'Yes.'
'That's all?' Rita said.
'That's all there is,' I said.
'No right or wrong, nothing like that?'
'Right or wrong?' I said. 'Rita, you're a lawyer.'
'I know, never tell that I said that.'
We were quiet for a moment.
'There's thousands of people need saving,' I said. 'I can't save them all. Hell, I can't save half the ones I try to save.'
'So you let chance decide?' Rita said. 'Someone hires you?'
'Chance and choice,' I said. 'I don't take every case.'
'How do you decide?' Rita said.
'I'm not sure,' I said. 'I usually know it when I see it.'
'You can't save everybody,' Rita said.
'And if I try, I end up saving nobody,' I said.
'And saving one is better than saving none,' Rita said.
l nodded. Rita looked at me silently before she spoke.
'Do you know what I bill an hour?' she said.
'I believe I do.'
'How you going to pay me?'
'I'll give you every cent I earn on this case from here on,' I said.
She looked at me some more and smiled wider.
'They fired you,' she said. 'Didn't they?'
'Well,' I said. 'Yuh.'
'And you're offering me half of that.'
'Yuh.'
Rita laughed softly and flipped the ballpoint pen onto her desk.
'I'll take it,' she said.
Chapter 63
I WAS IN MY OFFICE. Pearl was asleep on the couch. It was raining outside, and the colorful umbrellas over boots and fashionable raincoats were flowering once more on Berkeley Street. The office door opened. Pearl's head went up. Royce Garner came in and closed the door behind him and pointed a gun at me.
'I'm going to kill you,' he said.
With his orotund voice, he sounded like Richard Nixon. Pearl growled.
He turned toward her with the gun, and I shot him at an angle in the backside, so that the bullet passed through and lodged in the far wall. Confined by the small room, the gunshot hurt my ears. Garner fell over. Pearl jumped from the couch and scuttled behind my desk. Still holding the gun, I patted her as I went past her to Garner.
'Should have kept the gun on me,' I said. 'I'm a lot more dangerous than Pearl.'
'You shot me,' he gasped. 'You shot me.'
I picked up his gun carefully and went back to my desk and put it in a large plastic Baggie. I put my gun back in the holster. Then I called 911 and ordered up an ambulance.
'Help me,' he said. 'I'll die if you don't help me.'
'No you won't,' I said. 'You got shot in the ass. You're not even bleeding that bad.'
I went to the sink and got a hand towel and folded it up tightly and walked to Garner and squatted down beside him.
'Oh, God,' he said. 'This hurts. I'm bleeding.'
I pressed the towel against his wound.
'Roll over so you're lying on the towel,' I said. 'It'll be like a pressure bandage.'
'I can't move,' he said.
'Oh,' I said. 'Well, maybe you will bleed to death.'
He groaned and struggled over onto his side and groaned again, but his weight was on the wound and the towel. I stood and leaned my butt against the front edge of my desk. Pearl peered bravely around the edge of the desk at Garner.
