by Wick Downing
I helped him into bed. “Let me at least call Mom?” I asked him. “She’d love to come over and—”
“No you don’t.” He closed his eyes and pulled the sheet up to his chin. “The last thing I need is a managin’ female tellin’ me to do this and do that.” His eyes closed. “You aren’t like that, Katie my dear. Not yet.”
It sounded like a warning, which I didn’t need. I’ve always known that the only person I need to manage is me. But I could hardly wait to tell Mom she was a managing female. “Will you call me if you need anything?” I asked, hating to leave him when it seemed he might die any second.
“Course. You’re my partner.” He opened an eye and found me with it, even though I was certain he couldn’t see me. “Kate, you’re a fine young woman, you are. Your father would be proud of you. So would your brother.”
I saw them suddenly, getting in the car and leaving for the mountains on that awful day. “Really?” I whispered as tears squished out of my eyes.
“No question about it.”
Chapter Six
IT WAS ALREADY TEN THIRTY when I left Grandfather’s hotel. What happened to my morning? The Alvarez motion had to be filed before noon, which I could do. But what about Herman? What if he’d already been put to sleep? I hurried back to the office, torturing my brain for ideas.
When I opened the door, I had to push my way through a crowd of people. Clients? Were they all waiting to see their lawyer? That was me!
Miss Willow’s eyes pleaded with mine from a corner of the room, and I nodded at her, trying to keep my cool. “Mrs. Roulette, can I see you a moment?”
“Of course, dear.”
She followed me to my room, and I shut the door behind her so no one would hear me scream. “What can I do?” I begged her. “There is no way I can see all those people. I don’t have time. I have to file that motion, and Miss Willow’s dog is facing a death sentence!”
She put her hands on my shoulders and smiled at me as though she knew I’d think of something. “Calm down, sweetie,” she said. “How would your grandfather handle the situation?”
“He’d decide who has a real problem and tell everyone else to go away.” Then came a brainstorm. “You know all the clients, don’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
“And what their problems are?”
She nodded knowingly. “Mrs. Clarvey probably wants to throw her husband out of the house. She’s a big woman. The Judge would tell her to pick him up and put him outside. Mr. Thorne often simply wants to change his will. His daughter may have done something to annoy him, and he punishes her by taking her out of it, then telling her what she did to deserve it. Mr. Cleft—”
“Will you screen them for me?”
“What?” She frowned at me with uncertainty. “Dear, what do you mean?”
“Work up a little form? It doesn’t have to be very complicated or anything, maybe a place for their name, today’s date, their telephone number, and what kind of problem. Then do a quick interview and tell anyone who really needs to see me to come back this afternoon?”
“I’m just a secretary, honey,” she said. “Can I do that?”
“You’re not ‘just a secretary,’ Mrs. Roulette.” She looked at me as though she wondered what on earth I was talking about. I wondered too, but kept going. “Didn’t you read that article in Ms. on Pat Nixon?” I asked her. “How she should stop being ‘just a wife’ and start being a woman?”
“It’s a bit late for me to make changes like that.”
“No, it isn’t.” She seemed to shrivel before my eyes. “Mrs. Roulette, I really need your help.”
She nodded and took a deep breath. “I’ll do my best, dear.”
“Thank you!” I said. “Use Grandfather’s office when you do your interviews, okay? It’ll be easier, and you can answer the telephone too.” A thought flashed through my mind, someone I could call about Herman. “But let me use it first,” I said, hopping across the hall.
“Of course, dear. Would you like to see Miss Willow now?”
“Not yet.” I ripped through the telephone book, looking for the number for the animal shelter. It takes forever to find a number when you’re in a hurry, but finally I found it. “Maria?” I blurted into the telephone, remembering the name of the “nice woman” Miss Willow had baked cookies for at the animal shelter. “Hi. I’m Kate Hope, Miss Willow’s lawyer? Can you tell me what’s going on with Herman?”
“Oh! I am so happy you called, Mrs. Hope!”
“Kate,” I said. “And it’s ‘Ms.’ Like the magazine?”
“Herman must not be destroyed,” she said urgently. “He may look like a wolf, but he is a wonderful dog, so strong, so gentle. He would never bite a baby!”
“Where is he now?”
“Here. With me. I take special care of him.” Her voice was one step from hysteria. “There’s no time to lose. Officer Milliken wants to put an end to the dog today. He will take the paperwork to the city attorney’s office himself, and walk it through.”
“What does that mean?”
“He will have the city attorney write up an order, ordering Animal Control to ‘destroy’ Herman! That’s what the law calls killing dogs. Then he will take the order to the judge and have it signed, and come back to the shelter, and . . .” Her voice trailed off to a gasp.
“And what?”
“He will see to Herman himself.”
I was shocked. “You mean he’ll kill him personally?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked. “Is he a sadist or something? What’s the big hurry? Why does it have to be today? What about Miss Willow?”
“He doesn’t care about her. It’s his wish to be the big hero to the family of this baby, to give them their vengeance. Ms. Hope, is there something you can do?”
My whole body buzzed with static. “Who writes up the orders in the city attorney’s office?”
His name was Carl Thomas, and two minutes later, I actually had him on the telephone. Would he talk to me, like, lawyer to lawyer? “I . . . sir, I have a client with a dog,” I started.
He laughed. “A lot of people have dogs. Who is this?”
“Kate Hope, sir. I’m with—”
“I know who you are, Kate,” he said, then corrected himself. “Miss Hope. I’ve read about you, and knew your dad. A fine man, I might add. What’s this about your client’s dog?”
His voice sounded familiar to me, even though I couldn’t place it. “There has been this terrible mistake. The dog’s name is Herman, and—”
“Is that the German shepherd that bit the Pearsan baby?”
“I . . . well, the charge is that he bit a baby, but—”
“It’s not a terrible mistake, Kate. The animal-control officer just talked to me, and I’m working on the order now. He’ll be here right after lunch to pick it up. Herman will be out of his misery this afternoon.”
My body went from buzz to numb. “Please, Mr. Thomas,” I begged him. “What can I do?”
“I don’t know. Ask your grandfather.” He sounded angry. “Your client didn’t even show up at the hearing, Kate. What do you expect?”
“But—”
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said.
I tried to say something, but nothing came out.
“Listen to me, Kate,” he said, a bit softer this time. “You’re a lawyer now. You win some and you lose some. It’s not a bowl of cherries.”
“Thanks, I guess,” I said.
“I’ve got another call,” he said, and hung up.
Cold sweat covered my forehead. How could I tell Miss Willow that Herman was toast? I grabbed all my notes on Herman and stuffed them in my briefcase, next to the Alvarez motion, then hurried down the hall. “Bye, Mrs. Roulette,” I said, waving and smiling confidently at everyone, which is something the Judge said I should always do, no matter what I felt. “Miss Willow?” I asked, finding her terror-filled stare in the corner of the reception room. “Wait here, okay? I won’
t be long I hope.”
Mom’s genes may have given me her great smile, but they also gave me her nervous stomach. Why did that have to be part of the package? I probably looked okay to all our clients, but I needed to throw up.
The courts are in the City and County Building, less than two blocks from our office. It’s a colossal four-story mass of huge stone bricks that totally occupies two city blocks. It sits there like a Greek temple, with enormous marblelike columns that don’t hold up anything except huge marble beams with Roman letters carved on them. Steps spread down from the main entrance on the second floor, like pictures I’ve seen of those terraced hillsides in China.
As I jogged up the steps, a man coming down them stopped when he saw me, then smiled and got in my way. “Are you Kate Hope, the girl lawyer?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
He shifted his briefcase to his left hand and stuck out his hand, kind of man to man. “You’re hell on wheels, girlie. Thought you were going to run me over on that boy’s bike you ride.”
“Oh. You’re . . .” I held out my hand. He looked almost slender in the lightweight Italian suit he’d changed into.
“Incidentally, I do have daughters, Kate. Two of them.” He crushed my hand.
“Aaagh!”
His face beamed with happy malice. “Better strengthen your grip, honey. The law is basically a man’s world, know what I mean?” He let go of my mutilated hand.
“I guess it needs some work.”
“Another thing, Kate,” he said. “I’m Carl Thomas.”
“You?” I tried to smile. “Oh.”
“I know I was a little abrupt on the telephone. But—well, I’m sorry.” He shrugged and trotted on down the steps.
It was cool in the courthouse, like being deep inside a mammoth cave. The high ceilings were twenty feet above the marble floors. I rode the elevator to the fourth floor and hurried down the hall to the office of the clerk for the criminal division. Mrs. Davis, the clerk, was behind the counter. “Hi, cutie,” she said to me.
I didn’t mind being called “cutie” by Mrs. Davis. It meant I was part of her family. The Judge had introduced me to her right after I’d passed the bar. “She knows more law than most lawyers, Kate,” he’d said.
“Judge, you know I can’t give legal advice,” she had replied. “That’s against the law.”
“So it is,” he’d said to her, then turned to me. “But if you treat her nicely and say please, she might make helpful suggestions.”
I hoped she’d give me some helpful suggestions now. “Hi, Mrs. Davis,” I said, handing her the Alvarez motion. “This has to be filed before noon.”
She leafed through it. “Kate, the DA needs a copy. Have you given him one?”
I took a deep breath. “I forgot. I’ll just run back to the office and—”
“You won’t make it in time. I’ll make you a copy.” She took it over to the copy machine. “Five cents a page.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Pay me the next time you see me.” She put the first page of the motion on the glass plate on top and closed the lid. In less than two minutes, the motion was copied. “Do you know what to do now?”
“Give it to the receptionist in the DA’s office? And get a certificate of service?”
“Not quite. Have her sign your certificate of service.”
“I forgot that, too.”
She reached under the counter for a form that said Certificate of Service at the top. “Just make sure the receptionist signs and dates this,” she said, “and then bring it back to me. Hurry now.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s eleven thirty.”
“You’ve saved my life.” I grabbed the papers, ran across the street to the DA’s office, gave the copy to the receptionist, who signed the certificate of service, and then ran back to the clerk’s office with minutes to spare.
“You aren’t even sweating,” Mrs. Davis said as she file-stamped the original at eleven forty-nine. “How are you doing, Kate? Having fun?”
“Not today. Grandfather’s sick and . . .”
Two men walked in, so I stopped talking. Neither of them really noticed me as they joked with Mrs. Davis and filed their papers. After they left, Mrs. Davis said, “I’m sorry to hear about the Judge. He’s such a dear.”
“Mrs. Davis, can I ask you for a suggestion?”
She laughed. “Sure.”
After I told her about Herman, she frowned at the clock. It was almost noon. “I’m meeting with some judges for lunch, honey, and can’t help you. But I can show you a file. If you’re as smart as the Judge says, you’ll know what to do.” She pulled a file out of the long bank of cabinets in the back and handed it to me, then gave me several clean sheets of legal-size typing paper. “There’s a typewriter in the law library. Can you type?”
“Sort of.”
“You’ll need copies. One for you, one for the court, and one for Carl Thomas.” She thought a moment. “Here.” She opened a drawer and gave me a key. “This opens that side door. Can you use the copier?”
I didn’t know. The office of Hope and Hope didn’t have one. “Yes.”
“You’ll have to be finished at one, Kate. I can’t let you stay after that.” It was three minutes after twelve. “Think you can do it?”
Mom’s great smile appeared on my face. “Piece of cake.”
Chapter Seven
THE FILE MRS. DAVIS HAD GIVEN ME was a burglary case! Had she made a mistake? But when I thumbed through it, I understood. The defense lawyer had filed a “Motion for Injunctive Relief, to Prevent the Destruction of Evidence.” I could do the same thing, only I’d call mine a “Motion for Injunctive Relief, to Prevent the Execution of a Dog.”
I tucked the file under my arm, let myself out the side door, and hurried to the law library.
Mrs. Roulette would not have been proud of the way it looked, with uneven margins and strikeovers and erasure marks. But there wasn’t time to worry about that. With two minutes to spare, I left the key on Mrs. Davis’s desk and stuffed the motion and all the copies in my briefcase. The city attorney’s office was across the street. “Hi,” I said, five minutes later, to the receptionist.
“It’s Kate Hope!” the receptionist said, smiling at me. She knew who I was, which was nice. All the receptionists, and secretaries, and the women who did all the work that the men got the credit for, knew who I was. I got energy from them too, because they wanted me to succeed. “How are you, honey?”
“Great,” I lied. “Mr. Thomas here?”
“He’s with someone, but if . . .”
“A dogcatcher? Officer Milliken?”
She nodded.
“Can you sign for this,” I asked, giving her a copy of my motion, “and give it to him?”
“Sure, but—”
“I’m in kind of a hurry, or I’d wait.”
As she signed the certificate of service, she glanced at the motion. Her eyebrows went up. “You scoot,” she said. “I’ll see that he gets it.”
Next stop was Judge Steinbrunner in Courtroom Six. I hurried into his clerk’s office, but no one was there, so I tapped the bell on the counter.
“Who is it!” a man’s voice demanded from the judge’s chambers.
“It’s, ah, Kate Hope, sir,” I said.
“You don’t say! Well.” I heard the man talking to someone, then the sound of a phone being hung up. He came out. A round little man with horn-rimmed glasses and thin gray hair, he looked pleased when he saw me, but not nice. In fact, he looked like a cat who had cornered a mouse. “That was Carl Thomas on the phone, so I was expecting you. Let me see what you have, missy.” He took the papers from me and the smile on his face got bigger. “Well, now. Have you ever challenged someone to a duel?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Once you start something like this, you can’t stop it.” He nodded to himself with satisfaction. “Young lady, I want you in my courtroom at two o’clock. Today. Thirty-five minutes from
now.” He beamed at me. “With your client.”
My stomach hurt as I zipped back to the office. “Your young man called,” Mrs. Roulette said. “He’d like you to call him.”
“Mike Doyle is not my young man!” The office had emptied except for Miss Willow, who sat huddled in a corner. “I can’t call him now. Miss Willow and I have to be in Judge Steinbrunner’s courtroom in twenty minutes.”
Miss Willow’s eyes popped open and a timid fist covered her mouth. “We do?” she managed. “But I can’t go to court looking like this! You’ll just have to go without me, dear.”
“You look fine, Miss Willow,” I said, “and you have to be there. Judge’s orders. Let’s go.”
We drove back in her car, which was a mistake. It would have been faster to walk—and safer, too. She was a complete basket case. When we got to Courtroom Six, I pushed her inside and looked at the clock. We’d made it with one minute to spare.
Mr. Thomas was already there, sitting at one of the tables in front of the bench. He wouldn’t look at me, but the big man wearing a brown uniform who sat next to him did. Officer Milliken, no doubt, though he wasn’t at all like the picture of him I’d drawn in my mind. I’d drawn a weasel, but this man had a friendly expression on his face and nice brown eyes. “Hello,” he said, standing up. “I’m Dan Milliken, Ms. Hope.” He stepped over to me and stuck his hand out. Another crusher? “I’ve got a daughter your age who wants to be a lawyer,” he said. “She wants to meet you.”
At least he was nice enough not to break any of my fingers when he shook my hand. “If anything’s left of me after today, sir, I’d love to meet her.”