Lawyered to Death

by Michael Biehl

  “Because the guy’s getting alcohol and drug abuse treatment, right?”

  “I can’t tell you anything about what treatment the patient is receiving, Detective.”

  “That’s just swell,” said Lopopolo with a tone of sarcasm. “We got to be extra-careful to protect the privacy of this child molester because he’s also a drunk and a junkie.”

  “You know the law is intended to encourage addicts to seek treatment, without fear that medical records will be used to convict them of drug offenses. And you also know the hospital won’t oppose any valid court order,” said Karen.

  “It’s a pain in the ass,” said the detective.

  “I’m calling about another matter. You were at the hospital early this morning seeking information about Lorraine Winslow’s medical condition.”

  “What, do we need to have notice and a hearing? Is she a drunk, too?”

  Karen could feel her animus rising, pumping toxins into her bloodstream. Lopopolo’s antagonism was uncalled for. While Karen was pregnant, her husband, Jake, had taught her several meditation techniques on the outside chance that meditation might result in a mellower baby. Karen did feel anger much less frequently during her leave and attributed it to the meditation—until she went back to lawyering and found nothing had changed. Also, the baby was not at all mellow. She dropped the meditation.

  “Mr. Winslow tells me you asked him to come to the station house to make a statement,” said Karen.

  “He comin’ in?”

  Karen hesitated. She was not a criminal lawyer and was not sure that meeting with the police was advisable. Maybe more information would help.

  “Is Mr. Winslow under suspicion of anything?” Karen was uncomfortable with the terminology. Should she have said “accused”? Or “being charged”?

  “I told him we had two reports of a domestic disturbance at his house last night. One of the witnesses says he heard an even worse disturbance last Thursday evening. After we got the reports, Winslow’s wife shows up at the hospital with a broken arm and a bad blow to the head. Winslow admits he was with her when she got hurt but he won’t answer my questions. Doesn’t that sound suspicious to you?”

  Karen knew not to answer Lopopolo’s rhetorical question, but she had to say something. “What time should he be there?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could bring him in no later than 4:00 P.M. It’s been a long day already, and at some point I’d like to get home and see if I still have a family.”

  Karen thanked him and hung up without making a firm commitment.

  “Bring him in,” Lopopolo had said. Oh yeah, it was time to get her boss a criminal lawyer.

  JAKE HAYES TRIED to ignore the plaintive wail of his eight-month-old son long enough to get an eight-piece trap set moved into the attic of his Victorian house. Karen’s husband was a professional blues musician whose primary instrument was what most people call a harmonica but blues musicians call a “harp.” He was also proficient on saxophone, guitar, keyboard and vocals. Now Jake was in the process of teaching himself the drums. Bass would come next, and then he would finish the mini-recording studio he was fashioning in a spare room and make decent demos of his songs without having to pay a recording studio or even leave the house.

  Leaving the house had been an issue for Jake since Karen had gone back to work at the hospital part-time. Jake’s gigs were always at night, so he and Karen were able to avoid using day care or nannies. The problem was practicing with a baby in the house. Especially drums. Jake hoped that moving the trap set into the attic would enable him to get in a few minutes on the skins without inducing a bawling fit. Once the kid started crying it was a major project to get him to stop.

  Jake was six-two, two hundred pounds and muscular, but at forty-three he had to take the trap set up the narrow pull-down stairs one piece at a time. It was hot and stifling in the attic. Even though Jake was dressed for the heat in gym shorts and a gray T-shirt, sweat was running into his wide-set brown eyes as he struggled with the tom-tom on the rickety steps. He would have cursed the ringing phone had he not figured it was Karen calling. He backed down the steps hurriedly and bumped into the high hat. The resulting jangle set off the baby.

  “Y-y-y-ello,” said Jake.

  “Why is the baby crying?” said Karen.

  “I knocked into the high hat rushing to get the phone. Nice pipes the kid’s got, eh?”

  “He needs his sleep, Jake.”

  “I could use some myself.”

  “Me, too. When do you suppose McKinley is going to make it through the night without waking us up at least three times?”

  Karen and Jake had named their son after the primogenitor of Chicago blues, the man who had brought the sound of the delta north and urbanized it, McKinley Morganfield. A master of the slide guitar and a powerful, distinctive vocalist, he had performed under the name Muddy Waters. Karen’s parents did not like the name, her conservative father pointing out that his grandson, McKinley Hayes, was named “for two dead presidents.” Karen had made them back off by threatening to go with Jake’s second choice, which was “Muddy.”

  “Why am I asking you?” said Karen. “There’s nothing blues musicians know less about than babies.”

  “Sure there is,” said Jake. “Accounting and sobriety.”

  “I might be home late today. I have to accompany Arthur Winslow to the police station.”

  “So they finally busted Mad Dog Winslow, eh? What for? Counterfeiting? Prostitution ring?”

  “Don’t joke, Jake. I think Arthur’s wife is seriously ill. She got injured last night and the police are going to give Arthur a hard time about it. I need to find a criminal lawyer for him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jake. “Arthur’s the most likable CEO you’ve had down there, if you can stand good-looking, self-assured people, that is. The guys in my band know some criminal lawyers, but I think they specialize in drug possession cases. Why not give Emerson Knowles a call? He kept me out of the slammer when I got picked up for fleeing that traffic stop, remember?”

  Karen remembered vividly the night that Jake was cited for attempting to elude a police officer. It was the same night she had been confronted in her office by an enraged doctor and sustained a near-fatal injury. Despite Jake’s flight from the traffic stop, by the time he arrived at the hospital Karen was being wheeled into surgery.

  “That’s a good idea. Now go take care of your howling son.”

  “You mean our howling son,” said Jake.

  “He gets the howling from your side, sweetheart.”

  “And he’s going to be a great blues singer.”

  EMERSON KNOWLES HAD been Karen’s outside counsel for as long as she had worked at Shoreview Memorial, but not because she had selected him personally. For eighty-five years, Emerson’s firm, Winslow & Shaughnessy, had been the premier corporate law firm in the city of Jefferson. It represented the First Bank of Jefferson, which was by far the largest bank in the city. Its clients included the city’s three largest employers and half of the residents of Weyawega County who could by any standard be considered wealthy. The board of directors of the hospital, which consisted mostly of the movers and shakers of the local business community, had always had one or more Winslow & Shaughnessy partners on it. And a majority of the board members were either executives at companies that were W & S clients, or were themselves clients of the firm. As the only health care law specialist at Winslow & Shaughnessy, Emerson had been the automatic choice for outside counsel until he, along with the rest of his partners, left the firm.

  In the fourteen years Karen had known Emerson, she had seen him change from a short, thin man with thick, curly brown hair to a short, thick man with thin, curly gray hair. His wire-rim glasses had become bifocals. He and Karen had always lingered on the cusp between business acquaintance and friendship.

  Karen had to use a phone book to look up Emerson’s number at his new law firm, Van Dyke ~ Eddington. She hated how Van Dyke ~ Edd
ington, like a lot of other law firms, had recently begun using a meaningless icon in the firm name instead of a communicative, traditional ampersand. She knew the intention was to create a distinctive logo to, as marketing people put it, “enhance brand awareness,” but it seemed stupid to Karen as a corporate law client to see professional services sold like so much soda pop or bathroom cleanser. Van Dyke ~ Eddington’s advertisement in the yellow pages even had a slogan: “Smart lawyers who understand your business.” Karen thought, what’s next? Things go better with shysters? You deserve a will today?

  Emerson gushed about how glad he was to hear from her, and she did not doubt his sincerity. She asked how his new job was going.

  “This is a terrific place,” he said. “Aggressive, bottom-line-oriented, not stodgy at all. I’m working for an up-and-coming young partner, Matthew Stoker. Real go-getter. Only thirty-four and he’s already making rain by the buckets.”

  Karen had never heard of Stoker, so she knew he could not be a health lawyer.

  “What are you doing for him?”

  “This and that. He’s a trial lawyer, about half civil, half criminal. I’ve been doing research and brief writing for him, stuff like that.”

  Stuff like first-year associates do. The ebullience in Emerson’s voice was fading fast.

  “Do you like that?” said Karen.

  Emerson paused and grunted softly. “Karen, I’m grateful for the work. When Winslow & Shaughnessy broke up, some of the older guys took early retirement, the younger ones left Jefferson. I have three kids in school, my wife is taking care of her mother with Alzheimer’s; I’m not going anywhere. At my age, I was lucky Van Dyke made me an offer. Matthew wired it. He didn’t rule me out because I’m middle-aged. He’s not hide-bound. But do I like doing grunt work for a young buck fifteen years my junior, and grunt work I’m not very good at, to boot? I hate it like a lingering disease. But I’m still grateful.”

  Emerson could be very candid when he wasn’t schmoozing. Karen had never gotten the inside story behind the breakup of Winslow & Shaughnessy. She asked Emerson what had happened to his old firm.

  “Three things happened,” he said. “First, the bank got an in-house legal department and most of our corporate finance work dried up. Partner income went down 30 percent in one year. Second, the firm spent a small fortune to lure a lateral partner away from a Chicago firm in hopes that he would revitalize our corporate finance department, bring a new bank client or two with him. He didn’t manage to bring in any new bank clients, but he did manage within three months of joining the firm to give a legal opinion on a corporate bond issue that was flat-out wrong. Fifteen million dollars of the resulting legal malpractice judgment was not insured and had to be eaten by the partners. The last straw came this past fall when a highly regarded senior associate was offered early partnership, and instead of jumping for joy, he asked if he could remain an associate. You see, he didn’t want to be personally liable for the partnership debts.”

  “I never heard of an associate turning down partnership,” said Karen.

  “Neither had any of us. It was just one associate—such a little thing—but the partners all realized simultaneously that the kid was smart not to trust the partnership. We didn’t trust each other anymore. Within a month one guy took an in-house job in Joliet, two guys moved to a firm in Milwaukee, and just like that,” Emerson snapped his fingers, “the county’s largest, oldest, most prestigious and most powerful law firm dispersed like dandelion seeds in a stiff breeze.”

  Karen said a silent prayer of thanks for the security of her job.

  “Arthur took it pretty hard, I suppose,” said Karen.

  “He seemed dazed by the fiasco, but not hurt by it. He landed on his feet taking over the hospital. No financial worries, his wife’s got money up the wazoo. If anything hurt him, it was the change in the way his ex-partners treated him.”

  “How so?”

  “Arthur was the chairman of the committee that determined partner compensation at Winslow & Shaughnessy, so everybody sucked up to him big-time. Laughed at his jokes, listened to his war stories with rapt attention, agreed with his proposals, generally tried to give him the impression they were all his best friends and biggest supporters. Hell, I did it myself. Arthur seemed to be completely unaware that all the flattery and fawning was inspired by avarice rather than genuine esteem. He thought we were all nice to him because we liked him, because he was so wonderful.”

  “Interesting,” said Karen. “Here he’s refreshingly humble for a CEO.”

  “I’m not surprised. As far as I know, not one of the former partners of Winslow & Shaughnessy ever told Arthur to his face that they blamed him for the collapse of the firm, but most of them said they did behind his back. He could not have failed to notice that once he no longer could influence partner incomes, there was a huge change in the attitudes of his former partners. Pre-breakup, these guys had dropped by Arthur’s house on Christmas Eve with presents for his kid, they invited him to their vacation homes in Colorado at the height of the season, they clustered around him at office parties like adoring vassals. Post-breakup, if he was limited to his former partners, Arthur would have had trouble putting together a foursome for a round of golf.”

  “That explains why he called me with his personal legal troubles,” said Karen.

  “What legal troubles does he have?”

  Karen explained Arthur’s need for a criminal attorney, one who could handle a meeting with a police detective at 4:00 P.M. that afternoon.

  “Short notice,” said Emerson, “but if I can get Matt Stoker interested, Arthur will thank us both. He handles the police like Randy Johnson handles left-handed batters. He’s out now, but I can get him on his cell phone.”

  “Have him call me at 1:00 P.M. if you can. I’m meeting with Arthur in a few minutes. I’ll run the idea by him.”

  They ended the conversation, and Karen walked to the window and enjoyed a few deep breaths of the balmy, redolent air before grabbing a pen and a yellow legal pad, and heading to Arthur’s office.

  Just outside her office, she stopped at Margaret’s desk to pick up Lorraine Winslow’s power of attorney document. Her secretary was in her mid-twenties and was skeletally thin to a point that suggested an eating disorder. She had wavy, waist-length brown hair that, to Karen’s annoyance, constantly encroached on Margaret’s face. Karen had an urge to pull her secretary’s hair out of her eyes and into a barrette. Maybe if she could see she would make fewer typos.

  Stifling her irritation, she said, “Thanks for getting this document together so quickly, Margaret.”

  “You’re very welcome,” Margaret replied, with uncharacteristic politeness. “Before you get away, I need to ask a favor of you for a friend of mine.”

  Karen’s suspicion was aroused immediately. Margaret was constantly seeking free legal help from her boss, and it usually involved helping Margaret with something that Karen did not approve of, like beating a drunk driving charge or breaking a lease. But Karen never refused to help because she depended on Margaret to get work out. This time, at least, Margaret was asking for a friend instead of herself.

  “What’s the favor?” asked Karen.

  Margaret repositioned her bony hips in her chair and flicked her hair aside with her hand. It instantly fell back across her face.

  “This guy I know, his name’s Ed, he’s really smart and he’s really cool and he really needs a job.” When Margaret was keyed up, she talked so fast she sounded like she was on amphetamines, which Karen often suspected she was. “He can do anything, he’s really strong, he even has a year of college, and it would really help ’cause then we could split the rent and get a better place.”

  Ah. The friend was a boyfriend, live-in variety. Margaret changed boyfriends more often than most people changed the oil in their cars.

  “Has he got a résumé?” said Karen, figuring that by the time Ed put together his curriculum vita he and Margaret would have split up.


  “I’ll ask him. I just thought you might know of an opening like in maintenance or security or something.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” said Karen. As it happened, she knew that there was currently an opening for a security guard, but she needed to get a look at this Ed before she mentioned it to Margaret.

  WITH HER TYPICAL punctuality, Karen arrived at Arthur Winslow’s office at precisely 11:00 A.M. To her surprise, Arthur’s door was closed. “The only problem with punctuality as a virtue,” Jake had often told her, “is that there’s never anyone else there to appreciate it.”

  Winslow’s secretary, Rona, was a severe-looking woman of sixty with silver hair in a bun and schoolmarm half-glasses attached to a heavy metal chain. She eyed Karen’s casual cleaning day togs with disapproval. Karen said she had an 11:00 A.M. appointment.

  “Mr. Winslow asked not to be disturbed,” said Rona.

  “Does he have someone with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I should wait here?”

  Winslow’s secretary pursed her lips and cocked an eyebrow. “I will call you at your office when Mr. Winslow is available,” she said.

  Karen started to walk away, then hesitated.

  “Do you know who he’s with?”

  Rona rotated her steno chair to face her keyboard, turning her back to Karen.

  “I believe she’s one of the receptionists,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Arthur Winslow hated the way his predecessor had decorated the office but had not gotten around to changing it. The absurdly large office was lavish, but its Spanish tile floor, polished stone casual tables, straight-backed teak guest chairs and black volcanic glass desk gave it a cold, unfriendly atmosphere and harsh acoustics. Arthur thought the office suited the previous CEO, who had been pretentious. It embarrassed Arthur, however, and he felt compelled to make light of the decor to his guests, lest they attribute its lack of taste to him.

  “Look at this, Shari,” he said, opening and closing the titanium blinds by remote control. “This is in case you want to look at the gorgeous view of the parking lot, but you’re too tired to get up and pull the little cord.” He and Shari laughed at the extravagance. The office had a number of such wasteful gimmicks, and Arthur was demonstrating them all. He had already shown her how he could close and lock the office door by pushing a button on his desk. He had left the door closed and locked.