Logan chose to misinterpret the remark. “Sorry. I’m not in the market for a move. I’m very happy where I am.”
“That’s good. Real good. Because I didn’t make this journey to offer you a position. No. I want to offer you a case.”
Logan used the padded armrests to push himself erect. “You’re going after Marcus.”
“On the contrary. Marcus Glenwood has elected to go after us. Or, rather, after a dear and valued client, for whom I happen to serve as outside counsel.”
“Which one?”
Randall used his mug as a stage prop, holding the moment with a veteran’s poise. He sipped, sighed, sipped again, and finally said, “New Horizons.”
Despite himself, Logan was rocked. “Marcus is suing New Horizons Incorporated?”
“He has not yet filed, but it is looking increasingly likely that he will indeed be bringing suit in federal court.”
“Who is he tying in with?”
“Apparently the gentleman has decided to go it alone.”
Logan had to laugh. “You can’t be serious. Nobody in their right mind would try to handle a federal case by themselves. Much less take on a billion-dollar corporation. Who does he think he is, the Lone Ranger?”
“A question I would very much like to ask him myself.”
“Marcus is going to get himself squashed like a bug.” The prospect brought a great deal of satisfaction.
Randall nodded once. “I sincerely hope so.”
Logan hesitated. To gain New Horizons as a client would be a major coup. His status would skyrocket. But still the question had to be asked. “Why me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Kedrick and Walker has a hundred lawyers who’d kill for the chance to represent New Horizons in court. Why come to me?”
Randall fiddled with the knot of his tie. The triangular design was woven with what appeared to be genuine silver threads, for they reflected the light like dozens of tiny mirrors. “I have done some checking up on you. The word in our tight-knit little community tends to confirm what your colleague Ms. Rikkers implied. You were a better trial attorney, Marcus the better rainmaker.”
“So?”
“Yet it was Marcus who received the partnership, not you. That hardly seems fair, now, does it?” Randall leaned forward. “I do not seek just any attorney for this case. I want a lawyer with a grudge.”
Logan waited, scarcely breathing.
“I want someone who despises Marcus Glenwood. Someone willing to tear him limb from limb.”
The tightness in his throat barely left room for a single word. “Delighted.”
“I do not mean for you just to win this case,” Randall said. “I want Marcus Glenwood to be so humiliated that his name is forever erased from legal memory.”
A light flashed, and with it came a slight easing of the constriction. Logan hungered after this chance, but he also wanted to enter with eyes wide open. “It’s not Marcus at all. You want to make sure nobody else takes this case up again later.”
The words pushed Randall back in his seat. “Marcus Glenwood has no case. It is a nuisance claim. We want it stifled.”
“But I’m right, aren’t I?”
Randall’s gaze had the texture of dirt from a very old grave. “Whatever my reasons, if you take this case it is with the express purpose of leaving a heap of ashes for the wind to blow away.”
Logan permitted his grin to show through. “Then I am definitely your man.”
TEN
Marcus pulled into the Hayes drive and halted behind a new Jeep Cherokee of midnight blue. His suspicions mounted when he spotted the keys dangling from the rear door. Which was why he forgot and shut his door too hard, causing one end of the rear bumper to break free of its coat hanger and clank to the ground.
“Marcus Glenwood!” A woman’s voice shrilled. “You get that cockroach of an automobile outta my front yard!”
“Hello, Libby.”
The house door slammed like a rifle shot. “I declare to goodness, if my gardener dared show up in a heap like that I’d fire him on the spot!”
“Nice to see you again, Libby.”
Boomer’s wife was tanned and fit and strong-willed enough to keep Boomer and three college-aged kids in line. She wore the obligatory Carolina-casual uniform of a pastel Izod shirt, pleated cuffed shorts, an alligator belt with a gold buckle engraved with her initials, and Bass loafers with no socks. She marched down, circled his car, declared, “It’s worse than Boomer said.”
“Whose Jeep is this, Libby?”
“Yours, soon as you sign the papers.” She tsk-tsked her way back to where he stood. “Amazing those hoodlums let you walk away.”
“I can’t afford a new car, Libby.”
A familiar voice snapped, “Save your breath, Marcus.” Charlie Hayes limped his way down the drive. The old man lived in a second-floor apartment separated from the rest of the house by a poured-concrete wall. The wall was one of two conditions laid down by Charlie Hayes before he had agreed to move in with his son. The other was that Boomer stop threatening to cut off his oldest boy for electing to study at Wake Forest. “The title’s already in your name.”
Before Marcus could object further, Libby said, “Boomer wants to do this, Marcus. You haven’t ever won an argument with Boomer and you’re not going to start now.”
Charlie Hayes huffed to a halt and said to the Jeep, “Dang thing would have to be blue, wouldn’t it.”
“I’m paying for this,” Marcus declared.
“Of course you are.” Libby smiled up at Marcus. “Charlie told us about the Hall case. Boomer started feeling bad for everybody.”
“I haven’t taken the case yet.” It was a feeble protest, but all he could muster just then.
“You will.” This from the judge. “Get on over here and drive me to lunch. I’m hungry for some collards and fatback. Only thing I get fed around here is chicken with lemon and yogurt glop. Woman takes pleasure from squeezing out the last drop of fat.”
“Fat is bad for you,” Libby said, still smiling up at Marcus, a secret look in her clear gray eyes.
“Fat is where they hide the taste,” Charlie said, climbing into the Jeep and slamming the door.
Libby reached over and patted his arm. “Go fight the good fight, Marcus Glenwood. Do it for all us normal folk. Keep us safe in our cozy little world.”
Though he had been coming for years, the Farmers’ Market remained new and strange to Marcus. He still recalled the days of traveling here with his grandmother, carrying bushels of backyard produce in the trunk of their old Chevy. By the ripe old age of eleven he was hauling the tattered baskets of shelled peas and okra and corn and beets, setting them up according to his grandmother’s artistic eye. He earned seventy-five cents for nine sweaty hours’ work, and counted himself lucky-but not for the money. If he could have, Marcus would have paid his grandmother for the chance to be there at all.
Back then, the old Farmers’ Market had been little more than a dusty red-clay field, packed hard by decades of pickups and horse-drawn wagons before them. Because of her age, his grandmother had held a coveted spot under the open-sided shed, shielded from the sun by a roof more rust than metal. There had been a spigot off to one side where the young ones gathered, filling buckets both for drinking and for wetting down the produce. In Marcus’ memory, the children around the spigots were always laughing, his grandmother always had a kind word for her boy, and the summer sky was always so clear it appeared black off away from the sun. There had been a redheaded little darling in a flour-sack dress whose family sharecropped down Wilson way, and in his memories she was always there waiting for Marcus to arrive, always hoping for a smile and a word from the tall boy with the strange accent. Marcus remembered that now, as he drove in and parked by the new restaurant, how the redheaded girl could not get over the way Marcus spoke, his Philadelphia accent turning the words into something so foreign just his listing the produce made her laugh. Marcus followed Charlie Hayes across the parking lot and recalled that little girl and the way she would come running up to greet their dusty car with the words, “Tell me something funny, Marcus.” If only he could remember her name.