Firm Ambitions by Michael A. Kahn Page B

wouldn’t have been surprised if Andros’s trophy case included explicit shots from other affairs.
    For Eileen’s sake, I hoped the two shots she had taken from the hotel room were the only such pictures he had ever taken of her. I wasn’t optimistic.

Chapter Five
    By 12:25 a.m. I knew it was going to be a rotten day.
    Twelve twenty-five , I said to myself as I turned in bed and stared at the alarm clock. That’s not so bad. If I fall asleep in five minutes, I’ll still get six hours of sleep ,
    The next time I checked, it was ten minutes after one.
    No problem , I assured myself. I can still get more than five hours of sleep .
    I tried breathing slowly. I tried breathing deeply. I tried breathing through my nose. I tried breathing through my mouth. At 2:45 a.m. I turned the alarm clock toward the wall and told myself that all I really needed was three and a half good hours of sleep. I revised the estimate to three hours at 3:10. The next thing I knew the alarm was ringing and it was 6:30.
    The same thing happens to me every night before a trial or an appellate argument. I get in bed after telling myself how important it is to get a good night’s sleep—which for me is the best way to ensure that I won’t get a good night’s sleep.
    But this time my insomnia was due to more than nerves. I had a loser. A fascinating loser, but a loser nevertheless. My client was an elderly man who had lost his life savings in an investment partnership that owned, according to the prospectus, a huge quantity of frozen semen collected from several prized Brangus bulls, including 200,000 “straws” of semen (surely the least appetizing unit of measurement ever coined) from a blue-ribbon stud named Lucille’s Grand Slam. But when the bottom fell out of the show cattle market and the bank foreclosed on its collateral, it discovered a distressing lack of congruence between the descriptions of the collateral contained in the security agreements and the actual collateral contained in the storage freezers. Even in a depressed market, a bucket of Grand Slam’s liqueur de vivre had real value. Two hundred thousand “straws” of frozen milk, however, did not.
    My client had come to me with a judgment for $380,000 against the general partner of the partnership. Unfortunately, the general partner had a negative net worth. I struggled with the appellate brief for weeks, trying to find a way to break into the corporate fortress and get at the folks with the money. I even went to the extreme of citing a line of California decisions. Benny Goldberg warned, “Hey, trying to get a Missouri court to buy a California precedent is like trying to get June Cleaver to buy a set of gold nipple rings.” By the time oral argument ended that morning, it seemed obvious that the three appellate judges weren’t in a buying mood either.
    As I trudged out of the courtroom and down the hall, I heard someone call, “Miss Gold!” I turned. It was one of the assistant court clerks. “Your secretary called, Miss Gold. She needs to talk to you right away.”
    I returned the call from a pay phone down the hall. “What’s up?”
    â€œYou need to get right over to the Clayton police headquarters. Mrs. Landau called from there an hour ago.”
    â€œEileen? She called from the police station?”
    â€œShe left the number.”
    â€œDamn. Is this about Andros?”
    â€œI think so. The police asked her to come down for questioning.”
    â€œCall her back. Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell her not to talk to anyone until I get there.”
    ***
    The first person I saw at the police station was L. Debevoise Fletcher.
    â€œWell, well, well,” he said with a big, hearty smile. “The lovely Rachel Gold.” He held out a huge paw. “Delightful to see you, dear.”
    We shook hands. His face became solemn and he covered my hand with his