Nobody smiled. Katrina said, “Don’t antagonize them. I’m not sure they’ve been fed yet.” Which was much funnier than what I said, but then, in certain situations, I don’t mind being upstaged by my underlings.
The new guy hooked a finger and led us through a series of corridors, past a number of offices droning with quiet activity. Whatever agency this was, it obviously owned the full top floor of this building. Eddie had to be in heaven. He was all ego anyway, but blow a little fairy dust into it, like his own armed guards and dozens of special assistants, and he’d become Dumbo the Flying Elephant. I was seriously not looking forward to this meeting.
We were eventually deposited in a big empty conference room and ordered to wait. So we waited. And more of the same.
Our appointment was for eleven, and at twenty after, the door blew open and he entered, followed by ten or eleven fawning assistants. They just kept coming and coming, and the only one I recognized was Karen Zbrovnia, who wore her Army uniform, unlike Eddie, who sported an exquisitely tailored blue wool suit.
So. A bit more about Eddie: Picture Robert Redford before he got old, wrinkled, and splotchy, toss in more persuasive bullshit than William Webster, and then add the generosity, grace, and selflessness of Jack the Ripper.
Eddie is all this, and so much more. He is to Army law what Babe Ruth is to baseball, the holder of more records and awards than there ever was. At least that’s what someone once said about Eddie, and to show he believed every word of it, he made it a practice ever after to send autographed baseball bats to everybody he beat in court. Lots of us have those bats-I have two of them-and we all privately dream about someday bashing Eddie’s beautiful head in with them.
He rounded the table and approached, squinting and offhandedly saying, “Drummond, isn’t it? Haven’t we met before?”
This was Eddie’s trademark greeting to all opposing attorneys, his lousy way of saying, Hey, you’re so insignificant I barely recall we ever met.
“Yeah. And who are you? I’m supposed to meet with some asshole named Eddie Golden. He here yet?”
It was a very stupid thing to say, and Eddie immediately chuckled like this was just so damned amateurish, so adolescent, but he’s so magnanimous he’d just take it in stride instead of stuffing it down my throat with some snappy comeback. Which, really, was a snappy comeback.
Admiring chortles erupted from his fleet of admirers. I swiftly said, “Uh, this is my co-counsel, Katrina Mazorski.”
“Jesus Christ, Drummond. Where’d you find this one?” He laughed, igniting another broadside of yuck-yucks from the gallery.
Katrina calmly weathered this, folding her arms and waiting patiently for the laughter to subside to giggles. She grinned. “You’re very funny, Eddie.”
“I know.”
“ ‘Where’d you find this one?’ That’s what you said, right?”
“That’s what I said.”
Her grin disappeared. “The implication being what, Eddie?”
“Choose your own implication,” he replied, ever the cocky prick.
“I can’t. Help me out here. ‘Where’d you find this one?’ What’s the implication? Why did everybody laugh?”
The background chortling died. It suddenly struck Eddie what everybody else just realized. “There were no hidden implications.”
“There had to be, Eddie. I hope it wasn’t sex discrimination. What? Where’d you find this skank? What gutter did she crawl out of? What?”
“I just meant… like, where’d she come from? Virginia? New York?”
She put a hand to her chin. “And that’s funny?”
“To some folks… apparently.”
She gave him a threatening look. “I don’t think it’s funny. Do you think it’s funny?”
“Uh, no, I guess not.”
She spun away and faced me. She winked, and did this little jerky gesture with her hand. Now that was funny. At least, I thought it was very funny. Eddie didn’t and he sulked the whole way back around the table.
I waited till he was seated before I said, “So who are the rest of your distinguished colleagues?”
He stopped sulking and produced a raw grin. “A few members of our interagency prosecution team. I obviously couldn’t fit everybody in this room-hell, I can barely fit them all on the three floors assigned to my task force. Hah-hah-hah. So I handpicked a few key members to sit in.”
This was a very shrewd way of saying he had a whole legion of lawyers behind him, which I already knew, but leave it to Eddie to reinforce the point.
He pushed back his chair, leaned on the two rear legs, and put his feet up on the table, soles facing me. In Asia, that gesture’s considered an unforgivable insult. He casually looked down and began playing with his fingernails, like he was digging dirt out of one of them, which was farcical because Eddie never collects any dirt under his nails.
“So, Drummond, you requested this meeting. Why?”
“I just thought we should all get introduced.”
“We’re already introduced. You and I met in court twice already. What’s next?”
Which was another clever move, because it threw the onus of carrying this meeting on my shoulders. I replied, “A few procedural points. Have you decided what charges you’re going to bring?”
“Not yet. Your client committed so many crimes, over such a long period of time, we may take our full thirty days to decide on the full range. For the time being… just treason.”
And that confirmed my first suspicion. The deal was this: Eddie would stall till the last minute and then fire the full barrage of charges at our doorstep, forcing us to scramble around in confusion under a precariously short deadline to decide how we wanted to respond to a slew of unexpected disclosures.
“Okay, fine.” I worked up a menacing expression, then said, “I spoke with O’Neil and he said you have a group of attorneys clearing evidence for release to my team. I’ll tell you what I told him. If I don’t start seeing that evidence early, I’ll start holding press conferences. I’ll also lodge a request for dismissal on the grounds of obstruction of justice.”
Eddie looked up from his fingernails for the very first time. “That would be really stupid, Drummond.”
“Not from where I sit. Is it true you and Captain Zbrovnia have been working for months with the team that caught my client?”
“They’ve been exposing us to various details along the way,” he replied evasively, back to studying his fingernails.
“Then you’ve had plenty of time to consider your evidence and build your case. No judge is going to have sympathy for you. If I don’t get charges and evidence in a timely fashion, I will lodge that request for dismissal and you’ll have to explain to a judge how you wasted months of preparation before the arrest.”
Eddie turned on that big flashy smile. This was all so much fun. “Won’t work, pal. Nobody’s been pushing harder to get it cleared than I have. I’ve got a file drawer filled with memos and requests to show any judge that’s interested. Isn’t that right, everybody?” he asked his admirers. They all began nodding furiously, like, Yeah, really, nobody’s pushing harder than the boss here. He’s just such a fabulous guy. Don’t you just love him? We sure do.
Eddie continued, “The sooner you see how this went down, the quicker you’ll realize the deep shit you’re in. I’ve never seen a stronger case. And please, plead innocent, because I’m really, really looking forward to shoving it up your ass.”
I worked hard at keeping my face perfectly bland, although from the expressions across the table I think I came up short. Before this got worse, I stood up. “I think we’ve accomplished everything we can today. I’ll be waiting for that evidence.”
Outside in the car, I turned to Katrina. “Well? What did you think?”
This being her first real dose of the big leagues of law, the poor girl seemed shell-shocked. She simply stared out the windshield for a while.
“He definitely won that round,” she finally said.
“Other than that?” I growled.
