Joseph Teller - Depraved Indifference

"That's wonderful, " she said. "Should I fire Mr. Mermelstein?"

"No," said Jaywalker, "I think we should keep him. You know, as local counsel, if you can afford us both. He knows the players, the court officers, maybe even some of the prospective jurors. And besides…"

"Besides?"

"His name can't hurt us."

"His name?"

"I'm half-Jewish," said Jaywalker, "but you wouldn't know it from my name. And to an orthodox Jew, Carter Drake the Third might as well have GOY stamped on his forehead."

"Goy?" said Amanda. She wasn't getting this.

"Gentile," explained Jaywalker. "Christian. In other words, not a Member of the Tribe. A name like Judah Mermelstein, on the other hand, could go a long way toward diffusing some of that insider-outsider bias."

"Okay," said Amanda, "if you say so. What else?"

"What else," said Jaywalker, "is we have to meet, settle on a fee and draw up a retainer agreement." The rules had changed since his suspension had begun. Handshake agreements, once commonplace between criminal defense lawyers and their clients, were no longer permitted. Apparently there'd been too many after-the-fact disputes about who'd agreed to what.

"Where do you want to meet?" Amanda asked. "My place, or your office?"

His office? In his haste to renew his credentials, meet with his client and formalize his retainer agreement, Jaywalker had completely forgotten that he was a lawyer without an office. Yet as he thought about it, he decided he kind of liked the ring of it. If there could be Doctors Without Borders, surely there was room on the planet for Lawyers Without Offices, wasn't there?

"Your place is fine," said Jaywalker.

That afternoon, Jaywalker put in a call to Nicky Legs. With his brief career as a private investigator suddenly at an end, he figured he was going to need the real thing. And Nicolo LeGrosso, a retired NYPD detective, was definitely the real thing.

"Hey, howya doon?" said Nicky as soon as he recognized Jaywalker's voice.

"Good, I think. They gave me my ticket back."

"No shit? It's been tree yeahs awready?"

"Something like that," said Jaywalker. "Look, I need some work done on a case."

"That Rockland County thing?"

Word traveled fast. "Yeah," said Jaywalker, "that Rockland County thing."

They met an hour later, over coffee in a midtown luncheonette. Nicky looked good; he'd been playing a lot of golf. "Yaughta take it up," he said.

Jaywalker wrote out a list of half a dozen things he wanted LeGrosso to do on the case, and pushed the list across the table. Nicky read it without bothering to turn it around, nodding six times. Jaywalker had no idea how he could do that. If he tried to read upside down, he'd bring on a migraine, or at least get dizzy.

"Is this like the last case?" LeGrosso asked. "You know, the ex-hooker with the big bucks? Or am I doon it on the arm?"

On the arm w as coptalk for out of the goodness of my heart. On several occasions Jaywalker had asked Nicky to do things for defendants who had little or no money- repeat customers who'd fallen on bad times, referrals from friends or family members, and others to whom Jaywalker hadn't been able, for one reason or another, to just say no. And Nicky had always obliged.

"No," he said, "there's money here. You need something up front?"

"Nah," said Nicky. "I'm good."

He met with Amanda that evening, and although she answered the door wearing a man's oxford shirt and, so far as he could tell, nothing else, he made her put on a robe. "Business," he told her.

"I think I liked it better," she said, "when you weren't a lawyer."

Jaywalker ignored the remark, sat her down and pulled out a retainer agreement he'd printed out earlier. For fee purposes, it broke the case down into three stages: pretrial investigation and motions; evidentiary hearings; and trial. It was how he'd always charged, though he'd rarely bothered to spell it out in black and white, as the new rules now required. He handed the agreement to Amanda, and waited while she skimmed it.

"The dollar amounts are blank," she said.

He nodded. "We have to reach an agreement on what's fair."

Jaywalker had been toying with the idea of asking for fifty thousand, if the case had to be tried. It would be his largest fee ever, but he knew he'd earn it. Hell, he'd read of cases where lawyers had charged upwards of a million dollars and complained about it not being enough. No doubt they had expensive offices, huge payrolls and vast overheads. He had no office, no payroll and an answering machine. So he was fully prepared to negotiate, and settle for somewhere between twenty-five and thirtyfive thousand, still a pretty good payday.

"How about an even hundred thousand?" Amanda suggested. "Do you think that would cover you?"

Cover him?

Jaywalker did his best imitation of someone thinking, but it was impossible. "Sure," he said, trying to look like a grown-up. It reminded him of a morning thirty years ago, when he'd found out he'd passed the bar exam on the second try. He'd spent the rest of the day walking around with a dumb smile he couldn't wipe off his face. A shit-eating grin, his brother had called it, and Jaywalker had been afraid to ask what that meant. "Sure," he told Amanda again, "I think I can live with that." And fought to keep his hand steady as he inked in the amounts on the retainer agreement. From the way Amanda treated the numbers, he sensed it was nothing but small change to her, or a few months' interest from a bottomless trust fund. But to Jaywalker, it was like winning the lottery.

Okay, a small lottery.

"Is business over?" she asked, crossing her legs so that the two sides of her robe fell apart.

"No," said Jaywalker, trying to look away. "Did Carter phone you from the bar that night?"

"Yes," she said.

"And?"

"And we drove up to get him."

"We?"

"I picked up Eric at his father's place," she said. "I figured he could drive Carter's car."

"You told me he's only seventeen. What does he have, a learner's permit?"

"Yes, but he's a good driver. Like his father. Too fast, but a good driver."

In Jaywalker's book, no seventeen-year-old was a good driver. Not even those who had licenses.

"Anyway," Amanda added, "it was short notice, and I didn't have time to get anyone else."

"And what happened when you got there?" Jaywalker asked.

"I waited outside in my car and sent Eric in to get his father. I was pissed at Carter, and I didn't want to have to deal with him, especially if he was drunk. A few minutes later the two of them came out, and they were arguing. Carter said, 'I'm not going to allow Eric to drive.' So Eric got back into my car, and we drove home. Carter was supposed to be following us, but at some point we got separated. I pulled over and waited for him, but he must've gone a different way or something. So I drove Eric to his father's and dropped him off. I told him to call me and let me know when his father got there. And by the time I got home, there was a message from him that Carter had made it, safe and sound."

"And the next day?" Jaywalker asked.

"The next day the accident was all over the news. Carter called me to tell me that it must be him the police were looking for. He knew his license plate by heart-I didn't- and he recognized the digits they were broadcasting on all the news reports. He said he was going to call his lawyer. I said okay, good. I figured if he came forward, they'd give him a break. The next I knew was when he called me from jail and told me it had turned into a murder case."

"So much for the break," said Jaywalker.

Amanda nodded. "Is business over now? " she asked, uncrossing her legs.

"Yes," said Jaywalker, who never had succeeded in looking away. "Business is over."

Afterward, she asked him to stay, but he said no. "You're paying me a shitload of money," he told her. "I've got to start earning it, first thing in the morning."