So far, his proudest “outlaw” moment to date had been when he hacked into the computer system for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority and screwed up all the regional rail times. He had wanted to make a point about how a system supported by public funding should serve the public more reliably. Unfortunately, SEPTA itself screws up the rail times on a daily basis, and thus, nobody noticed. Nevertheless, he was completely convinced that the FBI was following him for a month afterward and he scheduled many billable client conferences, despite Dana’s assurance that he was probably safe.
“I’ve been trying to contact Dana all morning but she doesn’t answer,” he said, sounding even more nervous than usual. And this was a guy who I was sure owned more than one tinfoil hat.
“She’s in a Continuing Legal Education class all day. Hey, how did you know I would be walking through here now?” I squinted at him suspiciously. Trog was a wackado and a geek, but he had never been a creepy stalker, to my knowledge at least.
“I didn’t. I was supposed to meet someone else here but they never showed,” he answered distractedly, eyes still darting around. Knowing Trog, I assumed he was probably looking for government agents who wanted to interrogate him, space aliens who wanted to probe him, or possibly government agents who wanted to interrogate him and then probe him.
“In the bushes?” I raised an eyebrow. This was weird even for Trog, who was shifting his weight from foot to foot and rifling his fingers through his stringy dishwater colored hair. Forget Red Bull; he was like a ferret on Meth today.
“In the Square but I didn’t want anyone to notice me.”
“And you thought that lurking in the bushes would make you blend in.”
“Look, I have to talk to Dana. It’s urgent. I might be in trouble.”
“Maybe you should hide out with Julian Assange instead of squirrels.”
“Enough with the bushes already! This is serious shit.” He finally looked directly at me and I was surprised to see a gleam of what might have been real fear in his bloodshot eyes. Even though it was probably just his usual paranoia, obviously Trog believed there was something significant going down. Well, maybe there was. Trog could certainly afford our legal fees and we could use the business. Who was I to argue?
“Okay, well she’ll be in tomorrow. If you call the office, Rosalie can probably figure out how to schedule you. I think she’s mastered the appointment book by now.”
“Great, thanks. Make sure you tell Dana you saw me.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about that.” I smiled. He nodded gravely and then turned and began weaving his way back and forth out the Square, likely taking evasive maneuvers. Because you know, government agents can’t follow a circuitous path.
I rolled my eyes and started off again toward our office. I still smiled every time those words ... “our office” ... came to mind and I thought back to the conversation three months ago that had led to the creation of Solomon Merino & Roth.
***
I
was with two close friends, Dana Solomon and Magdalena “Lena” Merino in the offices of Killian Lockman, Attorneys at Law. We were surrounded by brass and glass in the cavernous conference room where the air conditioning made August in Philadelphia feel like a trip to the Arctic Circle. It was always freezing cold at KL. It even
smelled
cold in that place, such a “homey” feeling.
KL was one of the most prestigious law firms in the country, and there were recent law school graduates, as well as experienced attorneys, who would probably kill to work there. Partners were considered to be “power brokers” who were members of the most elite echelons of legal practice. The problem was that to become a partner, you had to sell your soul to the firm and risk working yourself into an early grave first. Work/life balance had no meaning at Killian Lockman and the cases I was assigned there had no meaning to me. I was overworked and under-challenged.
Not that there weren’t plenty of lawyers who weren’t still thrilled to be working there. Some people just didn’t care. The prestige, money and power that came with partnership were all that they lived for. But that didn’t describe us. All three of us were miserably unhappy, especially now that we were all over thirty and partnership was still nowhere in sight. We weren’t willing to do it anymore. It was time. We had been killing ourselves for too long, working eighty hours per week and handling tasks that were mind numbingly boring in a 200-lawyer firm where nobody knew our names. We needed to get out of that place, even if it meant that we had to tunnel out.
“We would be like the Legion of Justice,” Dana said, her green eyes shining.
“We would be like a
law firm
, Magneto,” Lena shot back in her heavy Philadelphia accent, tucking her wavy dark hair behind one ear.
“Magneto is a character in the
X-Men
series,” Dana pointed out patiently. “Furthermore, he’s a villain. Although admittedly, he does have a fascinating history ...”
“Roswell,” Lena said firmly and Dana stopped talking.
Dana’s Asperger Syndrome didn’t hold her back as an attorney but it did make her a bit ... quirky. Lecturing was one of her quirks. Lena and I liked her exactly as she was, but sometimes her eccentricity made things hard for her. So, we had come with the code word “Roswell” to tactfully let her know when she was being
especially
quirky.
“As I was saying, instead of every single day being the same drudge work, we could handle cases that were meaningful to us,” I went on.
“At first we would have to take what we could get,” Dana pointed out, refocusing.
“My family might be able to send some clients our way to get us started,” Lena offered. “My brother Vinnie and his friend Tony need legal representation related to a business matter.”
“Are they going to make us an offer we can’t refuse?” I asked her with an inquisitive smile. I often teased Lena, who
loved
being an Italian American Princess.
“Hey, no stereotypes!” she shot back wagging a finger at me. “They want to open an Olive Garden. They’re entrepreneurs.”
“Wait, I’m not sure ...” Dana began looking a bit confused.
“She was humorously implying that they were in the mob,” Lena explained. “I’m gonna let it go, though, because I know that she’s not really an asshole.”
“You mean not an asshole for real, or not
much
of an asshole?” Dana asked furrowing her brow. Before Lena could answer, Dana started laughing. “I knew she was kidding! I was just going to point out that none of us has any experience with franchise work.”
“Well, I don’t know!” Lena laughed back. “You understand Quantum Physics, but subtle humor, not so much.”
“We could figure out the franchise stuff,” I said. “We’re very intelligent women. Lena’s a whiz with numbers, and hell, Dana you could probably build us a computer from scratch to look up the legal requirements.”
“Speaking of computers,” Dana spoke up, “I know a lot of hackers. Mere probability would suggest that eventually some of them would require the services of an attorney.” She paused and added, “Unfortunately.”
“My mom visits this senior center where there are a bunch of elderly folks who decided to become political activists,” I offered. “They keep getting trouble and she’s been trying to get my brother to take them on as clients, but it’s not really what the nonprofit he works for does. Maybe we could give them a group discount.”
“So, we’ve got some business law, criminal defense, civil rights ...” Dana said, getting up and starting to pace. I knew that when Dana was pacing, Dana was thinking.
“This is actually happening!” Lena said slapping her hand down on the polished wood conference table. “Abby Roth, you are a genius.”
“Well, technically, to qualify as a genius,” Dana began, and turning to look at us, immediately hesitated. “Roswell?” Lena and I just smiled. Dana was getting really good at reading body language.
And that was how it began. Solomon Merino & Roth was born.
A
few hours after springing Agnes, I found myself on my back, panting and covered in sweat. I grabbed my ankles and peered through my trembling legs at the muscular blonde Adonis gazing down, silently praising me with his eyes, a thin sheen of moisture glistening on his tanned brow.
“Do you feel that Abby?”
“Yes!” I gasped. “Oh God! It’s so hard!”
“You can handle it!”
“So close.” I groaned as I felt myself get nearer to where I needed to be.
“Almost there,” he coaxed.
“Yes!” I cried. Then without warning, the blonde Adonis, or “Barry” as we called him, suddenly stood up.
“Okay ladies! Our hour is up. Don’t forget that you need to practice these stretches every day if you want your muscles to stay flexible.” He crossed his arms and cast a stern look about the room, which was promptly ignored by all.
“If this will make me flexible, why do I feel like I can’t move?” I groaned.
“You know Abby, if you
work on it
you’ll have it, but it takes investment.” With an expression that telegraphed his (accurate) belief that I would not be practicing the 3000 hours of stretches he demanded, he left me lying there on the floor like a sweaty human pretzel.
There were grunting and shuffling sounds all around me as I winced and eased my legs back down to the floor. Yeah, I would have it all right. And “it” would be a body cast. While I lay there trying to work up the energy to move, I saw Lena approaching out of the corner of my eye. She was crawling toward me on all fours. When she arrived she collapsed into a heap beside me.
“Remind me again why we do this to ourselves.” She groaned.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m here because I finally have time to pay attention to my health again, and I’ve heard that being shamed by a sadistic gay man is healthy.”
“You think Barry is gay?” she asked, turning her attention to the front of the room where he now stood, hands on hips, legs splayed apart at a jaunty angle, feet planted firmly on the floor. He looked like he should be wearing tights and a cape.
“First of all, he spends his days staring deeply into the vaginas of some very attractive and scantily clad women and I have never seen it make even a dent in his neon Spandex shorts. And secondly ... neon Spandex shorts.”
“Straight guys wear neon.”
“Neon
pink
?”
“Bad taste happens. I don’t think he’s gay. Why don’t you ask him out? He’s very attractive for a passive-aggressive fashion victim.”
“He’s openly aggressive, and I could never date a guy who’s prettier than me.”
“Oh come on.” She laughed. “When’s the last time you went on a date? Your long dark hair and big brown eyes would compliment all his goldeness.”
“You’re not exactly ‘Queen of the Dating Scene’ either and you have long dark hair too. Why don’t
you
see what team he plays for?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, though, I’m kind of worried that he would be silently critiquing the sex. ‘
Lena if you just practiced your stretches eighty five hours per week like you’re supposed to, your doggie style pose would be much better developed.’
“Stop making me laugh!” I guffawed, holding my stomach. “My abdominal muscles are begging for mercy.”
“Okay, we have been lying here much too long,” she noted sounding amused. “I’m worried somebody will call an ambulance.”
“The next class is coming in now anyway,” I added. “If we don’t achieve verticality soon we run the risk of having someone toss a yoga mat on top of us.” With a deep breath I pulled myself to my knees and then stumbled to my feet as Lena did the same beside me, and then the two of us limped off to change.
Twenty minutes and a blissfully hot shower later, as I stood by my gym locker getting dressed, I noticed that the message light on my cell phone was blinking. Picking it up and staring at the screen, I knit my brows. For a second, I thought I must have seen the number wrong.
“Call from
Rosalie
,” I muttered in confusion.
“Not our secretary Rosalie?” she asked dubiously. “When did she discover voicemail?” It was a reasonable question. Sadly.
“Right after she mastered the hold button ... a week ago, ” I replied. Rosalie wasn’t what I would call a very “secretarial” secretary, but she had cannily created such a chaotic record keeping system that she was now the only person who could locate anything in under a day. Thus, her long-term job security was forever assured. You had to admire that kind of ingenuity.
Besides, she was a distant relative on my mother’s side with a rich ex-husband and too much time on her hands, which meant that she worked for free. I also figured that if I employed her
and
represented the elderly anarchists cheaply, maybe my mom would stop reminding me that I’m thirty-one and unmarried. You do what you have to do.
I punched the callback button and almost dropped the phone when she picked up on the first ring. This was becoming like an episode of the
Twilight Zone
.
“Who are you and what have you done with Rosalie Kravitz?” I asked suspiciously as I grabbed my gym bag and headed for the door following Lena.
“There are FBI agents here. Should I destroy any files?” she more hissed than whispered in her heavy New Jersey accent.
“No thanks, G. Gordon Liddy. Did they happen to say what they wanted?”
“No, but I just assumed that ...”
“Don’t assume anything,” I broke in impatiently. “This could be totally innocent. For all you know they could be looking for a donation or something.”
“A donation? What is this, the Salvation Army? Their cards said “FBI” not “Will investigate for food.” I took a deep breath and mentally counted to ten.
“Just please let them know I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” I clicked off and took a deep cleansing breath as I contemplated the possibilities. Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t think of a place to hide Rosalie’s body.
***
L
ena was due to argue a motion in court, so it was up to me to face the G alone. I strode through the door of our office a few minutes later and immediately encountered Rosalie, who was obviously preparing for a career on the stage. A hand clutched to her heart, a look of unbearable pain on her face, she appeared to be doing the death scene from
Camille.
Our student intern, Jaya stood by looking confused and slightly alarmed. I would have to talk to her later. Jaya had only moved here from Mumbai two years ago. She was still learning about American culture, and she may not have fully grasped certain subtleties, like the fact that the FBI likely wasn’t there to abduct us, and the fact that Rosalie is a nut.