Firm Ambitions by Michael A. Kahn

lipstick or mascara, certainly your fingerprints, probably strands of your hair. It’ll be a lot easier on you if you come forward now instead of letting them track you down on their own. I know how these things play out. I can arrange it for you with the police. You can tell them what you saw and—”
    â€œForget it,” she interrupted impatiently. “I tell the police today and then read about myself in the newspaper tomorrow. No, thanks. I’m not about to become some scandal slut. And anyway, I didn’t leave my lipstick there. I didn’t leave anything there. And I’ve never been fingerprinted in my life.”
    â€œEileen, you’re not thinking straight.”
    â€œI’m thinking very straight. I’ve been thinking very straight and very hard about this very subject and about nothing else since I got home last night. I know how these things work, Rachel. I know what kind of people are in the media. They’re vultures. No, vultures wait till you’re dead. They’re parasites. They feed on live flesh. I saw what they did to Tommy on his drug charges. Here’s a simple question: Can you guarantee that my name won’t appear in the newspaper if I come forward?”
    â€œWell, I can’t guarantee it.”
    â€œThat’s the answer, then. I’m not going to have my children read about this. I’m not going to have them teased at school.” She paused to take another drag on her cigarette. “Do you know what the first Sunday of next month is?”
    â€œNo,” I admitted, conceding defeat. You can give a client advice, but you can’t make them take it.
    â€œIt’s CSL Night.”
    â€œOh,” I said, trying to put a little enthusiasm into my voice.
    CSL Night. Short for Cocktails over St. Louis Night. It’s an annual fund-raising event put on by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Mount Sinai Hospital of St. Louis. For $1,000, you can join the Jewish glitterati of St. Louis on a voyage to nowhere, i.e., a black-tie evening featuring cocktails and a motion-picture premiere aboard a specially chartered Lockheed L-1011 jet that departs St. Louis at 8:00 p.m., circles southern Illinois for four hours, and returns to St. Louis at midnight. For the Jewish country-club set of St. Louis, it is the social event of the season, which the Women’s Auxiliary thoughtfully times to coincide with the opening of the spring fashion season. I am told that when the hospital’s president announces during cocktails how they plan to spend the money raised on that year’s flight, the passengers—or at least some of the sober ones within earshot—feel a warm glow.
    â€œI’m chairman of CSL this year,” Eileen explained. “I’ve been planning for the event the whole year. We’re having John Goodman and John Landis for the premiere of their new movie. There are a lot of people counting on me, Rachel. Important people. Look, Andros is dead. There’s nothing I can do for him. This event is important to me. It’s where my life’s at these days. It’s where my future is. I’m not going to have some sleazy sex scandal ruin it for me.”
    Nothing I could say would change her mind. Maybe she’d get lucky. I doubted it. The Clayton police weren’t the Keystone Kops.
    â€œOkay,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s talk about what you should do if the police call.”
    I took her through the usual police techniques and the response she should make to each question they asked. “Understand?” I repeated.
    â€œYes, yes, yes,” she said. “‘I want to talk to my lawyer before I answer that,’” she recited.
    â€œGood.”
    Eileen reached under her chair and handed me a canvas attaché. “Speaking of my lawyer, I want you to keep this for me.”
    â€œWhat is this?” I asked, although I had guessed the moment she pulled it