Pleading Guilty Read Free

no to the boss. Around here it's team play--yes, sir, and salute smartly. No way I could refuse. But there was a reason I was going to law school at night while I was on the street. I was never one of these lamebrains who thought cop work was glamorous. Kicking doors in, running down dark alleys--that stuff. tended to terrify me, especially afterwards when I got to thinking about what I'd done.
    "I have a hearing Wednesday," I said. This took them all back for a moment. No one, apparently, had considered the prospect that I might be working. "Bar Admissions and Discipline still wants to punch Toots Nuccio's ticket."
    There was a moment's byplay as Wash proposed alternatives--a continuance, perhaps, or allowing another G &G lawyer to handle the case; there were, after all, 530 attorneys here. Martin, the head of litigation, eventually suggested I find another partner to join me at the hearing, someone who could take over down the road if need be. Even with that settled, I was still resisting.
    "Guys, this doesn't make sense. I'm never going to find Bert.
    And you'll only make them angrier at TN once they realize we waited to tell them."
    "Not so," said Wash. "Not so. We needed time to gather facts so that we could advise them. You'll prepare a report, Mack," he said, "something we can hand them. Dictate it as you go along. After all, this is a significant matter. Something that can badly embarrass them, as well as us. They'll understand. We'll say you'll take no more than two weeks." He looked to Martin and Carl for verification.
    I repeated that there was no place to look.
    "Why don't you ask those thugs down at the steam bath where Ile likes to hang out?" Pagnucci asked. Talking to Carl is often even less satisfying than his silence. He is stubbornly, subtly, but inalterably contrary. Pagnucci regards agreement as a failure of his solemn obligation to exercise critical intelligence. There is always a probing question, a sly jest, a suggested alternative, always a way for him to put an ax to your tree. The guy is more than half a foot shorter than me and makes me feel no bigger than a flea.
    "Mack, you would be the savior of this firm," said Wash. "Imagine if it did work out. Our gratitude would be"--Wash waved--"unspeakable."
    It all looked perfect from their side. I'm a burnt-out case. No big clients. Gun-shy about trials since I stopped drinking. A fucked-up wreck with the chance to secure my position. And all of this coming up at the most opportune time. The firm was in its annual hysteria with the approaching conclusion of our fiscal year on January 31. All the partners were busy choking overdue fees out of our clients and positioning themselves for February 2, a week and a half from now, when the profits would be divided.
    I considered Wash, wondering how I ever ended up working for anybody in a bow tie.
    "I say the same thing to you I've said to Martin and Carl," Wash told me. "It's ours, this place, our lives as lawyers ar e h ere. What do we lose if we take a couple of weeks trying to save it?"
    With that, the three were silent. If nothing else, I had their attention. In high school I used to play baseball. I'm big--six three--and never a lightweight. I have good eye-hand, I could hit the ball a long way, but I'm slow, what people call lumbering when they're trying to be polite, and the coaches had to find someplace to play 'Tie, which turned out to be the outfield. I've never been the guy you'd want on your team. If I wasn't batting, I wasn't really in the game. Three hundred feet away from home plate you can forget. The wind comes up; you smell the grass, the perfume from some girl in the stands. A wrapper kicks across the field, followed by a ghost of dust. You check the sun, falling, even with all the yelling to keep you awake, into a kind of trance state, a piece of meditation or dreams. And then, somehow, you feel the eyes of everybody in the park suddenly shifted toward you--the pitcher looking back, the