Parver was the youngest and newest member of what Vail called the Special Incident Staff - better known around town as the Wild Bunch - all of whom were in their late twenties and early thirties, all of whom had been 'discovered' by Naomi, whose vast authority included acting as a legal talent scout for the man they all called boss.
Shana Parver was the perfect compliment to Naomi Chance. She was not quite five-two but had a breathtaking figure, jet-black hair that hung well below her shoulders, and skin the colour of sand. Her brown eyes seemed misty under hooded lids that gave her an almost oriental look. She wore little makeup - she didn't need it - and she had perfect legs, having been brought up near the beaches of Rhode Island and Connecticut, where she had been a championship swimmer and basketball player in high school. She was wearing a black suit with a skirt just above the knee, a white blouse, and a string of matched pink pearls. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a white bow. Dressed as conservatively as she could get, she was still a distracting presence in any gathering, a real traffic stopper, which had almost prevented Vail from hiring her until Naomi pointed out that he was practising a kind of reverse discrimination. She had graduated summa cum laude from Columbia Law School and had made a name for herself as assistant prosecutor for a small Rhode Island county DA when she applied for a job on the SIS. Naomi had done the background check.
A rebellious kid who had made straight A's without cracking a book, Parver had raised almighty hell and flunked out of the upscale New England prep school her parents sent her to. Accepted in a tough, strict institution for problem kids, she had made straight A's and from then on had been an honour student all the way through college and law school.
'What happened?' Naomi had asked in their first face-to-face interview.
'I decided I wanted to be a lawyer instead of a big pain in the ass,' Parver had answered.
'Why did you apply for this job?'
'Because I wrote a graduate piece on Martin Vail. I know all his cases, from back when he was a defence advocate. He's the best prosecutor alive. Why wouldn't I want to work for him?'
She had had all the right answers. Naomi's reaction had been immediate.
'Dynamite.'
Vail had expected anything but the diminutive, smart, sophisticated, and aggressive legal wunderkind.
'I want a lawyer, I don't want to give some old man on the jury a heart attack,' he had said when he saw her picture.
'You want her to get a face drop?' Naomi had snapped.
When Parver stepped out of the lift and walked resolutely towards his office for her first interview, Vail had groaned.
'I was hoping the pictures flattered her.'
'There's no way to unflatter her,' Naomi had offered. 'Are you still going to hold her looks against her?'
'It's not just looks. This child has… has…'
'Magnetism?' Naomi had suggested.
'Animal magnetism. She is a definite coronary threat to anyone over forty. I speak from personal experience.'
'You going to hold her looks against her?' Naomi had asked. 'That's discrimination. Marty, this girl is the best young lawyer I've ever interviewed. She's a little too aggressive, probably self-protective, but in six months she'll be ready to take on any lawyer in the city. She has an absolute instinct for the jugular. And she wants to be a prosecutor. She doesn't give a damn about money.'
'She's rich.'
'She's well off.'
'Her old man's worth a couple million dollars - fluid. I call that rich.'
'Marty, this young lady reminds me so much of you when we met, it's scary.'
'She's a woman, she's rich, and she's gorgeous. The only thing we have in common is that we inhabit the same planet.'
'You better be nice to her,' Naomi had warned, leaving the office to greet her.
Six months earlier, Parver had tried two cases and blown one. Vail had told her later that she was too tough, too relentless.
'The jury likes tough, they don't like a killer,' he had said. 'You have to tone down, pull back. Study juries, juries are what it's all about. I had a friend we called The Judge who used to say that murder one is the ultimate duel. Two lawyers going at it in mortal combat - and the mortal is the defendant. Excellent analogy. Two sides completely polarized. One of them's right, the other one's wrong. One of them has to perform magic, turn black into white in the minds of the jurors. In the end, the defendant's life depends on which lawyer can convince the jury that his or her perception of the facts is reality. That's what it's all about, Shana, the jury.'
Toning it down hadn't come easily.
'You ready, Miss Parver?' Naomi asked, shaking her back to the present.
Parver scowled at her. 'It's not like it's the first time I ever questioned a murder suspect, Noam.'
Parver was the primary prosecutor on the Darby case but had been in court and missed Darby's first interrogation. Now it was her turn to have a shot at him.
'This Darby is a nasty little bastard. Don't let him push you around.'
Parver smiled. 'Be nice if the creepy little slime puppy tries,' she said sweetly.
'You haven't met Rainey yet. Be careful, he's a killer. A good honest lawyer, but a killer. Don't let that smile of his fool you.'
Parver drew herself a cup of coffee, sprinkled in half a spoonful of sugar, stirred it with her finger then sucked the coffee off it.
'Somebody said he's as good as Martin was in the old days,' she said casually, and waited for the explosion.
'Ha!' Naomi snorted. 'Who the hell told you that?'
'I don't know. Somebody.'
'Don't let somebody kid you, nobody's that good - or is ever likely to be.'
'You never talk about those days, Naomi. How long have you been with Marty?'
'Eighteen years,' Naomi said, tracing a long black finger down Vail's calendar for the day. 'When I started with Martin, he charged fifty dollars an hour and was glad to get it. And all I knew about the law was that it was a three-letter word.' She paused for a moment, then: 'My God, wait'll I run this by him. A luncheon and a cocktail party, both on the same day. The State Lawyers Association. I'll wait to tell him, he's liable to go berserk and kill Darby if I tell him before the inquiry.'
A moment later Vail stepped out of the lift, threading his way through the crowded jungle of glass partitions, desks, file cabinets, computers, blackboards, telephones, and TV screens towards his office. It was in a rear corner of the sprawling operation, as far away from the DA Jack Yancey's office as it was possible to get and still be on the same floor.
God, Naomi thought, he must've dressed in the dark. Vail was wearing an old grey flannel suit, unshined loafers, and an ancient blue knit tie that looked like it had been used as a garrotte by stranglers from Bombay. 'Christ, Martin,' Naomi said, 'you look like an unmade bed.'
'I am an unmade bed,' he growled, and stomped into his office. 'How old's this coffee?'
'Fifteen minutes.'
'Good.' He went to the old-fashioned brass and chrome urn he had taken as part payment for handling a restaurant bankruptcy years ago and poured himself a mug of coffee. Parver and Naomi stood in the doorway.
His cluttered, unkempt office was a throwback to what Naomi sometimes referred to as the 'early years'. It was dominated by an enormous, hulking oak table that Vail used as a desk. Stacks of letters, case files, and books littered the tabletop, confining him to a small working area in the centre of the table. There were eight hardback chairs around the perimeter of the table. He flopped down in his high-backed leather chair, which was on wheels so he could spin around the room - to overrun bookshelves or stuffed file cabinets - without getting up. An enormous exhaust fan filled the bottom half of one window. Vail was the only smoker left on the staff and no one would come into his office unless he sat in front of the fan when he smoked.