Impact (23 page)

“I don't want anything out of this, Alec. They're friends of mine; I'm just seeing they get the best advice available. I just think it would help if they were
doing
something about what's happened.”

“I understand. But you're entitled to a referral fee, Keith. We usually go up to thirty percent of our award, after expenses. No use being a martyr about it.”

Tollison's response contains the moralistic timbre that Hawthorne remembers as his only flaw. “That isn't necessary, Alec. Thanks anyway.”

“Well, it'll be here if you want it. Provided we take the case.”

Tollison plunges on as if he hasn't heard. “I should tell you that Brenda—the one with the sister—doesn't want to sue at all, and the other—Laura—she wants
me
to handle it. I've told her I'm not competent in something this complex, but she's insisting. So be ready to persuade them they're in better hands with you than me.”

“It sounds like they're pretty close to you.”

“They are, I guess. You know small towns—everyone's a friend or an enemy.”

“That's all the more reason for you not to be of record in their cases.” His unseemly comment is made before Hawthorne becomes aware of its origin, which is the lucrative damage claim of one Jack Donahue.

“Right. That's what I've told them both: I shouldn't be involved.”

Hawthorne hurries to amend his avarice. “Not that it's an ethical problem, of course.”

“I know. I just don't want the … responsibility. Not that I could handle it anyway. Hell, I'm lucky to manage a will contest without help.”

Hawthorne wonders if his friend can possibly be as professionally inadequate as he implies. Certainly his intellect could have carried him where he wanted to go, and his ambitions had seemed far larger than Altoona. Hawthorne wonders what happened—a booze problem, a woman, a scandal of some kind—or whether Tollison had been felled by something as insidious as his hometown.

“Okay, Keith,” Hawthorne says. “See you tomorrow unless I hear otherwise.”

“I appreciate it, Alec.”

“My pleasure.”

“And I just want to say that I think it's great what you've done with your life. You lived up to your potential, as my father used to say. Not many of us did.”

“Thanks, Keith,” Hawthorne says with feigned humility. “I'm sure you make a difference, too.” The sentence sounds as silly as he feels. Then, because his friend seems so deflated, Hawthorne extends the focus. “Hey. Whatever happened to—”

“I'm sorry, Alec,” Tollison interrupts.

“For what?”

“For whatever it is I've been doing. I'm not ashamed of my life—I'm pretty much the man I wanted to be, if not the lawyer. All in all I'm more disappointed in the world than in myself.” He pauses. “It's good to talk to you, that's all. I'll leave it at that—so who were you going to ask about?”

“That guy—what was his name—Moose? The big guy who wore torn T-shirts and lifted weights at noon?”

“He went to Washington with HEW. Then to South America with AID. Buenos Aires. He's still there. Changed his priorities a bit—they say he's made millions in real estate.”

“That suggests a disturbing dichotomy between brains and money. How about Roger Granbrook?”

“Got mixed up in a securities thing and was disbarred. Seems the registration statement he drew up was about as truthful as a Reagan press conference. Stayed out of jail, though. Sells burial insurance. Lives over in Turlock.”

Hawthorne laughs. “He might be better off in jail.”

As suddenly as he has laughed, Hawthorne is depressed. It's as if the fates of all of them have been a random chance, unearned and undeserved, part of a game that has as its object the destruction of faith and reason.

A second gap develops—even the past is not a sanguine subject for their reunion. Casting about for one that is, Hawthorne blurts, “I had a heart attack three months ago.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Are you okay?”

“They say so. I don't know if they're right or not. What I do know is I can't seem to get my mind off it. I sit here for minutes at a time doing nothing but pressing my fingers to my carotid artery, touching my heartbeat. Of course the longer I monitor it, the more irregular it seems to be. They say that kind of thing is normal and I'll get over it in time, but that doesn't help a whole lot when I'm lying there at three
A
.
M
. counting the number of times a minute my heart decides to thump. I'm thinking about retiring,” he concludes, as though it is inevitable.

“Really?”

In hock to his final phrase, Hawthorne is uncertain how to respond. “It's funny. That's the first time I've ever said that word and meant it.”

“I know what you mean; I've thought about it, too. But what I always wonder is, what the hell would I do after breakfast on Wednesday mornings?”

Hawthorne laughs. “That's the problem, isn't it? Lawyers learn all about how other people live their lives, but we never seem to learn how to live much of a life ourselves.”

Tollison is describing how a client fills his time by building miniature mansions out of toothpicks when Martha sticks her head in the door and points at her watch. Hawthorne waits for an opening. “I've got to go, Keith. Nice talking to you. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

“Same here.”

The instant Hawthorne hangs up, Martha enters the office. She sits down on the couch at the far end of the room, crosses her legs, unfolds her notebook, and prepares to read off his schedule for the rest of the day.

As she opens her mouth, he holds up a hand. “Do you think you could run this place on your own?” he asks casually.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if I cut my schedule back, do you think you could handle things in my place?”

She fixes him with a glare that says he'd better not be kidding. “I'd say it's up to you.”

“You sound like you've thought about it.”

“I have.”

“Since when?”

“Since your heart took a coffee break.”

Her candor is not surprising, but her initial equivocation is contrary to her essential self-assurance. “Why aren't you certain you could take over the practice?”

When Martha decides he really wants to know, she speaks in strident tones. “I didn't say I couldn't, I said I'd need your help. I could handle the legal part; most of it's just shit work and I've been doing that for years. The problem would be the referrals. No one would believe I was in charge unless you made it clear that I was the one they had to deal with.”

“Because you're a woman?”

She shrugs. “And because I don't have a track record in big cases. And because people know we sleep together and they think that's the only reason you keep me on. And because unless you were dead, people would assume sooner or later you'd be coming back, so they would never regard me as a permanent replacement.” Martha stops and frowns. “Why are we talking about this, anyway? You know lawyers never retire. They go on the bench or they litigate till they drop, and you can't afford to go on the bench.”

He inhales and closes his eyes. “I don't know what I'm going to do. It may depend on SurfAir. I'm thinking there's a chance to do something there that's never been done in a crash case before. It will take some luck and some blunders on the part of Hawley Chambers, but if I can pull it off, SurfAir could be something they would remember me for.”

Martha is perplexed. “What's this master stroke amount to?”

He shakes his head. “I need to think about it some more. I want to make sure it will work, as sure as you can be in a jury case. If I think it'll fly, we'll talk about it.”

Martha hesitates, then shrugs. “Whatever.”

As Hawthorne watches, her eyes drift toward the window and her lips spread into an introspective smile, which he reads as a red ripe stripe of satisfaction that her most fervent prayer is one step closer to being answered.

The ride had seemed interminable. Relieved that it was over, marveling that it had occurred at all, Keith Tollison guided the women through the door, then followed after them himself. Once inside, the three of them stood transfixed. Finally, Brenda spoke: “My God,” she muttered sotto voce. “This place must have cost a fortune.”

In keeping with the impression radiated by her surroundings, the receptionist seemed posed for Avedon and
Vogue:
her hair a spiral mop that seemed wet enough to drip, her neckline exposing her sternum and suggesting mannish breasts. But when Tollison and his charges approached her desk, she reacted with a cordial smile.

“I'm Keith Tollison,” he began, his words laboring to escape his throat as her enamel lips pursed to a thoughtful circle. “I have an appointment with Mr. Hawthorne.”

Her glance fell to the leather diary in front of her. “You're a bit early, I'm afraid; Mr. Hawthorne is still at lunch.” The blue-black eyes forgave him. “But he should be back momentarily. Perhaps you can take a seat.”

She gestured across the foyer. In response, Brenda and Laura eyed each other cautiously, then took seats at opposite ends of the Italian-leather couch, beneath a dangling sculpture that seemed made of rusting steel. Tollison took the chair at their flank. Exhausted from persuading Brenda and Laura to occupy the same room at the same time, he closed his eyes and waited as patiently as a pet.

A stream of people passed them by and was swallowed by the office. Well-dressed and self-absorbed, they were the junior lawyers, Tollison assumed, the court to Alec's golden throne, so many princes and princesses that the question of succession would surely spark a civil war.

Fifteen minutes passed. Brenda smoked, Laura gazed at the aggressive artwork, Tollison glanced furtively at everything but either of them, trying to imagine how the years would have treated his friend. By the time he heard his name, he was hoping Hawthorne looked like Porky Pig.

He turned to see a woman—tall, thin, stainlessly attractive—inspecting them with high-bred disapproval. Tollison acknowledged his name.

“Mr. Hawthorne can see you now,” the woman said without inflection. “Are these? …” She glanced quickly at a note. “Ms. Farnsworth and Mrs. Donahue?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Alec would like to see the three of you together, then meet with the women individually.”

Tollison glanced toward the couch and received a pair of nods. “Sure.”

“Fine. Follow me, please.”

Younger up close than she dressed or looked from a distance, the woman pushed through the swinging door at the rear of the reception area and led them down a hall that bypassed secretaries pounding word processors and file clerks tending rolling racks of folders. The doors off the hallway revealed persons buried in paper or talking on phones, jackets off, legs on desks, shirtsleeves rolled to broadcloth doughnuts. When they glanced up, each looked eager to be intruded upon and disappointed when the phalanx passed by. Moments later, their guide preceded them into an anteroom at the end of the hall, tossed her notebook onto a table, and turned to face them.

Documents gathered around her desk as though they were mutually magnetic, a computer blinked forth a jaundiced menu, a coffee machine gave off the odor of short circuits. Barring the door behind her as though it led to the spread-sheets from her subconscious, the woman said, “My name is Martha. Would you like a refreshment?”

They shook their heads, as the invitation unquestionably demanded.

“Then I'll introduce you to Alec. I'll be sitting in, but don't mind me, I'm just taking notes. Also, a tape machine will record the conversation. If you have objections you may discuss them with Alec, but he is adamant on the point, given some unfortunate experiences with clients who subsequently managed to forget the rules of the game or deny that they ever knew them. Are we ready?”

They nodded.

Martha pushed open the door. “Alec, I have Mr. Tollison, Ms. Farnsworth, and Mrs. Donahue. This is Alec Hawthorne.”

Martha stepped aside. The women entered the office as hesitantly as they would an alley. Tollison followed as quickly as he could.

After the glories of the lobby, the initial impression was disappointing. The motif was aeronautical—propeller, landing gear, yoke, landing light—which Tollison took to be souvenirs of Hawthorne's courtroom triumphs. The remaining accumulation appeared haphazard, none of the furnishings an exact fit with the rest, none so out of place as to be tasteless. The resonance was not of elegance but of rumpled comfort and memories randomly preserved, and Tollison was strangely cheered—the room suggested that Alec was not as removed from the old days as he had feared.

Tollison caught himself staring at a plastic DC-10 and remembering that Hawthorne had built model planes even back in law school, hanging them on strings from the ceiling of his room, creating an air force that had to be grounded whenever Alec threw a party, which was every Friday night. He glanced to his right just in time to see Hawthorne striding toward him, jacket off, tie askew.

“Ladies. Pleased to meet you.” Hawthorne stuck out his hand. “Keith. Nice to see you after all these years. You look great.”

“So do you.”

Hawthorne pumped his hand and slapped him on the back. “Thanks. Sit down. Please.”

He gestured toward the grouping of furniture at the end of the room. As the women took the couch and he and Hawthorne the facing wing chairs, Tollison noticed that Martha was already sitting at a small rolltop snuggled against the wall to the right of Hawthorne's massive desk.

“Well.” Hawthorne got comfortable in his seat. He wore charcoal pants, white silk shirt, paisley tie, tasseled loafers, and reading glasses that had drooped to the point of his nose over the course of the initial pleasantries. When he sensed the slippage, Hawthorne removed the glasses and let them dangle from a thong around his neck. When he crossed his legs, he displayed a sockless foot.