Beach Road

“Tom,” she says, “don’t ever come here again.”

Then she spins and walks down the hall, the clicking of her heels sounding even chillier than when she arrived. She never looks back.

Chapter 45. Kate

I RETREAT FROM Tom Dunleavy’s totally unexpected ambush to the sanctuary of my office. I know that sounds superficial. It’s just a room. But I’ve only had it a month, and the elegant furniture and dazzling East River view haven’t lost the power to make me feel better the instant I step inside.

Thirty-one e-mails have come in since nine last night. Eight are related to the cease-and-desist letter I messengered to the lead attorney for Pixmen Entertainment last night. Our client, Watermark, Inc., considers Pixmen’s new logo too close to one used by one of their divisions, and my letter accused them of trademark infringement and raised the prospect of aggressive legal action, including a possible freeze on all Pixmen income for the last fourteen months.

In an e-mail sent at 3:43 a.m., Pixmen’s attorney reports that the logo has been deleted from all outgoing product, and e-mails from Watermark’s attorneys express their satisfaction and gratitude. Persuasively threatening cataclysmic doom is one of the cheap thrills of my job.

A dozen other e-mails are the fallout of an embarrassing feature in American Lawyer about rising female legal stars. Many are from headhunters, but the most interesting is from the president of Columbia University, who asks if I have time to serve on the committee to find the new dean of the law school. Yes, I will find the time.

At exactly 9:00 a.m., Mitchell Susser arrives to brief me on the upcoming insider-trading trial of former Credit Mercantile managing partner Franklin Wolfe. An earlier trial, handled by one of our senior partners, ended in a hung jury, and I’ve been assigned the retrial.

“Relax, Mitch,” I say, not that it does much good. Susser, a brand-new hire who was Law Review at Harvard, has been reviewing the trial transcripts. “Wolfe,” he says, “spends way too much time implausibly denying activity that isn’t clearly illegal. It costs him his credibility and gains him almost nothing. I think a second trial is a great opportunity.”

We’re considering which of our defendant-preppers would make the best pretrial coach when Tony Reid, the “Reid” of Walmark, Reid and Blundell, sticks his eminent gray head into the room. Beside him is Randall Kane, arguably the firm’s most valuable client.

“Got a minute, Kate?” he asks rhetorically.

Susser sweeps up his papers and bolts, and Tony Reid and Kane take his place in the seating area at the far end of my office. “Of course, you know Randy, Kate.”

I don’t need to have met Kane to know him. In the process of making Bancroft Subsidiaries one of the fastest-growing corporations in the world, Kane has become an iconic business leader, the embodiment of the hard-charging CEO. With a proposal jotted down on a napkin, a colleague in another division just got him a six-million-dollar advance for a business book.

But as Reid explains with exactly the right degree of urgency, all that could be jeopardized by a just-filed class-action lawsuit. It charges Bancroft with tolerating a work environment hostile to women and allowing a pattern of widespread sexual harassment. The suit names Kane directly.

“I know I don’t need to tell you,” says Reid, “that this opportunistic litigation is nothing but thinly veiled extortion.” Based on my own experience with class-action lawyers, that’s probably true. Sophisticated ambulance-chasers, these lawyers come up with a target, prepare a suit, and then trawl for victims.

“I’m not rolling over on this one, Kate,” says Kane. “It’s total crap! Three of Bancroft’s eight senior vice presidents are women, and the company was cofounded by my wife. They’ve got the wrong guy. If I have to, I’ll take it all the way to trial.”

“I can’t believe that will be necessary,” I say, “but I assure you our response will be aggressive.”

“You bet it will!” says Randall Kane.

The rest of the day is wall-to-wall briefings, meetings, and conference calls. The company dining room delivers a chef’s salad for lunch and sushi for di

The lovely fall night reminds me of the lovely fall day I’ve missed, and I decide to walk awhile before catching a cab.

I’m taking my first steps toward mostly deserted Park Avenue -when a tall figure rises from the shadows of the small stone plaza beside our office building.

Chapter 46. Kate

WALKING STIFFLY, THE man hurries toward me, then stops before he reaches the brightly lit sidewalk.

“Half day?” he asks.

It’s Tom!

“How long you been here?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’ve always sucked at math.”

I’m shocked to see him again but, much as I hate to admit it, kind of impressed. Tom’s always been too charming by half but has never seemed the kind of guy capable of sitting on a stone bench for fifteen hours. Hell, one of our problems was that I never knew what Tom was capable of.

“Kate, you have got to hear me out. Can I please buy you a drink?” In the streetlight now, he looks exhausted, and his eyes plead. “This is a matter of life and death. That may sound lame to you, but not to Dante Halleyville.”

“A cup of coffee,” I say.

“Really? That’s the best news I’ve had in ten years.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, hoping I caught my smile in time.

The least intimate place I can think of is a Starbucks around the corner, where Tom wolfs a muffin in three or four bites and gulps down a bottle of water.

“Here’s my spiel, Kate, the one I didn’t get a chance to give you this morning. Dante Halleyville has never had one good thing happen in his entire life. When he was twelve, his father was stabbed in front of him, and he watched him bleed to death because in his neighborhood ambulances get there a lot slower than on Beach Road. His mother-a crack addict, prostitute, and thief-wasn’t much better than no mother at all. She’d been in and out of jail even before his father died. So how does Dante deal with all this? He sees he has a talent that can take him out of this world and help everyone in his family. He can play ball.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“I mean really play, Kate. A whole different level than me. The Michael Jordan-Magic Johnson level. He makes himself the best schoolboy player in the country. He’s easily good enough to go hardship and enter the League out of high school, but out of respect for his grandmother Marie, he agrees to go to college. Three weeks ago, he’s framed for four murders he had nothing to do with, Kate. Now the state of New York is seeking the death penalty. The least he deserves is a great lawyer.”

“What are you?”

“I don’t know what I am, Kate, but we both know it’s not a great lawyer. On a good day, I’m an okay lawyer trying his ass off. He needs a brilliant lawyer trying her ass off.”

“Excuse me?”

“Kate, it’s a figure of speech.”

It’s a good pitch. Tom didn’t waste those fifteen hours-but I don’t even think about it. The bastard could charm the birds out of the trees, but I’m not falling for it. Not TWICE. It’s a big world. He can find another sucker.

“Sorry, Tom. I can’t do it. But keep trying your ass off-you might surprise yourself.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tom, it’s a figure of speech. And thanks for the coffee.”