13
I spent all day Monday interviewing new clients, but my heart wasn’t in it. Some lawyers are great at bringing in business. Schmoozers and self-promoters, they are our rainmakers. They have an ability to terrify and mollify clients in the same conversation. First, in somber tones, they magnify the gravity of the harm if expert legal counsel is not immediately retained in this most complex and perilous of legal matters. Then they confidently explain how Harman amp; Fox recently extricated another wretched soul from a similar predicament, and for a small fortune, could work the miracle once again.
A good lawyer is part con man, part priest-promising riches, threatening hell. The rainmakers are the best paid among us and have coined a remarkably candid phrase: We eat what we kill. Hey, they don’t call us sharks for our ability to swim.
Bringing in business is not my strong suit. I have a small network of jailbirds, hospital interns, and bail bondsmen who send cases my way, but generally, I work for the firm’s clients. Like Atlantic Seaboard Warehouse and the legal problems therein. This morning, though, I was making a halfhearted attempt to build my own practice. Joaquin Evangelista, an ex-client who took a fall for grand larceny-parrot theft-had referred a young couple to me about a civil suit. A nice favor from a guy who was doing time, but Joaquin didn’t blame me for losing the case.
After putting my virtuous client on the stand to swear that he’d never seen any cockamamie cockatoo, the prosecutor brought the bird into the courtroom for rebuttal. “Hello, Joaquin Evangelista,” the feathered witness announced brightly.
Today I was staring out the window at a foamy three-foot chop curling across the reef at Virginia Key and pretending to take notes as Sheldon and Marilyn Berger told me they wanted to sue their rabbi. Sheldon owned a pet store, which probably explained how he knew Evangelista, who called himself an aviary consultant, rather than a bird thief. Sheldon was in his early thirties and had dark hair in that trendy short, brush look. He wore cordovan loafers with no socks, white slacks, a polo shirt, and a blue sport coat. Marilyn Berger, his bride of seven weeks, had streaked blond hair done in the wrinkled look. She let a cigarette dangle from the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t remind me of Lauren Bacall. I watched the cigarette flap up and down as she told me the story. As I listened, I drew two stick figures, a man and a woman, on my yellow pad.
“The schlepp was an hour and a quarter late for the wedding,” Marilyn explained. “It was 5000 embarrassing. I mean all our friends were just wondering, like was Shelly getting cold feet.”
“I was getting drunk,” Sheldon said with a sly smile.
“So were half the guests,” his bride chimed in. “Daddy calculated that, at the prices the country club charged, the rabbi cost us an extra five hundred twelve dollars in liquor.”
“Plus the band’s overtime,” Sheldon reminded her.
“Of course, darling.” She patted his arm as you might a puppy. “The band had to stay an hour longer. Another three fifty.”
I drew a picture of a Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic. “Why was the rabbi late?”
Marilyn leaned forward in her chair as if to share a secret. “He says we told him two o’clock, but I know we said one, because I told Sheldon to tell him one. If you ask me, the rabbi had another wedding at one. He just stacked us up, like the gynecologist.”
I managed to draw fifteen miniature bullets streaking from the gun barrel toward the man and woman. “Anything else?” I asked. “Any other damages besides the liquor bill and the band?”
Marilyn looked at Sheldon and exhaled a gray stream of smoke into his face. “Well, of course, it gave me a case of stress and severe mental anguish,” she said.
“Of course,” I said sympathetically.
Marilyn leaned toward me again. “I’ve read that stress can cause everything from wrinkles to bad breath.”
“You don’t have wrinkles,” I said.
Sheldon was fidgeting, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “It practically ruined the honeymoon.”
“Cancun,” Marilyn said.
I scribbled some more, drawing sombreros on each of the bullet-riddled stick figures. “Did you get off?” I asked Marilyn.
“What?”
“Your wedding night? Didja come?”
The color drained from her face. Her mouth dropped open. The cigarette stuck to her lower lip. Bright red lipstick covered the top of the filter.
“I see this as a lost consortium case,” I announced gravely. “Now, if you couldn’t get off on your wedding night, or if Shelly here was so bummed out he couldn’t get it up, I see some big bucks.”
Sheldon grabbed both of his wife’s hands. “Honey, that’s what it might have been…” She dipped a shoulder and shook him off like O. J. Simpson shedding a tackier.
“We’ll get the best expert witnesses,” I continued. “Now if we’re talking the whole honeymoon, or better yet, continuing to this very day, we’ll get you into therapy, counseling, sex surrogates.”
“Sex surrogates?” Marilyn Berger cried out, crushing her cigarette in a Miami Dolphins commemorative plate, circa 1973.
“Sex surrogates,” Sheldon repeated, hitting a high note, nodding in my direction. Here was a man who understood the legal process.
“You didn’t videotape, by any chance?” I asked.
“The ceremony?” Marilyn asked, still dazed.
“No, the honeymoon, if you get my drift. A lot of newlyweds these days get a camcorder as a gift and find a real quick use for it. But not too quick, eh, Shelly?”
Marilyn Berger was straightening her dress and shooting sideways glances at her husband. “Darling, I think we should leave now.”
He seemed to want to discuss the case further, but he stood up a split second after his bride.
“Sheldon,” I said, pointing at him, “you might want to keep a bedroom scorecard if you’re serious about this.”
“Scorecard?”
“Balls, strikes, errors, that sort of thing.”
“Sheldon!” she commanded, and he followed her out the door.
I could have used the work, but I prefer cases that I believe in. Best is to have a client you like, a cause that is just, and a check that doesn’t bounce. Two out of three and you’re ahead of the game. There are a lot of frivolous suits these days, and I didn’t need to add to the bunch. I used to think that the courthouse was the little guy’s haven, the place where the multinational corporation stood on the same footing with Joe the shrimp fisherman. In the past, lawsuits have righted some wrongs. Product safety, civil rights, and consumer protection cases have all expanded individuals’ rights. But the pendulum has swung the other way. An inmate who killed five people including his two children sued the state for denying him rehabilitation after lightning knocked out the satellite dish that carried public television. He claimed the programs on commercial channels were too violent. Then there was the man who sued his father for failing to attend his grandson’s communion. He asked for one hundred million dollars for anxiety and depression. Parents whose seventh-grader came in second in a school spelling bee sued, claiming she had correctly spelled horsy, or is it horsey? And, in the time-is-of-the-essence department, concertgoers sued Latin heartthrob Julio Iglesias, claiming he was two hours late taking the stage. Maybe Julio and the rabbi were having drinks together.
The courts are not equipped to handle all of society’s problems. They have enough trouble with a simple breach of contract to sell a hundred widgets from the Acme Corporation to the Zebra Company. So when I have a choice, I try not to add to the mountain of silly suits. Besides, today, I had a dinner date.
I was dipping the crunchy Italian bread into the olive oil when he sat down, drew a vinyl notepad and a ballpoint pen from his suit pocket, and started talking.
“Do you have it with you?” Robert T. Foley asked.
“The antipasto is very nice,” I answered. “I’m particularly fond of the cold eggplant.”
