Reilly 02 - Invasion of Privacy by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page B

said briskly, "wouldn’t you say?"
    "Pretty good," he agreed, "though I wouldn’t use the word biddy to describe you."
    "That’s what that other woman who wanted to know about Kurt called me. Her story was even more specious than yours. She said he’d won the lottery. I didn’t tell her anything."
    While Sandy was at lunch on Monday, a middle-aged woman messenger in jeans and a sweatshirt with metal clips around the ankles of her pant legs brought a thick yellow envelope to Nina. FAST WOMEN her red sweatshirt said. The silhouette of a bicycle and rider zoomed across her chest.
    The envelope bore Riesner’s firm’s return address. Jeffrey Riesner had disagreed with the wording on her proposed order. A further hearing was set on Sweet v. London on March thirtieth, ten days away.
    Damn it! She’d won the case. She had drafted the language for the formal order. Ordinarily, if the opposing counsel didn’t sign the order in ten days, it was submitted and accepted by the court unchanged. In cases where the draft gave somebody trouble, the two lawyers would put their heads together and work out wording they could both accept. Apparently, Riesner did not want to put his head that close to hers at the moment.
    The new hearing on Terry’s case put to rest any hopes Nina had of getting off the hook easily. She could seek a delay, further holding up the film, dragging out the relationship, fueling the fire of her client’s anger. Or she could put this with all the other necessary evils of the job, on the calendar, to be skulked through and finished.
    Sandy returned, swinging a voluminous purple coat through the door behind her.
    "Did we send the letter off to Terry London, the one where we fired her?" asked Nina.
    "Went out last night."
    "Grrr. Can you send another letter today with a copy of this, saying I’ll appear with her on March thirtieth, but that will be my last work in the case."
    Sandy was taking off her coat with such phlegmatic indifference to how long she took at the job that Nina said, "Sandy?"
    "Did we fire her or not?" asked Sandy, picking off a bit of lint.
    "I can’t fire a client, if by doing so her interests are negatively affected. It’s not ethical. Now she’s got a cleanup hearing in ten days. I’m stuck."
    "If you say so. If it was me, I just wouldn’t show up."
    "It’s much more complicated than that. If I don’t show up, and have no legitimate reason for my failure to appear, Judge Milne will sanction me seven hundred fifty dollars. If I file a motion to withdraw as attorney now, he won’t grant it, because it’s only one more hearing and Terry’d have to hire another lawyer with another retainer. If I postpone the hearing with some excuse, her film is held up longer, and I’m acting un-ethically because she’s been prejudiced."
    Sandy pointed her finger at her ear, drawing little circles. "Wacko," she said. "Problem is, you lawyers think too much. Things get too complicated. And you make all the rules, so your clients have to pay you to tell them how to follow the rules you made. And now—"
    "Back to work, okay, Sandy?"
    "You’re slaves to all these rules," Sandy said, undeterred, and settled her large personage into the creaking chair.
    "You’re right," Nina said.
    Sandy inclined her head, accepting this homage.
    "I still have to do it, though."
    "Is she dangerous?"
    "Maybe."
    "And to think I was actually bored at my last job."
    "I hate to have to say this to you on such an exquisitely beautiful day, Sandy. But keep your eyes open wider than usual."
    "Expect an Uzi poking through the door any day, check."

9
    THAT NIGHT PAUL DREAMED HE WAS THE GREAT PIANIST Van Cliburn, in black tie and tails, sitting at the piano in an enormous recital hall filled with surly private detectives who spoke only Hungarian. He pressed his fingers to the keys to begin, but then a kid came up and tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He woke up smiling.
    Early the next morning, he contacted the city