Stephen Cannell: Runaway Heart

"You have the number for the federal district court?" she asked. "I'll call over there now. They said they'd have the name by ten o'clock."

Herman flipped through a legal pad, found the number of the federal building in L.A., and slid it across the desk toward her. She crossed to the guest phone and dialed.

"Hello, I'd like the clerk's office, please," she said as she searched for a pencil. "This is Herman Strockmire's office. We're seeking injunctive relief and damages on behalf of the Food Policy Research Center and the Union of Concerned Scientists v. USD A, EPA, FDA, et al. Case number CO3769M. We were notified that the Chief Judge made a last-minute change in the judicial roster, that Judge Miller is not going to be able to hear the case, and that a new judge is being assigned." She dug into her purse. "Yes… yes, I have a pencil. Go." She scowled and started to write, broke the lead, stopped, and tossed the pencil onto the table.

"Thanks." She slammed down the receiver and muttered, "For nothing."

"What's wrong? Who is it?"

"You're not going to believe it. We got her again."

"Awww, no. Come on… I thought she was taking a pregnancy leave."

"She is, but I guess she made time in her prenatal schedule to hammer us into the ground."

"Judge King? You sure?"

"How many Melissa Kings could there be on the Ninth Circuit Federal bench?"

"One is plenty," Herman said, realizing this reassignment was just one more anti-Strockmire missile from the federal government. With that realization came an additional weight that descended on his shoulders and chest, pulling him lower, squashing him, making him even more like his dead father.

"Dad, we can't go in front of her."

"We have no grounds to request that she recuse herself. What am I gonna say? She hates me and the way I practice law? That's not grounds for recusal."

"But Dad…"

"Honey, we'll just have to try this thing on its merits, okay? We'll note every one of her prejudicial rulings or statements, and if we have to go to Circuit Court and get her reversed, then that's where we'll go. But if I don't take this in now we'll miss the planting season next month."

Then the buzzer sounded. "Mr. Strockmire?" The voice of a Lipman, Castle Stein secretary came over the intercom. They were ice queens who always managed to convey their extreme distaste at having a slob like Herman in their sleek environs. He wasn't show biz; he didn't have a personal trainer; he was soiling their palatial offices, like axle grease on their white decorator carpet. "Your clients have arrived." The words pronounced like a death sentence.

"Send them in," Susan said, checking her father to make sure he was presentable. It was the habit of a lifetime. She had.started trying to fix his look way back when she was six or seven and realized that her beloved daddy often resembled a five-foot stack of laundry.

"Dad, why didn't you use the numbers?"

"It was dark. I thought I was getting all threes. I must have missed. I was trying not to wake you up."

She scurried around the desk and helped him out of the jacket, took a look, then shook her head and put it back on. "Jeez, you look like Pee Wee Herman on acid."

"That good?" He smiled ruefully.

The door opened and three glum people walked in. From their expressions Herman could tell that his day had not yet hit bottom.

Jim Litke, M.D., Ph.D., and Valerie Taylor, M.S., Ph.D.,

were copresidents of the Union of Concerned Scientists. True to their organization, they looked concerned. Their brows were furrowed and pulled close together like caterpillars in a mating dance as they came through the door ahead of J. Thomas Stinson, managing director of the Food Policy Research Center. All three of them looked like they were about to bury their best friend. They found seats in Herman's small, one-window office.

Herman was feeling worse by the minute. His arrhythmia was escalating and he was becoming dizzy and light-headed, but he didn't want to reach into his briefcase for his pills for fear that he would appear weak. Nobody wanted to have a sick, weak

lawyer. Clients wanted their lawyer to be a meat eater. A carnivore. A killer. So Herman tried to fix a killer look on his tired, sagging ponim, projecting confidence on the eve of trial. Herman of Bavaria, sword raised, ready to lead his troops into the Valley of Death and come out driving a Cadillac.

"Things are looking very good… surprisingly good," he started to say. But a frog unexpectedly jumped up into his throat so he more or less gargled this fantasy at them. He cleared his pipes and went on. "We should have the information we need to file our last discovery motions against the defense first thing tomorrow. My senior investigator, Roland Minton, is in San Francisco right now getting that data. He tells me it's going to prove devastating." A lie, but a necessary one. Never let a client sense concern. Client doubt is the wood rot of legal architecture.

"Oh…" Jim Litke of the Union of Concerned Scientists said. That one little word a packed suitcase of concern.

"Yes?" Herman smelled trouble. A lawyer had to know how to gauge his clients, how to sense the winds of discontent. Herman thought he had a gale blowing here. "You look troubled," he said, stating the obvious.

"Yes," Valerie Taylor, M.S., Ph.D., intoned gravely, glancing over at J. Thomas Stinson of the Food Policy Research Center. It was sort of a "Take it away, Tom," look. He was the designated talker.

"Yes… yes," Thomas said. "Troubled would pretty much capture it."

"How can I help?" Herman asked softly, trying to sound like a friendly priest in a confessional.

"You didn't tell us you were about to be disbarred in California." Thomas was injecting some attitude now anger and frustration mixing them into that ugly little declarative sentence.

"Lawyers with difficult cases often have review hearings before the Bar Association. To put it into a medical context, it's like

a hospital review where a doctor is being asked to describe a complicated procedure. It's… it's… well, it's very common in the law."

"We also understand that several of your old clients are currently suing you for malpractice," Thomas continued. "There's even stuff about it on the Internet."

"Uh… frequently, when you get an unfavorable result in court, an emotional client will question tactics. Again, the jury, as we like to say, is out. The Bar Review hasn't ruled on any of this yet."

"Tell him about the other," Valerie Taylor said, prompting the tall, thin Stinson.

Herman thought that for a guy who ran a food research center, J. Tom wasn't getting enough to eat. But like a shadow across a picket fence, that unnecessary rumination flitted on his dizzy thoughts without much effect. Herman suddenly reached inside his briefcase and took out the Warafin and Digoxin. He shook several pills randomly into his palm, threw them down his throat and dry swallowed, trying to appear lusty as he did it Thor tossing back a pint of ale. Then he rubbed his eyes to clear his blurred vision.

"Dad?" Susan was looking at him with concern.

"It's okay, baby," he said, and smiled at his clients with about the same degree of humor found in a coroner's report.

"We also understand that you have some controversial cases already filed against various agencies of the federal government far-fetched, conspiracy-type lawsuits," J. Thomas Stinson cross-examined.

"The Institute for Planetary Justice seeks to expose government malfeasance wherever it exists," Herman countered. "It's our specialty. However, I certainly wouldn't call the cases farfetched." Jesus, he was feeling horrible. Herman wanted to let his head fall into his big, meaty hands. Catcher's mitts, they'd been called by his tormenters in high school. The fact that he was recalling forty-year-old teenage insults during this meeting was in itself mildly noteworthy. In high school Herman had been teased constantly and was the brunt of constant practical jokes. His locker had hosted more strange concoctions than a skid row garbage can. He could feel himself slipping into one of his old inferiority complexes. During times of stress he always ended up back in that mindset. Underneath it all he was still just "Herman the German," a slow, fat, unpopular kid.