The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (12 page)

Then Neely said, "I'm not trying to dictate your
program here, but I'd start with the lawyers. Probably Uta first,
since she's been here the longest. Then I'd talk with Elliot and
finally Deborah."

"I'd also like to see Mr. Gant's office and
speak with his secretary."

"His . . . ? Oh, that's right. You've seen
Imogene only at the reception desk. One of the secretaries covers it
when the receptionist's on break or whatever."

"Imogene was Mr. Gant's secretary?"

"Shared secretary. Financial necessity, this day
and age."

"Who did he share her with?"

"Me," said Frank
Neely in a matter-of-fact voice before rising.

* * *

Sure enough, when Neely walked me to his door and
opened it, Imogene was sitting at the kangaroo-pouch desk in front of
his office that had been empty when she'd escorted me back there.
Imogene turned from folding correspondence, the creases razor sharp,
the edges perfectly aligned. Four of the pink message slips lay on
her desktop. More toward the center, near a single rose in a clear
vase, was a little brass pup tent with "UMOGENE BURBAGE"
etched into the metal.

"Imogene," said Neely, "would you take
Mr. Cuddy to Uta, then check back with me?"

"Certainly."
 
As
she led the way around a corner, I said, "Ms. Burbage, I
understand you worked with Mr. Gant as well?"

A little stiffening of the shoulders in front of me.
"As his secretary for three and a half years."

"I'd appreciate being able to speak with you,
too, before I leave."

"I'll ask Mr. Neely about that."

"He's already okayed it."

Burbage started to turn. "If you don't mind,
I'll ask him anyway."

Another woman, in her twenties and seeming frazzled,
came toward us. A bundle of manila files were clutched to her chest,
both hands crossed over them, a couple more of the pink message slips
between two of her fingers. She stopped and started to extend the
folders toward Burbage.

"Oh, Imogene, these messages and files are for
Mr. Neely, too."

"Patricia, can you please leave them on my
desk."

There was no rising, question-tone at the end of
Burbage's statement, and Patricia simply said, "Sorry."

I walked past four hung prints of the same lighthouse
at different seasons of the year. Near the end of the hall, Burbage
paused at an open doorway without saying anything. I heard a hearty
female voice inside say, "She's here now," and then the
plastic bonk of a phone receiver redocking. "Please, Imogene,
show Mr. Cuddy in."

Burbage turned to me and nodded before going back up
the hall. 

Entering the office, I saw a broad-shouldered, stolid
woman coming around the desk to meet me. Radachowski's brown hair,
dull but full, was leavened with the silver of untended middle age
and cut so that it didn't quite reach her shoulders. She wore silver
aviator glasses over features that bordered on homely. Her suit was
tweed, the salt-and-pepper material flecked with red nubs. The eyes
behind the glasses were sharp, p but slightly distorted by the
prescription so they looked a third bigger than they were, kind of
like viewing fish under water from the air above. A subdued smile
showed long teeth that could use some whitening, but there was
something about the way she engaged you with those oversized eyes
that made you want to be her friend.

"Ms. Radachowski?"

"Uta, please"

"John."

We shook hands, hers nearly as large as mine. "John,
I hear you might make me cry some more."

Quite an opening, I thought, as Radachowski released
my right hand and waved me toward a chair.

The phone burred, and she apologized for needing to
answer it, having just sent her secretary off on an errand. As
Radachowski said something into the receiver about rescheduling a
deposition, I took a seat and looked around her office. The desk and
accompanying furniture were dark like Neely's, but I thought maybe
cherry rather than the firm's signature teak. A computer squatted on
the desk, and Radachowski cradled the phone on a shoulder as she
began clacking away at the keyboard with the facility of a high—speed
touch-typist. Her wall displayed photos showing Radachowski speaking
from different podiums, the banners of various charitable
organizations above and behind her. A different shot had Radachowski
standing between Frank Neely and Leonard Epstein, the former with his
horse-collar embrace of her, the latter looking sickly, even frail,
Radachowski's arm around Epstein's waist seeming to be all that was
holding him up. There were also plaques, the only one I recognized
given by the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, its "Liberty Award."

Radachowski pressed another key and said, "Got
it," into the telephone, followed by, "My direct dial? For
the voice mail—if it's working—use five-one-three,
two-two-oh-five .... right, bye." She hung up. “Sorry, John."

"The wonders of modern technology."

"When they're not on the fritz."

I gestured toward the computer screen. "You have
your calendar in there?"

"Yes, but more than that. The software I use for
docket control lets me overlay projected court deadlines and
appearances for any county I've got a case pending in. If a deadline
changes, the program ripples the modification through like a
dollar-item change on a spreadsheet. I want a printout of
tomorrow's—or next month's—events, I just hit another button and
carry that with me."

"And I remember being in an insurance office
when the arrival of a mag-card typewriter was like splitting the
atom."

A roar so loud and long it was literally a belly
laugh. "I like that." Then Radachowski leaned back in her
chair, elbows on its arms. Clasping her hands and steepling the index
fingers, she tapped the nails against her chin. "But you aren't
here for an update on office technology."

"No, I'm not."

"As Imogene brought you to my door, I was just
finishing with Frank Neely. He said to tell you anything I wanted to
about Woodrow."

Neely appeared to be a man of his word. "What do
you want to tell me?"

"First, that I believe your client killed my
friend and partner."

"I have reason to think maybe not."

"So Frank said. But you should know that I'm
speaking to you only because I, too, believe in the concept of
'innocent till proven guilty,' however . . . statistically inaccurate
it might be."

I wondered if Woodrow Gant, the former prosecutor,
had convinced her of that last part.

Radachowski seemed to sense what I was thinking as
she tapped her chin some more.

"Woodrow was a fine lawyer, and we all miss him
tremendously."

"Did you spend much time with Mr. Gant?"

"It's a small office, John, small enough that
each person interacts with the others a great deal during the day.
Staff meetings, lunches . . .” Her voice dropped. "In fact, I
remember an informal brown-bagger all we lawyers had in the
conference room a few weeks after the scene your client made there.
Woodrow mentioned that he was glad the Spaeth case was going to
settle, because Nicole had told him about her husband being 'fond of
firearms! "

Nicole. "You worked with Mr. Gant on the case,
then?"

"No. No, because of Epstein 8 Neely's size, we
often bill hours on each other's cases, but Woodrow and I less than
most."

"Why was that?"

"He did mostly domestic," said Radachowski.
"That's divorces, as you probably know. I'm more civil
litigation, with a little charitable organizations work thrown in."

"Not so little, from the Wall of Fame."

The belly laugh again. "You get involved with
one, you get asked to speak at another. I'm proud of all, though."
Radachowski gestured toward the Lambda one. "Some more than
others."

"I don't know much about the Liberty Award, but
it's for legal work regarding the gay and lesbian community, right?"

"Regarding discrimination against us."
Radachowski waited for a reaction from me, but I don't think she saw
one. "I got that award the same night as a congressman and a
literary agent. You have any idea what it was like to be a woman—much
less a lesbian—graduating law school twenty years ago?"

"None."

Radachowski softened her eyes, bringing me into that
cone of friendship I'd noticed before. Must work wonders with a jury.

"Today it's different, John. Many law schools
are almost fifty-fifty male/female, with a number of female faculty.
While women comprise only ten or fifteen percent of the partners in
most large law firms, that will change as today's female graduates
move in and up by sheer force of numbers and ability.

Back in my time, though, there were literally more
black males than women of any color in my graduating class, and only
a handful of declared gays or lesbians." Radachowski seemed to
go inside herself for a moment. "The fall of my senior year, all
the big Boston firms interviewed me, mainly because, one, I had the
grades and, two, my law school had a placement policy that forbade
overt discrimination based on gender or sexual 'preference,' as they
called sexual 'orientation' in those days." Then the eyes
hardened a bit, like wary animals turning angry behind the curved
walls of a glass cage. "However, there was some obvious
discomfort about how I'd 'fit in' with the other lawyers already
there."

"Christmas parties and firm outings—"

"—to concerns about loitering with innocent
young secretaries in the ladies' room." Radachowski stopped.
"But one interviewer was different. He looked down at my résumé,
and instead of focusing on the gay/lesbian extracurricular stuff, he
asked me what I wanted to do. And, given how little I knew then about
how the legal system worked, I told him ‘become a . . .' " For
the first time, Radachowski seemed to grope for her words. " 'A
litigator, try jury cases.' Well, the man indicated he thought I'd be
good at it. That interviewer was—"

"Uta," said the voice of Patricia from the
door. "I left those files and messages—oh, sorry, I didn't
know you . . ."

"That's all right," said Radachowski.

"Will you be needing me to do anything else?"

"Not just now, Patricia."

I heard shoes along the carpet outside.

Radachowski shook her head. "Temp," she
said to me, lightly. "Trying to do a good job, but a wee bit
dense on matters of protocol."

"Not to mention stepping on your line."

The big-toothed smile. "As you've probably
guessed, that man at my interview was Frank Neely. He got Leonard
Epstein to swing with him, and the firm's hiring committee made me an
offer."

Hiring committee? "I thought they were the
firm?"

"I'm talking two stops ago."

"Then I don't get what you mean."

Radachowski spread her large hands on the desk. “The
old firm that hired me was . . . Well, never mind the name of the
place. Let's just call it A, B & C."

"Okay."

"A, B & C thought it was quite something for
them to have hired a lawyer named 'Epstein' or even 'Neely' thirty
years before me, if you get my drift."

Meaning "restrictions" based on religion
and ethnicity. "I understand."

"Well, A, B & C began to lose some of their
best players as those attorneys realized they couldn't change a
partnership structure embedded in the nineteenth century. A number of
the lawyers—including Frank and Len—broke off to form a new
firm."

"But since you said ‘two stops ago,' I take it
that 'new' firm wasn't this current one."

"Right."

I thought back to my one year of evening division law
school. "Am I also right in thinking that A, B & C couldn't
impose a covenant not to compete on its former lawyers?"

"You are. Violation of the Rules of Professional
Responsibility, though I have to tell you, it's just a guild
protection rule."

"How so?"

"If you're an engineer or a sales manager, your
employer can get you to sign a covenant, then get it
enforced—reasonably as to geography, duration, and scope of
services—if you try to go work for a competitor. You're an attorney
and your law firm tries that, it's against public policy."

"Putting lawyers kind of above the law applied
to the rest of us."

"Kind of. Anyway, let's call the second firm D,
E & F. Prank and Len insisted as a conditionof forming that firm
that I be allowed to join it as a partner. There was still some
resistance—you ever hear the term 'CASP'?"

"Casp?"

"C-A-S-P."

"I don't think so."

"It stands for ‘Catholic Anglo-Saxon
Protestant! "

The light dawned. "People who've been
discriminated against themselves becoming—"

"—that which they profess to despise the most.
There were a few of them who wouldn't hesitate to use the words
'lezzie' and 'dyke'—or even 'Polack,' for that matter—when I
wasn't around. But Frank and Len wouldn't stand for it."