Larry pursed his lips. Gail wondered why she had bothered making a joke. The man had no sense of humor.
She started again. "As I explained to you and Jack Warner over lunch last week, the other side has been putting up roadblocks for months. I managed to set a date for taking depositions, but the case may be settled first."
His high forehead puckered into a frown. She continued. "Nancy and I have been playing telephone tag for days. I got in touch with Bill Darden at his medical office this morning—finally—and he told me to go ahead and see what the other attorney and I can work out. What more can I do, Larry? Tell me. Would Nancy like to review my time sheets?"
He looked uncomfortable. "The loss of revenue is a problem. We count it under JNR—justifiable nonrecoverable—but it's going to adversely affect our division's year-end totals."
"Look, if Nancy Darden doesn't like the way I'm handling the case, give it to Bob Wilcox. It wouldn't hurt my feelings."
One corner of Larry's mouth rose. "It has been suggested—not by myself—that a male attorney might have more success dealing with Hispanics."
Gail laughed. "Fine. Take the case yourself. Buena suerte."
Larry was silent for a few moments, then said, "You say the other side is being stubborn as well?" She nodded.
He pulled on his earlobe. "I think what we have to do is put pressure on this Pedrosa fellow from another angle. He still wants to purchase Judge Strickland's property, doesn't he?"
"As far as I know. Why?"
"And there's no contract yet?"
"No. Ben's trying to decide how much he really wants to sell it for." Gail paused. "Wait a minute. If you're suggesting that we connect these two transactions ..."
"As long as Ben is fully informed, it's worth considering." He arched his eyebrows, waiting for a response.
It was also, Gail knew, clearly against the rules. "I wouldn't be comfortable with that," she said. "And I'm sure the other attorney would have something to say about legal ethics."
"There are ways to be subtle." Larry's eyes seemed to glide along the fringed border of his oriental rug. "One thing about Cubans—they're quick to understand subtleties. A very pragmatic people. Carlos Pedrosa isn't the only buyer out there, and he should know that."
Gail finally said, "Let me see what I can work out with the other attorney this afternoon before we start panicking."
"Ethics can't be viewed narrowly," Larry said. "You have to remember that you are right. Your clients are difficult, granted, but they are in the right. That's the basis for legal ethics, knowing that what you do is right."
She and Larry looked at each other for a few seconds. Finally he gave her what he might have intended as a professorial smile. She idly noticed that his bottom teeth overlapped, too crowded in his narrow jaw.
"You know, Gail, as attorneys we're all going to get into difficult situations. That's what we get paid for, isn't it? To be able to handle them. And we can't resort to abstractions to make the decisions for us. We have to rely on experience in the real world as well as on our inner belief. Do you follow?"
"I'll certainly do my best, Larry."
"I have consummate faith in your abilities." He pulled back his cuff. "Well, time to go." At the door he patted Gail's shoulder. "Keep me posted."
Her mind churning, Gail made her way along the corridor past other attorneys' offices, hearing through open doorways a few snatches of conversation, a message dictated, an unexpected peal of laughter. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, then took a breath. The corridor seemed to go on forever, its end vanishing at a pinpoint.
She muttered to herself, "God almighty, how did I get into this line of work?"
It occurred to her, as she took a shortcut through the library, zigzagging between shelves of the Southern Reporter, that she ought to toss the damn case in Jack Warner's lap. He was the senior partner in the litigation division. She should make him decide what to do with it. If, however, she could also avoid making Larry Black look like the flaming idiot he was. Larry wouldn't forgive her for that, and it was Larry, after all, who wrote monthly reviews of her performance.
At the top of the stairs, Gail caught her heel on the first step. She grabbed at the curving balustrade and righted herself, then took a long, slow breath. She felt the familiar tickle in her chest, heart thudding against her breastbone.
Even if she went to Jack Warner, he would expect her to handle the Darden case to its conclusion. That was his way—trial by ordeal. She was in a pit and he would be waiting to see whether she could climb out of it. The last thing she should do was ask him to throw her a rope. Partners could levitate themselves upward on will alone.
The word around the office was that of half a dozen associates being reviewed for partnership, only two would be chosen. A credible estimate, given the sad facts of life in the legal profession these days: too many attorneys scrabbling for business in a saturated market. It wasn't enough, she realized, to be good at her job. She would have to be more than good. She would have to be brilliant.
On the way into her own office, Gail found Miriam on the telephone.
"... toda la noche, and I slept not even an hour. El niño me vuelve loca, I'm telling you. Pero you can see where the tooth is coming in, ¿tú sabes?, a little bump, entonces in a few days he'll be okay, my mami says. Pobrecito, cómo llora."
Gail tapped on the glass partition and Miriam waved. "Te llamo después, okay? Bye." When Miriam looked back at Gail, her smile faded.
"Don't we have things to do besides chat with our friends on the telephone?" Gail spun around and crossed the corridor to her office.
Miriam followed, dumping a stack of files on Gail's desk. Her brown eyes snapped with anger. "¿Qué te pasa? I don't like to be talked to like that. I do my work, don't I?"
After a moment, Gail sank back into her chair. "Yes. I'm sorry. You do your work very well. Just try to remember there are other people around here to please besides me, okay?"
Miriam's chin was still raised, and she looked at Gail haughtily before she relented. "Okay."
Gail wanted to make amends. "Is Berto sick?"
"No, just teething." Miriam laughed, her bubbly humor back again. "He was screaming so loud Danny had to sleep on the couch last night, the first time we've slept apart since we got married. He says he's going to buy Berto a set of false teeth."
"I want a picture of that." Gail smiled, pulling the files across the desk. "Anybody call?"
Miriam held up four pink message slips. "That Metro-Dade policeman, Frank Britton, wants you to call him back."
"He'll have to wait."
"And the Indian, Jimmy Panther. He didn't say what it was in regard to." Gail only nodded. Miriam continued to flip through the messages. "Ben Strickland says he has some papers for you to sign. And your husband can't pick up Karen from ballet this afternoon."
Gail groaned softly. "Just great."
After Miriam went back across the hall, Gail angrily punched in the number for the marina and asked to speak to Dave. When he answered, she said, "This is Gail. I got your message about Karen."
"Yeah, I have to do an estimate up in Lauderdale."
"You were supposed to pick her up. I can't possibly leave work so early."
"What, have you got a trial or something?"
"You know very well I don't have a trial. I have a meeting. I have appointments. There is work I simply have to do today."
"Ask Irene. Maybe Irene can help."
"Irene is in no condition to go driving around Miami. She won't even leave the house to do her own grocery shopping."
"Jesus. Look, I have to go. I'm with a customer." "Damn it, Dave."
"I'm not the family chauffeur. You're her mother. You've got some responsibility in this, too."
"I know that. I know." Gail dug her fingers into her hair. "Okay. Can you take her with you?"
"What?"
"Pick her up on the way and take her with you. She likes to ride in the truck. I'll come by the m
arina on my way home."
After a long silence, Dave said, "All right. Try to get here before seven. I'm playing tennis tonight." He hung up.
Gail let the phone drop back into the cradle. She swiveled her chair around to face the window. What in God's name would she do if he left her?
As she continued to stare across her office, the cold possibility settled into her mind that he might do just that. She couldn't pretend they were riotously happy. Their marriage might die. And her first thought had not been how to save it, but what a separation would do to her schedule.
Gail shook her head as if to clear it. "I can't think of this now." She reached for the files, then remembered she had to call Ben.
Turner, Brown, Widdeman, Young & Strickland.
The brass letters spelling out Ben's last name shone more brightly than the others because they had been added more recently to the wood panel outside his sixth-floor office. The other names belonged to old buddies of his, men Ben used to go fishing with, or take up to Gainesville in his Winnebago for the University of Florida homecoming game.
Still flushed from her dash across Flagler Street, Gail opened the door to the waiting room, which was unoccupied except for a UPS delivery man talking through the little window to one of the secretaries. The room had dark green vinyl-covered chairs and a bookcase with an outdated set of American Jurisprudence. Framed prints of British barristers in wigs and billowing black robes were lined up over the long sofa. Gail had seen them advertised in the Bar Journal.
When the delivery man moved away from the window, Gail stepped forward before the secretary could slide the frosted glass back into place. "I'm Gail Connor, here to see Judge Strickland." Ben wasn't a judge anymore, but he liked the title.
The woman looked at her in a blank but friendly way, obviously having forgotten Gail had been here before. "I'll tell him. Sit down." She pulled the window shut with one finger. Her red dress wavered behind the bubbly glass, then disappeared.
Gail leaned on the counter and read the titles of the brochures displayed in plastic holders. Should I have a will? What if I am arrested? How will title insurance protect my home?
Ben had said if he'd known private practice was this good, he'd have left the bench years ago. Gail often wondered whom he was trying to convince. She knew he had enjoyed his position on the circuit court. Now he was just one more late-middle-aged attorney in a firm of them.
The inner door opened. "Gail, come on in." It was Ben. He wore no jacket and his tie was loosened. She followed his long strides past the secretarial area, then around a corner to his office.
When she had called he had told her it would be no trouble to send the corrected probate papers by courier for her signature. Gail had said she didn't mind getting out of the office for a few minutes. Besides, there was something she wanted to talk to him about.
They sat on opposite sides of his desk, she in a heavy oak chair that had once been in a turn-of-the-century jury box, Ben in his black leather armchair. He had brought his own furniture from the courthouse when he left—dark, masculine pieces scuffed from years of use.
Over the desk he had hung his favorite Florida landscape paintings, a square arrangement of four heavy gold frames that used to grace the waiting room outside his chambers. Sunset and endless sky over the saw grass prairie. Turkey gobblers in the Central Florida woods. A white heron rising out of a cypress swamp. And Ben's own property in Southwest Dade—rustic cabin, pines, and palmetto scrub.
He opened the file and slid some documents across the desk. They were the same forms she had read at Irene's, retyped with her own name. He gave her a pen.
"I spoke to Irene," he said. "She told me about the police searching Renee's apartment. Said she asked them to. I swear, that woman worries me."
Without looking up, Gail signed the Petition for Administration, then the Oath of Personal Representative. “I think she's beginning to realize how irrational it was. She didn't want me to mention it to you, because you'd think the same thing." When Gail came to the inventory—still to be filled out—she said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you. They're keeping Renee's records for a few days."
"What for?"
"Procedure, I don't know. Frank Britton—he's the sergeant in charge—said he'd send you a preliminary death certificate. Did he?"
"Nothing's come in," Ben said, then added, "Britton. That could be the guy who went out to see Irene a couple of nights ago."
"What did he want?" Gail asked.
"She said they talked about Renee."
"I wish he'd quit bothering her."
Ben smiled. "Oh, I think Irene likes the attention. She said Britton was a nice man. She fixed him some tea."
"This is getting ridiculous. I wonder if you could find out what he thinks he's doing?"
"I could try. I know some people who could ask."
"Ben." Gail hesitated, then said, "Do you think there's anything to it?"
"Oh, I wouldn't worry. Irene overreacted a little is all."
"Be honest."
His face grew serious, deep lines appearing in his forehead. "I don't know, Gail. I've thought long and hard about it. Girl like Renee, she could have been into any number of things. Drugs, sickos of some kind. Kinky sex." He glanced at her. "Sorry if that shocks you."
Gail shrugged a little, aware she found it strange to hear Ben talk about sex, kinky or not. "No, it's all right," she said. "I wanted your opinion."
"I wouldn't say this to Irene, you understand. She's pretty old-fashioned. She thought Renee was just a fun-loving girl who hadn't grown up yet." Ben ran his thumb along the carved edge of his desk. "I think there was more wrong with her. The night of the party. She was acting crazy. I don't know how else to say it."
His eyes rested on Gail for a moment. He swiveled his chair toward the window. "Lord, this is hard to— I took Renee out on the back porch—I mean, I pulled her by the arm and told her to straighten up, she was making a damn fool of herself. There was this—" he paused "—wild look about her. We were out there in the dark and she laughed and— She—"
Gail didn't move.
"She . . . put her hands on me. She said—" Ben shook his head and blinked. "Doesn't matter what she said. Doesn't matter. She was not right in the head. I was thirty years older. And her cousin. Maybe she realized what she was doing and felt embarrassed, I don't know. I'm not going to remember her like that, though. I try to think of her the way she was, when she was a kid. But I figured you ought to know, honey. You asked me if I thought Frank Britton was barking up the wrong tree and I think he is. I think he's wrong as can be."
Ben gripped the arms of the chair, slapping them for emphasis. "Enough of that. Did you sign everything?"
Gail was still reeling. It took her a few seconds. "No. There's one left." She signed the last paper, then passed them all back.
Ben looked at Gail over the file as he dropped the papers back inside. "You said you had something to talk to me about?"
For a moment, she could not think of what it was. "Yes. Carlos Pedrosa."
There was a clock on Ben's credenza, an antique bronze horse rearing on its hind legs, with a white dial in the pedestal it stood on. The clock said one forty-two.
"I'll have to make this fast," Gail said. "Remember I told you I have a case against the same Carlos Pedrosa you want to sell your property to?"
Ben reached for his cigarettes and lighter. "I remember. You represent Doug Hartwell's girl." He drew a cigarette out of the pack, then held it up between two fingers to see if she minded. Gail shook her head.
"Ben, this is between you and me, all right?"
"Sure. What's going on?"
"Carlos is stonewalling on discovery. He won't agree to a reasonable settlement—neither will my clients, to tell the truth." She hesitated, then said, "Larry Black suggested I use your property as bait."
"What did you say?"
"I thought it was a bad idea. Now I'm not sure."
Ben flipped his lighter open with o
ne hand and hit the wheel with his thumb. He inhaled, then tossed the lighter back onto his desk. "Who's the judge on this case?"
"Arlen Coakley."
"I'll talk to him for you."
"Ben—"
"Come on. Arlen and I go way back. We went to grade school together."
"Absolutely not. I didn't come to you for that."
Ben extended his arm to flick his ashes into a heavy pewter ashtray. "You wouldn't accept help out of a pool of quicksand."
She said, "I only wanted to know if I was doing the right thing."
He smiled with one corner of his mouth. "Yes, honey. It's the right thing. I'm proud of you."
Gail felt a rush of emotion so sharp it stung her eyes. She glanced at the bronze horse clock again and stood up. "I have to go. Pedrosa's attorney is coming at two to talk about settlement."
Ben looked at her. "If you need help with Pedrosa, say so." He got up and walked with her to the door. "I'm of two minds with that sale anyway. I don't even like the guy. I wouldn't have talked to him if Renee hadn't introduced us. And what's the matter with his credit that he can't arrange a bank loan and pay me cash? Last weekend I was out there fixing up the cabin, and happened to drive by the construction site. Not a lot of activity going on. Makes me think I might have to foreclose to collect my money."
Gail turned to him. "Carlos Pedrosa is having problems?"
Ben laughed at the look on her face. "I don't know. I'm just telling you what to say to him. Make him sweat a little."
"How do you know he wants the property bad enough to sweat for it?' '
Ben smiled, deep creases in his cheeks. He looked vital again, the years lifting off. He said, "Carlos Pedrosa would make a lousy poker player."
Running back across the street through slow, heavy traffic, the stench of exhaust in her nose, Gail remembered the ranch—scent of pine, clouds reflecting in blue pools of rainwater, wind sighing through the trees.
The painting in Ben's office looked like her memory, but she knew reality was something else. The artist hadn't shown the air conditioner hanging out the back window of the cabin, or the mosquitoes, or the weeds that choked the yard. And there were no people in the painting.
Suspicion of Innocence Page 11