Rough Justice (5 page)

“Judy, the case.” Mary blushed. She could curse with any trial lawyer, but she was uncomfortable with Judy’s sex talk. To Mary, saying “fucking” had nothing to do with fucking.

“Oh, the case. The case is a winner. It’s a good jury and the D.A. didn’t prove their case. Steere gets aquitted.”

Mary allowed herself to believe it then, on faith. Judy had won every graduation prize at Stanford Law, had published legal articles, and had even been offered a clerkship at the Solicitor General’s office. Mary suspected Judy was the reason they got hired at Rosato & Associates. Judy had raw intelligence and legal talent, but Mary had to work hard to get results, and did. “Maybe we’ll get a bonus,” Mary said.

“From Rosato?
Bennie
Rosato?”

“It could happen.”

“She just started the firm a year ago. She’s not about to throw money around, even at Girls ‘
’ Us.” Judy meant that Rosato & Associates was the first all-woman law firm in Philadelphia; five women litigators worked for the new firm. The fact that they were all women had attracted publicity, but whether it attracted clients remained to be seen. Steere was the firm’s first major case, which was undoubtedly why Bennie Rosato entered the conference room that minute.

“Hello, you two,” Bennie said, knocking on the doorjamb. She was on her way out, with an overcoat on her arm and a packed canvas briefcase slung over one shoulder. Benedetta “Bennie” Rosato’s reputation as a civil rights lawyer was larger than life, and at six feet tall she intimidated the shit out of Mary, whose head popped up from the correspondence.

“Uh, we were just … organizing the file,” Mary stammered.

“Right,” Judy said, with an easy smile. “We’re not exhausted or anything. We work constantly, even when the jury’s out.” Her blue eyes met Bennie’s with a grin, and Bennie smiled back in a way that was friendly if not warm.

“We gonna win, Carrier?”

“How could we lose, boss?”

“That’s the spirit.” Bennie smiled, satisfied. Loose sandy hair streamed to her shoulders, wavy and careless, and her un-made-up features were large and not unattractive. Bennie wore a pantsuit of black wool, selected without excessive attention to cut, fit, or style. Bennie Rosato looked every inch the sunny, no-nonsense jock who won the scholar-athlete award in high school, which was just what she was. An elite rower in college, she still sculled every day on the Schuylkill River, a narrow ribbon of blue that rippled through the city. “How’d the jury charge go in? Did you get what you wanted?”

“Yes. They looked like they even understood it.”

“A first. How was Marta’s closing? I wanted to hear it but I had a dep.”

“She nailed it, except when she started quoting Sun-Tzu. Their eyes glazed over.”

Bennie frowned. “Sun-Tzu, the philosopher? What did she quote him for?”

Judy rolled her eyes. “I have no idea. He’s Steere’s guru. If you spend any time with Elliot Steere, sooner or later he hauls out Sun-Tzu.”

Sitting at the table, Mary marveled at Judy’s ease with Bennie. From their start at the firm, Judy acted more like Bennie’s partner than an associate. Mary guessed it was because Judy and Bennie were so much alike. Both lawyers, athletes, and monstrously tall, as if from some legal master race. It made Mary nervous. Her chest blotched under her blouse and she wondered if she was cut out for the law. She was too short, for starters.

“You okay, DiNunzio?” Bennie asked. “Don’t let up now. You’re almost at the finish line.”

Mary nodded in a way she hoped was perky. “I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m great.”

“She’s exhausted,” Judy translated.

“Hang in,” Bennie said. “Listen, Marta just called from a pay phone. She’s on the way back and wants to talk to you. Says it’s important. You can stick around, right? You two live in town.”

“Sure,” Judy answered, and Mary sighed. The same thing used to happen when she was at Stalling & Webb. Mary’s apartment was within walking distance, so she was expected to work no matter what the weather. It was so unfair. Mary made a mental note to burn down her building.

“Good. Thanks,” Bennie said, and her eyes scanned the conference table. The Steere file was scattered across its surface and manila folders were jammed into the accordions crookedly. It had been all the associates could do to pack the file in the rental car, drive it here, and lug it upstairs. “Better clean this file up, guys. Get the exhibits in order. You know how picky Marta is.”

“Tell me about it. Anal is just a first offer,” Judy said, and as soon as Beanie closed the conference room door, the young lawyers began straightening up the conference room. In short order, the twenty-five red accordion files that represented the defense in
Commonwealth v. Steere
sat upright on the glossy walnut table, arranged from correspondence to pleadings, trial exhibits, and lawyers’ notes. News clippings took up five accordions and over seventy foamcore exhibits rested against the wall under a mounted blueprint of an oar. The two associates finished just as Marta Richter flew into the conference room, when it became instantly apparent that she couldn’t care less about the file.

Marta felt composed, glued together again. The endless, stuffy bus ride back to the office had given her a chance to think. She had a plan, but she would need DiNunzio and Carrier.

Marta slipped out of her wet coat as soon as she hit the conference room, sat the associates down, and told them what to do, without telling them the truth about Steere. They would run to Rosato if they knew they were gathering evidence against a client, and Rosato was an opponent Marta could do without. So Marta pitched it to DiNunzio and Carrier as one more impossible assignment after two months of impossible assignments. The associates looked stunned.

“You want this
when
?” Mary asked, vaguely aware that she was not the first employee in America to ask this question.

Marta checked her watch and felt an already familiar tightening in the pit of her stomach. “It’s almost four-thirty. I need your answer by seven o’clock.”

“Seven?” Mary moaned. Her head was spinning, her shoulders drooped. “Less than three hours?”

“Stop complaining. You don’t have to draft a complete brief. There’re no cases to research. Read the file and search the newspapers. Take notes on what you find.”

“But the kind of search you’re talking about could take days. A week. I have to write the motion
in limine
, about the prints on the car.”

“The motion can wait. It’s not that important. It’s a loser anyway.”

“But the rest of the exhibits have to go to the jury first thing tomorrow. This morning you told me—”

“Mary,” Marta interrupted, “this discussion is taking longer than the fucking search. Just do it.”

“Fine.” Mary suppressed the BURN IN HELL YOU BITCH rising in her gorge and began scribbling on her pad as if some legal inspiration had suddenly visited her, like the Holy Ghost.
Definitely not cut out for this profession
, Mary wrote.
Convent looking better and better
.

Marta turned to Judy. “Your assignment will take longer, so get going. I’ll meet with you after Mary. Figure on having an answer for me by eight o’clock. That should be time enough.”

“Time isn’t the problem.” Judy shook her head. “This is a wild-goose chase. I’m not going to find anything. The assignment doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll explain this one more time.” Marta held her tongue, but it was hard to check her urgency. A time clock ticked in her mind. She didn’t have time to fuck around. “The Commonwealth has come up with after-discovered evidence, something that proves that Steere didn’t kill in self-defense.”

“How do you know this?” Judy asked.

“I can’t tell you. It’s confidential.”

Judy was more taken aback than angry. “From us? We’re all on the same side.”

“Just do it, Carrier. I don’t have time to fight with you.”

Mary wrote on her pad,
I could take Angie’s old room in the cloister. It had that tasteful wooden crucifix. The view was over the cemetery, but I’m not fussy. Anything away from the ice machine will do
.

“I don’t want to fight either,” Judy said. The higher pitch to her voice evinced confusion, not defensiveness. “I’m just trying to understand your thinking.”

“You don’t have to understand my thinking. You have to do your job.”

“How can I do my job if I don’t understand it?”

“Your job is to do what I say when I say it!” Marta shouted suddenly. Her face reddened and a vein in her neck threatened to pop. “I told you what to do and where to go. That’s all you have to know. That’s what you get paid for.”

I look good in black, it’s slimming. I don’t even need a double bed. Or cable.

Judy fell into a startled silence. Erect out of control? Something was wrong. Marta seemed almost panicky, but Judy couldn’t imagine why; the woman had just kicked butt in a huge murder trial. The newspapers and Court TV were touting her as the best criminal lawyer in the country. Judy would have expected Erect to be gloating right now. Usually they had to applaud if she farted.

“I want that answer, Judy.” Marta stood up and snatched her coat from the chair. “And I want it before the D.A. files their motion tomorrow morning.”

“We can deal with it then,” Judy said, struggling with her bewilderment. “The judge will give us time to respond to anything they file. He can’t make any kind of ruling without hearing from the defense.” Judy’s arms opened, palms up in appeal.

Mary thought Judy looked just like the Blessed Mother with her arms like that. To Mary, all associates looked like the Blessed Mother at one time or another. Like supplicants, pleading for mercy and finding none. She wrote,
I
’
ll take Judy with me to the convent. She’ll have to give up ESPN and ESPN 2, though. Not to mention that vow-of-silence thing
.

Marta tugged her trench coat angrily over her shoulders. “Don’t you get it? I’m not about to let those clowns blindside me. I didn’t get where I am by letting a D.A. get it over on me. If they have something on Elliot Steere, I want to know it and I want to know it as soon as they do.”

“We don’t have the resources they do! They have thirty lawyers on this case, plus the cops.”

“You have no choice!” Marta shouted, full bore. “You have a job, now do it and shut up!”

Judy’s face smarted as if she’d been slapped. She stood up and squared off against Marta on the other side of the table. “What if I refuse?”

“Then you’re off the case and you leave Mary to do your assignment
and
hers. By eight o’clock.”

Holy Mary Mother of God. Shoot me now.

M
arta steered her rental Taurus into the blizzard blowing down Locust Street. Flurries flew at the windshield, the wipers beat frantically, and the defroster whirred loud as a blow dryer. Still, the windows stayed foggy. Traffic lurched to a standstill, stuck. Exhaust fumes formed noxious plumes all the way down the street. Marta glanced at the car clock. 5:35. Her fingers gripped the wheel and she honked her horn at the Subaru in front of her. “Move it, asshole!” she shouted, her voice reverberating inside the car. “Move!”

Marta honked again, but nothing happened. It drove her crazy that she could do something and nothing would happen. Marta had grown accustomed to a reaction from opposing counsel and judges, from clients and the press. She could always make something happen in court and even in love, as infrequently as that appeared. Marta had fashioned herself into a human catalyst, but here she was honking like a madwoman and the traffic was ignoring her. Nobody honked back or even gave her the finger. She beeped the horn, louder. Longer, for the reaction. But she got none.

Marta tried to relax in the driver’s seat. She drummed her nails. She hummed tunelessly. She even tried rubbing the furrow from her forehead. That she understood her reaction annoyed her even more. She was reacting to years of stasis, of nothing happening no matter what she did, to two parents who sat and drank and wasted, whose lives trailed off like a sentence. And no matter how many times Marta had begged, yelled, or hid their bottles, nothing had changed. The Richters lived in the woods near Bath, Maine, and Marta’s father worked at the air force base there. He lost his job when she was six because she couldn’t keep his bottles hidden and he ended up drinking himself to death long after Marta had stopped playing hide-and-seek with his whiskey.

Marta’s mother became the breadwinner then, tugging the ten-year-old to the roadside.
Hey, mister! Sir
! The cars would whiz by.
Stop! Please! Hey
! As soon as a car stopped and its passenger door cracked open, the scam would begin. Marta begged not to do it but it made no difference. Nothing changed, not until the blue station wagon. That ended it, at least for Marta.

By the time she turned thirteen, she was behind the wheel of their battered Valiant, driving into town for milk, cigarettes, and another fifth. The cops in their small town didn’t stop her because they knew her mother and it was safer to let a child drive than a drunk, especially when the child was Marta Richter. Four foot eleven and on her own. Not that Marta blamed her parents or felt sorry for herself. On the contrary, it made her what she was today.