by John Chard
"Jack, where's that damn Barnicky file?" Margaret J. Kemp, Attorney at Law, bellowed from her office. "I have to leave in five minutes."
"I'll be right there, Ma'am," shouted Jack Dawson, harried paralegal and law student. His fingers flew through the drawer of file folders, but the Barnicky file just wasn't there.
Shit! What did I do with it? he thought, his heart pounding. Think, Jack, think. What was I doing the last time I had it? Then, like a lighting bolt, it came to him. The safe. I was getting the photos and video tapes from the fire safe and I had the file folder in my other hand. I was going to put it back in the file cabinet, but then Maggie started yelling for me over the intercom. I must have...
He ran to the fire safe on the other side of his workstation and frantically worked the combination.
"Jack, tick, tick," Maggie shouted from her office.
He said a quick prayer and pulled the heavy door open. Bingo! There it was, right on top. He snatched the heavy folder and hustled to the door leading to his demanding, task master's office. He got there just in time. She was already coming out, the keys to her Mercedes CL 500 coup clenched in her teeth as she slipped into her smartly tailored, navy-blue suit jacket. "Barnicky file," he said, handing her the folder.
She buttoned her jacket, and snatched the keys from her mouth before accepting the folder, turning an icy stare on her subordinate as she did so. "So where'd you find it?" she asked. "It obviously wasn't in the file cabinet where it belongs."
Jack's stomach lurched. He hated it when she gave him that look. Her deep blue eyes seemed to cut right through him as if she were looking right into his soul. "I left it in the fire safe when I was getting the tapes out, Ma'am," he admitted. He knew better than to lie about it. Maggie Kemp could smell a lie five counties away.
She pursed her lips and shook her head. "Pretty careless, Jack," she said, popping him lightly on the forehead with the folder for emphasis. "There would have been hell to pay if I had to postpone this meeting because you couldn't find this. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, Ma'am," he said, wishing desperately that he possessed the power to disappear. "It won't happen again."
"It damn well better not!" she said. She ran her fingers through her thick black hair and glanced at her Rolex. "I don't have time to talk to you now, but we will discuss your unacceptable loss of focus when I get back. Understood, mister?"
"Yes, Ma'am," he said, swallowing hard. It wasn't a discussion he was looking forward to.
She spun on her heels and was gone in an instant, a blur of conservative, navy-blue heading out the door.
Once the door closed behind her, Jack pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Damn! Why, why was I so careless? Things were going great and now this, he thought miserably as he plopped down into his workstation chair.
He'd only been working for Maggie Kemp for about six months. Just since the start of the school year, when he'd answered her help wanted ad posted on one of the university's websites. He'd beaten out several other applicants for the job and it had been a god-send. She could be a real pill sometimes, but on the whole they'd gotten along well.
The truth was that from the first day on the job he'd been aware of a certain fascination with his new boss. It wasn't a crush. He wasn't given to crushes. There was just something about her demanding, perfectionist nature that made him lust for her approval. Women like Maggie had always affected him that way. She'd expressed considerable approval with his performance too, until now anyway. He mentally kicked himself again for the set back. He knew he couldn't afford to screw this up.
The only child of humble, middle class parents, he'd lived most of his life in the small, heartland farming community where his parents owned and operated a local gas station franchise. They'd saved for his college education from the day he was born, but it still wasn't enough to cover a full four years. For that reason he'd stayed at home for the first three years after high school, getting his associates degree. It was a long struggle, taking night classes at a nearby community college while working part time as a clerk for a local lawyer during the day. He'd known since high school that he'd wanted to study law.
Once he had the acceptance letter in his hand from the state university, he decided to spend his last summer at home working on his paralegal certification and he'd achieved that goal as well just a week before having to report for the fall semester.
The money his parents had put away was enough to cover tuition, books, fees and the rent on a small, one room efficiency apartment, but only barely. He soon realized he'd need a little more for expenses. He had a beat up old Toyota Corolla for one thing. He got around most of the time on a second hand, ten-speed bike, but he did need the car sometimes and it needed gas and he had to pay for the insurance. Then there were groceries and various other sundries to be procured for the apartment and of course the utility bills. Having never lived on his own before, he was astonished how fast the little things added up.
Thankfully, he landed the job at Margaret J. Kemp's small law office. For part time work, the pay was generous and the work load really wasn't that bad.
He'd found his new boss to be a bit of a mystery, however. She wasn't given to talking much about herself or her past, at least not in the office, and that was about the only time Jack saw her. He'd been forced to piece what he knew of the story together from bits of information he'd gleaned over the last several months.
He'd learned that, like him, she'd grown up in a small town, only hers was somewhere in south-west Texas. He could still pick out the accent, but usually just when she was very tired or very upset, as she had been when she stormed out of the office just a few moments ago. She'd won a full scholarship to Brown and from there, went on to Harvard Law, also on full scholarship.
Having worked with her, the academic achievements didn't surprise him. She seemed to have a photographic memory, especially for legal precedence, and she was intuitive to a point that he found almost frightening. She passed the bar on her first try and was quickly snapped up by a big firm in Atlanta, Georgia. The details got a little murky after that. He knew she'd rapidly risen through the ranks in the firm and presumably made a ton of money in the process. At some point she'd married a big-wig CEO type, but they'd divorced amicably after fifteen years together.
The big mystery, at least to Jack's mind, was why, after the divorce, she'd decided to quit the big firm, move to a small, Midwestern college town and put out her own shingle. He could only assume she'd made enough money and wanted to get away from the rat-race and go someplace where she'd have more time to enjoy the fruits of her labors.
It's a million to one shot that someone with her talent would even be practicing law here, or that she'd hire me and now I go and pull a bone-headed stunt like this, he thought, as he scrolled through a backlog of e-mails that needed to be answered. Damn! How could I have been that careless? I've never seen her look that pissed; at least not at me. "We will discuss your loss of focus when I get back." Maggie's words echoed in his mind. I'll bet I'm in for one hell of an ass chewing when she gets back. God, could it be worse than that? She wouldn't fire me, would she? I mean, I did find the freaking file in time. It's not like it was a real disaster. He glanced at the wall clock and saw that the hands were at 3:00. She'll be at least another hour, maybe longer, he thought miserably. I guess I'll just have to wait and hope for the best. He punched up the first e-mail, a routine billing inquiry, hit the reply button and started typing.
Maggie Kemp put a heavy foot to the accelerator of the silver Mercedes coup as she raced back to the office. Not that she was in any great hurry to get back. She just liked to drive fast, especially when she was in a good mood, as she was now. Besides, she knew every cop and judge in the county. It's wasn't like she'd have a hard time beating a ticket.
As she roared down the highway, with Golden Earring's Radar Love blasting from the stereo, she basked in the glory of her most recent success. Her client, Earl Barnicky, owner and proprietor of a local muffler shop was being sued by one Harley C. Bass for injuries resulting from an alleged accident at Earl's shop. It was bullshit, of course. Harley C. Bass was a known slip and fall artist. He'd hired local ambulance-chasing lawyer and shit-bird extraordinaire, James C. Arnold who, in turn, hired washed up drunk and fellow shit-bird, Dr. Ivan Feller to certify Harley's disability.
The whole thing pissed her off on more levels than she could count. Earl was an honest, hardworking man with a wife and three kids. He made a decent living, but was by no means rich. Lazy bastards like Harley Bass, on the other hand, were a menace to society. They perverted the law for their own dishonest gain and she had damn little tolerance for that. Shit-bird, ambulance-chasers like Jimmy Arnold, as he was known locally, were even worse. They gave the entire legal profession a bad name. She didn't even know where to begin with Dr. Feller. He'd do anything for enough money. His bread and butter was said to be hush-hush abortions. A prominent, local Baptist minister's fifteen-year-old daughter was rumored to have been a recent client and just last year he'd been investigated for writing bogus prescriptions for local hop-heads.
The thing that really galled her was that they might have gotten away with it. Unfortunately for them she'd retained the services of an old friend from her time in Atlanta, William (Wild Bill) Barns. Wild Bill was a colorful character. He'd done stints with Army intelligence and the FBI before quitting the government to open his own private investigation firm, now one of the most successful in Atlanta.
Normally, her client wouldn't have been able to afford the services of Wild Bill Barns, but, fortunately for Mr. Barnicky, the man owed a few big favors to one Margaret J. Kemp. The surveillance tapes and photos he'd provided left no doubt that Mr. Harley C. Bass's alleged injuries were quite fraudulent. He'd also turned up evidence that Dr. Feller had faked x-rays and falsified other documents and that Jimmy Arnold had paid him handsomely to do so.
Those men had gone into today's meeting expecting to talk settlement. Instead, thanks to Wild Bill's well documented efforts, she'd given them the legal bitch-slapping of their lives. They'd left knowing that not only were they not getting any money, but that they would be very lucky to escape prosecution themselves. It had been one of the most satisfying experiences of her career.
It just doesn't get any better than that, she thought as she enjoyed the colorful autumn foliage bordering the highway.
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