The Rooster Bar (2 page)

Not so at Ness Skelton. With only fifty lawyers, it was far from a top-ten firm. Its clients were trade associations—Soybean Forum, Retired Postal Workers, Beef and Lamb Council, National Asphalt Contractors, Disabled Railroad Engineers—and several defense contractors desperate for their share of the pork. The firm's expertise, if it had any, was maintaining relationships with Congress. Its summer intern program was designed more to exploit cheap labor than to attract top students. Mark had worked hard and suffered through the stultifying work. At the end of the summer, when he had received an offer that somewhat resembled a position upon passing the bar exam, he couldn't decide if he should celebrate or cry. Nonetheless, he jumped at what was being offered—there was nothing else on the table—and proudly became one of the few FBLS students with a future. Throughout the fall, he had gently pressed his supervisor about the terms of his upcoming employment but got nowhere. There might be a merger in the works. There might be a split. There might be a lot of things, but an employment contract was not one of them.

So he hung around. Afternoons, Saturdays, holidays, anytime he was bored he would stop by the firm, always with a big fake smile and an eagerness to pitch in and help with the grunt work. It was not clear if this was beneficial, but he figured it couldn't hurt.

His supervisor was named Randall, a ten-year guy on the verge of making partner, and thus under a lot of pressure. A Ness Skelton associate who didn't make partner after ten years was quietly shown the door. Randall was a George Washington law grad, which, in the city's pecking order, was a step down from Georgetown but several notches above Foggy Bottom. The hierarchy was clear and rigid, and its worst perpetrators were the GW lawyers. They detested being looked down upon by the Georgetown gang; thus they were eager to look down with even more disdain on anyone from FBLS. The entire firm reeked of cliques and snobbery, and Mark often wondered how in hell he wound up there. Two associates were from FBLS, but they were so busy trying to distance themselves from their school they had no time to lend Mark a hand. Indeed, they seemed to ignore him more than anyone else. Mark had often mumbled, “What a way to run a law firm.” But then he figured that every profession had its levels of status. He was far too worried about his own skin to fret over where the other cutthroats had studied law. He had his own problems.

He had e-mailed Randall and said he would be dropping by to do whatever grunt work was available. Randall greeted him with a curt “Back so soon?”

Sure, Randall, and how were your holidays? Great to see you. “Yeah, got bored with all the holiday crap. What's up?”

“Two of the secretaries are out with the flu,” Randall said. He pointed to a stack of documents a foot thick. “I need that copied fourteen times, all collated and stapled.”

Okay, back to the copy room, Mark thought. “Sure,” he said as if he couldn't wait to jump in. He hauled the documents down to the basement, to a dungeon filled with copiers. He spent the next three hours doing mindless work for which he would be paid nothing.

He almost missed Louie and his ankle monitor.

L
ike Mark, Todd Lucero was inspired to become a lawyer by booze-tinted conversations he'd overheard in a bar. For the past three years, he had been mixing drinks at the Old Red Cat, a pub-style watering hole favored by students from GW and Foggy Bottom. After college at Frostburg State, he'd left Baltimore and drifted into D.C. in search of a career. Finding none, he hired on at the Old Red Cat as a part-timer and soon realized he had a fondness for pulling pints and mixing strong drinks. He'd come to love the pub life and had a gift for schmoozing with the serious drinkers while placating the rowdies. Todd was everybody's favorite bartender and was on a first-name basis with hundreds of his regulars.

Many times over the past two and a half years he had thought of quitting law school to pursue his dream of owning his own bar. His father, though, had strong opinions to the contrary. Mr. Lucero was a cop in Baltimore and had always pushed his son to obtain a professional degree. Pushing was one thing, but paying for it was something else. And so Todd had fallen into the same trap of borrowing easy money and handing it over to the greedy folks at FBLS.

He and Mark Frazier had met the first day, during orientation, back when they were both starry-eyed and envisioning big law careers with fat salaries, back when they, along with 350 others, were horribly naive. He vowed to quit after his first year, but his father yelled at him. Because of his commitment to the bar, he had never found the time to knock on doors around D.C. and hustle for summer internships. He vowed to quit after his second year and cut off the flow of debt, but his loan counselor strongly advised against it. As long as he was in school he did not have to confront some brutal repayment schedule, so it made perfect sense to keep borrowing in order to graduate and find one of those lucrative jobs that, in theory, would eventually take care of the debts. Now, though, with only one semester to go, he knew only too well such jobs did not exist.

If only he'd borrowed $195,000 from a bank and opened his bar. He could be printing money and enjoying life.

MARK ENTERED THE
Old Red Cat just after dark and took his favorite place at the end of the bar. He fist-bumped Todd and said, “Good to see you, man.”

“You too,” Todd said as he slid over a frosty mug of light beer. With his seniority, Todd could comp anyone he damn well pleased, and Mark had not paid in years.

With the students away, the place was quiet. Todd leaned on his elbows and asked, “So what are you up to?”

“Well, I've spent the afternoon at dear old Ness Skelton, in the copy room sorting papers that no one will ever read. More stupid work. Even the paralegals look down their noses at me. I hate the place and I haven't even been hired yet.”

“Still no contract?”

“None, and the picture gets fuzzier every day.”

Todd took a quick sip from his mug stashed under the counter. Even with his seniority, he wasn't supposed to drink on the job, but his boss wasn't in. He asked, “So how was Christmas around the Frazier house?”

“Ho, ho, ho. I lasted ten miserable days and got the hell out. You?”

“Three days, then duty called and I came back to work. How's Louie?”

“Still seriously indicted, still looking at real jail time. I should feel sorry for him but compassion runs thin for a guy who sleeps half the day and spends the other half on the sofa watching
Judge Judy
and bitching about his ankle monitor. My poor mom.”

“You're pretty hard on him.”

“Not hard enough. That's his problem. No one's ever been hard on Louie. He got caught with pot when he was thirteen, blamed it on a friend, and of course my parents rushed to his defense. He's never been held accountable. Until now.”

“Bummer, man. I can't imagine having a brother in prison.”

“Yeah, it sucks. I just wish I could help him but there's no way.”

“I won't even ask about your dad.”

“Didn't see him and didn't hear from him. Not even a card. He's fifty years old and the proud papa of a three-year-old, so I guess he played Santa Claus. Laid out a bunch of toys under the tree, smiled like an idiot when the kid came down the stairs squealing. What a rat.”

Two coeds walked to the bar and Todd left to serve them. Mark pulled out his phone and checked his messages.

When Todd returned, he asked, “Have you seen any grades yet?”

“No. Who cares? We're all top students.” Grades at Foggy Bottom were a joke. It was imperative that the school's graduates finish with sparkling résumés, and to that end the professors passed out As and Bs like cheap candy. No one flunked out of FBLS. So, of course, this had created a culture of rather listless studying, which, of course, killed any chance of competitive learning. A bunch of mediocre students became even more mediocre. No wonder the bar exam was such a challenge. Mark added, “And you really can't expect a bunch of overpaid professors to grade exams during the holidays, can you?”

Todd took another sip, leaned even closer, and said, “We have a bigger problem.”

“Gordy?”

“Gordy.”

“I was afraid of that. I've texted and tried to call but his phone's turned off. What's going on?”

“It's bad,” Todd said. “Evidently, he went home for Christmas and spent his time fighting with Brenda. She wants a big church wedding with a thousand people. Gordy doesn't want to get married. Her mother has a lot to say. His mother is not speaking to her mother and the whole thing is blowing up.”

“They're getting married May 15, Todd. As I recall, you and I signed on as groomsmen.”

“Well, don't bet on it. He's already back in town and off his meds. Zola stopped by this afternoon and gave me the heads-up.”

“What meds?”

“It's a long story.”

“What meds?”

“He's bipolar, Mark. Diagnosed a few years back.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“Why would I kid about this? He's bipolar and Zola says he's off his medication.”

“Why wouldn't he tell us?”

“I can't answer that.”

Mark took a long drink of beer and shook his head. He asked, “Zola's back already?”

“Yes, evidently she and Gordy hurried back for a few days of fun and games, though I'm not sure they're having much fun. She thinks he quit his meds about a month ago when we were studying for finals. One day he's manic and bouncing off the walls; then he's in a stupor after sipping tequila and smoking weed. He's talking crazy, says he wants to quit school and run off to Jamaica, with Zola of course. She thinks he might do something stupid and hurt himself.”

“Gordy is stupid. He's engaged to his high school sweetheart, a real cutie who happens to have money, and now he's shacking up with an African girl whose parents and brothers are in this country without the benefit of those immigration papers everyone is talking about. Yes, the boy is stupid.”

“Gordy's in trouble, Mark. He's been sliding for several weeks and he needs our help.”

Mark pushed his beer away, but only a few inches, and clasped his hands behind his head. “As if we don't have enough to worry about. How, exactly, are we supposed to help?”

“You tell me. She's trying to keep an eye on him and she wants us to come over tonight.”

Mark started laughing and took another sip.

“What's so funny?” Todd asked.

“Nothing, but can you imagine the scandal in Martinsburg, West Virginia, if word got out that Gordon Tanner, whose father is a church deacon and whose fiancée is the daughter of a prominent doctor, lost his mind and quit law school to run off to Jamaica with an African Muslim?”

“I can almost see the humor.”

“Well, try harder. It's a scream.” But the laughter had stopped. “Look, Todd, we can't make him take his meds. If we tried to he'd kick both our asses.”

“He needs our help, Mark. I get off at nine tonight and we're going over.”

A man in a nice suit sat at the bar and Todd walked over to take his order. Mark sipped his beer and sank into an even deeper funk.

T
hree years before Zola Maal was born, her parents fled Senegal. They resettled in a Johannesburg slum with their two young sons and found menial jobs scrubbing floors and digging ditches. After two years, they had saved enough for a boat ride. Using the services of a broker/trafficker, they paid for a miserable trip to Miami aboard a Liberian freighter, along with a dozen other Senegalese. When they were safely smuggled ashore, an uncle met them and drove them to his home in Newark, New Jersey, where they lived in a two-room apartment in a building filled with other folks from Senegal, not a single one of whom held a green card.

A year after they arrived in the U.S., Zola was born at Newark's University Hospital and instantly became an American citizen. While her parents worked two and three jobs, all for cash at less than minimum wage, Zola and her brothers attended school and assimilated into the community. As devout Muslims, they practiced their religion, though at an early age Zola found herself attracted to Western ways. Her father was a strict man who insisted that their native tongues of Wolof and French be replaced with English. The boys absorbed the new language and helped their parents with it at home.

The family moved often around Newark, always to cramped apartments, each one slightly larger than the last, and always with other Senegalese close by. All of them lived in fear of being deported, but there was safety in numbers, or so they believed. Every knock on the door brought a brief shudder of fear. Staying out of trouble was imperative, and Zola and her brothers were taught to avoid anything that might attract the wrong kind of attention. Even though she had the right papers, she knew that her family was in jeopardy. She lived with the horror of her parents and brothers being arrested and sent back to Senegal.

When she was fifteen, she found her first job washing dishes in a diner, for cash of course, and not much of it. Her brothers worked too, and the entire family scrimped and saved as much as possible.

When Zola wasn't working she was studying. She breezed through high school with good grades and enrolled in a community college as a part-time student. A small scholarship allowed her to become full-time and also landed her a job in the college library. But she still washed dishes, and cleaned houses with her mother, and babysat children for family friends with better jobs. Her oldest brother married an American girl who was not a Muslim, and though that meant an easier route to citizenship, it caused serious friction with her parents. The brother and his new wife moved to California to start another life.

At the age of twenty, Zola left home and enrolled as a junior at Montclair State. She lived in a dorm with two American girls, both of whom were also on tight budgets. She chose accounting as a major because she enjoyed working with numbers and had a knack for finance. She studied hard when time allowed, but the juggling of two and sometimes three jobs often interfered with the books. Her roommates introduced her to the partying scene and she discovered she had a knack for that too. While she clung to the strict Muslim prohibition against alcohol, and she really didn't like the taste of any of it anyway, she was more receptive to other temptations, primarily fashion and sex. She was almost six feet tall and was often told how great she looked in tight jeans. Her first boyfriend happily taught her all about sex. Her second introduced her to recreational drugs. By the end of her junior year she silently and defiantly considered herself a nonpracticing Muslim, though her parents had no clue.

Her parents would soon have more serious problems. During the fall semester of her senior year, her father was arrested and jailed for two weeks before bail was arranged. At the time, he was working for a painting contractor, another Senegalese with proper documents. Evidently, his boss had underbid a union contractor for a job painting the interior of a large office complex in Newark. The union contractor notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and reported that illegals were being used. That was serious enough, but some office supplies were allegedly missing and fingers were being pointed. Zola's father and four other undocumented workers were charged with grand larceny. He was served with a Notice to Appear in immigration court, along with a criminal indictment.

Zola hired a lawyer who claimed to specialize in such matters and the family forked over a retainer of $9,000, virtually all its savings. The lawyer was extremely busy and seldom returned their phone calls. With her parents and brother hiding in and around Newark, Zola was left to haggle with the lawyer. She grew to despise the man, a fast talker who liked to stretch the truth, and would have fired him had it not been for the retainer. There was no money to hire another. When he failed to appear in court, the judge kicked him off the case. Zola eventually convinced a legal aid lawyer to step in and the indictment was dismissed. The deportation, however, was not going away. The case dragged on and became so distracting that her grades suffered. After several court appearances and hearings, she became convinced that all lawyers were either lazy or stupid and that she could do a better job herself.

She fell for the scam that easy federal money could make law school possible for everyone, and took the first bold steps that would lead to Foggy Bottom. Now, halfway through her final year of law school, she owed more money than she could imagine. Both parents and Bo, her unmarried brother, were still facing deportation, though their cases were languishing in the backlogged immigration courts.

SHE LIVED ON
Twenty-Third Street in a building not quite as dilapidated as the Coop but similar in many respects. It was packed with students crammed into small, cheaply furnished flats. Early in her third year, she had met Gordon Tanner, a handsome, athletic blond boy who lived directly across the hall. One thing quickly led to another, and they began an ill-fated affair, one that soon led to conversations about living together, to save money of course. Gordon finally nixed the idea because Brenda, his pretty fiancée from home, loved the big city and visited often.

Juggling two women proved too much for Gordy. He'd been engaged to Brenda for practically his entire life and now wanted desperately to avoid a marriage. Zola raised far different issues, and he had not convinced himself he was brave enough to run off with a black girl and never see his family and friends again. Add the strain of a soft or even nonexistent job market, suffocating debt, and the prospect of flunking the bar exam, and Gordy lost control. He had been diagnosed as bipolar five years earlier. Meds and psychotherapy worked well, and, with the exception of a frightening episode in college, his life had been pretty normal. That changed around Thanksgiving of his third year at Foggy Bottom, when he stopped taking his meds. Zola was shocked at the mood swings and finally confronted him. He admitted his condition and went back on the meds. The ups and downs leveled out for a couple of weeks.

They finished exams and went home for the holidays, though neither wanted to. Gordy was determined to provoke the final fight with Brenda and blow up the wedding. Zola did not want to spend time with her family. Even with his troubles, her father would find the need to unload lectures and tirades on her sinful Western lifestyle.

After a week they were back in D.C. with Gordy still engaged, the wedding still on for May 15. But he was off his meds and behaving erratically. For two days he never left his bedroom, sleeping for hours, then sitting with his chin on his knees, staring at the dark walls. Zola came and went, uncertain about what to do. He disappeared for three days while sending her text messages that he was on the train to New York, to “interview some people.” He was on the trail of a great conspiracy and had a lot of work to do. She was asleep in her apartment when he barged in at four in the morning, ripping off clothes and wanting sex. Later in the day he disappeared again, chasing bad guys and “digging for dirt.” When he returned he was still manic and spent hours with his laptop. He told her to stay away from his apartment because he had so much work to do.

Frightened and exasperated, Zola finally went to the Old Red Cat and talked to Todd.