THREE

“You have a minute?” Abby poked her head inside his office door.

Morgan Spencer sat behind a large oak desk, its surface swept clean. He dropped the document he was reading, lifted his glasses, and smiled.

“Come on in and shut the door.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a large bundle of paper held together by a rubber band.

“As they say in the trade, you owe me a night’s sleep.”

“What did you think?”

“Good stuff.”

Spencer was one of Abby’s few sounding boards. He couldn’t write, but he had a good ear.

“Who is this guy Cooper, anyway?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Morgan had a sparkle in his eye and a quick word for every circumstance. He loved Irish limericks and any film featuring Peter O’Toole. In fact, there was something in the aspect of the man that reminded Abby of the actor in an earlier day. He was eight years older than Abby but a generation wiser. He was Abby’s Father confessor, the uncle she never had.

They had worked together on several cases. In the increasingly competitive atmosphere of the office, he had taken her under his wing and offered her protection from the slings and arrows of the corporate climbers. The problem was that of late, Morgan’s ability to protect anyone, including himself, was beginning to fade. The firm had been caught up in the disease of corporate downsizing.

She noticed that he was looking at a firm management document known as “The Book.” In essence, it was a partnership agreement that governed the internal workings of the firm.

“What’s up?”

“Just had a battle with Cutler.”

Lewis Cutler was African-American, the firm’s new managing partner installed by a group of young turks hellbent on control and increasing their own profit margin. He had gotten the nod from the management consultants and in turn been elected by the partners in order to deal with the secretaries and clerks, many of whom were minority. It made it harder for these laid-off employees to argue they’d been dealt the race card from the bottom of the deck. “The twit wants to cut my bonus,” said Spencer. “Can you believe it? Twenty years, they wanna treat me like an associate. The policy’s carved in stone. Right here.” He pointed to the place on the page. “A pro rata share. That’s what it says, in the Queen’s English.”

“Actually it’s Latin, Morgan.”

“What I hate about lawyers. Always want to get technical.”

The power group in their late thirties had all come out of a single law school in Washington State. In business they acted like a social fraternity, tight and exclusionary. There was nothing benign about it.

Like Abby, Spencer had gone to school out of state. Though he had been in the firm for more than twenty years, the guys he’d practiced with had all retired or left the firm, and the economics of law practice had changed. His specialty, honed over two decades, was Admiralty, and it had fallen on hard times.

“I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let ’em get away with it.

I’ve got a surprise for that bastard.” He was talking about Cutler. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Spencer didn’t have much of a temper, or if he did he concealed it well. This was as angry as she had seen him, a little red in the face and thumping the surface of the desk with a purposeful finger. He was the kind who was slick and quiet. Abby had never gotten cross-wise with him, so she’d never felt his sting, though she’d seen it demonstrated in court on a few occasions. It wasn’t until Morgan enveloped you with his affable smile that you felt the point of his sword.

“Maybe I should come back later?” said Abby.

“No. No. What is it?”

“You’ve got problems of your own.”

“Yeah, but yours are always smaller. God, you’re looking good today. Why don’t you move in with me and I’ll make an honest woman out of you?” Morgan was kidding but only partly.

She smiled, and he twinkled. It was the one problem with their relationship. Morgan always hoped for more than friendship. Abby didn’t.

Early on she had taken herself out of the running for a partnership in the firm. In college she had studied what she loved—literature—but everybody she knew told her that writing words didn’t pay. In a job market racked by increasing uncertainty, Abby made a deal with the devil and went to law school. Now she was paying the price.

She had grown to hate the practice of law. The best lawyers loved a good fight. The constant rancor with opposing counsel, judges, and at times one’s own clients was the stuff to spike adrenaline in a good trial lawyer. For Abby it only produced ulcers.

Her only reprieve came at night when she pursued her dream with a missionary’s zeal. Toward that end she worked for more than eight years and penned three novels. They were good stories with a literary edge. She won an award with one of them. Published by a small company in New York, they garnered solid reviews and kudos from her editor. But without marketing or promotion they suffered the fate of the vast bulk of general fiction in this country. They died on the shelves.

When lawyers became hot in fiction, all her friends told her to pen a legal thriller. They were the same friends who told her to go to law school. Abby ignored them. Writing was her own way of running from the law.

“You took that seminar last year on intellectual property and entertainment law?” she asked.

“Down at USC,” he nodded. “They give me the exotic locales. Cutler gets four days on Taxation in Belize, and comes back on the S.S. Lust. I get two days in L.A.”

“Would you like a client?”

“Sure.” He looked at her over his shoulder still searching for the materials. “I have them here someplace.” He swung around in his chair and started pawing through the drawers of the credenza behind him. “The syllabus and some books, if I can find ’em. What do you need?”

“A registration of copyright. I’ve never done one.”

“Oh hell, I can do that.”

“Have you done one before?”

“Simple form,” he said. “I think I even have one in the materials. Who’s it for?”

“Me.”

He swung around and looked at her from under arched eyebrows. “Writing again?”

She nodded.

“Well, good for you.” He went back to the credenza. “I wish I had the gift.” He was talking about writing. “You write lies and they pay you. All of mine are in the courtroom, verbal, and they call it perjury.”

“They aren’t lies. It’s called fiction, Morgan.”

“Right.”

A year ago, Abby’s publisher was bought out by a larger company. In the shuffle of reorganization, they fired her editor and rejected her next manuscript, offering a number of vague reasons, all of which added up to a single fact—in the publishing business Abby had become used merchandise, a name with a failed track record. In today’s publishing world it was better to be a virgin author, someone who had never seen print, than to have committed the mortal sin: producing a book that didn’t make its way onto the bestsellers list. The list was everything. It was all that mattered. The message was clear. What Abby needed was to reinvent herself.

Her former agent, a small-time operator who worked alone from a brownstone in Manhattan, took Abby’s manuscript to two other publishers. One checked her record of sales and passed. The other came back with an astonishing request—before they decided whether to publish they wanted to see a photograph of the author.

Abby was dumbfounded. The agent explained that this was becoming increasingly common. Publishers, if they were going to put money behind a book, wanted to know if the author could carry their load on the television talk show circuit if the book caught on, whether their likeness could be used to advantage in print ads. Or, thought Abby, whether it might be a detriment on the dustcover.

Abby didn’t like it. More than offended, however, she was scared.

Faced with no alternative, she finally submitted. A week later, after the photograph was sent, her manuscript was rejected. Of course she could not be certain of the reason, whether it was her work or her looks, but for a woman approaching middle years, personal insecurities weighed heavily, and in Abby’s mind, she knew.

“At least one of us is doing something we enjoy,” said Morgan.

“You enjoy the practice. You complain a lot, but you enjoy it,” she told him.

“I’d enjoy it more if somebody would nudge a few of these supercilious pricks out of some windows.” He was talking about Cutler and his entourage.

While Morgan fumbled in the drawer, Abby looked about the office. In the corner stood a large object, a hunk of brass the size of a lectern with a handle and gauge. It was an engine room telegraph. It had come off an old ship salvaged by one of Morgan’s clients, now no longer in business. Even the position of the telegraph’s handle said volumes about Morgan and his career. It was set at “Stop.”

“I thought your publisher usually did the copyright?”

“I don’t have one yet.”

“Why don’t you wait until you sell it? Let them deal with it.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. I’m doing this one under a pseudonym, a pen name,” said Abby.

“Hmm?” Morgan swiveled around in his chair and looked at her.

“Gable Cooper,” she said.

“You wrote this?”

“Don’t act so surprised. I can write.”

“No. No. That’s not what I meant. It’s just I would never have guessed. Your other books were so different.”

“You mean no action. Not much plot,” she said.

“Yeah. Well, that’s part of it,” said Morgan. “But this one. It grabs you by the gut and keeps you turning pages. I’m not kidding. I was up all night two nights running. Cutler owes you his life. If I wasn’t so tired I’da killed the son of a bitch during our meeting this morning.”

She laughed.

Over time, Abby’s agent had drifted away, no longer returning her calls. The process made a lasting impression. There had always been something secure about writing. She had the talent. Her age and how she looked didn’t matter. There was a certain comfort in the knowledge that you could write until you were old and frail, and all that mattered was the quality of your thoughts strung together in words and sentences. Now all of that had been swept away.

But Abby was no quitter. She was angry and made no pretense. In the fickle business of fiction she was tenacious, and in her own way a risk taker. She had been all of her life. It was something that her father, now deceased, had instilled in her at a young age, a fierce independence, and a willingness to take a chance. It was what kept her writing, engaged in a long-shot venture on those cold dark nights—and what caused her to do the crazy thing she was now doing.

“Why not just do it under your name?” said Morgan.

“I have my reasons.”

“And they are . . .?” He looked at her.

“My reasons.”

He shook his head.

Abby was wondering if she’d come to the right place for help. A stranger might have asked fewer questions.

“The publisher will still do a copyright.”

“I know they will. But I want a separate one, in my own name.”

He studied her for a moment.

“I want you to do it off the books.” Abby meant that there would be no record of the services performed on the firm’s billing records. “I’ll pay you.”

“Don’t be silly.” He fumbled in the files for a second, looking for the materials again. Then he looked up at her.

“No, actually you can pay me, but not with money. I want to know why you’re doing it? Using a pen name?”

“Because I don’t want anyone to be able to find out that I wrote it.”

“It’s a fine piece of work,” said Morgan.

“It’s a shamelessly commercial manuscript, written in a shamelessly commercial fashion,” said Abby. “I know what it is.”

“You talk like it’s a bastard child,” said Morgan. “It may not be fine art, but I couldn’t put it down. You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

“I’m not ashamed. I have my reasons. Can we leave it at that?”

“Only if you want to stiff me on the fee.”

Abby was a thousand pained expressions. “Alright. I’ll tell you. But it can’t go any further than this room. Do you promise?”

“Lawyer-client,” said Morgan. “All the privileges.”

“Fine. I don’t intend to identify myself as the author to anyone. To the agent, the publisher, or anyone else. I’m convinced the book will do better without me.”

“Being pretty hard on yourself,” said Morgan.

“I’m not. They are.” The they in this instance were the giant publishers in New York. “If my name’s on it they won’t buy it. They certainly won’t push it. And I want the book to have a chance.”

“At some point you’re gonna have to meet with them. Don’t they get a picture for the cover?”

“Yes.”

“What are you gonna do then?”

“I’m gonna give them someone else’s. A man’s photograph,” said Abby.

Morgan sat there shaking his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re a good-looking woman.”

“I’m almost forty. Besides a man, a good-looking man, is more likely to catch their attention.”

“Who?” said Morgan.

“I haven’t found him yet.”

“You’re out of your mind. Please tell me you haven’t done anything about this yet? I mean, you haven’t talked to a publisher?”

“Just an agent. But I think she has a publisher lined up.”

“What did you tell him?”

“It’s a her. And I told her that Gable Cooper was out of town. On business. I’m busy locating him now.”

“And she believed you?”

“I told her he has dangerous looks. She wants the book. She wants Gable Cooper. She wants the whole package. And I’m going to deliver it.”

Spencer sat with his head in his hands shaking it.

“There’s nothing illegal, Morgan. There isn’t.”

“Just a little friendly fraud,” said Spencer.

“People do it all the time. Pen names.”

“Oh yeah. People use pen names. But this. You’re gonna trot this guy out?”

“They want beefcake. I’ll cut ’em a slice. Young and juicy. And they’ll pay through the nose.”

“You actually think they’re gonna pay a man more than they would a woman.”

“A young man. Good-looking. You bet your ass.”

“Why?”

“Ask them. Besides, it’s not just the gender. I’ve got a blemished track record. Books that never came close to the list. They don’t make a star out of somebody like that. It isn’t done. In this business, you get one shot at being discovered. They want a fresh face so they can tell the world it’s their discovery.”

“But this?”

“So I’m giving them tight buns to go along with it,” said Abby.

“They’ll sue you nine ways from Sunday,” said Morgan.

“For what?”

“For fraud. Try that on for starters.”

“No they won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because to prove fraud you have to prove damages. And to prove damages they would have to prove that they would have paid less to me, a woman, than they would have to the hunk I put in front of them.”

Like a riddle, Morgan thought about this for a moment, men smiled. “Title Seven.”

Abby nodded. “They’d have to admit to discrimination.”

“They’d be on the horns of a dilemma,” said Morgan.

“With a prong in each cheek,” said Abby. “Besides, if the book is successful, why would they want to sue? If the book isn’t successful, who cares? There’ll be nothing to fight over.”

Morgan admired the ingenuity. She had thought it all through. She was not all writer after all. There was more lawyer there than he had credited.

“Doesn’t it bother you that somebody else is gonna take the credit for your work?”

“Only until the paperback publication,” said Abby.

“What then?”

“Then I intend to go public.”

“You think they’ll let you?”

“How can they stop me? If we put it together the right way, with a copyright to prove that I wrote the work. Maybe a contract with whoever I get to do Gable Cooper. They won’t have a choice.”

Morgan had to admit it sounded like fun. More fun than he was having practicing law. “Maybe I could do it. Be Gable Cooper, I mean.”

Abby didn’t know how to tell him. Morgan could read it in her eyes. She didn’t have to.

“I know. Things are sagging in all the wrong places,” said Morgan. And the hair’s starting to get a little thin. He reached up and mussed the shaggy top knot.

“Now who’s being hard on who?” said Abby. “But I don’t want to get you involved.”

“I see. You just want me to help you plot this fraud, not perpetrate it.”

“Can it be done? Can you copyright it in my name and can you keep them from finding it?”

Morgan paused, thought about it. “I think so. Does anybody else know what you’re doing?”

Abby thought for a moment. “Just three people.”

“Who?”

“You and I, and Terry. She’s staying at my house for a while, so she knows.” Abby and Theresa Jenrico had been tight since grade school.

“Is he hitting on her again?”

Abby nodded.

“What an asshole.” Spencer was talking about Joey Jenrico, Terry’s estranged husband. The two women and Morgan had socialized after work a few times at a bar around the corner.

“What Joey deserves is a shot in the head,” said Morgan.

“Are you offering your services?”

“I know some people.” He pushed his nose off to one side with a finger like some busted prize-fighter. “Could be done very discreetly. Drive over him in his bed with their Mack truck. I mean, what’s a little mayhem when we’re already doin’ fraud?” He winked at her.

She looked at him and laughed.

He made a few notes. “You haven’t told anybody else about what you’re doing on the book?”

“There will have to be one other person.”

“Who’s that?” said Morgan.

“Gable Cooper.”

He was not bad-looking, dark with a shadow of a beard. But then it was late afternoon. The clerk eyed him sort of sheepishly, a young girl at an older man, good-looking at that.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m lookin’ for Abigail Chandlis.”

“I don’t know if she’s in. What’s your name?”

“Joey Jenrico.”

“And what does this regard?”

“That’s what I wanna talk to Chandlis about.”

“No, I mean does this regard a case in the office?”

“Yeah. My divorce.”

“Are you a client?”

“No. You guys represented my wife.”

“Oh. Just a moment.” By now red lights and alarms were going off in the brain of the receptionist. There had been enough shootings in law firms by irate husbands in the last few years that clerks in the big firms had undergone more training in emergencies than the National Guard. She hit the button under the desk that signaled security on the first floor, the yellow button that told them to come up without guns drawn. She looked for bulges in the man’s coat but didn’t see anything, all the while smiling.

“They’ll be right out.”

Then she hit the com-line. But it wasn’t Abby that she called. The security pros had told them that the lawyer involved in the case was the last person you wanted. If Abby came out, she might as well be wearing a big bull’s-eye.

A second later, a young guy, suit and tie and about seven feet tall, came into the reception area from an office in the back.

“Can I help you?”

Dan London was a former cop turned lawyer. Before that he was a tight end for the University of Washington team that went twice to the Rose Bowl and kicked ass each time. He was the firm’s pick for internal security.

“Yeah . . .” The guy’s dimensions alone were enough to slow Joey down. “I’m lookin’ for one of your lawyers.”

“I’m a lawyer,” said London.

Joey didn’t realize they made them in that size.

“Yeah, but I’m lookin’ for Chandlis.”

“I’m afraid Ms. Chandlis isn’t in right now.”

“Right.” Joey wondered if this was the one Theresa was seeing. He’d been told by a friend that some lawyer was seen partying with Theresa at a restaurant downtown. He was intent on kicking somebody’s ass. But if this was the guy, Joey was gonna have to come back with a forklift.

“Maybe I could wait.”

“I don’t think so,” said London. “She’s not coming back today.”

“Where is she?”

“Out.”

“Oh.”

By now there were two guys in blue caps and white shirts wearing forty pounds of hardware around their waists outside the door. Joey turned and saw them through the glass.

“Maybe I could come back.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Joey gave him arched eyebrows as a question mark.

“Are you represented by counsel?” asked the lawyer.

“Why? Am I under arrest?” Joey thought maybe this was a form of Miranda. He was a loser. He’d spent a lifetime passing “Go” and he hadn’t collected two hundred bucks yet.

“No. I mean, did a lawyer represent you in your divorce?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Joey was relieved.

The lawyer was laughing. Joey didn’t like it. Still it was better to be laughed at than arrested. So he laughed, too.

“If you want to talk to Ms. Chandlis, have your lawyer call her.” He stuck a business card in Joey’s hand. “She can’t talk to you, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Professional rules. If you’re represented by a lawyer, she’s not supposed to talk to you.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, you do now.”

Just like a cop, thought Joey. If he had a hammer and got behind the guy, he’d show him.

“Nice to have met you,” said the lawyer.

“Yeah.”

The two guards collected Joey outside the door and escorted him to the elevator. Downstairs they put his name in a book; the equivalent of Wyatt Earp posting you out of town. Joey would never get through security and upstairs again. If he wanted to see Chandlis, he would have to do it someplace else.

As he passed through the big glass revolving door, he felt the chill wind off the Sound hit his face. It turned his cold sweat icy. Joey knew he’d dodged a bullet. He felt his stomach at the belt line and rejoiced that the two guards hadn’t done the same. Because he had a record, he couldn’t get a permit. But whenever he went looking for his wife, Joey Jenrico always carried a gun.

He answered on the second ring and before he could say hello, Abby was on him.

“Where in the hell is the check?” It seemed like she was always exasperated when she talked to Charlie.

“Abby?”

“I’m flattered,” she said, “that you could recognize my voice from among the throngs you must owe money to.”

“They haven’t paid me in two months,” he said.

“And you haven’t paid me in five.”

“Listen, I’m having a hard time.” It was the story of Charlie’s life.

Charlie Chandlis was Abby’s ex. They had been married for eight torturous years, during which Abby saw him mostly on weekends, and then only between legal briefs and trips to Walla Walla, where the state’s maximum security prison was located. Charlie was a criminal appellate lawyer in Seattle who lived on the edge along with most of his clients, several of whom were on death row.

He owed her a total of nine thousand dollars, half of their credit-card obligations at the time of the divorce. The cards had been in Abby’s name, but Charlie had racked up most of the debt. The court had ordered him to pay it in installments over twelve months. He was now four installments behind.

“What’s the story this time?” she asked him.

“Indigent defense panel. What else?”

None of Charlie’s clients could pay the freight, and so the taxpayers did it for them. They hired Charlie to tie the system up in knots, or at least that was Charlie’s self-avowed mission in life—endless appeals. The money for fees was never enough to go around. There was always more crime than public dollars to pay for lawyers.

“They cut my fees. They hold my money. What am I supposed to do?”

“Tell them you have bills.”

“Right. Only welfare recipients get their checks on time from the state. You know that,” said Charlie. “Mine they hold for at least ninety days. Sorta like the aging of good meat on a hook so that when it arrives it’ll be ripe, and properly appreciated.”

It was a good story, but it didn’t solve Abby’s problem. She had taken sixty days off of work to finish the book once she was in striking distance. She had also taken a loan and factored Charlie’s payoff into her budget. Now the bank was calling and the piper had to be paid.

“Charlie, I’ve got my own problems.”

“They took my car last week,” he told her. “Repossessed it. Right out of the lot behind my office. Now I’m hoofing it, and taking the bus,” he said.

Charlie was his own kind of loser, well educated but hellbent for poverty.

“Charlie, you’ve got a law degree, you passed the bar, why don’t you . . .”

“Let’s not get into that again.”

It was a good part of the reason their marriage had broken up. Charlie was a true believer, part of the ponytail set from the ‘60s who believed that feeding the root of every crime was some social injustice. It was Charlie’s sacred mission to set things right. Somewhere in the quest for ultimate justice, Abby and what was left of their marriage had gotten lost.

“It’s five months since I’ve seen a check,” she told him.

“Can’t pay if I don’t have it,” said Charlie. He said something about blood out of a turnip and then she heard his hand over the mouthpiece and part of another conversation.

“. . . it should be hand-carried. Have it messengered,” said Charlie.

“What? My check?” said Abby.

“No. No. It’s some documents we need to file with the court before five.”

Always on the edge, Charlie’s life was one big statute of limitations.

“You could go to jail, you know.” Abby was no fool, so she’d hired a lawyer for the divorce. She reminded him that her lawyer had threatened to get an order to show cause why Charlie shouldn’t be held in contempt when he missed the first payment. The lawyer also told Abby that it probably wouldn’t work. Charlie lived in the courthouse. He was on a first-name basis with all the judges. He would blame the system and they would buy it, giving him only a stern warning. In the meantime, Abby would be stuck with a bill from her own lawyer. So she spent her time and money on long-distance calls, jerking him around on the phone, with virtually the same result.

“You got ten days,” she said.

“Then what?”

It was a good thing he couldn’t see the vacant expression on her face over the phone, though he could read it in the crackling silence on the line. It was an idle threat and they both knew it.

“Listen, I’ll get you the check as soon as I can. Really.” His voice dropped an octave like he was about to impart some state secret. “I haven’t told her yet, but I’m not even gonna be able to pay my secretary this month.”

“Why don’t you put her on the phone so I can tell her?” said Abby.

“Gotta go,” said Charlie.

“How do I pay my rent?”

“Tell ’em to wait.”

“Right. I guess I don’t eat this month,” she said.

“I’ll come over and take you out to dinner,” he told her.

“You have enough money to take me out to dinner, but you can’t pay your bills?”

“New credit card,” said Charlie. “They keep sending these applications in the mail.” He laughed. Good-time Charlie.

It was another sore point. Abby couldn’t get a credit card if her life depended on it. Charlie had ruined her credit rating. Now he had a new card in his own name.

“Why can’t you borrow against it?” she asked him.

“Can’t do that. They’d take it away faster than I could flash it. The secret of credit is not to need it,” said Charlie. “Listen, why don’t I come over?” He changed the subject on her.

“Don’t bother.”

“Why can’t we get together? For old times’ sake.”

“Old times weren’t all that good,” she told him.

“They weren’t all that bad, either. Not as I remember.”

“I guess it all depends where you were sitting,” said Abby.

There was some pained silence on the phone that was quickly filled by Charlie. He always seemed to be the first to rebound after a fight.

“Listen, I gotta run,” he said.

“Charlie?”

“I’ll get the check to you. I will,” said Charlie.

“Sure.” In the next life, thought Abby. As Charlie hung up, she wondered if she would be eating cat food by the end of the month, or if the bank was into restructuring personal loans, and if so, at what level of usurious interest rates.