Absent Friends

Breathing Smoke

October 31, 2001

Phil spent the morning as he had to, with clients, with other attorneys, doing research, making calls. He moved fast. He fired orders at Elizabeth, his paralegal (she was used to it, she was young and sharp, driven and smart, going to law school at night, she wanted someday to be the lawyer he was, Phil knew that). He demanded decisions by deadlines he invented and rejected deadlines laid down by his opponents. As usual he was in the office before either Elizabeth or his secretary, Sandra, and had work laid out for both of them by the time they came. He could see from how they said “Good morning” that they knew about Randall and wanted to talk, but Phil wasn't ready yet. He had work to do first, real work in the real world that had nothing to do with arrogant reporters or sainted heroes, work from the world of Phil's life up until now. He wasn't ready to close the door on that life yet.

The trouble he was in might have made another man more cautious, but it set Phil free. He'd always flown high, pushed the limits, found the line by crossing it. Now he was accused—only in the pages of the Tribune and the public mind so far, but you couldn't miss the scent of the storm racing behind the wind—of going so far over the line that no reason, no explanation, would be enough.

What use was caution now?

He would rise or fall on the truth behind the truth in Harry Randall's story. Meanwhile, nothing he did could bring a risk that measured up. So Phil was free to go out on limbs, take chances, require this and refuse that. Into his cell phone he snapped and shouted; the midmorning meeting with co-counsel on a RICO case sent them, the other two, stomping from his office lock-jawed and fuming. Drafts of memos flew from his computer. He signed letters as fast as Sandra brought them. In the middle of a conference call on a totally other matter, he had an idea even he thought was harebrained for Mrs. Johnson's defense. But it might work, and God knew nothing else was going to. When he got off the phone, he sloshed coffee into his mug from the pot that was always on and outlined his inspiration to Elizabeth in a rapid-fire volley of half-sentences as he stood at her desk. Unfazed by his delivery, she jotted down key words and said she'd look into it.

When he'd hired Elizabeth two years ago, he'd been Mr. Constantine, and she'd been Ms. Grant. Phil took no liberties with intimacy. He could call her Lizzie, she said out of nowhere, working very late with him one warm April night a few weeks after she'd started. Everyone called her Lizzie, she told him, everyone always had.

Phil had three texts and half a dozen computer windows open in front of him, but a new note in Elizabeth's voice reached him in his distraction like a fresh breeze drifting into a crowded room. He looked up. The color in her cheeks was high, but her eyes were frank and stayed on his. The small smile that lifted her lips suggested an offer but no promise, held something unsaid but nothing coy. She had long hands, nails short but polished anyhow, and a gold clip in her thick dark hair.

A looming court deadline had forced Phil to break a date with Sally: he should have been on a ferry hours ago, on the windy deck watching Brooklyn slide by, and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge—he liked that side of the boat, not the other, where the Statue of Liberty was—as the secretive shadowed hills of Staten Island grew and the towers of Manhattan, always lighted, receded.

And he thought, Why? Or, looking at Elizabeth who wanted to be Lizzie, Why not? It wasn't as though he'd been faithful to Sally all these years, he didn't pretend that. In the eras when by mutual treaty they'd been banned from each other's lives—in practice, he from hers, Phil ever the one to come and go, to propose terms, Sally the one to accept or reject—Phil had always hoped to be intoxicated. Bewitched. Mesmerized and possessed. To fall under another spell that would counter Sally's. When Sally's door was barred, he'd always turned to his own world, prowling through it in search of a sorceress to free him.

Several times he'd thought he'd found her. A lawyer, a writer, a painter, once even a cop: wild nights, stolen days, two people swept away. But always the time came when the winds died down. And the salt smell from the deck of the ferry would start to come to Phil at strange times: in his office, in Grainger's, in court.

That spring night two years ago he'd met Elizabeth's eyes—plain brown eyes, exactly what they seemed to be, nothing hidden to challenge him with; Sally's were the clear green of emeralds, or pale like spring grass, or gray- green like the ocean reflecting low clouds, and why they changed he never knew—and he shook his head. “Go ahead and call me Phil,” he'd said. “But I wouldn't recommend ‘Lizzie.' This is the big leagues.” He went back to his books and his keyboard. From that night she'd changed her name, made it formal and professional, and he'd called her by it. Though a month passed before she could be counted on to answer to it.

At midday Phil closed a file on his computer, rubbed his hands over his face, turned his chair to face the window. Six floors below, the paths of pedestrians made a sharp-angled latticework on street and sidewalk. Without the cars, the traffic lights, though switching, were meaningless and ignored. In this new downtown, people had to find their own ways and their own rhythms.

Phil swiveled his chair back and called through the open door into the outer office. “You guys come in here a minute?”

Elizabeth and Sandra, neither of them guys, showed themselves in his doorway. Sandra carried a pad and pen. Phil tried to remember if he'd ever seen Sandra's hands empty. “Should I order some lunch?” she asked.

“After. This won't take long. Sit down.” He waited until they did. “You saw the news,” Phil said, no lead-in. With Phil there never was. “That Tribune reporter.”

Elizabeth nodded. Sandra said, “Died yesterday. Killed himself.”

Phil rested his gaze on her, then flashed a grin. “You don't read the Tribune.”

“Never did.” Sandra wore lipstick and no other makeup, kept her graying hair cropped Army-close. She was long divorced and nobody's fool. She had started with Phil a scant few years after he'd set up his practice, not soon enough to be there for the Keegan case, the indictment, and the negotiated plea, but in time to take the phone call from Greenhaven that Markie Keegan had been stabbed by another prisoner and was dead.

Elizabeth told Sandra, but with her eyes on Phil, “The Tribune story implied Randall didn't jump. They think someone killed him.”

Sandra raised her eyebrows, a skeptical question, a doubt.

“The Tribune may be blowing smoke,” Phil said. “I'm not sure what they're after. But listen.” He looked at Elizabeth, at Sandra. “The escrow account. The Keegan account. Neither of you ever touched it. You don't put money in, you don't write the checks. True?” He asked the question as he would in court, and as in court, because he knew the answer, he didn't wait. “If there's something wrong with it, you're clear.”

“Is there something wrong with it?” Elizabeth, fearless like himself.