Read Online If I Should Die Before I Die by Peter Israel - Free Book Online Page A

you’ve moved out of here permanently?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWell. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
    â€œNo, but it’s sweet of you to ask.”
    â€œBut suppose I have to find you over the weekend? About McCloy, I mean? Where can I reach you?”
    â€œJust leave a message on my answering machine at the office. I’ll be calling in regularly.”
    For a woman who’d just walked out on her husband—after how many years of marriage?—she sounded remarkably cool. Also for a shrink who suspected one of her patients of homicide. But it sure explained the prevailing atmosphere in our office. I don’t know if I was the last of the Counselor’s staff to catch on or the first. Nobody had said anything, at least not to me. But it explained the tension, explained Ms. Shapiro’s tears, even maybe Charlotte’s absence. And of course it explained the Counselor himself.
    Like I’ve said, he’d never exactly been a piece of cake to work for. But that week? Well, come to think of it, he’d acted exactly like a man whose wife had just walked out on him.
    Against his will, I figured.
    â€œNo, I’ve never had the pleasure,” said Roy Barger, extending a plump hand toward me in the Counselor’s office, “but I’ve surely heard of Phil Revere. Do you know what they call you around town, Phil? Charles Camelot’s Secret Weapon. Not so secret at that. But listen, my friend, any time you’re tired of playing slave to the Counselor here, you give me a call, will ya?”
    I’d never met Barger either, though I’d have recognized him from his pictures in the papers. He was a bulky man, a little shorter than I’d have guessed, with a florid complexion, lively blue eyes set in a large head and wavy gray hair, a lock of which frequently wandered across his forehead. His clothes fit him well: gray worsted suit, blue-striped shirt with white collar, black tie with a blue polka-dot design, black tasseled loafers. He came originally from somewhere in the South, still had a trace of the accent and the speech cadence and the ingratiating manner. As an attorney, though, he had the streetfighter’s reputation, also the headline-seeker’s, based in part on several notorious criminal cases, and though his firm now had several names after his own, it was, make no mistake, Roy Barger’s firm. An expensive one too, by reputation. He was also the first person I’d ever heard call my boss “Counselor” to his face.
    â€œI’m here to try to cut through the tall grass,” Roy Barger began, once the niceties were over and he was seated across from the Counselor, I at my usual end of the desk. “Why for once, Counselor, can’t we save our clients some money and ourselves some precious time?”
    I watched the Counselor reach for a pipe.
    â€œI think first we should define who our clients are,” he said. “I …”
    â€œRight there,” Barger interrupted with a wave, “do you see what I mean? Why can’t we dispense with all that, Charles? I know, I know, McClintock represents the estate, the Magister children have their own attorneys, and you’re just a consultant to McClintock. Is that why you’ve got your own investigators climbing all over my client, trying to find out what she had for breakfast this morning?” He paused—good timing, I thought—but when the Counselor didn’t answer, he turned to me with a broad smile: “If you really want to know what she’s having for breakfast, Phil, why don’t you just call me? Or call Margie? We’ll be delighted to give you the menu.” Then, back to the Counselor: “The point is, Charles, for every forkful of dung you can fling at Margie Magister, we’ve got truckloads we can dump on the family. Even the numbers are on our side. You’ve only got one Magister. We’ve