An Invisible Client Read Online Free PDF Page B

such a goon. This is my first interview.”
    “Your first interview for a lawyer position, you mean?”
    “No, my first interview ever.”
    “ This is your first job interview ever? You never had a paper route or waited tables or anything?”
    She shook her head. “No. Mr. Val and Mr. Keller did their interviews on campus. It was group interviews, so this is my first real one.”
    “Well, good for you. The working man gets screwed, so it’s good you’ve never had to put up with it.” I looked at her CV. “So, in your spare time, you play chess, huh?”
    “Yeah, I have senior master status. I was the first woman in Utah to do that. I love the game.”
    “I used to play, too. Gave it up, though. I don’t remember why.”
    “I can start right now,” she blurted. “I mean, you know, if you need someone who can start right now, I could.”
    “You’re already hired.”
    “I know, sorry. I read an article about how to do job interviews, and it said to make sure you say you can start right away.”
    I stared at her for a second, then chuckled. “Okay, well, you can start right now . . . actually, hang on.”
    I stepped out into the hallway and poked my head into a few offices. I didn’t want to go down to Pharma-K by myself—it was always best to have at least one witness for this sort of thing—but it looked like I’d waited too long. All the associates had gone home.
    “I do need your help right now, if you’re ready,” I said, walking back into the office. “Just need a warm body to come with me and listen in.”
    “Sure, I’d love to. Where are we going?”
    “To see where the sausage is made.”
    I had Olivia drive while I researched Pharma-K on my phone. They weren’t a massive drug company—their annual revenue was at about two hundred million—but they were gaining market share. They had been founded in New Jersey but moved to Utah in 2001 for the tax rebates. If a company had above a certain number of employees and agreed to hire local workers for a certain percentage of future openings, they could set up shop in the state of Utah essentially tax-free.
    The most unique thing about the company was what they termed their “Pharma Future” program, a division of the R&D department that hired the top minds graduating from pharmacy schools and chemistry programs around the world, and dumped money on them to come up with new drugs. One article I looked at estimated that, because of the drugs being worked on in Pharma Future, the company would triple in value over the next five years. All the profit tax-free.
    “Working man really does get screwed. He busts his ass for thirty grand a year and pays twenty percent in taxes, and a company that’s making hundreds of millions a year pays zero in taxes.”
    Olivia, whose hands were turning white from gripping my steering wheel so hard, said, “It’s not their fault.”
    “Whose, the working man’s?”
    “No, the company. Everyone would pay less in taxes if they could. It’s the government’s fault.”
    “And who do you think sent attack-dog lobbyists to Washington to get their taxes so low?” I scrolled through a portion of another article. “Don’t tell me you’re a libertarian?”
    “Sort of. Are you?”
    “Yeah, I’m all for state-of-nature, dog-eat-dog philosophy, but you struck me as the bleeding-heart liberal type.”
    “I’m some of that, too.”
    Pharma-K’s headquarters were in a section of Davis County known as North Salt Lake City, though the area was actually a completely separate city from Salt Lake itself. North Salt Lake had been founded by the owners of a mining company who thought they could get more hours from their workers if the miners didn’t have to drive back to a different city at the end of the day. The town consisted almost entirely of factories, warehouses, and manufacturing plants, with a few fast-food restaurants thrown in for good measure. A constant haze of thick, soupy smog hung over the surrounding