The Street Lawyer

Thirty

Intake at CCNV, alone, and two hours late. The clients were sitting patiently on the dirty floor of the lobby, some nodding off, some reading newspapers. Ernie with the keys was not pleased with my tardiness; he had a schedule of his own. He opened the intake room and handed me a clipboard with the names of thirteen prospective clients. I called the first one.

I was amazed at how far I'd come in a week. I had walked into the building a few minutes earlier without the fear of being shot. I had waited for Ernie in the lobby without thinking of being white. I listened to my clients patiently, but efficiently, because I knew what to do. I even looked the part; my beard was more than a week old; my hair was slightly over the ears and showing the first signs of unkemptness; my khakis were wrinkled; my navy blazer was rumpled; my tie was loosened just so. The Nikes were still stylish but well worn. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and I would have been the perfect public interest lawyer.

Not that the clients cared. They wanted someone to listen to them, and that was my job. The list grew to seventeen, and I spent four hours counseling. I forgot about the coming battle with Drake and Sweeney. I forgot about Claire, though, sadly, I was finding that easier to do. I even forgot about Hector Palma and my trip to Chicago.

But I couldn't forget about Ruby Simon. I somehow managed to connect each new client to her. I wasn't worried about her safety; she had survived on the streets far longer than I could have. But why would she leave a clean motel room with a television and a shower, and strike out through the city to find her abandoned car?

She was an addict, and that was the plain and unavoidable answer. Crack was a magnet, pulling her back to the streets.

If I couldn't keep her locked away in suburban motels for three nights, then how was I supposed to help her get clean?

The decision was not mine to make.

* * *

The routine of the late afternoon was shattered by a phone call from my older brother Warner. He was in town, on business, unexpectedly, would've called sooner but couldn't find my new number, and where could we meet for dinner? He was paying, he said before I could answer, and he'd heard about a great new place called Danny O's where a friend had eaten just a week earlier--fantastic food! I hadn't thought about an expensive meal in a long time.

Danny O's was fine with me. It was trendy, loud, overpriced, sadly typical.

I stared at the phone long after our conversation was over. I did not want to see Warner, because I did not want to listen to Warner. He was not in town on business, though that happened about once a year. I was pretty sure my parents had sent him. They were grieving down in Memphis, heartbroken over another divorce, saddened by my sudden fall from the ladder. Someone had to check on me. It was always Warner.

We met in the crowded bar at Danny O's. Before we could shake hands or embrace, he took a step backward to inspect the new image. Beard, hair, khakis, everything.

"A real radical," he said, with an equal mixture of humor and sarcasm.

"It's good to see you," I said, trying to ignore his theatrics.

"You look thin," he said.

"You don't."

He patted his stomach as if a few extra pounds had sneaked on board during the day. "I'll lose it." He was thirty-eight, nice-looking, still very vain about his appearance. The mere fact that I had commented on the extra weight would drive him to lose it within a month.

Warner had been single for three years. Women were very important to him. There had been allegations of adultery during his divorce, but from both sides.

"You look great," I said. And he did. Tailored suit and shirt. Expensive tie. I had a closet full of the stuff.

"You too. Is this the way you dress for work now?"

"For the most part. Sometimes I ditch the tie."

We ordered Heinekens and sipped them in the crowd.

"How's Claire?" he asked. The preliminaries were out of the way.

"I suppose she's fine. We filed for divorce, uncontested. I've moved out."

"Is she happy?"

"I think she was relieved to get rid of me. I'd say Claire is happier today than she was a month ago."

"Has she found someone else?"

"I don't think so," I said. I had to be careful because most, if not all, of our conversation would be repeated to my parents, especially any scandalous reason for the divorce. They would like to blame Claire, and if they believed she'd been caught screwing around, then the divorce would seem logical. "Have you?" he asked.

"Nope. I've kept my pants on."

"So why the divorce?"

"Lots of reasons. I'd rather not rehash them." That was not what he wanted. His had been a nasty split, with both parties fighting for custody of the kids. He had shared the details with me, often to the point of being boring. Now he wanted the same in return.

"You woke up one day, and decided to get a divorce?"

"You've been through it, Warner. It's not that simple."

The maitre d' led us deep into the restaurant. We passed a table where Wayne Urnstead was sitting with two men I did not recognize. Urnstead had been a fellow hostage, the one Mister had sent to the door to fetch the food, the one who'd barely missed the sniper's bullet. He didn't see me.

A copy of the lawsuit had been served on Arthur Jacobs, chairman of the executive committee, at 11 A.M., while I was at the CCNV. Urnstead was not a partner, so I wondered if he even knew about the lawsuit.

Of course he did. In hurried meetings throughout the afternoon, the news had been dropped like a bomb. Defenses had to be prepared; marching orders given; wagons circled. Not a word to anyone outside the firm. On the surface, the lawsuit would be ignored.

Fortunately, our table could not be seen from Umstead's. I glanced around to make sure no other bad guys were in the restaurant. Warner ordered a martini for both of us, but I quickly begged off. Just water for me.

with Warner, everything was at full throttle. Work, play, food, drink, women, even books and old movies. He had almost frozen to death in a blizzard on a Peruvian mountain, and he'd been bitten by a deadly water snake while scuba diving in Australia. His post-divorce adjustment phase had been remarkably easy, primarily because Warner loved to travel and hang-glide and climb mountains and wrestle sharks and chase women on a global scale.

As a partner in a large Atlanta firm, he made plenty of money. And he spent a lot of it. The dinner was about money.

"Water?" he said in disgust. "Come on. Have a drink."

"No," I protested. Warner would go from martinis to wine. We would leave the restaurant late, and he would be up at four fiddling with his laptop, shaking off the slight hangover as just another part of the day.

"Candy ass," he mumbled. I browsed the menu. He examined every skirt.

His drink arrived and we ordered. "Tell me about your work," he said, trying desperately to give the impression that he was interested. "Why?"

"Because it must be fascinating."

"Why do you say that?"

"You walked away from a fortune. There must be a damned good reason."

"There are reasons, and they're good enough for me."

Warner had planned the meeting. There was a purpose, a goal, a destination, and an outline of what he would say to get him there. I wasn't sure where he was headed.

"I was arrested last week," I said, diverting him. It was enough of a shock to be successful. "You what?"

I told him the story, stretching it out with every detail because I was in control of the conversation. He was critical of my thievery, but I didn't try to defend it. The file itself was another complicated issue, one neither of us wanted to explore.

"So the Drake and Sweeney bridge has been burned?" he asked as we ate. "Permanently."

"How long do you plan to be a public interest lawyer?"

"I've just started. I really hadn't thought about the end. Why?"

"How long can you work for nothing?"

"As long as I can survive."

"So survival is the standard?"

"For now. What's your standard?" It was a ridiculous question.

"Money. How much I make; how much I spend; how much I can stash away somewhere and watch it grow so that one day I'll have a shitpot full of it and not have to worry about anything."

I had heard this before. Unabashed greed was to be admired. It was a slightly cruder version of what we'd been taught as children. Work hard and make plenty., and somehow society as a whole would benefit.

He was daring me to be critical, and it was not a fight I wanted. It was a fight with no winners; only an ugly draw.

"How much do you have?" I asked. As a greedy bastard, Warner was proud of his wealth.

"When I'm forty I'll have a million bucks buried in mutual funds. When I'm forty-five, it'll be three million. when I'm fifty, it'll be ten. And that's when I'm walking out the door."

We knew those figures by heart. Big law firms were the same everywhere.

"what about you?" he asked as he whittled on freerange chicken.

"Well, let's see. I'm thirty-two, got a net worth of five thousand bucks, give or take. when I'm thirty-five, if I work hard and save money, it should be around ten thousand. By the time I'm fifty, I should have about twenty thousand buried in mutual funds."

"That's something to look forward to. Eighteen years of living in poverty."

"You know nothing about poverty."

"Maybe I do. For people like us, poverty is a cheap apartment, a used car with dents and dings, bad clothing, no money to travel and play and see the world, no money to save or invest, no retirement, no safety net, nothing."

"Perfect. You just proved my point. You don't know a damned thing about poverty. How much will you make this year?"

"Nine hundred thousand."

"I'll make thirty. what would you do if someone forced you to work for thirty thousand bucks?"

"Kill myself."

"I believe that. I truly believe you would take a gun and blow your brains out before you would work for thirty thousand bucks."

"You're wrong. I'd take pills."

"Coward."

"There's no way I could work that cheap."

"Oh, you could work that cheap, but you couldn't live that cheap."

"Same thing."

"That's where you and I are different," I said. "Damned right we're different. But how did we become different, Michael? A month ago you were like me. Now look at you--silly whiskers and faded clothes, all this bullshit about serving people and saving humanity. Where'd you go wrong?"

I took a deep breath and enjoyed the humor of his question. He relaxed too. We were too civilized to fight in public.

"You're a dumb-ass, you know," he said, leaning low. "You were on the fast track for a partnership. You're bright and talented, single, no kids. You'd be making a million bucks a year at the age of thirty-five. You can do the math."

"It's already done, Wamer. I've lost my love for money. It's the curse of the devil."

"How original. Let me ask you something. What will you do if you wake up one day and you're, let's say, sixty years old. You're tired of saving the world because it can't be saved. You don't have a pot to piss in, not a dime, no firm, no partners, no wife making big bucks as a brain surgeon, nobody to catch you. What will you do?"

"Well, I've thought about that, and I figure I'll have this big brother who's filthy rich. So I'll give you a call."

"What if I'm dead?"

"Put me in your will. The prodigal brother."

We became interested in our food, and the conversation waned. Warner was arrogant enough to think that a blunt confrontation would snap me back to my senses. A few sharp insights from him on the consequences of my missteps, and I would ditch the poverty act and get a real job. "I'll talk to him," I could hear him say to my parents.

He had a few jabs left. He asked what the benefit package was at the 14th Street Legal Clinic. Quite lean, I told him. What about a retirement plan? None that I knew of. He embraced the opinion that I should spend only a couple of years saving souls before returning to the real world. I thanked him. And he offered the splendid advice that perhaps I should search for a likeminded woman, but with money, and marry her.

We said good-bye on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. I assured him I knew what I was doing, that I would be fine, and that his report to our parents should be optimistic. "Don't worry them, Warner. Tell them everything is wonderful here."

"Call me if you get hungry," he said in an effort at humor.

I waved him off and walked away.

* * *

The Pylon Grill was an all-night coffee shop in Foggy Bottom, near George Washington University. It was known as a hangout for insomniacs and news addicts. The earliest edition of the Post arrived each night just before twelve, and the place was as busy as a good deli during lunch. I bought a paper and sat at the bar, which was an odd sight because every person there was buried in the news. I was struck by how quiet the Pylon was. The Post had just arrived, minutes before me, and thirty people were poring over it as if a war had been declared.

The story was a natural for the Post. It began on page one, under a bold headline, and was continued on page ten where the photos were--a photo of Lontae taken from the placards at the rally for justice, one of Mordecai when he was ten years younger, and a set of three, which no doubt would humiliate the bluebloods at Drake and Sweeney. Arthur Jacobs was in the center, a mug shot of Tilhnan Gantry was on the left, and on the right was a mug shot of DeVon Hardy, who was linked to the story only because he'd been evicted and got himself killed in a newsworthy fashion.

Arthur Jacobs and two felons, two African-American criminals with little numbers across their chests, lined up as equals on page ten of the Post.

I could see them huddled in their offices and conference rooms, doors locked, phones unplugged, meetings canceled. They would plan their responses, devise a hundred different strategies, call in their public relations people. It would be their darkest hour.

The fax wars would begin early. Copies of the trio would be sent to law offices coast to coast, and every big firm in the world of corporate law would have a laugh.

Gantry looked extremely menacing, and it scared me to think we had picked a fight with him.

And then there was the photo of me, the same one the paper used the Saturday before when it announced my arrest. I was described as the link between the firm and Lontae Burton, though the reporter had no way of knowing I'd actually met her.

The story was long and thorough. It began with the eviction, and all the participants therein, including Hardy, who surfaced seven days later at the offices of Drake and Sweeney where he took hostages, one of whom was me. From me it went to Mordecai, then to the deaths of the Burtons. It mentioned my arrest, though I had been careful to tell the reporter little about the disputed file.

He was true to his word--we were never referred to by name, only as informed sources. I couldn't have written it better myself.

Not a word from any of the defendants. It appeared as if the reporter made little or no effort to contact them.