“Yes, you would,” Fitzroy agreed. “But the legal profession lacks your delicate sense of humor.”
John said, “Fitzroy, walk me through this Feinberg business. You dealt with these people before?”
“Several times.”
“These are bent lawyers, is that it?”
“Not at all.” Fitzroy smiled. “Lawyers don’t have to be bent, John.”
Irwin said, “Their job is bent.”
“Tell,” John said.
Fitzroy said, “All right, John, this is the situation. Feinberg is a large corporate law firm in Manhattan. They have hundreds of lawyers on staff.”
“More than just all these bergs.”
“The bergs, as you say,” Fitzroy explained, “were the original partners, all, I believe, now dead.”
“Gone to their reward.” Irwin smirked.
“So who do you deal with?”
“That depends.”
John kept shaking his head, as though gnats were after him. “Depends on what?”
“The job at hand. For instance, with the land grant business, I spoke to the senior man there, who knows me, described enough of what I was doing, and he turned me over to a real estate specialist in the firm. When I was involved with the offshore salvage enterprise, he put me in touch with a specialist there in maritime law. This time, he’ll give me their DNA specialist.”
“You know,” Tiny said, “I think that’s the lawyers Josie went to when she set up her country.”
Fitzroy looked interested. “You know someone who created a country? For development funds, I should think.”
Little Feather would have liked to hear more about that—a person set up a country? what “development funds”?—but Tiny merely said, “Yeah, that’s it.”
Fitzroy nodded; he knew what they were talking about. “Feinberg would be just the firm,” he agreed. “They have a number of specialists in international law.”
Well, at least John still didn’t understand, which made Little Feather feel a little less dumb, because he said, “I don’t get it. You mean you tell these lawyers what scam you’re working, and—”
“No, no, John, not at all,” Fitzroy said, and, to Little Feather, he looked actually shocked at the idea. “We don’t want,” he said, “our lawyer to think ill of us. I explain what they need to know, but I never, never, never suggest I might intend to do something illegal.”
“But they gotta know,” John said.
“What they know is up to them,” Fitzroy told him. “But what matters is what I say.”
Still shaking his head, John asked, “But why do they go along with it? You’re there with them, and you’re talking and talking, and you’re not quite saying this is a scam going down, and they go along with it? Why?”
“Because that’s their job,” Fitzroy said. He seemed almost kindly, avuncular, and Little Feather realized that, though both men were lifelong professional criminals, they were of completely different orders, and they would never entirely understand each other. And I am going to need them both, she thought. For a while.
Fitzroy was explaining further: “You see, John, lawyers have much less respect for the law than the rest of us. It’s familiarity, you see, doing its little breeding job again. A lawyer isn’t there to tell you what the law is, you’ll get that from a policeman or a judge. A lawyer is there to tell you what you can do anyway.”
Irwin said, “Think of yourself as Dante, and the law as hell.”
“Okay,” John said.
“Your lawyer is Virgil. He takes you through it, and he gets you out the other side.”
John said, “And you’re saying he doesn’t ask questions.”
“John,” Fitzroy said, “do you think the lawyers who represent Mafia chieftains ask questions? The lawyers who represent inside traders in the stock market? The lawyers who do personal injury suits, class actions, divorces? Do you really think they ask their clients questions? Why on earth would they want to know those answers?”
Irwin said, “John, I’m not prying, but I would guess you’ve had a dealing or two with the law yourself, and had a lawyer. Did the lawyer ever ask you if you did it?”
“Well, usually,” John said, looking just a bit sheepish, “there wasn’t that much doubt. But I see what you mean, I get it. So you’ve got a history with these bergs. . . .”
“I pay their fees promptly,” Fitzroy said, “I bring them interesting legal challenges, and I never embarrass them by suggesting I am anything but a pillar of society.”
Andy said, “And what’s the pillar’s connection with Little Feather? You gonna be the sugar daddy?”
“Not at all.” Fitzroy offered Little Feather a bland smile, and she returned it in spades. To the others, Fitzroy said, “Little Feather is a young lady who used to work for an old friend of mine in the hotel business out west. She’s alone and defenseless here in the East, but her prospects are excellent once she proves her identity, and I put my reputation on the line to guarantee she will prove her identity.”
“Your reputation,” John said.
Fitzroy preened a little. “We talk that way in lawyers’ offices,” he said.
Tiny, who’d been turning his head to look from speaker to speaker the whole time, like a man watching a slo-mo volleyball game, said, “So we’re all done. Us three can go back to New York.”
“No,” John said. “This part is done, but we’re not done.”
Tiny turned his head to look at John. “Why not?”
“Because they hit too hard from the beginning,” John said. “The tribes. And they put a tail on Little Feather.”
Little Feather said, “They did?”
Tiny turned his head to look at her. “Two tails. The tribes and a cop.”
She hadn’t known about the cop, and she didn’t like it. “Well, well,” she said.
John said, “So we’ll stay here awhile, and we’ll go on being careful. Like, when we’re done here, Little Feather—”
“I bet I call another cab.”
“You win. You take it into town, catch dinner and a movie, then come back.”
She looked around at them all. “And when do we six meet again?”
Fitzroy said, “Well, you should keep us informed of what happens tomorrow.”
Little Feather nodded. “So I’m going to the drugstore again.”
“You don’t have to,” John said. “You’re going to see this Dawson tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what time.”
“Whatever,” John said. “When you come back, you’ll have company.”
21
Marjorie Dawson didn’t understand. She knew the Three Tribes attorney; he was Abner Hicks, with an office in the Laurel Building around the corner on Laurel Avenue, Marjorie herself being in the Frost Building around the corner this way on Frost Avenue. She’d expected she might even run into Abner this morning, on the short walk over to the courthouse to meet with Judge Higbee in chambers.
So why had the judge called this morning, a little before ten, to say the meeting would have to wait until three this afternoon, “because the tribe’s attorney has to come up from New York”? Wasn’t this a simple, straightforward matter? Either Little Feather Redcorn (had to call her that now) could demonstrate she actually was a Pottaknobbee and would have to be accepted as the third of the Three Tribes or she would fail to prove her case and would be sent packing. So why did the Three Tribes need a lawyer from New York?
After getting that call from the judge—from his secretary, Hilda, actually—Marjorie phoned Whispering Pines and they got Ms. Redcorn to come to the phone so Marjorie could tell her they’d meet in her office in the Frost Building at 2:30. Then she spent the time until then brooding.
The fact is, she was a little intimidated by the idea of a lawyer coming all the way up from New York, almost four hundred miles, to represent the Three Tribes in this matter. Marjorie, with two partners, Jimmy Hong and Corinne Wadamaker, had a small general practice in the county, mostly house closings and wills and divorces and small disputes, in addition to her work as defense counsel for the court, and she felt comfortable with the lawyers she faced in the normal course of work. They all knew one another, they all knew what the job was, and they never tried to make life difficult for one another. Treat the client decently, of course, but your fellow professionals naturally came first.