Rough Trade (32 page)

I remembered my roommate’s countless stories of patients who’d come into her emergency room shot five or six times. The important thing, I told myself, was to be sure to keep Bennato sufficiently off balance to prevent him from controlling where he hit me. I remember thinking that even if I could not take his gun away, I could take away his choice of how and when to use it.

I don’t remember making the decision to charge. I’m sure it wasn’t made consciously. I don’t even remember being shot. All I remember is tackling Bennato around the ankles, his body falling on top of mine, and the two of us rolling around on the floor, scrabbling after the gun.

Somehow I managed to get on top of him and get my hands around his throat. It was then that I realized my entire left side was slick with blood and I was having a hard time making my hand work. I kept on telling it to squeeze, but it wasn’t doing any good.

“Hey!” said Jake Palmer, walking in through the garage, carrying Chrissy, still unconscious, over his shoulder like a spoil of war. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Help... me,” I managed to gasp.

“What the fuck,” was all he said before he stepped up neatly and kicked Coach Bennato in the head. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, pulled the antenna out with his teeth, and began to dial. “What are you doing here?” I gasped, slipping too rapidly into shock to seem appropriately grateful.

“When Gorman called me back, I tried you at the number out here, but nobody answered so I figured I might as well take a ride, you know. I mean, hey, I heard you say that it was a matter of life or death that you talk to this guy, but I never figured you meant it literally.”

CHAPTER 28

Football season was finally over. The Monarchs had finished out the year in the toilet. The team was in shambles. Coach Bennato was in jail getting ready to stand trial for murder. His wife, Marie, and his daughter, Debra, brought him casseroles every day.

My shoulder had needed surgery. Luckily I drew the same crew who’d tried to patch up Jeff. Chrissy and I were even roommates again, this time in the intensive care ward, but only for one night. Her recovery was quick and complete. She brought baby Katharine to visit me every day.

Stephen came, too, but it was more obvious now than ever that without a business problem to chew on between us there was really nothing to say. He brought flowers and left sheepishly. He only came the one time.

As usual, Cheryl had been right. Not only that it was about time that I broke things off with Stephen, but that my partners would eventually forget about Avco and the $250,000. Gus Rolle, my nemesis on the management committee, was discovered to have embezzled something like $2 million from a client’s trust account in order to feather a love nest for his twenty-two-year-old secretary. By the time the Brandt brothers were finally indicted on charges of selling child pornography, my transgressions had, for the most part, been forgotten.

The shoulder had turned into a real pain. Not only did I need surgery, but I had to wear it in a weird kind of suspension splint that kept my elbow above my ear. Wearing anything but a cape was nearly impossible, and sleeping was a real treat. Eventually it was replaced by an arm cast and now, finally, just a sling. I had reached the point where the temptation to use the arm was practically irresistible, and Cheryl had taken to scolding me whenever she caught me at it.

The new apartment was finished, gorgeous, and empty. While Paul Riskoff and I had become the best of friends, Stephen and I had been reduced to squabbling over the furniture. That’s why I was at the apartment that Sunday morning, enjoying the thin January sunshine as it poured in through my perfectly arched windows. I was going through the apartment matching the furniture that had already been delivered to the checks that had paid for, trying to figure out who owed who what. I was surprised when the house phone rang and the doorman asked me if I wanted him to send Elliott Abelman up.

We hadn’t seen that much of each other in the weeks since I’d been hurt. He’d come to the hospital, of course, and we’d resumed our phone-friend habit, but nothing more. I sensed a certain reluctance in him, a desire not to crowd. I think he was waiting for me to come to him. For the time being, I thought I might as well leave it at that.

Apparently Elliott had been out running. He appeared to be almost totally swathed in Gore-Tex, and his face was ruddy from the cold.

“I brought you a housewarming present,” he said. “I was just planning on leaving it with your doorman, and then I saw your car out front.” He pulled a flat paper bag out of his warm-up and handed it to me.

“Classy wrapping paper,” I remarked.

“It’s for your coffee table,” he said, as I pulled the latest issue of
Milwaukee Magazine
from the bag. On the cover was a picture of a smiling Chrissy Rendell, her arms thrown around Paul Riskoff’s shoulders. The title ran
: MILWAUKEE’S NEW DYNAMIC DUO.

“Thank you,” I said. “I shall treasure it always. Now all I need is a coffee table.”

“You know, that Chrissy is quite a fox,” remarked Elliott with a wolfish grin. “Now that she’s single again I was wondering if you’d mind fixing me up with her.”

I took the magazine and heaved it at him with my good arm. I only missed him by an inch.

A Conversation with Gini Hartzmark

Q: Describe Kate Millholland. How is she different from otherfemale sleuths?

A: Kate is a young Chicago corporate attorney specializing in the kind of fast-paced, transaction-driven law that is only done in large firms like Callahan Ross, the staid and self-satisfied firm of which Kate is now a partner. She is also a Millholland, which means that her family is a big deal in Chicago in the same way that the Kennedys are a big deal in Boston.

Kate is smart, she is strong, and—like most other female sleuths—she is also an outsider. What makes her different is that the worlds that she stands outside of are those of the quintessential
insider
—old money and corporate law. She is not only independent but difficult. (Some would say impossible.)

Q: Is Kate modeled after someone you know?

A: Yes and no. Kate began life as a construct, a device. I knew that I wanted to write a series character and the premise of the series was that every book would take the reader inside a different business. I also knew I wanted to write a woman, but I didn’t know enough about police work to write a credible cop and I felt uncomfortable with a female P.I., which has been done successfully by so many others. Given my background, a lawyer seemed a natural. Of course, back when I was making these decisions, Scott Turow had yet to write
Presumed Innocent
and John Grisham was just another plaintiff’s attorney in Oxford, Mississippi. The choice of Kate’s background—great wealth and old money— came directly from my experiences attending an exclusive girls’ prep school. While I didn’t share Kate’s pedigree, I had classmates who did, and I was interested in writing about the narrowness of that world and the contradictory mix of unlimited opportunity and suffocating expectations that characterize it.

I used to reply incredulously to all inquiries about whether Kate and I were alike. After all, I sit alone in my office in a torn sweatshirt writing novels and taking care of a household that includes three school-age children and a husband with a very demanding career, while Kate, dressed in an Armani suit, deals with her glamorous clients and their high-stakes corporate problems. In her spare time she carries on with brilliant and impossibly handsome Stephen Azorini. Yeah, right. We have a lot in common. Of course, the truth is that we do. We share the same cranky outlook and have a similar disregard for what other people think of us. Neither of us has much use for authority, which is why I write books (my characters do what I want them to do or I kill them) and Kate is perennially in trouble with the senior partners at her firm.

Q: Why did you decide to write a series character?

A: I always wanted to write a series because those are the books that I’ve always loved best. I grew up reading about Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and later Lord Peter Wimsey and George Smiley. As a reader it is wonderful to be able to spend time with a character you enjoy book after book. As a writer I enjoy having the luxury of having the character grow and change over the course of many stories as opposed to just one.

Q:What are the challenges of writing a series character?

A: For me the hardest thing about writing a series is introducing Kate and the continuing characters in every book. It’s not just that I know that the readers of the previous books are already familiar with them while others are meeting them for the first time, but rather that it is difficult to present the same information (Kate’s background, profession, widowhood, etc.) in a fresh way each time.

There are also weird problems, like the fact that it always works out to be winter in the books. In part it is chronological, because the books follow one after another and the first book in the series,
Principal Defense,
begins in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which put me on a certain schedule. After
Fatal Reaction,
I was determined to write a summer book, but because
Rough Trade,
the next book in the series, was about the business of major league sports, specifically a football team, it had to be fall. So here I sit in monotonously sunny Phoenix
(not
a conducive climate for a mystery writer—I crave downright gothic amounts of clouds and rain) with the air-conditioning set at arctic levels, writing about the snowy Chicago skyline.

Q: How do you keep track of Kate’s characteristics and behavior (so you don’t contradict yourself in later books) ? Do you reread the previous books before writing a new one? Do you keep a written record? Or do you have an incredible memory?

A: After five books, a lot of Kate’s characteristics and behavior are second nature to me. After all, when you think about it, I spend a lot more time with her than with my husband. I do reread the previous book before beginning the next one, but that’s more a function of trying to get Kate’s voice back in my head and wanting to avoid repeating myself. From time to time I also flip back through the well-worn copies of the previous books that I keep on a corner of my desk to check details. Still, I make mistakes, especially with names of very minor characters. For example, the name of the wife of the managing partner in Kate’s law firm changes from Bitsy to Betsy from book to book.

Q: How does Kate change over the course of your books?

A: Kate changes like a real person, as a result of experience and the passage of time, but more slowly. Time in Kate’s world passes only half as fast as it does in real life in order to give me a chance to write about this period in her life.

Still, she’s changed quite a bit over the course of five books. Not only has she grown more confident in her professional life, but as she puts more years between herself and her husband Russell’s death, she is beginning to face up to the issues of her personal life.

Q: Do other characters grow along with Kate?

A: I’m not sure that they grow, but they do seem to progress. Her secretary, Cheryl, will be finishing law school and moving on to her own practice, which will not only add a different dimension to their relationship but also make way for a new character close to Kate. Claudia, Kate’s roommate, is also moving ahead with her medical training and bringing changes.

I think there’s no question that in
Fatal Reaction
the pressures on Azor Pharmaceuticals have made Kate’s boyfriend, Stephen, much more critical and demanding, which I think is only to be expected.

This interview originally appeared in a slightly different form in Murder on the Internet.

If you liked
Rough Trade,

don’t miss the other

Kate Millholland novels

by Gini Hartzmark

PRINCIPAL DEFENSE

FINAL OPTION

BITTER BUSINESS

FATAL REACTION

Published by Ivy Books.

Available at your local bookstore.