This Case Is Gonna Kill Me Read online

  “… saw me taking a scraping off the bumper, and came flying out the front door and down the steps. He threw back the screen so hard he broke it,” the man was saying, punctuating his words with little puffs of powdered sugar.

  “What did you do?” the woman asked, pausing from smearing cream cheese on her bagel.

  “Ran like hell, but he was fast for such a fat guy. He tackled me.” The man ruefully regarded the rip in his coat. “He tried to grab the Baggie with the sample, but I had it someplace safe.” The Álfar patted the front of his pants and leered at the woman. She blushed. “He popped me once, but he got the worst of the encounter,” he concluded with satisfaction.

  “Oh, you poor thing. Would you like to come over tonight? I can make dinner.”

  “Sorry, but Jennifer has already offered tea and sympathy.”

  Chip chuckled and slapped the man on the shoulder. “John, stop telling tales of your derring-do and pitching woo to all the secretaries, and come meet our new associate.” Said secretary blushed and slipped through the door. “Linnet Ellery, John O’Shea. Linnet comes to us by way of Radcliffe and Yale.”

  We shook hands, and I found myself studying his. Despite a scrape on the knuckles, they were beautiful, with long tapered fingers, manicured nails, and powerful muscles across the back. I am a sucker for hands. I have capable hands made even wider from years of riding horseback, but no one would describe them as elegant.

  We murmured our how-do-you-dos, and I wondered why he’d assumed the human name. O’Shea was smiling in a way that made me catch my breath. I knew that smile was fool’s gold; in addition to inhuman beauty, the Álfar are also known for devastating charm and short attention spans.

  “John’s our P.I. If you need anything investigated, photographed, stolen, or staked out, he’s your guy,” Chip continued.

  I was startled and decided to say so. “Not the usual role for an Álfar. You’re usually in the entertainment industry.”

  “I’m not your usual Álfar.” He gave me a genuine smile this time. “Most of the Fair and Crazy Folk couldn’t hold down a real job.”

  I was startled by his dismissive tone, and I would have loved to talk more with him, but I wasn’t sure if the desire was from actual intellectual interest or if he was throwing a glamour on me. If it was a glamour, I decided to start breaking the spell. The best way is to perform a mundane activity, so I began to prepare my own bagel. Chip was rummaging through the big Sub-Zero refrigerator.

  “There’s lox,” he said, and emerged with a package of thin-sliced salmon.

  “I’ll leave you folks to it,” O’Shea said. “I’m going to go put in a requisition for a new blazer. Nice meeting you,” he added.

  “And you,” I said, putting the finishing touches on my bagel.

  Chip pulled down plates from a cabinet. It was real bone china, Wedgwood. No paper plates at Ishmael, McGillary and Gold.

  “What’s his story?” I gestured toward the door and the now departed O’Shea. “O’Shea isn’t exactly an Álfar name.”

  “It’s not. He is a changeling. Raised by humans, lived with humans, worked with humans. He was actually a policeman before he opened his own detective agency and we put him on retainer. I’m surprised more Álfar haven’t done that, or become really good crooks. They’ve got that whole walk-through-Fairyland thing they can do. When John’s on your tail, he’s almost impossible to spot.”

  “Wow.” I really couldn’t think of anything else to say to this remarkable story, and now I really wanted another chance to talk with John O’Shea.

  Armed with food and cups of coffee, Chip and I continued to the end of the hall, where five conference rooms occupied the far wall. The center one was magnificent, with an inlaid-wood round table and high-backed chairs.

  “This is where the big boys meet,” he said, and I could hear the envy.

  “Where’s the law library?” I asked.

  “Just below us. They took out the floor between seventy-one and seventy-two to accommodate the shelves. Walkways and ladders everywhere so you can reach the top shelves.” He paused to gauge my reaction.

  It was one of pure lust. I love books, especially old books. There’s a smell and a feel to old paper that makes me feel like I am shaking hands with people across time. Law firms measure their wealth in the quality of their research library, and it’s always a real point of pride in a White-Fang firm. During one of my summer internships while I was in school, the senior partner loved to wander by, notice what book I was perusing, and casually mention that he’d acquired the tome back in 1715.

  I have the same reaction to portraits. Whenever I walked through a museum, I was always drawn to the walls of faces. I actually preferred the unknown subjects to the famous people. I’d look at the young girl playing with a puppy, or the young man wearing his dignity like a cloak, his hand resting on the sword hilt in a way that clearly said, don’t laugh at me.

  I’d weave stories about them and wonder about their lives. And then I would look over at my foster liege and realize that Mr. Bainbridge had become a vampire during the Renaissance. The past had been walking among us every day, and it was only in the past forty years that most humans had learned of it.

  “Want to see the library?” Chip asked, pulling me out of my reverie. I nodded in enthusiastic assent. We finished off our bagels and coffee, dropped off the china in the kitchen, and rode the elevator down one floor.

  There were twelve-foot-tall wood and glass double doors to the left of the elevator bank. Chip pushed one open and allowed me to precede him into the muted light thrown by glass-shaded brass lamps. It was so quiet that I could hear someone turning a page in a secluded carrel.

  For my high school graduation present, my folks had treated me to a trip to Europe. The only other place I had seen a library like this was at Blenheim Castle. Stairs led to a catwalk at the level where the seventy-second floor would have been. On both levels the walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling shelves and rolling ladders were available to reach the upper volumes. There were desks scattered among the standing shelves, carpet underfoot, a beautiful inlaid round conference table, and even a large gas fireplace topped with a carved marble mantle to add to the sense of comfort.

  Only one thing was missing. There were no computers. Instead, the index files were kept in an enormous antique file cabinet, and a table held a large stack of legal pads and pens. At least there was a copier so you wouldn’t have to hand-copy every citation you found.

  I sighed, but I wasn’t surprised. Vampires were conservative. If something worked well in 1847, why wouldn’t it work just fine in the twenty-first century? It was something I had endured growing up in the Bainbridge house. If I’d wanted to surf the net, I had to make a trip into town and find the nearest Internet cafe. A laptop was no help because there was no Internet service. Eventually the neighbors put in Wi-Fi, and I discovered that if I sat near the edge of the Bainbridge property I could bootleg their signal.

  Chip and I were just turning to head back to the door when a tall, silver-haired man in a rich gray-and-blue Canali suit emerged from between the stacks. He was frowning down at the open page of a book. Shade Shadrach Ishmael was one of the founding partners of the firm. He was close friends with my foster father, Meredith Bainbridge, and had often been a guest in the Sag Harbor house. Over the years we’d shared a number of rambling conversations about music, history, and law. I suspected Shade was the reason I had been asked to interview at Ishmael, McGillary and Gold.

  “Linnet, my dear. Welcome.”

  He bent, making the motion seem more like a bow. Vampires were so damn graceful, it made me feel all the more like a klutz. He kissed my cheek, and his lips were cold against my skin. Like most vampires, he wore a lot of aftershave and made sure to use mouthwash four or five times a day, but nothing completely masked the faint scent of blood that hung around him.

  Deep inside, I felt that primal shiver of fear. Intellectually, I knew it was unwarranted. I was in
no danger. I was a woman, and vampires didn’t bite women. I had also been raised in a vampire household. I had watched Mr. Bainbridge feed every night from the time I was eight until I graduated from high school. But the old lizard brain that had kept us safe when we first swung down from the trees was convinced that I was prey and that I was standing way too close to a predator.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ishmael, I’m very happy to be here.”

  He stared down at me, puzzled, and shook his head. “So formal, Linnet?”

  I smiled. “I work for you now. I need to be respectful.”

  He threw back his head and gave a sharp laugh. “I have a hard time reconciling that with the little girl I watched grow up. When I think of you, I think impertinent, cocky, brash—”

  “Pert, flippant, cheeky, insolent, saucy, sassy, smart-alecky.” I broke off and gave him a quick grin. “I can play Thesaurus too.”

  Shade laughed again and glanced at Chip. “You see what you have to contend with? You are forewarned.”

  Chip had gone from looking aghast to grinning. He nodded. “I think we’re going to get along fine.”

  Shade patted me on the shoulder. “You’re in good hands. Chip is the most meticulous lawyer I’ve ever known.”

  An image of his cluttered office flashed through my head. Shade seemed to read my mind. “Don’t be fooled by his surroundings. He keeps everything.” Shade tapped his temple. “Up here.”

  As we walked back to the elevator, I said softly to Chip, “Don’t get hit by a bus. At least not until I know where all the bodies are buried.”

  I spent the rest of the day beginning to read through seventeen years of pleadings, depositions, and interrogatories. Chip packed it in around seven o’clock. I hung on until eight p.m. and felt I’d made the right choice. Most of the human associates were just leaving.

  The assistants’ desks, wooden ramparts guarding the doors to the lawyers’ offices, were unmanned at this time of the night, but the central reception area was awash with departing lawyers. Expensive suits and snap-brim fedoras on the men, pencil skirts and elegant jackets for the women. Goodbyes were exchanged; a few people made plans to meet for drinks. There didn’t appear to be a lot of office romances, either brewing or actually up and running. If you were male and hoped to make partner and be made a vampire, you knew marriage and a family weren’t in your future. If you were male and weren’t interested in making partner, you probably lacked the ambition to be hired at a White-Fang firm. Thus, most of the women attorneys knew their male coworkers were a bad bet.

  David Sullivan stood in the doorway of his office and watched the humans mill with an expression of sublime indifference. He caught me looking at him, turned on his heel, and closed the door of the office. I joined the mass exodus and stood in a clump of people awaiting the arrival of an elevator. The moment of Briefcase Comparison had arrived—the ultimate legal version of dick measuring, or whatever the female equivalent would be.

  There were Forzieri and Brunelleschi cases with leather like butter. Caroline had a pale green leather Dior bag that she had thrown nonchalantly over her shoulder. She looked poised and elegant. Mine was a roller bag that held my small MacBook, up to four files, a legal pad, pens, a book to read at lunch, and sometimes a lunch. I looked like a geek.

  The elevator arrived with a melodic ding. People crowded in. I tried to follow. “I don’t think there’s room for the both of you,” Caroline said with a nod at my roller bag, and she let the door to the elevator close in front of my nose. I could hear the laughter as the elevator began to descend.

  Why did there have to be one like that in every office?

  2

  As I walked from the subway, I realized I didn’t want to cook. There was a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant just around the corner from my apartment, so I stopped there for takeout. I didn’t bother to check the mailbox in the entryway. I had moved in three days ago. There wouldn’t be any bills yet, and who wrote letters anymore? Then I thought about my foster liege, and his meticulously maintained fountain pens and heavy, creamy stationery embossed with his initials. Okay, vampires still wrote letters, and tried to get you to take notes in longhand, which meant I made a sharp turn and returned to the wall box to find a letter from my vampire liege/foster father. I hooked the bag with my dinner over the handle of the roller bag and read the letter as the ancient elevator wheezed its way to the seventh floor.

  Dearest Linnet, first day on the job. I hope it wasn’t too daunting. I was thinking of you, and the entire household is very proud of you. Love, Meredith.

  I kicked off my heels, dropped the sack of food on the coffee table, and headed to the windows. The July heat made the place stifling. I resolved to get to a hardware store over the weekend and buy a window air conditioner. I had to stand on a chair to unhook the window latch, and while I was up there I paused to take a look at the Hudson River. The rays of the setting sun danced on the water, making it look like a river of glass. The view was why I had rented the apartment, though I had to stand on a chair and cock my head to actually see the river. It was small, but I did have an actual bedroom, and I loved the old ten-story redbrick building that had been erected in the 1920s. It had leaded-glass cabinets in the tiny kitchen, the wrought-iron radiators were heavily decorated, and the floor was hardwood.

  The smell of lemongrass and chili made me remember I was hungry, and I jumped down as the last of the light faded. I located a plate for the pad thai, a bowl for the tom yum soup, and a fork and a spoon, then pulled out my cell phone and called my best friend, Ray. He wouldn’t mind if I chewed in his ear, and he’d want to hear how my first day had gone. I knew he’d be home. It was a Monday night, and the show in which he was currently dancing was dark on Mondays.

  “Hey, Munchkin,” he said in his soft baritone. “I’ve been thinking about you all day. How was it?”

  “Fine. My new boss seems nice.…” My voice trailed away.

  “I hear the paranoia,” Ray said.

  “I can’t help thinking I just got the job because Shade knew me.”

  “Please—you were third in your class at Yale. You did all that crap good little law students do.…”

  “Law Review and Moot Court,” I mumbled around a mouthful of pad thai.

  “Which is why I cannot take another month of you working through the emotional trauma of getting the job.”

  “Hey!” I tried to interrupt, but he was on a roll.

  “Last month, you were sure you blew the interview. I had to listen to six days of you replaying all the things you should have said. Then there was the week where you tried to figure out what you’d do if you didn’t get this job. Then there was ice cream therapy when the depression hit because you just so knew you weren’t going to get this job—”

  “And you were no help,” I grumbled. “You kept eating Tofutti while I was pigging out on Ben and Jerry’s.”

  “Hey, I have to keep my girlish figure.” I made a rude noise. “And I’m lactose intolerant. So, come on, tell me there was some moment of joy before you returned to your usual habit of looking for the black lining in every cloud.”

  I smiled, relishing a memory. “I did send gloating e-mails to everyone on my law school LISTSERV after I landed the job. And I made damn sure my worst enemies received the e-mail.”

  “Now that’s what I like to hear. Petty vengeance is the very best kind.” I heard Gregory, Ray’s partner, calling loudly in the background. “That’s the dinner bell,” Ray said. “Gotta go. Brunch on Saturday?”

  I agreed. Ray hung up, and I sat in my dark apartment and realized that right then all my clouds were silver and bright.

  * * *

  By Friday, my clouds had turned into thunderheads. During the past week, I had read through eight years of arbitrations—just nine more to go—and the files were getting thicker with each passing year. The takeaway from all my reading was that Chip was right: Our clients were crazy. After reading Marlene Abercrombie’s depositions, I decided that if
I’d been Henry I would have left her too. And her kids were just as irrational, grasping, and greedy as their mother. I dreaded meeting them in the flesh.

  I mentioned this to Chip, and he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t really identify. “Yeah, and we’re trying to put the most powerful private army in the world in the hands of these people. Kinda makes you wonder what we’re doing.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t follow up. One of the first things you learn in law school is that the law isn’t necessarily about justice. It’s about process. And you try not to make value judgments about your clients. That’s not your job. Of course, that’s honored more in theory than in practice. We’re human beings, not robots, and we have emotional reactions. We just have to try to keep them under control when we’re in front of a judge.

  By the second week, it was clear that Chip was definitely not in any kind of loop when it came to the firm. Most lawyers handle lots of cases. It seemed like Chip just had Abercrombie v. Deegan, because we never talked about, and I never worked on, anything but Abercrombie, Abercrombie, and more Abercrombie.

  At first I had thought it was because Abercrombie v. Deegan was so important, but it wasn’t. It was small potatoes when compared to the contract negotiations that McGillary was undertaking on behalf of one of our clients. They were going to be taking over power generation for Argentina. Caroline was assisting Gold on a massive and potentially very lucrative class-action tort case about long-term use of Botox.

  And I had the crazy-people case.

  It only took a day for me to notice that my fellow associates went off to lunch in groups of three and four. At first that level of camaraderie encouraged me. In a lot of White-Fang firms the competition between the human associates is so fierce that it precludes friendship, and can even tip over into outright warfare. I thought the fact these folks socialized together was great. I took to loitering in central reception at lunchtime, but an invitation was never extended. Instead I “overheard” remarks about “drones,” and classmates who were just wonderfully qualified and really ought to be working at IMG, followed by pointed looks. Then, on Friday, Caroline’s bosom buddy Jane had mused about the hiring policies at the firm. One of the male associates, Doug McCallister, had smirked at me and said loudly, “Every firm has the legacy or the patronage hire.” Caroline delivered the coup de grâce when she said, “And you just hope they realize they’re out of their league sooner rather than later, and seek their own level.” That was when I stopped hanging around the lobby looking to be included.