“Mr. Guthrie will see you now, Mr. Carl,” said the receptionist. “He’s sending his secretary up to get you.”
That was the way they did it in the big firms, they sent emissaries for the visitors to summon them into the meetings. I didn’t like being summoned, but Guthrie had said he wanted to meet and I had some questions to ask my dear former partner, a cuckold prone to violent rages, questions about his wife, from whom he had separated, and about a man with whom she was cheating while they were still together, a man who now was dead. I was out to find a murderer, so with the afternoon free I had told Ellie to set up the meeting and she had.
When the emissary from on high came I recognized her.
“Hello, Carolyn,” I said. She was a tall African-American, pretty, competent, and an awesome typist. I knew about the typing because she had been our secretary before Guthrie brought her to Blaine, Cox, along with the files he stole.
“It’s good to see you, Mr. Carl,” she said as she began to lead me through the wide hallways of her new firm.
“How are they treating you here?”
“They pay us for overtime.”
“Terrific.”
“And we work plenty of overtime.”
I followed Carolyn through winding hallways of wood and secretaries, remarkably busy for seven in the evening. When Carolyn worked for us she was always out the door at 4:58 on the nose. “I have to catch the train,” she’d say, “or there’s nothing else to get me home at a reasonable hour.” Now, getting paid for overtime, she seemed to have no trouble catching the later West Trenton Local. It’s funny what a little thing like time-and-a-half will do to a train schedule.
“Guthrie, you bastard,” I said after Carolyn had led me into his office.
“You look like crap,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Hey, what are friends for? Sit down, Vic. So this is your first time in my new digs, right? What do you think?”
What I thought was that this was everything I had ever wanted and I resented the hell out of him for it. The big office, the leather couch, the burnished desk, the window overlooking City Hall, the freshly painted walls and fancy phone and computer on his desk for his e-mail. I recognized the painting behind his chair. I pointed at it and said, “Wasn’t that in our offices?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Excuse me a moment while I call the police. You must have stolen it along with the files.”
He winked. “I’ll messenger it over tomorrow if you want.”
“I want. Along with the files.”
“If only I could, Vic. Truthfully, they’ve been more headache than anything else. I’d love to dump them. But the clients all wanted to stick with me. Hell, there’s more than enough work here to keep me busy.”
“What about the Saltz case?”
“I asked Lou what he wanted to do and he said he thought I was a prick for leaving and to let you have it.”
“He said that?”
“What did I care, it was a dog. But I heard you got a settlement anyway. You guys ever find that accountant?”
“No.”
“And a settlement even so. I should get a part of it, don’t you think? After all, I brought it in. A referral fee?”
“Sue me.”
“I don’t sue friends, Vic.”
“No, you just screw them in the ass.”
“Still sore, huh?”
“What gives you that idea?” I asked while looking out the window.
“Maybe I can make it up to you?”
“I never figured you for a suicide, Guthrie.”
“So hostile, Vic? Have you considered therapy?”
“I’d rather buy a gun.”
“It was only business. I understand Lizzie is finally hooking up with Community Legal Services.”
Word traveled fast, especially when the word was bad and it was about me. I didn’t want to go into the whole sorry mess, especially not with Guthrie. “It’s a consentual thing,” I explained. “I’ve been doing more criminal and investment work than she felt comfortable with. When she found they had an opening she decided she would take it.”
“That’s terrific for her,” said Guthrie. “It’s where Lizzie belonged all along. And it makes what I wanted to meet with you about easier for everyone. The reason I wanted to get together is that Tom Bismark was asking about you. You know Tom? The managing partner here?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, though I did. Not personally, the Tom Bismarks of the city didn’t waste their time with second-raters like me, but I had seen him in one of the bars with Jimmy. He had been out with his wife, cheating on his mistress, or so Jimmy had said.
“Tom caught you on the news with this trial of yours, the Jimmy Moore case. How did you get that, anyway?”
“They scoured the city for the most desperate shyster they could find and my name naturally came up.”
“No, really.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want him to know that what I had said was the absolute truth.
“Well, he saw you on the news and asked me about you. It seems they’re trying to build up their white-collar crime department here and are looking for some laterals with trial experience. I told Tom you’d be terrific.”
“You said that? Why?”
“’Cause you’re a friend, a buddy.”
“Skip it.”
“It’s the truth, Vic, nothing but. I gave him a glowing report and he wants to talk to you about joining the firm.”
“This firm?”
“Of course. After the trial.”
“Why would this firm be interested in me?”
“Frankly, I don’t know, Vic. I thought they’d have more sense. But you’re in a high-profile case, I lied about your ability, things are just breaking right. Don’t let this opportunity slip through your fingers.”
“I’m doing pretty well by myself right now,” I said. “It wouldn’t be so easy to just up and join here. Leases and stuff.”
“Hey, Vic. No pressure. Forget it if you want.” He leaned back at his desk and smiled at me. “But I know you. You’re just like me. This is something you’ve always wanted, and when it’s offered to you you’re going to jump for it. Like a show dog. Look at this office, look at the paneling on the lobby walls, paneling an inch thick. Look at what you can be a part of. You’re just like me, Vic. You want it. Set up a meeting with Tom after the trial.”
God, how I had hated Guthrie. I had hated his clothes and his shoes and his handsome twisted face and his supercilious manner and his slicked hair and his ability to absorb insults as if they were compliments. The idea of ever again becoming his partner was unthinkable, but now here I was about to be offered a job at his new firm, the job of my dreams. When he said it was something I had always wanted he was right. When he said I would jump at it he was right again. And when he said I was just like him I hated the very idea of it, but I guess, dammit, he was right about that too. Beth could have convinced me otherwise, maybe, but she had gone off to serve the poor and so I was left with becoming Guthrie. God help me.
Although he didn’t know it, by reminding me how very alike we were Guthrie was confirming all the more my suspicions about him and Bissonette. I knew how angry I would have become if everything I had gained in a marriage to an Amber was falling from me in an affair between my wife and some broken-down ballplayer, I knew how desperate, how irrationally ruthless, how murderous. And I knew something else, something I had learned with great gusto from my own carnal knowledge of his wife before she was his wife and which was confirmed by Slocum after consulting with Bissonette’s little black book. Lauren Amber Guthrie was a five-star in bed, someone almost worth dying for.