The Professor (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #1)(14)
“...which is nice,” Powell finished, laughing at the line from Caddyshack, which was a staple in the usual banter between Rick and Powell.
Breakfast was wolfed down quickly with the talk turning to women. With football season over, there was little else to talk about other than work. Walking outside, they said their goodbyes.
“Let’s get together at Phil’s for a pitcher or two or three tomorrow night, whattaya say?” Powell said, closing the door of his Honda and leaning his head out the window.
“Sounds good, but you never know. A home run may walk into my office and thicken the old case load. Or, by some act of God, I could wind up with a date.” Rick laughed. “I’ll call you.”
Ten minutes later, Rick trudged up the dusty steps to his second-floor office. Located on a side street two blocks from the courthouse, the law office of Richard Drake, Esq. sat above Larry and Barry’s Interior Design, a three year-old company formed by two gay lovers from Missouri – Larry Horowitz and Barry Bostheimer. According to Powell, who seemed to know everyone and everything since joining the DA’s office, Larry and Barry had done well for themselves since opening up shop. Whatever their financial condition, they had both been very supportive of Rick, even sending one of their friends – a lesbian dancer named Sharnice – to see Rick about a car accident. Rick was able to arrange a quick settlement with the other driver’s insurance company and since then, Larry and Barry had acted as if Rick was the next coming of Clarence Darrow.
At the top of the stairs, Rick unlocked the door and flipped the lights on. The office had once been a two-bedroom loft, but Rick thought he’d made a nice conversion. The den that the front door opened to was now a reception area where Rick’s secretary, Frankie, sat. Behind Frankie’s desk, the carpet turned to tile and there was a small kitchen with a counter containing a coffee pot and a refrigerator. To the left of the kitchen was the prior master bedroom – now a conference room containing a long table with several chairs – and to the right was the smaller bedroom, which Rick used as his private office.
As Rick walked into his office, his eyes immediately locked to a picture on the wall. “ABA Regional Champions, the University of Alabama” was the heading stenciled under the photograph of Rick, Powell and the Professor. Should be another one saying “National Champions” was the thought that went through Rick Drake’s mind every time he looked at it. Along with “You’re a hothead, Drake. A liability in the courtroom.” Rick glared at the gray eyes of the Professor, which seemed to mock him from inside the frame.
Rick shook his head and tried to think about the day ahead, which, as usual, was not that busy. The workers’ comp walkthrough was at 11am in front of Judge Baird. Rick’s client was Myra Wilson, who had fallen off a fork lift at the Mercedes plant in Vance and broken her hip. She was set to arrive at 10.30 to review the settlement documents.
Rick retrieved the Wilson file from his desk and walked back into the reception area, where he paced and read, wanting to make sure that everything was right. Every so often, he looked at Frankie’s desk, expecting her to be there, but then reminded himself that she was off today. A forty-two year-old mother of two whose husband was a self-employed bricklayer, Frankie had worked out all right. She typed eighty-five words a minute, was usually in a cheerful mood, and worked steady hours without many complaints. Other than today, the only time she had taken off since being hired was the Friday before Labor Day when Butch took her and the kids to Panama City for a long weekend.
As he noticed a mistake in the Wilson papers, a paragraph inserted on page two closing future medical benefits – the bastards always tried that trick – Rick was jarred by the sound he craved more than any other. The most wonderful sound in the world. The all-powerful phone. Ringing. In his office. And it wasn’t even 9am. Be a client and not Powell, he thought as he answered on the second ring, knowing that this could be the one. The one he knocked over the fence, turning Richard Drake into a household name.
“Richard Drake,” Rick said, in his most lawyerly voice.
“Dude, you’ll never guess where I am.” Powell. Sonofabitch, Rick thought, smiling in spite of himself as the elusive chase of the home run was put on hold until the next call. The life of the plaintiff’s lawyer.
12
Tom watched his team from the jury box in the trial advocacy room or, as his teams liked to call it, the “war room”. He focused, in particular, on their eyes. Were they listening to the opposition’s words or were they trying to remember what they were going to say when they got up there? Tom taught the former, but, from the look in their eyes, he could tell they were doing the latter. This team will be lucky to make it through Regionals.
At the bench sat Judge Art Hancock, venerable old “Judge Cock”, as he was known by most of the Birmingham bar. Judge Hancock had been a judge since the mid-Sixties. His rulings were always quick, precise and usually right on point. He put up with no grandstanding by lawyers, and each year routinely called at least one young lawyer down on the carpet for “acting a fool” in his courtroom. As a young lawyer, Tom had tried his very first case in front of Judge Hancock, and Tom felt that he had earned the Judge’s respect for knowing the basics and not going overboard with theatrics in front of the jury, like so many inexperienced lawyers tended to do.