'Doing what?'
'Law, what else?'
'For who?'
'Ever hear of Martin Vail?'
When he came in for his interview with Vail, he was wearing a black turtleneck, a tweed jacket he had bought at a Division Street pawnshop for six bucks, and tennis shoes. He had no expectations.
'We've been watching you in court,' said Vail. 'You've been dragging old Sid Bernstein through life for a year and a half.'
'It was a job.'
'You've got quite a transcript, Mr Flaherty. Probably could have landed a pretty good spot with some of the better law firms around town. How come you picked Sid?'
'Figured I could learn more from him.'
'You actually tried most of his cases,' Vail said, flipping through papers in a file.
'You been checking up on me?' Belligerently.
'Bother you, does it?'
Flaherty shrugged.
'You're originally from Rochester, New York?'
Flaherty hesitated, stared down at the file. Finally: 'I guess so.'
'You guess so? You don't know where you're from?' Vail said with a laugh.
'I put that behind me.'
'Why? You did pretty well for a homeless kid with no parents. How long were you on your own? When did you lose your mother and father?'
Flaherty stood up suddenly, his fists balled up, his face red with fury. His reaction surprised Vail.
'Forget it,' Flaherty said, heading for the door.
'What's your problem, son? You've got the makings of a great lawyer, but you have a chip the size of Mount Rushmore on your shoulder.'
'It won't work,' Flaherty said.
'What won't work? Sit down, talk to me. You don't want to talk about Rochester, forget it, we won't talk about Rochester.'
Flaherty sat down. 'Can I smoke?' he asked.
Vail wheeled his chair to the exhaust fan and flicked it on. He lit up, too.
'Sooner or later you'll find out.'
'Find out what, son? What kind of load are you carrying?'
'M'mom died when I was nine.'
'Okay.'
He looked at Vail and sadness seemed to invest itself in his rugged young features.
'Actually… actually, she didn't die. Actually what happened… See, what happened…' And then he said out loud something he had bottled inside himself for years. 'Actually my old man killed her. Beat her to death with his bare hands. He's on death row at Sing Sing. Been there… twenty years. I used to think… I used to think that I'd get to be a lawyer and then… then I'd spring him, and then I'd take him out, and then…'
'And then what?' Vail asked softly.
'Then I'd beat him the way he beat my mom. Beat him and beat him until…' The young man fell silent and sat puffing on his cigarette.
'When's the last time you saw him?' Vail asked.
'Before I came out here four years ago. I used to go see him once a month. I never even wrote after I left.'
'Dermott?'
'Yeah?'
'Your father died two years ago. Heart attack.'
'You knew about all that?'
'Naomi - Naomi Chance, the lady that came to see you when Sid died?
