“An interesting idea,” Freddie concedes. “Good fundamentals . . . sound management.”
I nod smugly, appreciating the praise but acting as if I expected nothing less.
Willie makes a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “You have a better idea?” I ask.
He nods, then asks Freddie, “What was that prediction thing you were telling me about?”
Freddie looks puzzled: Willie is not the easiest guy to understand.
Willie says, “You know . . . that thing where you buy up a lot of stuff ’cause you know people are gonna want it in a few months.”
“Futures?” says Freddie.
“Yeah, that’s it . . . futures. I think we should buy coffee futures.”
Laurie’s voice comes through the speakerphone. “Why?”
Willie goes on to explain that the Olympics are coming up soon, and many of the events are going to be on late at night or very early in the morning. People will want to watch them and will drink coffee to enable themselves to stay awake. It is as dumb a theory as any I have ever heard.
It is not quite the dumbest theory Edna has ever heard, and she nods in appreciation of Willie’s wisdom. “If I don’t drink coffee,” she breathlessly reveals, “I’m asleep by eight o’clock.”
“I’m the same way,” Laurie chimes in.
“Then you must have had a gallon of it last night,” I say, becoming more and more pathetic by the moment. “Come on, people, this is ridiculous. You think the whole country is going to drink coffee to stay awake?”
“Of course not, but anybody who wants to sleep can drink that decaf stuff,” says Willie. “That’s part of the futures thing, right?”
Freddie nods. “Sure.”
Willie smiles triumphantly. “So we got everybody covered.”
The discussion goes on for a while longer, but everyone jumps on Willie’s bandwagon, leaving me alone with my price-earnings ratio. Kevin comes over and patronizingly tries to cushion the blow. “I think your reasoning is sound, Andy, but Willie’s on a hot streak, and I believe in riding hot streaks.”
“I hope you and your fat black tongue make a fortune,” I say, hitting a new low. I stand up. “Well, it’s really been fun, but I’ve got to go see a client.”
“We’ve got a client?” Edna asks, surprise evident in her voice.
“We’ve got a client?” Kevin asks simultaneously, shock evident in his.
“Yes,” I say. “We’re a law office. That’s what we do. We represent clients.”
The truth is, that’s not what we’ve been doing lately. I’ve been a little burned-out since my last major trial, when I defended Laurie against a murder charge. It was intense because of how much was personally at stake. Since then I’ve pretty much found a reason to turn down prospective clients, many of them because I thought they were guilty, but some because the cases just didn’t seem challenging or interesting enough.
People who don’t know any better are always comparing me to my father, viewing us both as hardworking, high-powered attorneys. Even putting aside the glaring difference that he was the district attorney and I am on the defense side, there is still little comparison. I can’t recall him ever missing a day of work; he often likened it to working on an assembly line where the products coming through were accused criminals. I pick and choose my cases and show up when I please.
You might say I couldn’t carry my father’s briefcase, but you’d be wrong. The truth is, I’m too lazy to carry it. And I offer as proof the shock on the part of my staff on hearing we have a client.
“Who is it?” Edna asks.
“Vince Sanders,” I say.
Laurie’s voice comes through the speaker. “Well, at least it’s not a paying client.”
• • • • •
ON THE WAY TO MEET with Daniel Cummings, I reflect on why I’ve been in a foul mood lately. I’m not big on self-reflection, so I try to get this session over while sitting at one traffic light.
I quickly come up with four possibilities. One, I need to get back to some real work. Two, I’m thirty-seven years old and beginning a midlife crisis, whatever that is. Three, I miss Laurie terribly. And four, Laurie doesn’t seem to miss me nearly as much. I don’t know which of those is true, but the one I’m rooting against is number four.
The meeting with Cummings is unlikely to bring me back to the ranks of the smiling humans. I have a vague consulting role, in an area of the law that I am neither expert at nor interested in. I’m sorry that I took it on at all, though Vince really didn’t give me much of a choice.
Cummings keeps me waiting outside his office for fifteen minutes while he talks on the phone. This is not a good way to start a lawyer-client relationship, but the way I’m feeling it’s an excellent way to end one.
He finally comes out to get me, a hint of an insincere, apologetic smile on his face. He holds out his hand. “Daniel Cummings.” His tone and manner are such that he might have said “Prince Charles.”
I shake it. “Andy Carpenter” is my clever response. We’ve met once before, but if he doesn’t remember it, then I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of revealing that I do.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” he asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say, starting this relationship off on a mature note.
“Come in.”
He leads me into his office, points to a chair, and offers me something to drink. I choose a Diet Pepsi, and he has a mineral water. He’s about six one, with hair so lightly colored that at first glance it looks like he’s going bald, though he isn’t. He has chiseled good looks; he’d be a natural as a Russian movie star.
I don’t know how much Vince is paying his reporters these days, but there is no way that journalism is Cummings’s only revenue source. Sell his suit, shoes, and watch and you could buy something with bucket seats. And he looks comfortable in them, like there are plenty more just like them back home in a walk-in closet the size of North Dakota.
“I don’t know if Vince told you,” he says, “but I’m not keen on the idea of you getting involved in all this.”
I’m not quite ready to share anything Vince told me. “Why is that?” I ask.
“Because I can handle it on my own, and I’m afraid you’ll get in the way. And nothing personal, but defense attorneys are not my favorite group of people.”
“That must keep them up nights,” I say as dryly as I can manage.
His grin is without humor. “I wouldn’t know.”
“It’ll help me avoid screwing things up by knowing what it is I’m dealing with. So why don’t you start at the beginning?”
He gives me a brief rundown of the events, providing little more than I got from reading the stories. The killer contacted him by phone at the office after the first murder, praising the reporter’s “understanding” of his work.
“Why did he think that?” I ask.
Cummings shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I accidentally wrote something that hit him close to home. Maybe he just liked my style. I’ve made something of a study of the criminal mind, but I can’t quite read them.”
“But he told you he would be communicating through you exclusively?”
Cummings nods. “His exact words were, ‘You will reveal me to the world.’”
“So you went to the police.” I already knew that he did, so I’m just trying to move the story along.
He nods. “Of course. The first thing they did was tap my office phone, but they neglected to cover my home phone, which is where he called the next time. Our local police strategists leave something to be desired.”
“Any idea how he got your number?”
He shakes his head. “None.”