He cocks his head. “Now why do you think, Mary, Mary?” Suddenly he grabs the door and slams it shut. “Alone at last,” he says, with a dry chuckle.
I find myself rising, involuntarily. I scan my desk for a pair of scissors or a letter opener. Nothing’s there except a stapler and a dictaphone. I have no protection. I back up and feel the cold window at my back.
“Aren’t you standing kind of close to the window, Mary?”
I glance over my shoulder. The clock face glows fiercely at me through a thunderstorm. We’re forty stories up, in a tower of black mirrors that flexes and groans in high winds. I tell myself to stay cool. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re doing down here, Sam?”
His eyebrow arches in surprise. “Enough with the small talk, is that the idea?”
“Exactly.”
“Fine. Two reasons. One: I’m having a reception for the Rules Committee tomorrow night in Conference Room A. Eight o’clock. The litigation partners and the district court judges are invited. You should be there.”
“What?” I don’t understand.
“There’s a reception tomorrow night, and I want you there. Conference Room A. Eight o’clock.”
“Me, at a partners’ reception?”
Berkowitz looks at me like I’m crazy. “Yes, you. Do you go to receptions, Mary, Mary?”
“Yes.” I relax slightly.
“Bring Carrier. You two are pals, aren’t you?”
“Yes. We are.” I breathe easier and step away from the window. I hear a thunderclap outside and step even farther away from the window.
“Good.” He fingers his breast pocket again. “Well. Okay. Two: This goddamned thing with Tom Lombardo. I got a call today. He said you saw what happened.”
“I did.”
“Well, forget you did.”
“What?”
“Forget about it.”
“I’m just supposed to forget—”
“Yes. That’s an order.” His tone is gruff.
I’m beginning to understand what he’s saying. “I get it — it’s a deal. You want to trade off my partnership and Judy’s for my forgetting about what happened with Lombardo? And maybe to Brent?”
“Mary, it’s none of your fucking business!” he explodes, out of nowhere. With his face suddenly florid, he looks like a devil. But I fight the devils now and win. Fuck back, even when you’re fucking with the devil himself.
“Don’t you scream at me!” I lean toward him. We’re almost nose to nose over the desk. Berkowitz, the King of Fucking Back, and me, a pretender to the throne.
Suddenly, he breaks into a sheepish smile. The redness in his face vanishes. “That’s what my wife always says.”
“You ought to listen.”
He laughs loudly. “Lombardo’s right. You got balls.”
“No, I don’t. So what was it about?”
“Would you believe me if I told you it’s not your concern?”
“You mean not to worry my pretty little head?”
“Okay. Down, girl.” He looks amused but still tense. Whatever it is, it’s driving him nuts. “All right, it’s about Delia. She’s got her hand in the till. She’s taken a hundred thou over five years.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I were.” His face falls, he shakes his head. “I thought it was somebody in Accounting, maybe that asshole bean counter we let push us around. I didn’t think it was her. It never even occurred to me it was her. I asked Lombardo to track it down for me, but I didn’t want to believe him.”
“So you hit him?”
He looks pained. “Hey, you know, it hurts. She betrayed me after I took good care of her. I loved that kid.”
I meet his eye. Was Brent right about them?
“Don’t give me that look. I know everybody says I’m running around with her. I let’em think it. Fact is, she’s my best friend’s kid, her father was my sparring partner. He and I were like this.” He holds up two tight fingers in a gesture I haven’t seen in ages.
“For real?”
“For real. I’m her godfather. The first Jewish godfather in history.”
I laugh, with relief. Part of the puzzle falls into place. “Is that why she’s so mad lately?”
“Oh, yeah, Delia’s mad at the world; she must’ve seen it coming. She won’t even talk to me, even though I convinced the policy committee not to prosecute her. All she lost was her job, and we got a payment schedule worked out. She throws in one, I throw in ten. Can I drive a bargain or what?”
“You do okay.”
He slaps his breast pocket again for a cigarette. “Anyway, she left this morning. Now I have no secretary. Got a good one I can steal?”
I think of Miss Pershing. “No.”
“So. We all better here, Mary, Queen of Scots?”
“All better.”
“Okay, I gotta go. I don’t have to tell you not to mention this, do I?”
“Nope.”
“Tomorrow night,” he calls out, as he opens the door and walks out.
I collapse into my chair, hugely relieved. Tired. Drained. So the fight I saw wasn’t about Brent after all, and Berkowitz isn’t having an affair with Delia. I wonder what Brent would say to that revelation, but Brent isn’t here. I miss him. And I think I know who killed him.
My eyes fall on the note, sticking out from underneath the mail. Ned, my lover. My love. I feel heartsick and scared. He must be crazy, really crazy. Maybe that stuff he told me about the Prozac was just a story; I never did go back and check the dates on the bottles. Is the man I slept with really capable of killing Brent? And Mike, a year earlier? Maybe, if he’s obsessed with me like Judy says. And am I safe from him, or will he turn on me now that I’ve rejected him?
I check the clock. 7:02. Too late for me to be alone in the office. Rain falls in sheets on City Hall; I feel the building sway slightly. I lock the note in my middle drawer and leave for Judy’s office.
But I forget all about it when I see her.
30
“I’m fired,” Judy says flatly.
“What?!”
“I fucked up.” Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, as if she’s been crying hard. She slouches in her chair. Her chin sags into a sturdy hand.
“What happened?” I sit down.
“The Mitsuko brief is in the hopper. The Supremes reversed a similar argument in a case decided yesterday. I didn’t even know the case was up on appeal, because I hadn’t checked the cites yet. Great, huh? A first-year mistake.” Her jowl wrinkles into her hand like a basset hound’s. “I’m not paying attention lately.”
“Oh, Jude. How’d you catch it?”
“Guess.”
I flash on Martin, banging into Miss Pershing on the way downstairs. “Martin?”
“Nope. Guess again.”
“Not the client.”
“Yes, the client. Certainly, the client. Who better to catch you in the biggest blunder of your career than the client? The GC faxed us a copy of the Supreme Court decision after we faxed him a draft of my brief. Don’t you just love faxes? You can find out you fucked up when you’re still in mid-fuckup. That’s what I call technology!”
I groan. That must be why Martin had the faxes.
“Wait. That’s not all. The Third Circuit brief is due in two days. I have forty-eight hours to produce a winning brief or I’m fired.”
“Who said that, Martin? He can’t do that!”
“No? I’ve pissed off a house client and embarrassed the firm. Mitsuko’s appeal is in jeopardy — it’s their legal right, not ours.” She rakes her fingers through her hair, and it sticks up in funny places, making her look demented. “It was such a stupid mistake, I should resign.”
“You’d better not. We can rewrite the brief.”
“We?”
“We. I help. We do it together.”
“You can’t help, Mary. You don’t know the record.”
“I don’t need to, you do. Besides, what you need is a n
ew legal argument. A new angle.”
She smiles wanly. “I appreciate it, but it’s hopeless. I’ve thought about every argument. This was the best.”
“Jude! Where’s that pioneering western spirit? The Oregon Trail? The Louisiana Purchase? The Missouri Compromise?”
“Stop trying to cheer me up. And your geography sucks.”
“Listen, I beat the devil today. I can do anything!”
“You’re crazy. We don’t have time.”
“We have all night. It’s pouring outside and I have to stick with you anyway. You’re my bodyguard.”
“Give it up, Mary.”
“No. Tell me why we lost Mitsuko, besides the fact that Martin has no business being in front of a jury unless they all went to Choate.”
“Mary, it’s no use.”
“Tell me, Judith Carrier!”
“Aaargh,” she growls, in frustration. “Okay. I think the jury just didn’t understand the case. There were too many facts. Too much financial data. The legal issues were too abstract—”
“Were the jurors allowed to take notes?”
“Yes. Judge Rasmussen always lets—”
“Yes!” I have an idea. I tell it to Judy and she loves it instantly, realizing that even if it goes down in flames, it’ll be a blaze of glory.
She calls Kurt and makes two pots of coffee, one for her and one for me. I call Lombardo and give him the night off, but he doesn’t even thank me. We lock ourselves in a study room in the library and burn up the Lexis hookup. After a couple of hours, we lock ourselves in a war room on Gluttony and start drafting. We send out for Chinese food twice, once at eight o’clock and again at ten o’clock. We order to mein both times. After our second dinner, Stalling’s decrepit security guard, whom Judy calls Mack Sennett, knocks on the door.
“You girls okay in there?” he asks, in a Ronald Reagan voice.
“We’re fine now,” I call back. “But keep checking.”
“Roger wilco,” he says.
Judy changes his nickname to Roger Wilco. I re-check the lock on the door.
At midnight, we persuade Roger Wilco to be our lookout while we stage a giddy raid on Catering Services for potato chips, chocolate cupcakes, and more coffee. Judy tries to snort the Coffeemate, and we think this is wildly funny. The coffee sobers us up and we draft until dawn in the locked war room. Finally, at the end of the night, we put the draft on Miss Pershing’s desk, because she gets in earlier than Judy’s secretary. We shower in the locked locker room, me for the second day in a row. When we get out of the shower, we realize we have no clean clothes.
“Let’s just switch clothes,” Judy says.
“What?”
“At least it’s a change.”
I pop Judy’s tent of a peasant dress over my head. It billows to my ankles like a parachute. When I emerge from the embroidered hole in its top, Judy is still wrapped in a towel, holding up my tailored white dress.
“Do you need a bra with this dress?” she asks.
“Of course.”
“I don’t have a bra.”
“What do you mean you don’t have a bra?”
“I never wear a bra.”
“You don’t wear a bra to work? At Stalling and Webb? That’s a federal offense!”
“You can’t tell, my breasts are so small. You want to see?”
“No! Jesus Christ, will you cover up?”
“We’re both women, Mary.” She teases me by starting to unwrap the towel.
“I know that. That’s why.” I unhook my bra and slip it out through the wide sleeves of the smock. “Here, take mine. It’s one size fits all. Nobody can tell if I’m wearing one in this dress.”
“The bra off your back? What a pal!”
While Judy slips into the bra, I go over to the mirror and try to do something with my limp hair. A project for St. Rita of Cascia, Saint of the Impossible.
“Well, what do you think?” Judy asks.
I turn around. The dress, which is boxy on me, is too small for Judy, and it hugs each curve of her body. She looks dynamite. “Sell it, baby.”
She gives the hem a final tug. “Can it, baby.”
After we’re ready, we troop out to see if Miss Pershing has arrived. She’s closing up her clear plastic umbrella when I spot her, in jelly boots and a cellophane rain bonnet, at the secretaries’ closet.
“Good morning, Miss Pershing.”
She looks me over and smiles sweetly. “You look very pretty today, Miss DiNunzio. Very feminine.”
Judy slaps a hearty hand on my shoulder. “Doesn’t she though? I helped her pick out that dress.”
I give Judy a look. “Thank you, Miss Pershing. How was your book club last night?”
“Wonderful. Next week is Mary Higgins Clark.”
“Sounds great. Now I have to warn you, today is going to be a tough day, because Judy and I are working on an appellate brief. We need to finish it by the end of today. It’s on your desk, so could you start on it right away? We don’t have time to deal with Word Processing.”
“What about that other matter? The one we discussed yesterday.” She meets my eye significantly.
“It will have to wait, Miss P.”
“Got it!” She squares her shoulders.
“Call me as soon as you finish each page. I’ll come get it. Meantime, please hold my calls. And don’t tell anyone where I am, especially Ned Waters. We have to rewrite the whole day, because the brief has to be filed tomorrow.”
“Not to worry.” And she’s off, marching to her desk in her rain helmet and jelly boots.
31
We christen it the Shit from Shinola Brief and work on it all day in the war room. We run through draft after draft and eat everything that Catering Services carts up to us. We’re alternately dizzy, nauseated, euphoric, and cranky. By the end of the day, we have a terrible case of indigestion and a terrific brief. We place the final draft on Martin’s desk. His office is dark, and the empty eyes of the owls follow us as we leave. “I hate those fucking owls,” I say to Judy.
“They’re the only friends he has.”
My fatigue is catching up with me. “Think he’ll like the brief?”
Judy nods happily. “He has to. It’s brilliant. Thanks to you.”
“No.”
“Yes. You, Mary.” She gives me a playful push, which sends me crashing into the wall.
“What do you eat for breakfast?” I ask, as she skips ahead.
Back at the conference room, we pull up identical swivel chairs. I collapse into mine while Judy plays in hers, spinning in a circle. Miss Pershing appears in the doorway and steals a glance at Judy, going around and around. “Miss DiNunzio, aren’t you ladies through for the day?”
“No, we have a reception to go to upstairs.”
“Wheeeeeeee!” says Judy.
“I would think you’d be too tired for a reception. You both worked so hard.”
“We are, at least I am. But we have to go.”
“We must, we must! We must increase our bust!” Judy sings, spinning. Miss Pershing looks away.
“Miss Pershing, thank you for everything you did today. I appreciate it very much, and so does my co-counsel the lunatic.”
Judy stops spinning and grins, gaps on display. “God, I’m dizzy.” She holds her forehead. “Miss Pershing, I want to thank you for putting up with us, especially Mary. She can be so difficult when she’s under pressure.”
“I don’t know, I haven’t found that to be the case.” She smiles warmly.
“Thank you, Miss P.”
“I noticed you didn’t send out the… messages we discussed.” Miss Pershing looks nervously in Judy’s direction.
“It’s all right, Miss Pershing. Judy knows about the subpoenas.”
She seems disappointed. “Oh. Well. Why didn’t you mail them? Was something wrong with the way I filled them out?”
“No, they were fine, but I’m going to wait on them.”
“Well then,�
� Miss Pershing says. “Nighty-night, girls.”
“Nighty-night,” I say.
Judy’s eyes widen comically. “Nighty-night?”
“Say nighty-night to Miss Pershing, Judy.”
But Judy’s in hysterics, and Miss Pershing is long gone.
Before we leave for the reception on Avarice, we go to the locker room to freshen up. Judy offers me my clothes back, but I decline. I’m starting to like her artsy smock, and even my own bralessness. It makes me feel looser, freer. I splash water on my face to bring me back to life. Holy water, I think crazily. “Look, Jude, I’m reborn.”
“You’re not reborn, you’re exhausted.” She taps the soap dispenser. “You’ve been up for two days, kid. Remember your call to Lombardo? That was yesterday morning.”
I rinse my face with warm water. I think of Lombardo, then Berkowitz, and finally Ned. My heart turns bitter. “You know, you were right. It was Ned who sent the notes. I can’t believe it, but I think he killed Brent. And maybe even Mike.” I twist off the taps with a sigh.
Judy looks surprised. “How do you know?”
“I got another note. A love note, this time. It has to be from him. It came in the interoffice mail.” I bury my face in a nubby hand towel. Maybe I’ll never come out.
“Stay with me tonight. Kurt’s at the studio.”
I throw the towel at the hamper. It misses, but I don’t bother to retrieve it. “Thanks, but I don’t need to. I’m safe now. No more subpoenas, no more lawsuit. I’ll call Lombardo after the reception and have him question Ned.”
“What if you can’t find Lombardo? You’re not going home.”
“Alice hasn’t eaten in days. She’ll starve.”
“So what’s your point?”
We finish up, and take the elevator to Avarice. Roger Wilco greets us when we get off and waves us grandly into Conference Room A. I hardly recognize it; it’s been transformed. A string quartet plays Vivaldi in a corner. Lights glow softly on dimmer switches I never knew existed, and tuxedoed waiters pass through the crowd. The horse-shoe table, covered with a pristine linen tablecloth, is laden with silver trays of jumbo shrimp, fresh fruit, and crudités. It looks like an expense account version of the Last Supper.
“Christ Almighty,” I say, under my breath.
Everywhere That Mary Went Page 23
