Blood Royal (20 page)

“Sure. And they would wash you off the sidewalk, send your mortal remains down the drain, and go back to doing what they do best, fucking up other people’s work.”

Marlowe shook her head. “If there is anything I’ve learned in my cosmic journey from high school dropout to big-firm lawyer, it’s that there’s no justice in this world. We’re being held back because we are women and we’re not rainmakers. It’s not fair.”

Rainmaker
was an old term that described a new profession—people who brought in business to law firms. Unlike smaller law firms, big firms did not operate off of referrals from satisfied clients. Not only was their overhead too high for the capricious nature of referrals, but lawyers had to actually
win
cases to have satisfied clients. The financial wheel of the new age of law practice was the rainmaker, someone who brought to the firm a source of business. Some rainmakers were truth hustlers—and hucksters—who promoted their firm for businesses not unlike Willy Loman and generations of other salesmen. But selling took a talent that few business lawyers had. Most rainmakers had a connection created by marriage or were born into it. The classic example was the lawyer whose uncle was the claims manager at an insurance company. That lawyer, who may never have won a case or even appeared in a courtroom, was more valuable than all the best trial lawyers in the firm put together. Lawyers capable of trying cases could be hired—but having a “connection” was a rare condition that graced only the lucky few.

“We’re going to have to do sex change operations before they let us try cases,” Deirdre said. “These Neanderthals don’t believe women have the gray matter to argue important cases.”

“Bullshit,” Marlowe said, “they believe it and it scares the hell out of them.”

They laughed and toasted each other.

Deirdre said, “I hear you’re going down to San Diego with Chunky Chucky for the Weinstock products liability case. Have you ever been there?”

Chunky Chucky was Charles Bellman, the head of the Law & Motion Department. New to the firm and position, he had been head of the unit for six months. Chunky Chucky wasn’t a name they called him to his face. He wasn’t overweight enough for anyone to castigate his belt line, but he had a fat face that twisted into a scowl whenever he was displeased at a subordinate’s work product—which was almost all the time. Chucky was a rainmaker. His father-in-law, a deputy city attorney, directed business his way. It was enough to guarantee him a job as a section chief when he wasn’t capable of supervising the maintenance crew.

He was a bureaucratic swine, ruthless and arbitrary to anyone weak, and the only human being that Marlowe regularly prayed would fall under the wheels of the cable car he rode to work on every day down California Street.

“Never been to San Diego, and in answer to your unasked questions, yes, I will hate the place just because he will be there, and no, I’m not willing to sleep with Chucky to get transferred over to the trial unit.”

“He’s taking Eileen along, too.”

“Uh-huh, he’s a predator. He knows Eileen will fuck him just because he makes a show of authority.”

“Another Margo.”

Margo had been a new hire last year. She only lasted three months. After she worked on a case into the evening with a senior partner more than twice her age, he took her to dinner at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. After dinner, he took her by the hand and led her up to a room he had already rented and had sex with her. A couple weeks later, Margo tearfully told Marlowe and Deirdre the story of her “rape.” Both of them had listened openmouthed at the tale and offered no sympathy.

“You can’t rape a grown woman with a show of executive authority,” Marlowe told her. “You should have told him you were out of there when he started for the elevator.”

Not getting any sympathy, and angry at herself for letting her boss get into her pants, Margo quit and went back to St. Louis.

Part of Marlowe’s lack of sympathy was related to the fact that Margo had asked Marlowe where she had gone to school and had gaped when Marlowe rattled off a junior college and an unaccredited law school.

Marlowe said, “With Eileen, he’s playing with fire. She’s going through a divorce and she’s emotionally distraught and vulnerable. She’s liable to freak out and run down the hallways at work screaming that Chucky’s just a little prick.”

“And a premature ejaculator!” Deirdre howled.

*   *   *

S
AN
D
IEGO WAS A
nightmare. The firm equipped a satellite office at the Desert Princess Hotel near the courthouse to support the products liability trial. Desks and chairs, cases of lawbooks, IBM Selectric typewriters, secretaries, the whole nine yards were there along with Marlowe and Chunky Chucky. Eileen had taken ill with the flu and didn’t make it. That left Marlowe having to work side by side with Chucky.

“Someday we’ll have business computers as small as travel trunks that will be able to hold dozens of lawbooks,” Chucky told her confidently over dinner.

Marlowe smothered a yawn. She personally didn’t think a computer was something mobile, and couldn’t care less—who could improve upon books and the IBM Selectric?

They had been in town three days and it was the first evening she had to share alone with her boss. The other dinners had been business sessions with the trial attorneys. The case had been settled and they’d be packing up and returning to Frisco in the morning. Marlowe told herself she could stand being alone with Chucky for at least another twenty or thirty minutes before she ran screaming from the hotel’s lounge. She had thought she’d be a free woman once dinner was over, but he steered her toward the lounge as soon as they walked out of the adjoining restaurant.

She had to keep reminding herself that he was her boss, and that she now had a condo and a car to support. She ordered a soda and went into a catatonic state, staring at him with glazed-over eyes as he popped down Jack Daniel’s on the rocks and told her the utterly boring details of his life. The only saving grace was that the lounge was dark and they were in the dimmest corner, making it unnecessary for her to cringe when people saw her with a man she considered a total loser.

She was tapping the table with the long wooden spear that had pronged the cherry that came with her soda, her mind a million miles away, when she realized that he had changed the subject to career opportunities for her at the firm—and that his hand was up her skirt. It was a hot day and she had shed her panty hose before dinner.

He leaned against her and blew whiskey breath against her neck. “Let’s fuck.”

She sat perfectly still. Her mind and body were frozen, but she smelled the bad breath he was panting on her and felt the finger that was trying to violate her.

She reacted without thinking, jabbing at his face with the cocktail stick. It caught him in his right nostril. He yelped and grabbed his nose.

He shook with rage as he stopped the bleeding from his nose with a napkin. “You’re fired, you fucking bitch.”

She was ready for him. “No, I’m not finished, you are. I’m calling the police and having you arrested for rape, then I’m calling your wife and telling her you raped me, then I’m calling your father-in-law. You slimy bastard, you’ll be out on the street and selling your ass to chicken hawks in the Tenderloin when I get through with you.”

*   *   *

C
HUCKY ARRANGED HER TRANSFER
to the trial section immediately upon their return to San Francisco.

Marlowe prided herself on the fact that she had not blackmailed him to get the transfer. That would have been unethical, she told herself. However, after tears and pleading on his part, she decided she wouldn’t push the matter, rationalizing that she was protecting his wife and kids from his indiscretions.

Back in her condo in the city, she asked herself if it was really right for her to benefit from the incident, whether the world would have been better off had she had him arrested. She decided that, one, it would be a cold day in hell before he ever tried anything with another woman; two, she really did feel sorry for his family; and three, it was a tough world, no one was cutting her any slack, she had to fight for everything she got and had to work twice as hard as everyone else because they all seemed to have the right family or good fortune to have things come easier than they came to her.

She believed in an-eye-for-an-eye justice, that if you lived by the sword, you had to be prepared to die by the sword.

Chucky was just lucky she took the transfer and didn’t cut off his dick.

“Boring, boring, boring,” Marlowe told Deidre. “I’ve been in Trials for three months and all I’ve done is carry the briefcase for those bastards.”

She and Deidre were in their favorite watering hole again, the Albatross, the neighborhood body exchange. “Those bastards” were the four senior lawyers in the unit.

“Do you know James Stapp, the blond, good-looking guy with the cute southern accent? He’s two years older than me and he’s been in Trials for four years and has never done a trial. Can you imagine? Four years and has never done a trial. He’s only appeared as second chair in small cases and third chair in big cases and he never gets to open his mouth in any case. He has to wait for one of those bastards to die before he’ll get a chance to stand up and clear his throat and say ‘Your Honor—’” Marlowe emphasized the last two words in a southern accent.

“Stop it, you’re killing me,” Deirdre moaned. She was laughing so hard she spilled her drink.

“Look at all this talent going to waste,” Marlowe said. “I’m at least a hundred and thirty pounds of dynamic lawyer and my talents are being employed to gofer for fossils who probably went to law school with Lincoln.”

“Lincoln was a log-cabin type, I’m sure he didn’t go to law school.”

“Irrelevant, immaterial, inadmissible hearsay. Here’s the bottom line: My basic legal education is that I’ve read fifty-two Perry Mason books. I’m best qualified to represent beautiful people who murder their millionaire spouses and come into my office and lay the smoking gun on my desk when they hire me. I can’t get up a passion when Big Corporation A sues Big Corporation B because B is selling widgets that resemble those made by A. Do you know that some idiot in the office has suggested we all wear T-shirts around the office that say
BORN TO BILL
?”

“That was my suggestion.”

“I rest my case.”

They were silent for a moment, then Deirdre said, “Look, you’ll never be satisfied until you’re your own boss. You should become a sole practitioner before you bitch yourself to death.”

“Three terrible mistakes keep me from hanging up my own shingle. I don’t have parents who would support me while I get a practice going, I don’t have a man to support me while I get a practice going, and I already have an overhead to support. It’s the trap a steady job snarls you in. A steady paycheck lets you buy things on time, get a cool apartment in the Marina, buy that cute little Mustang convertible I can’t live without.”

“You’re right, we’re trapped because we’ve reached a comfort zone.”

As they chatted, Marlowe noticed a young man about her age across the bar. He was interesting on several counts, not the least of which was that he was a new face rather than the same old, same old that came to the place. But she liked everything about him, including the casual, rugged way he dressed in a city where suits and ties were the uniforms of almost any day—khaki pants, a brown leather aviator jacket that had come into vogue, tough hiking boots, plus he was over six feet. His light brown hair complemented light blue eyes, his tush was round and firm, with more shape than most men had.

“Good God, I’m in love.”

Deirdre gave him the once-over. “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.”

“You’re never going to get the chance,” Marlowe said. She sat her drink on the bar and went across the room. “Hello.”

The man with the aviator jacket grinned at her. “Hi.”

“My name is Rockefeller,” Marlowe said. “I’ve got so much money, I can’t spend it all. I’m looking for a man to amuse me. The right man will find himself the possessor of wealth and erotic pleasure beyond anything he ever imagined.”

“My kind of woman,” he said. “Rich, beautiful, totally immoral. Would you like to go someplace quiet and romantic where we can get together for five minutes and learn each other’s names before we make love?”

“Sure, but just one thing,” Marlowe said with a straight face. “My chauffeur drove away with my purse. Can you pay my bar tab?”

He patted his pockets. “Funny thing, but my valet forgot to give me my wallet. I’m afraid you’re going to have to pick up the tab or we’ll both be washing beer glasses.”

She picked up the tab. It would become a habit.

She married Barry Park two weeks later on impulse when they were in South Lake Tahoe gambling.

She hadn’t realized how lonely she had been. She had no family to fall back onto and had few friends. Other than casual dates and occasional short-lived love affairs, she had no serious entanglements with men. Barry brought light into her life, filled the voids.

She soon came to realize that she and Barry barely knew each other. They had an intense, almost violently sexual attraction. But they were strangers who had to get to know each other. Their compatibility was entirely in the bedroom.

Barry had rugged good looks, prime-time TV if not movie-star quality. But the genetic lottery that gave him good looks wasn’t backed up by the mental qualities of a winner. Barry managed to step into it in almost every aspect of life, but never getting close to succeeding. He got through three years of college, but never went back for the final year and a degree. His doting mother, who was successful herself as an entrepreneur of a small business producing high-end baby clothes, paid for his expensive business school program despite his lackluster college record. He failed to complete that also.

When Marlowe met him, he was working for a Financial District brokerage firm. Good stockbrokers made big money and he boasted he was the best. He certainly looked the part, expensive clothes and cherry-red Corvette convertible, but she discovered the morning after the impromptu wedding that she had to cover his overdrawn checking account and that he was behind in his bills.