Bitter Truth Read Online Free PDF Page B

to do, transcripts to review, briefs to write, discovery to discover. Instead of getting down to work I took the check out of my pocket. Ten thousand dollars. Caroline Shaw. First Mercantile Bank of the Main Line. That was a pretty fancy banking address for a punkette with a post in her nose. I stood and strolled into my partner’s office.
    She was at her desk, chewing, a pen in one hand and a carrot in the other. Gray-and-white-streaked copies of case opinions, paragraphs highlighted in fluorescent pink, were scattered across her desktop and she stared up at me as if I were a rude interruption.
    “What’s up, doc?” Beth Derringer said.
    “Want to go for a ride?”
    “Sure,” she said as she snapped a chunk of carrot with her teeth. “What for?”
    “Credit check.”

4

    W HERE ARE WE off to?” asked Beth, sitting in the passenger seat of my little Mazda as I negotiated the wilds of the Schuylkill Expressway.
    Short and sharp-faced, with glossy black hair cut even and fierce, Elizabeth Derringer had been my partner since we both fell out of law school, all except for one short period a few years back when I lost my way in a case, choosing money over honor, and she felt compelled to resign. That was very much like Beth, to pretend that integrity counted for more than cash, and of all the people I ever met in my life who pretended just that same thing, and there have been far too many, she was the best at pulling it off. Beth was smarter than me, wiser than me, a better lawyer all around, but she had an annoying tendency to pursue causes rather then currency, representing cripples thrown off SSI disability rolls, secretaries whose nipples had been tweaked by Neanderthal superiors, deadbeats looking to stave off foreclosure of the family homestead. It was my criminal work that kept us solvent, but I liked to think that Beth’s unprofitable good deeds justified my profitable descent into the mire with my bad boy clients. In today’s predatory legal world I would have been well advised to jettison her income drag, except I never would. I knew I could trust Beth more deeply than I could trust anyone else in this world, which was not a bad recipe, actually, for a partner and which explained why I hitched my shingle to hers but not why she hitched hers to mine. That I still hadn’t figured out.
    “I found us a new client,” I said. “I want to see if the retainer check clears.”
    “You smell like a chimney.”
    “This new client is a bit nervous.”
    “Why don’t you just have Morris do a background check for you?” she said, referring to Morris Kapustin, our usual private detective.
    “This isn’t big enough yet to bring in Morris.”
    A brown Chevette cut in front of me on the expressway and I slammed my horn. The guy in the Chevette swung around into a different lane and slowed to give me the finger. I gestured back. He shouted something and I shouted something and we jawed at each other for a few moments, neither hearing a word of what the other was yelling, before he sped away.
    “So tell me about the new client. Who is he?”
    “ She is Caroline Shaw. Her sister, one Jacqueline Shaw, killed herself, apparently. Caroline doesn’t believe it was a suicide. She suspects one of my clients and wants me to investigate. I’m certain it’s nothing more than what it looks like but I figure I can keep her out of trouble if I can convince her. My clients don’t like being accused of murder.”
    “That’s rather noble of you.”
    “She gave us a ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”
    “I should have figured.”
    “Even nobility has a price. You know what knight-hoods go for these days?”
    A maroon van started sliding out of its lane, inching closer and closer to the side of my car. I pressed my horn and accelerated away from the van, braking just in time to avoid a Cadillac, before veering into the center lane.
    “It’s not the sort of thing you usually take up, Victor. I didn’t know you had an