Paul Levine - Solomon and Lord Drop Anchor

Study by Day… Strip by Night

On the night before her interview at the Supreme Court of the United States, Lisa Fremont did not know if she could go through with it. She wanted the job all right-what newly minted lawyer wouldn’t?-but then, the thought of corrupting the position, of using it to repay an old debt, was antithetical to everything she thought she had become.

But have I really changed? Am I Lisa Fremont, magna cum laude from Stanford Law or Angel from the Tiki Club in the Tenderloin?

Until today, she thought she could handle it. But that was before she visited the Court to get the feel of the place. What she felt was reverence, a sense of awe, even piety.

I got goose bumps for God’s sake! How do I explain to someone like Max that marble statues and musty law books and the weight of history give me goose bumps? He only gets excited when the Dow Jones jumps.

Using his own key, Max Wanaker had breezed into her apartment just after 6 P.M. He kissed her hello, poured himself a Scotch, and made her a Gibson, heavy on the vodka, light on the vermouth. Then he loosened his tie and tossed his Armani suit coat over a chair. He kicked off his black Italian loafers, polished to a high gloss.

Lisa wore a cropped stretch lace camisole and high-cut briefs, both white with satin trim, under a soft pink chenille bathrobe that made her golden red hair glow a buttery copper under the track lighting. She had put on the robe when Max turned the air-conditioning down to sixty-five. It didn’t matter if it was her apartment or his hotel suite, everything was always done to Max’s specifications. Now, in early autumn in Washington, D.C., there was a manmade cold front settling into the living room.

In more ways than one.

They hadn’t gone out to dinner. Too risky. Not because Max’s wife, Jill, might discover them. Jill was blissfully alone in Miami, well aware of Max’s long-term relationship with Lisa.

No, the risk was bigger now. There could be no connection-no nexus, to use the legal term-between Atlantica Airlines and her. If there were, and it became known, she’d be no use to Max, and his big plans would be blown.

If I can go through with it at all.

For a moment she wondered what Tony would have done, but that was easy. Tony Kingston was the Eagle Scout, the Top Gun navy pilot, a yes ma’am, no ma’am, guy who didn’t jaywalk, litter, or cheat on his taxes. But Tony was gone, and now the plaintiffs’ lawyers said he’d been negligent. Lying bastards! Vultures picking at the flesh of the dead. A part of her wanted to help Max tank the case just to shut them up, but she realized that was irrational, and hadn’t she spent all these years locking her brain into a lawyer’s sense of logic and reason?

After dinner, she told Max she didn’t think she could do it, and they argued until 2 A.M.

“An ethical problem?” Max asked incredulously as he paced around her small living room. “Three years of planning, and now you have an eth-i-cal prob-lem.” He dragged out the words, as if trying a strange new phrase in Tagalog or Punjabi.

“Yes, Max, I realize that’s a foreign concept to you.”

He stopped pacing long enough to absorb the insult, then ignored it. “Are you worried about being disbarred?”

“It would be one of the shortest legal careers in history,” she said, ruefully. “I could go to jail, too.”

“So that’s it! You are afraid.” He laughed, the told-you-so, condescending chuckle he used when the joke was on someone else. “I remember a time when you could walk, buck naked, into a party of drunken investment bankers and show no fear. You could control every man in the place with your wits and your poise, and now you’re afraid of what, being subpoenaed by some two-bit G-twelve assistant attorney general who drives a Chevy?”

Vintage Max, measuring a man by his net worth.

“If he drove a Porsche,” she said, “would he be more worthy of respect?”

Max glared at her, a black-eyed scowl that could terrorize a corporate VP or send a secretary home in tears. In the old days, Lisa was intimidated by him, too. Not anymore.

“What are you going to do, Max, fire me? Too late. I’ve got tenure. I know where the skeletons are buried.”

“Not all of them,” he said with a coldness that sent a shiver up her spine.

They stood looking at each other, Max Wanaker and Lisa Fremont, former lovers and current coconspirators. He was frowning, his gray mustache turning downward. He was handsome and dark-complexioned with salt-and-pepper hair swept back and moussed. A jogger and tennis player in his younger days, Max was starting to put on a little weight around the middle. Too many business dinners, too much booze.

She remembered the way he looked when they first met, ten years ago. Why did it seem like another lifetime? He had been thirty-nine, and she was seventeen.

Jesus, it was another lifetime.

She knew how much she had changed. But what was different about Max? Not. just his graying hair. In those days-before Atlantica-he was on his way up. Big dreams, boundless energy and optimism. He’d scratched and clawed until the dreams came true. So why was he so unhappy now? There was the crash of Flight 640 three years ago and the lawsuit, of course, but she knew there was more, and lately, Max wasn’t talking.

She poured him another Scotch, hoping to mellow him out. “I went to the Court today, just to look around. Jesus, Max, you walk through these giant bronze doors with scenes of ancient Greece and Rome molded into them. Then there are marble statues and busts everywhere. Lady Justice, Moses, Confucius…”

“Confucius?” he said, puzzled.

“I went into the library. All hand-carved wood, giant arches, a quiet, peaceful place. It’s almost holy, like a church or a cathedral.”

“Exactly!” he agreed, smiling now. “That’s what they want you to think. Like all those churches you hauled me to in Italy. Why do you think they built them like that? For the glory of God. Hell, no! They did it to scare the shit out of the peasants. You walk into a church, what’s the first thing you do? You lower your voice, you whisper. Same thing in your fancy Court, right? The judges are the priests- they even dress like priests-and everyone else is a peasant. They want to scare you into thinking you’re on hallowed ground, that they’re doing sacred work. Hypocrites! They don’t want you to know what they’re doing under the robes.”

Lisa walked to the window, looking past her balcony into Dumbarton Oaks Park and the creek beyond. Max had chosen the apartment, but unlike the old days, he wasn’t paying for it. At least not on the books. Two years ago, when she was still in law school, he began erasing the paper trail-the canceled checks, airline passes, credit card receipts-that would link her to him. It was his idea that maybe one day she’d be able to help him in a way no one could know about. It sounded crazy at first, just as crazy as taking a money-losing air-freight forwarder with three aging jet props and turning it into Atlantica Airlines, poster child of deregulation and booming international air carrier… until the disastrous crash of Flight 640.

“You’re very persuasive, Max,” she said, at last. “You should have been a lawyer.”

Max laughed. “No way, baby! That’s why I spent a hundred grand on you.”

“I don’t think I’ll get the job,” she said, softly. “I think Justice Truitt will look at me and see I don’t belong there.”

Or is that what I want? The easy way out, sparing me the hassle of refusing to do Max’s dirty work.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You belong anywhere you want to be. You’re the most powerful woman I’ve ever known.”

“I learned from you,” she said.