Pamela Samuels-Young
Books
Chapter 2
R
eggie Jenkins made it back to his office on the low-rent end of Wilshire Boulevard in less than thirty minutes. Instead of getting to work drafting the pre-trial documents for the Randle case, he gazed out of a window clouded with years of grime and sulked.
He could not understand why Vernetta Henderson was so adamant about trying the case. Especially after he had made a perfectly reasonable settlement offer. Women attorneys, particularly the black ones, always made everything so personal. The girl acted like she wanted to punish him for even filing the case.
The view of the alley two floors below did nothing to lighten Reggie’s sour mood. To the right, three bums nodded near a metal trash bin overflowing with debris. The stench managed to seep into Reggie’s office even though his windows had been glued shut for years.
Reggie regularly fantasized about having an office with a real view, in a swanky downtown high-rise with marble floors, round-the-clock security guards and windows so clean you could see yourself. His name would appear on the door in fancy gold letters: Reggie Jenkins, Attorney-at-Law. Or better yet, Jenkins, Somebody and Somebody.
His secretary, paralegal and sometime girlfriend, barged into his office without knocking. “I just wanna make sure you gonna have my money on Friday,” Cheryl demanded. Her fists were pinned to a pair of curvy hips.
Reggie’s teeth instinctively clamped down on the toothpick dangling from his thick lips. “I told you I would, didn’t I?”
“You said the same thing last month, then you didn’t show up at the office for three straight days.”
Reggie snatched his checkbook from his briefcase and scribbled across one of the checks. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at her. “Just don’t cash it until tomorrow.”
As Cheryl sauntered out, Reggie shook his head and frowned. One day, he was going to have enough cash to hire a real secretary.
He stared down at his cluttered desk, realizing that he was about to lose another one and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Although he had promised Henry Randle his day in court, Reggie had never actually intended to make good on that vow. It was much easier to settle cases — the winners as well as the losers. He’d only had six trials during his thirteen years of practice and had lost every single one of them. He thought about calling Randle to update him on today’s court session, but what would he say? You’ll get to tell your story to a jury, but you’re going to lose.
Reggie had checked around and learned that Vernetta was an excellent trial attorney. He clearly was not. Juries unnerved him. Whenever those twelve pairs of eyes focused on him and him alone, something inexplicable happened and he turned into a bumbling idiot. If a witness responded with an answer he had not expected, it startled him and he froze up. When an opposing counsel yelled Objection – hearsay in the middle of his question, it wrecked his rhythm, causing him to stumble like an old drunk taking a step off of a curb he didn’t know was there. By the time the judge had ruled on the objection, Reggie did not know what to say next because he could not even remember what question he had asked.
He rummaged through the unruly stack of papers in front of him and pulled out the Randle vs. Micronics complaint. The day Henry Randle had walked into his office and told his story, Reggie felt like someone had handed him a blank check. He had never had a case with allegations of race discrimination and whistle blowing. Randle swore that he had never even laid eyes on Karen Carruthers before running into her in that elevator, and he certainly had not grabbed the woman or tried to kiss her. And Reggie fully believed his new client’s claim that Micronics trumped up the whole thing to silence his complaints about the company’s fraudulent billing on some multi-million-dollar contract with the Air Force.
But as the litigation progressed, Reggie’s enthusiasm for the case waned. Just as it always did. Now, he simply wanted his thirty-three percent of whatever settlement he could get so he could move onto the next one.
He turned on his ancient computer and prepared to get to work on the pre-trial documents. Before he could open a blank screen, an idea came to him and his dour mood immediately brightened. After mulling it over for a few minutes, Reggie grabbed his car keys, checked his breast pocket for his cell phone, and rushed out of the door.
If his brilliant little plan actually panned out, he was about to turn the tables on Ms. Vernetta Henderson and her scheming client.
