Potter makes small talk. He’s not finished. There’s something more he wants to discuss, but he’s taking his time getting there.
He jokes, about the pending senate confirmation hearings, about all the rumors-stories of a political litmus test for the court.
“It’s all crap,” he says. ‘Don’t you believe any of it. You go back there, the President shakes your hand, they give you some-tiling to drink, and while you’re standing on this chair being sized for your robe, the tailor asks you if life begins with conception.”
We laugh. Like much of Ben’s humor, I can never be certain how large the kernel of truth is in this story.
The smile fades from his face. “There is one more thing,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“A favor,” he says. “Something you can do for me.”
This is Ben at his best, wheeling and dealing, something that he wants from me at a time when he knows I cannot say no.
“It’s the law school, something that I started before all of this came up, before I went back to Washington.” There’s a lot of gesturing with his hands here, posturing and waving his drink in little circles.
“It’s nothing much,” he says. “A trust fund that requires a new administrator.”
I look at him, like ‘What does this have to do with me?’
“It’s set up in the name of Sharon Cooper,” he says.
Suddenly I understand.
Sharon Cooper was twenty-six when she died, killed in an automobile accident this summer. A second-year law student, she was working with the firm at the time, after I’d left. I had landed her a part-time job with P amp;S when I was still in favor. This was a courtesy to her father. George Cooper is the county’s medical examiner. We’ve been thick, Coop and I, since my days with the DA.
“The trust fund was something to remember Sharon,” he says. “Friends set it up at the law school and asked me if I would administer it. At the time it sounded good. But with all of this …” Ben shrugs his shoulders and I realize his dilemma. From three thousand miles away and with a full plate of cases on the high court, the last thing he needs are the minutiae of a trust fund.
Coop brought Sharon’s personal papers to my office the day after her death. He busied himself in the details of arranging her affairs, her funeral, her estate, anything that would serve to avoid the inevitable grieving. When he finally fell into that pit, George Cooper disappeared from the world of normal men for more than a month.
But on the day after Sharon died he sat across from me at my desk, entirely composed, a stack of documents carefully sorted and paper-clipped-insurance, taxes, stocks, a considerable portfolio for a young single woman. These were inherited from Sharon’s mother, who had died of cancer the year before. Within twenty-four months Coop had lost both wife and child. In his state of grief, to George Cooper a lawyer was a lawyer, equally adept in administering the property of the dead as in fending off a long term in the joint. So he came to a friend.
Unable to say no, I took Coop’s papers, opened a file, and blundered into the probate courts.
Ben looks at me from across the room in a kind of reverie now. “An endowment, a trust, has been established at the law school in Sharon’s name. A number of people who knew her have contributed,” he says. “It’s a sizable trust, but we need a trustee. I thought of you.”
This has become an avocation with Ben. A multitude of scholarships and private grants have been spawned under his guiding hand in the last few years, two for deceased partners of the firm, several others for departed wheels in the community. With Ben, it is any excuse to raise money for the law school, his favorite charity. This does not diminish Sharon Cooper, in his eyes or mine, but, his motivations are clear. He will make something positive, even out of the tragic death of this young woman.
“I’d do it myself,” he says. Ben’s talking about being trustee. “But Washington’s pretty far away. They need someone closer, to confer with the dean on expenditures, to administer the funds in a way she would have approved. You’re the natural,” he says. “Besides, I think her father would want you to do it.” The last is the linchpin of his pitch.
“What can I say?”
“You can say yes.”
I shrug a little gratitude toward Ben for the thought, the confidence that accompanies this offer.
“Yes.” I sense that a slight wrinkle of embarrassment has crept across my face. “Why not,” I say, like a giddy adolescent being given a prize he never expected.
“Good!” He smiles broadly. “We should talk again before I leave town, to the up some of the loose ends on this thing. Do you have plans for tomorrow night?”
“Nothing I can’t rearrange.”
“Then we’ll meet for a late dinner at The Broiler. What do you say, nine o’clock? We can talk and maybe you can give me a lift out to the airport when we’re finished.”
“Good,” I say.
Ben lifts himself off the edge of the desk. Our meeting is over. I rise, and we meet in the center of the room. His expression brightens like a lantern. He reaches out with his arm like a swinging gate and slaps a huge hand around the nape of my neck, a little male bonding, like a father cuffing his son for some errant but minor mischief. And as we head for me door, drinks in hand, my concerns turn to matters more economic-to Harry Hinds and my open bar tab.
CHAPTER 3
To get to my office I use an elevator from before the time of Moses, a contraption with a flexing metal gate that slams, emitting the fury of a sonic boom. It’s like hell’s portal closing on its new arrivals. Clients who’ve done time always take the stairs.
This lift empties its cargo into a small lobby on the second floor, the first being occupied by a bank with roots in the Gold Rush. The building itself dates to the last century, but has been well maintained. It has touches of elegance in the moldings and fixtures. The pressed-tin tiles set into the ceiling, original with my office, are again in demand, used to authenticate the metal-fabricated, high-toned restaurants of Fashion Square.
I share a two-room suite down a common hall with Dee, my secretary and receptionist, a hire I made on the recommendation of a friend to whom I no longer speak.
I have learned in my time with Dee to become master of all things electronic: answering machines, copiers, the fax, Mr. Coffee-and most of all the small personal computer which I moved from her desk to my office when I found her using its dark screen like some mystic high-tech looking glass, to comb her hair and apply makeup. I spend my evenings, before the usual rounds with Harry, typing my own correspondence and dreaming of some blameless way to fire Dee.
My secretary is not unattractive, in her early twenties, assertive, bright-eyed, and eager. But on an intellectual plane she is heavily into hairstyles and panty hose. She excels at clerical foreplay. All of the typing paper is stacked in neat piles. The plastic cylinders holding various sizes of paper clips are perpetually fondled like Buddhist prayer wheels, and the desk is endlessly combed for any object that might be out of place. I have learned by painful experience that anything beyond sealing an envelope or licking a stamp severely taxes her secretarial skills. She sports acrylic fingernails longer than claws on a saber-tooth tiger; from one of them dangles a minuscule gold chain stretching from the tip to a tiny star embedded in the half-moon, above the cuticle-almost as attractive as a bone through the nose. She wears these like a declaration of independence-it reads: “You really don’t expect me to type.”
As I enter the office she greets me enthusiastically. “Good morning, boss”-this latter to ensure that we both know who’s in charge. The tasks we each perform during the day have tended to muddy these distinctions. In the inner reaches of my brain, I issue a psychic growl like some snarling hound.
I respond with a flat, indifferent “Hello.” In recent days I’ve become increasingly abrupt in my manner toward her, a sort of cryptic message that she might look elsewhere for employment. But each day when I arrive for work she’s there, panting by the door like some warm puppy, to greet me. The thought that I must pull the trigger myself on this coup de grace is not pleasant, and so it waits.