Not that long ago, law firms were not quartered in crystal boxes comprising boxes of multiple office-building floors with internal and external walls of glass. Now, theatrically lit and scientifically ventilated, the slick, transparent spaces arrayed around floating staircases and airy atria coruscate from early in the day to late at night. If not privacy, the glass affords silence, and in a glass office one sometimes has the feeling of floating in an aquarium.
Katy understood that, a hundred years before, a law office would be as heavy as hers was light, with stolid Victorian or, were it to have been modernized, Edwardian furniture, and wood paneling, rugs, mantels, and hypnotically ticking tall clocks that could lull to sleep even an agitated ambulance chaser. But what would it be like a hundred years hence? When one of her now increasingly erstwhile suitors entered her office as she was entertaining this question, she had deliberately chosen to continue her determination to drive him away, so she greeted him with her musing. “Who knows?” she asked. “Maybe we’ll hang upside down like bats.”
This kind of thing was enough to keep them off. They said, “She’s a great lawyer. Perhaps it’s the stress.” They knew that for a long time she hadn’t known if Stephen were alive or dead. They knew that now he was imprisoned, and that his very case—which spoke to his actions, which spoke to his character, and thus to hers—was one of the things that, however small, had divided the political parties and become part of the nation’s fate, and they were somewhat awed by her connection to it. The ones who had fallen in love with her longed for her as before, but now she was untouchable, in another realm, elevated and isolated so that her position alone was sufficient to discipline their desire. In fact, to slap it.
For Katy, the glass house was perfectly complementary to the suspension of feeling she tried to will upon herself. Her tax cases were mindless games that nonetheless demanded full attention and made time fly. Coming in the morning, leaving in the evening, anaesthesia in between. At home, the quiet and stillness put her into an easy trance—the ticking of the clock as if she had traveled back to the law offices of a century past, the rain steady and powerful but not quite as wonderful as when she had lain in bed with Stephen, or the heat outside even in the dark, and the orchids and the palms so beautifully patient, and now and then a gin and tonic just so imagination and memory could fly while she was perfectly still, and time went by.
Safe in the glass house, she waited. She had had the strength to wait as Stephen fought, and she would have the strength to wait now. The sound of the air-conditioning was Zen-like. The boats far below on the Mississippi glided silently but as smoothly as if keeping time to a waltz.
Then the receptionist’s voice came over the intercom. “There’s a Mr. Osborne here to see you.”
“Mr. who?”
“Osborne.”
“Is he counsel in the Winterich case?”
“No, he’s in the Navy.”
“What does he want?”
The receptionist disappeared and then was heard again. “He says he’s sorry he couldn’t make an appointment, but he’s in transit from Washington to San Diego, and he’s supposed to speak with you.”
Katy hesitated, got her guard up, and said, “All right, bring him in.”
It took a full two minutes to walk from reception down the wide alleys between the crystalline boxes. And though by the time Osborne and his escort arrived at Katy’s door not everyone would have had time to prepare for all the possibilities, she was good at projecting scenarios. She hadn’t been warned of the investigative techniques, because of what Stephen had explained to Frearson.
“They have a score of techniques with which they get information to which they’re not entitled,” Frearson had said.
“You really don’t have to warn her,” Rensselaer told him. “There’s no more capable person in the world. She’ll know immediately. She doesn’t like it when, because she’s a beautiful woman, people let down their guard. Don’t ruin it for her by making it too easy.”
“Ms. Farrar?” she was asked.
She sized him up. His countenance and manner were false. She would be tough. “It’s on the door, you know, I’m sitting at the desk, and law firms don’t have substitute lawyers the way schools have substitute teachers.”
“But you are.”
“I am, yes. Would you like a peanut butter cup, a miniature one such as you might get at Halloween? I have one a day, as a treat.”
“Sure. One a day. They’re fattening.”
“That’s not it. I can’t gain weight even if I try, and I do love them. It’s an exercise in discipline.”
“Yes,” he said. Now he knew he didn’t know what he was dealing with. “So, I’m Dick Osborne.”
“Captain Osborne.” Of course she recognized the insignia.
“Exactly. I need to ask you some questions about Captain Rensselaer.”
“You need to? What makes you need to?”
“They may help him.”
“What else may they do?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“They may help him, and, if they don’t, mightn’t they hurt him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Whence your need?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Need. What compels you to ask some questions? Why do you need to ask them?”
“To find information.”
“That’s the result. What is the impulse that translates into need?”
“It’s my job.”
“So you were ordered.”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“The prosecutor.”
“I see, the prosecutor.”
“Yes. But facts are facts.”
“You need not say that, Gertrude. It’s self-explanatory.”
“Gertrude?”
“A rose is a rose is a rose. Gertrude Stein. Friend of Alice B. Toklas.”
He didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but he knew he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he cut to the chase. “Do you have any correspondence from him? Letters, emails, voice mails?”
“Yes.”
“I need to have copies.”
“Need again.”
“He’s facing very serious charges.”
“Yes?”
“These are necessary. You have a close personal relationship.”
“Yes?”
“Will you please supply them? I have to see them.”
She laughed.
“I can subpoena them.”
“I can contest your subpoena.”
“This is not going to help him.”
“Nor will it hinder him.”
“Was he in the habit of disparaging the Navy?”
“Of course not. He loves the Navy. He’s given his life to it.”
“Even after he was removed from the list?”
“Even then.”
“Did he ever disparage the president?”
“Well, he was not especially fond of Woodrow Wilson.”
“Would you rather,” Osborne began to ask, resorting to his most powerful weapon, “answer these questions now, or later under oath?”
“Under oath,” Katy told him. “That’s the best thing about a trial, isn’t it, better yet than the structural benefits of the adversarial system—to see people at their finest, who with no thought to their own interest sacrifice it and everything else in the sacred pursuit of truth. Testifying under oath is good for the soul. It purifies. I’d be grateful for the opportunity.”
Osborne stared at her, his mouth slightly open, his tongue pressed against his lower teeth. There she was—gorgeous, with sparkling eyes, sitting in her glass house, the Mississippi flowing silently below her. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “the two of you drive me crazy.”
“You’ve met Stephen.”
“I have.”
“And now you’ve met me.”