The old offices at Bilson, Dawes actually looked good. For some reason, the nods and smiles of the secretaries and paralegals carried a bit of what I self-indulgently sensed as respect. The usual attitude toward associates, particularly on the part of the fossilized queens of dictation of the more senior partners, is that of a day-care matron toward a child whose nose won’t stop running. I silently thanked Judge Bradley for throwing me into a case and an association with Mr. Alexis Devlin that boosted my status three rungs on the food chain.
I was walking proudly by the time I reached Julie’s desk. Needless to say, none of the above commentary went for Julie. I always thanked God for granting me a human being for a secretary. This particular blessing came with a concomitant curse.
Just as Julie was raising her eyebrows while she asked, “How are you and ‘Lex’ getting along?” I heard my name whined in the adenoidal tones of junior partner Whitney Caster.
“Knight, I want to see you.”
I smiled at Julie and whispered, “Lex wants to adopt me. Would you prepare the forms?”
Julie’s giggle was stepped on by a second whining outburst. “Now, Knight!”
I moved slowly backwards toward Caster’s office while asking Julie, “Anything critical?”
She said, “Mr. Malone called three times about the Keilly case. He wants to set up a deposition.”
“Tell him to give me a break. That case won’t go to trial for two years. What else?”
“Mark Shuman wants a date for pretrial motions on the copyright case.”
“When did he call?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“No sweat. Mark’s tuned in. He’s heard what’s going on. He won’t press it. Anything else? I mean critical.”
“Bob Casey just called about the Detroit Red Wings game tomorrow night.”
“That’s critical. And painful. Would you tell him it’s impossible? Maybe the Black Hawks in two weeks.”
From behind me, at a ten-decibel increase, “KNIGHT!”
Julie stifled a grin. “That man’s gonna split a hemorrhoid if you don’t get in there.”
I smiled back. “Is that a promise?”
Caster was a nice shade of pink by the time I was looking across his desk at him. I’m sure the fear of losing the power of having me on voice commands had nearly driven him to distraction. My finally-obedient presence before him came just before he started sucking his thumb.
“Did you call me, Whitney?”
Any form of “yes” would have sent Julie into a case of the unstiflable giggles. I think he appreciated that, because he finessed the question.
“Knight, I have an idea. I want you to go back and reargue that motion to suppress discovery before Judge Bradley.”
I could see his weasely little mind working. He was salivating at the thought of Judge Bradley finding it difficult to deny my motion when I was in the midst of representing his son. More to the point, if I won the motion, Whitney could see himself garnering the credit with the seniors for coming up with the ploy.
“Whitney, baby, you don’t have enough brains or ethics to realize that a man of Judge Bradley’s character would recuse himself from the case before he’d play into your sniggering little plot.”
I liked the sound of that, but it never actually passed these restrained lips. What came out was, “That’s an idea, Whitney. I’ll get on it.”
“You do that, Knight,” he whined as he busied himself with lofty legal issues in a brief. I was dismissed. I curtsied, and turned for the door.
I let him sink comfortably into the euphoria of self-admiration for his crafty little scheme before turning back.
“One more thing, Whitney. When Judge Bradley sees this motion marked up for rehearing, he’ll probably think we’re trying to put the squeeze play on him. My bet is that he’ll be on the horn to Mr. Devlin in about six seconds to tell Mr. Devlin that he views the ethics of the rest of his law firm as beneath contempt. Mr. Devlin will be climbing up my back in about four seconds to find out whose idea this was in the first place. At that point…”
The pink had run from Whitney’s cheeks. He was nothing if not protective of his little pinched posterior.
“Hold off on that, Knight. You’ve probably got other things more pressing.”
“As a matter of fact, Whitney…” I thought of the Red Wings game I’d be missing.
14
I needed the privacy of my office for what I was about to do. As I closed the door, I tried to think of the last time I had spent serious time there. It predated the Lothrop hearing before Judge Bradley, which seemed like a century ago.
Tom Burns was a private detective whom the firm used on a semi-regular basis. He was not inexpensive, but his rates still beat having a lawyer do certain types of legwork. He was also better than the rest of us when the information required serious private detection. I had worked with him enough to be able to play with the cards up.
“Hi, Mike. How goes?”
“Good, Tom. You alone?”
“Alone enough.”
“I mean alone alone. This is really sensitive.”
I heard him ask his secretary to type up what he had given her. I listened for the door to close in the background.
“What do you need, Mike?”
“I’ve got something for you, Tom, if you’ll do it. I’m going to level with you. This is not authorized by anyone in the firm. A certain big guy down the hall would put me into a submarine sandwich if he knew I was doing this.”
“I heard you were working with A.D. And you can still sit up and take nourishment. You’re a survivor, Mike.”
“You know what they say-that which doesn’t kill us makes us strong. It could still go either way. Have you got some time free in the next day or so?”
“No. What do you need, Mike?”
“There was a case ten years ago this March, Commonwealth v. Dolson, Suffolk Superior Court. It was a hung jury. The names and addresses of the jurors on that case are in the record. I need to know if there were any radical changes in the lifestyle of any of the jurors, say in the next year after the case ended. You know what I’m looking for.”
“I know what you want. Any cash windfalls that could be a payoff.”
“You got it. I have a hunch it could be connected to this Bradley case. But it’s just a hunch. I can’t get you authorization from any of the partners. Lex Devlin’s the only one involved in this case, and he’d split a gut if he knew what we were opening up.”
“You’re playing with dynamite here, Mike. That was the case where they said Lex Devlin…”
“I know. I don’t believe it, Tom. It was never proven or disproven. It’s been sucking the blood out of a great man for ten years. It’s time it was cut open. Good or bad.”
“You think that’s your call to make, Mike?”
I felt the weight of it all of a sudden.
“Not if I weren’t sure of the man. Can you spare some time, Tom?”
“No. But I will. When do you want it?”
“Ten years ago. Whenever you can. Listen, about payment, Tom. If there is a connection with this Bradley case, you can bill it to the Bradley file. I can’t promise it, though. The best I can do is pick it up myself, but it could take me a while to pay it off.”
“He really got to you, didn’t he, Mike?”
“He’s the class of this shop, Tom. The rest of them don’t come up to his socks. It kills me to see him dying a
