sliding into the visitor’s chair. It scared me how glad I was to see him. “But Cheryl said it would be okay if I dropped by.”

“When did you talk to Cheryl?”

“She called me a little while ago. I asked her to let me know when you got back into town. She also happened to mention that you’re experiencing something of a career crisis.”

“Is that why you came?”

“You mean to make sure that you weren’t standing on the ledge outside your office window?” His face lit up with a sudden smile. “No. I swear as I walked over I didn’t even look up.” He paused for a minute, adjusting the shoulder holster under his jacket against the chair. “You want to talk about it?”

“Absolutely not,” I replied.

“It’s not that you’re feeling overcome with remorse or anything for screwing the Milwaukee fans out of their football team, because, hey, if you are, I’ll personally lend you my gun so that you can do the right thing.”

“You don’t think you’re being a little bit harsh?” I asked. Even Skip Tillman hadn’t gone so far as to suggest that I kill myself.

“How would you feel if you woke up one morning to find out that some millionaire’s kid had decided to move the Art Institute to Poland, or that the Eiffel Tower was going to be relocated to Texas?”

“Believe me, we’re doing everything humanly possible to keep the team where it is. But unfortunately Jeff owes the bank a small matter of something like $18 million.”

“There’s also a small matter of whether the new owner is going to be watching the games from behind bars.”

“What have you heard from the cops?” I demanded.

“Only that they’re close to swearing out a warrant for your friend Jeff. I guess a check of the phone records the day that Beau was killed showed a 9ll call placed from the dead man’s office right around the time of the murder.”

“Aren’t all 9ll calls recorded automatically?” I asked.

“They are. Unfortunately, whoever called never said anything. Not a word. The call runs twenty-six seconds and all you can hear is breathing.”

There was no reason to think that Jeff Rendell had not strangled his father and every reason to think he had. Indeed, I’d closed my eyes to fact after fact in order to indulge in my naive and self-serving belief in his innocence. He’d fought with his father the morning of his death. They couldn’t find him to tell him what had happened to his father. His bizarre behavior—pushing the paramedics out of the way in order to assault the body of a dead or dying man—was hardly what you’d expect from a bereaved son. Now the phone call from his father’s office that seemed to indicate that whoever killed Beau had, at least initially, meant to do the right thing and call for help. It wasn’t until he’d had some time to contemplate the repercussions of what he’d done—twenty-six seconds to be exact—that he’d elected to move on to plan B.

Any cop will tell you that all kinds of people try to make a death into something that it’s not. Somebody has too good a time at a party where there are drugs, and his buddies take him for a ride and dump his body in the country. Grandpa dies surrounded by girlie magazines with his pants around his ankles, and the family gets him dressed before the police show up. An argument gets out of hand, and a son’s hands end up around his father’s throat. Appalled by what he’s done, the son throws the body down the stairs, hoping the death will be put down to the fall.

And then, of course, there was the business of the key. I couldn’t believe I’d been stupid enough to allow myself to become an accessory to murder. I made a silent vow to hand it over to the police the very first chance I got.

I did not go to the new apartment intending to end things with Stephen Azorini. In a way it’s frightening to realize that if it had been any other day, we probably would have just continued on our old, familiar path. But the tightness in my chest should have warned me that there was too much in my life that was beyond my control. That instinct would propel me to change what I could, if only to conserve the resources I would need to deal with what I could not.

I started out with the best of intentions. A check of the past day’s voice mail messages revealed a rambling communication from Mimi letting me know that the fabric that we had ordered to cover the panels in the dining room had finally cleared customs and been delivered to the apartment. Anxious that it might be inadvertently dirtied or damaged by one of the workmen, she suggested that Stephen or I take it home for safekeeping until we were ready to use it. I hopped a cab and told the driver to wait for me while I darted upstairs to grab it. I was surprised when Danny, the night doorman, told me that Stephen had just gone up himself.

I found him standing in the kitchen, examining the newly laid tile backsplash, his aquiline nose no more than two inches from the ceramic surface. “I don’t think these are perfectly straight,” he said, without looking up.

Of course, there were many possible responses to this. “Nothing is ever perfect” certainly springs to mind. Or, “You’ll never notice because it’s going to have a stove parked in front of it.” In a million years I wouldn’t have predicted what actually came out of my mouth, which was “I can’t live here with you.”

“What did you say?” inquired Stephen, straightening up and turning to face me, a look of surprise on his face.

“I said I can’t live with you,” I replied, feeling a kind of preternatural certainty flowing through me. I wasn’t at all sure of what I was doing, but I knew in my bones that I had no choice but to go ahead and do it. “The whole thing was a mistake.”

“You’ve chosen quite a time to come to this realization,” remarked Stephen, obviously taken aback.

“I guess you can’t always choose when enlightenment is going to strike,” I said. Then, to cover the awkward silence I added, “I realize that this is going to be inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient?” echoed Stephen incredulously. “What is wrong with you? Have you gone off the deep end? Both our names are on the deed. We’ve been jointly named in a lawsuit. It’s not going to be inconvenient, it’s going to be a
nightmare.”

“I’ll buy back your share of the apartment and pay you for everything you’ve spent on the renovation to date,” I replied, with the strange sensation of being outside of myself looking in. “The real estate department at Callahan Ross will take care of the conveyance of the deed and make sure that your name is removed as a defendant in any pending suits.”

“Are you going to give me a reason for this remarkable decision?” asked Stephen in a puzzled voice.

“I don’t want you to think that it’s because I’m afraid,” I said slowly. “Actually, it’s just the opposite. Moving in here with you would be the coward’s way out. And some things happened to me today to make me realize that no matter what, I’m not a coward.”

CHAPTER 18

The management committee met in the largest of the firm’s nine conference rooms, a formidable quintet of Callahan’s most senior partners arrayed somberly around the massive table. They were dressed in suits and ties—unusual for a Saturday—and no doubt meant to signal the serious nature of these proceedings. Skip Tillman sat at the head of the table, and you could tell that even after all these years it still gave him a secret thrill.

It didn’t help that I felt like roadkill. Muscles in my neck and back that I’d never even given a thought to now screamed out for my attention. The bruise on my shoulder where the Jester caught me with the pipe now extended halfway to my waist and was complemented by a perfectly round imprint, in deep purple, of the circumference of my defunct Volvo’s steering wheel that now graced the center of my chest.