Exposed (Rosato & DiNunzio #5)(11)
“I won’t get in trouble with her. She’s not my boss anymore, she’s my partner. And we used to get in trouble with her all the time. We were a united front.”
“Okay, then I meant square off against her. Cross swords with her. You know how tough she is.” Judy recoiled, stung. “Besides, we’re still best friends. We’re united. We just disagree.”
“Is that possible?”
“Of course,” Judy answered, finding a reassuring smile. “Don’t get all Godfather on me. I’m your bestie. I love you.”
“I know.” Mary felt torn. “Sorry I snapped.”
“You need an emergency muffin.”
“I need to look at that rulebook again,” Mary said, getting an idea.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bennie sat at her desk and stared at her notes without really seeing them. She usually felt jazzed before a deposition because it was the first time she would encounter her adversary. Plenty of lawyers played nice, warming up the witness only to work him over at trial, but she wasn’t built that way. Her litigation strategy was to assert her dominance from the outset and never let up. There was a reason she had a coffee mug that read I CAN SMELL FEAR. Actually, she had two of them. One was a gift, and she’d bought the other one in case the first one broke.
But this morning, Bennie didn’t feel jazzed. She tried again to concentrate on her notes, which she’d handwritten on yellow legal pads with a ballpoint pen that made satisfyingly bumpy ridges on the paper. She loved computers as much as everybody else, but there was something about a fresh legal pad that got her juices going. Bennie Rosato loved everything about being a lawyer and she was born with what lawyers called a “justice bone,” which ached whenever somebody was being treated unfairly. For that reason, she’d been looking forward to her deposition today, but her mind kept wandering. Her fight with Mary gnawed at the edges of her brain.
Bennie’s gaze strayed around her office, with its messy book shelves stuffed with binders, legal cases, clipped articles, and textbooks from law school, which looked older than usual, perhaps because she herself was vintage. Whatever. Across from her desk were two patterned chairs, and all four walls were covered with awards, citations, and certificates she’d gotten from public-interest law groups all over the country, and the American Bar Association. Acrylic and glass awards filled the entire shelf, and her gaze stopped on one of them, given for exemplifying ethics in the practice of law.
Believe it or not, it’s not a settled question.
Bennie got up from her desk in frustration. She crossed to her bookshelves and started digging through all the crap until she found a copy of the model rules, then flipped to the provisions regarding conflicts of interest and read aloud: “‘A lawyer who represents a corporation or other organization does not, by virtue of that representation, necessarily represent any constituent or affiliated organization, such as a parent or subsidiary—’”
Bennie stopped, surprised. This wasn’t the way she remembered the rule, but it must’ve been amended. She kept reading, “… ‘the lawyer for an organization is not barred … unless the circumstances are such that the affiliate should also be considered a client of the lawyer…’”
“Aha!” Bennie got the gist, reassured. Maybe the rule wasn’t as black-and-white as it used to be, but bottom line, each case had to be analyzed in its individual circumstances. So Bennie was right, and circumstances clearly prohibited Mary from representing OpenSpace against Dumbarton. It was good to be right, and Bennie never tired of it. She closed the book with a satisfying slap and slid it back onto the shelf, just as there was a knock on the door.
“Come in, Sam!” Bennie was expecting her old friend Sam Freminet, who’d sent her the client she was representing this morning.
“Good morning, honey!” Sam entered the office and kissed her on the cheek, and Bennie breathed in his spicy aftershave, since he always smelled better than she did. He looked better, too, his reddish hair in a short feathery cut, his small blue eyes bright behind his rimless glasses with earpieces of tan plastic, and a tan-patterned silk tie and tan suit of light wool, undoubtedly custom-tailored. Sam was one of the most prosperous bankruptcy lawyers in the city and he always dressed expensively, an irony that wasn’t lost on him.
“Good morning, Sam.”
“Why are you so frowny? Getting ready to destroy the enemy?”
“No, then I’d be smiling.” Bennie went around the desk and sat down, while Sam took a seat opposite her, crossing his slim legs.
“Then is it because of the skirt?”
“What skirt? You mean my jeans skirt?”
“Marshall told me.” Sam laughed wickedly. “Honey, please. So what, she bought your skirt. You should be ashamed that you owned a skirt like that in the first place.”
“I was young.”
“Were you also high? I mean, constantly? Or at least when you bought the thing?”
“I made it.”
“Then you were temporarily insane.” Sam chuckled at his own joke. “Anyway, I’m surprised it bothers you. You know you’re old. I know I’m old. We’re old now.”
“We’re in our forties.”
“Like I said. I may be forty-five, but that’s ninety-two in gay years. It’s like dog years. Who cares anyway?” Sam waved her off. “The day I didn’t want to go to clubs anymore, I knew it was over. Now I sit happily at home with Paul. We put on our jammies and watch British crime shows on Netflix. You and Declan never go out either, do you?”