Impact by Stephen Greenleaf Page B

legs you like.”
    Perplexed and pained, Hawthorne shakes his head. “Did anyone see him go?”
    â€œThe receptionist. She thought the boxes meant they were remodeling his office. Again.”
    â€œWho knew him best around here?” Hawthorne asks, casting his mind back across the years, seeking a foretelling incident.
    Martha constructs a smile, filament-thin, maddeningly tranquil. “You did.”
    Hawthorne shakes his head against the implication that he is somehow at fault. “Was he pissed about something? Lately people seem to be getting mad at me without me even knowing about it,” he adds, as if it is a phenomenon violative of natural law.
    Martha only shrugs. “I heard he didn’t like the size of his office.”
    â€œWhich office did he want?”
    â€œMine,” Martha notes without inflection, then stands, smooths her skirt, adjusts her jacket. For just a moment, her back arcs triumphantly.
    She and Dan Griffin have been rivals for a decade, the contenders for his empire jostling for the seat at his right hand. De jure, Griffin has been senior, his name before Martha’s on the letterhead and door. De facto, Martha has been primary since spending seventy-two hours in the office without sleep or supper to meet a deadline that had fallen through the cracks in Hawthorne’s scattered schedule. From that time hence, Martha has been in charge of the office calendar, and deadlines are no longer missed.
    He watches as she perfects her look. She is svelte and, in a form-fitting suit of blood-red suede and a high-necked blouse of off-white silk, particularly majestic this morning. He wonders if she knew Dan’s surrender was imminent and had dressed to suit the occasion.
    â€œYou do twice the work that he did,” Hawthorne says tentatively, trying a justification on for size. Because he knows no reason for Dan Griffin’s defection, he sits guilty of all conceivable ones.
    â€œCloser to triple, I’d say. Not that Dan saw it that way.”
    â€œHow did he see it?”
    Her smile is cryptic. “That he’d been with the firm longer than anyone but me, and that I didn’t count because I’d slept my way into the partnership.” She laughs to herself. “He also thought his credentials were more impressive than mine because he’d been a law review editor, and that because he was a man and a father and a sole provider and whatever else it is that men think makes them more valuable than women, he should be top cock.”
    As with most of Martha’s utterances, there is a provocative slant to her version of events, but the possibility that Dan’s desertion implies a personal failure on his part prompts Hawthorne to probe further. “We were carrying him. He never stayed in the office after five, never worked weekends, and always got sick when his cases came up on the trial calendar. He was a nervous wreck whenever he had to be anywhere but the law library.”
    â€œTrue.”
    â€œSo why leave now?”
    Martha stops fiddling with her dress and looks at him. “He got a client. Some movie star. A law school buddy down in Beverly Hills referred the case to Dan.”
    â€œWhat case?”
    â€œSurfAir.”
    â€œAlready?”
    â€œWell, you know those show biz types. If it involves anything more demanding than eggs Benedict and bullshit, they start looking for someone else to do the work.”
    Hawthorne slams a fist onto the desk. “He can’t take files out of here like that. If he weren’t in this firm, he’d never have gotten that referral in a million years.”
    â€œYou and I know that, and Dan used to know that; I doubt that he does anymore.”
    â€œWe’ll stop him.”
    â€œHow?”
    The problem is suddenly in a familiar mode—a quarrel amenable to maneuver. “What firm did he go with?”
    Martha shrugs. “I heard he shopped himself to Scallini a month