I peeled off my coat and concentrated on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. When we finally made it to Third Avenue, I took out my wallet and thrust a ten-dollar bill at the driver. We had only six blocks to go, but I needed air.
Dad was the in-house counsel for a big bank, boisterous and brilliant; he wore a rotation of pretty paisley-printed bow ties and dark suits. I’m serious only if you make me—but you don’t wanna make me seemed to be his legal strategy. Once, when my nephew was a baby, I’d overheard him when he thought no one was listening, cooing something about how he was rich and one day my nephew would be rich too. My nephew had giggled and shrieked in delight.
Thankfully, the air-conditioning was on at Manny Wolf’s. Dad was already sitting at his regular booth, the one beneath the autographed picture of Dean Martin smoking in the basement meat locker, surrounded by hanging carcasses brindled with fat.
“Here she is,” Dad sang out as he stood. He clasped me by the shoulders and made a show of looking me over, as though to confirm for himself that I was intact and all right. I was almost positive it was to hide the fact that there were tears in his eyes, and I felt an immediate sense of grounding. Like I belonged to someone, somewhere. My father and I had never been particularly close, but something had shifted after he found out I’d gotten into Columbia Law. He started to talk to me like a peer then. In the latter half of my life, he would become my best friend.
“Nice to see you, sir.” Brian was nearly a foot taller than my father, but next to him he always appeared diminished and nervous. Like an elephant afraid of a spider.
“Monsieur Armstrong,” Dad replied archly. My father was a first-generation Irish immigrant from Woodside who spoke with long o’s and w’s, just like Ed Koch. Southern niceties sparked suspicion.
We sat and I sipped my ice water. It tasted like home, pure and clean. Brian asked for a Budweiser, which they did not have, so he settled for a whiskey and soda.
“Sorry to hear your mother isn’t feeling well,” Dad said.
“You two were up late,” Brian said. “Gabbing away in the kitchen.”
Alarm coursed through me. “You heard us?”
“A word here and there,” Brian said. I stared at him, wanting to ask which words, but then the waiter came over with menus and a recommendation for the oysters, arrived on ice from Montauk that morning.
“So,” my father said after we’d decided on a dozen for the table, “I’m hearing Farmer is on board.”
Millard Farmer was a hotshot civil rights attorney from Atlanta who spent much of his career representing Black people in high-profile capital punishment cases and making sure everyone knew he represented Black people in high-profile capital punishment cases. The Defendant had written to him, asking if he would join his team of defenders in Leon County. Farmer had readily agreed.
“What I don’t understand,” Brian said, “is how come he even needs Farmer if he’s planning on representing himself again?”
“It’s a complex litigation,” I answered.
“I’d love to hear your thinking on it, sir,” Brian said, straight across the table, as though I hadn’t spoken at all.
Dad turned up a palm, coolly. Could be any number of reasons. “A case with stakes this high requires a team. The witness list will be long. No chance one person could handle all those depositions, documents, transcripts. In short”—he grinned in his own hotshot way—“it’s a complex litigation.” He tucked his napkin into his collar. The oysters had arrived.
“What if Farmer is the one to depose me?” I worried. This was the thought that had been keeping me up at night, ever since I learned about this infamous addition to The Defendant’s legal team. It would be so easy to destroy my credibility, based on the scintilla of a second when I thought I’d seen Roger at the front door. It was the jugular I would go for if I were the one to depose me.
“You and I will prepare for that,” Dad said portentously, “together.”
“Hold on, though,” Brian said, his hand raised like a traffic cop’s. “What if he’s the attorney who deposes you?”
I had a flash, what I realize now was a premonition, of The Defendant sitting across from me in a spiffy oatmeal-colored suit. As quickly as I saw myself at that table, I dismissed it. That would be outlandish. The court would never allow it.
“I believe one must pass the bar before one can be called an attorney,” Dad intoned.