“And then do what? What evidence do I have? What can I ask Ruffing that will change anything? It would be different if I had something concrete to use.”
“Would it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“So what are you going to do now, Victor?”
“Just what my client wants me to do,” I said. “Nothing.”
“I can’t accept that,” she said.
“It’s not your case.”
“It’s my name on the letterhead.”
“Yes, but it was the retainer I got in this case that finally paid the stationery bill. The decision has been made,” I said. “Whatever happens, it’s my responsibility.”
She gave me that damn sigh again and I shuddered as if I had been hit about my shoulders with a stick. “They’ve been trying for years to get me to work down at Community Legal Services,” she said. “Perillo called me again about CLS just last week. He has an opening for me. The pay’s steady, and there’s plenty of work.”
“Beth,” I said, but that’s all I could say, because when I finally looked up at her she was facing away from me and in the hunch of her shoulders was a sadness I had never seen in her before, a sadness that shocked me into silence.
“I think I’m going to accept his offer,” she said, and I knew then why she was turned away from me; Beth would sooner have me see her naked than have me see her cry. “Don’t you know, Victor, haven’t you learned yet that the one thing we’re never allowed to do in this life is nothing?”
“Beth,” I said again, and again that was all I could say, because before I could say anything else she was out the door.
This is what I realized just then. I realized that the difference between those who got what they wanted and those who didn’t was not merely talent or brains or grace under pressure, the difference was that those who got what they wanted simply wanted it more than those who didn’t. Well, dammit, I knew what I wanted and I knew just how bad I wanted it, too. I was sick of our outdated law books, of our scruffy copier, of the dunning letters and collection calls and my same three suits and my frayed collars and the worry over small change that had kept me tossing on the sofa as the late show droned. I was sick of our second-class practice, sick of my second-class life. I wanted my share of the wealth and glory in this world, I wanted money, and if my wants were shallow then sue me, dammit, for I was third generation now, American to the core, and what I wanted was only what this country had taught me to want. And it taught me how to get it, too. As Beth walked out of that room I learned that she simply didn’t want it all as much as I did. Too bad for her. Maybe she belonged at Community Legal Services, working in a cubicle, handling landlord-tenant disputes for families on welfare, but not me, no sir.
When Judge Gimbel came back on the bench and brought the jury into the courtroom and asked me, “Now, Mr. Carl, do you have any questions for this witness?” he might just as well have been asking whether I had any doubts about how badly I wanted the success that Prescott was promising, because the answer would have been exactly the same.
“No, Your Honor,” I said without hesitation. “None at all.”
When I sat down again Prescott was smiling at me. It was a warm smile, and what I interpreted that smile to mean was, “Welcome to the club.” I smiled too.
Now, when I think back on that smile of mine, full as it was with hope and anticipation and deference to my patron, I think of the chuckle it must have given to that bastard and I can’t help but wince.
32
I WAS IN MY OFFICE ALONE, late, checking through my mail and making calls, when Morris phoned with the bad news. I had spent another awful day in court, the only kind I seemed to allow myself, another day where I sat silently beside my client and let the evidence spill over him like ocean waves unchecked by any reef. And afterwards I had come back to the office to find it deserted again. I had not seen Beth since the afternoon of Ruffing’s cross-examination. She was conveniently absent when I was around but I noticed that the personal effects in her office, the photograph of her father, the photograph of her sisters, the little outhouse whose doors opened up with the touch of a button that she got such a kick out of, one by one the personal effects were disappearing. She was leaving, no doubt, she had meant what she had said, Beth always meant what she said. And so we would no longer be GUTHRIE, DERRINGER AND CARL or DERRINGER AND CARL but just plain AND CARL, and each night thereafter would be like that night, where I was left alone with nothing but the emptiness of the office and a pathetic stack of mail. On the high road to success.
My mail that day was much like my mail every day, letters confirming conversations on the telephone that in no way matched the descriptions in the letters, advertisements for legal journals and continuing legal education courses, an accounting firm’s brochure listing all the exciting ways it could make my practice more successful, when in fact the success it was seeking was its own. And then, in an ominous manila envelope, on crisp paper backed with a blue piece of cardboard, I found an answer. No, it wasn’t an answer to life’s more perplexing questions, like why we exist or how to drink beer and laugh at the same time without getting suds up your nose. What it was, actually, was an answer to the motion for a protective order I had filed on Veronica’s behalf against one Spiros Giamoticos, Veronica’s landlord, who had been leaving dead animals in front of her doorway in an effort to chase her out of her bargain lease.
Giamoticos was being represented by Tony Baloney, which was a surprise since Anthony Bolignari, Esq., dubbed Tony Baloney by the admiring press, was one of the more successful and expensive drug lawyers in the city, an interesting choice of counsel for a deranged landlord. You wouldn’t see Tony at the Philadelphia Bar Association dances or lunching at the Union League, even though he outearned most of the big-time corporate types. There is a certain pungency to drug lawyers, to mob lawyers, to those attorneys who represent society’s outlaws, a smell that makes such lawyers unwelcome in the more hallowed hallways of the bar. Where you saw Tony Baloney was on the evening news, his cheeks jiggling beneath his wide walrus mustache as he explained in overwrought language the details of still another acquittal for one of his clients.
The answer Tony had filed stated very simply that Spiros Giamoticos had not done any of the things Veronica had claimed he had done, which was not a surprise because Tony’s clients always pleaded not guilty, even when the cocaine was found inside their intestinal tracts, wrapped in greased prophylactics swallowed before boarding the plane from Bogotá.
“Yes, Victor,” said Tony Baloney into the phone, after I had waited on hold for a solid five minutes. “Not surprised you are calling. This nasty Giamoticos matter, I assume.” His voice was high, exuberant, punctuated by the deep breaths of the asthmatic. “My daughter resides in that very building. Giamoticos brings your motion to her. Like a devoted father I agree to take the case. I expect you’ll do your best to make me regret it.”
“Is he going to stop the animal killing crap?”
“It’s not him, Victor. He says he didn’t do it.”
“You sound like you’ve said that before.”
He laughed. “Yes, well,” he said. “Maybe I have. That’s the speech for the lummoxes in the DA’s office all right. But sometimes it happens to be true.”
“He killed her cat,” I said. “I know. I was forced to clean it up. The tenant I represent has a bargain-basement lease and he wants her out so he killed her cat.”
“‘Courage, man. What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.’”
“You speaking Spanish?”
“Not a devotee of the Bard, hey, Victor? Too bad. There’s more to learn of law from Shakespeare than from all the digests put together. So tell me what it is your client wants.”