Client doubt is the wood rot of legal architecture.
"Oh . . ." Jim Litke of the Union of Concerned Scientists said.
That one little word a packed suitcase of concern.
"Yes?" Herman smelled trouble. A lawyer had to know how to
gauge his clients, how to sense the winds of discontent. Herman thought he had
a gale blowing here. "You look troubled," he said, stating the
obvious.
"Yes," Valerie Taylor, M.S., Ph.D., intoned gravely, glancing
over at J. Thomas Stinson of the Food Policy Research Center. It was sort of a
"Take it away, Tom," look. He was the designated talker.
"Yes . . . yes," Thomas said.
"Troubled
would
pretty much capture it."
"How can I help?" Herman asked softly, trying to sound like a
friendly priest in a confessional.
"You didn't tell us you were about to be disbarred in
California." Thomas was injecting some attitude now—anger and
frustration—mixing them into that ugly little declarative sentence.
"Lawyers with difficult cases often have review hearings before the
Bar Association. To put it into a medical context, it's like a hospital review
where a doctor is being asked to describe a complicated procedure. It's . . .
it's . . . well, it's very common in the law."
"We also understand that several of your old clients are currently
suing you for malpractice," Thomas continued. "There's even stuff
about it on the Internet."
"Uh . . . frequently, when you get an unfavorable result in court,
an emotional client will question tactics. Again, the jury, as we like to say,
is out. The Bar Review hasn't ruled on any of this yet."
"Tell him about the other," Valerie Taylor said, prompting the
tall, thin Stinson.
Herman thought that for a guy who ran a food research center, J. Tom
wasn't getting enough to eat. But like a shadow across a picket fence, that
unnecessary rumination flitted on his dizzy thoughts without much effect.
Herman suddenly reached inside his briefcase and took out the Warafin and
Digoxin. He shook several pills randomly into his palm, threw them down his
throat and dry swallowed, trying to appear lusty as he did it—Thor tossing back
a pint of ale. Then he rubbed his eyes to clear his blurred vision.
"Dad?" Susan was looking at him with concern.
"It's okay, baby," he said, and smiled at his clients with
about the same degree of humor found in a coroner's report.
"We also understand that you have some controversial cases already
filed against various agencies of the federal government—far-fetched,
conspiracy-type lawsuits," J. Thomas Stinson cross-examined.
"The Institute for Planetary Justice seeks to expose government
malfeasance wherever it exists," Herman countered. "It's our
specialty. However, I certainly wouldn't call the cases far-fetched."
Jesus, he was feeling horrible. Herman wanted to let his head fall into his
big, meaty hands. Catcher's mitts, they'd been called by his tormenters in high
school. The fact that he was recalling forty-year-old teenage insults during
this meeting was in itself mildly noteworthy. In high school Herman had been
teased constantly and was the brunt of constant practical jokes. His locker had
hosted more strange concoctions than a skid row garbage can. He could feel
himself slipping into one of his old inferiority complexes. During times of
stress he always ended up back in that mindset. Underneath it all he was still
just "Herman the German," a slow, fat, unpopular kid.
"We understand," J. Thomas continued, "that you have sued
the Department of the Air Force over alien research supposedly taking place at
Area Fifty-one in central Nevada."
"Yes . . . yes . . . that's the truth," Herman said. "We
are in appellate review on that important piece of business. Why? Is there
something about it that's troubling you?" Herman could feel his heart now.
It was beating so fast it was tickling the walls of his throat. He was going
back into arterial fibrillation.
Shit!
He wished he could just lie down
on the leather sofa in the office.
Susan was watching him like a hen with one chick, her beautiful features
arranged into an expression of alarm. "Dad," she said softly.
"Dad, I think we need to . . ."
"I'm fine, Susie, just fine." He looked at his clients and
tried to salvage his case. He could sense a dismissal coming, but he needed
these clients in order to go into court tomorrow. He couldn't litigate a suit
for damages without a client who had been irreparably damaged. He needed a
plaintiff.
"Research on aliens?" J. Thomas said, pouring more than his
fair share of disdain into those three words.
"Let me ask you a question. . ." Herman was having trouble
focusing on J. Thomas Stinson because the room had just started spinning. The
first signs of acid reflux were burning his esophagus, then acute nausea
arrived like the last guest at a hanging. "Let me ask you how you would
feel if, in fact, experiments on aliens
were
being done in the desert.
Let's say, for instance, that in nineteen forty-five an alien spacecraft
did
crash in New Mexico. Let's say our government captured some dead alien
life-forms and transported them to Area Fifty-one, where for over fifty years
they have spent billions, maybe even a trillion dollars in taxpayer money,
conducting illegal experiments—building a huge, electronically secure science
pod around the crashed spaceship, freezing the dead life forms, studying them.
And, while this is happening—while our tax dollars are being used for this
ill-conceived experiment, Social Security is going broke, many Americans are
without health care, and high school reading scores are going to hell. Money
that should have been spent on these important social functions was and is,
instead, being diverted to do research on dead extra-terrestrials! You're damn
right, I'm suing them!" All of this came out without much thought or
effort. Herman had made this speech a hundred times at university fund-raisers.
It was one of his prepackaged sound bites.
"Aliens?" This was the first word of the meeting James Litke,
M.D., Ph.D., said, but he hissed it at Herman like a
curse. "So
you don't even deny any of this?"
"Not only do I not deny it, I'm proud to be trying to expose this
colossally wasteful research. I'm attempting to divert the staggering sums
thrown away on that project into necessary and worthwhile social
programs."
"Tell him about the other thing," Valerie prodded again.
"The Rockefeller thing, for the love of God."
"We understand you've filed a RICO suit against the Rockefeller
family, charging them with conspiracy in creating the Trilateral
Commission."
"I'm afraid my father doesn't want to be grilled about his other
cases," Susan said jumping in, trying to fend them off, concerned that her
father was in an arrhythmic crisis, wanting to get these three assholes out of
the office so she could take his pulse and find out.
"What is it you came here to tell me?" Herman asked, his voice
sagging like a sack full of broken dreams.
"That you're fired. We no longer want you to represent us. We
intend to find another attorney," J. Thomas Stinson replied.
"You can't fire me, sonny," Herman said, looking at the
fifty-five-year-old man who was approximately his same age but looked ten years
younger. "I came to
you,
remember? I told you about the
butterflies.
I
solicited
you.
You didn't hire me, ergo, you can't
fire me." He couldn't help it now; he was so dizzy, he had to put his
elbows up on the desk and grab his shaggy head in both hands. He felt like he
was about to vomit, and swallowed twice to keep the bile down.
"You're
going to lose the case. From what we found out yesterday, you're a less than
brilliant lawyer, and that's being kind," J. Thomas said. "We all
agree this is an important case, but if you lose it you'll have established an
important legal precedent that will be difficult to overcome later."
"Precedent? There's no precedent here! Stick to science, Jimmy boy,
I'll
do the legal stuff," Herman growled, suddenly seeing his high
school locker, remembering the hateful gray metal rectangle and the fear he
felt each time he opened it. Remembering the turd somebody had once put inside.
"Then there's the whole problem of your standing in the legal
community," Valerie was saying. "What if the California Bar
decertifies you? If we're in the middle of this trial or on appeal, and you
lose your license . . . what do we do then?" Valerie Taylor had snatched
the ball, or maybe it was a planned hand off. Either way, she had the old
pigskin wrapped up tight and was charging at him, knees high, going for extra
yardage.
"To begin with, Dr. Taylor, my hearing is a year away, and I'm
going to prevail. . . It's a no-brainer. But even if I don't, some kind of writ
of goddamnus on appeal would tie up the State Bar for two more years, and by
then our butterfly case will be history." He held her gaze, then got up.
"Excuse me for a minute." He lumbered out of the office hoping he
could make it to the men's room, but he had to detour at Marty Castle's
secretary.
"Excuse me, could I borrow your wastebasket for a moment,
please?" he asked.
She glanced up, wrinkled her Barbie-like features, and handed Herman the
round plastic container.
Herman, still teetering from dizziness, promptly vomited into her
wastebasket. "Thank you." With as much dignity as he could manage, he
set it down. "Got a bad Egg McMuffin, I think." He turned, and
weaving dangerously, made his way back to his office. As he neared his closed
door, he heard Susan inside, reading their ex-clients the riot act.
"You people don't know what you're throwing away," she said
hotly. "Where else will you find an advocate who is so damned committed to
his cases that he works most of them pro-bono, even spends his own money? The
damages he's suing for were incurred by
him,
not you. If you can look at
him and not see how great—how
beautiful
he is, then you don't deserve
him!"
Herman heard chairs scraping inside.
"And one other thing," Susan said. "My father is right.
This is not your case, it's ours. It's being filed by the Institute for
Planetary Justice. It doesn't belong to you. It doesn't belong to any of us. It
belongs to the people of the United States of America, and it is in the very
capable hands of Herman Strockmire Jr."
The door opened and, while Herman slumped pitifully against the
doorjamb, they filed out, not acknowledging him, their eyes down, sparking
anger. Susan followed, but stopped in the threshold and looked at her father.
"Y'know, baby, I think maybe I do need to go to the hospital,"
Herman the German admitted sadly.
R
oland Minton parked his white,
piece-of-shit rental Camry across from the shiny, blue-tiled, windowless
buildings that looked like five huge blocks of ice scattered randomly across
three or four acres of manicured lawn. The property was fenced and had more
digitized security than the Midwestern Federal Reserve. A monument sign out front
announced:
GEN-A-TEC
A BIO-SCIENCE
CORPORATION
Roland stuffed his new purple hair into his white phone company hard
hat, glancing at himself in his rearview mirror as he tucked the last strands
up under the hatband. God, he loved this new shade. It was Technicolor-tight.
The gay hairdresser at the San Francisco beauty salon had mixed some awesome
red-and-blue streaks in with the purple, and Roland thought the do rocked
majorly. He pulled the bill down on the hard hat and grabbed his computer cracking
kit out of the backseat: a tool belt with screwdrivers, pliers, wire cutters,
lines, and alligator clips. He checked his phony ID badge made with his new
CD-ROM computer package. His picture, geeky and proud, grinned back at him;
pacific bell
was in block sans-serif
letters underneath. Roland clipped it on, grabbed his computer packed in its
expensive Cordura case, and again turned his attention to the shimmering, blue,
fortress-like science lab. "Bet you assholes
got a load'a pixel-dust security,"
he muttered, "but I is de Dustbuster."