Dead Ringer (6 page)

“But that’s not your fault, and I tried to explain it to her. Working on those cases was my decision, and things happened. She just worries because I work here. She wants me to quit.”

“You can do whatever you like.” Bennie couldn’t imagine the place without DiNunzio, but she wasn’t about to guilt-trip the kid. “Do you want to work somewhere where your mom wouldn’t worry?”

“That’s impossible. She’d worry no matter what I did. She worried about my sister Angie, and she was a nun in a cloistered convent.”

Bennie said nothing. She was thinking about her mother, who had been so ill and had passed two years ago. Bennie still missed her every day.

“Besides, I like the work we do, even if sometimes I get into trouble. I mean, we’re doing justice. We actually do justice.” The associate’s mouth set with determination. “I think I’m getting better at being a lawyer, over time. I know I’m trying, and I don’t want to stop. And today I brought in a new client, all by myself.”

Bennie smiled. She’d never heard DiNunzio speak with such pride. It seemed like a cue for Bennie to say something she’d never said, even at the associate’s performance reviews, when maybe she’d been too bogged down in the details of brief writing. “DiNunzio, I think you’re a far better lawyer than you know. You have the mind, and the heart, to be one of the best of your generation.”

Mary almost started crying again.

“Also your hair doesn’t glow in the dark.”

Mary smiled, but tears threatened still.

“Don’t give a second thought to what just happened with your mom. I’m sure we can work it out. I’ll take her to lunch and have a little chat.”

“No!” Mary’s eyes flared with new alarm. “I mean, thanks, but I don’t think so. My mother doesn’t go out to lunch.”

“Why not?”

“It’s outside.”

“Outside what?”

“Her kitchen.”

“Of course it is.” Bennie thought again of her own mother. Depression had kept her confined to bed, often for months, in the era before Prozac and Paxil, when nothing seemed to work. “Why doesn’t she go out? Is she ill?”

“No way. You saw her.”

“Is she agoraphobic?”

“No, she’s Italian.”

Bennie let it go. “Okay. Then I’ll take her to an Italian restaurant. Get her a nice plate of pasta.”

“No, she would never eat someone else’s gravy. Unless it was a blood relative.”

“Okay, we won’t go out. I’ll go over to see her. That’s in.”

“No.” Mary shuddered. “No talking, no seeing.”

“Why not?” To Bennie, the whole thing seemed unusually complicated. “I want to make peace. We can reason together. I have great faith in the power of words.”

“Take it from me, you two don’t speak the same language. Bennie, you may not realize this, but my mother has lots of superstitions. Beliefs she brought over from the old country.”

“Like that I’m the devil incarnate? Because of our cases?”

Mary swallowed hard. “It’s not what you do, it’s more who you are. It’s what you stand for, the way you wear your hair, that you’re tall, that you’re so unlike her, what she thinks a woman should be, that you’re not married, that you’re not really ladylike—”

Don’t hold back now.

“—and also it’s not completely rational. Like, she’s mad at you because I grew up, because I work, because I don’t live at home, because my sister is a nun and I’m a lawyer and all and—”

Bennie stopped the word flow like a traffic cop. Funny thing was, she sort of understood. “Okay, so what do I do about it?”

“Letting it go will be the best course.”

“That’s not like me.”

“Sometimes it’s good to step back.”

From the mouths of babes.
Bennie straightened up. “Okay, fine. Now then, about the Brandolini case—”

“Can we keep it? If I promise to walk it and feed it and work it on my own time?” Mary jumped off the chair, fell to her knees on the dhurrie rug, and clasped her hands together in prayer. “Please, please, please?”

“You nut! Get up!” Bennie burst into laughter.

“I’m not a nut, I’m a Catholic, and we do this all the time. Please, please,
please
can we take the case? It so important. It would be righting a terrible wrong. I’ll work it on my own, I swear, and the Circolo will help with the bill. They can sell a lot of cannoli. The ricotta with the chocolate chip is beyond belief.”

The associate’s dark eyes pleaded with such deep and undisguised emotion that Bennie realized there was more than just a case at stake. Mary had brought in her first real client and was growing up before her eyes, as a lawyer and as an adult. Bennie felt herself respond, caught by surprise as something wrenched within her chest. Between Murphy’s pantyhose and Carrier’s hair and Mary’s new case, she had lost any and all authority with these girls. The inmates were taking over the asylum, and for some reason, Bennie found herself smiling.

“So this is what it’s like to have kids,” she muttered.

And Mary exploded with joy.

Bennie had given up on the Filofax and was just about to call about her driver’s license when the phone rang and she picked up reflexively. “Bennie Rosato,” she answered, and the voice on the other end of the line laughed.

“Gotcha!” It was Dale Gondek, the rental agent for her office building. “Bennie, you been ducking my calls for two weeks!”

Busted
. Bennie flushed. It was true. Caller ID wasn’t made to evade landlords, it was more a by-product. “You’re not going to believe this, but I have great news. I just got a big case, and I should have some dough for you this week.”

“Who fell, Bill Gates?”

“Very funny. I can send you three grand as soon as the check clears.” She had already earmarked the St. Amien and Brandolini money for payroll, utilities, and Iams MiniChunks.

“Three grand? That’s one month rent. You owe us for three months, Bennie. You said you would get current when your jury trial ended. Did it end yet?”

Bennie winced.
Ray Finalil
. “It did, but my client went bankrupt and couldn’t pay me. Can you take the three grand, and I’ll get you the rest later?”

“When’s later?”

“Soon later.”

“Huh?”

Bennie rubbed her forehead. She was confusing herself. And she couldn’t lie. She was the worst liar in the bar association. “Realistically? In six months, when the big case settles. Then I’ll never fall behind again, I swear.”

“
Six
months?” Dale sighed. “Not good enough. You know I like you, Bennie, but I’m gettin’ all kinda heat from upstairs.”

“I know that, and I appreciate it.” Bennie had thought of moving her offices east of Broad Street, where the rents were lower, but at this point she couldn’t make the security deposit. “Can you remind them I’ve been a tenant for five years, and I’ve never missed a month until recently? It’s just a cash-flow problem.”

“I know, and that’s why you’re still there. I got you the three months’ leeway because of that trial you were on.”

Ouch
. “Maybe if I could talk to them myself and explain.”

“No way, that’s what they hire me for. Just between us, they ain’t doin’ so hot either. They need the money. Can’t you borrow the dough somewhere?”

“No, I’m already leveraged out the wazoo.” Bennie had already maxed out a commercial loan and a personal line of credit. She had a last resort, but broke a sweat at the prospect. “I’ll get it to you, I swear.”

“Ben, I’m up against it here. Don’t make me send you an eviction notice.”

“You did that already. It’s pink.” Bennie’s gaze traveled to the notice, which was sticking out from underneath a stack of papers on her desk and was the same shade as Carrier’s hair. Eviction Notice Pink. “Just let me slide a little longer, please?”

“No can do.”

“I get thirty days on the eviction anyway. I’ll have plenty of money as soon as this case settles. Send me the final eviction notice. The orange one.”
Oops
.

“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not promisin’ anything.”

“Dale, thanks so much! You’re the best!” Bennie said.

She hung up before he could change his mind.

5

It took only a weekend to transform the firm’s large conference room into a war room. Documents from St. Amien & Fils, Xeroxed cases, and scribbled notes cluttered its long walnut table, law books sat stacked on its matching chairs, and a modern oak credenza overflowed with empty lo mein containers and a coffeemaker brewing on an endless loop. Windows lined the north wall, dark squares of shiny onyx, now that it was well past eight o’clock at night, and four weary lawyers ringed the table.

“Well, I understand class-action law better and I almost have a complaint drafted.” Bennie leaned back in her chair, in a blue work shirt and khaki shorts, with her long curly hair twisted into a topknot by a dull pencil. Things were bad when your sole fashion accessory was a Dixon Ticonderoga. “And this fee business is amazing.”

“How so?” Judy looked up from behind a mountain of open casebooks. Her orange T-shirt was wrinkled, and the stubby strands of her candy-coated hair were pinned away from her face by about two hundred clips. Her eyes had dark circles around them but came to life when she spoke. “You mean the amounts?”

“Yes. Under the lodestar approach, lead counsel can charge five to six times more than the hourly rate for representing the class, because of the benefit bestowed on the class as a whole.” Bennie tried not to drool. “That’s why there is such a battle over who gets to be lead counsel. It should be called the mother lode approach.”

Anne looked up, next to Bennie. She managed to look fresh and crisp in a white cotton dress, with a coppery French braid running down her back. “What would the fees be in this case, for example?”

“If there’s sixty million in damages in this case, then we can make twenty percent in fees. That’s more than ten million dollars!” The number took Bennie’s breath away. She’d never thought she could be so mercenary, but being broke can turn a girl. “Thirty percent, which would still be kosher, would yield even more. If we represent the class, we get a ton of new clients, almost automatically, and my head explodes.”

“Yowza!” Judy said, and Bennie agreed.

“The hard part is getting to be lead counsel. Lawyers usually decide among themselves who will be lead counsel. It’s called ‘private ordering.’ The lawyer representing the biggest fish generally becomes lead counsel, which I have to believe is us, in St. Amien. And you know another way lead counsel is picked?”

“I do,” Anne answered, raising her hand like the law student she’d been not long ago. “It’s auction bidding. The qualified law firms submit secret bids on their fees, under seal, and the judge chooses the lowest bidder.”

Judy looked over. “Are you serious? Lawyers submitting bids, like contractors? That’s absurd! How can a judge choose who should be someone’s lawyer? Whose lawsuit is it anyway?”

Bennie sipped ice-cold coffee. “It works well for cases like St. Amien’s. It leaves more money for the class and gives lawyers like us, who don’t usually represent class actions, a fighting chance. That’s the rationale, but the Third Circuit found that auction bidding should be used only in special circumstances.”

“Bidding is commerce, not law.” Judy curled her nose. “The law should be pure, like art. It evolves like a painting, created step by step, until the whole can be seen.”

Bennie smiled. The associates could be so surprising. They had worked their butts off this weekend, especially Mary, who had screened out the world as she researched her Brandolini case. Yellow, orange, and blue Hi-Liters lay on the table at her side, and she had filled three legal pads with tricolor notes. She was dressed to work in an oxford shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and wore her tortoiseshell glasses instead of contacts. Bennie found herself touched by the young associate’s effort.

“DiNunzio?” she said. “It’s late. Maybe you should stop now. We all should.”

“Huh?” The associate looked up after a minute, her gaze preoccupied behind her glasses. “Gimme another ten minutes.”

“No, I think we’re all finished. We have to go to work tomorrow. You’ve all busted your butts this weekend, and I appreciate it. Time to go get some dinner.”

Mary set down her pen only reluctantly, avoiding eye contact. Silence fell for a minute, and everybody noticed it.

Carrier looked over at her friend. “Hey, Mare. Something the matter?”

“Not at all. It’s nothing. Not really.” She turned to Bennie. “By the way, did you find your wallet?”

“No, but Marshall canceled the cards. Is that what’s bothering you, my wallet?” Even Bennie could see that Mary needed to be drawn out, but she was almost as bad at drawing out as she was at comforting. “You’ve been quiet all weekend. Not that I’m not grateful, given the disorderly conduct of your fellow associates. But is something the matter? You want to talk about it?”

Mary looked away. “I don’t know.”

Bennie wondered if it was the thing with her mother. “Listen, we’re a firm of four women. A hardy few, a happy few, I’m too tired to remember the quote. We should be able to talk about anything.”

Mary wet her lips. “Well, it’s just that there’s something I wish we could talk about.” Her soft brown eyes found Bennie’s. “With you, Bennie. It’s about the firm, and money.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I know that Caveson and Maytel went out of business. How exactly does that affect us financially, and will St. Amien and Brandolini make it better? For example, I tried to call long distance on Friday and couldn’t. I called AT&T to check the line but they said they’d talk only to the person whose name is on the account. Is something wrong with the bill?”

Anne nodded gravely. Her artful makeup had worn off by now, leaving her even lovelier. “And laying off Marie last month. You loved her, and she was our only other secretary. You wouldn’t have done that unless you had to. And there’s other cutbacks. No magazine and reporter subscriptions. Only double-sided copying. We’re not supposed to take clients to dinner anymore, only lunch. And we share everything but toilet paper.”

Judy chimed in, “You just won a jury verdict for Ray Finalil, and we should be flush. Celebrating. But you don’t even seem that happy about it. What’s going on? We have a right to know.”