“This moment requires memorialization.” I say, pulling out my phone. “Smile, Char-bar.”
She wipes her eyes again and then flashes her smile. The frozen image on my phone captures my sister perfectly. A woman on the verge of greatness.
I turn my phone to show it to her. “This is the shot you’ll use on the book jacket.”
The server arrives to take our orders. A salad for me, and what I wished I’d ordered for Charlotte—grilled Swiss on rye and french fries. The moment he leaves us, my ringtone sounds.
“Work,” I say, not wanting to tell her that it’s actually our father. “Yes. Yes. I can do that.” I pull the phone away from my ear to check the time. “It’ll take me forty minutes or so to get back, but I’m leaving now . . . Okay . . . Bye.”
I tuck away the phone. “Sorry. Duty calls. I have to get back to the office.”
“Your boss sounds like a real piece of work,” she says with a knowing grin.
“You don’t know the half of it. I’m really sorry I can’t stay for lunch. Do you mind canceling my order?”
“Sure. And I’m sorry too that you have to leave, but I get it. We can’t all live lives of leisure. I’m really glad you came up here, though. I wanted you to be the first person I told. Call me as soon as you’ve read it, okay?”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Oh, and don’t tell Dad, okay? I want to tell him myself.”
“I promise that too.”
I’ve never broken a promise to Charlotte. Not once in my entire life.
But this time I don’t keep my word.
On either score.
2.
Although my father is not quite a household name, he’s plenty famous in households that have a lawyer in the family. It’s not an overstatement to say that he’s universally regarded as the guy you go to when money is no object and you’re up to your eyeballs in criminal sewage.
He’s often asked to speak at law schools. When he does, he always starts with the same story. He usually says it happened when he was in kindergarten, although I’ve heard iterations where he’s in first grade, and sometimes as old as a fifth grader. It’s career day, and the teacher is going around the room asking the kids what they want to be when they grow up. By the time they get to my father, nearly every boy has laid claim to being a future athlete of some type, the girls actresses or singers.
When it’s my father’s turn, he announces that he dreams of someday becoming a garbageman. The disclosure gives rise to snickers among his classmates, and the teacher is horrified that such an intelligent child aspires to a career in waste management.
“Why do you want to be a garbageman, Francis?” the teacher asks.
My father now goes by “Clint,” but as a child he went by Francis—the F in F. Clinton Broden.
“Because it would be fun to get all dirty and hang off the back of the truck,” my father claims he replied to the teacher. In his retelling, this never fails to evoke laughter from his law-student audience.
“Well, you can’t be a garbageman, Francis. Pick something else,” the teacher scolds.
“Then I want to be a lawyer,” says my father. “Because you get paid to fight with people.”
The law students tend to laugh even louder at this, but my father is not joking. He absolutely loves the fight.
I suspect he’s summoned me back to the office to gird for a new battle. When I arrive, I’m greeted by Ashleigh, the firm’s receptionist.
“He’s in his office,” she says.
I like Ashleigh and she certainly seems competent, but she looks like a stripper. Teased-up blonde hair, a chest that makes you wonder how she doesn’t tip over, and spindly legs. I would have thought that my father would be sensitive to the impression she makes on clients. Then again, maybe that’s something his clients—who are virtually all male—like.
My father’s office is, of course, in the corner. Because we are on the fifty-seventh floor, the view captures the entire city to the north and west. My father once told me that he chose to go into criminal defense rather than civil law because clients facing jail time are happy to pay through the nose in the hope that they can buy their freedom. His office shows that he was correct. It’s almost as large as my entire apartment and more opulently appointed than any five-star hotel.
“So nice to see you, Ella,” he says when I enter.
The undertone of sarcasm is hardly even an undertone. My father’s passive-aggressiveness, front and center.
I could have told him that I’d gone to have lunch with Charlotte and still kept her news a secret, but I learned long ago to deal with my father the way he advises clients to act with prosecutors—by saying as little as possible. My father is probably the world’s foremost cross-examiner, and he does not restrict his talents to the courtroom. He has an almost preternatural ability to detect not only lies, but even half-truths and meaningful omissions. Yet like any state-of-the-art detection device, his powers only work when they’re turned on. For much of my life, my father’s interest in me has been stuck in the “Off” position. Still, I’ve always adopted a less-is-more approach when providing him with information about me or Charlotte.
“Am I not allowed to take a lunch hour now?”
“Not when I need you.”
He says this with a smile, but that only reinforces that he’s deadly serious. My father is well aware that he calls the shots with everyone, especially his daughters. Correction—me. Charlotte is too strong-willed, which is why she’s a writer and not a lawyer.
I take a seat in one of the many guest chairs opposite my father’s desk. “So, what’s the emergency?”
“It’s about Garkov,” he says.
Nicolai Garkov is my father’s marquee client of the moment. Garkov is . . . There’s no delicate way to put this. He’s a terrorist and a murderer. The Red Square Massacre is his crowning achievement, if you measure such things by body count. My father has been retained to defend him in connection with charges relating to money laundering, which, ironically enough, is the only unlawful act for which Garkov has been indicted. If you believe my father, it’s also the one crime of which he is innocent.
The defense strategy for Garkov from day one has been to delay, delay, delay. My father boasted back then that it would be four years before Garkov saw the inside of a courtroom. I thought he was being hyperbolic, but he’s kept Garkov from his day of reckoning for nearly five.
The string appears to be finally played out, however. At the last pretrial conference, Judge Koletsky told my father that he’d had enough. “Come hell or high water,” the judge said, “we’re going to start this trial next week.” And then, as if that weren’t clear enough, he added, “And if it’s high water then you all better bring wet suits, because we’re still picking a jury.”
“Okay . . .” I say in a noncommittal tone.