Chapter 7
Allison
“Okay, people. The trial begins on May eleventh.” I look at my phone. “Today is February sixteenth—happy Presidents’ Day, by the way. So we have eighty-four days before trial.”
This trial is why I’m still married. A longtime congressman from central Illinois, Lawton Childress, was indicted on fourteen counts of corruption two years ago.
He hired a team of attorneys, half from L.A.
, half from New York, a who’s who of lawyers famous for representing celebrities.
Last week, he called me and said he wanted me to take over the case.
But the judge doesn’t care that I’m new—he’s holding to the May trial date, less than three months away.
So I don’t have time to deal with the drama of a divorce or separation right now.
Soon, Finley. Soon. For now, work will be my escape from the reality that I live with a man who has no respect for our marriage or me.
“We’ll be ready,” says Vivian D’Agostino, a junior partner at our firm. Like me, Vivian spent nearly her entire career prosecuting crime. When I heard she was looking to move to the private sector, I reached out immediately.
“Welcome, Aaron,” I say to the fifth-year associate sitting next to Vivian, a man named Aaron Starks, who moved here recently from Washington, D.C.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Brice. It’s an honor—”
“Call me Allison.”
“Yes, ma’am. Yes, Allison.”
Aaron is here on Vivian’s recommendation.
All I know is that he worked in criminal defense in D.C.
, a partner in our branch there recommended him highly, and Vivian has worked with him.
Disciplined, focused, through-the-roof smart, she told me.
Beyond that is what I see: a handsome Black man who spends money on his clothes but goes out of his way not to be flashy, a stoic man who rarely smiles and seems to be wound exceedingly tight.
“A good trial lawyer gathers all the facts first,” I tell him.
“Then she decides on her narrative, her story, and she makes all the facts fit that narrative. The congressman is charged with trading favors for campaign contributions. Our job is to take the facts the government has, the additional facts that we discover, and make them all fit into our narrative, not theirs.”
Aaron adjusts the glasses on his nose. “Understood.”
“What is our narrative?” I ask him, testing the new guy.
“I…haven’t seen the facts yet,” he says.
I point to him. “That’s the correct answer. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have to go meet with the lawyers the congressman just fired.”
On my way down the hall, Finley responds to an earlier text, when I asked him to pick up some light bulbs at the hardware store. Crazy day for me, he writes. Could Luke do it?
Luke has scrimmage, I respond.
That was canceled the other day ok will try no promises.
I sigh. He’s too busy to fit a quick trip to the store in between his zero meetings today on his new start-up idea that, thus far, has generated zero revenue?
I take the corridor down to the conference room for the meeting. I don’t know these lawyers; all I know is the congressman said they were great at taking his money but seemed unprepared to take on the full weight of the government in a public corruption trial like his.
Outside the conference room, one of our staff, Phyllis Gruca, is struggling with pots of coffee and plates of brioche on the rolling cart. “Hey, Phyllis, I can help you with that,” I say.
“Oh—oh, no, Ms. Brice. I’ve got it.”
“Don’t be silly.” I set down my work bag, pick up two thermoses of coffee—one regular, one decaf—and back my way through the glass doors of the conference room.
Starbucks and brioche for the meeting this morning. That’s one big difference between private practice and being a federal prosecutor. When you cash a government paycheck, you fetch your own coffee and hope nobody stole the yogurt you left in the office’s kitchen fridge.
“Oh, that’s great, hon,” one of the men says. “Can you bring that to the table?”
I turn to the table of men, two from Manhattan and two from L.A. They even sound like stuffy lawyers—Emerson Crouch; Winston Bailey; Jack Crawley; Dermot Shaker III.
“Just bring it to the table,” says the senior of the four, with a nice Florida-vacation tan and a third chin on its way. “And could we get some cups, too?”
He’s talking to me. He thinks…
“What’s her name?” one of the men says. “Allison what again?”
“Brice. I’ll bet that’s not her married name. I’ll bet you anything she kept her maiden name.”
I suppress a smile as I bring the coffee pots to the conference table. Actually, Brice is my married name—Allison Rankin Brice.
“Any bets on what the ice queen looks like?”
“Judging from that last email,” says another guy, wearing a bow tie, for Christ’s sake, “I’m guessing she’ll have a cape and fangs.”
I place a mug in front of each of the attorneys, then grab the thermos and start pouring.
“She was with the U.S. attorney here, right?” This one, with a bad comb-over and a worse tie, nudges his cup toward me. “That explains the nastiness. Can I get some cream, sweetheart?”
“Absolutely,” I say, because he asked so nicely.
“I hear she’s a big deal here in Chicago,” says the fourth, who I believe is Jack Crawley. “I think she was on the prosecution team that took down Senator Bridges.”
“Yeah, but that’s probably window dressing. Gotta have a girl on the team, right? And I’m sure they threw in a minority, too. God forbid there are any white men. Shit, the prosecution team probably looked like the freakin’ U.N.”
“A girl on the team”? Never mind that I was lead counsel, that I cross-examined a sitting U.S.
senator for two days. And delivered the rebuttal summation.
And was offered the head of Public Corruption but turned it down, because I want my son to attend the best private school and I’m the only source of income in our family.
I have probably put more juries in a box than all these entitled gasbags combined. Each one of these guys was born on third base but is utterly convinced he hit a triple.
Phyllis, who has finished setting up the plates of brioche, returns with my work bag, which I’d left outside. “Didn’t want you to forget this, Ms. Brice.”
“Thank you, Phyllis.”
The room goes silent as I take the seat at the end of the table. All eye contact broken. All blood drained from four faces. Even the one with the golf tan looks like he swallowed a bug.
“Well, gentlemen, thank you for coming,” I say, slapping my hands down on the table. “I’m Allison Brice. Sorry to be dressed so informally—my cape is at the dry cleaner’s.”