“Good,” Chickie said, “but right now I’ve got a problem that’s half personal and half-not. I offered to go to Gregor Demarkian for you. You sent me there, and you know that I had history with that man, even if it wasn’t much of one.”
“It was hardly any at all,” Kate said. “You were one of the suspects in a case he consulted on. Did he even remember who you were?”
“As a matter of fact, he did,” Chickie said, “and I wasn’t putting on the act I used to when he knew me last time. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my relationship to him is important to me, slight as it is. And there’s more than that to be taken into consideration. I live and work here. I want to practice law in Philadelphia once I graduate and pass the bar. Gregor Demarkian is a very important person in this city, especially if you’re a lawyer. He’s tight with the commissioner of police and half the detectives and beat cops in the department. He can make or break a defense. I don’t want him angry with me, and I don’t want him deciding that I’m a dishonest jerk who’s willing to use our acquaintance to make him look like an idiot.”
“You’re not making him look like an idiot.”
“I know I’m not. I had no idea whatsoever what you’d done until about twenty minutes ago. But it’s going to look like I made him look like an idiot, and that’s all it’s going to take. If you don’t get on the phone to Gregor Demarkian and tell him what you’ve done, I’ll do it.”
“And would you tell him what I’ve done, that it was me?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t be so harsh about it,” Kate said. “I wasn’t, I’m not, being deliberately meretricious. I’m not lying for the sake of lying. You can’t defend these people without breaking some of the rules. The rules weren’t made for them. They were made for people like you and me.”
“That sounds like the revolution you say you don’t want to have,” Chickie said.
“No, it’s not,” Kate said. “It’s just realism, that’s all. This is a society—all societies are societies—where the rich count for more than the poor, the educated count for more than the uneducated, the able count for more than the disabled. I don’t expect to make that disappear anymore, but I do have to do whatever I can to level the playing field when I get into a fight. I can’t just go out there and behave as if my client were, well, you.”
“Gregor Demarkian is a very decent human being,” Chickie said. “He’s not radical, and he’s not particularly ‘progressive,’ but he’s a decent human being and he’s a fair one. You’re making unwarranted assumptions about how he will behave—”
“It’s not just him,” Kate pointed out. “It’s the police and the district attorney, too. They’re part of this. You act as if nothing and nobody existed but ourselves and Gregor Demarkian.”
“Two people are dead, Kate. Including that poor idiot from Liberty-Heart Communications, who seemed to me like a pretty decent human being, too. This is not a game anymore. This is not a chance to stick it in the eye of Drew Harrigan.”
“He was the first one who was dead,” Kate said.
“Call Demarkian, and tell him what you did.”
Kate swiveled the chair around so that her back was to Chickie and stared at the posters on the wall. They were somebody else’s posters, or else some secretary’s idea of what would be suitable for guest lawyers who wouldn’t be around very long. “It’s still about Drew Harrigan, you know,” she said. “It’s still about who he is, and what he can get away with, and what men like Sherman Markey can’t. It’s still not impossible that we’ll lose this fight and Markey will end up on the run or in jail.”
“He’s already on the run.”
“I know. I’m just saying that you have to be more careful than you’re being. You can’t just charge into the breach and blunder around and expect it all to work out like an episode of Law and Order.”
“Call Demarkian or I will.”
“All right,” Kate said, making up her mind. She swiveled the chair around again so that she was facing forward. She was struck, as she was sometimes, by just how young Chickie George really was. She wondered how much of his attitude had to do with the fact that he had a very good friend who was becoming a nun. She put her elbows down on the desk and her face in her hands. “All right,” she said again. “First thing in the morning, I’ll call him. You get me his number, and I’ll call him. But you have to understand. I don’t really think this is the right thing to do.”