“So’s this a social call or you still diggin’ around?” she asked me, once again languidly composed within the depths of her fluffy cushions.
“I was wondering about Milton Hornsby.”
“Def’nately not social.”
“How was he to work with?”
She rolled her eyes.
“I told you, man. A stiff.”
“As a lawyer.”
“Aw, Christ, don’t make me think.”
I sat back into the overstuffed cushions to give her more breathing space.
“Did you know Bay Side Holdings was a WB subsidiary? The old plant sitting on the property?”
She rolled up on her right side and looked at me over the top of a cushion.
“No.”
“No?”
“No I won’t talk about it.”
“You knew all along.”
“Can’t go there.”
“Or at least figured out along the way.”
“You got an imagination,” she said.
“You spin a good story.”
“Works on judges.”
“Not so well on engineers.”
“No imagination?”
“Too analytic.”
“I need a good analyst.”
“So you say.”
“Need my head examined.”
“What’ll they find?”
“Conflicted interests.”
“Caught between the Bar and a hard place?”
She sunk deeper into the couch and draped her long bangs over her face the way my daughter would do when she didn’t want to talk about something or finish all the peas left on her plate.
“You’re not as funny as you used to be.”
“That’s why you’re so pissed at those guys,” I told her, “not because they wouldn’t press the case. Because you thought they weren’t telling you everything you needed to know to do your job. They were holding out on you, treating you like a lesser partner. Like a local.”
“You’re also not as nice.”
“Quite a conflict. On one side, a great case, lots of interesting law, the kind you could take advantage of out here. Lots of money. And a heartthrob for a co-counsel. On the other side, a feeling you’re aiding and abetting the enemy. The City People, with all the money and none of the feeling for the real Southampton. Where you were born and raised and still refuse to leave, even though you’re smart enough and capable enough to have a real career anywhere you want.”
“Time for the fifth.”
“I could get you one.”
“The amendment, dummy.”
“Something about this whole scene really bothered you. But you’re constrained by attorney-client privilege. Though not enough to stop you from giving me that map.”
“You know, I’m either too stoned or not stoned enough to listen to all this.”
She gave my leg a squeeze, then used it to haul herself up on her feet. I gripped her forearm and hauled her back down again.
“You don’t have to tell me anything. Unless you want to.”
After that she seemed happy enough to stay put. I slurped my coffee and lit another Camel. We sat quietly for a little while.
“I never saw them.”
“The clients?”
She nodded. Then shook her head.
“Client. Only spoke to one guy. Never saw him in person. Just talked to him on the phone. Me, Hornsby and Hunter would sit in Hornsby’s office with a speakerphone. Hornsby always made sure he knew we were all in the room. Never even heard his name. When I asked Hunter, ‘Does this guy have a name?,’ he’d say ‘Mr. Client.’ He was nice enough about it, but you know. Mr. Client was a very uptight person. Insistent, or insinuating, or insulting, one of those ‘in’ words. Hunter handled him fine. Whenever the guy handed him some crap, he’d hand it right back. That’s what made me think there were other clients behind the client. I know it sounds terrible, but the real giveaway was the way Mr. Client talked. You know, a little of the ‘dese,’ ‘dem’ and ‘dose.’ I guess that’s snobby of me.”
“A little.”
“And the profanity. Fuck this and fuck that. Like he was trying to sound tough. He did sound tough. And the way he talked about handling the Appeals Board, and the DEP, how to get around this and get around that, and who do you have to take care of, and whose arm do you have to twist and who’s got the juice with who and all this stuff that had no regard for due process or the spirit behind all these regulatory hurdles, no matter how stupid they might look to these developers. Jesus Christ Almighty.”
She reached over and took my cup out of my hand, downed a gulp and handed it back. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and burped. I wondered how Jackie got to sleep at night with all that noise in her head.
“Of course, they had a lot of hurdles to leap,” she said. “They probably couldn’t believe the regulatory resistance they were getting. All the signs, stated and unstated, that said this project was going to get the full treatment. And that’s no idle threat from a town that’ll fight like rabid badgers over the slightest variance. If they’re in the mood. Mr. Client was nervous as a cat. Until the Town told us the next steps and he pulled the plug.”
“Stopped the project?”
“Cold. Just ended it. I got a check, cutie pie went home. That was it.”
“What did the Town want?”
“Neighborhood Notice. Couple different types. For a normal variance, you only need a four-hundred-foot radius around the property. Send the neighbors a postcard, tell ’em there’s going to be a zoning hearing, if you want to come and raise a stink, here’s your chance. Appeals Board takes these things seriously. Neighbors can make board members miserable.”
“What other kinds of notice?”
“Bay Side pulled the absolute worst kind you can get because of the old factory. It’s a DEP thing—they go out like a mile and send everybody this big questionnaire that just about begs you to come up with environmental reasons to oppose the project. It’s really punitive, frankly, but that’s federal Super Fund shit and nobody screws with that.”
“Bummer.”
“So who gets blamed? The co-counsel. The local. Like I’m supposed to anticipate this kind of thing? I felt so bad.”
“Was Hunter mad at you, too?”
She looked thoughtful. “I guess not. He didn’t ask me out afterwards, like I thought he would, despite it all. But, no. He wasn’t pissed. He said I’d done my job as well as I could.”
I realized she was crying. I should have seen it earlier. It was the kind of insensitivity I’d honed through years of practice. I hauled myself from out of the white couch and went to the bathroom for tissues. I’d done a lot of that, too. Going to get tissues was one of my specialties.
She looked up at me after she blew her nose.
“Is this some investigation? Are you really from the goddam FBI? Are you going to ruin my life?”
