A career to be proud of. “I’m impressed. You want to represent Judge Hamilton? I hear he needs somebody like you.”
Mack shook his head. “No, Rita. Wrong. My idea was that Jake could backstop you on the case. Judge Hamilton told me it’s you or he goes to Goldberg’s firm.”
Tobin nodded. “Now I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be, I quit,” I said.
Mack sighed. “Rita, I’ve had reporters calling from the American Lawyer and the National Law Journal. Joanne told me there were almost forty calls yesterday. And that plaintiffs lawyer, Julicher, he’s all over the news.”
“Julicher?” Tobin asked. “I never heard of him.”
“I had his bio checked, wait a minute.” Mack thumbed through a neat stack of papers to the side of his desk, pulled a sheet out, and skimmed it. “He’s from New York, but not from any of the top-tier firms. A nobody. Graduated from a state university, then Fordham Law School, Class of ‘77, blah, blah, blah, blah. He’s a slip-and-fall guy, does workmen’s comp cases. A scrapper, a nothing, and he’s on the tube all night last night.”
“He’s hustling referral business, Mack.”
“Is he a good lawyer?” Tobin asked, looking at me.
“He’s no scholar, but he’s a fighter. If he still had a harassment case, he would’ve given me a run for my money.”
Mack tossed the bio aside and stood up. “But it’s a murder case now, it’s getting everybody’s attention. Everybody’s watching. If you withdraw now, they’ll all know about it. It’ll make Judge Hamilton look guilty.”
What if he is? “No, it won’t.”
“Well, I, for one, won’t hang a federal judge out to dry. The networks are all over the story, so are the newspapers. Rita, we go back a long time. I’m asking you as a personal favor to keep the case.”
“Why?”
“For the publicity, dopey,” Tobin said.
I looked at Mack for confirmation, and his smile was already broadening. “I told you, I had forty calls yesterday. Forty-count ’em-forty. One was from Good Morning America. Federal judge kills secretary? We’re talking national exposure here!”
“Allegedly kills secretary,” Tobin added.
Mack laughed. “We’re on a roll with this, Rita. I even hired a public relations firm to manage it. It’s a gold mine.”
Wait a minute. The unsayable needed saying. “But what if Fiske really is the killer?”
They both looked at me blankly. “So what?” Tobin said, and Mack nodded.
I was dumbfounded. “It cuts both ways, boys. It could be bad publicity.”
Mack laughed. “Ain’t no such thing, kid.”
“I second that emotion,” Tobin said.
I looked at them and realized that as long as lawyers like this were around, I would always be second-best.
And I’d never even been to Cincinnati.
10
The tiny, cluttered kitchenette in back of the butcher shop filled with the smell of cholesterol as my father shook a crackling pan of homemade sausage. He was wearing his I’M ITALIAN AND YOU’RE NOT apron, but I couldn’t read the front. All I could see was his thick back, which ended in a white ribbon tied over baggy white pants. The silent treatment again.
“So, Dad, explain this to me. You’re pissed when I decide to represent the judge, then you’re pissed when I want out? What is it? My aftershave?”
LeVonne, who had been rocking his fork by pressing on the tines, laughed softly. He ate with my father every morning at this ancient white drop-leaf, where they both pretended that LeVonne had eaten already and was just keeping my father company.
“You laughin’, Professor?” my father said, without turning around. “I hope not, because it’s not funny. Everything’s a big joke with her.”
“Who, me? Aren’t you going to call me Miss Fresh?”
The only response was the sausage’s. It sputtered, releasing an aromatic smoke of olive oil, fresh garlic, and green pepper.
“Come on, Dad, I like it when you call me Miss Fresh. Then I know it’s you and not some Vito impersonator.” I turned to LeVonne. “LeVonne, what do you think? Is it really him? It must be, who else would wear that apron?”
LeVonne’s smooth lips tightened to hold back his smile. He looked fresh this morning in an oversized T-shirt with a faded picture of Kriss Kross on it. A gentle crease between the twins told me the shirt had been ironed. I wondered who had ironed it, for his parents were long gone and it was all his grandmother could do to get him to my father’s. It occurred to me there was a lot I didn’t know about LeVonne.
“LeVonne, will you talk to me at least? What grade are you in now? Tenth?”
He nodded and looked down at his heavy white plate. Being totally empty, the plate couldn’t have held his interest for more than a moment, but he stared at it, saying nothing, while the sausage sizzled along with my father.
“You like school, LeVonne?”
He shrugged.
“Are you going to take a language next year?”
He shook his head.
I’m usually a better conversationalist than this. “LeVonne, I’ve been meaning to tell you I like your… uh, what do you call that, a beard? Are you growing a beard?”
He touched his chin, self-conscious.
“Do you call it a beard? Or what?” Just to see if he’d talk.
“S’whatever,” LeVonne said.
“It’s a goatee,” snapped my father. “A beard goes all the way around.”
Thanks, Dad. “Well, whatever it’s called, I like it.”
LeVonne hung his head even farther, until his chin was practically buried between Kriss Kross’s steam-ironed, backward baseball caps.
“I like it, too,” my father said.
“I said it first, Pop. So that makes me a nicer person than you.”
“Hmph.” He jiggled the pan.
“In fact, I’m such a good person that when I have a guest to breakfast I do not turn my back on them until I get my own way.” The sausage popped loudly. “Hear that, Dad? The meat gods agree.”
LeVonne laughed, almost a child’s giggle. He covered his mouth but the giggle persisted. My father pivoted and speared the air between us with the tines of the cooking fork. “It’s not my own way, it’s the right way.”
“What’s the right way?”
“The right way is you finish what you started. The judge could be charged with murder. You told him you’d defend him, you defend him.”
“I said I’d defend him against sexual harassment, not murder.”
He punched up his glasses with his wrist. “You said you’d be his lawyer, you’re his lawyer. Finish what you started.”
“But what if I shouldn’t have started it? What if he was using me, like you said?”
“It don’t matter.”
“Can’t I change my mind? Maybe you were right in the first place, Dad.”
He straightened himself to his full height, which was five foot five. “I was right. I was right the first time and I’m right the second time, too. You don’t quit just because it’s tougher than you thought.” He drew a horizontal line in the air with the fork. I had no idea what this meant, except maybe it was the thirty-eighth parallel and I was North Korea and he was South.
“It’s not that simple, Dad.”
“No? Why not?”
“It’s not getting tougher, it’s getting different.”
He turned to LeVonne and pointed to him with the fork. “Do you understand what that means, Mr. President?”
LeVonne shook his head.
“It means it’s not what I bargained for, Dad. I’m not a criminal lawyer. What’s the matter with getting the judge a good criminal lawyer?”
“It’s wrong!”
“Why?”
“General principles.”
“General principles?” I smacked myself in the forehead. “How could I forget about general principles?”