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CHAPTER ONE
The man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me, but I didn't see him at
first. I smelled him though --- the pungent odor of smoke and cheap wine and life on the
street without soap. We were alone as we moved upward, and when I finally glanced over I
saw the boots, black and dirty and much too large. A frayed and tattered trench coat fell
to his knees. Under it, layers of foul clothing bunched around his midsection, so that he
appeared stocky, almost fat. But it wasn't from being well fed; in the wintertime in D.C.,
the street people wear everything they own, or so it seems.
He was black and aging --- his beard and hair were half-gray and hadn't been washed or cut
in years. He looked straight ahead through thick sunglasses, thoroughly ignoring me, and
making me wonder for a second why, exactly, I was inspecting him.
He didn't belong. It was not his building, not his elevator, not a place he could afford.
The lawyers on all eight floors worked for my firm at hourly rates that still seemed
obscene to me, even after seven years.
Just another street bum in from the cold. Happened all the time in downtown Washington.
But we had security guards to deal with the riffraff.
We stopped at six, and I noticed for the first time that he had not pushed a button, had
not selected a floor. He was following me. I made a quick exit, and as I stepped into the
splendid marble foyer of Drake & Sweeney I glanced over my shoulder just long enough
to see him standing in the elevator, looking at nothing, still ignoring me.
Madam Devier, one of our very resilient receptionists, greeted me with her typical look of
disdain. "Watch the elevator," I said.
"Why?"
"Street bum. You may want to call security."
"Those people," she said in her affected French accent.
"Get some disinfectant too."
I walked away, wrestling my overcoat off my shoulders, forgetting the man with the rubber
boots. I had nonstop meetings throughout the afternoon, important conferences with
important people. I turned the corner and was about to say something to Polly, my
secretary, when I heard the first shot.
Madam Devier was standing behind her desk, petrified, staring into the barrel of an
awfully long handgun held by our pal the street bum. Since I was the first one to come to
her aid, he politely aimed it at me, and I too became rigid.
"Don't shoot," I said, hands in the air. I'd seen enough movies to know
precisely what to do.
"Shut up," he mumbled, with a great deal of composure.
There were voices in the hallway behind me. Someone yelled, "He's got a
gun!" And then the voices disappeared into the background, growing fainter
and fainter as my colleagues hit the back door. I could almost see them jumping out the
windows.
To my immediate left was a heavy wooden door that led to a large conference room, which at
that moment happened to be filled with eight lawyers from our litigation section. Eight
hardnosed and fearless litigators who spent their hours chewing up people. The toughest
was a scrappy little torpedo named Rafter, and as he yanked open the door saying
"What the hell?" the barrel swung from me to him, and the man with the rubber
boots had exactly what he wanted.
"Put that gun down," Rafter ordered from the doorway, and a split second later
another shot rang through the reception area, a shot that went into the ceiling somewhere
well above Rafter's head and reduced him to a mere mortal. Turning the gun back to me, he
nodded, and I complied, entering the conference room behind Rafter. The last thing I saw
on the outside was Madam Devier shaking at her desk, terror-stricken, headset around her
neck, high heels parked neatly next to her wastebasket.
The man with the rubber boots slammed the door behind me, and slowly waved the gun through
the air so that all eight litigators could admire it. It seemed to be working fine; the
smell of its discharge was more noticeable than the odor of its owner.
The room was dominated by a long table, covered with documents and papers that only
seconds ago seemed terribly important. A row of windows overlooked a parking lot. Two
doors led to the hallway.
"Up against the wall," he said, using the gun as a very effective prop. Then he
placed it very near my head, and said, "Lock the doors."
Which I did.
Not a word from the eight litigators as they scrambled backward. Not a word from me as I
quickly locked the doors, then looked at him for approval.
For some reason, I kept thinking of the post office and all those horrible shootings
--- a disgruntled employee returns after lunch with an arsenal and wipes out fifteen of
his co-workers. I thought of the playground massacres --- and the slaughters at fast-food
restaurants.
And those victims were innocent children and otherwise decent citizens. We were a bunch of
lawyers!
Using a series of grunts and gun thrusts, he lined the eight litigators up against the
wall, and when their positions suited him he turned his attention to me. What did he want?
Could he ask questions? If so, he could get anything he damned well pleased. I couldn't
see his eyes because of the sunglasses, but he could see mine. The gun was pointed at
them.
He removed his filthy trench coat, folded it as if it were new, and placed it in the
center of the table. The smell that had bothered me in the elevator was back, but not
important now. He stood at the end of the table and slowly removed the next layer --- a
bulky gray cardigan.
Bulky for a reason. Under it, strapped to his waist, was a row of red sticks, which
appeared to my untrained eye to be dynamite. Wires ran like colored spaghetti from the
tops and bottoms of the sticks, and silver duct tape kept things attached.
My first instinct was to bolt, to lunge with arms and legs flapping and flailing for the
door, and hope for luck, hope for a bad shot as I scrambled for the lock, then another bad
shot as I fell through the doorway into the hallway. But my knees shook and my blood ran
cold. There were gasps and slight moans from the eight against the wall, and this
perturbed our captor. "Please be quiet," he said in the tone of a patient
professor. His calmness unnerved me. He adjusted some of the spaghetti around his waist,
then from a pocket in his large trousers produced a neat bundle of yellow nylon rope and a
switchblade.
For good measure, he waved the gun at the horrified faces in front of him, and said,
"I don't want to hurt anybody."
That was nice to hear but hard to take seriously. I counted twelve red sticks --- enough,
I was certain, to make it instantaneous and painless.
Then the gun was back on me. "You," he said, "tie them up."
Rafter had had enough. He took one very small step forward and said, "Look, pal, just
exactly what do you want?"
The third shot sailed over his head into the ceiling, where it lodged harmlessly. It
sounded like a cannon, and Madam Devier or some female shrieked in the
foyer. Rafter ducked, and as he attempted to stand upright the beefy elbow of
Umstead caught him squarely in the chest and returned him to his position against the
wall.
"Shut up," Umstead said with clenched jaws.
"Do not call me Pal," the man said, and Pal was instantly discarded as a
reference.
"What would you like us to call you?" I asked, sensing that I was about to
become the leader of the hostages. I said this very delicately, with great deference, and
he appreciated my respect.
"Mister," he said. Mister was perfectly fine with everyone in the room.
The phone rang, and I thought for a split second he was going to shoot it. Instead he
waved it over, and I placed it squarely before him on the table. He lifted the receiver
with his left hand; his right still held the gun, and the gun was still pointed at Rafter.
If the nine of us had a vote, Rafter would be the first sacrificial lamb. Eight to one.
"Hello," Mister said. He listened briefly, then hung up. He carefully backed
himself into the seat at the end of the table and sat down.
"Take the rope," he said to me.
He wanted all eight of them attached at the wrists. I cut rope and tied knots and tried my
best not to look at the faces of my colleagues as I hastened their deaths. I could feel
the gun at my back. He wanted them bound tightly, and I made a show of practically drawing
blood while leaving as much slack as possible.
Rafter mumbled something under his breath and I wanted to slap him. Umstead was able to
flex his wrists so that the ropes almost fell loose when I finished with him. Malamud was
sweating and breathing rapidly. He was the oldest, the only partner, and two years past
his first heart attack.
I couldn't help but look at Barry Nuzzo, my one friend in the bunch. We were the same age,
thirty-two, and had joined the firm the same year. He went to Princeton, I went to Yale.
Both of our wives were from Providence. His marriage was working --- three kids in four
years. Mine was in the final stage of a long deterioration.
Our eyes met and we both were thinking about his kids. I felt lucky to be childless. The
first of many sirens came into range, and Mister instructed me to close the blinds over
the five large windows. I went about this methodically, scanning the parking lot below as
if being seen might somehow save me. A lone police car sat empty with its lights on; the
cops were already in the building.
And there we were, nine white boys and Mister.
Excerpted from THE STREET LAWYER © Copyright 2001 by John Grisham. Reprinted with permission by Doubleday. All rights reserved.
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