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Tucked away in a windowless office the size of a Ford Fiesta, Ian Wicker skimmed a list of cases on Westlaw looking for anything relevant to the non-compete clause lawsuit his father had taken on behalf of a software engineer whose startup was being hassled by his previous employer. The project was reminiscent of the ones he’d been handed seven years earlier as a third-year law student. He cared even less now than he had then, though he knew he had to make it look like he’d put some effort into it. Monday afternoon his father had suggested he find another firm in need of a goldbricking chair warmer after accusing him of half-assing a similar assignment. Wicker doubted the sincerity of the threat but wouldn’t test his old man again so soon.
Their relationship had strained after the Beretta fiasco, when his dad essentially nuked his agency by proclaiming “a new era of fiscal responsibility.” Translation: Richard Wicker would no longer be financing his son’s operation. No money, no clients. No clients, no money. Ergo, he was clerking again for Lindahl, Wicker, Smalley, & Brogden as he prepped for the bar exam in February. Given his father never actually used any of the pleadings he crafted, his position was for all practical purposes a sinecure, and he recognized there was no point in jeopardizing this.
It had been more tenable, of course, before he’d walked in one morning to find the IT guy wiring a second computer on a desk that literally backed up to his own. Three days a week he became intimate with one of the firm’s student associates, who attended a.m. classes at Loyola. Stinky Josh usually rolled in around noon, reeking of onions and breaded fish. The smell wasn’t half as painful as the parade of mentors so keen to assist the budding legal scholar. Most had long since ceased to bother with Wicker, whom they derisively referred to as “Junior” when he was supposed to be out of earshot.
This being a Thursday, Wicker had the office to himself. The scent of saturated fat, however, lingered, emanating from the sport jacket hanging on the back of Josh’s chair, which had been kicked into the wall behind the door with enough force to gouge the drywall. Not much relief to be sure, as it was hardly an arm-length away, but at least he wasn’t backing into it as he typed. Words streamed from his fingers, and not just the usual crap he turned in. This time it actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Maybe his father would even use this one. He read it back to himself under his breath, halting occasionally to tweak the wording. He was nearly to the end when a knock on the open door interrupted him.
“Ian?” The new receptionist poked her head in. A petite redhead with peridot green eyes, she was one of the few employees at the firm who treated him with anything bordering on respect. If not for the fresh diamond she sported on her left hand, he’d have asked her out by now. He settled instead for flirting with her on his swings past her desk.
“Yes, Kimberly?”
“You have a visitor.”
“Really? Who might that be?”
“It’s a Del Tanner. He says you have worked with—”
“Tell him I’m busy. I can’t see him today.”
Kimberly smiled sheepishly. “It’s just that he’s ...” Del stepped into view in the doorway behind her. “... right here. I’m sorry Ian. I should have buzzed down first, but you don’t always answer.”
“It’s all right,” Wicker said, winking at her. “You can make it up to me later.”
Kimberly arched her eyebrows and shook her head teasingly, then departed, leaving Del alone in the hall.
“So is it okay if I come in?” Del asked.
Wicker leaned back in his chair, stroking his chin with one hand while drumming the fingers of his other on the desk. He stared at Del for an uncomfortable thirty seconds before finally responding.
“You know, if I had wanted to talk to you, I would have answered your calls.”
“Look, I’m sorry.” Del took a tentative step into the office.
“Sorry? For which? Firing me, or everything else?”
“I’m just sorry the way things ended.”
“Yeah. Aren’t we all.”
“No, I really am. I didn’t even mean to do it. It just came out. And then I was too much of a chickenshit to call and apologize.”
“That’s touching. Did you know I got a written warning from the Players Association last summer? Or that I couldn’t get any clients because my name somehow got leaked out of the grand jury testimony and there were rumors I’d lose my license? Or that two of the ones I did have switched away, allegedly for other reasons, but I have my doubts? Or that—”
“I didn’t bring your name up.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“No. Honest. They asked me about you. I was almost out the door and he suddenly asks about you. He said they found your name in Jesus’ stuff. And he asked something like, didn’t you introduce me to Jesus.”
“And what did you say?”
“What could I say? I was under oath. Obviously they knew it all already. If I’d denied it I could have gotten indicted.”
“There’s always enough room to fudge to avoid selling a guy out. If you want to.”
“Me lying wouldn’t have helped you. It would probably have made it look worse.”
He was right, but that wasn’t a point Wicker was prepared to acknowledge. Not so readily, anyway, after months of picturing Del singing like a lark in the witness box.
“Jesus is the one who sold you out,” Del said. “And me, really, which, I mean, it’s my fault for being involved in the first place, but, you know, why’d he ask for the money? I gave him a thousand bucks.”
Wicker winced and held his hand up. “Would you shut the door, at least?” he asked in a low voice. When it was closed he said, “Use some common sense. No one needs to know any of this. God, I hope you didn’t offer that part up.”
“Of course not.”
“Well, don’t assume it’s safe to talk about it here, either. I’m not sure how many of these people I really trust.”
“Sorry.”
Del spun Josh’s chair around so it faced Wicker’s desk. When Wicker didn’t object he sat down in it. “I need your help.”
“That’s a good one,” Wicker replied. “You come to me for help after all this. Lots’a laughs. Sorry, but I’m out of the agenting business.”
“For real?”
“All I had left was your buddy Mendenhall and a couple other guys who will never get past Triple-A. That’s hardly worth the fight.”
“What happened to Bobby Beretta? I read he signed for seven million. You must have got a nice chunk off that.”
“Bobby faxed me three days before the signing deadline to inform me he’d switched over to Jamie Bliss. Then he turned around and signed the deal he and his dad had told me all summer wasn’t enough. Before the draft I told him seven million. They were cool with it, until all of a sudden it came time to negotiate. When they realized the Padres were willing to give seven, suddenly they wanted ten. I told them we wouldn’t get ten, but I could get seven and a major league deal. Not good enough. So they dump me and call Bliss, who winds up getting them seven and a major league deal. And I got shit.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, it gets better. Once that fell apart, my dad decided it was time to quit bankrolling my expenses. He said I could either go it on my own, which as you know is kind of a losing proposition without at least a few big money clients, or I could park it here and take the bar, then put my ‘expertise in contract law’ to use for him. So, yeah, I’m living the fucking high life, sharing this closet with an intern who smells like his shift just ended at the In-N-Out. So what exactly is it that I can help you with?”
“I got released last month.”
“So I heard.”
“I need a job.”
“Best of luck to you. I wouldn’t get your hopes up there’ll be any kind of bidding war. The last anyone saw of you, you skipped out on your drug test, right? There’s speculation you’ll be suspended for the first fifty games of the season. Who wants to deal with that?”
“That’s not exactly what happened. I left because they didn’t call me up.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. That’s not how everyone else heard it.”
“Well, couldn’t we at least try?”
“Who’s this ‘we’? I told you, I’m done. I’m taking the bar next month.”
Del fidgeted with his wedding band, spinning it around the base of his finger. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it and thought for another moment. “I could handle working a bridge. I really think I could. There’s parts of it I might actually enjoy. But you, here? I don’t see it.”
Neither did Wicker. He’d studied the law because his father had. And before him, his grandfather, who had etched his name on the door when the firm formed in 1964. In college it was easy to imagine himself in a corner office, feet atop his mahogany desk, staring out over the city as he closed multimillion-dollar deals by speaker phone. By his second year of law school, all he wanted was the title. Nothing about the business of law appealed to him. If he could have done things over, he’d have studied sports management at USC and would probably be an assistant GM for some big league team by now.
“I’ll be all right. Once I get my own clients I’ll make some decent money here.”
“Come on, Wicker. I need you.”
“If you’re that desperate for an agent, I could print you out a list of fifty guys who would be happy to represent you, half of them within a short drive of here.”
“I want someone I can trust.”
“Sorry, man. That chapter’s over.”
Del pushed himself up out of the intern’s chair. Shaking his head, he offered a parting shrug that said, “sorry for wasting your time.” Two steps toward the door he halted. “Can I hire you as my attorney, then?”
“I haven’t passed the bar yet,” Wicker laughed.
“So? I don’t care.”
Wicker let out an exaggerated sigh. “That’s kind of against the rules, Del.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Wicker glanced down at his monitor. The cursor was still flashing on the non-compete pleading that had only seemed riveting in comparison to the even more banal crap he’d had to feign interest in the past few months. Could he really see himself flushing eighty hours a week on such mind-numbing grunt work? Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep a toe in his old world. For the occasional escape if nothing else. On the Q.T., of course. His old man wouldn’t need to know.
“I’ll make a couple of calls, okay?”
A relieved smile parted Del’s face as he bounced on his toes in the doorway.
“Don’t get all crazy on me,” Wicker said. “Honestly, I think you’ll be lucky to get a Triple-A job somewhere. We might even have to try something like the Atlantic League.”
“What’s that?”
“Independent league, back East. They get some pretty good players. I know a guy with the Long Island team, I could probably ... what’s that look?”
“I want to play real baseball.”
“It is real baseball. Guys get signed out of there all the time.”
“I want a big league job.”
“And I want a beach house in Malibu.” Wicker peeled his jacket off the back of his chair. “But let’s keep things realistic. What say we go grab some cervezas and talk this through a little more? On the clock, of course.”