It’s too late, but I punch in the number for AID and listen to their telephone ring and ring. I decide to go down tomorrow, first thing. Fuck the appointment. I’m the wife, for Christ’s sake. And the lawyer.
I hang up the telephone and flop into my chair.
I look at the pile of mail on my desk. It’s not like I don’t have other things to do. There’s a mountain of mail, including the expected motion from Starankovic. I open the envelope and read through the motion papers. They’re not bad, an improvement over the crap he usually files. At least he didn’t request oral argument, so I don’t have to sing to Bitter Man again.
I look through the pile of phone messages on my desk, and there’s one from Jameson.FILE THE BRIEF HE SAYS! Miss Pershing has written, with a little daisy in the exclamation point. I thumb through the rest of the pile. Judy, Judy, my mother, Stephanie Fraser again, the rest are clients that will have to wait. None are from Ned. Be careful what you wish, you might get it.
I turn to the mail. My heart begins to pound. On top is a plain white business envelope, with my name laser-printed in capital letters. But there’s no Stalling address. And no stamp or postmark. It came through the interoffice mail, from somebody at Stalling. I pick up the envelope. My hand begins to shake slightly.
Berkowitz. Martin. Jameson. Ned. Not Ned’s father, because it came interoffice.
I tear open the envelope.
I LOVE YOU, MARY
Ned. It has to be. I feel a sharp pain. How could I have been so thoroughly duped? I close my eyes.
When I open them, Berkowitz is standing in the doorway.
29
Berkowitz lurches into my office as if he owns it. I’m struck by his size, intimidated by his power. For the first time, his presence alone seems menacing, and I understand why a lot of people don’t like him.
“Mary had a little lamb,” he says. “Nice place you got here.”
“It looks just like everybody else’s.” I slip the note and the subpoenas under my mail.
“Except for the view, of course.”
“Right.” I glance back at the clock, luminous against the darkening sky. Storm clouds gather behind the clock tower.
Berkowitz leans against the file cabinet by the bookshelves. “Must be a weird feeling, having that thing over your shoulder. Like you’re being watched all the time.”
The comment sends a chill down my spine. He knows about the notes. What is this, a game? I say nothing.
“I don’t think I would like that.”
“The feeling or the clock?”
“Both. Either.” He snorts out a little laugh.
“I don’t like the feeling. The clock I can live with.”
He doesn’t reply, but his eyes scan my diplomas, my desk, and the other file cabinet. His expression is unreadable. “You don’t have any pictures.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have family. In South Philly.”
“Yes.” I flash on the car barreling by me down my parents’ street. “How did you know that?”
“Your accent. It’s a dead giveaway.” He pauses beforeBlack’s Law Dictionary and runs a thick finger along its binding. I can’t gauge his mood, I don’t know him well enough. He seems distracted. Tense. “Do you ever use this thing?”
“No.”
“Then why do you have it?”
“My parents gave it to me.” The detail makes me feel exposed to him, increasing my nervousness. I tell myself to relax. I handled Lombardo, I can handle him. “Did you have an office like this when you were an associate?”
“When I started out, we were in the Fidelity Building on Broad Street. All the windows opened.” He laughs, abruptly, and slaps his breast pocket. “Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Shit.”
“Sorry.”
“So.” He leans against the file cabinet. “Mind if I close the door?”
I feel my chest flush. “Uh…why?”
He cocks his head. “Now why do you think, Mary, Mary?” Suddenly he grabs the door and slams it shut. “Alone at last,” he says, with a dry chuckle.
I find myself rising, involuntarily. I scan my desk for a pair of scissors or a letter opener. Nothing’s there except a stapler and a dictaphone. I have no protection. I back up and feel the cold window at my back.
“Aren’t you standing kind of close to the window, Mary?”
I glance over my shoulder. The clock face glows fiercely at me through a thunderstorm. We’re forty stories up, in a tower of black mirrors that flexes and groans in high winds. I tell myself to stay cool. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re doing down here, Sam?”
His eyebrow arches in surprise. “Enough with the small talk, is that the idea?”
“Exactly.”
“Fine. Two reasons. One: I’m having a reception for the Rules Committee tomorrow night in Conference Room A. Eight o’clock. The litigation partners and the district court judges are invited. You should be there.”
“What?” I don’t understand.
“There’s a reception tomorrow night, and I want you there. Conference Room A. Eight o’clock.”
“Me, at a partners’ reception?”
Berkowitz looks at me like I’m crazy. “Yes, you. Do you go to receptions, Mary, Mary?”
“Yes.” I relax slightly.
“Bring Carrier. You two are pals, aren’t you?”
“Yes. We are.” I breathe easier and step away from the window. I hear a thunderclap outside and step even farther away from the window.
“Good.” He fingers his breast pocket again. “Well. Okay. Two: This goddamned thing with Tom Lombardo. I got a call today. He said you saw what happened.”
“I did.”
“Well, forget you did.”
“What?”
“Forget about it.”
“I’m just supposed to forget-”
“Yes. That’s an order.” His tone is gruff.
I’m beginning to understand what he’s saying. “I get it-it’s a deal. You want to trade off my partnership and Judy’s for my forgetting about what happened with Lombardo? And maybe to Brent?”
“Mary, it’s none of your fuckingbusiness! ” he explodes, out of nowhere. With his face suddenly florid, he looks like a devil. But I fight the devils now and win. Fuck back, even when you’re fucking with the devil himself.
“Don’t you scream at me!” I lean toward him. We’re almost nose to nose over the desk. Berkowitz, the King of Fucking Back, and me, a pretender to the throne.
Suddenly, he breaks into a sheepish smile. The redness in his face vanishes. “That’s what my wife always says.”
“You ought to listen.”
He laughs loudly. “Lombardo’s right. You got balls.”
“No, I don’t. So what was it about?”
“Would you believe me if I told you it’s not your concern?”
“You mean not to worry my pretty little head?”
“Okay. Down, girl.” He looks amused but still tense. Whatever it is, it’s driving him nuts. “All right, it’s about Delia. She’s got her hand in the till. She’s taken a hundred thou over five years.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I were.” His face falls, he shakes his head. “I thought it was somebody in Accounting, maybe that asshole bean counter we let push us around. I didn’t think it was her. It never even occurred to me it was her. I asked Lombardo to track it down for me, but I didn’t want to believe him.”
“So you hit him?”
He looks pained. “Hey, you know, it hurts. She betrayed me after I took good care of her. I loved that kid.”
I meet his eye. Was Brent right about them?
“Don’t give me that look. I know everybody says I’m running around with her. I let’em think it. Fact is, she’s my best friend’s kid, her father was my sparring partner. He and I were like this.” He holds up two tight fingers in a gesture I haven’t seen in ages.