It was impossible to deny such a straightforward request without asking Rosario straight-out if she was loaded. “Sure,” she said, stamping her feet before she stood, to get the feeling back in them. “I have vodka and scotch.”
“Scotch with a scooch of ice.” Rosario laughed at her own word-play. She had a gravelly, masculine laugh. Gossip, hardened into legend, maintained she was the illegitimate daughter of one of the city’s most beloved mayors, and anyone who had seen his portrait in City Hall had to believe it was true. Daniel Florio in drag would have been a dead ringer for Rosario Bustamante. But Rosario didn’t encourage the speculation, because her accomplishments would appear less impressive if there was a powerful patron in the wings, manipulating her rise. Rosario Bustamante’s official biography was a Horatio Alger tale of a girl transcending her roots as the daughter of a Mexican cleaning woman to become the city’s best criminal defense attorney. But there were tiny hints of connectedness imbedded in her résumé. St. Timothy’s for high school, then Vassar and Yale Law. Sure, she could have done it all on scholarship. But how would a cleaning woman have known to aim her clever teenage daughter at the city’s private school system? Someone had been whispering in Rosario Bustamante’s ear since she was very young.
Sharon brought Rosario her drink, no longer caring if her barware earned her the woman’s admiration.
“Rosario-I can’t do this without you.”
“I’m not sure you can do it with me. Pro bono holds less attraction for me as I near retirement age.” She bared her teeth in a self-mocking grin. Everyone in the courthouse knew it would be decades before Rosario Bustamante died, probably at her desk, or in a summation. But she wouldn’t shuffle off this mortal coil before she sent a few more judges and prosecutors to the edge of apoplexy.
“Helen Manning’s parents have money.” And Helen would kill herself before asking for it, Sharon knew. That’s why a public defender had ended up representing Alice in the first place. But Sharon would persuade Helen of the importance of not being proud this time.
“Sharon, you know how I work. I take on cases that I can win, cases with rich clients or ones that are rich in publicity. This lacks the former, and you’ve told me you want to avoid the latter. I’ve wanted you to work for me for years, but why should it be on these terms? To put it baldly-what’s in it for me?”
“Me. You’d have me, at last.”
“How old are you now? Thirty-five? Forty?”
“I’m thirty-four.” Sharon couldn’t help glancing at her reflection in the plate-glass sliding doors. The sky was completely dark now, so she could see herself more clearly, and what she saw was a woman who, if anything, looked younger than she was.
“Not a comment on your looks, dear, just the sheer number of years I’ve been bumping into you around the courthouse. You were quite the prodigy when you started out. But for my office, you’re long in the tooth. You know that.”
Sharon did. Rosario ran a farm team, taking passionate young men and women straight out of law school, then working them to death. She reaped the benefits while most of her associates burned out and crashed, some leaving the law altogether. There was always a ready supply of associates because she was a brilliant lawyer. She had a great instinct for cases that looked open-and-shut for the prosecutor, but could be derailed by a little bare-minimum lawyering. People liked to say that Rosario Bustamante drank to level the playing field, and there had never been a complaint filed against her with the state bar, no matter how many nips she stole in the ladies’ room during a trial. If Rosario Bustamante had been Daniel Florio’s legitimate son instead of his bastard daughter, she would have been a power broker in the city, rising high in the judicial ranks or winning elective office. Deprived of her birthright, she took great pleasure in kicking the shit out of anyone with power.
“Sharon, you clearly have some family money”-Rosario indicated the surroundings with her chin. “You’re one of the few who can afford the dignity of being a public defender without giving up the, um, niceties provided by private practice. And everyone knows you’re a good lawyer. If you’re intent on bailing, find a good firm with a partnership track. You know I’m never going to share the profits of my practice, so why bother?”
“Aren’t you going to retire someday?”
Rosario laughed. “Why not just ask me if I plan to die? Yes, I’m going to retire one day, but not for quite some time. What are you planning to do, sit around like a vulture, in the vain hope you can take over my lease and buy my office equipment on the cheap?”
“I could learn enough from you to set up my own practice. Or I could run for public office.”
“County council?”
“State delegate, more likely. County council is still a boys’ club.”
“It’s a part-time legislature, dear. The jobs don’t pay enough to make it worth your while to spend the three months in Annapolis.”
“But you would pay me enough. And it wouldn’t hurt you to have an associate who was in Annapolis part-time.”
“Perhaps.” Rosario paused, and Sharon wondered if she was jealous. “Assuming you got there. But what would you do for me in the meantime?”
Without realizing what she was doing, Sharon knelt before Rosario Bustamante and took her hands. Rosario’s knees were splayed-she was always careless about how she sat-and her pantyhose were an off shade of amber that made her legs look jaundiced. From this vantage point, Sharon could see the ladder of a run that had opened on the inside of the right thigh, reaching past the hem of the short skirt. Sharon felt as if she were bowing before a queen, waiting to be knighted.
“I know this doesn’t appeal to you, because, if we do it right, there won’t be any publicity. The best-case scenario is a case that never happens. The cops find whoever really did it, and leave Alice alone.”
Rosario looked at her keenly. “But you don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”
“No. I think they’re going to find a way to put a charge on her-or at least get a warrant to search her mother’s home, which will tip reporters that she’s a suspect. If that happens, Alice and her mother are going to need a strong ally, someone who can hold the press at bay, spin the story in their favor. There’s stuff about Alice that no one knows, stuff that would blow people’s minds if we told. I’ll do the work, you can go on mike. But please, please, Rosario, let’s do this. I’ll sign a personal services contract, give you the next five or ten years of my professional life if you’ll just hire me, tonight, and let me work on this case.”
Rosario patted Sharon’s hair with a gesture that was somehow more fatherly than motherly. “Okay. Let’s see where this goes. I hate to say it, but it could be fun. Now”-she shook her glass-“more Scotch, less scooch this time.”
“One more thing-”
Rosario scowled, skeptical of being taken.
“The last time around, there was a sort of gentlemen’s agreement that the two girls would, um-”