The Mourning Sexton

by Michael Baron

  “Like tiger lilies to tigers,” he used to shout at Hirsch over the din.

  Not anymore, pal, Hirsch thought as he eyed McCormick's puffy face. But he caught himself, irritated by his own cockiness. There were, he reminded himself, far more reputable places to get in shape than the weight room of a federal penitentiary, and far more respectable workout programs then the so-called Eminem Regimen, which got its name not from the rap star or the little candies but from the disgraced junk bonds prince Michael Milkin, whose personal trainer supposedly wrote the program for his client's stay at the federal prison camp in Pleasanton. Photocopies of the program had spread throughout the federal correctional system and were posted on the gym walls of most minimum-security facilities, including Allenwood.

  “Looks like I should have a break in my trial docket the middle of next month,” McCormick said, studying his calendar. “Assuming I don't get a preemptive criminal setting, I'll have Betty set up a time for you to come in here for a witness interview. Hopefully, you'll have some feedback from your experts by then. Do you have them all retained?”

  “Almost.”

  Actually, not even close. One of Rosenbloom's paralegals had put together a list for him of possible experts, but he'd contacted none of them. Indeed, he'd done little work on the lawsuit. The file had sat unopened on his credenza since the afternoon he came back from the clerk of the court with the file-stamped petition.

  McCormick chuckled. “We do have one crazy quirk here, don't we?”

  “What's that?”

  “One of your defendants is Peterson Tire. Until I read your petition, I'd forgotten they made the tires on that Explorer.”

  “I'm not optimistic about that claim.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “I haven't retained a tire expert yet, but I didn't see any indication of tire failure.”

  “Don't give up on Peterson, David. That's my advice. I've had those fellows in my courtroom for five years now. Believe me, they have the litigation equivalent of shell shock. Of all your defendants, they'll be the most susceptible to settlement overtures. You've got Ford Motor in your lawsuit. I've had them before me in a couple of cases. They can be tough as nails. Don't know about that air-bag manufacturer. Never had them before me. But Peterson, well, that's a different story.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Let's not b.s. each other, David. We both know what you're going to be up against when the lawyers for the defendants start ramping up. You're no slouch, of course. Hell, back in your heyday you were one of the best. But you're not Gary Cooper and this sure as hell won't be High Noon. You're going to find yourself outgunned once the defense lawyers arrive. You've been on the other side, and you know what I'm talking about. Just you against a pack of lawyers. They're going to do their best to grind you into the ground, and they'll try to smear you with shit in the process. Maybe you do have a lousy case.” McCormick held up his hands and shrugged. “Hell, I have no idea. But I do know that most death cases settle. Even the crappy ones. So hang in there. You mark my words. If any of those defendants are going to blink, it'll be Peterson.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Little Walter was on the stereo but Hirsch didn't hear the music. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the harmonica as he rotated it in his hands.

  I am so pleased that you're the lawyer on this case, David.

  Two days later and the words still rang hollow.

  Not to Rosenbloom, though. He'd been waiting for Hirsch late that afternoon when he returned from his meeting with McCormick. Together, they took the elevator down to the building garage as Hirsch described the conversation and his misgivings.

  “So what?” Rosenbloom had said as he wheeled himself toward his black Cadillac. “What's so odd about knowing when the statute of limitations expires?”

  He'd watched as Rosenbloom folded the wheelchair, slid it into the back, and winched himself into the driver's seat, which had been modified to accommodate his condition. Hirsch knew better than to offer to help.

  “Nu?” Rosenbloom said between gasps. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Am I right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? What's with the maybe? He was in the fucking car when it crashed. He may not be Felix Frankfurter, but even a knucklehead would remember that date.”

  Rosenbloom started the engine and closed the door. He rolled down the window and looked up at Hirsch. “The judge told you he was happy you filed the lawsuit, right? Even told you he was happy to find out that you were the lawyer on the case, right?”

  “Right.”

  “That means that you're the lawyer who gets to curry favor with a federal judge, right?” He gave Hirsch a wink. “I can think of worse things to happen in a legal career.”

  He turned the harmonica in his hands as he thought back again to the way McCormick had ended their meeting—the firm handshake, the earnest look, the parting words: “I am so pleased that you're the lawyer on this case, David.”

  Maybe Sancho was right. Maybe he shouldn't be so skeptical.

  But he knew enough about his standing in the legal community to know that he was on no one's short list of personal injury lawyers.

  He was on no one's list—short or long.

  Period.

  The silence pulled him back to the present, back to the small living room of his apartment. He stared at the scraped skin on the back of his right hand, where he'd slammed into the wall during the handball game earlier that night at the Jewish Community Center. Times had changed, he thought with a smile. Ten years ago it would have been squash at the country club, followed by a drink in the club's bar. Now it was handball at the JCC, followed by a drink at the water fountain on the way out. He'd learned squash at Princeton. He'd learned handball on the outdoor courts at Allenwood.

  He glanced over at the stereo just as the quick drum roll and opening bars of Little Walter's “My Babe” began. He was lifting the harmonica to his mouth when the phone rang.

  “The Eagle has landed.”

  It was Rosenbloom.

  “Oh?”

  “Yep, and a big prick stepped out.”

  “What's that mean?”

  “I got a call from Channel Five. They wanted a statement on the lawsuit.”

  “Which lawsuit?”

  “Which one do you think?”

  “The Shifrin case? You?”

  “Don't forget my name's first on the pleadings.”

  Under the reinstatement order, Rosenbloom had to jointly sign all court filings with Hirsch.

  “Apparently,” Rosenbloom said, “Ford Motor's lawyers filed their appearance today.”

  “So?”

  “So they held a press conference.”

  “A press conference. Who would care enough to cover it?”

  “Channel Five, for starters. They're running a story at ten tonight.”

  Hirsch frowned. “That makes no sense.”

  “Never underestimate the self-promotion skills of Jack Bellows.”

  “Bellows,” Hirsch repeated.

  “I hear he's a prick.”

  “He is—or at least he was.”

  “There's no such thing as a former prick.” In a gentler voice, he said, “I think he took a shot at you in the press conference.”

  Hirsch said nothing.

  “The guy from Channel Five said he called the lawsuit frivolous. He wanted a response from one of us. I told him you were the sole spokesman on the case. I also told him that you preferred to do your talking in court papers instead of pubic relations events. He wanted your phone number.”

  Hirsch's number was unlisted.

  “I told him I didn't know it.”

  “I wouldn't talk to him anyway.”

  “Yeah, but you may want to check out the news at ten.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  “Well, Samson,” Rosenbloom said with a grim chuckle, “fasten that seat belt. I think we're in for a little turbulence.”

  Hirsch adjuste
d the antenna on the portable TV. He hadn't watched the ten o'clock news since he'd been a recurring lead item a decade ago.

  The show opened with a three-alarm fire at a warehouse in north St. Louis. Then came a series of stories apparently culled from the day's events based upon the quality of the visuals. Thus a rogue alligator caught in a mall parking lot in Fort Lauderdale and a Yorkshire terrier stranded atop a mailbox in an Arizona flash flood trumped a hostile takeover bid in the cable television industry and the congressional defeat of a major health-care reform bill. Hirsch was beginning to question Rosenbloom's heads-up when the male anchor, a balding, middle-aged black man with tortoiseshell eyeglasses, looked into the camera with furrowed brow and announced, “A new lawsuit over an old death.”

  Cut to a silent video of Jack Bellows talking at a lectern.

  The anchor, in voice-over. “But a lawyer for the defense claims it's all much ado about nothing.”

  Back to the news desk, this time on the female anchor, a woman in her fifties with short hair, pearls, and a black dress. She gave the camera a solemn look. “More on the lawsuit when we come back.”

  Cut to a commercial for Taco Bell.

  The quick shot of Jack Bellows had jolted Hirsch. Back when he'd been managing partner of Marder McFarlane, Hirsch had blocked the firm's efforts to recruit Bellows. Although Bellows had a good book of business and the backing of the chairman of the litigation department, Hirsch controlled the vote on the executive committee, and that's precisely where Bellows's candidacy died. The reason was simple: Hirsch couldn't stand him. Bellows was an arrogant blowhard who'd earned the nickname Jack the Ripper for his back-alley litigation techniques. There were lawyers in town who refused to discuss anything with him without a court reporter present. Eventually, Bellows discovered that Hirsch had been the one to block his bid to join the firm. According to someone who'd overheard him in the locker room at the Missouri Athletic Club, Bellows had vowed to “nail that Jewish prick to the cross some day.”

  That was eleven years ago. Since then, Bellows's book of business had apparently grown to irresistible proportions because he was now a senior partner at Hirsch's old firm. Although Bellows's nastiness and holier-than-thou attitude enraged his opponents, Hirsch knew that Jack the Ripper was one formidable adversary.

  Back from commercials.

  The male anchor: “Three winters ago, a law clerk to United States District Judge Brendan McCormick died in a tragic one-car accident while driving the judge to his annual staff Christmas dinner.”

  Cut to a head shot of Judge McCormick.

  The male anchor continued in voice-over: “That young clerk, Judith Shifrin—”

  Cut to a photo of Judith, the one from her law school yearbook.

  “—lost control of the car on an icy road and rammed into a tree. The force of the collision killed the twenty-five-year-old woman. Judge McCormick, seated in the passenger seat at the time of the accident, escaped serious injury but spent the night in the hospital.”

  Cut to the first page of the file-stamped petition that Hirsch had filed four weeks ago.

  The male anchor, in voice-over: “That was three years ago. News Channel Five has learned that a wrongful death action has recently been filed on behalf of the deceased woman. The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages against Ford Motor Company and two other corporations.”

  Cut to the male anchor. “Today, the lawyers for Ford Motor entered their appearance in the case, and our own Rob Drennan was there.”

  The camera pulled back to reveal a bearded guy in his late thirties seated in the chair next to the male anchor. The anchor turned to him with an avuncular smile. “Rob?”

  Drennan nodded and faced the camera, which moved in tight. “That's correct, Mel.”

  His grin faded. “This is no ordinary case.”

  Grave expression. “The victim was a law clerk to a powerful federal judge. The defendants include some of the nation's largest corporations. And the plaintiff's lawyer himself is no stranger to controversy. Ten years ago, attorney David Hirsch was the managing partner of one of this city's oldest and most powerful law firms and a rising star in Democratic politics.”

  Cut to a head shot of Hirsch, taken about fifteen years ago as he addressed a bar association group.

  “But in a turn of events as swift as it was bizarre, Hirsch was first implicated in the drug-related death of a prostitute—”

  Cut to a front-page headline from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

  PROMINENT ST. LOUIS ATTORNEY UNDER ARREST

  FOUND IN EAST SIDE MOTEL WITH DEAD PROSTITUTE

  Police Say Wild Night Ended in Fatal Drug Overdose

  “And then, at the end of that same week, FBI agents raided his law firm's offices, seizing two years of billing records on his clients.”

  Cut to a shot of the imposing lobby of Hirsch's former law firm—the legend MARDER MCFARLANE LLP carved in marble over the entranceway—as men wearing FBI windbreakers loaded boxes of records onto a freight elevator.

  “Federal agents had acted on a tip from one of Hirsch's riverboat casino clients, whose audit of its legal bills uncovered more than forty thousand dollars in phony charges by nonexistent court reporters, copy services, and the like. Hirsch was indicted on various federal charges for the embezzlement of more than a million dollars from clients of his law firm.”

  Cut to a shot of a U.S. marshal leading a handcuffed Hirsch up the stairs of the federal courthouse.

  “And finally, at the end of that same month, nine women—all current or former secretaries and paralegals at his firm—filed suit against him for sexual harassment. By the time David Hirsch entered prison one year later, he was divorced, disbarred, and about to become destitute. That final blow landed three weeks after he entered prison—”

  Cut to front-page headline from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

  JAILED ATTORNEY HIT FOR $10 MILLION VERDICT

  Jury Finds Him Guilty of Sexual Harassment

  “He would serve seven years in a federal penitentiary for the embezzlement crimes.”

  Cut to generic shot of a prison interior—a long hallway lined with prison cells.

  “But Hirsch is out of jail these days, his license to practice law has been reinstated, and now he has filed suit over the death of that young law clerk Judith Shifrin. Among the targets of the suit: Ford Motor Company. Today—”

  Cut to a mid-range shot of Jack Bellows behind the lectern, squinting into the television lights.

  “—the lawyer for Ford had his say.”

  The camera zoomed in for a close-up. Bellows had a good TV face—craggy features, unruly shock of reddish-gray hair, bushy eyebrows. His name appeared at the bottom of the screen as Attorney for Ford Motor Company.

  “There's one word for this lawsuit,” Bellows said in his gruff voice, “and that word is ‘frivolous.' I am confident that we will dispose of this ridiculous case in short order, and once we do, I intend to focus my attention on the lawyer behind this outrage.”

  A reporter in the crowd called out, “Why do you say that?”

  Bellows's mouth curled into a smirk. “Because David Hirsch has proven again that he's a disgrace to the legal profession.”

  Cut back to Drennan at the anchor desk. “The lawsuit may only be starting, but”—dramatic pause, puckish smile—“it's already shaping up to be a real barn burner.”

  The female anchor shook her head in wonder. “‘Disgrace to the legal profession.' Those are strong words, Rob.”

  Drennan nodded. “And they weren't the strongest. After the press conference, Mr. Bellows told me that one of his goals was to get Mr. Hirsch's law license, and I quote, ‘yanked and shredded.'”

  The male anchor said, “Thanks, Rob. We'll be sure to keep an eye on that lawsuit. Meanwhile, meteorologist Dan Webber has been keeping an eye on that winter storm developing to our west.”

  Cut to a bald man with a goofy grin and protruding ears posed in front of a weather map. “That's right
, Mel. The latest from the National Weather—”

  Hirsch turned off the television. The phone rang. It was Rosenbloom.

  “That miserable cocksucker.”

  “Vintage Jack Bellows.”

  “I hope you drill him a new asshole. That stuff he said, it's bullshit, Samson. Nasty, below-the-belt bullshit.”

  “I'm okay with it.”

  “Totally uncalled for—way, way out of bounds. I am so pissed right now I can't see straight. If I had a baseball bat—”

  “Sancho.”

  “I'm not kidding. If I had—”

  “Sancho.”

  A pause. “What?”

  “I'm okay with it.”

  “Ah, come on. How can you—”

  “I've heard worse. Get some sleep. We'll talk in the morning.”

  Hirsch walked over to the window of his apartment. It was starting to snow, the big flakes briefly illuminated as they floated through the light of the streetlamps.

  Hirsch understood, of course. This wasn't rocket science. Bellows's goal was intimidation, to demoralize him, maybe undermine his commitment to the case. The execution was over the top, but everything about Bellows was over the top. Nevertheless, the strategy was sound and based on two reasonable assumptions. First, that Hirsch knew that he was alone and facing three platoons of big-firm litigators, and second, that Hirsch knew that many in his profession viewed him as a pariah.

  No, the strategy was simple and sound. Rub his nose in it, and do so publicly.

  What surprised Hirsch was his reaction.

  He wasn't intimidated.

  He wasn't demoralized.

  And his commitment to the case hadn't lessened.

  Quite the contrary.

  Once upon a time, he had loved a good courtroom battle. Indeed, he had craved a trial the way others craved gambling or mountain climbing or cocaine. He used to joke that a good cross-examination was better than good sex—and he spoke from experience, having had plenty of both. He needed trials. He sought them. He never felt more alive than inside a courtroom in the middle of a trial.