Jenson turned and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
4
Tracy Garvin stuck her head in the door.
“Well?” Steve said.
“That man is definitely pissed off.”
“No, no,” Steve said. “I mean-”
Tracy held up her hands. “Relax. Mark Taylor’s men picked him up. They’ll follow him until further notice.”
Steve exhaled and his features relaxed. He smiled. “Nice work.”
“Just routine.”
“Yeah, as if we had a routine. How’d you work it out?”
“Nothing to it,” Tracy said. “We have no Halsburg case. No surprise there. We have no cases at all. Any name you picked would do. So you had to be trying to tell me to get a message to Mark Taylor without tipping off Jenson. The only thing I could think of was you wanted to have him followed, or you wanted him thrown out of your office. I couldn’t really see you calling in detectives to give the guy the bum’s rush-not at that point, anyway-so I figured you must want him tailed.”
“You figured right.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I think I made a bad mistake, and I want to try to make up for it.”
Tracy frowned. “What do you mean, a bad mistake?”
Steve rubbed his head. “Tell you what. There’s no point my going through this whole thing twice. Why don’t you give Mark Taylor a ring, tell him to drop down here. I need to fill him in anyway.”
“Sure,” Tracy said. She went in the outer office to make the call.
Steve Winslow leaned back in his chair and rubbed his head again. Jesus Christ. Once, just once, it would be nice to have a client come in, tell him the facts and retain him in the case. Just once it would be nice to approach a case from the point of view of knowing what the hell was going on.
Steve chuckled. No, it probably wouldn’t. A case like that would probably be boring as hell.
The door opened and Tracy Garvin ushered Mark Taylor into the room.
Taylor said, “Hi, Steve,” and flopped his two hundred and twenty pounds into the clients’ chair. Taylor was Steve’s age, in fact had been his roommate at college. He had been an exceptional linebacker with pro aspirations, before an injury had ended the dream. Instead he ran the Taylor Detective Agency, and had offices in Steve’s building. Or rather, Steve had offices in his building. The Taylor Detective Agency had been there for years. When Steve had finally scraped up enough money to set up a practice, Mark Taylor had put in a word with the super to get Steve in.
“Hi, Mark. You pick him up?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s covered. I got a man on him, and he’ll stick like glue, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
“That’s what I figured. Of course, I couldn’t be sure.” Taylor grinned, jerked his finger at Tracy Garvin. “Tracy here calls me up, says, ‘I think Steve wants someone followed.’”
“That’s not what I said,” Tracy protested.
“Maybe not in those words,” Taylor said, “but that’s the gist of it. Anyway, she gives me a rundown of what happened, says she figures that means you want this guy tailed. The way she tells it, I figure you do too. But I’m a nice guy, and I don’t want Tracy out on a limb taking the responsibility on herself, so I gave her the chance of a lifetime, Taylor special, money-back guaranteed surveillance.”
Steve grinned. “What the hell is that?”
“I told her I’d follow the guy, and if it turned out that wasn’t what you wanted, there’s no charge.”
“It’s what I wanted.”
“Good. Then I’ll bill you. So what’s the scoop? Why am I tailing this guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s helpful. Glad you called me down here. Otherwise, I’d be working in the dark.”
“Yeah, well that’s the problem,” Steve said. “In this case, we’re working in the dark.”
“You got a client?”
“In a way.”
“Oh, great. I can’t wait to find out what way that is.” Taylor turned to Tracy. “Is he putting me on?”
“No.”
“All right, Steve, what’s the pitch? What do you mean, in a way? You got a client or not?”
Steve shrugged. “That’s open to interpretation. More to the point, no client asked me to tail Jenson. I did that on my own initiative.”
“Is Jenson the client?”
“No.”
“Then who is?”
Steve rubbed his head. “O.K. Let me give you a brief rundown. This morning an old ragged man off the street comes into my office and asks me a whole bunch of questions about probate law.”
Mark Taylor started at him. “What?”
“That’s right.”
“A street bum?”
“One of the homeless. And he doesn’t tell me his problems, like you’d expect a guy like that to do. No names, no specifics. No, the guy just wants to discuss abstract points of law.”
“A homeless guy?”
“Yeah. He asks me a whole bunch of questions and I answer them. He still doesn’t say why he wants to know. Then he gets up, throws two hundred bucks on my desk, and walks out.”
Taylor’s jaw dropped open. “A homeless guy paid you two hundred bucks?”
Steve grinned, put up his hands. “Hang on. You ain’t heard nothing yet. This afternoon another man comes into my office. Carl Jenson. The person your men are tailing. Tells me the street guy’s his uncle-his great uncle actually. And get this-he tells me this uncle’s an eccentric multimillionaire who’s lost his marbles, sold his house out from under him, and went to live with the homeless on the subway.”
Taylor blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. Jenson’s argument is his uncle’s mentally incompetent, so anything I do for him won’t be legally binding. His pitch is, if I throw in with him against his uncle and help him get his hands on the money, he’ll pay me a whopping big fee.”
“Jesus Christ. So that’s why you decided to have him tailed?”
“Actually, I decided the moment he told me his uncle was worth money.”
“Why was that?”
“Because that’s when I realized I’d made a big mistake.”
“How?”
“By giving his uncle advice.”
“Why? Because he’s not mentally competent?”
Steve shook his head. “No. Besides, we’ve only got Jenson’s word for that. For all we know, the guy may be perfectly sane.”
“A millionaire living on the subway?”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s insane. But that’s not the point. The point is, I shouldn’t have given him advice at all.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t tell me what his problem was. He just discussed abstract points of law.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything. A lawyer’s not a reference book. A lawyer’s job is to take the facts of the case, and apply the law to them. If the lawyer doesn’t get the facts, if the lawyer just tells the client the law and lets the client go off and apply the law himself, that’s the worst thing a lawyer can do.”
“Why?”
“Because every case is different. And the law may or may not apply. And even if it does, the law is constantly changing. That’s what legal precedents are all about. You take the facts of the case and you say, ‘Ah, that’s similar to this previous case. The same laws should apply.’ Or, if you don’t want it to apply, you say, ‘Ah, the reason it’s different from Coosbaine vs. Markowitz is this,’ and then you argue that point, and if you win, your case becomes a legal precedent.
“But, you see, it all depends on the facts of the individual case. So for a lawyer to tell a client the law without knowing the facts of the case is totally irresponsible. The results could be disastrous.”