Primary Justice (Ben Kincaid series Book 1) (3 page)

Ben raised the pen to his mouth and began to chew on the lid, then caught himself. He returned the pen to the desk and sat on his hands. “I suppose I never thought about it like that.”

“Well, that’s the reality, kid, so it’s just as well you come to grips with it now. How old are you, Kincaid?”

“I’m twenty-nine, sir.”

“Hmmm. Well, you may be old enough for this. Just one more tip, Kincaid, and I hope you’re not too young to appreciate it. All that business in law school—you know, about
stare decisis
, and how the law is the sacrosanct wisdom of the ages, passed down from time immemorial and applied evenly to different fact situations throughout time?”

“Yes?”

“It’s a crock. A con job by a musty crusty crowd of academics. You know what the law really is?”

Ben didn’t think this was an appropriate time to guess. “What?”

“It’s mirrors and bubble gum. The only thing that’s sacrosanct is your client. Your client needs help, and the odds are there won’t be any law precisely on point to help him, so
you
, the lawyer, must take what law there is and perform a little magic. Create the illusion of precedent with mirrors and bubble gum, and make the law say what it needs to say. That’s what being a lawyer is all about.”

Ben knitted his eyebrows and tried to appear as if he was absorbing all the erudition.

“That’s what Joseph Sanguine liked about me from day one,” Derek continued. “I told him the law was a tool, just like a hammer or a monkey wrench, and I could put the tool in his tool box.” Derek leaned back in his chair. “And I’ve had all his legal business ever since. He’s one of the firm’s biggest clients. And he’s a close personal friend, too.”

For some reason, Ben had difficulty imagining that Derek had any close personal friends.

“Am I making any impression on you, Kincaid?”

“Ahh—yes, sir. Yes, you are.”

“Not much of a talker, are you, Kincaid?” He smiled faintly. “Perhaps in time.” He blew another cloud of smoke into the air. “Well, I hope you’ll take what I’ve said to heart. I have a case I want you to work on, Kincaid. An important case for the aforementioned Joseph Sanguine. President of Sanguine Enterprises. Their principal subsidiary is Eggs ’N’ Stuff, Inc., the franchisor for those cute little breakfast joints you see all over the country. Their national headquarters is right here in Tulsa, you know. They’ve got a problem I think will make an excellent starter case for you.”

Ben beamed. “Really, sir?”

Derek grinned. “Now don’t get too excited, kid. It’s a domestic matter. You took family law in school, didn’t you?”

Ben nodded, considerably subdued.

“It’s an adoption proceeding. For one of Sanguine’s executives. You’re meeting him in about an hour.”

Ben hesitated. “I didn’t think Raven, Tucker & Tubb handled domestic matters, sir.”

Derek shifted positions again and groaned, still rubbing his back. “Well, normally we don’t, but for Joseph Sanguine, we do. I suppose we’d take the garbage out for Joseph Sanguine, if he wanted us to.”

Ben tried not to look disappointed.

“It may not exactly be a blue-chip case,” Derek continued, “but it’s perfectly adequate for a baby lawyer’s first time out.” He peered at Ben across the desk. “I suppose you think you’re too good to do an adoption case? Too much of a waste of your young upwardly mobile talents?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Well, good. Joseph Sanguine is one of our most important clients. His companies provided Raven, Tucker & Tubb with over three million dollars in gross revenues last year. He likes to think he can depend on us. We don’t want to disappoint him.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Good. If you have any questions about the library or office supplies or anything, just ask Maggie. Maggie is my secretary. We’ll share her, at least for a while, until you’re settled.”

Ben started to rise to his feet.

“Just one last thing, Kincaid.”

“Yes, sir?” Ben wasn’t sure whether to remain standing or to sit back down. He hovered in between for a few moments, then decided to remain standing, then changed his mind and sat down.

“Did you get a good look at the incoming class of associates?”

“I—I think so, sir.”

“Excellent. Let me tell you something about them, Kincaid. For the next three years, they’re all going to be working hard, just like you, putting in overtime, trying to be seen by the boss at the office late at night, carrying mounds of work home with them—even if they don’t plan to work on it. Basically, they’ll be doing the same chores as you. Some cases will be interesting bits of complex litigation; some will be dogs like this adoption business. Except, when the associates receive their evaluations at the end of the first three-year period, half of them will be told that they are on track for partnership, and the other half will be told that they are not. At the end of six years, assuming they are all still here, which is unlikely, perhaps one-fourth of them will be promoted to senior associate positions, and the rest will not. At the end of eight years, assuming there have been no lateral hires, which is unlikely, one, perhaps two, of the associates in your class will be made partners in the richest law firm in the state of Oklahoma, while the rest will either be offered nonprofit-sharing permanent associateships or just sent packing.”

Derek’s eyes met Ben’s. “Where will you be, Mr. Kincaid?”

Ben assumed this was a rhetorical question and did not attempt to answer it.

Derek ground his dead cigarette into the ashtray. “Now get to work.”

B
EN REMEMBERED THINKING, AFTER
four years of undergraduate school, two years of special studies, and three years of law school, that the days of desperate, last-minute cramming were finally over. He was wrong.

Thanks to his eleventh-hour assignment from Derek, Ben had about forty-five minutes to immerse himself in adoption law prior to counseling a client of indirect but genuine importance. He was confident that Family Law I and the Socratic method didn’t come close to providing enough real-life practical experience to enable him to advise other human beings. He polled Greg, Alvin, and Marianne, and learned that none of them knew anything about adoption, or if they did, they weren’t telling him. He grabbed a family law hornbook and a copy of the relevant Oklahoma statutes from the library and walked hurriedly toward his new office.

A middle-aged woman with a frosted bouffant hairdo was sitting in the cubicle between Ben’s office and Derek’s, separated from the hallway by heavy wooden dividers. She was smoking, and her ashtray indicated she went at it as fervently as did Derek. She did not look up as Ben approached.

“You must be Maggie,” Ben said amiably.

The woman’s gaze shifted from the paperback romance novel she was reading. “Yes.” Her voice had a detectable nasal twang. Ben wondered if she had come from back East with Derek.

He smiled. “I’m Ben Kincaid. I guess we’re going to be working together.”

“I work for Mr. Derek,” she said crisply. She returned her attention to her novel.

“Evidently you’re working for me, too. I’m the new associate on Mr. Derek’s team.”

Maggie looked up slowly. “I haven’t worked with a new associate in seven years.” She removed the clear plastic reading glasses hanging on a chain around her neck and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “New associates are always …
writing
things, and always wanting them typed by yesterday. And always changing them once they
are
typed.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Ben said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “It wasn’t my idea. I’ll try not to be a bother.”

Maggie lifted the receiver to her ear and punched a button on the complex phone console on her desk. “We’ll see about this. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. We have an arrangement.”

Ben decided that his need to hit the books was more pressing than this rewarding conversation. “I’ll be in my office,” he said.

Maggie didn’t even nod.

Ben surveyed his new office. Well, there will be few distractions, he thought.

Raven, Tucker & Tubb provided him with a desk—a table, actually, and a matching chair, both made of a cheap pine Ben wouldn’t have used in his college dorm room. The walls were a barren, uninterrupted white. The table held a green banker’s lamp and a complicated telephone unit, smaller than but similar to the one at Maggie’s station. There was a short, empty bookshelf beside the table and two undeniably hideous orange corduroy visitors’ chairs. Apparently, furnishings were passed down from one associate to another—the good stuff going up the totem pole and the wretched stuff going down. Ben hoped his first client didn’t have a keenly developed sense of decor.

On the table, he saw a small box. He opened it and found hundreds of preprinted business cards with his name on them, just beneath the firm logo. Ready for business. He cracked open the hornbook and began to read.

A few minutes before eleven, he was startled by an electronic beeping noise. He pushed the illuminated button on his telephone console. It was Maggie.

“Visitors for you in the main foyer,” she said brusquely.

“Thank you, Maggie. Please show them in.”

There was a pause, then a slow, inhaling noise. “You understand this is only temporary, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Yes, I do, Maggie. But while it lasts, I plan to treasure every precious moment we spend together.”

“I’ll get your visitors,” she said, and rang off.

There was no reason for Ben to be surprised. Derek had not made any representations regarding his visitors’ appearances, although he had linked them with one of the most sophisticated and prosperous corporate entities in the state. Nonetheless, when Maggie ushered the visitors into his office, Ben was surprised and vaguely disappointed. The two adults, a man and a woman, were older than he had expected, perhaps in their early sixties. Both had pure white hair. The man wore blue jeans and a white shirt with a plastic pencil holder in the front pocket and noticeable yellow-gray stains under each arm. The woman wore a simple green print dress, a plain brown coat, and white costume beads.

“My name’s Jonathan Adams,” the man said, taking Ben’s hand, “and this is my wife, Bertha.”

The single sentence had been sufficient to tell Ben a great deal about Mr. Adams’s origins. He had the thick, slow drawl usually found in rural areas in the western part of the state.

Ben shook his hand, then Bertha’s, and introduced himself.

“Honestly!” Bertha said, eyeing him with suspicion. “Are you an attorney?”

Ben tried not to react. People usually thought he looked young for his age. “Yes, I am,” he said amiably. “Promise. I’ve got a diploma and everything. Just haven’t coughed up the money to have it framed yet.”

“Oh,” she said, looking meaningfully at her husband. “I see.”

Ben knew exactly what that expression meant. It meant: Jonathan, I thought we were getting a real lawyer.

She turned her attention slowly back to Ben, eyeing him carefully. Ben knew that expression, too. It meant: This case may not mean much to your firm, but it’s the whole wide world to us, and we’d like to have a
real
lawyer, not some baby-faced kid who hasn’t lost his training wheels yet. Or something like that.

“Princess, don’t be standoffish like that,” Bertha said.

Ben looked up, startled. For a moment, he thought the woman was talking to him. Then he saw a small dark-haired girl standing behind the adults. “Mr. Kincaid, this is our Emily.”

The girl was beautiful. Her features were simple and smooth; her pale skin was virtually translucent. Her long black hair served to highlight her flawless white complexion. She was a marble sculpture of what a little girl ought to look like, Ben thought, a Botticelli angel. And there was something else about her, he realized, a light, or a
glow
, that seemed to radiate from her.

Ben suddenly felt embarrassed. He was romanticizing a little girl. And he was staring, too.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling.

Emily gazed at him with a puzzled expression. Her eyes didn’t quite seem to focus on his face. “Good morning, Mr. Kincaid. Have I met you before?”

Ben blinked. “Uh, no, I don’t believe so.”

“Oh,” Emily said. She looked around the office. “Have I been here before?”

Jonathan Adams interrupted. “Good grief, girl. What a lot of questions. Just say hello.”

Ben smiled. “It’s all right. I like to ask questions myself.” He took the pink woolen sweater she was holding and hung it on a hook behind the door. “How old are you, Emily?”

“I’m five,” she said, and she held out five fingers.

Five? Ben was no expert on children, but this girl appeared to be at least eight or nine. He saw Mr. and Mrs. Adams exchange another meaningful glance.

Ben squatted down to her level. “And what grade are you in?”

Emily giggled. “Not old enough for school, silly. Mommy dinn’t want me to go to kinnergarnen.”

Bertha Adams looked out the office window.

Emily abruptly changed the subject. “Do you play pat-a-cake?” She raised her hands with the palms outstretched and chanted. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can—”

Ben winked at Mrs. Adams. “I don’t think I know that one.”

“I know more,” she said. She continued chanting in the same rhythmic pattern. “A bumblebee and reverie. It will do, if bees are few—”

Mr. Adams interrupted. “Bertha, don’t you have her crayons or something?”

“Yes.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an oversized book. “Emily, honey, I brought your coloring hook.”

Emily turned and stared at the book. “What is this?”

Bertha pressed the book into her hands. “It’s your coloring book, princess. We bought it just before we came here. And here are your colors. You take them and go sit in the lobby.”

Emily frowned. “Don’t remember no lobby. Don’t know this place.”

Bertha pointed out the door toward the lobby.

“You won’t leave me, will you?”

“Of course not, child,” Mr. Adams said. “Now you go sit down and wait for us. We need to talk to Mr. Kincaid here for a spell.”