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It took no time after springing Bernie Holmes from the pokey for my office phone to ring off the hook. Business increased dramatically. Everybody and their cousins were calling. Lauren took messages left and right. There was no way any solo practitioner could handle it all. I tried my best but quickly realized that in addition to the passion I once had being topped off, so too had my energy and drive. This discovery hit me over the head midway through a consultation with a new client, a real loser by the name of Billy Washington.

When Billy Washington called to schedule his appointment, he made a point of bragging to Lauren he only hired Jewish male attorneys, but since I won Bernie’s case, maybe he might switch to a “broad” this time. I meant to tell Lauren to cancel the appointment because I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with knuckleheads this month, and with the onslaught of so much new business, I didn’t have to. I could be more selective, pick and choose. But with juggling all my new files, I completely forgot to instruct Lauren to cancel. Therefore, I had to abruptly stop researching another case one quiet morning and meet with Mr. Washington when he arrived at his scheduled time, announcing his presence three blocks away with deafening rap music blasting, shaking the ground to its very foundation. My office building literally vibrated more and more the closer he got. From the second floor I heard obnoxious, offensive language for all the world to hear in a song intensifying in loudness and boom-ability as he approached. This idiot stopped and parked, of all places, in front of my law office with the sound beating, pulsating through floors, walls, and ceilings another full minute or so while he just sat in his window-tinted army green Mustang, which sported chrome and one hundred spoke rims. The visual seared onto my brain because I knew then and there this clown was on the road to nowhere.

Other boutique law offices, residences and small businesses lining my two lane street certainly could hear the commotion. From my window I saw the wishes and hopes in each head poking out of each window that the ear-piercing car wasn’t destined for their address. My shared sentiments were in that hopper too. I continued to watch as this creature emerged from the driver’s seat with a long black bandana hanging from a pocket of his sagging well-worn pants. They sagged so much he walked with a slump, holding onto his crotch like it was a prized possession. He had enough tattoos to fill a basketball court and just as he got to the sidewalk, smoke shot through his nose and mouth like a dragon. To my surprise, the passenger side door opened and a plump female exited the car, dressed in the usual tight, ill-fitting get-up I see from my client’s girlfriends all through the courthouse these days. When Lauren yelled up that that might be my 9:30 a.m. appointment, I hung my head and froze, realizing I forgot to terminate the meeting. I could have slapped myself!

“So look, Miss Goodwin, alright, when my bitch, I mean my girl here hands you these two stacks, right, I’m gonna become, what’s that, a priority client?” the creature said, five minutes into our consultation in my conference room. I rarely met with clients upstairs in my personal office unless I felt really, really comfortable with them, like Marcus. Billy Washington unequivocally qualified for downstairs treatment. If I felt safe and if I had one, I would have met with this clown down in a dungeon, which is where he belonged. I mainly stared at him while he ran his mouth because I was barely listening and, after Bernie, I just didn’t care.

“I mean, I’m looking at some stiff shit with a felony of the second degree and I be damned if I do some more prison time. I caint! I just caint!” he whined. As he performed, practically all I could concentrate on was either that his mismatched braids looked to be very well slept on, or exactly how could he brush his teeth with these silver fronts glued inside of his mouth, if he did at all. It didn’t look like he did, or smell like he did either. Also, I wondered how much pain he endured sitting for the multitude of tattoos draping his neck and hands and arms. With three tear drop tattoos falling from his left eye, he even had tattoos on the insides of his hands. That had to hurt. His pants sagged below his butt and he thought he was the funk. Come to think of it, he was, because I detected he hadn’t bathed recently either. He reeked of pungent nicotine. It was overbearing.

Normally, I would have been copiously taking notes during our meeting, giving this drug dealer every ounce of attention I could muster. I would explain to him how long I’d been a criminal defense attorney, and how I had a winning record when it came to jury trials, though losing a couple cases, and trying cases in not only our county but in neighboring jurisdictions as well. I’d also take time to detail how I handle criminal appeal matters in the appellate court, writing briefs on behalf of convicted inmates trying to get their sentences reduced or overturned, doing oral arguments, post-conviction cases, and explain how these processes can take six months to a year to complete and get a decision. In present day, sitting before this criminal fool, I just didn’t give a shit.

“Yeah, Billy, you’re looking at two to eight years in prison. You’ll be a priority to me like all my clients are a priority to me,” I said, adjusting myself more comfortably at my cherry wood conference table. The smile I flashed at Billy Washington was loaded with heaps of emptiness. He didn’t smile back which was quite alright with me. I didn’t want to see his grills again anyway. They had stuff caked in them. I turned and smiled at Anna, mother to the youngest of Billy’s six children, putting slightly more effort into that one though. Anna sat dutifully right next to him, just staring at the boldly colored Moroccan carpet covering the floor, a gift from a colleague who handled divorce cases who has tried to holler at me for the longest, until he realized that my relationship with Dean was solid. What Anna was doing with this broke-down thug I will never know.

Lauren and I had decorated the conference room so that my clients would feel most comfortable. The large cherry conference table was its centerpiece, surrounded by cherry corner cabinets and cherry wall tables. I bought them the same time I purchased the corner cabinets for Mom’s living room. A flat screen plasma television hung diagonally from a corner ceiling well out of reach and remotely tuned to a news channel, muted with a running script.

Billy continued to try to be tough and terrorizing, but was more a professional bore than anything else. He, like droves of other drug dealers, was coming to me because of Bernie and for Marcus and for other cases I successfully defended. He wasn’t going anywhere else, although I wished he would.

“I mean, shit, what the fuck? I gotta be on hold a long time when I call you, when I gotta speaks to my lawyer?” he continued to jabber.

I had long since grown tired of listening to these nuts. Anna continued to sit in silence. This all wouldn’t have been so pathetic if she hadn’t been a kindergarten teacher who called in sick to her elementary school to scramble around to her bank and other resources to get a hold of money for her cash-strapped boyfriend here. I didn’t know what to make of the pair. She was quiet and demure, he the antichrist. So she was a couple few extra pounds heavy, she still could have done better. Much better. She was cute in the face. How the two ever met to even strike up a conversation, let alone date, let alone make a baby, I’ll never know.

“Did Bernie ever tell you I kept him on hold for a long time? Huh? What did Bernie tell you I could do?” I asked. Billy sat back in his chair and turned to his silent partner.

“Babe, give my attorney her stacks,” Billy ordered, straight trippin’, as if he were some astute rap mogul cutting a deal at Motown or Arista Records, when all he was good at was bossing insecure women around and dressing the part of a card-carrying buffoon. He definitely wasn’t good at the drug business if he needed an elementary school teacher to pay his legal fees. But, I had seen it all so many times before. For some reason, though, this time was different for me. As if on cue, Anna began digging her gold and silver manicured nails deep inside her knockoff Gucci purse that I know Billy didn’t buy her, to dig out the two thousand dollars I charged him as a retainer. She never looked me in the eyes as she disrespectfully tossed the money on the table in my direction and grabbed a hold of Billy’s arm, scooting closer to him. It dawned on me in that moment that she had an attitude because she thought I was interested in her man. I almost jumped across the table to pimp slap her with her two thousand dollars cash money just for the thought. The whole arrangement was insufferable and I was tired of being part of it. I knew I was about to accept food and rent money her child would ordinarily reap the benefit of, as payment for this bastard’s legal fees. But that didn’t really turn my stomach or cause me to cross over, in and of itself. I’m a defense attorney. I’ve been paid with the milk money of innocent children for years. It would take much more than that to trigger me to do the cross-over I was about to embark upon, and I knew I was about to do it because I was there. I was so there. Billy Washington and his whole cowardly institution put me there. What’s more, I now had the blessings of Aloysius the slave.

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