The Street Lawyer (6 page)

“Was he a squatter?”

“Damned sure was. They’re all squatters. Our client is trying to clean up some of that mess.”

“Are you sure he was a squatter?”

His chin dropped and his eyes turned red. Then he took a breath. “What are you after?”

“Could I see the file?”

“No. It’s none of your business.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Who is your supervising partner?” He yanked out his pen as if to take down the name of the person who would reprimand me.

“Rudolph Mayes.”

He wrote in large strokes. “I’m very busy,” he said. “Would you please leave?”

“Why can’t I see the file?”

“Because it’s mine, and I said no. How’s that?”

“Maybe that’s not good enough.”

“It’s good enough for you. Why don’t you leave?” He stood, his hand shaking as he pointed to the door. I smiled at him and left.

The paralegal heard everything, and we exchanged puzzled looks as I passed his desk. “What an ass,” he said very quietly, almost mouthing the words.

I smiled again and nodded my agreement. An ass and a fool. If Chance had been pleasant and explained that Arthur or some other honcho from above had ordered the file sealed, then I wouldn’t have been as suspicious. But it was obvious there was something in the file.

Getting it would be the challenge.

WITH ALL the cell phones Claire and I owned—pocket, purse, and car, not to mention a couple of pagers—communication should’ve been a simple matter. But nothing was simple with our marriage. We hooked up around nine. She was exhausted from another one of her days, which were inevitably more fatiguing than anything I could possibly have done. It was a game we shamelessly played—my job is more important because I’m a doctor/lawyer.

I was tiring of the games. I could tell she was pleased that my brush with death had produced aftershocks, that I’d left the office to wander the streets. No doubt her day had been far more productive than mine.

Her goal was to become the greatest female neurosurgeon in the country, a brain surgeon even males would turn to when all hope was lost. She was a brilliant student, fiercely determined, blessed with enormous stamina. She would bury the men, just as she was slowly burying me, a well-seasoned marathon man from the halls of Drake & Sweeney. The race was getting old.

She drove a Miata sports car, no four-wheel drive, and I was worried about her in the bad weather. She would be through in an hour, and it would take that long for me to drive to Georgetown Hospital. I would pick her up there, and we would try to find a restaurant. If not, it would be Chinese carryout, our standard fare.

I began arranging papers and objects on my desk, careful to ignore the neat row of my ten most current files. I kept only ten on my desk, a method I’d learned from Rudolph, and I spent time with each file every day. Billing was a factor. My top ten invariably included the wealthiest clients, regardless of how pressing their legal problems. Another trick from Rudolph.

I was expected to bill twenty-five hundred hours a year. That’s fifty hours a week, fifty weeks a year. My average billing rate was three hundred dollars an hour, so I would gross for my beloved firm a total of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They paid me a hundred and twenty thousand of this, plus another thirty for benefits, and assigned two hundred thousand to overhead. The partners kept the rest, divided annually
by some horrendously complex formula that usually caused fistfights.

It was rare for one of our partners to earn less than a million a year, and some earned over two. And once I became a partner, I would be a partner for life. So if I made it when I was thirty-five, which happened to be the fast track I was on, then I could expect thirty years of glorious earnings and immense wealth.

That was the dream that kept us at our desks at all hours of the day and night.

I was scribbling these numbers, something I did all the time and something I suspect every lawyer in our firm did, when the phone rang. It was Mordecai Green.

“Mr. Brock,” he said politely, his voice clearly audible but competing with a din in the background.

“Yes. Please call me Michael.”

“Very well. Look, I made some calls, and you have nothing to worry about. The blood test was negative.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Just thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”

“Thanks,” I said again as the racket rose behind him. “Where are you?”

“At a homeless shelter. A big snow brings ’em in faster than we can feed them, so it takes all of us to keep up. Gotta run.”

THE DESK was old mahogany, the rug was Persian, the chairs were a rich crimson leather, the technology was state-of-the-art, and as I studied my finely appointed office, I wondered, for the first time in many years there, how much all of it cost. Weren’t we just chasing money? Why did we work so hard; to buy a richer rug, an older desk?

There in the warmth and coziness of my beautiful room, I thought of Mordecai Green, who at that moment was volunteering his time in a busy shelter, serving food to the cold and hungry, no doubt with a warm smile and a pleasant word.

Both of us had law degrees, both of us had passed the same bar exam, both of us were fluent in the tongue of legalese. We were kindred to some degree. I helped my clients swallow up competitors so they could add more zeros to the bottom line, and for this I would become rich. He helped his clients eat and find a warm bed.

I looked at the scratchings on my legal pad—the earnings and the years and the path to wealth—and I was saddened by them. Such blatant and unashamed greed.

The phone startled me.

“Why are you at the office?” Claire asked, each word spoken slowly because each word was covered with ice.

I looked in disbelief at my watch. “I, uh, well, a client called from the West Coast. It’s not snowing out there.”

I think it was a lie I’d used before. It didn’t matter.

“I am waiting, Michael. Should I walk?”

“No. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

I’d kept her waiting before. It was part of the game—we were much too busy to be prompt.

I ran from the building, into the storm, not really too concerned that another night had been ruined.

Six

T
HE SNOW had finally stopped. Claire and I sipped our coffee by the kitchen window. I was reading the paper by the light of a brilliant morning sun. They had managed to keep National Airport open.

“Let’s go to Florida,” I said. “Now.”

She gave me a withering look. “Florida?”

“Okay, the Bahamas. We can be there by early afternoon.”

“There’s no way.”

“Sure there is. I’m not going to work for a few days, and—”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m cracking up, and around the firm if you crack up, then you get a few days off.”

“You are cracking up.”

“I know. It’s kinda fun, really. People give you space, treat you with velvet gloves, kiss your ass. Might as well make the most of it.”

The tight face returned, and she said, “I can’t.”

And that was the end of that. It was a whim, and I knew she had too many obligations. It was a cruel thing to do, I decided as I returned to the paper, but I didn’t feel bad about it. She wouldn’t have gone with me under any circumstances.

She was suddenly in a hurry—appointments, classes, rounds, the life of an ambitious young surgical resident. She showered and changed and was ready to go. I drove her to the hospital.

We didn’t talk as we inched through the snow-filled streets.

“I’m going to Memphis for a couple of days,” I said matter-of-factly when we arrived at the hospital entrance on Reservoir Street.

“Oh really,” she said with no discernible reaction.

“I need to see my parents. It’s been almost a year. I figure this is a good time. I don’t do well in snow, and I’m not in the mood for work. Cracking up, you know.”

“Well, call me,” she said, opening her door. Then she shut it—no kiss, no good-bye, no concern. I watched her hurry down the sidewalk and disappear into the building.

It was over. And I hated to tell my mother.

MY PARENTS were in their early sixties, both healthy and trying gamely to enjoy forced retirement. Dad was an airline pilot for thirty years. Mom had been a bank manager. They worked hard, saved well, and provided a comfortable upper-middle-class home for us. My two brothers and I had the best private schools we could get into.

They were solid people, conservative, patriotic, free of bad habits, fiercely devoted to each other. They went to church on Sundays, the parade on July the Fourth, Rotary Club once a week, and they traveled whenever they wanted.

They were still grieving over my brother Warner’s divorce three years earlier. He was an attorney in Atlanta who married his college sweetheart, a Memphis girl from a family we knew. After two kids, the marriage went south. His wife got custody and moved to Portland. My parents got to see the grandkids once a year if all went well. It was a subject I never brought up.

I rented a car at the Memphis airport and drove east into the sprawling suburbs where the white people lived. The blacks had the city; the whites, the suburbs. Sometimes the blacks would move into a subdivision, and the whites would move to another one, farther away. Memphis crept eastward, the races running from each other.

My parents lived on a golf course, in a new glass
house designed so that every window overlooked a fairway. I hated the house because the fairway was always busy. I didn’t express my opinions, though.

I had called from the airport, so Mother was waiting with great anticipation when I arrived. Dad was on the back nine somewhere.

“You look tired,” she said after the hug and kiss. It was her standard greeting.

“Thanks, Mom. You look great.” And she did. Slender and bronze from her daily tennis and tanning regimen at the country club.

She fixed iced tea and we drank it on the patio, where we watched other retirees fly down the fairway in their golf carts.

“What’s wrong?” she said before a minute passed, before I took the first sip.

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Where’s Claire? You guys never call us, you know. I haven’t heard her voice in two months.”

“Claire’s fine, Mom. We’re both alive and healthy and working very hard.”

“Are you spending enough time together?”

“No.”

“Are you spending any time together?”

“Not much.”

She frowned and rolled her eyes with motherly concern. “Are you having trouble?” she asked, on the attack.

“Yes.”

“I knew it. I knew it. I could tell by your voice on the
phone that something was wrong. Surely you’re not headed for a divorce too. Have you tried counseling?”

“No. Slow down.”

“Then why not? She’s a wonderful person, Michael. Give the marriage everything you have.”

“We’re trying, Mother. But it’s difficult.”

“Affairs? Drugs? Alcohol? Gambling? Any of the bad things?”

“No. Just two people going their separate ways. I work eighty hours a week. She works the other eighty.”

“Then slow down. Money isn’t everything.” Her voice broke just a little, and I saw wetness in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mom. At least we don’t have kids.”

She bit her lip and tried to be strong, but she was dying inside. And I knew exactly what she was thinking: two down, one to go. She would take my divorce as a personal failure, the same way she broke down with my brother’s. She would find some way to blame herself.

I didn’t want the pity. To move things along to more interesting matters, I told her the story of Mister, and, for her benefit, downplayed the danger I’d been in. If the story made the Memphis paper, my parents had missed it.

“Are you all right?” she asked, horrified.

“Of course. The bullet missed me. I’m here.”

“Oh, thank God. I mean, well, emotionally are you all right?”

“Yes, Mother, I’m all together. No broken pieces. The firm wanted me to take a couple of days off, so I came home.”

“You poor thing. Claire, and now this.”

“I’m fine. We had a lot of snow last night, and it was a good time to leave.”

“Is Claire safe?”

“As safe as anybody in Washington. She lives at the hospital, probably the smartest place to be in that city.”

“I worry about you so much. I see the crime statistics, you know. It’s a very dangerous city.”

“Almost as dangerous as Memphis.”

We watched a ball land near the patio, and waited for its owner to appear. A stout lady rolled out of a golf cart, hovered over the ball for a second, then shanked it badly.

Mother left to get more tea, and to wipe her eyes.

I DON’T know which of my parents got the worst end of my visit. My mother wanted strong families with lots of grandchildren. My father wanted his boys to move quickly up the ladder and enjoy the rewards of our hard-earned success.

Late that afternoon my dad and I did nine holes. He played; I drank beer and drove the cart. Golf had yet to work its magic on me. Two cold ones and I was ready to talk. I had repeated the Mister tale over lunch, so he figured I was just loafing for a couple of days, collecting myself before I roared back into the arena.

“I’m getting kind of sick of the big firm, Dad,” I said as we sat by the third tee, waiting for the foursome
ahead to clear. I was nervous, and my nervousness irritated me greatly. It was my life, not his.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means I’m tired of what I’m doing.”

“Welcome to the real world. You think the guy working a drill press in a factory doesn’t get tired of what he’s doing? At least you’re getting rich.”

So he took round one, almost by a knockout. Two holes later, as we stomped through the rough looking for his ball, he said, “Are you changing jobs?”

“Thinking about it.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. It’s too early. I haven’t been looking for another position.”

“Then how do you know the grass is greener if you haven’t been looking?” He picked up his ball and walked off.

I drove alone on the narrow paved trail while he stalked down the fairway chasing his shot, and I wondered why that gray-haired man out there scared me so much. He had pushed all of his sons to set goals, work hard, strive to be Big Men, with everything aimed at making lots of money and living the American dream. He had certainly paid for anything we needed.