Сидни Шелдон – Rage of Angels (страница 6)

Every summer Jennifer went home to visit her father. He had changed so much. He was never drunk, but neither was he ever sober. He had retreated into an emotional fortress where nothing could touch him again.

He died when Jennifer was in her last term at law school. The town remembered, and there were almost a hundred people at Abner Parker’s funeral, people he had helped and advised and befriended over the years. Jennifer did her grieving in private. She had lost more than a father. She had lost a teacher and a mentor.

After the funeral Jennifer returned to Seattle to finish school. Her father had left her less than a thousand dollars and she had to make a decision about what to do with her life. She knew that she could not return to Kelso to practice law, for there she would always be the little girl whose mother had run off with a teenager.

Because of her high scholastic average, Jennifer had interviews with a dozen top law firms around the country, and received several offers.

Warren Oakes, her criminal law professor, told her: ‘That’s a real tribute, young lady. It’s very difficult for a woman to get into a good law firm.’

Jennifer’s dilemma was that she no longer had a home or roots. She was not certain where she wanted to live.

Shortly before graduation Jennifer’s problem was solved for her. Professor Oakes asked her to see him after class.

‘I have a letter from the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan, asking me to recommend my brightest graduate for his staff. Interested?’

New York. ‘Yes, sir.’ Jennifer was so stunned that the answer just popped out.

She flew to New York to take the bar examination, and returned to Kelso to close her father’s law office. It was a bittersweet experience, filled with memories of the past and it seemed to Jennifer that she had grown up in that office.

She got a job as an assistant in the law library of the university to tide her over until she heard whether she had passed the New York bar examination.

‘It’s one of the toughest in the country,’ Professor Oakes warned her.

But Jennifer knew.

She received her notice that she had passed and an offer from the New York District Attorney’s office on the same day.

One week later, Jennifer was on her way east.

She found a tiny apartment (Spc W/U fpl gd loc nds sm wk, the ad said) on lower Third Avenue, with a fake fireplace in a steep fourth-floor walk-up. The exercise will do me good, Jennifer told herself. There were no mountains to climb in Manhattan, no rapids to ride. The apartment consisted of a small living room with a couch that turned into a lumpy bed, and a tiny bathroom with a window that someone long ago had painted over with black paint, sealing it shut. The furniture looked like something that could have been donated by the Salvation Army. Oh, well, I won’t be living in this place long, Jennifer thought. This is just temporary until I prove myself as a lawyer.

That had been the dream. The reality was that she had been in New York less than seventy-two hours, had been thrown off the District Attorney’s staff and was facing disbarment.

Jennifer quit reading newspapers and magazines and stopped watching television, because wherever she turned she saw herself. She felt that people were staring at her on the street, on the bus, and at the market. She began to hide out in her tiny apartment, refusing to answer the telephone or the doorbell. She thought about packing her suitcases and returning to Washington. She thought about getting a job in some other field. She thought about suicide. She spent long hours composing letters to District Attorney Robert Di Silva. Half the letters were scathing indictments of his insensitivity and lack of understanding. The other half were abject apologies, with a plea for him to give her another chance. None of the letters were ever sent.

For the first time in her life Jennifer was overwhelmed with a sense of desperation. She had no friends in New York, no one to talk to. She stayed locked in her apartment all day, and late at night she would slip out to walk the deserted streets of the city. The derelicts who peopled the night never accosted her. Perhaps they saw their own loneliness and despair mirrored in her eyes.

Over and over, as she walked, Jennifer would envision the courtroom scene in her mind, always changing the ending.

A man detached himself from the group around Di Silva and hurried toward her. He was carrying a manila envelope.

Miss Parker?

Yes.

The Chief wants you to give this to Stela.

Jennifer looked at him coolly. Let me see your identification, please.

The man panicked and ran.

A man detached himself from the group around Di Silva and hurried toward her. He was carrying a manila envelope.

Miss Parker?

Yes.

The Chief wants you to give this to Stela. He thrust the envelope into her hands.

Jennifer opened the envelope and saw the dead canary inside. I’m placing you under arrest.

A man detached himself from the group around Di Silva and hurried toward her. He was carrying a manila envelope. He walked past her to another young assistant district attorney and handed him the envelope. The Chief wants you to give this to Stela.

She could rewrite the scene as many times as she liked, but nothing was changed. One foolish mistake had destroyed her. And yet – who said she was destroyed? The press? Di Silva? She had not heard another word about her disbarment, and until she did she was still an attorney. There are law firms that made me offers, Jennifer told herself.

Filled with a new sense of resolve, Jennifer pulled out the list of the firms she had talked to and began to make a series of telephone calls. None of the men she asked to speak to was in, and not one of her calls was returned. It took her four days to realize that she was the pariah of the legal profession. The furor over the case had died down, but everyone still remembered.

Jennifer kept telephoning prospective employers, going from despair to indignation to frustration and back to despair again. She wondered what she was going to do with the rest of her life, and each time it came back to the same thing: All she wanted to do, the one thing she really cared about, was to practice law. She was a lawyer and, by God, until they stopped her she was going to find a way to practice her profession.

She began to make the rounds of Manhattan law offices. She would walk in unannounced, give her name to the receptionist and ask to see the head of personnel. Occasionally she was granted an interview, but when she was, Jennifer had the feeling it was out of curiosity. She was a freak and they wanted to see what she looked like in person. Most of the time she was simply informed there were no openings.

At the end of six weeks, Jennifer’s money was running out. She would have moved to a cheaper apartment, but there were no cheaper apartments. She began to skip breakfast and lunch, and to have dinner at one of the little corner dinettes where the food was bad but the prices were good. She discovered the Steak & Brew and Roast-and-Brew, where for a modest sum she was able to get a main course, all the salad she could eat, and all the beer she could drink. Jennifer hated beer, but it was filling.

When Jennifer had gone through her list of large law firms, she armed herself with a list of smaller firms and began to call on them, but her reputation had preceded her even there. She received a lot of propositions from interested males, but no job offers. She was beginning to get desperate. All right, she thought defiantly, if no one wants to hire me, I’ll open my own law office. The catch was that that took money. Ten thousand dollars, at least. She would need enough for rent, telephone, a secretary, law books, a desk and chairs, stationery … she could not even afford the stamps.

Jennifer had counted on her salary from the District Attorney’s office but that, of course, was gone forever. She could forget about severance pay. She had not been severed; she had been beheaded. No, there was no way she could afford to open her own office, no matter how small. The answer was to find someone with whom to share offices.

Jennifer bought a copy of The New York Times and began to search through the want ads. It was not until she was near the bottom of the page that she came across a small advertisement that read: Wanted:/Prof man sh sm off w/2 oth/prof men. Rs rent.

The last two words appealed to Jennifer enormously. She was not a professional man, but her sex should not matter. She tore out the ad and took the subway down to the address listed.

It was a dilapidated old building on lower Broadway. The office was on the tenth floor and the flaking sign on the door read:

KENNETH BAILEY

ACE INVEST GA IONS

Beneath it:

ROCKEFELLER C LLECTION AG NCY

Jennifer took a deep breath, opened the door and walked in. She was standing in the middle of a small, windowless office. There were three scarred desks and chairs crowded into the room, two of them occupied.