transmission, which was something of a mystery to her. No, she had no driver's license, never had. She'd meant to end up at 72nd Street but had kept going past it by mistake. She'd been trying to downshift and turn left when the median island suddenly rose up in front of her and hit her head-on. She was sorry about the accident, but not overly so. 'Barry has lots of cars,' she explained.
Jaywalker told her that given her lack of a previous record, he was all but certain he could keep her out of jail. What he didn't tell her was that no judge with eyeballs was going to send her to Rikers Island. No male judge, anyway. That said, there were going to be some pretty stiff fines to pay. That was okay, she said. 'Barry has lots of money, too.'
'Will you take my case, then?' she asked.
'Yes,' he said.
She stood up to leave. She couldn't have been more than five-three, he guessed, and she was wearing serious heels.
'We have to talk about my fee,' said Jaywalker.
'Talk to Robert,' she said, waving vaguely in the direc tion of the waiting room. 'I'm not allowed to deal with money matters.'
Robert was summoned. He was actually wearing a uniform, complete with a chauffeur's cap. He reminded Jaywalker of those limo drivers who met people at airports, holding stenciled signs against their chests. He produced a check from an inner pocket and sat down across from Jay walker, in the seat Samara had vacated. Jaywalker could see that the check was signed, but that the dollar amount had been left blank. Robert picked up a pen from the top of the desk-there were a half dozen of them strewn around, a few of which worked-and looked at Jaywalker expectantly.
'I'll need a retainer to start work-'
Robert held up a hand. 'If it's all right,' he said, 'Mr. Tannenbaum prefers to pay the full amount in advance.'
Jaywalker shrugged. In his business, which was dealing with criminals, you tried to get a half or a third up front, knowing that collecting the balance would be a process similar to dental extraction. If you were lucky, you got twenty percent. Paying the full amount in advance didn't happen.
Jaywalker stroked his chin as though in deep concen tration. In fact, he was fighting hard to recover from his shock and come up with a fair number. He drew a complete blank.
'If there's no trial…' he began, trying to buy time.
'No ifs,' said Robert. 'Give me the bottom line. I don't want to have to go through this next time, and the time after that.'
'Fair enough,' said Jaywalker, before lapsing back into chin-stroking. His normal fee for a drunk driving case was $2,500, with another $2,500 due if the case couldn't be worked out with a guilty plea and had to go to trial. He'd gotten more once or twice, but only where there'd been some complicating factor, such as a prior DWI conviction, or the fact that the case was outside of the city and meant travel time.
Still, there was the Lamborghini factor, the chauffeur, and that comment that was still reverberating in his ears: 'Barry has lots of money.'
Fuck it, he decided. Why not go for it?
'The total fee,' he said, in as steady a voice as he could muster, 'will be ten thousand dollars.'
'No way,' said Robert.
'Excuse me?' Jaywalker said, feigning surprise, but knowing immediately that he'd blown it. Greed will get you every time.
'Mr. Tannenbaum will never go for it,' he heard Robert saying. 'Not in a million years. Anything less than thirtyfive grand and he'll think he's getting second-rate service.' He proceeded to fill out the amount in the blank space.
Two hours after they'd left, Jaywalker was still pulling the check out of his pocket every fifteen minutes to stare at it, counting the zeroes one by one to make sure it said what he thought it did.
Thirty-five thousand dollars.
He'd gotten less on murder cases.
A lot less.
The matter had been resolved with what Jaywalker liked to think of as mixed results. Samara ended up pleading guilty to driving while impaired and operating a motor vehicle without a license. She entered her plea on her third court appearance, Jaywalker having obtained two earlier postponements for no reason other than fear of being dis barred for life for charging a fee that worked out to some thing in the neighborhood of $17,500 an hour.
Grand larceny, by any measure.
Samara paid-or rather, Robert paid on her behalf-a fine of $350, plus another hundred or so in court costs. She was compelled to take a one-day safe-driving course (no doubt she elected Lamborghini Navigation 101) and attend a three-hour substance abuse seminar, and was prohibited from applying for a learner's permit or driver's license for a period of eighteen months.
That was the good news.
The bad news, at least so far as Jaywalker was con cerned, was that his infatuation with Samara never pro gressed beyond the staring point. Robert was always around. And the truth was, as even Jaywalker would have had to admit in his more reflective moments, had Robert not been around, things would have been no different. Not once did Samara ever indicate that she was the least bit interested in anything from Jaywalker besides legal repre sentation. When the case ended and he went to embrace her (something he'd done with men and women, killers and rapists, he rationalized), she turned her head at the very last second, so that his kiss landed dryly on her cheek.
'Stay out of trouble,' he told her.
'I will,' she promised.
5
Promises being what they are, they occasionally go unkept.
Six years later, Jaywalker had been looking over the front page of the New York Times Metropolitan section when he spotted an item well below the center fold. Ap parently the T imes considered the news fit to print, but only barely.
WIFE HELD IN KILLING OF WEALTHY FINANCIER it said. He might have read no farther, having little empathy for financiers on the best of days, let alone wealthy fi nanciers. In fact, he was trying to figure out if the phrase was redundant when his eyes, drifting down the fine print, came to rest on the name Samara Moss Tannenbaum, and stopped right there. It was as though he were suddenly seeing her again, sitting across his office desk, utterly pow erless to take his eyes off her, just as now he was power less to take them off her printed name.
He forced himself to blink, once, then twice, just so he could look away. Then he lowered himself into his chair the same chair he'd sat in six years earlier, behind the same desk-and, folding the paper in half, began to read.
A 26-year-old woman was arrested early this morn ing in connection with the death of her husband, a financier described by F orbes magazine as having a net worth in excess of ten billion dollars.
According to a source close to the investigation, who insisted upon anonymity because he is unau thorized to speak publicly for the police depart ment, Samara Moss Tannenbaum was accused of stabbing her husband, Barrington Tannenbaum, 70, once in the chest. The wound was deep enough to perforate the victim's heart and cause him to bleed to death, said the source.
(Continued on page 36)
