“Both,” she replied assertively.
FORTY
Hunter stared at Sheila skeptically, trying to reconcile the sudden change of heart. “Both, huh?” he asked, wrinkling his brow and grinning. “I must admit. Frankly, Sheila, you’re confusing the hell out of me. Just moments ago you were up in arms about the collateral damage to your career. Yet now suddenly you’re willing to trade in your robe for the coveted post of lead counsel on the Hunter Gray murder defense team,” he said facetiously.
“I overreacted,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “Russo’s death caught me off guard, as you can probably imagine. Although I never liked the guy, I still had the utmost respect for him as a jurist. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.” She paused. “But the unfortunate reality is that I just so happen to care,” she added endearingly.
Hunter shook his head in frustration. “It sounds good, Sheila. It truly does. And as much as I’d like to believe the explanation is that simple, something tells me there’s more to it, isn’t there?” Hunter hadn’t put it together yet, but his instincts told him to push. And he had nothing to lose by starting to trust them again. Their eyes locked, Hunter’s conviction enveloping her evasive gaze like a finely tuned polygraph machine. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Sheila diverted her eyes for a split second, a subtle admission she was holding out on him. Even judges are human. “Sheila?” No response.
“You have to trust me, Hunter.”
“As much as I’d like to—”
She cut him off, though. “Let’s just say we both have a serious interest in clearing our names now.”
“Clearing our names? You’re serious? I’m perfectly innocent, Sheila. I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide. How about you?” asked Hunter, whose question wasn’t entirely serious. Sheila’s having blood on her hands was a virtual impossibility. Yet she was still concealing a valuable fact.
“Very clever,” she replied. “I won’t even dignify that question with a response.”
“Then what? What else have you so conveniently omitted?” He couldn’t help but feel the same way he had just days earlier when she first broke the news about her former fling with Mancini.
“It’s not important right now. I just need to know what the detective said to you, word for word. Did my name come up?”
“It didn’t,” he replied, growing increasingly frustrated with her caginess. “But just tell me what’s going on,” he demanded.
“All right,” she agreed, getting to her feet and beginning to pace in front of the window. “You remember how I suspected that Russo knew about us,” she started nervously. “How I sensed he was up to something? His throwing in subtle references to us in the presence of the other judges: the sanctity of the position, the public’s perception of the judiciary, which included how and with whom we passed the time when we were off the bench—that sort of thing.”
“Right,” he replied, wondering where she was going with all this.
“Spearheading an ethics inquiry, secretly orchestrating my demise, only to bolster his chances of achieving that coveted slot with the state Supremes.”
“Okay.”
“And at the time, you accused me of being paranoid delusional.”
“I still don’t understand how he could’ve known about us.” Then again, it would explain the Mediacast debacle.
“I wondered the same thing myself. I tried to block it out, secretly hoping he would eventually let it go or that maybe I was just being delusional. And if things eventually came to a head, I was pretty sure I’d find out then how he knew about us.”
“I’m still not sure I understand,” replied Hunter. “Why does any of this really matter now? Russo’s scheming days are officially over, in case you haven’t heard.”
Hunter wasn’t typically in the habit of desecrating the memory of the recently departed, especially the ones who had kicked the bucket within the past twenty-four hours or so. Yet Russo would probably be one of the few exceptions to that general rule during the course of Hunter’s lifetime. Thanks to Russo’s personal crusade against him, his dream of making partner was dashed and his days almost certainly numbered at Whitman.
“Just listen,” Sheila snapped in frustration. Hunter indulged her. “Well, as it turns out,” she continued, “Russo did know about us all along. My hunch was right.” She paused. “And take a wild guess who confirmed it for him, when he initially grew suspicious, inadvertently noticing you leaving my chambers after hours outside the presence of other counsel?”
“Who?” asked Hunter, edgily.
“Your boss. Al Mancini,” she revealed with an ironic smile. “Claims Russo was actually the one who approached him and that the evidence was pretty damning. All that he could do at that point was to confirm it, as much as he wanted to deny it.” There was an awkward pause. “Which, of course, he didn’t have to do,” she added under her breath, still trying to reconcile that piece of the puzzle.
“Mancini, huh?” What would be his motivation for that, though? Hunter recalled the way Mancini had referred to Russo when they were discussing the Mediacast case. Playing the scene back in his mind’s eye, he actually made a point of letting Hunter know he wasn’t one of Russo’s biggest fans.
“Yup. I guess he thought he had an ally in Al. No pun intended,” she said, finally loosening up.
“Still not sure I get the connection, though. They didn’t seem particularly fond of each other.” A perplexed Hunter asked, “Do you believe him?”
“I suppose. I mean, I have no real reason not to. That’s not the sort of thing one generally admits to very freely. He knew I’d be pissed when he told me.”
“Why would he tell you this, though?” asked Hunter, mulling over the question in his own mind.
“Russo steered a lot of work in your firm’s direction,” educated Sheila. Hunter raised his brow in surprise, caught entirely off-guard by the notion. “And trust me when I tell you I know that much for a fact. Mancini used to brag about it as far back as I can remember.”
“That’s pretty shocking.” Although it wasn’t entirely improbable, Hunter thought. He wouldn’t put it past Mancini or half the lawyers in this town to toot their own horns, especially when it came to one’s rainmaking prowess. When all was said and done, countless months of grueling trial preparation and one relatively arbitrary jury verdict later, it was still the clients who kept the firms afloat. Win, lose, or appeal, the brain trust of any one given firm was immaterial without the funding for them to have the luxury to flex their intellectual muscle.
“This was before he became the king in the Whitman fiefdom and yours truly ever even considered running for the bench,” she clarified. “Frankly, he probably never thought he’d make it far enough for it to matter, anyway.” After a brief pause, she equivocated: “Wait—actually, I take that back.” In hindsight, Sheila never truly knew or understood the man. He was a cheater, for God’s sake. The type who had no qualms about leading a dual existence, maintaining various fictions just to keep things going for as long as he could. He was as calculated as they came, pure grit, and unshakable determination. Think of him as a modern-day Caesar.
“And how long have you known about this?”
Sheila quickly glanced at her platinum Cartier watch. “About an hour ago.”
Which certainly explained Sheila’s edginess, reasoned Hunter, who immediately began to ruminate over the possible significance of this relative bombshell, especially on the day the world learned of Russo’s murder.
“And it makes perfect sense. Of course, I haven’t had time to do any real digging. But from what I can gather, preliminarily at least, Russo ensured that Whitman had more than its fair share of favorable—strike that—very favorable decisions.” Which thoroughly contradicts what Russo was in the process of doing in Mediacast prior to being murdered.
“So there was a quid pro quo thing happening?”
“Unquestionably.”
The wh
eels were turning inside Hunter’s head, not that he had either the time or the energy for any of it. His efforts on the Vito’s case, if he ever expected to be prepared by Thursday, had to be nothing short of Herculean at this point. “So apparently they were much closer than they appeared,” said Hunter, thinking out loud, balancing as he rocked back in the stiff wood chair, the tattered rubber soles of his shoes resting rebelliously on her desk. “Despite the impression created by Mancini.”
“Interesting,” Sheila said, incorporating Hunter’s last insight into her calculus. “Plus, it couldn’t have hurt that Mancini had a score to settle with me,” she continued. “They’d both get their rocks off as they witnessed the carnage, watching my career and reputation go up in flames.” Sheila had her hand at her mouth as she shook her head in disbelief at the very distinct possibility that her theory was accurate.
“So why now? Why’d he wait so long before he ’fessed up?”
“Claims he wanted to warn me.”
“About what?”
“About the appearance of Russo’s death in light of his plan to take me out.”
“So Mancini confirmed it.”
“Yup.”
“See, that’ll teach you never to heed advice from a man again.”
“Who said anything about heeding?” she asked playfully.
“Right.”
“And who’s your voice of reason, by the way?”
“I wish I had one.”
“I sure hope it’s not Dillon Wright.”
“And why’s that?”
“Don’t trust the guy. Never gotten a good vibe from him.”
“He’s one of the only people who gives a shit about me.”
“He’s your competition, Hunter. And don’t ever forget that. Remember, I used to be in your world.”
Growing increasingly impatient with her sororal wisdom, he navigated them back to the course of discovery they were charting. “So what about how Russo’s death would come across?”
“Al’s only point was the perception that I have a motive to preempt my fall from grace. Stop Russo from initiating a judicial investigation and targeting me.”
“So ‘preempt’? As in murder?”
Sheila nodded at the gravity of the situation. As far-fetched as it may have sounded, it wasn’t an altogether unbelievable scenario. To put it another way, very powerful people have done much crazier things.
“And that’s why I’m so curious to know what this Detective Risotto said to you,” she clarified.
“Risotto,” Hunter replied. “Wait. How did you know his name? Did I mention—” And then he stopped himself mid-sentence, the explanation hitting him hard.
All Judge Primeau, murder suspect number two, could do, was nod in total and utter disbelief, confirming Hunter’s hunch that Mancini had arrived too late, intentionally or unintentionally, which was still unclear for the moment. Detective Risotto’s first interviewee had been Sheila.
FORTY-ONE
For all the idealistic drivel spewing from the mouths of first-year law students across the country these days, large firm existence had the remarkable ability to chill even the most quixotic sentiment. Survival meant conformity, exhibiting masterful diplomacy skills, and billing an ungodly and humanly impossible number of hours. And Whitman was no different from the others. Like Kruger and a handful of blue-chip law firms dominating the Philadelphia skyline, Whitman prided itself on luring the region’s best and brightest and making them regret their decision to attend law school in the first place. These modern-day bastions of communism had mastered the art of excising those areas of the human brain associated with creative thought and leadership without their ever even knowing it.
Perhaps describing these places as communistic is a bit extreme, for it might suggest that the attorneys lead an ascetic existence, at least on some level. That couldn’t be further from the truth, however. Some of the lawyers—like doctors and other highly skilled professionals—struggled with inferiority complexes. They worked too hard and were paid exceptionally well. Yet the figures certainly weren’t staggering by any means. Once the excitement of passing the bar exam or the boards and securing one’s dream job subsided, it was all a bit anticlimactic. By anyone’s standards, though, Whitman lawyers were well compensated, tending to avoid the drabber colors on the spectrum, perhaps as a way of furthering their own denial that somehow they weren’t just expendable cogs in a highly inefficient machine. Drab personalities, on the other hand, were inescapable. After all, that was the whole point of garishly bold power ties, seemingly a requirement among the firm’s top brass.
And on this particular Tuesday, news of Russo’s murder had little if any consequence. It was business as usual, or rather unusual, depending upon one’s vantage point. The Whitman eye, cloaked by classic Wayfarer shades, barely blinked despite the grisly discovery made in Russo’s chambers in the early hours that same morning: a severe but nonfatal gash across the neck and a single gunshot to the back of the head that had penetrated the brain directly above the cerebellum and lodged itself inside the temporal lobe. The lifeless body had been discovered face down on a bloodstained Oriental rug. There were no indications of a struggle, and it was apparent that Russo had been caught entirely off-guard.
If grieving for one’s own loved ones was a luxury for these folks, getting bogged down with trivialities like pausing to acknowledge the untimely death of one of the city’s most prominent jurists was entirely out of the question. Unless, of course, mourning became a firm-wide mandate. Yet that remained to be seen. Even the initial outpouring of support for Andy, one of their very own, had been short-lived. Hunter couldn’t help but consider the possibility that some of the other associates were secretly praying for a rapid decline in Andy’s health, excited by the prospect that a serious partnership contender might be out of the running.
Frankly, Hunter, very much in stealth mode, was relieved at the thought that there was still a place he could remain relatively anonymous. He considered the irony on his way up to his office after spending more than an hour analyzing his conversation with Detective Risotto and strategizing. He passed through the minimalist, post-modern corridors of this deconstructionist shrine to the billable hour, observing a handful of newer, anal-retentive associates who marched like soldiers to their next billable event. One of the newly minted partners surfaced, stiff and smug, meandering through the air-conditioned halls in the latest and greatest Brooks Brothers’ ensemble, self-importantly basking in his newfound glory as he casually made his way to the power meeting awaiting his divine presence.
Hunter stood over his desk, reduced to one giant inbox, holding a fax marked urgent from his opposing counsel in the Mediacast case. Neglected for nearly a week, the small office was starting to look more like an eccentric scientist’s laboratory than the office of a senior associate with partnership aspirations. Hunter quickly logged in to his LexisNexis account, just to see if there were any reported cases Mancini had been involved in. In addition to a handful of cases that had wound their way up to the state’s highest court, Hunter was surprised to come across one where Mancini himself was a party. It was a divorce, and he was waging a bitter property battle with his first and only wife. Rather shockingly, he’d married his high school sweetheart only a few years out of law school. Then after a blindingly fast union, he wound up fighting her tooth and nail over her alimony and property demands. Ultimately, he made out like a bandit too, leaving her with little more than an assuredly staggering legal bill. The prick’s lucky he wasn’t in California.
“Hunter. Where have you been?” asked his paralegal, whispering loudly, interrupting his concentration. She was frazzled for his sake in a sympathetic demonstration of loyalty, a trait exhibited only by the most devoted support staff in the highly impersonal setting of the large law firm. Debbie, her dark hair crimped and looking very eighties as usual, stood at the door, cupping her mouth as she spoke, a misguided effort at discretion that only called attention to their conve
rsation, making things appear direr, not as she probably intended. She nervously glanced over her shoulder, scanning the immediate vicinity for eavesdroppers with clout, more commonly referred to as partners.
Hunter, with his eyes still scanning the document’s contents, glanced up in Debbie’s direction, trying to maintain at least some semblance of composure. As trustworthy as Debbie was, she was still vulnerable to the unrelenting probing sure to follow by the firm’s other paralegals and secretaries. They were information carnivores with a voracious appetite for meaty gossip. Hunter wouldn’t put it past them to have their own underground listserv, devoted exclusively to the gratifying topic of the rise and fall of the firm’s most promising lawyers. Despite the appearance of cohesion in a large firm, it was still support versus the lawyers, town versus gown.
“Jesus, you look like shit,” she observed, getting a closer look at his exhausted and gun-shy expression.
“Didn’t I tell you that I’d fire you if you ever held back on me?” he asked, deadpan, making eye contact with her for the first time since last Thursday. The truth was that he and Debbie made a great team, a relative rarity when it came to associates and their paralegals. Typically, the support staff abhorred the lawyers in the office, the unfortunate recipients of obsessive-compulsive behavior, inconsistency, and passive-aggressive verbal barbs. Hunter, more than any other associate at Whitman, bore the remarkable distinction of being the most well-liked and most flirted-with lawyer. He barely noticed, though.
“You can’t fire me,” she retorted. That was actually true. He’d have to get authority from the partnership, which meant Mancini made the call. And when it came to attractive staff, he had a tendency to come down on the side of the support—female, naturally.
“I know. Just posturing.”
“Save your little lawyer tricks for the courtroom, Gray.”
“I’ll get my fix anywhere I can, considering I might never see the inside of a courtroom again after this week’s over.”
Justice Hunter Page 23