There was an accusatory silence. "Mrs. Metzger, a child can't concentrate when she goes hungry. Karen said she didn't have breakfast."
"She had cereal. Cheerios with a banana." At least it had been sitting on the table when Gail had kissed her good-bye. "Fine. I'll take care of it. . . Yes, before eleven."
Gail swiveled her chair back around. Eric Ramsay was watching her, as if waiting for Gail to tell him to run out and buy lunch for her kid at a convenience store and deliver it to Biscayne Academy.
She said, "Well. I guess that's it for now. Any questions?"
"Nope." He stood up.
Eric left with a stack of files and Gail dialed her mother. Irene Connor was just on her way out. Again? Well, all right, if the poor little thing doesn't have any lunch. Really, Gail, you need to make arrangements—
Gail hung up and closed her eyes on her fists for a moment, wondering if she should call Karen's psychologist about this. Later. She went to the door of her office, leaning forward into the corridor, her hands on either side of the frame.
"Miriam!"
There was a hearing scheduled at the Dade County Courthouse at ten-thirty, and she wanted to make sure all the documents were ready. Miriam said of course they were, and opened the file to show her: motion, exhibits, and cases to support her position, with copies for the court and for the other party. As if Miriam would ever forget anything. She had put them all in the file, neatly catalogued with sticky notes.
"Excellent." Gail made another checkmark on her list.
Miriam was a petite twenty-one, with curly brown hair to her waist, fluffy bangs on top, and bright red lipstick. She went four evenings a week to the local state university, making straight A's in accounting while her husband Danny worked twenty-four on, forty-eight off with Hialeah Fire-Rescue and her parents kept the baby. Miriam was second-generation Cuban-American, a fizzy blend of two cultures. She had romantic ideas about lawyers and wanted to go to law school. Gail didn't have the heart to remind her what the public thought of lawyers these days.
"There were some phone calls while you and Eric were talking." Miriam dug into a pocket of the sweater she wore. She had put on one of Gail's with the sleeves rolled up. The lower edge reached to the hem of her miniskirt. Miriam wasn't supposed to wear miniskirts to work, but as with other ridiculo Hartwell Black policies, she paid no attention. She wasn't supposed to speak Spanish on the job either.
She pulled out a stack of messages.
"Holy God," Gail said. She shook two Excedrin out of the bottle she kept in her top drawer and downed them with the last of her coffee, cold as tap water. Miriam read the messages. Some were leftovers from two or three days ago and could wait. Others couldn't.
"Where in hell is that part-time girl we were supposed to get this week?" Gail grumbled.
"Still working on the AeroMexico case. I could call a temp agency."
"And I'd have to pay for it myself. Never mind. What else?'
"Paul Robineau called."
"Oh, good. Did he say what for?" Nothing came to mind but the case she wanted. Larry must have come through.
"He just said come up and see him when you have the chance." Miriam's expression said she would like to know what that was about, the managing partner summoning her boss to his office, but Gail did not elaborate.
Miriam pressed the last message to her small bosom. "And this is from tu novio."
Gail waggled her fingers and Miriam handed it over. "He is far too dignified to be referred to as a boyfriend." She read it. Anthony, calling to confirm lunch, which was the best they could do. He had a trial in federal court to prepare for; she was in her usual midweek crush.
"When he called back I told him yes," Miriam said. "Is that okay?"
"Indeed yes. We're even going to discuss business."
"Mentira-a-a-a." Lie. She grinned and busied herself collecting letters Gail had signed.
Twenty minutes later Gail had worked her way through half of her messages. She had her pumps off and her toes curled over the edge of a lower desk drawer pulled halfway out.
Miriam had come back in to clip papers into the files scattered around the office.
Gail was on the telephone. "Go ahead and appeal it, if you feel that strongly ... An extension? Don't ask me that. You're past the deadline already ... Marty, listen to me. Listen ... Fifty. I think it's more than reasonable ... No, we can't."
At the edge of Gail's vision, the flutter and shift of papers in and out of files gradually stopped. Often Gail would become aware that Miriam was intently watching her, as a young dancer offstage might watch the ballerina in the lights. Close enough to see the sweat and concentration, too far to know the ache of muscles and tendons.
"Seventy-five? Uh-uh. Can't do it." She sighed. "Maybe. But you pay the costs ... Well, I hope so, Marty ... you too."
She hung up. Miriam was still watching. "When you become a lawyer, ninita, keep a copy of the Rules of Civil Procedure in your purse and learn them by heart. Our esteemed opposing counsel forgot to file his amended counterclaim, and we've got him in the crosshairs."
"So he's lost the case?"
"Well—" She reached for her time log. "Marty Gerson is a decent guy. If I screwed him over, he'd do the same to me one day. There's no point in being a complete meanie."
She wrote the code for Tel conf w/opp atty. Then she wrote the amount of time that would show up on the bill: .5—half an hour. It hadn't been half an hour, but point-one would look silly. Point-five was better. $125. She visualized Jack Warner, head of the litigation department, putting down 1.0 at his $500 rate. Jack would get huffy if you asked him why. Why? Because I just kicked the other guy in the nuts, and I deserve it. So point-five was an acceptable middle ground, Gail decided.
She tore off the time slip.
Sometimes gifts would drop from heaven like that, another attorney's lapse. Sometimes—more often—she would have to wrench them out of stone. Either way, she would feel a giddy rush of satisfaction.
"Miriam. How would you like to go with me to the courthouse? I need you to copy the probate file on Althea Tillett."
"Sure. I could do that."
Gail said, "I'd use the regular runner, but this isn't a case yet, and there's nothing to bill it to." She picked up a folder from her credenza. No file number, just a handwritten name: Norris. "Get me the Petition for Administration, Appointment of Personal Representative, whatever they've got." She slid the folder across the desk. "And find out how we file this thing. A collateral action in Circuit Court? Petition in Probate? I've never done one of these."
"No problem. I'll ask Claudia in the probate department." Miriam had it figured out: Don't waste time in the library when you can ask a head paralegal, who usually knows procedure better than an attorney.
Gail said, "All right, but don't tell her what it's for. I'd like to keep this buried for a while. Also get me a copy of the Probate Code and the statutes on wills."
Miriam didn't write it down. She would remember everything, point by point. She looked up from the notes Gail had made in the conference yesterday with Patrick, and her brown eyes widened. "Mira! Ten million dollars! Is that how much this old lady had? Patrick Norris doesn't look like he comes from a rich family."
"Surprise, surprise."
Miriam left the room still reading, turning to the next page of notes. Gail opened the file on the case set for hearing at the courthouse.
Thinking about Patrick for the past couple of days had convinced Gail that he had been right to leave law school. He'd never been meant to play a lawyer's game of bluff and threaten. Jack Warner squashed opponents simply because he could, and the other side expected that from a top trial attorney. Patrick would extend the deadline to Marty Gerson; he would be trampled. Patrick would suffocate on time sheets and staff meetings and budgets and personnel complaints and the dozens of other nitpicking details of a law practice.
This wasn't what Gail had pictured either, entering law school. Then she had been as
naive as anybody. She had wanted to work at the EPA. Or in the juvenile courts. Or the Florida Department of Consumer Affairs. She and Patrick had hit it off immediately.
She had gradually become one of the friends he invited to his wood-frame cottage a few miles north of the university. On Saturday afternoons everybody would sit by the lake, drinking jug wine, arguing happily about the law and justice while the sun went down. Then they built a fire and drank more wine and argued some more. Patrick's spare, angular body seemed to quiver with conviction, and the flames danced in his eyes.
When Gail learned that Hartwell Black and Robineau wanted her for a summer clerkship, she waited till the other students had left before telling Patrick. She expected a comment about going over to the enemy, but he only said it was great news and squeezed her shoulder. Gail could feel his hand through her sweater. Could feel the bones and the light pressure of fingertips. Her wine was rocking in the glass, dark red in the firelight. She turned to Patrick, slid her fingers up his cheek through his beard, and kissed him.
She went alone to Patrick's house by the lake two or three other times that semester, looking in the rearview mirror before she turned onto the dirt road where he lived. Dave had been home in Miami selling powerboat parts and taking care of Karen, so that Gail could concentrate on her studies. Wretched with guilt and desire, she hadn't expected it to last with Patrick. When the affair sputtered out, she thought he was as relieved as she.
Dave had never known, but she tried to make it up to him anyway. She worked hard at Hartwell Black, joined the PTA, and helped Dave start his own business. She was as good a wife and mother as she knew how. Gradually their marriage turned brittle and joyless. It tottered along for a while on habit, then fell over stone dead when Dave left her.
Relationships don't last, her women friends had said, consoling. Count on your kids, your friends, your job, because men will leave you. Some do it by walking out, others in their minds, but eventually they all leave. Gail didn't know if that was true or not. She suspected her friends might work themselves into a melodramatic funk when they all got together and talked about men. Perhaps each still had more hope than she would admit.
Today at noon, upstairs in the law firm's elegant private club, Gail would have lunch with her lover, a man who could still do his half of the pre-liberated dance of the sexes: male pursuit. Anthony Luis Quintana Pedrosa liked silk boxers, Spanish cognac, and illegal Havana cigars. And—most wondrous of all—she believed him when he said no, he didn't have some other woman to go to when Gail was in trial for two weeks straight. She didn't tell her friends everything for fear of making them envious.
They had not known each other long. Last spring, when Gail had been accused of murder, Anthony was her defense attorney. That arrangement ended quickly: Legal ethics don't allow sleeping with a client. He turned her case over to another attorney and waited for it all to be over. When the charges were dropped, Anthony had taken her across the state to Captiva Island, where they came out of the room only long enough to watch the orange sun settling into the Gulf, the sky slowly turning velvet blue and starry.
Now they saw each other a dozen times a month, if that. Their schedules created Byzantine complications of timing. He was open one weekend; she had to prepare for trial. She had an evening alone; he had to fly out of town. Gail suspected it was better that way. When they did make love, it was magical; nothing existed but the two of them. See someone every day and God only knows what accretion of annoyances will finally outweigh the magic. Soap film on the shower doors. Leaky roofs. Chinese carry-out for dinner instead of risotto. A ten-year-old girl who didn't want him around. Then the regretful shrug, the murmured assurance that he still cared for her, would always care ...
With a sudden sharp intake of breath, Gail stood up from her chair, heart racing.
For one awful, panicky moment, she could not remember where she was supposed to be. The clock on her bookcase said 9:42.
She sat back down. The hearing was at ten-thirty. Good. Plenty of time. Miriam would have come in. Miriam had kept her from disaster more than once.
But over half an hour had ticked by, Gail staring at the heavy brown file, doing nothing at all.
Paul Robineau had a corner office on the sixteenth floor, with round-edged furniture and ivory carpet, the monochrome broken by a vivid abstract painting in the colors of Biscayne Bay. From where she sat, Gail couldn't see the bay, only the sky and the puffy white clouds reflected in the windows of a nearby bank building. At the opposite end of the room, the CNN Business Channel was playing soundlessly behind Robineau's desk, stock prices sliding along the bottom of the screen.
He stood halfway in the corridor speaking to his secretary, telling her to hold his calls, he wouldn't be long. He came back in and closed the door.
If he had possessed the least scrap of humor, Paul Robineau would have been an attractive man. He had a strong jaw, heavy shoulders, and thick gray hair. The points of his starched, white collar were secured by a gold pin. That he had become the managing partner of a major Miami law firm in his mid-forties was due to an uncanny knack for keeping his clients dazzled and the staff in line.
'Thank you for coming up on short notice." Robineau walked toward his desk, a slab of smoky glass supported on polished limestone columns.
"I had a few minutes." She smiled.
He sat down. "There are two matters I wish to discuss with you. First, this Trans-State case you wanted to take. Larry Black spoke to me about it. I'm going to say no, and I want you to understand why. It's not my policy—"
"Paul, before you—"
"May I finish?" He waited. "As I said, it is not my policy to make associates at this firm guess why their requests are turned down. Larry didn't tell me you had asked him to intercede on your behalf, but I assume that is the case."
His thick brows rose; he expected a response. Gail drew a breath. " 'Intercede' isn't accurate. I mentioned the case to Larry and he said he would speak to you."
"Next time I suggest you try the direct approach in dealing with another attorney's clients."
Gail felt her cheeks flame. "All right I don't see that it matters, but if that's what you prefer, fine. As for Trans-State, I believe that I can do a good job. Larry knows my work and he agrees. Apparently you have reasons for giving it to someone else. If so, that is certainly your decision."
Paul Robineau slid his fingers down a black and gold pen, upended it, then turned it again. He wore cuff links of a striated gray stone that glittered with the movement of his hand. "Let me raise this other matter, which may help you understand my position on Trans-State. Jack Warner told me about Beltran Plastics. Apparently you've arranged a settlement. Correct?"
"Yes." Something else was coming.
"We've got a—what?—$400,000 case ready for trial and you let it go for $175,000. That's quite a hit"
"What do you want me to say? It was my case and I made the call. And not in a vacuum. Larry and I discussed it." She could feel herself sliding backward down a long slope. "It was a loser, Paul."
"Is that right? A week before trial and you know it's a loser."
"And you're in the banking division, not litigation. Give me some credit for knowing how to do my job."
He pointed at her with the black pen. "Don't tell me, Ms. Connor, what should or should not be of concern to me." His voice was rising. Anyone standing in the hall must have heard. "I suggest that if you want to become a partner of this or any other law firm, you pay more attention to winning cases than settling them for less than half of what they're worth. Is that understood?"
The clouds were moving from window to window on the shiny panes of the building to the south. Gail felt her stomach floating. Her mouth was dry as a stone, and her tongue clicked when she spoke. "You probably don't know what was involved. Oscar Beltran isn't—"
"Forget it." Robineau shifted his shoulders in the chair. "Look. I'm not trying to be an SOB. You're a good lawyer, I'll be the first to say so. But h
ere's what I see. I see a tendency to compromise too quickly, and I think it goes deeper than your recent personal problems. You want to be more than just a good lawyer? You need a set of cojones, so to speak. And this is not—I promise you—a gender issue. I think you can be taken advantage of. And if you can, so can your clients. And ultimately, so can this law firm." He stared impassively at her. "And that is the basis of my decision on Trans-State. It would please me greatly to be proved wrong."
After a few seconds, she stood up, the muscles in her legs shaking. She gave him a polite smile. "Is there anything else? I have to be in court."
"No. That's it."
At the door she turned around. "You are wrong about me." He lifted his palms momentarily from the desk. "I hope I am."
In the ladies' room on the fifteenth floor, with its beige marble and faux gold faucets, Gail took the box of yellow tissue into the last stall and threw up until her stomach cramped and the sharp taste of acid was in her mouth. Shaking, she came out and patted her face with a wet paper towel.
She went the back way down another floor to her office and closed the door. At the bottom of her purse was one lint-covered Xanax. She swallowed it dry, then repaired her makeup before Miriam could buzz her and say it was time to leave for court.
Chapter Four
A table by the windows in the Hartwell Building's luncheon club usually gave a stunning vista of shimmery blue water curving into haze at the horizon. Today a downpour had turned the scene gray and indistinct. Palm fronds hung limply along the shiny streets. On leaden water a cruise ship pivoted slowly in the turning basin at the Port of Miami. Along the railing, passengers huddled under their umbrellas, little dots of color.
Suspicion of Guilt Page 4
