and Stalling’s address in capital letters. Also laser-printed. The stamp is a tiny American flag. “I don’t understand.”
“I do.”
“What?”
“I think somebody’s jealous of you, that’s what I think. The news about your motion is all over the department. Everybody knows you won before Bitterman. It was a big deal for an associate. I even heard it in the secretaries’ lunchroom, so you know the lawyers are talking about it.”
“Really?”
“Sure. You’re a star, kid. Your enemies will be comin’ out of the woodwork now. It just proves my theory.”
“What theory?”
“I never told you my theory?”
“You told me your cancellation theory, about how assholes marry each other. You never told me your theory about hate mail.”
“Well. My theory is that you find out who your true friends are when something good happens to you, not when something bad happens to you. Everybody loves you when something bad happens to you. Then you’re easy to love.”
“That’s sick, Brent.”
“But true. And this is a good example. There must be somebody who you think is your friend, but who isn’t really. Not a true friend. They’re jealous as shit of you, secretly competing with you. Whoever it is, they smile in your face.”
His words make me uneasy. “Who?”
“Think about it. Who’s competing with you right now to make partner? Judy and Ned. We know it can’t be Judy, so that leaves Ned. I never liked that guy.” He looks bitter.
My thoughts race ahead. Is the note connected to the car? To the phone calls? Is it one person or more than one? Holy Christ. I hand Brent the envelope. I don’t even want it in my hand.
It’s getting worse, says the Mike-voice.First the calls. Then the car. Now a note.
“Mary? You okay?”
I plop down into my chair. “I think this has something to do with the phone calls.”
“Mystery Man?”
“Brent, something’s the matter.”
“What?”
“Close the door, okay?”
“Mare, what’s going on?” He shuts the door and sinks into one of the chairs opposite my desk.
“I think somebody might be watching me. Following me.”
“What?” His eyes widen.
I tell Brent about the car on my street and then at my parents’ house. He barely lets me finish before he has a conniption. “You have to call the cops! Right this instant!” He points to the telephone on my desk. “What are you waiting for?”
“I can’t do that. I’m not even sure about the car. Maybe I’m imagining-”
“Mary, you’re not imaginingthis! ” He waves the note in the air like a warning flag.
“I can’t just call the cops. Can you imagine? Cops asking everyone in the department-even partners-about me? That would be terrific right now, right before the election.”
“Mare, what’s the matter with you? Someone is stalking you and you’re worried about making partner?”
“They’re notstalking me, you don’t have to make it sound like that.”
At that moment, my telephone rings and we exchange uneasy looks. Brent takes charge. “Let Lucinda get it. And theyare stalking you. What do you think it’s called when someone follows you around?”
The phone rings again, and Brent looks at it angrily. “Fuck! Can’t she get off her ass for once? I pick up forher! ”
The phone rings a third time.
I reach for it, but Brent heads me off. “No, let me. If it’s that asshole, I’m gonna scream my fucking head off.” He snatches up the receiver. “Ms. DiNunzio’s office,” he says, in a crisp telephone tenor. Then his face blanches. “Okay. Right now.” He nods, hanging up.
“What?”
“Berkowitz wants to see you.”
“Why? Is something the matter? Was that him?”
“It was Delia. She said he wants to see you right away.”
“Great. This is all I need.” I dig in my purse for my compact and check my reflection in its round mirror. A circle of dirty-blond hair, shoulder length. A circle of dark brown eye, an extended-wear contact lens afloat on its cornea. A circle of whitish teeth, straightened into Chiclets by orthodonture paid for in installments. Mike used to say I was pretty, but I don’t feel pretty today.
“What are you doing? Get going! You’re worse than Jack with that mirror,” Brent says. Jack is his lover of five years, a bartender at Mr. Bill’s, a gay bar on Locust Street. Judy calls him Jack Off, but Brent claims he thought of it first. “Go, girl, you’ll be late!”
Berkowitz’s corner office is on Pride, and Delia’s desk blocks its entrance like a walnut barricade. She types as she listens to the teaching of Chairman Berkowitz through dictating earphones. Even the ugly headset doesn’t mar her good looks. Lustrous red hair, a perfect nose, the sexiest pout in legal history. Brent is right. Deliais a stone fox.
“Hi, Delia.”
“I’m busy.” She doesn’t look up but continues to hit the keys of her word processor with spiky acrylic nails.Click-click-click-click. It sounds like a hail on a rooftop. Too bad it will look likejciywegwebcniquywgxnmai. I know, I’ve seen her work.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“He’s in there.”Click-click-click. Oreuhbalkejeopn?
“I’ll just go in, then.”
“Suit yourself.”
This is even more attitude than I’m used to from Delia; I wonder what’s bothering her. I walk to the open doorway of Berkowitz’s office, but his brawny back is to the door. A tailored English suit strains at its shoulder seams as Berkowitz hunches over. The only time Burberrys has dressed a major appliance.
“Go in already!” snaps Delia.
The command startles me into the sanctum sanctorum. Berkowitz is on the telephone and doesn’t turn around. I walk the three city blocks to his desk and sit down in a massive leather wing chair. The decor here screams Street Kid Who Made God-I mean, Good. The desk is a baroque French antique with a surface that was polished by a Zamboni. The high-backed desk chair could have belonged to the Sun King. Photographs of Berkowitz’s first, second, and third sets of children adorn curly-legged mahogany end tables. I feel like a scullery maid at Versailles.
“I don’t care, Lloyd! I don’t giveone flying fuck! ” Berkowitz bellows into the telephone, as he swivels around in his chair. “You tell that little bastard if he thinks he’s going to fuck me, he has another thing coming! We can take his fucking littlepisher of a firm, and we will!” Berkowitz is so engrossed in making what constitutes Terroristic Threats under the Pennsylvania Crimes Code that he’s oblivious to me altogether. This is why Judy calls him Jerkowitz, but I think she’s being unfair. Berkowitz grew up in tough West Philly and made it to the peaky-peak on sheer brainpower and force of will. If your Fortune 500 Company is in deep shit, he’s one of the few lawyers in the country who can save your sorry ass. Guaranteed. But not in writing.
“Where the fuck does he get off? I told him what the agenda was, and he tries to make a fool out of me! He’ll be offa this committee so goddamn fast it’ll make his head spin!” Berkowitz is yelling at one of his apostles on the Rules Committee, which he chairs. It’s a twelve-man panel of federal judges and prominent litigators that meets at our offices to propose changes in federal court rules. If something didn’t go well at a recent meeting, heads will roll, and balls too. Everything rolling, off down the hall.
“Don’t tell me to calm down! Iam calm!…No! No! No!You deal with him then!”
