Page 32 of Go Alone

He parked the Bentley and stepped out to another bright March morning. Well, okay, not so bright. It was only five in the morning, and this time of year, the sun wouldn’t rise for another two hours.

Still, the air tasted sweet, and Dennis didn’t mind the pungent sweetness of thawing motor oil and concrete dust that invaded the crispness of the melting snow. Just like the distant sound of vehicles honking on the interstate and the rough squawks of the crows fighting with the pigeons for the right to consume the garbage overflowing from the four cans in front of the office tower, that was the smell of home.

Cities had their own charms, and while the waste management company was dealing with a strike right now, Dennis knew from his friend at Wilmeyer & Patel that the union was going to make a deal that would not only see their garbage vanished by Friday but would see improved infrastructure through the entire city over the next two years.

Birds squabbled, but in the end, everyone got what they wanted. That was the beauty of cities.

He was surprised to see another car here, a ten-year-old RAV4 parked in one of the spaces reserved for the dental office that shared the building with them. One of the dental assistants must be getting a head start on the day. Good for them.

He whistled as he entered the building. The night watchman looked up from his nap and glared at Dennis. Dennis gave him a cheerful wave, thought without saying it that maybe the guy should keep his eyes open while he was working, and headed for the elevator.

He wasn’t really upset, though. Aside from his general joie de vivre, this office tower had seen not a single act of crime since its creation. Even vandalism was discouraged thanks to the copious number of security cameras watching the interior and exterior of the building. You couldn’t spit within twenty feet of the parking lot without someone catching you.

He punched the top floor and beamed at his reflection as the elevator lifted him. His smile returned as a hideous grimace in the warped image proffered by the polished brass of the door.

“Oof. Horror movie vibes or what?” he said aloud.

He took a picture with his cell phone to send to Maria, his former secretary and thank God for that former because she was dynamite in bed, and he really didn’t want to taint his record of perfect propriety. She was working for Midwest Printing Services now, a leasing company that provided industrial machines for commercial use, though in these days of cloud computing, very few of them were still printers.

The image was even more muddled than his reflection, showing only a vaguely darker line on the elevator where his suit reflected off the metal. Oh well.

The doors opened, and Dennis stepped through. Most of the lights were off, which made sense since it was five in the morning and not even Raymond showed up this early. That was another feather in Dennis’s cap, the feather that had earned him the largest feather of all: a full partnership.

He worked harder than everyone else. So why not be proud of that, and why not enjoy what he’d accomplished?

The only lights lit, aside from the emergency LEDs that remained on automatically so maintenance, security, and early risers such as himself could move around the building, were those in the partners’ conference room.

He frowned. Had Raymond shown up early after all?

No. More likely than not, the cleaning staff had sat for a minute in the room when they were finished and neglected to turn the lights off when they left. Which wasn’t a huge deal, but it was a little frustrating. If there was one thing that Dennis disliked more than dishonesty, it was laziness. Details mattered.

He took two steps toward the conference room to shut the lights off but stopped when he saw Raymond with his head bowed on the front of the table, his hands folded underneath his head.

Ah. Raymond was here after all. And he was praying.

Raymond rarely talked about his faith in the office, but everyone knew he was a Baptist raised by a long line of Baptists. A few of the younger associates were fond of whispering snarky shit under their breath when the partners weren't around because that's what you did when you were an insecure snot-nosed twerp, and almost every young lawyer was an insecure snot-nosed twerp. Other than that, Raymond's religion mattered about as much as his sexual orientation, which was to say not at all.

Dennis left him there. He’d check on Raymond a few minutes later when he was finished praying.

He stepped into his office, holding the handle down and releasing it slowly so the click of the latch was as soft as possible. Then he headed to his desk. He liked to start his mornings reviewing his schedule and making any adjustments he needed. Or rather, leaving notes for Nolan, his new assistant, to make the necessary adjustments.

Today was a light docket. He had the Allan Mining Company brief at noon and a meeting with representatives from two clients engaged in separate lawsuits against the same individual. The rest of the day was free.

The double lawsuit was against a homeowner in Deer Creek trying to rush foreclosure on his house so he didn’t have to sell it and pay his soon-to-be ex-wife half the proceeds. One client was the ex-wife, who really wanted to stick her soon-to-be ex-husband with the fees and penalties for refusing to pay the mortgage. The other was the bank, trying to make sure they had an airtight case for attaching those fees and penalties.

The bank had an airtight case, but not against only the husband. Both he and his wife were on the mortgage, and she hadn’t paid the mortgage either since moving out. That made her case a non-starter. They’d both have to share the fees and penalties unless Brannigan & Associates could gaslight the husband into accepting the fees himself.

“So we’ll be losing Ms. Brantley,” he muttered as he flagged that meeting as IMPORTANT.

They’d keep the bank. Both Brantleys were behaving like children, and when Dennis assured them that they had a strong case against both parties, it wouldn’t matter that they’d lost the Missus. The bank would just expand its lawsuit to include both of them. That might cause a bit of a scuffle against Missus, but she didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. Besides, once they figured out the shit they were in, the Brantleys would put aside their differences and figure it out. He’d seen it happen before.

He looked through the window of his office. Raymond was still praying.

In fact, he hadn’t moved a muscle since Dennis arrived. Had he fallen asleep? He turned sixty-nine next month, so it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t quite have the staying power he used to.

Dennis got to his feet and headed for the conference room, this time not being careful of the noise. Ideally, Raymond would hear him and wake up so Dennis could pretend he hadn’t noticed that his senior partner and the only remaining founder of the firm had fallen asleep in the conference room.

A more sobering thought occurred to him. Had he fallen asleep last night? Had the cleaners left him here? That was a little harder to believe, but they could have been intimidated by him. Some old lawyers were bad-tempered, and television convinced people that bad-tempered lawyers were supervillains who could wave their hands and ruin lives. In the real world, doing something as simple as filing a grievance over someone parking in another person’s driveway was nine hours of paperwork, four hours of filing, and two hours of argument in court. No one wanted to waste time going after petty shit.