Something Unfortunate E-Book

Mike Farris

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

At some point, every lawyer will encounter a client from hell.

Kelly Adair finds herself in this exact situation, defending a lawyer accused of killing another. A power struggle within the Dallas law firm Christopher Clark & Oliver has left partner Ken Hargrove dead and Frank Oliver on trial.

Convinced that her client might be guilty but bolstered by accounts of Oliver’s irrational behavior, she decides to rely upon an insanity defense at trial. Soon, the resulting courtroom drama threatens to tear the firm apart.

Will Kelly have hell to pay?

Leseprobe

SOMETHING UNFORTUNATE

MIKE FARRIS

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Epilogue

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About the Author

Copyright (C) 2020 Mike Farris

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

To Susan, my inspiration and muse.

ONE

Fall had begun, and the sun had set early. Weekend darkness reigned on the anchor floor in the offices of Christopher Clark & Oliver, one of Dallas’s most prominent law firms, perched high in a downtown skyscraper. Outside, only a smattering of lights from other buildings accented blackened skyline. Inside, lights in all hallways had been turned off. No light spilled from any offices, whose darkened doorways dotted the hall like caves. From no offices, that is, except one. Ken Hargrove’s office. Once considered a catch, Ken had let himself go in his quest to ascend to the top of the legal world, sacrificing working out for working. As his blonde hair thinned, his waistline expanded. Now sporting a paunch and the beginnings of a double chin, Ken sat with his back to the door, immersed in a scattering of documents on his credenza. He stroked his goatee and mustache occasionally, lost in a world of exhibits, briefs, and pleadings.

Silence prevailed on the floor, interrupted only by buzzing fluorescent lights in Ken’s office and occasional rustling of paper as he flipped over documents. Perhaps lawyers worked on other floors of the office, but only Ken Hargrove moved on the anchor floor.

And a figure moving slowly down the darkened hallway toward Ken’s office. The figure clung close to the walls, almost invisible in the darkness. Features totally obscured by shadows, it was only an ephemeral shape, moving slowly, stepping toe to heel. Silently approaching an unsuspecting Ken Hargrove. What little light reached the hallway from Ken’s office gleamed off the blade of an ornate gold knife with an ivory handle, which the figure held in a tightly-clenched fist.

The figure stopped at the door and peered inside, eyes falling on Ken’s back as he leaned over his credenza, oblivious to all but a stack of documents. Ordinarily the windows would have acted as a mirror, reflecting the office’s interior, but Ken had drawn the mini-blinds on two-thirds of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The intruder tiptoed into Ken’s office. Moving from darkness into light, stopping for just a few seconds, eyes adjusting, and then stealthily approaching an unsuspecting Hargrove. One more step and the uncovered portion of the windows would pick up a reflection. The intruder closed the gap quickly.

The sudden appearance of movement on the window flashed in Ken’s peripheral vision. He swiveled his head and stared at a now visible reflection in the glass. He made eye contact with the person behind his back. His eyes lit up.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Frank Oliver sat motionless at an oversized desk in his corner office, unconscious or asleep. His head rested on his arms, which were crossed on the desktop. In his right hand, he gripped a hunting knife tightly, its blade covered with something dark and wet. He stirred uneasily as consciousness returned. Gradually he became aware of his surroundings. It was dark, almost pitch – the lights were out – but he knew that he was in his office. The lights of the Dallas skyline shone to the west through his window.

“Must have fallen asleep,” he mumbled, as he tried to clear the cobwebs. He sat up straight and shook his head, immediately aware of a pounding sensation in his brain. A massive headache. A migraine. He hadn’t had a migraine since his law school days, more than 30 years before. He groaned and leaned back in his chair. He wondered how long he had been asleep. He checked his watch, squinting through the lenses of his wire-frame glasses. The luminous face showed that it was after ten p.m. It had been hours!

Got to get home.

Frank stood and stretched. A wave of nausea passed through him and his knees buckled. He quickly sank into his chair. As he did, the clank of metal on wood made him aware that he still clutched his knife. He dropped it on the desk and rubbed his face. After a few minutes, the nausea passed, but a pounding in his head kept up its rhythmic boom, boom, boom. Slowly he stood again, bracing himself with his hands flat on the desk. He stood still for a moment as he fought another wave of nausea. Finally, semi-confident that he wouldn’t throw up, he felt his way out of his darkened office and turned up the hallway toward a dim light in the reception area, where elevators awaited.

Behind him, a splash of light spilled from the doorway of Ken Hargrove’s office.

TWO

Joey Stephens arrived at his office building on Monday morning a bit later than usual because he had taken longer reading the paper, watching morning news shows, and getting dressed. Maybe it was psychological. After all, no siren call drew him to the office bright and early these days. He barely had enough to keep himself busy working nine to five, much less eight to six. Struggles between Frank Oliver and Ken Hargrove, both of whom typically fed him files, had driven away a few of the clients he worked for, and even arriving late, wasting time drinking coffee, and visiting with his co-workers, he would still have to struggle to fill his day.

With his six-foot frame filled out at a muscular 200 pounds, tousled brown hair, and tanned boyish face, Joey looked more like the college running back he had once been than the partner in a major law firm that he had become – and no longer wished to be. He had reached the point where, if he could find some other way to make a living, he would abandon law practice altogether. Just hang up his law books and walk away, like a gunfighter hanging up his guns.

Upon reaching downtown Dallas, Joey turned onto Elm Street almost thirty minutes later than usual. As he turned into the ramp to the parking garage beneath a 60-story skyscraper that held his office, he saw three police cars parked in front of the office building. He wondered if something had happened at the bank in the lobby. Now that would be unusual. Bank robberies didn’t often occur at downtown banks but were typically committed in the suburbs and at smaller branches. Downtown banks were too difficult to get into and out of for a quick getaway.

Joey put the police out of his mind as he negotiated a narrow, winding path down into the garage. As he ran his card through a machine that controlled gate entry, he saw two more squad cars on the first level of the garage. What the hell was going on?

Within minutes he stepped off the elevator on Christopher Clark & Oliver’s anchor floor. Two uniformed police officers loitered at the reception desk. He glanced down a hallway, where more cops milled about. Secretaries stood in small groups and talked softly while suit-wearing men he had never seen before moved around the corner looking very official.

“It’s Hargrove,” a voice said behind him.

Turning, Joey saw Clint Raymond and Paul Mustang, two senior partners with whom he worked in the firm’s construction and energy litigation section. Both wore blank expressions, as if in shock. A web of wrinkles branched out from the corners of Clint’s eyes. He had long dark hair and boyish good looks that gave him a deceptively youthful appearance for a man in his mid-forties. Paul, his contemporary and classmate at Baylor Law, was much slighter in build and already showing his age, with flecks of gray in his hair and eyebrows.

“It’s Hargrove,” Clint repeated. “He’s dead in his office. Murdered.”

“When? Who did it?”

“No idea who and not sure exactly when.”

“Has anyone talked to the police yet?” Joey asked.

“Not yet,” Paul said, “but you can bet they’ll want to talk to everyone in the section. I heard that they want to talk to Frank for sure when he gets here.”

“Does anybody know how it happened?”

Paul again provided the answer. “His secretary found him slumped over his credenza, all covered with blood. She went nuts and started screaming. One of the other secretaries had to calm her down and call the police. That’s all we know right now. We probably won’t know anything else until the police talk to us.”

“Why do they want to talk to Frank?”

“I guess he’s the most likely suspect,” Clint said. “But I don’t think anybody really believes Frank did it. He may be crazy, but he’s not a murderer.”

Ken Hargrove’s body sat in a desk chair. One of the police officers had pulled Ken’s torso back from where he had fallen forward onto his credenza so that he sprawled grotesquely in the chair. His legs stretched out in front of him, under his credenza. His arms hung loosely at the sides of the chair, with his head tilted back, open-eyed, and dark crimson soaked the front of his golf shirt and jeans. A short, white-haired man from the medical examiner’s office studied the front of the body, looking at Ken’s chest and throat, trying to find any and all signs of wounds.

A fingerprint crew dusted dark powder on every smooth surface they could find. A tall, muscular African American man in an off-the-rack suit supervised. He stood in the office doorway, rubbing his thin mustache and talking to himself as he scribbled notes on a pad. His sharp eyes carefully surveyed every movement in the office, while at the same time checking for anything out of the ordinary.

K.C. Hodges had been with the Dallas Police Department for fifteen years, the past six as a homicide detective. A native Dallasite, having been a star football player at David W. Carter High School, K.C. turned down a college scholarship to stay home and work to support his family after his father was gunned down in a barroom disturbance just as K.C. started his last semester of high school. The unsolved murder led him to the police academy after completing an associate’s degree at a nearby community college, and now he was one of the DPD’s top homicide detectives. But this murder was different than your run-of-the-mill killing. While the murder of a prominent lawyer in his office in a downtown skyscraper had the potential to advance a career, it also had the potential to destroy one.

K.C. tried to process his preliminary thoughts. If he had learned anything in the past hour, it was that Ken Hargrove had at least one enemy. If anyone held a grudge against the dead man, it was a lawyer named Frank Oliver. Frank Oliver, as in Christopher Clark & Oliver.

“What’s it look like, K.C.?”

K.C. turned to see who had spoken. He grinned at sandy-haired Detective Jerry Knowles, one of his closest friends on the force, who stood just outside the office. The two weren’t regular partners, but they had worked together on occasion. K.C. smiled at the prospect that this might be one of those occasions. He motioned at the body then flipped back a few pages in his notes before answering.

“Got a white man, mid-forties, apparently stabbed to death by a large blade. Looks like it might have been a Bowie knife or a hunting knife of some sort. Multiple stab wounds. Also looks like his throat’s been cut. Either that, or he was stabbed in the throat as well as the chest.”

Knowles adjusted his half-lens glasses and squinted through the doorway at the body. He wrinkled his nose. “What killed him, the stabbing or the throat-cutting?”

“We probably won’t know until the autopsy.”

“Y’all found a weapon?”

“Not yet. I’m waiting on a court order, so we can start an office to office search.”

“What do you need a court order for? Can’t you just get consent? Or argue that exigent circumstances exist?”

K.C. smiled. “You know better than that. We’re dealing with a bunch of lawyers here. You think they’re not going to make us jump through every hoop? Even when we get an order, I’ll be surprised if someone doesn’t try to quash it, claiming there’s confidential attorney-client stuff in the offices.”

“Detective?”

Both men turned in the direction of the speaker, a young uniformed officer who stood in the doorway of a corner office just down the hallway from the dead man’s door.

The officer beckoned to them. “I think you ought to come see this.”

K.C. and Jerry approached the officer, who stepped aside and pointed into the office. “Over there, on the corner of the desk by that stack of papers.”

Across the way stood a huge desk, its top covered in scattered pages and legal pads. Just beside a stack about three or four inches high, nearly, but not quite, hidden from sight by the papers, sat a large, white-handled knife in a puddle of dark red. The same dark red color decorated the knife’s blade.

“You haven’t been in this office?” K.C. asked.

“No, sir. I just looked inside. I almost didn’t see it at first, but the blood caught my eye.”

“And yonder it sits, in plain view,” Jerry said, using legal buzz words that would justify seizure of the knife without a warrant.

The two detectives exchanged glances. They looked at the nameplate on the wall outside the door.

FRANK OLIVER.

THREE

Clint Raymond’s heartbeat picked up its pace as he walked toward the firm’s main conference room. He could almost hear its steady pounding. He wiped sweaty palms on his pants leg. He had been in the conference room hundreds of times for depositions, meetings, and client conferences. Literally hundreds of times. But he had never felt this nervous before. Of course, he had never been asked to meet with a police detective investigating the murder of one of his partners – a sobering thought he believed would make anyone nervous.

Clint paused outside the conference room door and again wiped his hands on his pants leg. He took a deep breath, then grabbed the door and pushed his way in.

The room’s centerpiece was a massive marble-topped table that spanned the room from north to south. Floor-to-ceiling windows faced west, overlooking the Dallas skyline. A huge black man sat at the far end of the conference table, studying notes on a pad. The pad looked like a child’s toy, dwarfed in the man’s oversized hands. He flashed a disarming smile Clint’s way.

“Mr. Raymond?” He stood and extended his hand. “My name is K.C. Hodges. I’m a detective in homicide.”

Clint shook the huge hand, hoping the detective wouldn’t notice his clammy palm. “Detective Hodges. I’m Clint Raymond.”

Clint pulled out a chair and sat quietly, sweaty hands folded on the table. Hodges studied his notes for a few minutes without saying a word, then looked up and smiled sympathetically at Clint.

“I’m sorry about your partner,” Hodges said. “I’m sure this is a shock to y’all.” He paused, then added, “You are a partner, isn’t that right? I understood that you and Mr. Hargrove are both partners.”

Clint nodded. “Ken’s been a partner for about six years, while I’ve been a partner for – oh, gosh, must be fifteen years now.”

“Had Mr. Hargrove been a member of this firm as long as you have? If he’s been a partner for less than half as long as you, I would guess he hasn’t been here as long. He’s obviously older than you, so I assume he came here from another firm.”

Clint smiled at the tribute to his youthful appearance. “I’ve been here a good bit longer than Ken. He bounced around from firm to firm for a while before he landed here. But for your information, we’re about the same age.” He grimaced involuntarily as he said the last line, acutely aware that he had spoken in present tense when, based upon the body lying in Ken’s office, it should have been past tense.

Hodges whistled. “I never would have guessed that. In fact, I was surprised to hear you say how long you’ve been a partner. I wouldn’t have guessed you’ve been practicing law that long, much less been a partner.”

“A common mistake. I guess I have good genes.”

Hodges glanced at his notes again, then turned and stared out the window. “Tell me about Frank Oliver and how he got along with Ken Hargrove.”

Clint took the detective’s lead and stared out the window. As a lawyer preparing witnesses to testify, he always told them to answer only the question asked, not to volunteer anything, and to carefully think through each question before answering. He took his own advice. After fifteen or twenty seconds of hesitation, he answered simply, “They didn’t get along.”

Hodges swiveled his head. “That’s it? They didn’t get along? How about a little detail?”

“I don’t really know how much detail to give you. I mean, they didn’t get along.”

“Didn’t get along, how?”

“For whatever reason, Frank thought Ken was trying to steal his clients and take over his position as head of the section we work for. And so, they didn’t get along.”

“Anything to that? That stealing clients thing?”

Clint looked at Hodges and smiled. “How much time you got?”

“All the time we need. Give me the history all the way back to B.C.”

Clint took a deep breath. “Okay, this goes all the way back to before Erwin Christopher retired. So, literally B.C. – Before Christopher.”

K.C. smiled. “The other guy in the firm name?”

“Other guy?”

“Besides Mr. Oliver. And let’s not forget Mr. Clark.”

“That’s right. Erwin helped found the firm and, in the process, built a national reputation as a business litigator, particularly construction litigation. He later branched out to include energy-related companies during the oil boom in Texas, the one back in the Eighties. That was a little before my time, but since I’ve been here, our section has also gotten into litigation involving the renewable energy industry and even some IT and trade secret litigation. Primarily due to that, we’re the most profitable section in the firm. Not the highest-grossing section – some of the bigger sections, like insurance defense, gross more, but that’s because they have more lawyers and more clients, but they bill at lower rates. But we are the most profitable, because we can command the highest rates. And not just regional stuff. I’m talking about nationwide.

“Another thing you’ve got to understand is the firm’s compensation structure. Partners get rewarded for not only the work they do, but also the work they bring in, no matter who does the work. Sort of an ‘eat what you kill’ mentality. Erwin was the highest paid lawyer in the firm.”

“I think I can see where some of this is going,” Hodges said. “When he retired, someone had to take over that business – and maybe some of that income.”

“That’s right. Frank and a partner named Jeff Alden were next in line. For whatever reason, Erwin decided to groom Frank as his successor, putting him in touch with the clients and letting them know that Frank was going to be ‘the man’ when Erwin left. After Frank took over, he started cutting off work to Alden, including access to clients, because he saw him as a threat. So, Alden left.”

“Leaving Frank with all that business to claim as his own.”

Clint nodded. “Most of the clients we work for in this section are clients Frank inherited from Erwin, but he did help build the IT and trade secret practice, along with renewable energy. The biggest problem has to do with Erwin’s old clients, though. Their loyalties were to Erwin, not Frank, and new, younger people have moved up in the ranks at those companies, so sometimes the relationships seem a little shaky. Ever since I’ve been here, Frank’s always been real protective of those clients, always worried that someone was going to try to steal them.”

“Like Ken Hargrove.”

Clint nodded again. “Like Ken Hargrove.”

K.C. scribbled a few notes, then looked at his pad as he framed his next question. “So, let’s get back to what I asked before. Was Ken Hargrove trying to steal Mr. Oliver’s clients?”

Clint hesitated before answering. This was not easy to explain, especially to someone who had never worked in a large law firm.

“The problem is trying to figure out how Frank’s mind works,” Clint said. “He sees the world a little bit differently than the rest of us do.”

Hodges arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not that easy to explain. Ever since I’ve been here, Frank has tried to keep any of us who work with him from having close contact with his clients. Like I said, he’s afraid we’re going to poach them.”

“Doesn’t that make it hard for you guys to practice law?”

“You have no idea. But that’s where the problems started. We were trying to get away from that mentality of his shielding us from the clients. Ken sorta spearheaded that whole deal. We all thought he was right, but he was more willing to act on it than the rest of us were.”

“Why are y’all afraid to take him on?” K.C. asked.

“Fear. We saw what happened to Jeff Alden.”

Clint paused as K.C. caught up with his notetaking. “Anyway,” he continued, “without Frank knowing it, or at least not knowing the full extent of it, Ken started dealing directly with some of the clients. He developed a real friendly relationship with a few of them and started getting new files directly from them instead of having them come to him through Frank. Some have even referred new clients to Ken. When Frank found out, he blew up. He thought it was proof that Ken was trying to steal his clients.”

“Anything to that?”

Clint shook his head. “Absolutely not. The problem was trying to make Frank understand that. It caused problems for all of us.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Frank overreacted. In the process, he smothered what little client contact we did have. And when some of us complained about it, he assumed we were conspiring with Ken to conduct a coup, to force him out of the firm and replace him with Ken.”

Hodges flipped through his notes. “Do you know if Mr. Hargrove was working in the office this weekend? He was wearing casual clothes when we found him, so we assume that was the case.”

“That’s right. I saw him up here yesterday, around five o’clock, just before I left.”

“Do you happen to know if Mr. Oliver was also here yesterday?” K.C. asked.

“He was getting off the elevator just as I got on,” Clint said.

“Did you talk about anything?”

“Just why I was working on a Sunday.”

“Any mention of Mr. Hargrove being there?”

“Sorta. Just as I got on the elevator, Frank said something about Ken setting up an –” Clint made air quotes with his fingers – “unauthorized meeting. He wanted to know if I knew about it, and I just said, ‘Talk to Ken; don’t talk to me. He’s in his office.’ So, I guess I let it slip that Ken was there.”

“How did Mr. Oliver respond?”

“He was pissed. I figured he was going to confront Ken about the meeting, so I left as quick as I could. That wasn’t my fight.”

“What made you think it was going to be a fight?”

“It always was.”

“Did Mr. Oliver seem any more pissed off than usual?”

“It was about par for the course for the last few weeks.”

“Were the last few weeks worse than before?”

Clint thought a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess they were.”

“Tell me about that.”

FOUR

THREE WEEKS AGO

Ken Hargrove watched Frank Oliver pace in front of his desk. Sunlight streamed through open mini-blinds in Ken’s office and bathed both men in a splash of washed-out brilliance. Frank was livid, acting out his anger in a fashion Ken had seen countless times before. Although it once had its desired intimidating effect, Ken now simply found it tiresome. Veins pulsed in Frank’s forehead, throbbing at the fringes of his thin face like special effects. He set his lips in a straight line as he struggled to control himself, something both men knew was an exercise in futility. Ken sat silently, awaiting Frank’s next outburst.

It was a short wait.

“And you know damn well what I’m talking about!” Frank yelled. Self-control was now a distant memory for him. “It’s been your goal since day one – ever since you got here.”

“What’s been my goal?” Ken asked. He shifted his chunky figure forward in his chair, casting a broad shadow on the desk. “You keep pissin’ and moanin’ but you haven’t said anything that makes a damn bit of sense. Now tell me – what’s been my goal? I want to hear you say it in plain English.”

Frank abruptly stopped pacing and whirled around to face Ken. The two men stared at each other, Frank through wide eyes boring from beneath his protruding brow, while Ken peered through narrowed slits cut above his fleshy cheeks. Frank leaned across the desk and jabbed a finger in Ken’s face. Ken instinctively drew back his defiant chin, and it melted into his neck.

“Don’t play innocent with me, you sonuvabitch,” Frank said. “That hurt and innocent act may play for everyone else, but it’s not going to work on me. I know what you’re up to, and I won’t stand for it, Mister.”

Ken stared blankly at Frank. Drops of sweat materialized around the edges of his receding hairline and rolled down his face. He waited, looking for the right moment to launch a counterattack. As always, Frank’s next assault came quickly, as if two seconds of silence meant an opportunity lost.

“You’re not going to get away with this,” Frank said. “I won’t stand for it. I’ve worked hard to build this section and –”

“That’s a crock!”

Frank straightened in surprise, his pointing finger still suspended in the air.

“You didn’t build anything,” Ken said. “You happened to be in the right place at the right time when Erwin Christopher retired. He built this section, not you. You just inherited it. You were born on third base but think you hit a triple.”

“You think I didn’t have anything to do with building this section, you little piss-ant?” Frank’s face quivered and his pointed finger twitched like a metronome. “You think I haven’t worked my butt off to keep building up this section after Erwin left, to build up relationships with clients and to bring in new clients? I’ve worked damn hard to do that. No client left this firm after Erwin retired, and that’s because of me. And new clients flocked here in droves after I took charge. All before you got here, Mister. This section got along perfectly well before you got here, and it will get along perfectly well if something unfortunate were to happen to you.”

As he talked, Frank resumed jabbing his finger at Ken, as if punching a recalcitrant doorbell that wouldn’t ring. Suddenly Ken slapped Frank’s hand away and jumped to his feet.

“And this whole firm would get along perfectly well if something unfortunate were to happen to you, too, so back off, you pompous ass,” Ken said. “Don’t try to threaten me. And don’t try to intimidate me.” He laughed, a short staccato burst. “I’ve gone through tougher men than you just to get to a fight.”

Frank’s blank expression telegraphed his shock at Ken’s defiance. He backed up a step and blinked.

“If you think I’m trying to steal your clients, then you’re nuts,” Ken said. He spoke calmly and evenly, but neither man mistook the tone for control. Ken’s temper was as far gone as his hair, and they both knew it. “I’m talking literally nuts. Certifiable! But I can’t believe that even you really think that. I think you’re just pissed about Centennial Energy. Because Ernie Nabors called me instead of you about the Massey file. Isn’t that it? You’re pissed and now you’re throwing a tantrum.”

Ken cocked an eyebrow and looked at Frank, as if expecting an answer. Frank remained silent, standing in front of the desk, red-faced. His whole body quivered.

“That’s not my fault,” Ken said. “Even if there was something evil about my talking to him – which there’s not, and you damn well know it – but even if there was, it’s not my fault. He called me, remember? I didn’t call him. And I didn’t ask him to call me. He’s a grown man and he can call whoever he wants.”

“Well, why did he call you?”

Ken waved his arms in frustration. “Just how in the hell should I know? But I’ve got an idea how we can find out.” He picked up the receiver to his desk phone and offered it to Frank. “Call him and ask him.”

“I don’t have to ask him.” Frank backed away from the desk and resumed his pacing. “I already know why he called you.”

Ken slammed the receiver down. “Then please share it with me. Give me the benefit of your superior knowledge.”

“It’s because you led him to believe that you’re calling the shots on this file and not me. You made him think that you’ve got all the great ideas, that you’re making all the decisions, and that I’m nothing more than a figurehead.”

“First of all, that’s bullshit. I’ve done no such thing. But even if I had, where’s the harm in telling the truth?”

“What do you mean ‘the truth’?” Frank stopped pacing again and leaned forward on the desk. His knuckles turned white as he pressed on the top. “I’m not a phony. I do real things.”

Ken flopped into his chair. “What the hell does that mean? You’re not a phony? You do real things? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I mean I’m not just a figurehead. I get involved in these files. I actually do things on them.”

“And your point is?”

Frank wagged his finger in Ken’s face again. “My point is this, Mister.” There was nothing respectful intended, or taken, by Frank’s use of the word “mister.” It came out of his mouth like an epithet. “This is the most shameless bit of self-promoting I’ve ever seen.”

“There’s nothing to see,” Ken said. He made a circling motion around the side of his head with the index finger of his right hand. “This is all in your mind. It’s a delusion, totally unconnected to reality.”

“It’s no delusion.” Frank narrowed his eyes. “Don’t screw with me.”

“Or what? Something unfortunate’s going to happen to me?”

“Try me and you’ll find out.”

FIVE

The voices of the two arguing men carried down the hallway on the south side of the firm’s offices. The door to Ken’s office had remained open from the first angry word as the two law partners tore at each other without apparent regard for who might hear them. Maybe neither of the combatants realized the door was open because they were so caught up in their personal battle. Or maybe they both knew it was open, but wanted to use the public nature of their argument for their own means – Ken to engender sympathy from other lawyers for this latest vicious attack from Frank Oliver, and Frank to impress upon everyone else in the section that he would not condone challenges to his authority. Whatever the reason, their voices bolted through the open door and into the hallway.

Embarrassed secretaries huddled over word processors, furiously typing as they tried to pretend they couldn’t hear what they obviously could. Around the corner, Joey Stephens and Clint Raymond fidgeted uneasily in Clint’s office, listening to the battle royale between their partners. Although Ken and Frank had argued before, it had never been quite so public. The open door offered a new twist on their feud. Joey and Clint periodically exchanged embarrassed glances but, for the most part, they merely stared out the window and listened.

Joey had been with the firm, working for Frank Oliver, for ten years, and during that time Frank had always held the reins tightly on his clients. From the day Joey got his first file from Frank, he found himself handicapped because Frank insisted on being the funnel for all client contact. Joey thought bottleneck was a better description than funnel. When he needed authorization from a client to take a specific action, he had to wait for Frank to get it for him. When he needed information, he had to wait for Frank to get it. When he ghostwrote letters to clients that had to go out over Frank’s signature, he had to wait for that signature.

And he often found himself called on the carpet by Frank, who was embarrassed by his own lack of familiarity with a particular file – as if it were Joey’s fault that he was ignorant. Joey cringed every time a client wanted to meet with Frank because there would always be at least one question that Frank was unable to answer, and Joey would be blamed for not properly briefing him. Joey thought, but never told Frank, that the logical solution would be for Frank to let him talk directly to the clients. Either that or Frank should get more actively involved in the files. Good logic, Joey thought. But Frank’s logic was not Joey’s logic.

Over the years, Joey had learned to deal with Frank’s system. If Frank wanted to be in charge – if his ego demanded that – so be it. As a former jock, an injury-prone running back at TCU, Joey knew about ego and self-promotion, terms that were almost synonymous with athletics. Himself humble and self-effacing, Joey wasn’t now, nor had he ever been, interested in glory and credit. If that meant being obscured in the shadows while Frank created his own sun, he would do that. Joey strongly believed in teamwork. He always had.

A loud noise coming from Ken’s office suddenly cut through the arguing voices. It sounded like the two combatants had moved from throwing insults to throwing objects.

“That’ll cost you,” Ken said. “That’s an antique.”

Frank Oliver stood next to a broken chair and listened to Ken lecture him like he was a little boy. It embarrassed him – he hadn’t meant to break the chair – but his embarrassment fueled his rage. He struggled to find a way to blame Ken. After all, how was Frank to know the chair was an antique? And how was he to know the stupid thing was fragile and would fall apart at the slightest touch? Ken knew but hadn’t bothered to tell Frank. If he had, Frank wouldn’t have touched it. He would have kicked something else, of course, but it was Ken’s fault. Ken should have stopped him when he pulled back his foot to deliver the blow.

“I expect you to pay for that,” Ken said.

Frank’s tomato-red face transformed to plum-purple. His lip quivered and, with each twitch, it exposed clenched teeth, giving him the appearance of a rabid dog.

“I don’t care what you expect,” Frank said. He kicked a leg from the broken chair across the floor. “You’re not going to make me look bad, Mister, I’ll tell you that right now.”

Ken flinched as the chair leg skittered across the hardwood floor and crashed into the wall. He walked around the side of his desk and advanced toward Frank.

“I want you to leave my office,” Ken said as he came toe to toe with Frank. He pointed over Frank’s shoulder to the door. “Get the hell out of my office.”

Frank stepped back a pace, then set his feet, legs shoulder-width apart, and put his hands on his hips. With purple face, pulsing veins, and defiant stance, he resembled a troll guarding his bridge.

“I’m not leaving until I’m good and ready,” Frank said. “And you can’t make me.”

“Shoo!” Ken said, swatting at the air. “Get on out of here.”

Frank stood his ground for a moment, fists clenched and lip quivering. Embarrassment fought with rage for control of his mind. He cocked his arm, as if to throw a punch. Ken waited for the blow, but it never came.

“Go on,” Ken said. “Get the hell out of here.”

Frank turned and stomped out the door. Thirty feet down the hallway, he paused outside his own office. He looked back at Ken, who stood by his office and watched, guarding his own bridge.

“This is not over, Mister,” Frank said. “Not by a long shot. I’m not through with you.” Then he entered his office and slammed the door.

SIX

After Frank Oliver’s door slammed, a suffocating silence settled over the south and west hallways of the office’s thirty-first floor. Life went on in the rest of the firm, spread out over several floors, but nobody moved in these halls. Except for Frank, the section’s attorneys followed an open-door policy, but no sounds came from any of those open doors except the clicking of fingernails on keyboards and the shuffling of papers. Joey Stephens and Clint Raymond exchanged glances across Clint’s desk, but neither said a word. An unwritten rule prohibited conversation immediately after an Oliver-Hargrove donnybrook.

After a few minutes, Clint said, “I guess it’s safe to go out now.”

Joey stood and stretched. “I assume you and Paul will debrief Ken, but I’m not sure you can get anything out of him that we didn’t hear, anyway.”

“You underestimate the interrogative abilities of Mr. Mustang and me. Who knows what insights brilliant minds like ours can glean with a few well-honed questions?”

The sounds of footsteps on carpet outside Clint’s door and the jingle of change in a pocket interrupted their conversation. Paul Mustang walked in the door.

“Ah, here’s my esteemed co-inquisitor now. Welcome, Mr. Mustang.”

Paul smiled and nodded. “Mr. Raymond,” he said with mock formality. “And Mr. Stephens.”

Clint stood and brushed past Joey. “Well, Mr. Mustang, shall we proceed to speak with our partner, Mr. Hargrove?” He affected the same mock formality Paul had introduced to the conversation.

“Yes, let’s,” Paul said. The two men left the office, walking arm-in-arm.

“Geeks,” Joey said.

“Yes,” Clint answered over his shoulder. “But we both make more money than you.”

Joey laughed as he headed back to his own office.

“Joey,” Clint called.

Joey stopped and turned around

“Why don’t you come with us? We can’t protect you forever, so maybe it’s time for you to graduate to the big leagues.”

Ken Hargrove sat behind his desk, rocking slightly in his chair, waiting for Clint and Paul. He knew the routine as well as anyone. He was also getting pretty damn sick of the routine. It had been mildly amusing at first, then later annoying, but now it was getting to be more than he could take. He wanted to do something – anything – to put an end to Frank Oliver’s dictatorship. But he knew that he couldn’t do anything on his own. Any solution or any action would require a united front by the section members. And maybe some help from the firm’s management committee, demanding that Frank put an end to his periodic assaults. Before he could make a move with the committee, though, he first had to inject some backbone into the partners closest to him.

Clint Raymond followed Joey Stephens and Paul Mustang into Ken’s office then closed the door behind him. Ken seemed surprised to see Joey but didn’t say anything.

Paul stepped over the broken chair and sat on a small couch to the side of the desk while Clint slipped into the other half of the antique chair set – the one still standing. Apparently, Ken hadn’t been able to manipulate Oliver into destroying that one. As Clint sat, he adjusted the mini-blinds to block sun from Paul’s squinting eyes. Joey leaned against the wall by the door, arms folded. Ken leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. The lawyers looked uneasily at each other for a few seconds. Finally, Clint pushed a broken armrest across the floor with his foot.

“Cheap construction,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s the way they did things a hundred years ago,” Ken said. “He was going for a field goal and – ka-bang; instant kindling.” He smiled and added, “Funny thing, I always hated those chairs, but Carol insisted I get ‘em. And you know how it is when your wife insists.”

“Look at the bright side,” Paul said. “If you’re lucky, it can’t be fixed, then you get to demand that he pay for it.”

“That would be the time to keep your mouth shut about how you always hated it,” Clint said.

“I made that demand already, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I doubt I’ll ever see a dime out of him. I bet he holds me responsible for the chair breaking in the first place.”

Joey looked at Paul and Clint, who nodded in agreement. It appeared that, as the newest partner, he hadn’t been privy to some of the Frank Oliver craziness that had gone on behind closed doors with other partners, but he couldn’t make sense of what Ken had said.

Ken guessed Joey’s thoughts. “You’ll figure this stuff out before long,” he said. “See, Frank will look at it this way: I deliberately pissed him off so he would do something like kick a chair, and I knew the chair would break but I didn’t stop him, so when he did it, it was my fault. He probably even thinks I got an antique chair in the first place knowing something like this would happen someday.”

“That reminds me of the time he borrowed my briefcase to take with him to New Orleans for a Fifth Circuit argument,” Clint said. “He decided to look at the briefs on the plane, so he grabbed the briefcase to take them out, but when he noticed that the combination wasn’t set on zero-zero-zero, like he sets his, he changed the numbers. Of course, that locked it. But when he tells the story, it’s all my fault because I didn’t use the same combination he did. Then it was my fault for having a briefcase with a combination lock, in the first place, and finally it was my fault for not telling him what the combination was. He never accepted that changing the numbers on the plane had anything to do with it. It was always all my fault.”

“Same principle here,” Ken said.

Clint turned serious. “We joke about this a lot, but I really think the man has got some serious psychological problems. That’s just not normal behavior.”

“None of it is normal,” Ken said. “I’m a little concerned something unfortunate might happen to me.”

“What does that mean?” Clint asked.

“Just something Frank said.”

“I’m with Clint,” Paul said. “We’ve laughed about this before, but it’s starting to affect all of us, and none of it makes any sense. He’s lost it and I’m afraid that, if we let it go, he’ll take down the whole section. I’m already worried about how much business we’re going to get in here next year. I’m not as busy as I was this time last year, and I don’t see it getting any better next.”

“So, you finally think it’s really something to worry about,” Ken said.

“Damn right I do,” Clint said. “My files have all got gray hair, and I don’t see much new business coming in to replace it.”

“How much of it do you think is Oliver,” Joey said, “as opposed to just the normal ebb and flow of legal business?”

“Ebb and flow is one thing,” Clint said, “but I think that some of our clients are sending new business to other firms. That’s a whole different ballgame.”

“I know for a fact that they are,” Ken said.