The Killdeer Connection

by Tom Swyers

  “Yes, Amber, what’s on your mind today?”

  “That’s what I like most about you, Thompson.” She always called male attorneys by their last names, like she was one of the boys. “You never pull any punches. You’re straight to the point.”

  “I’m glad you like something about me,” David said, imagining the look on Annie’s face if she were to overhear this conversation.

  “There’s much to like, David.”

  David kicked himself. He had given Amber an opening to get personal, and true to form, she was driving a tractor trailer through it. To make matters worse, he had to face that he had invited the exchange. He felt guilty, then angry that he had let her get into his head in a few short seconds. Get ahold of yourself—she’s the Black Widow, you idiot.

  “Are you there, Thompson?”

  “I’m sure you didn’t call to talk about me. What’s up?”

  “I’m sorry to hear about Dr. Salar.”

  Silence.

  David wanted to call bullshit. She knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find another expert of Salar’s stature to speak out against Big Oil. Salar was retired and drawing a pension from Columbia University. He was willing and able to cut himself off from all the petroleum-industry funding that he had cultivated for his research projects over the years by testifying in the Prior case.

  “We’re all sorry, Amber. Is that all you wanted to say?”

  “No, I want to invite you out for a drink to discuss the case in person.”

  His defenses were up now. He knew the last place he wanted to be was under the influence and sitting next to the long-limbed Amber, crossing and uncrossing her black-stockinged legs. “How about your office instead?” He didn’t have any other option. It wasn’t like he could invite her over to his basement office with Annie in the house. The last time he had any girls in a basement was when he was a teen at a house under construction down the street. He was the lookout while his friends and the girls played spin the bottle.

  “Really? I’d like to get out of the office,” she said.

  “Some other time, maybe. I’ve got too much on my plate right now. How about your office, tomorrow at eleven?”

  “Okay, if you insist. That’s fine.”

  “See you then, Amber.” With that, David hung up and headed for home.

  When David entered the house, Christy was setting the table and Annie was in the kitchen working on dinner.

  “Hey, Dad, guess what?”

  “I’m guessing it’s good news by the smile on your face.”

  “We got a heart-attack call today during my ride-along. It was my first one.”

  David thought for a second. It seemed weird to celebrate someone else’s medical misfortune, but at least Christy would know what to do when his dad went into cardiac arrest, a prospect that seemed more likely with each passing day.

  “I’m not sure what to say, Christy. ‘Congratulations’ seems out of place.”

  “Is he okay?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t know. He was in good shape when we got him to the hospital.”

  Annie came over and kissed David on the cheek. “Can you pour us all some water? Dinner is ready.”

  “Sure.”

  “How was your day?” she asked David before heading back into the kitchen.

  Gee, honey, I spent my day surrounded by cockroaches and playing in mouse droppings. I won a million bucks, but I’m going to prison for life. “Pretty good. I made some progress. How goes the job search?”

  “I had a phone interview with a school in Albany. There’s a second-grade teacher who is on maternity leave. They need a substitute until she’s ready to come back. The pay isn’t the greatest, but it sounds interesting. It would be a good change of pace to work with kids.”

  David started to pour water from the refrigerator’s dispenser. A family pay cut didn’t sound like a good idea to him, given the circumstances. He was stretched thin after fronting the costs of the Prior case, and the Salar estate was filled with nothing but trash at this point. He couldn’t make a claim under the life-insurance policy, especially if he might need money to retain a criminal-defense attorney. Mentioning any of this to Annie would set her off, so he had no choice but to keep it all under wraps. “Which school?”

  “Corning Elementary,” Annie said, setting food on the table.

  David brought in the water and sat down, joining Christy and Annie. “Isn’t that near the Port of Albany?”

  “Yes, a few blocks inland,” she said as they all started serving themselves: chicken, mashed potatoes, and salad.

  “You know that’s not the best of neighborhoods,” David said. He couldn’t talk about the pay-cut issue, but he could come at her from a safety angle.

  “I don’t have the job yet.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Christy said.

  “How would you know?” David asked. Albany was a thirty-minute drive away, and Christy didn’t have his license.

  “We get a lot of ambulance calls in Albany. The heart-attack call was from the South End.”

  “Wait a second,” David said. “Since when are you taking calls in Albany? I thought you told me the ride-alongs were going to be in Indigo Valley.”

  “They said I should ask to ride-along in Albany because I’d get more calls.” Christy thought he might want to be an EMT, maybe a paramedic, possibly even go on to med school. It was David’s idea that he do ride-alongs to help him decide exactly what path to follow.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last week.”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I was going to mention it, but it’s not like you’ve been around the house a lot lately.”

  “Annie, did you know about this?”

  “Yes, he mentioned it to me. But I didn’t know all the details.”

  “What’s the big deal, Dad?”

  “The big deal is that you could get shot in Albany. How do you know you’re not entering a dangerous situation? Who makes that call?”

  “Dad, the police will protect us. We wait for them before we go into a dangerous situation. And paramedics and EMTs don’t have to help out if they feel their lives are in danger.”

  “What if a typical call turns bad after you’re there on the scene?”

  “I guess we back out—”

  “Guess? You guess? You can’t guess. You don’t have time to guess; you have to know what to do. Even then, that might not be good enough. What happens if your back is turned, and something bad goes down?”

  “Dad, these paramedics have been around for years. They are trained to assess the safety of the scene first. They plan their exit from a scene when they pull up. They’ve seen it all.”

  “Oh, come on now,” David said raising his voice. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you learn that you haven’t. It’s a dangerous job, and you’re just a volunteer.”

  “Dad, you’ve got to accept that I’m growing up and trust me to—”

  “Trust? This has nothing to do with trust. It has to do with things outside of your control. Trust can’t and won’t make up for those things.”

  “I deal with things outside of my control every day, Dad, in school.”

  “Indigo Valley High School is not Albany. It’s a bubble that shields you from the outside world. The weapons of choice there are fat wallets, not guns.”

  “None of the paramedics or EMTs I work with has ever been shot.”

  “Of course not. You think they’d still be out there if they’d been shot? They’d be on disability, or they would have moved on to another career. Now remind me why you’re doing these ride-alongs again?”

  “They were your idea, Dad. It’s like you’ve said: ‘Sometimes you have to do what you don’t want in order to do what you do want.’”

  There’s nothing that deflates a father’s rant faster than having his words come back to haunt him. Christy had not only made it a habit to listen to his father, but also
he had been taking notes. And he wasn’t afraid to use them, much to David’s frustration. It wasn’t that Christy was any smarter than his old man; he just had more time to think about things, to build his defense and to establish his independence.

  Christy wanted to pursue a medical career but didn’t know if he could handle blood and guts. He was scared of it and openly admitted that to David. So he wanted to be exposed to as much gore as possible, to seek it out, to swim in it, so he could prove to himself that he had the stomach for it. David understood, but he didn’t like it that Christy was going to unsafe neighborhoods to get his baptism of fire.

  “What do you think of this, Annie?”

  “I don’t think this is great dinner-table conversation. I’m tired. Let’s drop it, and have this discussion another time.”

  This brought silence to the table, interrupted only by the sounds of utensils tapping and scraping the dinnerware. David gulped his water while he watched Christy point his face at his plate. It was a struggle to find that balance between protecting his child and letting him grow up. But the more independence Christy achieved, the more he would crave, and the further he would forge ahead. David was hard-pressed to keep up with the changes, even before Harold Salar had been killed. Things were getting out of hand, both inside and outside the home. He had to choose his battles now out of necessity. In David’s mind, this was one he had to fight. The Thompsons had only one child, and they weren’t about to lose him to the street.

  EIGHT

  David had served time at Baxter, Chadwick, & Wasp earlier in life, but he’d escaped and never looked back. The law firm would hardly think of itself as a prison, but during David’s three years there, he often made the analogy. His “cell” had been windowless with just a desk and a chair, and it was almost twice the size of a solitary-confinement cell in “Little Siberia,” New York’s most notorious maximum-security prison, near the Canadian border. But David found the work climate so miserable that he imagined the firm’s brain trust might install cots and bathrooms in each office if it would increase the number of hours their “prisoners” toiled.

  During his incarceration there, David learned to despise everything about the law firm of Baxter, Chadwick & Wasp. There was no “Wasp” partner name in the history of the firm. David had inserted it because the place was staffed almost entirely by WASPs. The firm had a few token women associates and one black man, but partnership was out of the question for them. That was something they’d learn after eight years of hard labor—if they stuck it out that long.

  David had enjoyed discrimination of a different kind there. Even though he was white, David had been a part-time, evening-school law student. The way the partners at Baxter & Chadwick had whispered night school sotto voce made David feel as if he’d emerged from the dark side of humanity, hand-stamped with a badge of inferiority.

  All the partners had enjoyed the good fortune of law-school educations paid for by their parents. None could even fathom the idea that the world contained some misfortunate students who had to pay their own way. The WASPs thought evening classes were like the correspondence schools advertised on the backs of comic books or matchbooks. It was the firm’s view that lawyers with degrees from such schools could not bill at top hourly rates like those from Harvard, Columbia, or Yale.

  Yet their preconceived notions did not prevent them from hiring David as a law clerk at the firm’s New York City office while he worked his way through the evening division of law school. He slaved away year-round at one-quarter the pay of summer clerks, who did essentially the same work—though David had to bill 1,800 hours per year, as a minimum, while summer clerks had no floor. While summer clerks (also called summer associates) got spacious offices with a great view of New York Bay and the Statue of Liberty, David’s desk was in a windowless, converted supply closet. Lavish lunches at the Downtown Athletic Club, firm trips to Yankees games, or evenings with catered cruises across the bay aboard the schooner Pioneer were perks reserved for recruits from the elite schools.

  Upon graduation, David passed the bar examination on the first try. It was an achievement that eluded some of the Baxter & Chadwick summer associates who were hired, though they got to keep their jobs and take another crack at the bar. He left and headed home to Indigo Valley to get away from the city and the likes of Baxter & Chadwick. But when Bakken crude started to move by train from North Dakota to Albany, Baxter & Chadwick set up a satellite office to serve and lobby on behalf of its energy clients in state capital. It was like the mountain coming to Muhammad.

  Now, for the first time in thirty years, David was returning to his old firm, albeit in a new place. Memories boiled to the surface as he drove east to the offices of Baxter & Chadwick to meet with Amber Remington. David parked his old Mustang in a space marked Visitors on a quiet, dead-end side street next to the building. He saw a BMW, a Lexus, and a few Jaguars parked in the spaces reserved there for partners.

  The office was on Broadway, new construction in a changing area, a red-brick structure with oversize, reflective windows on all sides. The neighborhood held a mix of pubs and industrial companies with a scattering of office buildings. Hardly any pedestrians graced the sidewalks, but there were plenty of diesel delivery vehicles on the street.

  The top of the building formed a pyramid, with an American flag flapping from a pole at the peak. The firm’s name blared in giant, 3D, gold lettering over the full-glass entry doors. David walked through those portals into a spacious waiting area marked by Carrara marble floors, soaring ceilings, and a tall, mahogany reception desk topped with a granite counter. Lest visitors forget where they were, the front of the reception desk boasted the firm’s name, and overhead, again in shiny gold, Baxter & Chadwick erupted from the soffit in the same 3D lettering. David’s heels echoed off the white marble as he walked to the firm’s receptionists: two perfumed Sephora mannequins, a blonde and a brunette, who sat on tall stools and looked in his direction.

  David put his hand on the counter and felt the coolness of the black, speckled granite as Blondie greeted him. “Hello, how can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Amber Remington.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Your name?”

  “David Thompson.”

  The brunette tapped his name into a computer keyboard and pointed to it on the screen. The blonde glanced over, then looked at David and smiled, revealing perfect white teeth embraced by Barbie blood-red lips. The brunette sported the same lip shade, as if Baxter & Chadwick had it written into their dress code. “Won’t you have a seat?” the blonde said, with a gesture off to the side.

  David looked where her long, carmine nails pointed. A thick, slate-blue-figured Oriental rug tried to warm the cold, marble tiles. Scandinavian-modern rectangular sofas, upholstered in midcentury textured prints, and Bauhaus black-leather chairs with signature chrome legs and arms sat neatly arranged and empty, like a waiting area for passengers at an airline gate. He looked back at her. “Sure. Thank you.”

  Taking a seat that faced the reception counter, he didn’t have to wait long. From the far side of the room, a glass door swung open, and Amber Remington emerged. Her shoulder-length, light-brown hair bounced as her black Christian Louboutin ice-pick heels clicked across the marble floor. She was in her early thirties and dressed for success. She wore a black-silk blouse open to the third button, a Mikimoto pearl necklace with matching ear studs, and a charcoal-gray Brooks Brothers fitted wool jacket. The matching pencil skirt, hemmed above the knees, revealed her long legs in black sheers. Only the red soles of her sassy shoes belied the professional image. She sashayed right past the staring receptionists, who knew an alpha female when they saw one. David spotted her and stood. Amber extended her hand, perfectly manicured in the signature Baxter & Chadwick red. With her three-inch heels and volumized hair, she was a little taller than David.

  “Hello, David,” she said, smiling but showing no teeth.
/>   “Amber.”

  “I’ve reserved a conference room for us. Won’t you follow me?”

  “Sure,” David said, as he bent to retrieve the briefcase near his chair. When he straightened, Amber was already halfway to the glass entry of the firm’s offices. The slit in the back of her narrow skirt revealed even more leg, and she walked with the confidence of a Fashion Week model gliding down the runway. Her passage left a faint cloud of expensive perfume in its wake, a sophisticated and exotic smell, nothing like the light, lemony fragrance Annie wore. For a second, David felt like a dog on a leash. As he hustled to catch up, she looked over her shoulder at him.

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  There was a pause. “Of course,” she said, laughing a bit too long. David wondered what was so funny before he realized that Amber may have been entertaining a double entendre. He was embarrassed and needed to fill the silence, change the subject.

  “Your offices are nice. Are they new, or did you renovate the building?”

  Amber started to pull the gold handle on the glass door when David grabbed the door above her head to help her open it. She gave him a cold look, again over her shoulder. It wasn’t a “thank you” glance. Nope, it was more like, “You aren’t Tarzan, and I’m so not Jane.”

  But she continued without a pause. “We bought the property in 2008, demolished the building, and then we built these offices.” They walked through another reception area before arriving at an elevator bank. Amber pushed the button to go up.