The King of Torts Read Free Page A

He didn’t like her mother. “They’ve invited us to dinner at the club.”
    A bad day just got worse. The only response he could possibly give was, “Sure.” And a quick one at that.
    “Around seven. Coat and tie.”
    “Of course.” I’d rather have dinner with Tequila Watson at the jail, he thought to himself.
    “I gotta run,” she said. “See you then. Love you.”
    “Love you.”
    It was a typical conversation between the two, just a few quick lines before rushing off to save the world. He looked at her photo on his desk. Their romance came with enough complications to sink ten marriages. His father had once sued her father, and who won and who lost would never be clear. Her family claimed origins in old Alexandria society; he’d been an Army brat. They were right-wing Republicans, he was not. Her fatherwas known as Bennett the Bulldozer for his relentless slash-and-burn development in the Northern Virginia suburbs around D.C. Clay hated the sprawl of Northern Virginia and quietly paid his dues to two environmental groups fighting the developers. Her mother was an aggressive social climber who wanted her two daughters to marry serious money. Clay had not seen his mother in eleven years. He had no social ambitions whatsoever. He had no money.
    For almost four years, the romance had survived a monthly brawl, the majority of them engineered by her mother. It clung to life by love and lust and a determination to succeed regardless of the odds against it. But Clay sensed a fatigue on Rebecca’s part, a creeping weariness brought on by age and constant family pressure. She was twenty-eight. She did not want a career. She wanted a husband and a family and long days spent at the country club spoiling the children, playing tennis, doing lunch with her mother.
    Paulette Tullos appeared from thin air and startled him. “Got nailed, didn’t you?” she said with a smirk. “A new murder case.”
    “You were there?” Clay asked.
    “Saw it all. Saw it coming, saw it happen, couldn’t save you, pal.”
    “Thanks. I owe you one.”
    He would have offered her a seat, but there were no others in his office. There was no room for chairs and besides they were not needed because all of his clients were in jail. Sitting and chatting were not part of the daily routine at OPD.
    “What are my chances of getting rid of it?” he said.
    “Slim to impossible. Who you gonna dump it on?”
    “I was thinking of you.”
    “Sorry. I got two murder cases already. Glenda won’t move it for you.”
    Paulette was his closest friend inside the OPD. A product of a rough section of the city, she had scratched her way through college and law school at night and had seemed destined for the middle classes until she met an older Greek gentleman with a fondness for young black women. He married her and set her up comfortably in North West Washington, then eventually returned to Europe, where he preferred to live. Paulette suspected he had a wife or two over there, but she wasn’t particularly concerned about it. She was well-off and seldom alone. After ten years, the arrangement was working fine.
    “I heard the prosecutors talking,” she said. “Another street killing, but questionable motive.”
    “Not exactly the first one in the history of D.C.”
    “But no apparent motive.”
    “There’s always a motive—cash, drugs, sex, a new pair of Nikes.”
    “But the kid was pretty tame, no history of violence?”
    “First impressions are seldom true, Paulette, you know that.”
    “Jermaine got one very similar two days ago. No apparent motive.”
    “I hadn’t heard.”
    “You might try him. He’s new and ambitious and, who knows, you might dump it on him.”
    “I’ll do it right now.”
    Jermaine wasn’t in but Glenda’s door, for some reason, was slightly open. Clay rapped it with his knuckles while walking through it. “Got a minute?” he said, knowing that Glenda hated sparing a minute with anyone on her staff. She did a