I don’t even know how to respond to this. It’s just nuts. But then again, I know it’s not really the roof that’s tormenting Piper. My heart is beating a mile a minute as I decide to give Piper a chance to share what’s really going on.
“I don’t know what’s happening with you,” I say. “You’ve been moving away from me for a long time. I can see that. But these past couple months, it’s like you’re running away. You’re always off with one of your girlfriends, in New York, or out for the night, or whatever. And when you are at home, you’re either attacking me or not really here.”
Piper looks over at me, her eyes incredulous. “Me not here? Wow, Mick. Fucking wow.”
I turn away and start to leave.
“Yeah, that’s it. Walk away, Mick. Go somewhere else.”
“Fuck you!” I shout over my shoulder as I stomp down the stairs.
11
MONDAY, AUGUST 20
Finally, some good news. It’s just before noon on Monday. I’m sitting in my office, having just hung up the phone with Arthur Hogarth. A-Hog, as he’s been nicknamed by the bar, is the managing partner at Hogarth, Blumenthal, and Fishbein, Philly’s most successful, headline-grabbing personal-injury firm.
The poorest-kept secret in the legal profession is that the easiest way to make money is to refer personal-injury cases to guys like Arthur Hogarth. Although as the referring lawyer you’re still technically part of the client’s legal team, the A-Hogs and their lackeys do all the work on the case and, just as important, front all the costs. The end result is that you, as the referring attorney, spend no time on the case, invest no overhead, bear no risk, but reap the rewards when someone like Arthur obtains a settlement or collects on a verdict.
This happened with one of my own clients, Candice Crenshaw, a twenty-two-year-old “performance artist” at Delilah’s Den who was arrested for drug possession three years ago. I’d beaten the charges. A year after that, the young stripper was back in my office, opening her shirt to me. Candy’s left breast was the most perfectly sculpted breast I had ever seen. Her right breast was a pancake and had more stitches than a Raggedy Anne doll. As it turned out, the right-side implant had burst during augmentation surgery, bringing on a massive infection that destroyed the mammary.
An hour after Candy appeared in my office, I walked her through the doors of Hogarth, Blumenthal, and Fishbein for a meeting with Arthur. Over the course of the next two years, A-Hog navigated Candy’s “broken boob” case through the legal system. He sued everyone even remotely involved in the enhancement surgery: the surgeon, the nurses, the anesthesiologist, two residents observing the surgery as part of their rotation, the hospital, the implant manufacturer. He mowed down scores of people in depositions. He identified dozens of witnesses ready to testify to what an upbeat, happy, well-balanced, good-natured, responsible, wonderful, doting, and saintly friend, daughter, sister, neighbor, convenience-store customer, mass-transit rider, and God-fearing American Candy was before she was turned into a circus freak. And what a hopeless, despairing, distraught, defeated, deflated, destitute, God-fearing American her deformity had caused her to become. Impressively, Arthur’s witnesses included Leon Auerback, the big-time Hollywood agent (and, Arthur confided in me, his college roommate), who showed up at his deposition to reveal that just before Candy’s surgery, she had been about to sign on for a starring role in an edgy series on HBO.
“The upshot,” I tell Susan as she sits in my office, “is that the case has just settled for three and a half million.”
Susan lets this sink in for a minute. “So our third of Arthur’s third is . . . ?”
“Three hundred and eighty-nine thousand.”
At my mention of the amount, Susan exhales. “Breathing room,” she says. “Finally.”
“Let’s take everyone to lunch,” I say.
In the wake of the unexpected ending to the Phillip Baldwin case, we’d been putting pressure on Vaughn, and our paralegals, Jill and Andrea, to file as many motions, interview as many witnesses, do as much legal research as possible in our other cases, bill as many hours as they could—to generate cash flow. Everyone is exhausted, and the pressure in the office is palpable. We all need a break.
Half an hour later, the whole firm—Susan, me, Angie, Vaughn, paralegals Andrea and Jill, even nineteen-year-old Katrina, our file clerk—are seated around the table in the center of the main dining room of the Capital Grill. As our waiter brings our appetizers, Angie asks where Tommy is.
“Still out chasing alibi witnesses for Terrell Davis.” Terrell Davis’s case is another murder scheduled to go to trial the month after David Hanson’s—and we still hadn’t found the two friends Terrell claimed he was with across town at the time of the drive-by shooting he’s accused of taking part in. It’s not that our client hasn’t done his best to help us. So far, Terrell has given Tommy three pairs of names. But every time Tommy interviews the potential alibis, they fall apart on close questioning. “Terrell’s got to find some friends who can memorize a simple story line,” Tommy had complained.
I share this with the group, and we all chuckle. Then Vaughn tells a story about a call girl he once represented who went by the name of Wednesday. “So I asked her why not pick some other day of the week, say, Saturday or Monday? She looks at me like I’m dumb as wood. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she says. ‘Wednesday is hump day.’”
We all burst out laughing. Vaughn’s punch line opens a valve, unleashing the pressure that’s been building inside of us for the past few months. Susan and I take turns regaling the table with our own tales, and I realize this is what I love about practicing in a firm like ours. It is a truism among lawyers that the practice of law would be great were it not for the clients. And criminal-defense attorneys complain the loudest of all. After all, our clients are not only needy and demanding—they are also, for the most part, criminals. Some are violent criminals, sociopaths, or pathological narcissists.
But these are the worst of the lot, and the fewest. Most of our clients don’t find themselves in orange jumpsuits because they harbor a truly malicious nature. They run afoul of the law because their neighborhoods and schools teem with indolence, indifference, and outright criminality. They fail not because they’re unable to adapt to society’s mores, but because they adapt too well to the rules of poverty and violence that govern the world in which they’re raised.
Lawyers like me, firms like mine, do our best to guide these men and women through the intestines of the dragon they woke up inside. If they’re lucky, we’ll get them out the other end before too much more damage is done. If we’re lucky, we’ll get paid fairly and enjoy a few laughs along the way—to go with the tears, frustrations, and outright defeats.
Almost as though she’s been reading my mind, Susan looks at me and says, “Not like being a DA, is it?”
I smile and shake my head.