David Kessler - No Way Out

“Pulling rank?”

“Yes,” he said stiffly.

Alex said nothing. They were playing the old good cop / bad cop routine, and now it was Sherman’s turn.

“You seem to think you’ve got something to back it up with.”

“How about your future at this law firm?”

“My future?” she echoed, more amazed than afraid, more puzzled than angry. “I have a contract.”

“That cuts both ways. You’re refusing to work for one of our biggest clients.”

“Elias Claymore?” she asked incredulously.

“His insurance company.”

“Well if it comes down to it, I have a valid reason for not representing Claymore.”

“What reason?” asked Sherman.

“A conflict of interest.”

“ What conflict of interest?”

“My… partner… she works at the Say no to Violence Rape Crisis Center. She might even be assigned to the victim in this case.”

“She could agree to hand over to another member of staff.”

“She may have had some contact with the victim already.”

“We can cross that bridge when we come to it. We can cite the defendant’s right to the representation of his choosing. You can agree not to talk to you partner about the case.”

“It’ll… put us under… strain.”

Alex noticed that she had mellowed in her objections: the tone of her refusal was no longer outright. But he also realized that things had been slipping away. And Paul Sherman wasn’t exactly gifted with tact. Alex knew that if he waited any longer, they’d lose her completely.

“Okay,” Alex cut in. “Try this.”

He half-turned and grabbed a couple of newspapers from a nearby shelf and threw them on the table.

“What are you doing?” asked Andi, her tone betraying her confusion.

“Wait!” he said, thumbing through the papers. “Just listen.”

Elias Claymore is the kind of man who expects people to believe he’s right whatever side he takes and whatever he says or does. When he was raping white women and calling it a revolutionary, political act, he expected us to think of him as a freedom fighter, not a criminal. When he fled to Libya and started preaching Islam, he expected to be thought of as a religious scholar. Then he ‘saw the light’ and found Jesus — as well as capitalism — and expected us to welcome him back to the fold with open arms. And like fools, we did. Now he’s accused of rape once again and, having come full circle, he asks us to believe that he’s an innocent man who is being victimized because of his outspoken political comments in the recent past.

“So what? Of course he’s going to get some hostile press.”

Alex wasn’t finished yet.

“Okay that’s the mainstream press. And it’s typical of the rest. Trust me, I’ve read through them all.” He pointed to a stack of newspapers on the cherry wood trolley beside the table. Now let’s see what black radical journals are saying.”

He grabbed another paper. This one was already open on the right page.

The chickens are coming home to roost for a Judas who betrayed his people for thirty pieces of silver. Elias Claymore, who once stood for the rights of his oppressed brothers now stands exposed as a hypocrite who places self-indulgence above any cause. This perennial campaigner, who keeps re-inventing himself whenever it suits him, has now run out of ideas and has finally reverted to type as a self-indulgent narcissist and egomaniac. Having turned against his own kind and sold his soul to the devil, he has now compounded his crime by bringing his brothers into disrepute.

When Claymore was a respectable figure of the Middle Class establishment, he was held up by conservatives as an exception to the rule, the black man who worked within the system and succeeded. This was in stark contrast to us “deadbeat” blacks who would never amount to much because we didn’t play by the white man’s rules. The rest of us only had ourselves to blame for our miserable plight because we were lazy and refused to abide by the rules and make use the system. But now that he has been exposed for what he really is, he will be held up as a typical example of the black everyman and the old stereotype of the black male, sex-driven monster will be resurrected yet again.

“Okay. That’s what we’re up against!”

“And you think…”

She stopped. There was no easy way to brush off an appeal to the fighting spirit within her. Bullying hadn’t worked, but this was quiet persuasion.

“Well what do you say?”

“I say…” She hesitated again., wondering if Alex could see the civil war raging within her.

Alex and Sherman looked at Andi, as if inviting her final answer. Ignoring Sherman, she stared back at Alex for a few seconds, breathing heavily as the stress of the argument slowly melted away. Then — not trusting her voice — she nodded her head in reluctant truce rather than surrender. He smiled gently as if accepting it with good grace.

“Okay,” said Sherman. “I’ll go now and leave you to start working.”

And with that, Sherman packed his papers into his attache case and left.

“The case took a dramatic turn today when it was revealed that Andromeda Phoenix — a civil litigator with Los Angeles law firm Levine and Webster — is to serve as co-counsel together with Alex Sedaka.”

Martine Yin’s voice was coming from the television window in the web browser on a computer.

“Ms Phoenix is in a relationship with a woman called Eugenia Vance, who works at the Say no to Violence Rape Crisis Center. In order to protect Elias Claymore’s right to the counsel of his choice, the court issued an injunction against Ms Vance having any contact with the alleged victim.”

Standing outside the courthouse, Martine was wearing her snooker vest, speaking to the camera in a dry, clipped tone. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to depart from her trademark blue jacket, but she had worn the snooker vest a couple of times before and on both occasions had got a positive response in her mailbag. And she had a particular reason for wanting to emphasize her figure today. The network had been talking about putting her behind a desk in the studio and were evidently getting some funny ideas about parachuting in some ambitious spring chicken to fill her slot.

“Ms Phoenix’s participation was opposed by the prosecution. But after a long sidebar, the prosecution’s motion was denied. The DA’s office declined to say afterwards whether they would file an interim appeal.”

A woman’s hand reached out and clicked on the button to pause the news report. Then she returned her attention to the computer in front of her. With a click of a button she launched an E-mail package and started preparing a message to aphoenix@levineandwebster.com”.

This would put the fear of God into the bitch.

“So how did you manage to overcome her objections? asked Martine over her hors d’oevres of Torchon of Duck Foie Gras with House Poached Adriatic Fig in Muscat Wine.

A succession of light waves from the wrought iron candelabra rippled across the lace tablecloth. Ten minutes earlier, they had entered The Little Door. As they stepped through the wooden doors to the Patio, it had been like one of those movies where you pass through a gateway into another dimension. In an instant they had left the city behind them and entered a rustic world of bougainvilleas, ferns, a tiled fountain and a Koi pond. They could even see the moon through the open skylight.

“I don’t want this to end up on the evening news,” said Alex.

Martine made an up-and-sideways gesture with her right hand.