Primary Justice (Ben Kincaid series Book 1) (13 page)

Ben stared back at the man. It was useless. Like arguing ethics with the Great Wall of China.

“Speaking of Sanguine,” Derek continued, “have you finished the brief for our preliminary injunction motion in the trade dress case?”

“Yes,” Ben answered. “I placed it on your desk this morning—”

“I’ve already read that draft,” Derek interrupted. “And I’ve made changes. It’s in your in box.”

“I’ll see that Word Processing makes the changes, sir.”

“What about my opening statement? Have you written that?”

“N-no. I didn’t realize you wanted—”

“What did you think I was going to do tomorrow morning? Stand at the podium and twiddle my lower lip?” He struck a match against the side of the box and lit a cigarette. “You see, Kincaid? This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. You’re behind in your work, you’re really only making an effort on one case, and you’re not accomplishing anything on
it
!”

He took a deep, calming draw on his cigarette, then used the cigarette as a pointer. “A good associate doesn’t have to be told to do something. A good associate
sees
that it needs to be done and does it. Period. I know you’ve just started, but frankly, your work to date has not been up to the usual Raven standards. And if your work isn’t up to snuff, Kincaid, nothing can save your butt from the shredder. Not your mother, your minister, a shareholder—
or
his wife.” Derek’s eyes flashed.

Ben didn’t know how to respond. No secrets at R T & T.

“So get humping, Kincaid. The trade dress hearing tomorrow is before Old Stone Face, Judge Schmidt. He’s a would-be author of a few unimportant legal articles and fancies himself a celebrated literary figure. So pepper the opening statement with obscure quotations and polysyllabic prose. You should be good at that.” He took a final drag from his cigarette. “And forget about this asinine accountant crap!”

Ben left the office without saying a word. As he walked down the corridor, every secretarial eye was fixed upon him. Ben realized just how loud Derek’s shouting had really been. Was it just Ben or was Derek still on the skids with his wife? That would explain volumes. It seemed as if Derek opposed his investigation of this case at every step.

Ben ducked into the elevator lobby and pushed the
DOWN
button. Tom Melton and Alvin Hager joined him just as the doors opened. The three of them stepped into the elevator.

“So, Mr. Harvard gave you a bad time, eh?” Alvin asked in a boisterous voice.

The elevator descended. “Do you lurk outside of keyholes or what?”

“Not necessary when Derek’s doing the shouting,” Tom said. “What a prima donna. I did think that jab about shareholders’ wives was unfair, though. I mean, it’s not as though it was your idea, after all.” Tom and Alvin looked at each other solemnly, then broke into broad grins.

Tom regained his solemn expression. “Seriously, Ben, try not to worry about him too much. Everyone knows what a prick he is.”

“That’s an understatement,” Alvin added. “Do you realize no associate assigned to Derek has lasted over three years with the firm? Ever. In the twelve years since Derek came here from Philadelphia.”

“That’s pathetic,” Ben mumbled. “Someone needs to do something about him.”

The bell rang, and the doors opened on the ground floor. Alvin and Tom headed toward the fast-food restaurants and ice-skating rink in the mall adjoining the office tower.

“Before we run off, Ben,” Tom said, “are you coming to the recruiting function tonight?”

“Recruiting function? I’ve already been recruited.”

“For next year’s class, Ben. Now that you’re an associate, you have an obligation to pull your weight in recruiting. I’m in charge of the recruiting program, and I’m organizing a little soiree tonight. The firm likes to have new associates in attendance—to tell the new recruits how wonderful life is at R T & T. They’re more likely to listen to someone closer to their own age.”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t think I’d be the ideal pitchman for R T & T.”

“I wouldn’t say no if I were you, Ben,” Alvin remarked. “Just speaking as a friend. The firm higher-ups want tonight’s guest in a bad way. He’s 3L Yale, decent grades, law review. If we can be part of the team that reels him in, it’ll be a feather in our caps. Given your current standing in the firm, you can’t afford to pass up a chance to impress shareholders.”

Ben sighed. “I’ll think about it and get back to you guys. Okay?”

They nodded.

“Is Marianne coming?”

Tom and Alvin exchanged a naughty look. “I don’t think so, Ben,” Tom said. “That wouldn’t be quite appropriate.” They looked at each other again and burst into laughter. Tom swatted Alvin on the shoulder, and the two of them walked off toward the fast-food zone.

Ben watched Heckle and Jeckle recede into the distance. Great, he thought. What next?

After they were gone, he walked until he reached the shopping mall area. He stood at the banister on the third level, looking down on the ice-skating rink below. There was only one person on the ice, a girl, probably in her early teens. She had dark hair and was wearing a skimpy, sequined outfit. She was skating to a classical piece—one of Chopin’s preludes, Ben thought. She raised her arms and executed a nice aerial double spin. She was trying to maintain balance, to remain smooth and graceful, and yet there was something imperfect, something slightly awkward about her execution. Perhaps she was new at this, Ben thought, or was performing a new routine, and was still working out the bugs, still perfecting her art.

Ben stared down at her until the itching in his eyes grew too strong. He turned and, holding his head down so that he could not be seen, raced to the nearest men’s room. He entered one of the stalls, closed the door behind him, sat down on the toilet, and began to cry.

W
HEN BEN FINALLY RETURNED
to his office, Christina was waiting for him.

“What ho!” she said, saluting. “It’s Benjamin Kincaid, Man of Adventure!”

Ben slammed the door shut. “Don’t say that!” he whispered harshly. “Someone might figure it out. Sanguine’s bound to report a break-in. After all, we left the window wide open.”

Christina plopped into one of the orange corduroy chairs. “Sorry, boss. Didn’t mean to get you riled up. Any luck on the accountant?”

“Are you kidding?” He threw himself into the other chair. “Derek is determined to do this case for next to nothing and doesn’t care if we lose it in the process.”

“Really?” Christina said. “That seems odd.” She meditated for a moment.

Ben dialed the combination on his briefcase and withdrew the manila envelope he had found beneath Adams’s desk drawer. He pulled out ten pages of paper, stapled in the upper left corner. Each page contained five vertical columns; the first contained letters, apparently in code, while the other four all contained numbers. At the top left of the first page someone had scribbled in pencil
Comp Sang Summ
. Some of the figures had been underlined in red.

“Have you figured out what it is?” Christina asked.

“No,” Ben replied. “I got into law so I wouldn’t have to deal with addition and subtraction and other forms of higher mathematics.” He threw the document back into his briefcase. “How about you? Weren’t you an accountant in a previous life?”

She smiled thinly. “Well, I was going to offer my invaluable assistance, but now I’m not so sure.”

Ben laughed. “C’mon,” he said. “Give me a second chance.”

“Well …” She brushed back her long strawberry hair. “I do have a friend in Bookkeeping here at Raven. Sally might consider taking a look at this on the QT, but you’ll have to make it worth her while.”

“That’s awfully suggestive. Remember, I’m just a naive waif from the suburbs.”

“Don’t worry, Ben. I’ll play chaperone and protect your virtue. I’ll call you when it’s arranged. Will you be home tonight?”

“No. I’m going on a recruiting function with Tom Melton.”

Christina gave him a long, questioning look. “Well, I’ll expect a full report in the morning. Don’t spare me the details.”

She departed, leaving Ben to wonder what that was supposed to mean.

The neon sign pulsed with irritating regularity in garish red:
THE BARE FAX.
The lights in the second
A
and
X
had almost entirely burned out, however, and from a distance the sign read
THE BARE F.
The windowless building was a small, flat rectangle, made of sloppy stucco and painted a dirty brown color. It looked as if it hadn’t been repainted in ten years, but then, Ben mused, there was no reason why it should be. It was not the aesthetics or architecture that drew in the customers.

The Bare Fax was conveniently located just outside the Tulsa city limits, about a twenty-minute drive from the plush downtown seafood restaurant where the group had eaten dinner. What a deal for a new recruit. A three-hundred-dollar dinner and a strip-joint chaser. How could the guy say no?

The guy—one Dewey Stockton—was at the front of the R T & T assemblage with Tom Melton. Stockton was tall, blond, reasonably attractive, well spoken, and intelligent. Ben had to admit that he seemed like a promising attorney. He had the courage to decline wine with dinner even after Tom selected a bottle and ordered glasses all around. Ben admired Stockton for that. Besides, it was a lousy vintage.

Close behind Donald and Tom were Greg, the grizzled party veteran, and Alvin, the celibate sensation. Ben had witnessed enough winking and jabbing between those two to fill a lifetime. Unlike Dewey Stockton, Alvin had opted to drink wine with dinner. Too much, near as Ben could tell. He suspected Alvin was not accustomed to heavy drinking. Or even light drinking, probably.

Tom did a little negotiation regarding cover charges with the beefy humanoid guarding the front door. A Ben Franklin passed hands, and the man waved the whole group inside. “Treat these fellas extra special, ladies,” he shouted behind them.

The room was smoky, smelly, congested, very noisy, and none of it mattered. When there are eight waitresses running through the room wearing nothing above their waists, Ben realized, one tends not to focus on the ambience. Along the east wall, an old-fashioned wooden bar was situated, with a large single-plate mirror behind it. A young, bearded bartender was working furiously, filling pitchers of beer and sliding them down to the bare-bosomed babes.

In the opposite corner, along the same wall as the entrance, was a small wooden dance floor with a guardrail separating the dance floor from the peanut gallery. A long iron bar in the middle of the dance area ran from ceiling to floor. And coiled around the iron bar, Ben spotted a leggy blonde twisting and gyrating in a pair of leopard-skin panties. And nothing else.

Tom motioned everyone around a vacant table directly in front of the dance floor. The woman currently onstage was not exactly pretty, Ben noted, although
pretty
generally refers to a woman’s face, a feature barely noticeable with regard to the body in question. She seemed as if she were dancing through a dream, as if she had forgotten, or was trying to forget, that the hooting and howling audience existed. Occasionally, a patron would catch her eye and she would bare her teeth and release an animalistic growl, thereby completing the leopard theme of her presentation.

“So what can I get you, darlin’?”

Ben turned his head. The waitress’s breasts were dangling about an inch from his nose.

“So answer the woman, Kincaid,” Greg said. He gave Ben a shove on the shoulder, which propelled his face even further forward.

She was a redhead, with freckles that seemed to cover her entire body, or at least as much of it as Ben could see, which was quite a bit. She was older than most of the Bare Fax babes—mid-thirties, probably. Her skin drooped a bit in places, as if worn down by constant scrutiny. Thick, caked makeup couldn’t hide the wide half moons under her eyes.

“Uh … what do you have?”

“Beer,” she answered.

“Oh.” Ben leaned back for air. “What kind?”

“Beer,” she repeated.

“Oh. Well, I’ll have some of that.”

“Two pitchers,” Tom shouted over Ben’s shoulder. He slapped Alvin on the shoulder. “We need to get you loosened up, pal.”

The waitress vibrated a bit, pivoted on her gold lamé high heels, and walked back to the bar.

“Third round,” the redhead said cheerily. As before, she insisted on thrusting herself in Ben’s face as she unloaded her refreshments. Ben trained his eyes on the pitchers of beer.

The floor show continued as the waitresses donned costumes and took turns dancing. The leopard woman had been replaced by the fairy princess, the Egyptian cat-woman (played by their waitress, stage-named Delilah), and the schoolmarm. The schoolmarm (Jezebel) had removed her thick eyeglasses and the bobby pins constraining her hair and was currently demonstrating the creative use of a chalkboard pointer.

Suddenly, Alvin, urged on by Tom and many, too many, beers, stood in front of his chair and shouted, “Baby, baby, you’re
killin’
me! I’m ready for ya, babe! Come and get me!” A chorus of grunts and cheers echoed Alvin’s sentiment.

Ben stared at him, horrified. “Alvin! Sit down!” he hissed. He yanked Alvin down by his arm.

Tom leaned close to Alvin’s ear. “Loosen up, pal.” He thrust a glass in Alvin’s hand. “Here, drink another beer.”

Ben snatched the glass away, splashing beer on his arm and lap. “
No.
Definitely no more beer. I think he’s loose enough.”

Greg slapped Alvin on the shoulder. “Don’t get yourself arrested, Al. You still have to take the bar exam come October. The bar examiners tend to frown on lawyers with a criminal record.”

Delilah bent over, cupped her hand around Ben’s ear, and whispered, “Isn’t this silly? I think so. I’m just trying to get enough money so I can go to college and dedicate my life to Christ.” Her freckles bounced before his nose for a moment, and then she disappeared.

What was that all about? Ben wondered. Had she singled out the only guys in the place that were better dressed than the usual jeans and cowboy boot crowd? Dangerous place for suckers.