Weller gasped. “You don’t? You don’t! Who the fu-sonny, read the goddamn letterhead! Read the goddamn brass fucking sign on the front door! It’s my goddamn law firm, and I say who we sue and who we do not sue! Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Karp. “I’ll resign, effective immediately.” He stood up, and Weller had to lean his judge’s chair back a little to see Karp’s face. “I’ll turn all my Goldsboro stuff over to whoever you think will try the case. Because Steve and Toby think it’s pretty sure to go to trial early next year.” Karp paused significantly. “Who would that be? Trying it, I mean. Yourself?”
Weller ignored the absurd question. He had not been in front of a jury for years and did not intend to derail his extremely pleasant life to start now. Neither was the possibility of losing Karp seriously to be entertained. There were attorneys at B.L. who knew more about Goldsboro than Karp, but the firm did not have anyone who was his equal in the art of standing in the well of a court and convincing twelve ordinary people that although someone had done a bunch of awful things to the plaintiffs, that someone was not the Goldsboro Pharmaceutical Company, their client.
After a brief pause Weller said, “That’s absurd. You’re the only trial lawyer we have who’s prepped on Goldsboro. You can’t just drop it.” Then he had a happy thought. “And in any case, you couldn’t run both Goldsboro and this Selig thing. You’d have to drop him eventually.”
“Not necessarily,” said Karp. “I expect Selig to go quite rapidly. We can fast-track the whole thing. The case is straightforward, and there’s little room for maneuver on either side. It’s September now. With the holiday slow-down, preliminary motions and discovery should bring us into next February. Federal jury selection is fast, a couple of days, and we should be in trial by early May, maybe earlier if we draw Craig, who’s new, as you say, and who’ll have a light calendar. Twelve weeks for trial, max. I can’t imagine Goldsboro getting started much before late summer.”
“I don’t like it,” said Weller, a trace of helpless petulance creeping into his tone. “Quite aside from the personal embarrassment and lack of consideration involved in pursuing this, by the distraction of your energies you’re potentially jeopardizing the firm’s most important case. And I don’t understand it at all. Haven’t we been good to you?”
“Yes, very good,” admitted Karp. “This is a nice place to work.”
“Then why? Is this Dr. Selig a friend of yours?”
“Not particularly. But something very nasty was done to him for no reason and I said I would fix it, and I intend to.”
“Butch, Butch,” said Weller placatingly, “you’re not with the D.A. or some congressional committee now. You can’t go running around town righting wrongs whenever you feel like it.”
“Gee, that’s an odd thing to say. I thought that was the damn point. Of the law, of judges, courts, juries-”
“Oh, don’t pretend to misunderstand me,” Weller snarled. “And I don’t need any sanctimony from you. You know very well what I mean.”
“Yes, I do,” said Karp. “And I’m still not dropping Selig. So, was that all?”
It was.
Marlene went directly from court back to the loft and there sat by the answering machine, screening her calls. There was one message already from Carrie Lanin, and while she waited, Marlene’s mother, a charity, and the insurance man called and Marlene let them all leave messages. The phone also rang four additional times, but the party calling hung up when the message tape came on. Marlene guessed that it was Lanin, and she was praying that Bello would call back before she had to pick up the kids and see Carrie and tell her that her sweetheart had picked up a walk from the criminal justice system.
Ring, ring, pause, clickety-click, beep. “It’s me,” said Harry Bello, confident that Marlene would be poised at the phone. She picked it up immediately.
“He walked, Harry.”
“I heard. She tried.”
Meaning Beckett. “What are we going to do, Harry? What’ll I tell her?”
“It depends,” said Bello.
Yes, it did depend, on what Marlene herself was willing to do, which simultaneously infuriated her and excited her.
“We should talk,” said Marlene. “Eight-thirty?”
“Paglia’s,” said Bello and hung up.
When Marlene picked up the girls at the P.S. 1 schoolyard, the teacher on yard duty called her over and informed her that cap pistols were not approved accessories, and that her daughter should not bring hers to school again. When Lucy was settled in the front seat of the VW, Marlene looked her over and saw a silvery butt protruding from the pocket of her red corduroys.
“Is that a gun in your pocket, dear?” Marlene asked sweetly.
Wordlessly, her daughter yanked it out, showed it briefly, and stuck it back in her pocket. It was a battered metal six-shooter with plastic grips, about two-thirds full size and quite real-looking.
“Where did you get it, Lucy?”
“Bobby Crandall gave it to me.”
Light dawned. “The kid you did the project for, huh? This is the payoff?”
Lucy nodded. After a pause she said, “Girls could have guns.”
“Yes, they could,” said Marlene, disturbed and proud at the same time. “But some girls have daddies that might think that kids shouldn’t play with guns at all, boys or girls. I wouldn’t go waving that around the house, and you can’t take it to school again, understand? The teacher will take it away from you. Plus, no more doing school stuff for other kids. It’s against the rules too, okay?”
Marlene was hoping for another burst of Chinese, but Lucy just nodded, her hand deep inside her pocket, from which issued little clicking sounds.
“Well?” Carrie Lanin’s face was bright with hope as she met Marlene and the children at the door to her loft. Marlene noted that she had installed a heavy new police lock on it.
“I think we did pretty good, considering. He got a year and three years’ probation.”
“Yippee!” Carrie shouted. “He’s really in jail?”
“Well, actually, no, they suspended the sentence,” said Marlene too quickly, “but now it’s on record and if he ever comes near you again-”
“If he ever…! What are you saying, he’s free? He’s out there?” Both women’s eyes involuntarily flicked to the door and lock for an instant, and when Lanin turned her gaze back onto Marlene it was vibrating with fear and, naturally, anger, not at Pruitt nor at the criminal justice system in general, but at Marlene, as being the only vaguely responsible adult present to take the shit.
Marlene braced herself. She was used to this, bored with this even, from the old Rape Bureau days. You would expect violated women, women whose essential self-confidence had been stripped away by a practical demonstration of exactly how vulnerable they were to any asshole who cared to make the effort, to appreciate a sympathetic and willing listener. But no; those who weren’t nearly catatonic were looking for someone on whom to take out their rage and, absent the perp himself, the lucky winner was more often than not Marlene or one of her people.
Carrie Lanin was not as bad as some. There was a lot of nasty language, a lot of look-what-you-got-me-into, and a glass and a picture frame got broken. The girls came running out of Miranda’s room and stood for a moment in shocked silence in the doorway, until Carrie caught sight of her daughter. Then, with a groaning sob, she swept up the frightened child into her arms and collapsed against the wall, weeping.
Marlene took charge. She grabbed a handful of paper towels from the kitchen and handed it as a nose wipe to the afflicted woman. She took Lucy aside and gave her a child-size version of what was going on: a bad man was after Miranda’s mommy and Mommy was going to make him stop and Lucy had to take Miranda away and watch TV or play and keep out of the way while Mommy talked with Miranda’s mommy.