Practicing law is like juggling a dozen raw eggs, and sooner or later every lawyer drops one.
I heard the sound of splat coming at me.
More precisely, I heard my faithful secretary mutter something like Madre de Dios, which I think is Mother of God, or Saints Preserve Us. I get them mixed up, but Bonita doesn’t blaspheme lightly and my antennae were up when she came into my office holding a file.
“Jackson’s brain-damaged baby case,” Bonita said.
Splat, splat, splat, I heard.
“I found the pleadings file on your desk when I came in this morning.”
While I’d been playing around with Newly and was late getting in.
“I was going through it, tagging...”
“Spit it out.”
“Did you know that the plaintiff’s motion for a pretrial conference is set for this afternoon?”
“Good God,” I blurted, blasphemy coming easier to me, having been raised by heathens.
Bonita handed me the top volume of the veggie baby pleadings file with the notice of hearing faceup, as if perhaps I wouldn’t believe her. I read it and handed the file back to her as if it were safer in her hands than mine.
No way on this whole huge green earth could I be ready for a pretrial in that case in a matter of hours.
The phone rang and Bonita eyed it but turned back to me.
All right, think. That’s what lawyers do in tough spots. They think.
No, in exigent circumstances, they file paper. “Has Jackson filed the motion for a continuance?”
Flip, flip, flip.
“Yes.”
“Is it set for a hearing time yet?”
Flip, flip.
“No.”
“Okay, good. File a cross-notice of hearing for this afternoon, same time as the pretrial, telling the plaintiff’s attorney, Stephen LaBlanc, and the judge and his judicial assistant that I’m going to argue the motion for continuance at the pretrial. Fax a copy to LaBlanc, the judge, and his J.A.”
The phone, which had stopped ringing, started ringing again.
Bonita didn’t even blink at the sound, but she nodded at me, a small smile playing about her full lips. “Got it. Take up LaBlanc’s time with your motion, argue that if your motion is granted it moots his pretrial. Buys you time to get ready for the pre-trial. How about I do the same on the motion to amend the witness list?”
“Excellent. Do it.”
Ambush, stall, live to fight another day. Guerrilla litigation tactics were by far the norm and not the exception these days.
Our receptionist’s voice cut through the speakerphone. “Bonita, are you there? It’s one of your kids. You’d better get this.”
Bonita stepped over to my phone, hit a button, and said something sweet-sounding in Spanish, followed by a very American “What’s up?”
I chewed my lip and waited.
“All right. Put the tooth in a damp paper towel. No, don’t wash it. Wrap it up. Have Benicio drive her to the dentist. I’ll call and tell him you’re on the way. Pack some cotton on her gums and put a cold compress on her face, you hear?”
I chewed my lip so hard I tasted my own blood and started thinking about which secretary I could commandeer if Bonita insisted on going to the dentist’s office herself.
“Yes, I know he’s only fourteen, but Benicio knows how to drive. Wear your seat belt and tell him not to speed.”
I edged closer to Bonita.
“Yes. I’ll call your aunt and she’ll meet you at the dentist. I’ll be along soon as I can, but I have something here I must finish first.”
Oh, bless her, I thought, and stopped chewing my lip.
“No, I’m not mad. I love you all. You tell her that for me.” This was followed by something sweet-sounding in Spanish.
“Accident. I’ll tell you about it later,” Bonita said.
“If it’s serious, don’t sign anything and call Newly,” I said, knowing Bonita knew that.
Bonita only glanced at me as she headed out to her computer, where within seconds after she’d called the dentist’s office, I heard the reassuring sound of legal jargon being typed into the computer at an incredibly fast rate of speed.
Stephen LaBlanc, the hotshot Miami attorney representing the veggie baby’s good-parents, was already in the hearing room when I tumbled in with my entire entourage of one, Angela, the orange-haired wonder, both of us looking like feverish, crazed women. Naturally, Stephen sat calmly in his chair, posed as if for the cover of Esquire. Dapper. The man was dapper. I hate a dapper man. He rose smooth and easy while I struggled with my purse, the five-pound paperback Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, the most recent volume of the veggie baby pleadings file, three copies of my amended memorandum of law, and a stack of photocopied cases Angela had jabbed at me as I fled the office for the hot ten-minute walk over here. She had trudged along beside me, twisting her hair with one hand and with the other carrying a briefcase full of the most important summaries of Jackson’s discovery in case we actually had to do a real pretrial conference. The humidity had tripled my hair into a kind of wiry, electric-shock punk style, and I was keenly aware that I was visibly sweating. The air-conditioning in the building was set at about zero, which had the immediate effect of stopping up my nose.
When Stephen stuck out his hand, I dropped the Rules of Civil Procedure trying to put enough stuff down to shake it.
“Well, I see the bottom of the order is here,” he sniped and stepped back. Didn’t even pick up the dropped book.
Angela did, and then she took the memoranda and the photocopies out of my other hand and smoothed them out and laid them on the table.
Judge Goddard came into the hearing room. We all rose and I dropped the damn Rules of Civil Procedure again. Angela scampered to gather it up.
Judge Goddard nodded at Stephen. To Angela and me, he said, “Good afternoon, ladies. Ms. Harper and Ms. Cleary. Are we ready?”
No, I thought, but that’s beside the point.
After introducing himself for the sake of the court reporter and the transcript, Stephen informed the judge the hearing had been set on his motion for a pretrial conference, and that I was improperly trying to piggyback my motions for a continuance and to amend the witness list onto his motion. Stephen maintained that he learned of my plans to argue my motion for a continence only when his secretary had called him on his cell phone just minutes ago.
Oh, yeah, right. As if she’d waited three hours to call him on that.
“But you were served with the original motion for continuance, what, three weeks ago?” Judge Goddard asked.
“Four, your honor,” I said.
“And the grounds haven’t changed, have they?” The judge peered at Stephen with much the same look I’ve seen Olivia give one of her Rottweilers after he’d piddled on the Oriental rug.
“Yes, sir, but . . .”
I stopped listening and tried to visualize my safe place, my crystal blue waterfall. I was so wholly un-prepared that listening to Stephen prattle wouldn’t help me. Nothing would, I thought, as the waterfall crumpled into a vision of canned hash.
Angela nudged me. Judge Goddard looked at me. Stephen had shut up, so it must be my turn to speak.
“Good afternoon, your honor,” I said, as Angela shoved a memorandum in front of me. “I have a memorandum of law prepared for you, if I may.”
“I trust you have one for me,” Stephen said.
“Of course she does,” Judge Goddard answered, a hint of a growl deep in his throat.
Okay, this is going all right, I thought, making myself breathe and sliding the copy that had the pages out of order to Stephen and taking the perfect copy to the judge.
“If my motions for a continuance and to amend the expert witness list are granted, your honor, then Mr. LayBlank’s pretrial conference would be premature.”
“La-Blanc,” Stephen corrected. “There is no y and no k in it.”
“What my memorandum establishes is that where a need for a continuance is occasioned by some fault of the other side, which I can demonstrate here, and there is no undue prejudice to either party, then it is a matter of discretion with a judge to grant a continuance. I refer the court to the case of, er,...” Here, I had to stop while Angela turned the page of my copy of the memo and jabbed her finger emphatically at a citation of law on page two.
“That’s all right,” Judge Goddard said. “I can read. Tell me how this is his fault.”
“Well, your honor, Mr. LayBlank here hired away our top medical expert witness by offering him twice the hourly rate the liability insurance company authorized me to pay him, and I am in the process of locating another expert witness. I need—”
“Time,” Judge Goddard finished for me and eyed Stephen as if he were guilty of some personal affront against me.
Encouraged by the judge’s expression, I wandered through my explanation, pointed out that nobody would be unduly prejudiced by a delay and that justice would be served, et cetera, et cetera, and threw in a couple of the case names that Angela kept waggling her fingers at, and hoped I had made some kind of sense.
The court reporter typed, paused, looked up, and nodded, and Judge Goddard turned to Stephen and said, “Mr. LayBlank.”
I noticed Stephen didn’t correct that as he launched off without notes or sweat or mispronunciations and slung out rules and citations and hundred-dollar words and then turned and looked at me and said, “Ms. Cleary is clearly engaging in sophistry, your honor, but I must insist....”
Sophistry? I didn’t like the sound of that, or the tone of voice Stephen was using, and I checked the stern look on Judge Goddard’s face before I jumped up and said, “I object.”
Technically you don’t object at a hearing, but I’d been reading Judge Goddard’s facial expressions for years now and knew I could get away with it.
“You apologize to her, right now, Mr. LayBlank,” the good judge said.
“Your honor, all I’m saying is that she is blaming me for the inadequacies of her own case, for her law firm’s inexplicable delays, and—”
“That doesn’t sound much like ‘I’m sorry’ to me,” Judge Goddard snapped.
Stephen looked at me, then at the court reporter, who had stopped typing and leaned back to watch the show.
“Madam Court Reporter, please make a record of this exchange.”
“Yes, Mr. LeeBlink,” she said.
“La-Blanc, La-Blanc,” Stephen snapped. “Can’t anybody in this whole damn county pronounce my name?”
“No reason for profanity, son,” Judge Goddard said. Then he slapped down his hand on my memorandum and said, “Motion for continuance granted. Contact my assistant for a new time. Motion to amend the witness list granted. Ms. Cleary, you have thirty days to file an amended list with your new expert witness identified. Pretrial conference will be rescheduled. Now, Mr. LayBlank, you apologize to this woman right now.”
“Very well, I see I have no choice but to capitulate to this obvious hometown favoritism. Madam Court Reporter, I will be ordering a transcript.”
“Steve,” I said, smiling my biggest fake smile, “you have a nice flight home.” He never did apologize.
“Steph-fin,” he corrected, clueless, still, as to how easy it was for the hometown crowd to play him.
The judge rose to his full five feet five, we stood, and he disappeared through a green curtain into his own chambers. Sort of like the Wizard of Oz, I thought, as I slumped back into a chair while Angela gathered up the strewn papers. Stephen picked up his dapper briefcase and left with a tight-assed smile and the ubiquitous “See you in court” threat.
Madam Court Reporter—Judy, by name—closed her little machine and smiled at me. I take her to lunch regularly at the Ivy Club, charging it, wine and all, to a rotating list of clients, and we gossip like schoolgirls. “I’ll let you know if Mr. LaBlanc orders the transcript,” she said, winked at me, and left.
Judy gone, I put my head down on the table, and Angela patted my back once and then apparently thought the better of that.
I heard Judge Goddard come back into the hearing room, and I lifted my head.
“Lilly, what happened to you? In all my years of listening to you, I’ve never known you to be unprepared.”
“No sir. It’s just . . . you see, it’s Jackson’s case, and he dumped it on me a couple days ago, but I didn’t get the pleadings file until this morning, and I didn’t know about the pretrial until mid-morning, and one of my clients got killed, and . . .” Of course, I wasn’t going to mention I’d been diddling with Newly instead of working late at night as I usually did.
And I was whining. I stopped.
“I’m sorry, your honor. It won’t happen again.”
“Lilly, I’m not fussing. Just worried. You’re always so overprepared, that’s all.”
He would have called me “honey” if Angela weren’t still in the room.
“Thank you, your honor. I’m fine. And it won’t happen again.”
“Ms. Harper, we aren’t ex parte communicating,” he said, nodding at Angela. “We’re old friends.” The judge glanced at Angela, who nodded, graciously gathering the papers into her arms and taking the trial briefcase, and eased out of the room.
“What the hell is sophistry?” I asked.
“Ten-dollar word for chicanery. Come on, look it up so you’ll remember it.”
I myself thought chicanery was also a ten-dollar word, but I didn’t share this with the judge.
Back in Judge Goddard’s chambers, I looked up the word Stephen had thrown at me with such contempt. “A plausible but misleading or fallacious argument,” the dictionary said.
“That’s not so bad,” I said.
“Told you it was just a fancy word for chicanery,” he said.
He leaned back in his red chair and sighed and closed his eyes. “I hate those know-it-alls from Miami with their big bags of tricks, looking down their big-city noses at us.”
“Me, too.” But I was studying the judge, thinking how old he looked. Coming up on his mandatory retirement birthday in another few years. The last of the old-fashioned Florida-cracker judges who let common sense and fair play rule and didn’t take crap from anybody.
As if reading my mind, Judge Goddard opened his eyes and looked right at me and said, “You know, they’ll replace me with somebody like him. Some hotshot lawyer been in town five years but with ties to that damn carpetbagger governor going all the way back to their fathers’ fraternity.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Walking Lawton Chiles,” the old judge said in a tone of admiration. “I’ll tell you what, that’s the last Florida governor to actually be a Floridian. Walked the whole damn state when he was just a guy from Lakeland nobody’d heard about, running for the U.S. Senate, shaking hands with everybody he met and listening. Listening to them, by God.”
“Yes, sir. I met him once, shook his hand. Of course, he was running for reelection as governor then and riding around in a big-ass car.”
“His walking days, you were still in diapers.”
We sighed together, as if on cue.
“You mark my words,” the good judge said, “we’ll live to rue the day we let the damn carpetbaggers take over.”
That night, still weary from the veggie baby hearing, in the nearly dead hallway of my law firm, I passed Jackson, who without greeting or breaking stride said, “Doll, now you got that continuance in the brain-damaged baby case, I’ve got another case for you.”
“No, thank you,” I said.
We stopped and stared at each other for a moment. I had never said no to this man before. My heart beat too fast and my mouth went dry.
“Doll, if you’re overworked, give some of the low-billing files to that little orange-haired gal of yours.” Having spoken, Jackson turned and started to walk away.
“Angela Harper. That’s her name. Her name is not ‘that little orange-haired gal.’ And she is not, technically, my gal. She’s an associate and she has her own caseload.” I raised my voice, though I struggled for control. This man had dumped a killer veggie baby case on me at the last minute and hadn’t even warned me about the pretrial and didn’t say nice job for getting out of that, and now he wanted to dump more of his work on me. “No,” I said, loudly and with an edge. “The brain-damaged baby case is quite enough of your work for one week.”
His eyes narrowed into that eagle-eyed glint that Stonewall’s face bore in the bigger-than-life-size portrait over Jackson’s desk. “What?” he said, as if misunderstanding me.
“No. I’m not taking any more of your cases.”
Jackson’s eyes squinted another notch, so much so that I doubted he could focus on me.
“You didn’t even warn me about the pretrial,” I said shrilly.
Possibly in response to my sharp voice, little Ashton the Maniac stuck his head out of the conference-room door across from where I stood. He cleared his throat, and I glanced at him and saw that his girlfriend, Jennifer the Stairmaster wizard, was hanging over his shoulder, and I realized I was yelling and stopped.
When Ashton started clapping, Jackson made a loud, inarticulate noise and stomped down the hallway.
“Good girl,” Ashton said. “Come in. Join us. We’re relaxing.”
“Relaxing” is a lawyer euphemism for drinking on the job. I slipped into the room and shut the door.
Ashton, whose irises were huge bowls of blue glass, grabbed me, hugged me, and gave me a big kiss, right on the lips. I kept my mouth tightly closed as I tugged away from him.
“Proud of you, babe. Telling the big guy off. Told him not to give you that brain-damaged baby case.” Ashton then twirled me around as if we were square-dancing.
I spun and came to rest in front of Ashton and rolled my eyes at Jennifer.
“Oh, don’t worry about Jenn. I told her all about us.” Ashton grinned.
Huh? Ashton and me? An “us”? He told Jennifer what? Caray! There is no “us,” as in Ashton and me, and that was about the last rumor I needed.
“What do you mean, ‘us’?” I narrowed my eyes in a plausible imitation of Jackson and looked into Ashton’s as he took a swig of his drink.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Jennifer sang. “He said you had this big, you know, schoolgirl, like, crush thing and all, because he was your, ah, mentor, but he, you know, didn’t want to mess up how you worked together. That was all before he met me, anyway.” Jennifer smiled the confident smile of a pretty blonde with big tits. “Martini?” she asked and held up a shaker.
“With vodka,” I said, and eyed Ashton again. “Us?”
“Ah, babe, come on, you’re gorgeous and all, so don’t take it personal, but you’re an Amazon, not my type. I told Jenn we never consummated it.”
“Here you go, Lilly.” Jennifer handed me a glass and winked at me.
I sipped, and I simmered, and I wondered if it was safe for Ashton to drink when his dilated eyes suggested other mind-altering substances were already afloat in his system.
“You were sooo cool out there,” Jennifer said.
I sipped, and sipped again, and I mellowed.
Jennifer, in my unstudied opinion, was a dingbat of the highest order. But the girl knew how to make a martini. There is, of course, a hidden bar in the credenza in every conference room in the firm, and in most of the lawyers’ offices, and soon I felt the warm, fuzzy feeling of hard liquor running down my throat. I also felt the warm, fuzzy feelings of a friendship beginning as Jennifer continued to ooh and aah over me as if I had single-handedly ended male dominance of the female sex.
“They just won’t ever respect us,” Jennifer said, shaking her martini and her Barbie-doll breasts, which were, naturally, generously displayed.
“Un-huh,” I said, wondering if Jennifer understood about irony.
“Why, I had this boss once, when I worked at a big bank, and he, no matter what I did, that man just never gave me credit for having any sense.”
“Un-huh,” I said, sipping my drink and losing interest.
“You were sooo wonderful to stand up for yourself and that other woman,” Jennifer cooed. “I showed that banker boss a thing or two, like you, and I taught him about respecting women.”
“Yeah? Did you tie him to the bed and read him Betty Friedman?” Ashton asked.
“Who’s that?” Jennifer responded.
Yup. I had definitely lost interest.
“That squat woman with the big hats. You know, that feminist congresswoman,” Ashton said.
Swallowing my vodka martini, I started to correct him, plus educate Jennifer, and then I thought, You can’t teach a pig to sing, and I took another sip.
“No, what I did was I bought out a bait shop full of crickets and put them in his house, and then I spray painted his car windows—he had a Mercedes, a huge, black one, and it had just about the best speakers, had ’em special installed—Bose, I think— and that car rocked, and the leather seats, those leather seats...” Jennifer glazed over for a minute. “That car, I . . . those leather seats. Then I . . .” Jennifer seemed to have lost her place. I know I had.
“Baby,” Ashton said in a soft tone, almost endearing.
“Anyway,” she said, suddenly beaming her baby blues across at me with a quick-change giddiness that made me suspect psychogenic drugs, “you are just so cool, and Ashton’s always telling me how smart you are, how you don’t miss a trick.”
I was so this and so that, she continued, winning back my interest. The vodka teased my brain into believing her. I might forgive her for being blond, blue-eyed, and stacked.
But I wasn’t sure I would forgive Ashton for spreading a tale that I’d had the hots for him.