Or maybe you’d say something to a guy, not a gay thing, just two people traveling through this world acknowledging each other’s existence. Now everyone walks around obliviously listening to their own little music downloaded from their own little computers. It’s lonely, brother.
Plus, it’s dangerous. You step off the curb and don’t hear the crosstown bus till you’re under it, and you certainly don’t hear the Chinese guy pedaling around the corner on his greasy bike.
Well, now you can add the sad cautionary tale of Manny Rodriguez. He’s so caught up in his own tunes he doesn’t hear me walk up behind him and pull out my gun. He doesn’t sense anything’s the slightest bit amiss until a bullet is crashing through the back of his skull and boring into his brain. The poor guy doesn’t know he’s been murdered until he’s dead.
Chapter 51. Kate
THE BLUEBACK LAYING out the formal complaint against Randall Kane hits my desk at Walmark, Reid and Blundell around 2:30 p.m. I shut my door and clear my calendar for the rest of the day.
I’m well aware that this choice assignment is not based entirely on my skill as a litigator. For the high-powered CEO charged with crossing the line, walking into court with a female lawyer is pretty much textbook. And I don’t have a problem with that. There are still so many more disadvantages than advantages to being a woman, career- wise, that in those rare instances where it plays in your favor, I believe in going with the flow.
Once I read the language at the top of the complaint, I’m confident this is something we can win not only in court but in the media. It’s sprinkled with phrases like “hostile work environment,” which usually refers to off-color jokes and pages of the
Then I read the affidavit from the first of Randall Kane’s alleged victims. She’s a thirty-seven-year-old mother of three who spent nine years as Kane’s executive secretary. In her written statement, sworn under oath and the penalty of perjury, she describes how on more than thirty occasions, she repelled Kane’s physical and verbal sexual advances, and how when she finally quit and filed a complaint, he used all the corporate resources at his disposal to destroy her life.
By the time I finish reading the complaint, I realize that
I close the file on my desk and ponder the East River. Kane apparently isn’t just an unfaithful husband. He’s a scumbag and possibly a serial rapist who just happens to be worth a billion dollars. He deserves to pay a high price for his actions, and if I help him avoid it, I’m no different from that in-house lackey of his making obscenely threatening phone calls.
For a decade I’ve punched all the right tickets, from Law Review at Columbia to two years prosecuting white- collar crime for the DA’s southern circuit, and after three and a half years at Walmark, Reid and Blundell, I’ve got senior partner in my sights.
You know how many female senior partners there are or have been at Walmark, Reid and Blundell? None.
So why am I walking down the corridor to Tony Reid’s corner office?
Is it possible that Tom’s midnight pitch hit the mark?
But now I’m a very well-paid consigliere, and he’s defending someone he believes is innocent-for free.
Reid waves me into his office, and I drop the stack of affidavits on his antique desk.
“You better read this,” I say. “We go to trial, Randall Kane will be exposed as a ruthless sexual predator.”
“Then it can’t go to trial,” says Reid.
“I can’t represent this man, Tony.”
Reid calmly gets up and closes the door. It barely makes a sound.
“I wouldn’t think I’d have to remind you, of all people, how important Randy Kane is to this firm. In every department, from corporate to real estate to labor management, we bill him hundreds of hours a year. A dozen unfortunate women have been manipulated by a shameless lawyer, an ambulance-chaser out for his own gain. You know the game. And if by some chance they’re telling the truth? Guess what, ladies? It’s a tough world.”
“Get someone else then, Tony. Please. I’m serious about this.”
Tony Reid thinks about what I’ve said before he responds. Then he speaks in the same persuasive tone that has made him one of the most successful trial lawyers in New York.
“For an ambitious attorney, Kate-and everything I know about you indicates you are as ambitious and talented as any young lawyer I know-cases like this one are a rite of passage. So unless you come back to this office at eight tomorrow morning and tell me otherwise, I’m going to do you and this firm the favor of pretending this conversation never happened.”
Chapter 52. Kate
THAT NIGHT, I get back to my apartment at the unheard-of hour of 7:00 p.m. Three years ago, I bought this insanely expensive one-bedroom apartment in the eighties on the Upper West Side because it had a garden. Now, having poured myself a glass of pricey Pinot Noir, I’m actually sitting in my garden and listening to the sounds of the city as the lights blink on in the surrounding apartments.
I watch the sky go black on this late October night, then go back inside for a refill and a blanket.
That arrogant prick Reid is right about one thing: I should hardly have been shocked to discover Randy Kane is a scumbag. Wealthy scumbags pretty much fill the coffers at Walmark, Reid and Blundell. If the firm is ever in need of a catchy motto to chisel into the marble lobby, I’d suggest Scumbags Are Us.
But I don’t want to be the person defending those clients anymore. How did this happen? When I went to law school, aiding and abetting white-collar crime couldn’t have been further from my career goal. But then I did well at Columbia, got on the fast track, and wanted to prove I could stay on it, earn just as much money, make partner just as fast, etc., etc., etc.
Sitting in the cold dark of my lovely garden with my third glass of Pinot, I realize there have been other consequences of my fab career. You may have noticed that I’m sharing my depressing thoughts with myself tonight rather than bouncing them off a succession of dear old friends. That’s because I really don’t have any. Forget a boyfriend. I don’t even have a really close girlfriend I’d be comfortable pouring my heart out to right now.
I think it’s that competitiveness and pride thing again. In law school I had two wonderful, very close friends- Jane Anne and Rachel. The three of us were thick as thieves and swore we’d be soul mates to the end and bring the bastards to their knees.
But then Jane Anne gets happy and pregnant, and Rachel stays on a fast track for a couple of years before dropping out to work for Amnesty International. Both resent my “success” a little, and I’m miffed by their resentment. Then one time a week goes by without one of us returning a call, and then it’s a couple of weeks, and eventually no one wants to give in and pick up the phone. So I finally break down and make the call but feel the chilliness on the other end, or think I do, and wonder who needs that.
It turns out I do, because the next thing you know I’m alone in the dark with only a blanket and a glass of wine for company.
Now it’s 2:00 a.m., and the empty bottle of Etude lies next to the half-empty box of Marlboros, which was full when it was delivered from the bodega three hours ago. Let the record show that I never once represented a cigarette manufacturer. Of course, no one asked me to, but it should still count for something.
An hour and a couple more cigarettes later, I’m dialing the number of the one person on this planet I’m reasonably confident will be delighted to hear from me at three in the morning.
