Blood Royal (19 page)

He made a gurgling noise.

“The scene’s all too cool for me. When they start playing sexy mind games, it’s too much for a girl from Modesto to handle.”

Two years later, Marlowe was not the same girl who arrived in Baghdad-by-the-Bay green and innocent with central valley dust in her eyes. She had her own place now, a studio apartment in a lower-income building on Polk Street in the government center area, not a fashionable address or even a respectable one, but one she could afford as she waited tables and attended the city’s junior college. She had discovered that there was a job with an almost living wage, for a single woman with no skills but good feet and plenty of stamina—waiting tables. Tips were the secret. You didn’t get tips working the hat counter at Macy’s, and despite the best-laid plans of the IRS, most of her tip money never got reported as income.

She had never communicated with or spoken to her father since she had walked out of the house over two years ago. She heard through a friend that her father had remarried. Her only curiosity about the woman who was technically her stepmother was to wonder if her father beat her.

She finished two years of college with a B-minus average, getting A’s in whatever interested her and barely passing courses she found boring. The first two years of college were general education, mostly making up for the years of high school she barely floated through. She was still technically a high school dropout because it wasn’t a California junior college requirement that she finish high school to attend. But the only doors her associate of arts junior college degree opened were out the exit doors of job interviews.

The ink was hardly dry on her diploma when she got a life-altering experience and realized what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She was waiting tables for the lunch group at the Star Chamber, a greasy spoon near the courthouse, walking distance from her apartment, when the realization came to her.

The luncheonette was frequented by lawyers. She heard shop talk every day. Almost by osmosis, she started picking up on the way lawyers thought—and she liked it. “They have a rule of law and the facts of what their client did—they argue back and forth, trying to see if they can get around the law,” she told Norma Jean, the counter waitress.

“The only thing they learn in law school is how to send bills,” Norma Jean said. “And they’re poor tippers.”

Marlowe was happy with her tips, but then again, the other woman showed her dislike of lawyers by endlessly chewing on their ears about her two mean-spirited divorces with dicey child custody battles. One of the lawyers she liked told Marlowe, “Most people see a lawyer for a divorce, a drunk driving offense, or when someone dies. And then they have to open their wallets. You can see why a lot of people think Hamlet was right when he said to kill all the lawyers.”

There were regulars who came in every day. Usually they were nice. Some were jerks. Like the lawyer who always strained to get a peek down her blouse as she bent over to pour coffee. “You stick your nose too close and you’re going to lose it,” she told him with a friendly smile. He was a good tipper.

She had learned long ago that clothes didn’t change the man. Just because they had professional degrees and wore expensive suits didn’t make them any different than the Market Street construction workers who shouted down catcalls to women passing by. Businessmen were just a little more subtle about it—they didn’t yell as loud.

She paused as she poured coffee for two lawyers arguing a divorce case. One of them claimed the wife wanted a restraining order because the husband said he was going to kill her and the kids if she divorced him. The other lawyer said, “I’ve talked to the husband, she’s a liar, she just wants his money. The guy has worked for twenty years and now she wants half of everything.”

“Of course he said it,” Marlowe said. “It’s obvious he’s threatened her.”

The husband’s lawyer smirked. “Oh, the jury is in even before there’s been any evidence presented. And what makes you think he’s a liar?”

She knew two things about the lawyer—his name was Jerry and he was a bad tipper, he had even stiffed her before. “Because she’s worried about the kids and he’s worried about money. That’s why he said it. He doesn’t want to kill her because she’s leaving him, it’s because she wants half.”

“Well, honey, you know what these two fighting and calling each other liars does to us? We laugh all the way to the bank.”

“Yeah, and what happened to truth, justice, and the American Way?”

“That law firm went bankrupt!” his companion howled.

“If you’re so smart, why don’t you become a lawyer?” Jerry said.

“Maybe I will. Maybe I will at that. It looks to me like this country needs a few good lawyers.”

“Hey, sweetie, if you want to get some legal training, you can get your hands in my briefs anytime.”

“That’ll be the day,” she threw over her shoulder as she went to pick up an order.

“Those ambulance chasers giving you a bad time?” the cook asked.

“Naw, actually they just clued me in on what I want to be when I grow up.”

“What?”

“I’m going to be a lawyer.”

“How can you become a lawyer? You haven’t even finished college.”

“I heard you don’t have to. Some law schools take you even if you don’t have a four-year college degree.”

“Where’d you get the idea you can be a lawyer?”

“Those two over there and most of the rest who come in here. They’re not any smarter than I am.”

The cook shook his head. “It’s okay to dream, kid, but be practical. It takes money to be a lawyer. And how many women lawyers have you ever seen? Tell me—after you take the lunch special to table nine.”

The notion buzzed in her head for weeks. She confided her ambition to her landlady. “It really comes down to one thing: If they can do it, why can’t I? Lawyers come into the café every day for lunch. I hear them talking about their cases. I even go over to the courthouse and watch cases. And you know what? Most lawyers aren’t any smarter than me. Some of them that come into the restaurant seem so damn stupid, you wonder how they made it to the courthouse that morning. If they can become lawyers, why can’t I?”

“Where would you get the money for law school anyway?”

“I’ll work to support myself, and there’s student loans. One of the lawyers told me there’s a law school in Sacramento that will take anyone, as long as they have the price of tuition. And it doesn’t matter where you go to law school. You take the same bar exam that people who graduate from Stanford and Harvard take.”

“It’s that easy?”

“It’s not easy. But if they did it, why can’t I?”

San Francisco, 1975

Marlowe was nervous. She hadn’t felt this nervous since the day she got off the bus in San Francisco, just shy of eighteen years old. That was more than seven years ago. She had just celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday in November.

In the years since she had dusted Modesto off her, she had gotten her junior college degree, spent nearly a year preparing for the Law School Admittance Test, and moved to Sacramento to attend law school. After four years of night school, she had taken the bar exam and waited nearly five months for the results. Slightly less than half of the people who took the California bar, of which seventy-five percent were men, passed the exam on the first attempt. Her school did not attract the best of students and the average pass rate for its students was less than one in five. While her grades had not been exemplary, studying under the disadvantage of working full-time, she had been among the one in five from her school who passed the bar.

It was now January. She had been sworn in at a ceremony conducted by a judge, had her license to practice, and was back in San Francisco. Now all she needed was a job.

To support herself through law school, she had worked as a waitress at a Denny’s restaurant in Sacramento during the school year and as a blackjack dealer at Harrah’s South Lake Tahoe Casino during summer vacation. She had sent out fifty-two résumés, directed at law firms in the Bay Area. She had chosen the number fifty-two because she had read fifty-two Perry Mason legal thrillers and had hoped for a job in criminal law.

After being turned down by the district attorney’s and public defender’s offices, and every criminal defense lawyer she contacted, she decided to try for a job at any kind of firm before she went back to dealing blackjack. She had even tried to cold-call the most famous lawyer in town, Melvin Belli, but had been tossed out of his brick building without seeing the King of Torts.

Part of the problem was that she was a woman. One Stone Age lawyer thought it was “cute” that she had gotten a law degree and offered her a job as a secretary. She politely declined.

Her break came from Stella Johnson, a woman she used to serve at the Star Chamber. Stella worked as a clerk for a judge and through her Marlowe got a referral to a prestigious law firm. “These big business firms need female lawyers. They’re under pressure from the companies they represent to hire women and minorities before the government comes down on them for discrimination.”

She didn’t have a strong interest in business law, but her interest in eating and paying her student loans propelled her to the city’s Financial District. Most of the business law firms were congregated on and around Montgomery Street, the main artery of the Financial District.

Her interview with the law firm was on one of the upper floors in the Bank of America Building, the tallest building in the city. It was a Big Firm. The named partners were all Ivy League and long dead—both factors added prestige to the firm.

She disliked the interviewer at first sight. Despite the fact that she had not earned her spurs yet in a courtroom, she had a trial lawyer’s contempt for lawyers who shuffled papers. This one not only was a paper-shuffler, but he conveyed an attitude that taking time to interview a prospective employee was a waste of his valuable time. The fact that she had lain awake nights worrying over the interview was something he cared little about.

Her résumé was on his desk and he pushed it distastefully away from him with his pen. “I can’t say that I’m impressed with your academics,” he said.

“I worked full-time,” she said.

“Yes, very commendable.” He didn’t sound sincere. “Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.” He looked up, flashing a grin. “Or we could say panty hose, couldn’t we?”

She smiled thinly.
What a jerk.
But she held her temper because Stella had referred her.

“Frankly, even though we need female lawyers, we would never consider hiring someone who wasn’t in the top ten percent of her class and in the top ten percent of the schools in the nation.”

“Well, that certainly takes me out. But I do appreciate you taking the time to see me.” She got up to leave.

“Wait a minute.” He waved her back down. “Sit down. There are other considerations besides academics.” He tapped the desktop with his pen. “We have a big case, a
very
big case, coming before Judge Bernstein, a matter of utmost importance to the firm. How well do you know the judge?”

“Judge Bernstein?” She blinked. It took a moment for her to make the connection—he was the judge Stella worked for. The interviewer probably thought the judge had referred her to the firm. She smiled and shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call him family…” In her mind it was a very lawyerlike statement, with just enough truth to avoid actual fraud: He certainly wasn’t family. In fact, she had never even met the man. Nor did she claim to have met him, no matter what her tone and body language conveyed.
Fraud by omission,
was what her contracts professor would have called it.

“Would you feel comfortable discussing legal matters with him during social occasions, subtly, of course, pillow talk sort of thing? We wouldn’t want to leave an impression that we were trying to influence him.”

Pillow talk?
Jesus, does this jerk think I’m sleeping with the judge?
She straightened in her chair. Talking to a judge behind the opposing attorney’s back was a no-no. “I wouldn’t consider speaking to him privately about any matters before his court.” She leaned back, smiled coyly, and shrugged. “Of course, if the matter came up, I would have to address it, wouldn’t I? Within the realm of the Rules of Professional Conduct.”

He rubbed his hands together and smacked his lips. “Of course, within the rules. We don’t do it any other way here at Jones, Hopper and Lewis. Welcome aboard, Marlowe. You’ll find we are a close-knit family here.”

As she walked toward the elevators, she had a pressing desire to beat it to the courthouse and finagle an introduction to Judge Bernstein from Stella. She had no intention of ever attempting to influence the man for the firm, but she ought to at least know what the man looked like in order to keep up the pretense. Not that she wouldn’t consider taking her turn on the proverbial casting room couch—in this case the one in a judge’s chamber—to get a job with the most prestigious law firm in town.

Until she got her school loans paid off and knew she had enough in the bank to eat and have a roof over her head for more than three days, she was in the market to make a deal with the devil.

“Boring, boring, boring.”

Marlowe made the pronouncement as she sat in the Albatross, a Marina District “body exchange”—a phrase that described the bars that singles crowded into after work to swap war stories about their jobs and hope to pick up someone of the opposite sex, though in San Francisco being of the opposite sex was not always a prerequisite.

She was complaining to her friend Deirdre Weiss, who worked at the same firm she did. Like Marlowe, Deirdre was in her twenties and had been with the firm for two years. Both were stuck in lawyer’s purgatory—the Law & Motion Department, where they researched and wrote briefs for
other
lawyers to argue.

“Every time I see one of my brilliant briefs heading out the door, on its way to the courthouse to be argued by some schmuck who isn’t half as sharp as I am, I want to scream.” She leaned closer to her friend and shook her head with wide-eyed frustration. “If those so-called litigators in the Trial Department screw up any more of my finely crafted work, I’m going to leap from the building.”