Neon Dragon Read Free Page B

the gate to let in as new clients only corporate personae on the rise. When Willie Sutton spun off his famous answer to the question of why he robbed banks, he was also laying down a game plan for Bilson, Dawes’s selection of clients: “That’s where the money is.”
    On the walk down the hall to my office, I had the feeling that I’d brought a blast of the winter chill in with me. While the joy of humancamaraderie was not exactly the hallmark of the firm on its best day, I noticed as I’d pass their offices the partners giving me fleeting glances that were even more drained of warmth than usual.
    I was something of an anomaly at Bilson, Dawes. The firm, and therefore the partners, thrived—in fact, more than thrived—on fees from clean, unsullied
civil
litigation. By contrast, my earlier days at the U.S. Attorney’s office had given me a familiarity with most of the judges at the federal district court, which meant that a fairly steady stream of criminal court appointments to represent indigent defendants followed me to the firm. For all of their pious and publicized pro bono posturing, the partners suffered this acne on the pristine skin of the firm not gladly. And the frequently scruffy, scratching, whiskey-breathing criminal clients who decorated the firm waiting room as a result of my court appointments did nothing to liberalize their sentiments.
    I never made it to my office. Julie Benson, my secretary of three years and one of the human elements that made life tolerable at the firm, nearly had tears in her eyes when she intercepted me with a note.
    â€œSEE ME IMMEDIATELY! A.D.”
    To the outside world, “A.D.” stood for Alexis Devlin. To any associate and most of the junior partners, it meant “Angel of Death.”
    I had had no direct dealings with Mr. Devlin—“Lex” to those who dared—since he joined the firm two years previously. Word around the courthouse had it that in his day, which was some ten years past, he was the best there was at the criminal bar. For some reason, as he was rising from star to legend, he suddenly dropped out. You heard conflicting rumors among those with their three-piece suits pressed to the bars of the city’s watering holes, but no one really seemed to know why. Word had it that he had a taste for the grape, but you could lay that one at the door of a fair percentage of the trial bar. Given the pressures of the trade, it’s endemic.
    Then about a year after I came to the firm, he dropped back in. To almost universal surprise, he accepted the offer of Bilson, Dawes tobring his still-legendary skill with a jury to the civil side of the court. I had not had the pleasure of working with or for him, but the associates who did bore mental lacerations that they would only bare to each other in the copy room.
    As I walked back down the corridor to the gates of hell, it was clear that word of the summons had gotten around. Every associate I passed seemed to take one last look at me in life. I winked and smiled the smile of the incredibly brave. I whispered to myself for confidence, “Latinos rush in where Anglos fear to tread.”
    His secretary never looked up. She just waved a pencil in the direction of the door behind her. There was apparently no question that I was the next item on the menu.
    I opened the door. He was standing with his back to me at the window behind his desk. Maybe it was the expectations raised by the associates’ stories, but I could actually feel the weight of his presence in the room. When he turned around, I was struck almost breathless by the power of that presence. But it was far more than that.
    He was on the phone. I doubt that my presence meant more to him than the cigarette butts in his ashtray, but I could not take my eyes off of him.
    At about seventy years, he was block built, with a jaw that could cut granite and a nose that changed direction like the Boston streets. His