“Who can I talk to? Who can I meet with?”
Sandra shakes her head. “No one. The decision’s been made. If it makes you any happier, you’re not the only one I have to deliver this news to. At least you have some money coming in to cover the loan. You just settled that big case, right? What was it—Crenshaw?”
You bitch—I want to scream it at her. I know exactly why they’ve chosen to call in the loan now. I believe in being transparent with all the companies that do business with the firm. When I got Arthur Hogarth’s call about the Crenshaw case, I e-mailed Sandra about our coming windfall. Now, almost exactly thirty days later—the normal period between a settlement and the plaintiff’s receipt of the check—Sandra is in my office with her hand out.
“You’ve been a good customer, Mick. Moving forward, we can—”
“Moving forward?”
She knows we won’t be moving forward. That I’ll close out our accounts, move the money to another bank.
As soon as she’s gone, I pull up QuickBooks on the computer. The $275,000 balance on the line of credit will eat up all but $111,000 of our share of the Crenshaw settlement. About enough to keep the firm breathing for a month. Which would be bad enough if Susan and I hadn’t sucked $30,000 out of the firm the day after Hogarth’s call. I couldn’t wait to get home that day to tell Piper that we wouldn’t have to borrow money from her father for the new roof. I took her a check for $15,000, half the cost of the roof, to use as the down payment. My taking the $15,000, of course, meant that Susan had the right to do the same, and she did so to pay for a new living-room suite for her apartment.
I close my door and tell Angie not to let any calls through. Tomorrow, I’ll have to tell Vaughn and the others that our windfall is going to blow right past us and that they’ll all have to send the billable-hour clock spinning again. More motions. More hours in the office. Anything that lets us withdraw money from the client-retainer accounts.
The phone rings again. I pick up the receiver, ready to ream Angie. But before I can start, she tells me it’s Piper. I exhale and say I’ll take it. Piper gets right down to business. The roofers are ready to start tomorrow, and they’re looking for the second half of their money.
“Before they start?”
“That was for the materials,” Piper explains. “The new money is to pay the workers. Is there a problem?”
“I’ll bring home a check tonight,” I say curtly, then hang up. Things have been especially bad between us since our blowup after we returned home from dinner with her parents. We’re civil with each other, but just barely. I’m still angry at Piper’s soliciting money from her father for the new roof. I’m annoyed, too, over her stinging remarks about my always leaving. As if my working hard is an excuse for her to play the bitter housewife. And all my ill feelings are just the gloss covering a black ball of rage. It’s taking all my strength not to launch the nukes, put everything on the table. But it’s too soon.
It’s four o’clock and I’m standing at the reception desk, signing a letter for Angie to mail when two men saunter in. “My two best friends,” I say. Detectives Tredesco and Cook. “Come to tell me the DA’s dropping the charges against David Hanson? You’ve decided to look for the real killer? Maybe even dig up some actual evidence?”
Tredesco snorts. “There’s that famous sense of humor I told you about,” he says to his partner. “Nah, Hanson’s going down. But you may be right about evidence. How about we have a chat.”
I lead the detectives into the conference room. “Okay, John. So what brings you to my little kingdom?”
“It’s the incriminating calls,” he answers. “The calls your panicked client placed to you after he killed Jennifer Yamura.”
My heart skips a beat. Tredesco is walking in the wrong direction, but I know instantly what he’s getting at. Still, I play dumb. I look at Cook and say, “Your partner fall off the wagon?”
Tredesco is instantly pissed. “Fuck you, Mick. I’m seven years clean and sober. And don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. The phone records show two calls from Jennifer Yamura’s iPhone to your office. One at 11:45. And one at 12:30. I’m figuring Hanson called you just after he sent the reporter down the stairway to heaven and then a little later, just before he left the house. Or is the phone company wrong?”
Tredesco is wrong about the calls, of course. They were both from Jennifer herself. The first was to set up the appointment to see me. The second was when she moved the appointment up. Something had happened between the calls to upset her, though she didn’t tell me over the phone what it was.
I smile smugly at Tredesco. “You’re so far off course that part of me wants to keep my mouth shut and watch you flounder. But I’m too soft. So I’m going to help you out here. Both of those calls were placed to me by Jennifer Yamura. She wanted to hire me to represent her in connection with the grand-jury mess. She called once to set a time to come in, then a second time because she decided she needed to get together sooner.”
Tredesco’s eyes flash fury. He’d shown up thinking he was going to catch me off balance. He probably figured that, as David’s attorney, I would reflexively hide behind attorney-client privilege, which would have only confirmed what he suspected—that the calls on Jennifer’s cell phone had indeed come from David.
“Horseshit. All that story tells me is that you and Hanson worked out a cover for the calls. You’re smart; I’ll give you that. So’s your client. But both of you together aren’t going to think your way out of this mess.” Tredesco shoots out of his seat, turns, and leaves.
Ed Cook sits for a moment, staring at me blankly, a deer in the headlights. Then he, too, stands and leaves. This time he doesn’t shake my hand.
He’s learning.
14
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25
It’s Tuesday morning, the week after the bank’s decision to call in our line of credit. I’ve told Susan, and she’s as stressed as I am about our money.
My phone buzzes. It’s Angie. “It’s Patti Cassidy,” she sighs. “She says it’s important.”
I sigh back. “With Patti, it’s always important,” I say. “All right, I’ll take it.” I try never to miss a chance to talk to the press about a case, spin the story in some way favorable to my client. “Hi, Patti,” I say, my voice as sunny as I can make it. Not an easy task. “How are things with you these days? I hear you’re up for some journalism award.”
Patti skips the pleasantries, gets right to it. “I’m calling to see if you want to comment on the second geisha house.”
Silence hangs between us as I try to figure out what she’s talking about.
“The brownstone, in New York?”