Page 6 of The Devil's Advocate

If only money came with it, maybe then it wouldn’t be so bad. Some people become lawyers with the hope of making a lot of money. Money is nice, don’t get me wrong. I like having a roll in my pocket as much as the next guy, but I like being able to sleep at night too. The more cash in your pocket, and the more scumbags you put back on the street, the harder it is to sleep. A criminal attorney’s wealth can be measured by their bank account and the weight they carry on their souls. Until that day, that magical day when they just stop giving a shit. Then, there’s just the money and it can be enjoyed without a conscience getting in the way.

I never rode that path. Getting a guilty client off was against the rules. My rules. This makes me either the worst defense attorney in the world, or the best, depending on how you looked at it. While I occasionally looked at it, if I wasreallyshort on cash, I could always hit the tables at Vegas for a weekend and that would be enough to get me over. A previous life as a con artist comes in handy when criminal work dries up for a spell. For now, I was doing just fine. My new partner, Kate Brooks, was a rainmaker. Mostly she was raining shit on big law firms and businesses in class-action sexual harassment suits. And she was damn good at it. Our investigator, Bloch, who’d come with Kate to the business, was just about the most resourceful PI I’d ever met. Bloch and Kate were childhood friends and it sure helped melt the ice on Bloch’s tongue. She didn’t talk much. Mostly she talked to Kate. That didn’t mean she was unfriendly – she spoke when she had something to say and it paid to listen.

My criminal practice was thriving. Harry Ford, retired New York Justice, and now my consultant, was able to take appointments in the office with clients while I wore my shoe leather thin in Center Street and the Brooklyn courthouse. Harry preferred to stay in the office so he could be with his dog, Clarence, who was now pretty much the office dog.

The only thing we lacked as a new firm was a good secretary to take calls, type and organize our asses. A lawyer is only as good as his administrative support – and usually only half as smart.

Kate had put an ad online for a legal secretary and was fielding the applications. There was someone due in sometime this morning for an interview, and Kate wanted me to sit in. We were joint partners, everything fifty-fifty, including decisions, good or bad. It was coming up on nine-fifteen. Our office was in Tribeca, just above a tattoo parlor. Kate had wanted offices in a shiny tower close to Wall Street – all glass, pine and leather. I couldn’t work in that kind of place, and Kate took pity on me by letting us rent a fleapit above a tattoo parlor called Stinkin’ Ink.

Kate and Bloch were shuffling bundles of papers around the Xerox machine, Harry was on the couch in the small reception area with Clarence. He’d bought Clarence a fancy new collar with a GPS locator. He’d been trying to activate the collar for the past ten minutes without success. I was trying to get the coffee machine to produce something that didn’t wipe three layers of skin off the roof of my mouth, when the buzzer rang downstairs.

‘Eddie, can you get that? I bet that’s Denise,’ said Kate.

‘Who?’

‘Denise Brown, the applicant for the secretary’s position. Didn’t you read her resume?’

‘You gave me a resume?’

‘Last week. It’s probably still on your desk.’

I couldn’t remember reading it. That’s not to say I didn’t get it. Administration is my weak spot.

I pressed the button to open the front door and waited at the top of the stairs.

Heavy footsteps made me wonder if Denise wore boots. I leaned over the rail. There, coming up the stairs, was the last man on earth I wanted to see.

He wore a trilby hat, an old gray raincoat that must’ve been a gift from a now deceased spouse because that was about the only excuse you could have for wearing it. Beneath the coat was a bespoke suit, and inside the suit was one hundred and eighty-five pounds of serious trouble.

‘Unless you’re here about the secretarial job, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave,’ I said.

He got to the top of the stairs, tipped his hat and smiled at me in a way that reminded me of a crocodile about to take a bite out of my ass.

‘My secretarial skills are not what they used to be,’ he said.

‘Can you type and make coffee? If so, you’re in. The pay is bad, but the work is lousy.’

‘I’m here about a job, Eddie. But it’s got nothing to do with typing. May I come in?’

His name was Alexander Berlin. When I last saw him, he was working for the State Department. I’d heard he’d moved around since – CIA, NSA, Justice Department. He was a fixer, and a black-ops man who bent the laws to get a result for whatever limb of federal government that happened to employ him at the time. He knew where all the government’s bodies were buried. And if he had a job for me, then I wasn’t interested.

‘I don’t need a job. Whatever it is, it’s going to be anofrom me.’

‘You haven’t heard what it is yet. Let me in for ten minutes and a hot cup of coffee. You don’t want this? Fine, I’ll walk out straight after. No hard feelings. No grudges.’

‘I think it’s premature to say you won’t hold a grudge, you haven’t tasted my coffee yet. And you won’t like my answer. I’m not interested, Berlin.’

It had been raining out. His old coat was soaked through and he was dripping on the stair carpet. We hadn’t had time to get the carpets cleaned yet, and his dripping coat was beginning to make a clean spot among the stains.

‘Hear me out, Eddie. Please,’ said Berlin.

‘Give me one good reason why I should listen to you.’

Berlin removed his hat, looked at me with heavy, wet eyes and said, ‘Because, if you don’t, a nineteen-year-old kid is going to be murdered.’

‘Murdered? Murdered by who?’

‘Technically, me.’