The House Girl (44 page)

Dresser’s assistant whispered loudly, “Ron,” raised his eyebrows and tapped his watch.

“Now,” Dresser said, glancing at the assistant, “I need to catch a flight but I wanted to come in personally and give my thanks for your hard work. This is a cause close to my heart. I’m grateful to you all for your dedication. Dan, we’ll be talking again soon, no doubt.”

Dresser and the assistant rose. Dan and Garrison jumped up to see them out, but it was Lina whom Dresser approached. She remained seated and he gazed down at her. “Lina, it was a pleasure to have worked with you. If you ever find yourself in need of employment, please give me a call.” He handed her a card. “I need people with commitment to a cause. People who believe in what they’re doing. It’s a rarity in this world.”

Without comment, Lina accepted the card. From the corner of her eye she saw Garrison, his features adrift with the effort of hiding his envy.

Dan ushered Dresser out of the room and then returned, falling into his cushioned desk chair with a soft whoosh of expelled air.

“I’m sorry to see this case go,” he said, turning toward his antique law books. His face softened and, for a fleeting, hallucinatory moment, Lina saw a younger Dan gazing fixedly at the spines of the
United States Reports
. Under-eye shadows softened; the furrows beside his mouth relaxed; his hair became less obvious, more sincerely the characteristic of a man who didn’t care what he looked like, who thought about justice and injustice, the workings of history, the cases to celebrate, the cases to be ashamed of. Then Dan turned his chair around and pulled himself flush against the desk, his face falling straight under the glare of a strip light and again he was Daniel J. Oliphant the Third, partner, Clifton & Harp LLP: tired, rushed, and annoyed.

“But it is what it is,” Dan said. “And I’ve got a shitload of derivatives work coming in. A shitload. And to be frank, this reparations case has been a tough sell for the partnership. Dave doesn’t think we need something like this right now. Easier ways to make the diversity point—it looks like we’re making up Joe this year.”

“Joe Klein, in M & A?” asked Garrison. Lina didn’t know Joe Klein, besides knowing the fact that he was black.

“Yeah, Joe Klein.” Dan nodded. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it, it still has to go to final vote, but he’s been working like a dog. The guy has no life. This isn’t affirmative action, believe me. He’s earned partnership. He’ll slide by. So that will make three black partners, which is one of the better numbers in the city, trust me on that.” Dan was speaking quickly, scanning through some papers on his desk, not looking at Lina or Garrison. Lina knew he shouldn’t be telling them this kind of information, but something seemed to have come loose in Dan.

“And Garrison, your name is being bounced around for a white-collar matter. Something with Dave.”

“Dave, Managing Partner Dave?” Garrison asked with a quick eagerness.

“The one and only. Be on your best behavior. If you impress him, you’ll go far. Now get back to your office. I’m sure his secretary will be calling you soon.”

Garrison left, casting a half-smile and raised eyebrows at Lina; he looked self-satisfied but dazed too, like a man who has just been given the thing he’d been asking for but is now unsure if it is in fact the thing he wants.

Lina knew she should leave too. There was no reason to stay. But was this really where the case would end, with the too-sweet smell of Dresser’s cologne still hanging in the air and that photo of Dan’s ageless, grinning twins staring at her?

The window washer hung suspended behind Dan’s desk. His arms were in constant motion: circle, circle, pull, circle, circle, pull. He seemed perfectly at ease, more at ease than any of them, more sure of himself and the rightness of his task, the utility of it. Suspended thirty-four stories above a hard concrete planet.

“Did you read what I found?” Lina asked. “Did you see?”

“Yeah, good work, Lina. Probably a bit more detail than we need for the initial brief, but a good first draft. You’d make a great private investigator. I’ll remember that about you. You’re like a dog with a bone.”

On another day, Lina would have said thank you. Or laughed. But now she said nothing.

She thought of Dan sitting in this office, looking out over Midtown, Bryant Park and the library, and, if he leaned his cheek against the glass and kept his gaze level, he would see the rising expanse of Lower Manhattan, Wall Street, and, long ago, the Twin Towers. The best of New York there from these windows. Dan spent his days and nights behind this expanse of glass, his wife and children behind glass, his antique books behind glass. Everything there for him to see, but he didn’t know what any of it really felt like.

The harder road to walk,
Dresser had said to her. And now, finally, Lina got it. Her road was not here. She didn’t know where it might be, but it was not at Clifton & Harp LLP.

Lina stood up to leave. Dan had his head down, shuffling pages. A blue vein on his neck pulsed faintly. He said nothing as she walked out.

Back at her desk, Lina closed her door and opened the reparations brief to page thirty-four. She reread what she had written there:

Lina flipped the cover of the brief closed. She walked out of her office, past Sherri’s cubicle, past all those associate offices with half-closed doors, past the elevator, and up six flights of stairs until she reached Dan’s office.

Outside, Lina paused to catch her breath. Then she pushed open the door.

“Dan, I need to talk to you.”

Dan looked up slowly from the papers on his desk. “Lina. Yes?”

“I quit,” she said and felt an uncomplicated, lovely thrill.

“What?”

“I quit. I’m leaving.” Again, that rush.

“Hmm …” Dan frowned. “Why?”

Although Lina had anticipated this question, she still wasn’t sure how precisely to answer it. “I—I—I can’t do this job anymore. I don’t
want
to do it. Clifton isn’t for me.” The words flew across Dan’s expansive carpet and landed on the polished surface of his desk, weightier than any brief, truer than any law.

“Ha. I used to think the same thing.” Dan tilted his head back. His eyes roamed the ceiling and then he lowered his gaze. “All right then, go.” He shooed his hand at her. “And make sure you release all your time. We’ve decided to bill Dresser by the hour for all the reparations work. None of this contingency bullshit.”

“Okay,” Lina said. “Will do.” She had been expecting some kind of drama, raised voices or persuasive argument, or at least a hug, but Dan remained firmly rooted behind his mammoth desk and Lina did not move toward him. “Bye, Dan,” she said.

Dan smiled a tired smile; his climate-controlled bookshelves shifted off with what sounded like a sigh. “Good-bye, Lina.”

L
INA RETURNED TO HER OFFICE
. Sherri was standing just outside her cubicle. “I heard you quit!” she said, giddy with the gossip.

“
Already?
But it just happened.”

“Yeah, well. Mary.” Sherri shrugged her shoulders, her neck disappearing for a moment within the muddle of her curls. “But listen, what do you need? The security guards will be here soon so—quick, how can I help?” Lina had never seen Sherri so eager to assist.

“Security guards?”

“Clifton doesn’t like people hanging around. No long good-byes. Too much opportunity for sabotage.” The last word Sherri said with a drawn-out drama as though this were a Bond film and Lina the turncoat.

Lina handed Sherri her copy of the brief with its numbered exhibits and the additional documents she’d uncovered in her search for Josephine Bell. “I need three copies of this. In three separate envelopes,” she said.

“No problem.” Sherri winked at Lina. “You know, I never pegged you for a Clifton lawyer anyhow.”

Lina scanned the hallway for approaching security guards, but saw what could only have been a stray law school student attempting without success to send a fax. She heard the young woman curse faintly. Lina closed her office door, picked up her phone, and dialed the number for the Bell Center archives.

“Nora,” she said. “It’s Lina Sparrow. I was hoping we could talk about the Stanmore Foundation.”

S
HERRI RETURNED WITH THE COPIED
documents and helped Lina pack up her things. There wasn’t much—Oscar’s small painting, the snow globe, the photo of her parents, an extra pair of pantyhose. The statuesque Meredith passed Lina’s open office door and stopped, wide-eyed.

“You’re
leaving
?” she exclaimed, and hugged Lina good-bye with a sincerity that made Lina wonder if, all this time, she had misjudged Meredith. Perhaps they could have been friends after all, and Lina felt a shallow stab of regret.

“We’ll miss you, Lisa,” Meredith said, and Lina only smiled and grabbed her cardboard box, which was small enough to fit under one arm. She marched steadily down the long hallway toward the elevator bank, pausing only at the office of a corporate partner who liked to play high-volume reggae music on his Bose system. Steel drums and
Stir it up, little darling
drifted from his half-cracked door. Lina listened for a moment, catching a glimpse of a bald, bobbing head, and then kept walking.

In the elevator, Lina exhaled as she sank away from the canned office air and light, down to the gleaming lobby of black marble and chrome, out onto the sidewalk, people and sunshine and smog, honking cars, a bus wheezing to a stop at the corner and Lina quickened her pace to catch it.

T
HIRTY-SIX MINUTES LATER
, L
INA STOOD
in a different sort of office building, this one ivy-covered and loud with rushing students, walls cluttered with posters announcing end-of-year exam dates, review sessions, books for sale. After wandering through a maze of narrow, cluttered corridors, Lina finally found the right door:
PORTER R. SCALES, STERLING J. HAWKES PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY
. According to the website for “Modern American Painting,” the class he was teaching this semester at Columbia, Porter was currently holding open office hours. Lina knocked.

“Just a moment,” Porter’s voice called, and she heard the rustling of papers, a cough, and Porter opened the door.

“Lina! How nice to see you. I thought it was odd, someone knocking on my door. No one comes to office hours. I mean, not a single student. Am I so brazenly clear in my lectures? Or do they just not care?”

“Brazenly clear, I’m sure,” Lina said.

“Please come in,” Porter said and Lina stepped into his office, which was small and jumbled but with a lovely view over the Columbia quad, emerald-green trapezoids bordered with straight-edged paths, the students moving along them with the purpose and steady pace of worker ants.

“I can’t stay long,” Lina said. “I just wanted to give you this.” She handed over the packet of copied documents. “This is everything I’ve uncovered in my research into Josephine Bell. Josephine was the artist, not Lu Anne. These documents prove it.”

Lina paused. Her heart was beating very fast.

“And I’ve written down the phone number of Nora Lewis, the archivist at the Bell Center. She’s agreed to speak with you. The Stanmore Foundation isn’t playing fair. Their lawyers are destroying evidence. Nora will give you the details.”

Porter took the papers from Lina and looked at them with confusion.

“But why are you giving all of this to me?”

“I’ve quit my job. And the reparations case has been suspended,” Lina said quickly, not pausing to explain any further. “But Porter, I want you to write about Josephine Bell. I want you to tell her story. I want her to get credit for what she did. Please. She can’t just disappear.”