Brian Haig - PrivateSector

Sally next, and I was directed to a carrel in a massive cube farm. There was a fairly gaping gap between junior and senior associates at Culper, Hutch, and Westin I had learned. After also learning that junior associates started at $130, 000 a year, my sympathy meter was stuck on don’t give a shit.

I stuck my head in and coughed. In response, she frowned, pointed at her watch, and said, “Drummond, yesterday was bad enough. This.. . well, it’s absurd. Cy and Barry both asked where you were a dozen times. You’re in big trouble.”

“Lisa Morrow was murdered last night. I flew to Boston to notify her family.”

I wasn’t sure she heard me. She continued to stare at her watch. “Murdered?”

“Yes. Somebody broke her neck.”

“Do they know who?”

“No. Not yet. It appeared to be a robbery.”

She briefly contemplated this, and then concluded, “You still should’ve called.”

It struck me I was arranging the wrong funeral.

I informed her, “I’ve also been appointed her family’s survival assistance representative. I’ll need time over the next few days to arrange Lisa’s funeral and handle her affairs.”

She said, “Explain your problems to Barry and Cy.”

“I will.” Bitch.

She went back to studying whatever she was reading and sort of casually asked, “So did you or didn’t you study for your test?”

Okay, here’s the deal. She had all the proper affectations of the model junior attorney-ambitious, hardworking, buttoned-down, dedicated, and so forth. And yet she didn’t strike me as overly bright-not dumb or brainless, just not bright. More obviously, she lacked a few human ingredients, like sympathy, a sense of humor, and compassion.

Anyway, my choices seemed to be continue this line of conversation and end up putting her in a chokehold or change the subject. “So what’s that you’re working on?” I asked.

“What you should be working on.” She pointed at one stack. “That’s the original proposal sent by Morris Networks for the DARPA bid.” She pointed at another. “That’s the protest filed by AT amp;T, and that’s the one by Sprint.”

“It takes two hundred pages to file a protest?”

“They were probably in a hurry.”

A voice behind me chuckled and said, “It’s an industry standard, thank God. You don’t suspect reputable firms of padding bills?”

I spun around. Cy was smiling, though it was something short of his normal, gregarious smile. He remarked, “Perhaps Sally failed to mention that we like our attorneys to come in before noon.”

“She did mention it. But Lisa Morrow was murdered.”

“Oh…?”

“Apparently a robbery gone wrong.”

He, at least, had the decency not to stare at his watch. In fact, he appeared both stunned and upset. After a moment of hesitation, he said, “I’m, uh… I’m sorry, Sean. Were, uh, were you two close?”

“We were.”

Again he appeared uncertain what to say next, a reaction that struck me as uncharacteristic. Silver-tongued types like Cy were never at a loss for the right sentiment, the right words. He finally said, “She was quite a woman. Truly, she was. She had spunk and smarts.”

He saw the confused expression on my face and pulled me aside so Sally and the others couldn’t overhear. “She made quite an impression on us,” he informed me. “We offered to bring her in as a partner.”

I suppose I looked surprised, because he swiftly added, “In fact, she accepted. She asked for a few weeks to put in her resignation and get things cleared up with the Army. We were expecting her to start next month.”

“I don’t believe it.”

He acknowledged this with a nod. “A salary of three hundred and fifty thousand, a cut of the annual take, and the usual assortment of gratuities this firm generously provides its partners. We intended to move Lisa to our Boston office, where she’d be near her family.”

Okay, I believed it. In fact, it did explain his sudden discomfort, and also why Lisa wanted to talk to me about the firm. The Army is where you came to be all you can be, but there comes a time for all of us to get all you can get, and I suppose Lisa had reached that point.

“Have you heard anything about her funeral?” he asked.

“I’m arranging it. I’m also supposed to settle her estate and help get her family through this.”

“Take whatever time you need. She made a lot of friends here, so please be sure to let us know. And Sean… anything I can do… let me know.”

I heard a grunt of disapproval from Sally. But I said I would, and Cy wandered off to notify the rest of the Washington office that there was still an opening in the Boston office for a new partner.

I returned to my office and immediately called the Fort Myer military police station to inquire if a certain prick named Chief Warrant Spinelli worked there. Indeed he was a prick of thoroughbred proportion, the duty officer confided, but he wouldn’t be in until

5:00 P.M.

I assumed Spinelli had experienced a long night and an even longer morning. The murder of a female JAG officer on military property raises a lot of eyebrows-eyebrows of the wrong variety in the Military District of Washington, a sort of grazing pasture for general officers, some of whom have little better to do than stick their fingers up their posteriors, and their bossy noses into your business.

There was, of course, a television in my office, and I decided to catch the 5:00 P.M. local news. After fifteen minutes of chatter between a pair of overly jocular anchors, the male anchor said, “And in other news, the body of Army captain Lisa Morrow was found dead in a Pentagon parking lot, apparently murdered. The police are investigating.”

Other news? What the…? My phone rang. I picked it up and a female voice said, “Major Drummond?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“This is Janet Morrow. We met this morning.”

“Oh, right… what can I do for you?”

“I just checked into the Four Seasons in Georgetown. I was wondering if we could meet for dinner.”

“I, uh-”

“Please. I’d like to go over a few details about Lisa’s funeral and estate. You mentioned you were handling that.”

No-I distinctly recalled her saying she’d handle the funeral and estate. So this was interesting.

However, she sounded perfectly sincere, and possibly she was perfectly sincere. I wasn’t betting on it, of course.

But no wasn’t even an option.

I raced home and slipped into a blue blazer and tan slacks, appropriate attire for 1789, the Georgetown restaurant where Miss Morrow had suggested we meet and eat. Among those in the know, 1789 is a well-regarded D. C. powerplace. Though to be socially correct, it’s an evening powerplace, which I guess is different from a midday powerplace, which I guess means only real schmucks eat breakfast there. As long as nobody made me drink sherry.

When I was a kid, my father did a tour in the Pentagon, which was my initiation to our capital and its weird and idiosyncratic ways. We lived in the suburb of North Arlington, some four miles from the city. Washington, back then, was a government town populated mostly by impoverished blacks, penny-pinching bureaucrats, and a small coterie of political royalty. Even in those days it was an expensive town, but my mother was a wizard with Green Stamps, so we lived like kings. Just kidding-but my father’s commute wasn’t all that long.

More recently, Washington has become a roaring business town, attracting a whole new breed of denizen; entrepreneurs, wealthy executives, bankers, and, with the smell of money, corporate lawyers. Military people these days live in North Carolina and commute. The city never had any pretension of being an egalitarian melting pot, yet the sudden influx of money, and monied classes, has upset whatever precarious balance once existed.