It took only a weekend to transform the firm’s large conference room into a war room. Documents from St. Amien amp; Fils, Xeroxed cases, and scribbled notes cluttered its long walnut table, law books sat stacked on its matching chairs, and a modern oak credenza overflowed with empty lo mein containers and a coffeemaker brewing on an endless loop. Windows lined the north wall, dark squares of shiny onyx, now that it was well past eight o’clock at night, and four weary lawyers ringed the table.
“Well, I understand class-action law better and I almost have a complaint drafted.” Bennie leaned back in her chair, in a blue work shirt and khaki shorts, with her long curly hair twisted into a topknot by a dull pencil. Things were bad when your sole fashion accessory was a Dixon Ticonderoga. “And this fee business is amazing.”
“How so?” Judy looked up from behind a mountain of open casebooks. Her orange T-shirt was wrinkled, and the stubby strands of her candy-coated hair were pinned away from her face by about two hundred clips. Her eyes had dark circles around them but came to life when she spoke. “You mean the amounts?”
“Yes. Under the lodestar approach, lead counsel can charge five to six times more than the hourly rate for representing the class, because of the benefit bestowed on the class as a whole.” Bennie tried not to drool. “That’s why there is such a battle over who gets to be lead counsel. It should be called the mother lode approach.”
Anne looked up, next to Bennie. She managed to look fresh and crisp in a white cotton dress, with a coppery French braid running down her back. “What would the fees be in this case, for example?”
“If there’s sixty million in damages in this case, then we can make twenty percent in fees. That’s more than ten million dollars!” The number took Bennie’s breath away. She’d never thought she could be so mercenary, but being broke can turn a girl. “Thirty percent, which would still be kosher, would yield even more. If we represent the class, we get a ton of new clients, almost automatically, and my head explodes.”
“Yowza!” Judy said, and Bennie agreed.
“The hard part is getting to be lead counsel. Lawyers usually decide among themselves who will be lead counsel. It’s called ‘private ordering.’ The lawyer representing the biggest fish generally becomes lead counsel, which I have to believe is us, in St. Amien. And you know another way lead counsel is picked?”
“I do,” Anne answered, raising her hand like the law student she’d been not long ago. “It’s auction bidding. The qualified law firms submit secret bids on their fees, under seal, and the judge chooses the lowest bidder.”
Judy looked over. “Are you serious? Lawyers submitting bids, like contractors? That’s absurd! How can a judge choose who should be someone’s lawyer? Whose lawsuit is it anyway?”
Bennie sipped ice-cold coffee. “It works well for cases like St. Amien’s. It leaves more money for the class and gives lawyers like us, who don’t usually represent class actions, a fighting chance. That’s the rationale, but the Third Circuit found that auction bidding should be used only in special circumstances.”
“Bidding is commerce, not law.” Judy curled her nose. “The law should be pure, like art. It evolves like a painting, created step by step, until the whole can be seen.”
Bennie smiled. The associates could be so surprising. They had worked their butts off this weekend, especially Mary, who had screened out the world as she researched her Brandolini case. Yellow, orange, and blue Hi-Liters lay on the table at her side, and she had filled three legal pads with tricolor notes. She was dressed to work in an oxford shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and wore her tortoiseshell glasses instead of contacts. Bennie found herself touched by the young associate’s effort.
“DiNunzio?” she said. “It’s late. Maybe you should stop now. We all should.”
“Huh?” The associate looked up after a minute, her gaze preoccupied behind her glasses. “Gimme another ten minutes.”
“No, I think we’re all finished. We have to go to work tomorrow. You’ve all busted your butts this weekend, and I appreciate it. Time to go get some dinner.”
Mary set down her pen only reluctantly, avoiding eye contact. Silence fell for a minute, and everybody noticed it.
Carrier looked over at her friend. “Hey, Mare. Something the matter?”
“Not at all. It’s nothing. Not really.” She turned to Bennie. “By the way, did you find your wallet?”
“No, but Marshall canceled the cards. Is that what’s bothering you, my wallet?” Even Bennie could see that Mary needed to be drawn out, but she was almost as bad at drawing out as she was at comforting. “You’ve been quiet all weekend. Not that I’m not grateful, given the disorderly conduct of your fellow associates. But is something the matter? You want to talk about it?”
Mary looked away. “I don’t know.”
Bennie wondered if it was the thing with her mother. “Listen, we’re a firm of four women. A hardy few, a happy few, I’m too tired to remember the quote. We should be able to talk about anything.”
Mary wet her lips. “Well, it’s just that there’s something I wish we could talk about.” Her soft brown eyes found Bennie’s. “With you, Bennie. It’s about the firm, and money.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I know that Caveson and Maytel went out of business. How exactly does that affect us financially, and will St. Amien and Brandolini make it better? For example, I tried to call long distance on Friday and couldn’t. I called AT amp;T to check the line but they said they’d talk only to the person whose name is on the account. Is something wrong with the bill?”
Anne nodded gravely. Her artful makeup had worn off by now, leaving her even lovelier. “And laying off Marie last month. You loved her, and she was our only other secretary. You wouldn’t have done that unless you had to. And there’s other cutbacks. No magazine and reporter subscriptions. Only double-sided copying. We’re not supposed to take clients to dinner anymore, only lunch. And we share everything but toilet paper.”
Judy chimed in, “You just won a jury verdict for Ray Finalil, and we should be flush. Celebrating. But you don’t even seem that happy about it. What’s going on? We have a right to know.”
“Wait just one minute.” Bennie felt herself stiffen. She didn’t want to discuss this with them. She had let herself get too close, somewhere between the pantyhose and the lo mein. They weren’t her colleagues; they were her employees. “I don’t agree that you have a right to know. As a matter of fact, you most certainly do not have a right to know. It’s my business. Literally.”
Judy’s cheeks turned as pink as her bangs, and Mary bit her lip. “Bennie, I’m not sure we have a right to know, but we want to know. It’s our burden to share.”
“Right,” Murphy agreed.
Bennie considered it, only reluctantly. “Okay, I do have a cash-flow problem. Ray Finalil is going bankrupt, and he didn’t pay us or his experts. St. Amien’s case is great, but frankly, he may come too late. I don’t know if I can keep the wheels on this thing until it settles, and there’s always a chance that it won’t settle at all.” Bennie gathered her papers and rose stiffly, stowing them quickly in her briefcase. “You don’t have to worry about your jobs for the next two months, but that’s all I can guarantee. At this point, that’s all I can promise you. Two months.”
The three associates looked thunderstruck, and Bennie was fairly sure none of them had considered her job in jeopardy until this very moment. She looked down, fumbling with the latch of her briefcase, willing the lump from her throat. Then she forced herself to meet their eyes dead-on and steeled herself to say what was best for them, and not what she wanted to say at all:
“So now you know. I think things will change when we settle this class action, but I’ve learned enough law this weekend to know that that may take a long time. I will understand if any one of you wants to leave. Feel free to put out your résumé. I wish you all the best and will give you nothing but the highest recommendations. And I will manage without you. So if you need to leave the firm, please go.”
“We don’t want to leave!” Judy blurted out, and Anne was shaking her head.
“No way. I just got here.”
Mary looked stricken; her lips parted. “I didn’t mean it that way, Bennie. Let’s just go to dinner. Forget about the whole thing. We have two great cases, in the class action and Brandolini, too. We can make it work. Bridge the gap somehow-”
“No, you guys go to dinner without me.” Bennie shook her head quickly. “I’m beat. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Thanks again, for everything.” She managed a fraudulent smile and headed for the exit. Her face felt hot, her mouth dry. Words she’d heard earlier that day flashed into her mind, about Amadeo Brandolini: He had failed to support his family, or to protect them. It made him feel ashamed, as a man. She understood now exactly how Brandolini had felt. The feeling wasn’t confined to men. She left the associates quickly, and without another word.
Outside the office, the night air was dark, humid, and cool. The streets were deserted even though it wasn’t that late. An empty SEPTA bus traveled down Chestnut Street, rocking from side to side with a hydraulic hissing. The bus didn’t bother to stop at the kiosk at the corner, since nobody was waiting there, but accelerated, belching gray exhaust into the street. Bennie took a right turn onto a side street to lose herself in the narrow colonial streets of the city. She usually took them for her walk home because she liked the different sights they afforded, an insider’s view. But tonight her route wasn’t a matter of preference. She simply felt like hiding. From her associates, from herself.
She headed down a backstreet too narrow for a streetlight. An almost complete darkness lay ahead of her, interrupted only by the pool of a mercury-vapor streetlight at the far end of the block. It must have rained hard while they were working, and the asphalt of the street glimmered slick and black. Her Sauconys squished on the wet sidewalk. Then she heard a funny sound right behind her.
She turned, but there was no one there. Maybe she was just tired. Stressed. Still, she picked up the pace, hoisting her heavy briefcase a little higher. Something made her glance again over her shoulder. But there was nothing there. Bennie, usually so fearless, felt suddenly uncomfortable.
Enough already. Loser.
She held her head up and inhaled deeply. The wet air had a heavy odor that was hard to explain. Maybe it was her imagination, or maybe it was something else, which she identified next. Cooking oil? She had walked northeast, far enough to find herself approaching Chinatown. The scent of saturated fats wafted down the block, spewed into the air by whirling fans atop a score of restaurants.
She walked on, and brightly lit signs with red lettering-PEKING DUCK, DIM SUM, SHANGHAI GARDEN-surrounded her, and she remembered she had only cereal to eat for dinner at home. Her dog could wait a little for his walk; she felt oddly that she needed to be around people. She ducked into one of the bigger restaurants, hoping to get a table quickly.
The restaurant bustled with suburban families and couples, raising the noise level and steaming up the front window. It wouldn’t be the peaceful meal Bennie had pictured. She was turning to leave when a waiter in a black jacket grabbed her elbow. “One seat at bar,” he said, urging her with a pushy little yank.
“Is it ready now?”
“Right now,” the waiter replied, and Bennie followed him through the packed restaurant to a seat at the bar, which was busy since this was one of the few Chinese restaurants with a liquor license. The waiter read her mind. “You want drink?”
“Please, yes. A glass of zinfandel.” The waiter nodded and took off, and Bennie set her briefcase at her feet and glanced around. The lights were low, but she could make out some familiar faces at a long table in the back of the restaurant. There was Judge William Tepper, of the federal district court, his glasses reflecting the tiny white lights at the center of the table, near a huge pu-pu platter. Next to him sat Judge Lynne Maxwell, also of the district court, then Judge Lucien Favata and Judge Ernest Calhoun Eadeh. It was a huge party, full of judges from the Eastern District bench. Judges often lunched in Chinatown because it was so close to the courthouse, but Bennie wouldn’t have expected to see them here on a Sunday night.
Damn. She looked away, but thought better of it. The St. Amien complaint would be randomly assigned to one of these judges. She should start politicking if she wanted to be approved as class counsel. And her seat was close enough to the table that she couldn’t avoid being seen. In fact, Chief Judge Kathryn Kolbert was already motioning to her to come over.
“Bennie, Bennie, over here!” the chief judge was calling. She was in her late sixties, with frosted hair cropped in a chic layered cut, and she wore her laugh lines with pride. Bennie had always admired Judge Kolbert, who came from an era when women burned bras and promoted other women, which made her almost extinct.
Bennie got up, put on a smile, and wedged her way to the table of judges. “Well, here’s quite a brain trust! What brings you all together? Splitting the atom?”
Chief Judge Kolbert laughed, waving a manicured hand at the head of the table. “It’s Ken’s birthday. He’s the big six-oh today.”
“Sixty, can it be?” Bennie asked, smiling at Judge Kenneth Sherman. She genuinely liked Judge Sherman, though she could never bring herself to call him Ken. Judges for her held a certain mystique and they always would, even without their robes. They were true public servants, making far less than they could have in private practice, for the good of everyone. She bowed slightly from the waist, trying to summon some dignity in her khaki shorts. “Congratulations, Judge Sherman!”
“Ms. Rosato, one of my favorite Democrats!” Judge Sherman exclaimed, and Bennie laughed.
“That’s right. Now don’t die on me, Judge. It’s only you, me, and the chief on the home team.”
“You got that right!” Judge Sherman laughed, and so did the others, good-naturedly. Everybody knew that the string of Republican presidents, starting with Bush senior, had changed the face of the federal judiciary, making it older, whiter, and more conservative. But the appointments were generally smart and fair, and evidently had a decent sense of humor. Even if they didn’t realize that sisterhood is powerful.
“Well, I don’t want to disturb you,” Bennie said. “I’ll leave you to your revelry. Enjoy!” She left with a short wave and a round of good-byes and went back to her seat at the counter, where the waiter greeted her with her glass of wine. She sat down, nursed her wine, and tanked up on the fried things they brought free while she memorized her draft complaint. Her only other choice was looking at all the happy people around her, who undoubtedly paid their long-distance bills. When her meal came, she finished it quickly and left the restaurant.
Bennie emerged into the night, and the air had thickened, heavier with an expectant humidity. She pulled her sweatshirt closer around her and glanced up at the sky, opaque with storm clouds, and moonless. It was going to rain again, from the look of it, any minute. She looked around for a cab but there was none in sight. The sidewalks were empty. Philadelphians stayed home on Sunday nights, and every other night. It was only one of the things she loved about her hometown.
She turned west toward her neighborhood and picked up the pace. If she had to walk home, she would. It would take only a half an hour. But her stomach felt uncomfortably full, and she couldn’t shake the spooky feeling she’d had before. She didn’t hear a noise, but she glanced back anyway. A drizzle came on, spitting at first and then harder, with cold raindrops pelting the parked cars and city streets.
Bennie tilted her head down and hurried down the street.
Trying not to look behind her.