But there was no practical or safe way to do so, and what he was planning was already risky enough. In fact, Mac thought, there was an even chance that what he planned to do in Washington would end his career.
The idea had seemed all but inspired when she was standing in her office, but now the reality of approaching the elaborate doorway of her senior partner’s Medina district home felt like an act of sacrificial stupidity.
Gracie hesitated, her thoughts racing through the range of options, from turning and leaving quietly to pushing ahead and ringing the doorbell.
He’s already expecting me, she reminded herself. There was no turning back.
Ben Janssen opened the door himself, his big, meaty hand engulfing hers in a not unfriendly handshake as he ushered her into a large den, warm with family portraits and framed snapshots spilling off every surface, the beamed wooden ceiling a counterpoint to the perfectly manicured, lighted lawn beyond.
She thanked him, perhaps too effusively, for agreeing to see her on a Saturday evening and he waved it away.
“Gracie, I’m always available to any of my people, junior or senior. If I can expect you to work at any hour, I can expect myself to be at the helm when you need me.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you heard anything from Bernie Ashad?”
“No, sir. After our conversation, of course, I’ve attempted no contact, but there has been nothing from his end.”
“There will be, unless he returns my call first, which he won’t do because I’m nowhere near as cute as you.”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned forward slightly, his incredibly bushy eyebrows lowering over his deep-set eyes, his slightly craggy, squarish face showing the rigors of more than forty years of practice. Janssen, she knew, had passed his sixty-fourth birthday, but was considered as healthy as a horse.
“Gracie, I’m a very direct man. Always have been. Today’s politically correct world doesn’t like my style much, and I’m sure I occasionally get too close to the line.”
“Sir?”
“Have I, or am I making you uncomfortable with my references to Ashad’s true intentions and the sexual aura surrounding anything he does with a woman?”
“No, sir. I understand what you’re saying.”
He nodded slowly, studying her face. “Okay. You tell me if I go too far. Not only do I never want to field a sexual harassment suit, I genuinely don’t want you to feel harassed.”
“I don’t, sir.”
“All right. You wanted to see me.”
“First, I apologize again for…”
He was already waving away her words. “Not necessary. We understand each other.”
She licked her lips and nodded slowly. “Very well.”
“If that’s why you came over, then we’re done.”
“No, sir. There are new developments in the Rosen case, and I need to… ask your advice, and ask for a personal favor.”
She explained her emergency filings, the loss of the D.C. lawyer, the need to take the fight to the Beltway, and the critical nature of Arlie Rosen’s emotional state.
Ben Janssen sighed and sat back. “Gracie, is Rosen a client of the firm?”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely!”
“And, I assume his finances are already being drained?”
She nodded.
“What are we charging for your time?”
“One hundred fifty per hour, sir.” She smiled. “I’ve got a way to go to get to your level of eight hundred an hour.”
“But,” he continued, “I get the distinct impression that these people are very close to you personally. Right?”
She nodded.
“How close?”
“I… never really had a family life, for numerous reasons. Arlie and Rachel Rosen have been my surrogate parents.” She felt the last word catch in her throat and forced the emotion back.
“Very well. Let’s do this. I’m releasing them to you individually, as your individual clients. If you need to have the firm’s name for purposes of clout, then we can do that, but otherwise, it seems to me you’re arguing on the merits and the firm will just cost these folks a huge amount.”
“Thank you!”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet. You’ve had your attention diverted in a way I can’t institutionally allow in an associate. You have to decide that law practice, for the firm, comes first. But I’ll allow a little adjustment time to get past this one and make your decision.”
“My… decision?”
“I’m going to kick you out on personal leave for three weeks. I’ll tell Dick Walsh. You don’t need to call him. At the end of that time, you come to me at the office and tell me one of two things. You resign, or you’re back to work, body and soul, with no more wild diversions.”
“Okay.”
“I know you’re sitting there thinking, How can he call my surrogate parents ‘diversions’? But there were better, more professional ways to handle this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Gracie, keep this clearly in mind. We’re paying you a huge starting salary, and it is not for charity. We expect you to earn every penny of it.”
“Am I… on probation, Mr. Janssen?”
He smiled and looked at the Persian carpet for a second before looking back at her and nodding. “At the very least. I can’t give you any other answer. You’ve blundered badly on two counts: diverting your attention from the firm and messing with a client for personal reasons — Ashad, I mean. But this will give you a second chance as well as the opportunity to clear your friends’ problems, or”—he had an index finger in the air—“or send them to another practitioner better suited to that kind of matter. It’s your choice, Gracie. We’d like to keep you, but there will be no more concessions. And, I might add, be very careful how you conduct yourself in this mission through the federal courts. Do not make yourself a liability to us through a tarnished reputation, or there will be no option to return.”
Piloting her car to Seatac airport to meet April was accomplished by rote. As Gracie parked, she realized she had no conscious memory of the trip, or of much of anything since Janssen waved goodbye and closed his door physically and metaphorically. The concept of a professional purgatory filled her head, defining itself by the way she felt, which was somewhere between devastated and encouraged. She had been saved and damned in the same moment, her reputation with the managing partner a mélange of disappointment and respect, all of it leading to her professional demise if she mishandled the next three weeks.
For a while she thought seriously of quitting. It would be a simple matter to draft a brief, eloquent letter resigning from the firm and delivering it or sending it by FedEx. It would mean selling her boat and probably her car. But she could retreat without ever having to face them again. The concept, though, of what life might be like beyond Janssen and Pruzan was worse than fuzzy and indistinct. It loomed as dark and purposeless as Joseph Conrad’s vision of a sailor’s wrecked future in Lord Jim, a book that had always haunted her. She felt like Jim, the failed deck officer who had run from a sinking ship full of people at the moment his courage was tested.
Running, however, was not an option for her. That was cowardice and a void. Arlie Rosen, after all, was depending on her now more than ever, and she owed him and Rachel so very much.
Gracie stopped at the Alaska Airlines ticket counter and begged a gate pass from a sympathetic agent. She moved in a fog through the screening lines and out to the gate, sitting in a corner of the boarding lounge to wait for the inbound flight and watching passively as the multidimensional cross section of humanity ebbed and flowed past her. The torrent of people carried the usual stream of human emotions: the smiles at happy reunions, the tears at parting, the stoic, the dramatic, and the occasional passive face, all fascinating to her on any typical day.