Dead Ringer (8 page)

“I would say so.” She snorted. “They were in a tizzy this morning, but they’ll be okay.”

“How bad were they? Did you distribute Prozac?”

“No, they’re fine. It’s good to share information like that with them. They’re old enough, they should know the kind of pressures that the firm is under.” Marshall’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the one I’m worried about. They said you didn’t eat dinner with them, that you were really upset when you left. Are you okay? You look tired this morning.”

“I worked late, and I wasn’t upset. I wanted to draft that complaint. I’m fine.”

“You can’t do everything alone, Bennie.” Marshall clucked. “What’ll you do when I have a real baby to take care of?”

“God knows,” Bennie answered, then went off to be her own messenger.

A half an hour later, she had arrived at the United States Courthouse, which rose like a red-brick monolith among the historic halls and the new Constitution Center. Lawyers, court employees, jurors, and judges flooded into the courthouse this morning, typically busy for a Monday, when new juries were impaneled. Inside, new security measures had forced the slicing up of the courthouse’s formerly generous marble lobby into glass chutes that funneled people to the metal detectors. Bennie joined the back of the line, ending up not far from the courthouse entrance, and was just about to jockey for a faster lane when she felt a hand on her arm. It was Chief Judge Kolbert, but today she appeared stiff in a trim tweed suit, carrying an accordion briefcase.

“Long time no see, Chief,” Bennie greeted her. The lawyers in front of her glanced back, jealous. Knowing Chief Judge Kolbert was the legal equivalent of knowing Madonna.

“Good morning, Bennie,” the judge replied, but her freshly made-up face wrinkled so deeply her foundation cracked. “I gather you have a rather large headache this morning.”

“No, not really. Why do you say that?”

“Your conduct last night.” The chief judge leaned over, scented with Shalimar and annoyance. “You had had quite a lot to drink at the restaurant. You certainly tied one on.”

“What?” Bennie asked, surprised. “I had only the one glass of wine.”

“Please. You disappoint me. Judge Eadeh told me he saw you, in the crowd at the bar. You made quite a scene. He told me they asked you to leave.”

“That’s not true!” Bennie felt slapped in the face. The lawyer in front of her glanced back to see who was making a fool of herself in front of Madonna. “Nobody threw me out, Judge! What are you talking about?”

“I’m not going to argue with you about it.” The chief waved hello at a passing group of lawyers, then returned her attention to Bennie, her whisper thinned to a hissing. “I’d advise more prudence in public. I know you were on your own time, as were we, but really, everybody noticed. You are well known and you represent all of us.”

“But, Judge, I didn’t get thrown—”

“Judge Eadeh saw you, and so did Judge Sherman. Are you saying they were lying?”

Judge Sherman, too?
“No, of course not, but they must have made a mistake. The bar was crowded. Maybe it was someone who looked like me, but it wasn’t me, I swear it!”

“Bennie, I tell you as a friend. If you have a drinking problem, attend to it. Now, I must go.” The chief judge pivoted on her patent pumps and left bearing her briefcase.

Bennie stood stunned, her face aflame. What was the judge talking about? She hadn’t had more than one glass. She hadn’t made any scene. She hadn’t been thrown out. The line shifted forward, and she shifted with it, on autopilot. She couldn’t understand it. There had been a crowd at the restaurant’s bar. Maybe someone in the bar area had made a fuss, and the judges had mistakenly thought it was her. Maybe it was someone who looked like her. That had to be it. But what could she do about it? Go to each judge and explain?
Excuse me, Judge, I’m not an alcoholic?

Bennie passed though the security checkpoints, shoving her briefcase and bag onto the conveyor belts and flashing her laminated court ID, completely preoccupied. There must have been some sort of misunderstanding, simple as that. Best to let it go. Say nothing, and pray that St. Amien’s complaint wasn’t assigned to a judge who thought she needed Alcoholics Anonymous. It gave a whole new meaning to the term “judicial intervention.”

Bennie grabbed the escalator to the second floor, and by the time she reached the blue rug of the landing, she had another theory. She’d said it herself earlier, the thought coming out of its own volition:
Maybe it was someone who looked like me
. Because there was someone who looked like her. It was possible that Alice, her twin, had come back to Philly. They looked identical, but Bennie hadn’t seen Alice since the day she’d left town two years ago, and given Alice’s lifestyle, Bennie had even wondered if she were still alive. Alice hadn’t wanted a twin, and Bennie hadn’t either—after she’d met hers. The two women hadn’t grown up together, and one had become a lawyer, while the other had become a criminal. It had all come out in court, when Bennie defended Alice on a murder charge. Was Alice back in town? And why would she be in the same Chinese restaurant last night?

Bennie walked distracted down the corridors of the building, through a warren of bright white halls and past the door to the United States marshal’s office, flanked by framed movie posters of Kevin Costner as Wyatt Earp and Tommy Lee Jones in
U.S. Marshals
. Evidently everybody was having trouble separating fiction from reality this morning. Bennie walked on, considering her situation. It couldn’t have been Alice in the restaurant, could it? She hadn’t seen her there, and she would have noticed her doppelgنnger eating dim sum. It seemed impossible, or at least unlikely. No reason to jump to conclusions. Alice had no business in town, and she’d said she’d never come back. The judges had simply made a mistake. They did that all the time, whenever they ruled against Bennie. She tried to laugh it off, but she wasn’t laughing.

She reached the office of the district court clerk and opened the double doors into the large office, buzzing with characteristic activity. Facing the entrance was a long Formica counter of fake wood, and behind it fifty-odd court employees hustled back and forth with court documents or keyboarded at their desks in maroon cubicles covered with American flags and Eagles calendars. Bennie never lost sight of the fact that even the biggest lawsuit started with a single complaint, which would be accepted by someone, time- and date-stamped, then assigned to somebody in a black robe. The employees in the clerk’s office, dressed in rugby shirts and Cherokee jeans, were as integral to the justice business as the guys in the black robes, and Bennie had come to know many of the clerks personally over time. She took a place in line at the counter, suppressing nagging thoughts about Alice.

“Yo, Joe,” she said, settling when she reached the front of the line. Joe Grimassi, the clerk at the counter, greeted her with a smile. He was a twenty-five-year-old in a blue oxford shirt and khakis, and he attended Temple Law at night.

“Hey, Bennie. How you been?”

“Good.” She reached into her briefcase, slid out a manila folder containing the complaint, the civil cover sheet and the other papers, and her check for the filing fee. “How was your Civ Pro exam?”

“Last semester? I got an A! Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Res judicata’s a bitch.”

“Tell me about it. If it weren’t for you, I’d be screwed. So, what do you have for me today?” Joe held out his hand, and Bennie passed him the papers and check.

“A class-action complaint. I’m an old dog, learning new lawsuits.”

“I recognize this defendant.” Joe nodded, skimming the caption. “I heard this case is gonna be a monster. We already had four other complaints filed in it last week.”

Huh?
“Already? You’re kidding. From who? Whom?”

“The usual suspects. Kerpov, Brenstein, Quinones, and Linette’s firm. Linette filed first, of course.”

“I shoulda known.” Bennie was kicking herself. So much for getting ahead of the curve.

“These class-action jocks, they don’t sit on their thumbs. Not on a case this big, with lead counsel in play. It’s a gold rush.” Joe leaned over the counter like a co-conspirator. “And you didn’t hear it from me, but the word is Bill Linette signed the lead plaintiff.”

“The lead plaintiff?” Bennie couldn’t believe it. Bill Linette was the heaviest hitter in the class-action bar. He’d supposedly been given the nickname “Bull” because he was so tough, but Bennie knew a better reason. “How can he?
I
have the lead plaintiff. Robert St. Amien.”

“Not according to Linette. His messenger spilled the beans. I forget the plaintiff’s name.” Joe set aside her papers, filled out a receipt for her check, and assigned her a case number. “Looks like you and Big Bull will have to duke it out. Celebrity Lawyer Deathmatch. Kick his ass for me, would you?”

“Bet on it, Joe.” Bennie felt her juices flowing. “Lemme see a copy of Linette’s complaint.”

“Believe me, it ain’t Oliver Wendell Holmes. It took him about ten minutes to write, if that.” The clerk went to a desk nearby, looked through a file, extracted a manila folder, and returned to Bennie. “Here we go. You know the rules, give it to the guys in the copy department over there.”

“It hasn’t been assigned to a judge yet, has it? Say no.” Bennie wanted time between her alleged public drunkenness and the case assignment, but one look at the file told her that it wasn’t to be. The judge’s name had been stamped in large red letters at the top. HONORABLE KENNETH B. SHERMAN. It was Judge Sherman, the birthday judge, who had liked her until he found out she was in rehab. “Thanks a lot, Joe,” she said as he motioned for the next lawyer in line.

Bennie moved out of the way with the file folder and joined the long line at the copy department, where she opened the folder. Mayer v. Lens Manufacturers Association of Pennsylvania et al., read the caption, and she winced. One Herman Mayer had already been given the lead plaintiff position, at least in the caption. She flipped through the complaint while she waited in line, with increasing anger. It was only three pages long, with just the barest bones of pleading, stating the reasons the case should be a class action and the cause of action. There were no details, no specifics, no dates, no wrongful statements alleged. It wasn’t a complaint, it was a bookmark.

Bennie turned the page to the claim for damages, at the end of complaints in capital letters. She had to read the capitals three times before she could convince herself what was really printed there, in black and white: SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS. Her eyes popped.
Seventy million dollars!
No way was Mayer’s case worth that much! He hadn’t built a plant, as St. Amien had. It went way beyond the norm, even for kamikaze plaintiff pleading. No wonder Linette had beaten her to the courthouse. If the fee was a standard percentage, he could make as much as 30 percent of seventy million bucks. She’d need a twelve-step program to figure the final total.

“Hey, lady,” said a gruff voice from behind her in line, a messenger from one of the big law firms. “You gonna copy that or not?”

“Yes, sorry.”
Seventy million!
Shaken, Bennie moved forward and began fishing at the bottom of her purse to find money for the copies, fifty cents a page. She needed to buy a new wallet. But she couldn’t get past the request for damages.
Seventy million dollars!
“That’s a lot of money!” she heard herself say.

“Fifty cents a page, I’ll say,” the messenger agreed.

Bennie had the complaint photocopied, returned the file, left the courthouse, and stormed rather than walked all the way back to the office. She couldn’t shake her terrible mood. It was another unseasonably warm day but she didn’t notice. She hadn’t eaten but she wasn’t hungry. She reached her office building full of steam, worry, and purpose, but all of it vanished when she stepped off the elevator.

And realized what was happening.

7

Near the wall in the reception area, two workmen in the navy blue jumpsuits of the building-management company were posting an eviction notice of a color Bennie hadn’t yet seen. White. Laser-printed. No-nonsense.
Eek
. Bennie hurried to the workmen as the associates rushed her like abandoned baby birds.

“Boss!” Carrier said, almost tripping over a new delivery from J. Crew. “They say they’re evicting us! We have to get out in thirty days.”

DiNunzio had paled as white as her oxford shirt. “They can’t do this, can they?”

“Of course not.” Murphy folded her arms, seething in a manner perfected by redheads. “I told them they’d be in deep shit when you got back.”

“Step aside, girls,” Bennie said, coming through. Marshall was already on the phone at the reception desk; she probably already had Dale on the line. This was definitely a mistake. Maybe he hadn’t gotten her check, or maybe these guys didn’t know he’d gotten it.

“Yo, guys,” Bennie said to the workmen. One name patch read GUS and the other, VINCENT, but she didn’t need the prompting. She had known them since she’d moved her office here. “Gus, what the hell’s going on?”

“Sorry, Bennie,” he answered, keeping his head turned away. He was heavyset and looked like a chubby baby in his jumpsuit. His thick hand grasped a ring of gray duct tape. “Believe it or not, this is harder for us than for you.”

“We’re just doin’ our jobs, Ben.” Vincent was duct-taping the bottom edge of the eviction notice to the wall. “We got no choice in this matter, you know that.”

“Listen, guys, I swear, I sent Dale a check by FedEx. I even paid extra for Saturday delivery. Maybe he didn’t get it, maybe something went wrong, I don’t know. I’ll call him and he’ll tell you, so you can save your duct tape.”

“I don’t think so,” Gus said, his tone flat. “They took this outta Dale’s hands. This comes from the cheese. He tole us this morning, go out and get it done.”

“And don’t let you talk us out of it.” Vincent was twisting off the end of the duct tape with difficulty. He turned to Gus. “Gimme the X-Acto knife.”

“I don’t got it. I thought you brought it.”