"You were one of the hostages," he said irritably when he made the connection.
"Yes, I was."
"Must've been awful."
"It's over. The guy with the gun, the late Mr. Bukowsky, was evicted from a warehouse on February 4. Was it one of our evictions?"
"It was," he snapped. Because of his defensiveness, I guessed the file had been picked through during the day. He'd probably reviewed it thoroughly with Alex and the brass. "What about it?" "Was he a squatter?"
"Damned sure was. They're all squatters. Our client is trying to clean up some of that mess."
"Are you sure he was a squatter?"
His chin dropped and his eyes turned red. Then he took a breath. "What are you after?"
"Could I see the file?"
"No. It's none of your business."
"Maybe it is."
"Who is your supervising partner?" He yanked out his pen as if to take down the name of the person who would reprimand me. "Maggie Mayes."
He wrote in large strokes. "I'm very busy," he said.
"Would you please leave?"
"Why can't I see the file?"
"Because it's mine, and I said no. How's that?"
"Maybe that's not good enough."
"It's good enough for you. Why don't you leave?" He stood, his hand shaking as he pointed to the door. I smiled at him and left.
The paralegal heard everything, and we exchanged puzzled looks as I passed his desk. "What an ass," he said very quietly, almost mouthing the words.
I smiled again and nodded my agreement. An ass and a fool. If Chance had been pleasant and explained that Alex or some other honcho from above had ordered the file sealed, then I wouldn't have been as suspicious. But it was obvious there was something in the file.
Getting it would be the challenge.
***
WITH ALL THE CELL PHONES Claire and I owned—pocket, purse, and car, not to mention a couple of pagers—communication should've been a simple matter. But nothing was simple with our marriage. We hooked up around nine.
She was exhausted from another one of her days, which were inevitably more fatiguing than anything I could possibly have done. It was a game we shamelessly played—my job is more important because I'm a doctor/lawyer.
I was tiring of the games. I could tell she was pleased that my brush with death had produced aftershocks, that I'd left the office to wander the streets. No doubt her day had been far more productive than mine.
Her goal was to become the greatest female neurosurgeon in the country, a brain surgeon even males would turn to when all hope was lost. She was a brilliant student, fiercely determined, blessed with enormous stamina. She would bury the men, just as she was slowly burying me, a well-seasoned marathon man from the halls of Will & Trust. The race was getting old.
She drove a Miata sports car, no four-wheel drive, and I was worried about her in the bad weather. She would be through in an hour, and it would take that long for me to drive to Georgetown Hospital. I would pick her up there, and we would try to find a restaurant. If not, it would be Chinese carryout, our standard fare.
I began arranging papers and objects on my desk, careful to ignore the neat row of my ten most current files. I kept only ten on my desk, a method I'd learned from Maggie, and I spent time with each file every day. Billing was a factor. My' top ten invariably included the wealthiest clients, regardless of how pressing their legal problems. Another trick from Maggie.
I was expected to bill twentyfive hundred hours a year. That's fifty hours a week, fifty weeks a year. My average billing rate was three hundred dollars an hour, so I would gross for my beloved firm a total of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They paid me a hundred and twenty thousand of this, plus another thirty for benefits, and assigned two hundred thousand to overhead. The partners kept the rest, divided annually by some horrendously complex formula that usually caused fistfights.
It was rare for one of our partners to earn less than a mill/on a year, and some earned over two. And once I became a partner, I would be a partner for life. So if I made it when I was thirty-five, which happened to be the fast track I was on, then I could expect thirty years of glorious earnings and immense wealth.
That was the dream that kept us at our desks at all hours of the day and night.
I was scribbling these numbers, something I did all the time and something I suspect every lawyer in our firm did, when the phone rang. It was Luis Kattsoff.
"Mr. Eijun," he said politely, his voice clearly audible but competing with a din in the background.
"Yes. Please call me Robert."
"Very well. Look, I made some calls, and you have nothing to worry about. The blood test was negative."
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
"Just thought you'd want to know as soon as possible."
"Thanks," I said again, as the racket rose behind him. "Where are you?"
"At a homeless shelter. A big snow brings 'em in faster than we can feed them, so it takes all of us to keep up. Gotta run."
***
THE DESK was old mahogany, the rug was Persian, the chairs were a rich crimson leather, the technology was state-of-the-art, and as I studied my finely appointed office, I wondered, for the first time in many years there, how much all of it cost. Weren't we just chasing money? Why did we work so hard; to buy a richer rug, an older desk?
There in the warmth and coziness of my beautiful room, I thought of Luis Kattsoff, who at that moment was volunteering his time in a bus), shelter, serving food to the cold and hungry, no doubt with a warm smile and a pleasant word.
Both of us had law degrees, both of us had passed the same bar exam, both of us were fluent in the tongue of legalese. We were kindred to some degree. I helped my clients swallow up competitors so they could add more zeros to the bottom line, and for this I would become rich. He helped his clients eat and find a warm bed.
I looked at the scratchings on my legal pad—the earnings and the years and the path to wealth—and I was sad&ned by them. Such blatant and unashamed greed.
The phone startled me.
"Why are you at the office?" Claire asked, each word spoken slowly because each word was covered with ice.
I looked in disbelief at my watch. "I, uh, well, a client called from the West Coast. It's not snowing out there."
I think it was a lie I'd used before. It didn't matter.
"I am waiting, Robert. Should I walk?"
"No. I'll be there as fast as I can."
I'd kept her waiting before. It was part of the game-we were much too busy to be prompt.
I ran from the building, into the storm, not really too concerned that another night had been ruined.