Tell No Lies (11 page)

"Good to see you again, too, Frank." In a more pleasant tone, she said, "Hi, Andy."

"Did you two close down the bars across the river last week?" Andy asked, trying to make up for Frank's rudeness. He sat on the step in front of Jenny.

But Jenny wasn't buying it. "No, having a real job, I had to work the next day."

"Dodson, from what I hear, you weren't in any condition to be doing work, at least not the legal kind." Frank laughed at his own comment. Jenny looked as though she were about to explode.

"We came over to see if you wanted to get a pizza with us," Andy said. Maybe he believed that, but Jack was certain Frank had torment on his mind.

Jenny held up her empty lunch bag. "How unfortunate. I've already eaten."

"So what
did
you two do when you left that night?" Frank asked, raising his eyebrows.
 

"What do you think?" Jack said. "We went home."

"
You
drove?" Frank said to Jenny, ignoring Jack.
 

"Oh, you gonna report me to the police, Mr. Mann?"

"
I
drove," Jack said, figuring it'd be better to admit it than have Frank catch them in a lie.
 

"Really? Mmm, interesting." Frank turned away and faced the middle of the plaza.

Jack thought of the car in the garage, wondering if it could have been Frank's. But he'd left the festivities much earlier than the rest of them, so Jack decided that Frank just wanted to give them trouble.

"Look, if you guys don't mind, Jenny doesn't have much time today and we were in the middle of a discussion" —he looked at the back of Frank's closely shorn head, hoping he knew the statement was directed at him— "a
private
discussion."
 

"Is she helping you plan your campaign strategy?"

Andy stood. "Come on, Mann. You're being a jerk. Can't you tell when you're not wanted?"

"Frank?" Frank turned around at Jack's voice. He was oblivious to the imminent ambush. "I didn't know he had me in mind for the position. I'm not trying to take something from you."

Frank's eyes dropped for a moment and then he looked back up again. "Yeah, I know. I was just needling you. I didn't mean anything by it." He stood. "I'm sorry if it came across wrong." He really did sound repentant, as if he realized for the first time that Jack could be his boss in a few months.

As they walked away, Jack glanced over at Jenny; she pretended to be occupied with the cap of her bottle. It occurred to him that they'd just talked more to Frank and Andy about the night of the dinner than they had with each other. They sat for a while, listening to the music.

"I don't like that guy," she said finally. But Jack didn't want to discuss Frank.

"Jenny?" She looked at him. "Why were you so hostile to me on the phone, and when I first got here?"

She sighed, and he realized his mistake in asking her an open-ended question. "I'm having a really hard time at work right now, Jack. I'm sorry. You know I'm up for partner this fall. I feel like Stan's testing my commitment or something. He's loading me down with work. I'm billing more hours than I did when I first started. You'd think I was still in New York. Sometimes I think he asks me to do something at the drop of a hat just to see if I will."

"Have you talked to him about it?" he asked.

"No. He works long hours himself. I don't think I have a right to complain."

He sensed she wasn't telling him everything. He thought of her outburst after they'd seen Mendelsohn at Newman's offices that night. "Is Mendelsohn giving you trouble?"

She shrugged and was quiet for a moment before she answered, "Just the usual for him. You, of all people, know how he is."

"What happened with me was different." He paused. "Jen, that night" —he looked down— "you said something about Mendelsohn trying to screw up your partnership chances . . . something about Maxine Shepard."

She fiddled some more with the bottle cap and then took a drink. "It's nothing. I guess he just doesn't think I'm doing a good enough job for her. That's all."

Jack waited. She finally met his stare.

"Jack, really. You know how Maxine and I are like water and oil. She gets her jollies from trying to make my life miserable."

"In what way?"

"Mendelsohn says she's been complaining about me." She shrugged, as if to suggest she didn't care. "Really, that's all. Okay?"

"You said something about him being 'into' something."

She pretended not to have heard him. "What really pisses me off is that some of the guys are starting that crap again about how Newman has a reputation for hiring only good-looking women. As if that's the only reason I was hired. As if it doesn't matter that I do a damn good job."

"Oh, come on, Jenny. You've never been one to let stupid talk like that bother you." He accepted that he wasn't going to persuade her to talk about Mendelsohn just then. "Anyway, it's not like you don't use your—how shall I say?—physical attributes to your advantage, when you need to." And then he thought that maybe he shouldn't have said that, given their current precarious situation.

But the Jenny he admired, the tough one who consistently proved his first statement right, responded. "Yeah, look who's talking, Mr. Flashes His Dimples on Demand."

"What dimples?" he said and gave her a big grin.

She shook her head and laughed. And then, as if she suddenly remembered something, she eyed her watch. "Now don't get upset; I'm not being hostile. But I do have to scoot." She placed her hand on his knee, using it as leverage to get up. Maybe everything really was back to normal. "Will you call and let me know how your Tuesday meeting goes?"

"I'll even call you before that."

The corner of her lip curled in the start of a smile. She looked pleased, as if she thought everything was okay, too.

Jack's mood droppe
d like a stone when he returned to his office and found Earl sitting in his chair. Earl held a paperweight in his hand, a large egg-shaped rock that Jamie had painted at preschool and given to Jack as a Father's Day gift. Earl turned it over in his hand, inspecting the boy's work. He wasn't smiling.
 

Jack stopped in the doorway. "I think you stopped a few doors short of the right office."

Earl set the rock down on the desk and moved Jack's calendar a bit closer, pretending to look it over.
 

"What are you doing?" Jack asked, his tone more accusatory than he intended.

Earl pushed the chair away from the desk, leaned back, and crossed his arms. "What I am doing? Well, let me see." He spoke slowly. "I'm trying to figure out what it's like to be Jack Hilliard. I'm sitting here, and I'm thinking, Now, what could be going through his mind? What could he be thinking? How does he view the world? He's got this boss who practically wants to hand him his job on a silver platter—a job that, by the way, any of the other attorneys in his office, and some others around town, would kill to have—but Jack doesn't seem to want it." He paused and propped his feet up on the desk. "At the same time, though, he hasn't taken any calls, or returned any calls, from the reporters who keep trying to reach him, so that he can tell them he doesn't want the job. For some reason, he hasn't told them that he's not going to run. And he also schedules meetings with the very people who can help him get the job—you know, the job he doesn't want." He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. "So what is Jack Hilliard thinking?" He shrugged. "I don't know, maybe you can tell me."

Jack closed the door. "I don't know, either."

"Well, if you don't know, I think we're in trouble."

Jack remained standing. From his spot against the door he could hear voices in the hall, some secretaries back from lunch.

"Tell me, Jack, why'd you go to law school?"

Jack shrugged and let out a short laugh. "I don't know, why does anyone go to law school?"

"Come on, seriously. I know you. I don't think it was for the money."

"I don't know, Earl." His voice was louder now. He knew Earl was leading him down the primrose path, but he also knew he needed to go there. "Like I said, probably for the same reason everyone does. We all have this romanticized idea of what a lawyer does, don't we? You know, like we're all going to become Atticus Finch, fighting the good fight."
 

"Do you feel like you're fighting the good fight?"

He nodded. "Yeah, most days."

"Give me the name of a politician you admire, one you respect. Past or present."

"Can't think of one."

"You haven't even tried."

"Well, if you're talking about recent memory, I liked Jimmy Carter."

Earl grinned, as Jack knew he would. He knew he hadn't chosen the most
effective
one he could think of. But that hadn't been the criteria.
 

"Because of his honesty?"

"Yes."

"He was a good man?"

"Is. Yes."

"Anyone else? From the past, maybe?"

Jack finally sat down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk.

"Truman, I guess. It's hard to grow up here and not respect Harry Truman."

Earl looked pleased with Jack's choice. "Despite him having dropped the bomb?"

"You're the military man. I shouldn't have to defend that decision."

"But you still admire him?"

"Yes." They looked at each other across Jack's desk. "Look, I know where you're going with this."

Earl removed his feet from the desk and leaned forward. "Where am I going, Jack?"

"You want me to say something like 'the ends justify the means,' right?"

"Do they?"

God, he'd walked right into that one. "You know what? I'm behind on everything. I have a lot of work to catch up on." He stood. "Can I have my desk back?"

"Sit down. It'll wait."

"Easy for you to say." He sat back down. "You'll be out of here soon."

Earl picked up the rock again and turned it in his hand. "Well?"

"Well, what?" But he knew.

"Do they?"

"I don't think you can compare dropping the A-bomb to deciding whether to run for District Attorney." He couldn't help but laugh, it was so ridiculous.

"No, you can't, it was a much more monumental decision, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, just a bit."

"That's my point, Jack."

He thought he'd followed Earl all along, had cut him off at the pass, but now he felt stupid, as if he should have already known the point, but didn't. "What?"

"He made a decision of that magnitude, knowing the terrible consequences, and yet he's still an admired, respected man, even by someone like you. You still think he's a good man."
 

"Don't you?"

"What I think isn't relevant just now."

"He did what he thought was
right
, that's why I respect him."
 

"No, he did what he had to do to achieve certain goals, but that doesn't mean he gave up his principles."

Jack looked away in frustration. Earl always had a way of making anything he said seem logical. He could coax a mouse into the mouth of a lion if he wanted to.

Earl set the rock down a second time and crossed his arms. "On second thought, maybe you're right." He paused, knowing that statement would get Jack's attention. "Maybe he did do what he thought was right, but 'right' is relative."

"I'm listening."

"What's right or ethical depends on the particular situation at hand. Don't you think?"

"Sounds like a cop-out to me."

"So you think Truman's decision was a cop-out?"

When Jack didn't respond, Earl continued. "Look, Jack, sometimes you just have to work with the system you've got, and accept that. You do the best you can. There will always be those who think we should ask for death in certain cases; you'll never change that. You know I'm thinking seriously about it in Barnard. I hesitate because I think the man who makes the decision to ask for it should be the one to try it, and I might not be here to do that."

"Well, doesn't that just prove the arbitrariness of it all?" Jack asked sarcastically. "I mean, the Pope comes to town and whispers in the Governor's ear, and the next thing you know, the next guy in line is spared. How friggin' crazy is that?"
 

Earl ignored Jack's editorial. "But there are still things you can do in my position that you can't do in yours. Good things. You can set policy in this office, choose the type of cases you want to make a priority. Those child abuse cases that drive you crazy? The ones where you think I shouldn't send defendants to jail without any provisions for counseling? Well, go for it. If you want the judge to impose counseling, then you can make it your policy to ask for it, or to cut deals, if you want, to require it. You don't have that leeway now, but in my job, you would. But first you have to get here."

He paused to study Jack's reaction.

"And even the death penalty. You've got a problem with how the statute's written? Then do something about it. You can have an effect on state legislation, if you want. It'll be a lot easier from my chair. You may not change anything, but at least your voice has a better chance of being heard."

"But it's like you said, first I have to get there."

"That's right. But it doesn't have to be so hard, Jack. Stop making it so hard."

Jack looked past Earl to his and Claire's graduation picture. What would Claire say to Earl's little speech? Would he have convinced her? He thought of his dad; he remembered his dad telling him on graduation day that he had the smarts, the skills and even the drive to succeed, but how far he went would depend on whether he finally gave up his need to please everyone. Jack had been insulted at the time—since it was his dad he was always trying to please—but now he realized that it sounded just like something Earl would say. Or Jenny.

"Sounds like you and Jenny have been talking," he said to Earl.

"No, but if she's telling you the same thing, she's a wise girl."

"Let me digest what you've said. Fair enough?" Earl nodded. "And I'm doing what you want. Obviously, you know I'm set to meet with Dunne on Tuesday."