Unfit to Practice

“They’re talking,” Nina said. “Now what?”

“Wait,” said Paul.

After a few moments, Riesner got up.

“She’s letting him go?” Nina asked, amazed.

He walked toward the rest rooms and disappeared inside. Scholl watched him go in. A minute passed. Although she continued to watch for Riesner, she and Kevin began to talk again.

A moment’s distraction was all it took.

With the swooping, invisible speed of a short-track ice skater, Riesner skidded out, ducked around behind Scholl, and headed for the elevators. Nina and Paul, trying to stay out of sight, followed as quickly as they could.

By the time they got to the nearest elevator, the doors were already closing. The elevator ascended, Riesner clearly visible through the glass. Then it stopped. Then it started up again. Nina and Paul tipped their heads back, observing it.

“The fifth floor,” she said. “He got off. Let’s go.” She pressed the elevator button.

“No, Nina. You stay down here and watch these two. And call the police. Wait for them. Direct them up to the fifth floor. I’ll hold him until they get here.”

She experienced a fear so intense in her belly she thought she would fall down with the pain. “I don’t want you to go.”

“Look, Nina, he’s a white-collar coward, not a mobster,” he said. “I’m tougher than him, and I hope you know that much. And then, I’ve got a gun, remember?” He touched the back of her neck with his finger. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine as long as you are.”

“Got your pepper spray?”

She patted her bag.

“Keep it handy.”

He hurried down to the end of the long courtyard and took the stairs up.

Leaning against a wall near the restaurant, Nina took out her mobile phone and tried to make a call to 911. Busy. She tried again, got through, and waited on hold. Was this legal, no one answering an emergency call instantly? While she held on with growing dread, watching Scholl and Cruz with one eye, her call-waiting buzzed. She took the call.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. Wish.”

“I can’t talk.”

“Wait, Nina, this is important! I found the rest of the note from my mom. It says, ‘Received transcript of Gleb testimony. Forger is extrovert, likes money, craftsman.’ ”

“I’m sorry, Wish, I have to go.”

“And I forgot to tell you, she left a paper bag with something in it-wait a sec-” Paper rattled through the phone line and then Wish said in a puzzled voice, “Huh. It’s this wooden lazy Susan my dad uses out in the garage. She brought it home from her old office one Christmas.”

An image came to Nina of a man in a dark basement, carving for hours to make a perfect tiny puppet replica of Nina that he jerked around in private. “That’s your mom’s way of warning me it’s Riesner,” she said.

“We cracked it!”

“We sure did,” she said, clicking him off. What a trial that boy must be to his mother.

“ 911,” a woman’s voice said suddenly.

Okay, elapsed waiting time not long at all. “Yes, I’m-” A sharp poke to her back stopped her.

“I’ll take that.” A hand reached out and snapped her phone shut.

“Hello, Counselor,” Jeffrey Riesner’s voice said. “I spotted you and your knucklehead friend back there quite a while ago. Nice of him to leave you alone for me. Makes things much easier.” He yanked her bag away and tossed it on the ground, and dumped the phone after it. “Now I think we take a little walk. This way.”

He steered her along the low rectangular pond, back toward the elevators. She swallowed, trying to find her voice. “You don’t want to do this!” she said.

“Shut the hell up and get in there.” He shoved her into a waiting elevator and pushed a button. Once inside, she faced his moist face. She faced his gleaming gun.

“You won’t shoot me. You’re not a killer,” she said. “You’re a lawyer.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You will never again embarrass me in front of my colleagues. You will never win again.”

“Wait. We can make a deal, Jeff.”

The floor numbers lit up as they passed. There was no thirteenth floor, which made the fourteenth floor her unlucky alternative. The elevator stopped there. He pushed her out. “Walk.”

She walked down a long hallway, echoes of laughter and music emanating from the gaping open space beyond the balcony’s edge. She thought of screaming. But he would shoot her. He held her in a grip like iron.

“There will be no deals,” he said. “There will be a sad death, your death, because, by God, I will not let you get away from me. If I can’t see you ruined I will see you dead. Suicide, out of disgrace. Too bad it’s such a crude solution.”

“Kevin Cruz won’t be a party to this! And what about Scholl?”

“Cruz? He’s in my pocket too deep to peep. And Scholl’s an idiot.” Riesner imitated Scholl’s deliberate voice. “‘Thing is, you stole the Bronco. That makes you my problem and I’m takin’ you in.’ All she could think about was your broken-down truck! I’ll find a way to keep her quiet and happy.”

“What’s this about? Why do you-hate me?”

His hand on her tightened. “Because your smelly perfume and your messy hair make me sick. Because you steal my clients. Because you despise me. But most of all because you are ruining me. They want to fire me.”

“They can’t! You’re a partner! Besides, you can always get another job!”

“They want to fire me and hire you to take my place.”

“What? No! But I would never take it!”

“Ever since you fucked me so completely in that casino case, ever since then, they’ve been riding me. I lost our biggest client that day. The casinos want me gone and you in. It’s been Reilly this and Reilly that. So brilliant. Such a star in the legal firmament.” The words sputtered out of him like spit. “I won’t be humiliated by a woman. By you.”

Nina struggled to say something soothing, something to save her life, but she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it. She hated him at this moment almost too much to try to save herself. He watched her try.

“It’s-just-business,” she managed finally, thickly.

“I am my business.”

Seeing they were coming to the end of the long hall, she stopped, turned, and faced him. “You don’t have to kill me. You’re good enough to get out of this.”

“For years now I’ve watched you,” Riesner said. “Clicking down the halls of the court. I detest the sound of your officious, vain little shoes.”

“Jeff-I saved your life once.”

“Your mistake.” His stony expression scared her more than anything. She had always been able to goad him before, always been able to arouse some kind of reaction. This time, the granite cold of his eyes told her everything. He meant to kill her.

He moved in closer and put a hand on her rear, pinching her buttock. “Get up there. Hmm. You’ll need a life-” He caught her around the waist with his free hand.

She jerked away from him. Knocking back against the balcony’s wall, she felt for her suit pocket.

He grabbed her, lifted her up to the shoulder-high railing while she struggled, and pushed. The balcony wall did not end with the usual narrow railing. Extending beyond it only a couple of inches below the edge of the balcony railing was a flat metal grid at least two feet wide, exactly like a ladder on its side, designed to prevent nasty accidents. Now, out of balance on that grid, fighting for her life, she rummaged in her pocket, turned toward Riesner, pulled out the pepper spray canister she had stuck in there on Paul’s reminder, and sprayed directly at his face.

Nothing came out. The canister was empty. She had forgotten to get a new one after using it on Riesner once before!

Unable to get her loose from his position on the floor, he threw a leg up and joined her on the grid.

“Paul!” she yelled. “Help!”

Trying to get her off-balance, Riesner hit her in the face.

Her eyesight blurred on his face. She leaned back, then smashed the canister straight into his eye as hard as she could.