Chapter 7

 

“What!” Betty said in shock as she dropped her attaché and thermos on her desk. “When?”

“That’s what I said when I heard about it. Mr. Murphy had a massive heart attack,” Carol, a secretary Betty shared at the firm, said. “We got the news yesterday. I saw the files I left on your desk were missing and could tell you had been by. I knew you were working from home and tried to call you, but actually, I wasn’t at my best. None of us were. Can you imagine what that penny-pinching weasel Renfro will do to this place? You remember how he tried to fire half of the clerical pool a couple of years ago. Yesterday most of the paralegals and secretaries were updating their résumés, for Pete’s sakes.”

“Oh my God,” Betty said, unable to close her mouth as she blocked out Carol’s last comment regarding job security. “I can’t believe this. I wondered why no one was at the reception desk when we walked in yesterday. When we were leaving, I saw Lisa in the back with the secretaries, but it never dawned on me it could have been something like this.”

“It’s true!” Carol said. Her red, medium-length hair was gathered in a bun with a number-two pencil, and her burgundy heckles stood away from her white complexion. “This place has been an absolute zoo ever since.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how those assholish partners are. It’s all about money with them. They’re trying to get a senior partnership or a place on the executive board. And the associates? They’re just as bad. You can see it on their faces.”

Betty couldn’t stop thinking about Jack Murphy. He was of Irish ancestry and was always willing to share the latest joke he had heard. He would set his appointments around attorneys’ birthday parties and demanded everyone attend, including the partners. His wife, Agnes, even sent cards to all employees and their spouses on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries.

He took pride in calling the members of the firm “family.” Each year the annual Christmas party was celebrated at one of the Murphy homes, either the one in the city or the one on nearby Amelia Island. While everyone in the firm would draw names, Jack and Agnes always bought gifts for each of the more than 125 employees and their spouses.

While Jack Murphy could be generous, he was a calculating and at times ruthless attorney. He was the lead litigator in each of the three largest cases awarded the firm. Unlike most senior partners, he enjoyed the fire of the courtroom. He would get as excited while practicing in his fifth decade as if he were preparing to deliver his first summation. He would always litigate with his toothy smile and familiar charisma. His favorite expression was “Kill them with kindness.” Now he fought with every breath in his body for his life.

“So the vultures are lining up in formation already?” Betty asked as she sat behind her desk.

“Yeah, and we were just out of it yesterday. I came in today to work on a few things O’Shaughnessy gave me as well as to find the files you needed for the Henderson Electric case.”

“I can’t believe this! He was the picture of health. Poor Agnes.”

“Yes, Mrs. Murphy has always been good to all of us, you know.”

“Have any of you been out to see him yet?” Betty asked as she handed Carol a tissue from the box on her desk to wipe her eyes. “Except I guess he’s still in ICU, so we can’t, right?”

“Yeah. We took up a collection for flowers, but Lisa thought about it and told us we couldn’t even send them yet. She even tried to call last night and find out if they had upgraded his condition, but they wouldn’t tell her anything since she wasn’t family.”

“So what are you doing here, on a Saturday, at eight o’clock no less?”

“Like I said, we didn’t do anything yesterday. It’s sad to say it, but people were either praying the man would live so they could keep their job or hoping things would happen so they could get a promotion. I feel bad even thinking that, but it’s true. I’ve got almost twenty years invested in this place and I know Renfro would love to get rid of me and hire someone for half as much. Lisa just said we should all try to ignore it, pray for Mr. Murphy, and come in early today to catch up on our work so we could get out before noon.”

“Well, that would explain why there are so many cars out there today.”

“Darling, they tell me they really are already discussing his replacement, and it’s a domino effect for the other partners and associates, you know. Shush,” Carol said with her finger to her lips as she turned to look into the hallway. “Hello, Mr. Patterson. How are you today, sir?” she said to the middle-aged balding attorney wearing Docker shorts and carrying his six iron.

“Fine, ladies, fine,” he said as he looked at Betty. “So, are you as shocked about this as I am?” Patterson was considered a loner and rarely spoke to the other employees. Rumor had it he’d transferred to the firm from Stamford, Connecticut, with a partnership as bait, but four years later he was still an associate.

“I just heard about it this morning,” Betty said between sips of tea. “Do you know if anyone has spoken with Agnes?”

“I’m told she and the boys are doing well, considering. Renfro has been out to the hospital several times, and Burt Collins will be there this morning with Cee Cee, and then possibly Danny and Beatrice Lake this evening. Muffy and I sent Agnes and the boys a fruit basket to the house, but outside of that, there’s just not much we can do but wait. Jack’s secretary, umm, umm . . . What’s her name?” he asked, looking at Betty.

“Paula,” Carol said in monotone.

“Ah, yeah,” he said with a brief glance at Carol. “She told me there were telegrams and faxes from the governor’s office and even one from Senator Graham.” And then R. Raymond Patterson added with faux sincerity as he leaned his stubby body against the door, “That man was an institution in this state. In this country, in fact. Everybody loved Jack Murphy.”

“That’s true,” Betty said.

Jack Murphy had been instrumental in Betty’s recruitment and subsequent hiring. It was rumored that two of the partners, one of whom was Renfro, had been against the first African-American female associate joining the firm. Ten years earlier, an African-American male who had barely passed the bar had been brought into the fold. When Renfro caught him at his desk asleep, he was forever used as the excuse not to integrate. But Murphy, in his delicate and yet effective way, got what he wanted like a velvet bulldozer.

“Yep. He’s one heck of a man,” Patterson said, and then there was dead silence. Betty and Carol glanced at each other with looks that said, Why is he still in here? as Patterson glanced around Betty’s office.

With a glimpse at her watch Betty said, “Well, I better get to work, guys. If you hear anything else, Ray, please let me know.”

“You betcha, Betsy.” And then he glanced at her nameplate on the door. “I mean, ahh, Betty.”

Betty and Carol gave each other weak smiles, and then Carol followed him out the door after saying ’bye with a wink.

Betty looked at the pile of work in her in-box and prepared to catch up from the day missed as she noticed a note from George O’Shaughnessy.

To:       Betty

From:  George

If you have an opening @ 12:30 for lunch on Monday, Sampkins and I would like to run something by you. Please let me know.

O’Shaughnessy was the oldest associate in the firm and was connected in the political arena from having served as a bodyguard for former governor Claude Kirk and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. He was a husky man, which bespoke his previous profession. If he had not ended up as an attorney, he could have used his six-foot-eight-inch rock truck of a frame as a bouncer. O’Shaughnessy was in his midsixties and had spent thirty of those years in law enforcement with the state of Florida.

He’d had the tenacity to attend and receive a law degree from a diploma mill and had taken the bar five times before he’d received the letter in the mail stating he had passed. Content with his position in the firm, O’Shaughnessy never played the office politics game. He was satisfied with just being an associate. This made him popular with the other attorneys and the clerical staff as well, because he was free to say what he felt.

O’Shaughnessy had an adequate win percentage, and his billable hours were in league with the other associates. His goal was to stay above the normal office jockeying for position and to enjoy his employment with Murphy, Renfro and Collins before he retired with his wife and camping equipment to Flagstaff.

Betty, on the other hand, was a cash register to the firm. Her billable hours were thirty percent higher than the second highest associate, who happened to be R. Raymond Patterson. She was a rainmaker to the concern, not because Jack Murphy was her mentor, but because she did as she’d been instructed as a child. She always worked twice as hard as the next person.

An hour after the departure of R. Raymond, George O’Shaughnessy tapped on the door. Betty, who was dressed in her sorority red and white sweat suit, had her white Keds perched on top of the desk. As she reviewed the Henderson Electric file, she was not in the mood for company.

“How are you doing, Betty?”

“Fine,” she said, and peered over the top of the reading glasses she wore as a result of studying for hours in badly lit dormitories and coffeehouses. “And yourself?”

“I can’t complain, can’t complain,” he said, and looked at a chair with her attaché on it. “May I?”

“Sure.”

“So what do you think about what’s going on in this place?”

After she took a breath, Betty put her feet on the floor, rested her elbows on her desk, and tugged softly at the brim of her cap. “I just hope he pulls through,” she said, trying to camouflage her pain.

“Hey, don’t you worry, little darling. Jack Murphy is one of the toughest kids on the block,” he said, with his Brooklyn accent somehow preserved after all the years in the sun belt. “I’ve known da man twenty, thirty years, and it’ll take more than a li’l cramp in his ticker to take him out, believe you me.”

“I hope so,” she said, and made eye contact with him. “The only reason I came to this firm and decided to stay in this godforsaken town was because of Murphy. He wasn’t like the others who talked to me. I could have done better with several firms in Atlanta, Dallas, or New York. In fact, I even had a firm here in town offer me more. It was never just about money with Jack. I guess—” her voice lowered—“that’s why he has so much of it now. He once told me that money was a great servant but a terrible master. He spoke of the honor of this profession. About something called ethics. Even after I graduated, I debated if one could be ethical and still be a successful attorney. I found out the answer to that question by watching Jack Murphy. No one else, and I mean no one I spoke to, talked like that. Those were the reasons I initially wanted to practice instead of going into medicine,” she said as she stared through George O’Shaughnessy. “He spoke of the law in such, I don’t know, in such eloquent terms. He has such a passion for what we do.” And then she added in a whisper as she thought about the words she’d said, “Mr. Murphy is what I wanted, I mean, would like to be.”

“Well,” O’Shaughnessy said in a consoling tone, “he’ll be okay, darling. You know,” he said, and tried to change the subject with the tact of a hungry pit bull in a butcher shop, “I was talking to Pete Sampkins last night about a case he’s preparing a motion of dismissal on and it reminded me of you.”

Betty, who’d taken another tissue from her box for her nose, looked at O’Shaughnessy.

“It appears this African-American kid is being denied a promotion with a Subaru distribution center and he’s saying it’s because of racism. He has no evidence as such. They have no other legal precedence for making the claim, yet because he is black, I mean African-American, it’s discriminatory. He wants a promotion based solely on affirmative action, and that’s just not right. Call me crazy, but I just don’t understand it,” he said with a smile and shake of his Nixonion jowls. “I hate it when people use racism as an excuse for anything and everything that happens. When you cry wolf like that, the next time someone comes with a valid claim, they’ll be ignored. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been around. My father couldn’t get work in the union because of our last name. So I understand where you’re coming from with the racism thing there. But you can’t always blame it on race.” As he spoke, Betty sat poker-faced. “Which is why I thought about you. Because you are the perfect example of what is wrong with affirmative action.”

Betty tilted forward in her chair and removed her glasses. “Oh really?”

“Hell yeah!” he replied with a raised voice. “Look at you! You’re black, I mean African-American, as well as a woman. I’ve worked with you on a couple of cases and you’re a pretty good lawyer. I don’t know what type of upbringing you’ve had, but you have had every reason in the world to give up. Every time I see Jesse Jackson or that Fair-a-con, yelling about quotas and affirmative action—I tell you, I think about you. Because,” he said, and thumped his fist on the edge of her desk, causing Betty to look at the ripples in her tea, “it’s people like you who show black folk that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps in this country. In America,” he finished, and thumped his fist with every syllable, “the opportunity is there for anybody if they want it, by golly. But some people—and I’m not just talking about the black people, there’s some sorry-assed white folks out there too—would starve to death with a ham under each arm.”

Betty was insulted, but almost laughed as he made the ludicrous comments and ended with the words “by golly.”

O’Shaughnessy added, with a cock of the head and a gap-toothed grin, “You see, darling, the only thing America owes any of us is an opportunity. This is the land of opportunity. If you work hard in America, you can accomplish anything you want. I’m living proof of that. I never noticed that plaque over there. Did you just get it?”

“No. I mean yes,” Betty said. “It’s the Charlotte Rae award given each year by BALSA.”

“I know her. She’s from New York, I think. Queens to be exact. She used to play in that sitcom with the cute little col—I mean African-American kid. ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ or something. Did she give them some money or something?”

With a quiet sigh Betty said, “No. She’s the first female African-American attorney in the United States. She was a corporate litigator and had to close her doors because she could not get work, but I want to go back to what you said earlier.” Betty had to decide quickly, Do I rip his heart out and leave him for dead or do I take out a scalpel and delicately remove his organs, one by one? She chose the latter as the waves dissipated in her tea. O’Shaughnessy leaned back and crossed his long legs with a condescending smile on his lips.

Betty leaned to the side in her chair, swiveled silently between the ten- and two-o’clock positions, and said, “You know, I really do appreciate the compliment you gave me, George.” Her mind moved quickly for the words, the right words.

O’Shaughnessy smiled and tipped his head as if to say thank you, but unbeknownst to him, he had walked into the abyss.

“But I can’t believe you could sit here, with a straight face, and tell me you do not see the need for affirmative action. You’re an educated man, George.” She rose from her chair, turned her back on him, and looked down on the city below. “Do you know about the forty-acres-and-a-mule agreement made with the former so-called slaves after they were freed? It was referred to at the time as ‘special order fifteen.’”

“Now, Betty, with all due respect, that stuff happened—what—two, three hundred years ago by people—”

“So you are aware of it?” She turned to look at him. “You know that a parcel of land which extended from South Carolina down to Jacksonville was given to the freed slaves and that President Andrew Johnson not only took it away from them, he gave it back to the Confederacy? The same army who months earlier killed his sons in battle? He gave it back to the army he had just defeated. And I am sure, George, you would say since it happened so long ago by people who have long since left this earth, we should forget about it, correct?”

“No, I was just—”

“But,” she said, and cut him off again with a thrust of her hand into the air, “allow me to tell you, there are some things people should never forget. Imagine, if you would, a marathon. Now, imagine the gun going off and one runner being set free to run, while the other is held back. Imagine the runner running seven, eight, or nine miles before the other runner is set free. He is already behind nine miles. Don’t you think it would be easy for this runner to just give up? Would you look at this race at the halfway mark and say, oh well, he was held back, but that is out of our hands now? We have no responsibility for the injustices he experienced at the starting gate? Of course you wouldn’t, George, because I know you, and I know you to be both a fair and learned man.”

O’Shaughnessy smiled and sunk lower in his chair.

“So you see, African-Americans will catch up, don’t get me wrong. And African-Americans will not quit. We are too strong a people for that. The race is not over for us. It will take time, George, but African-Americans, as a whole, will catch up. And you know something else?” she continued with a slight twinkle in her eye as she smiled. “There are just some things we will never forget.”

“I follow. But look at you, Betty,” O’Shaughnessy said as he sat forward with his arms folded tight across his barrel chest. “You are a perfect example, because with your background, whatever it is, and with me and where I come from, we are both associates in one of the top firms in the country. Look at Clay Bancroft, or better yet, Raymond. Everybody knows that R. Raymond Patterson’s family has more money than God Almighty, and yet we are all equals. We make practically the same money. You’re Black, I mean an African-American girl, and R. Raymond and I are white. So obviously,” he said with his palms held open to Betty, “it can be done without quotas and with good old-fashioned American hard work. See where I’m coming from? Did you need a quota to get into the law school at UF?”

“George,” she said, and stood in front of her chair as she ignored yet another sexist and obtuse comment delivered with a chuckle. “First of all, like I said, African-Americans as a whole will catch up.” And then she paused, as if to shift gears, and continued, “Secondly, George, if all things were fair and equal, no, I wouldn’t be here.”

A question mark appeared on O’Shaughnessy’s wrinkled brow.

“With my education and dollars generated to this firm, I’d be a partner now and on my way to the governor’s mansion.” She plopped down in her chair on the word mansion, to drive home the point with a smile.

After a thorny silence, O’Shaughnessy flashed his toothy grin. “Point taken. Well,” he said as he stood and brushed the wrinkles from his jeans before he reached for the doorknob, “I think I’ll leave a note in Sampkins’s box. We need to get started on that Subaru case.”

“Ahh, George? Is that why you wanted to get together for lunch Monday?”

“Oh. Oh no,” he said as he looked at the pink slip of paper between her fingers. “No, no, we were going to ask you a couple of questions about a civil case that was similar to that Biradial Foods case you worked on a few years ago. That’s all. But Phillip Sheridan answered our questions last night.”

Betty crumpled the memo, put on her glasses, and skipped the opportunity to comer him with a lie.

“I’ll tell Sampkins to thank his lucky stars he’s not going to go against you in court, sugar,” O’Shaughnessy said, and laughed as he closed her door.

Betty thought as she shook her head, So you wanted me to be the token Negro attorney in the Subaru case, huh? Oh, you tried my natural soul that time.

Betty and Carol searched for files and related documents for an hour to prepare for a large lawsuit filed against a hardware store by the parents of a kid who’d been hit by a truck driven by one of their delivery men who had been drinking on the job. After she located all of the files, Betty got a fresh cup of cocoa and settled in to finally get some work done. Fifteen minutes into her reading of a motion appeal filed by the company’s attorney, there was yet another knock on her door.

“Yes!” she said in her driest, most frustrated voice. This time she removed her spectacles and leaned back on the desk she sat in front of Indian style.

“It’s me, girl; calm down,” Jacqui said as she opened the door and dropped her bag on Betty’s antique oak desk.

“Thank goodness.”

“Why? What the hell’s going on here today? I’ve never seen that many cars outside this place on the weekend.”

“Child, let me tell you; this place has been beyond crazy. Murphy is in the hospital, apparently with a heart attack. You know he was always in perfect health.”

“I know,” Jacqui replied with her mouth open. “I used to see him jogging every Saturday morning when I came by here from Books for Thought. As a matter of fact, I looked for him this morning. Where is he?”

“North Florida General. Apparently he’s still in ICU and they’re only allowing his immediate family to see him. I just found out about it this morning.”

“Oh, snap. It happened yesterday? But we were in here. You mean to tell me these jerks didn’t tell you?”

“No, no. Remember, we were in and out so fast we didn’t see anyone. There was no one at the reception counter when we came in or when we left.”

“Oh yeah. That’s right.”

“Carol tried to call me, but what with the move, the answering machine didn’t pick up. But this morning,” Betty said as she cupped her mouth and spoke lower, “she told me that the vultures are already circling for position.”

Jacqui got up to close the door so they could speak without being overheard and sat on the edge of Betty’s desk. “So what does this do to the partnership opportunities here for you?”

“Well, really, Jac, I haven’t thought about it. I mean, I’m just hoping the man survives.”

“Yada, yada, yada. Whatever, whatever. I understand all that, girl, but you better watch out for yourself in a place like this. I don’t trust none of them here. You’re working in a den of straight-up thieves. I bet you there’re more than a few of these assholes praying the man—”

“Jacqui!”

“Well, it’s true, girl. You got a good heart and all, and I admire you for that. I couldn’t put up with them. A job like this is like spandex, it’s just not for everybody. But Jack Murphy, God bless him and all, got your head all full of this money-as-a-servant stuff, and that’s nice. But this is the real deal. Welcome to reality. You better watch your back before one of them starts greasing the skids for you.”

“But, Jac, Murphy is one of the top attorneys in the country. And this man has taken me under his wing. I know his wife, his kids, and you can’t put a value on that. I mean, I know Renfro has his issues to deal with, and believe me, that whole good-ole-boy system they play here gets old. But there is a method to my madness.”

Picking at her fingernails, Jacqui said, “As Billie Holiday said, ‘Mother may have and Murphy may have, but God bless the child that has his own, and I am through with that.’”

“Oh well,” Betty said as she got up and sat on the edge of her desk beside Jacqui’s Fendi purse. “You make a good point. Trust me, I understand where you are coming from, especially with what happened yesterday.”

“Got an idea for you. Let’s eat.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Betty said, happy to end the conversation. As she dropped her files, cut off her reading lamp, and grabbed her purse, she said, “Maybe getting away awhile will clear my head a little. Oh yeah, child, don’t let me forget to tell you about the discussion I just had with O’Shaughnessy. That fool is a trip.”