Pam’s Rogowsky’s professional space is a kind of working lawyer’s version of Jay Lombardi’s living arrangements. In fact, she’s located just two blocks away from where Jay somehow survives among people and things whose true names no sensible person would want to know much less utter.
Pam’s own building has a working and sanitized elevator and is accessible to the general public. There are even a fair number of real businesses operating within its squat, unfashionable, five-story confines. This is nonetheless not the sort of urban environment that attracts the Rittenhouse crowd. It’s a warren of cramped work spaces occupied by marginal economic bottom feeders, behind in their rents and maxed out on their credit cards, selling goods rescued from fires some of which they set themselves, or offering services to clients who wished they could afford to be serviced elsewhere.
There’s no ante room in Pam’s office. You walk in and there she is, a few feet from where you enter, sitting behind a desk stacked with case folders in neat piles like so many oversized poker chips. The room’s other furnishings consist of a coat rack, a coffee pot on a hot plate, a hook on the wall holding the key to the washroom down the hall, a low-to-the-floor bookcase with some thick tomes that might provide insights into aspects of the law were you inclined to burrow through several layers of dust to begin your research. There’s also the one chair for clients in which I now sit. Or more precisely, in which I am now trapped. The chair has no springs and clings to you like a straight jacket when you drop into it.
“Getting in here is easy,” Pam once told me. “It’s getting out that’s hard.”
I’ve known Pam almost since the day I arrived in Philly, and over the years have watched her operate in many and varied legal capacities. She cut her teeth on civil rights cases, fought for gays long before that became fashionable, and still goes after locally well-connected corporations on behalf of indigent clients and equally indigent environmental groups. More than half her cases have always been pro bono. A fair number have even ended up with her subsidizing clients out of her own pocket.
Then there’s that other side of Pam’s practice. She defends pornographers, slum lords, low-end securities hustlers, flagrantly guilty small-time thieves and drug dealers who she helps escape punishment for crimes they committed so they are free to commit some more. When dealing with this money side of her business, any scumball or wingnut willing to pay Pam’s fees is welcome. Her nostrils still flare at the sound of an ambulance siren.
Pam is neither physically nor socially well favored. She’s overweight, poorly attired, loudly self-deprecating but with a boundless ability to offend far more savagely anyone who takes her self-inflicted jabs as an invitation to join in. The chip on her shoulder, were it straightened out and directionally adjusted, is big enough to pick up a hundred pay-to-view channels from the ether. She can be murderously funny one minute and maudlin the next, start a sentence waxing rapturously about The Law and
end it spewing anger at The System.
Nobody just likes or dislikes Pam Rogowsky. A few people, a very few like
myself, admire and adore her. Most put her down as distasteful or disgusting or simply mentally unbalanced. Stepping back and considering the matter objectively, an impartial observer might say of Pam Rogowsky that the elements of idealism and cynicism, nobility and vulgarity, greed and charity, are so mixed within her that nature might stand up and say to all the world, this, is a Philadelphia lawyer.
“So how’s life mistreating you today,” she says without looking up from an open case folder as I take my seat. She’s obviously not concerned or embarrassed about the fact that I’m squirming madly in an attempt to find purchase in her venus fly trap of a client’s chair.
“Can’t complain. Cops are after my ass. I got involved in a murder case and now the murderer may be coming after me. My basement was deliberately flooded and I almost drowned.”
She finishes writing whatever she’s writing and closes the folder slowly. Then gives me her undivided attention, making it abundantly clear in the process that she wishes she didn’t have to bother
“Some days are like that. So how’s Libby?”
“Libby’s good.”
“Too good for you, Bernie. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
She smiles, forcing herself to appear interested. Pam has known her own tough times.
“So which fuck-up brings you my way today, my intellectual hero? The police, the murderer who doesn’t like you, or the basement inundation?”
“All of the above.”
“Oh, goody.”
At this juncture, with a paying client, Pam would name a price for her services. With me she has a different arrangement. I’m her unofficial and unpaid snoop. Her occasional hardman.
She signals for me to describe my current problems more fully. Then gives two of the three short shift.
“The person trying to get you out of Irving Street will keep at it,” says Pam knowingly, like he might be another client. And with her roster, who knows. “This person’s got everything going for him except for that technicality. The mechanics lien on your place. Which by the way, as your counsel, I’m pretty sure could be short-circuited if they just get the lien-holder of record declared dead. ”
“And your advice, Pam, is what?”
“Buy an inflatable for the basement. If you can get in touch with the lien-holder have him put you in his will as the lien beneficiary in case he croaks.”
Well, not much help there. We move on to my relationship with Philly’s finest.
“You only get away with the shit you get away in this town because the local guardians of the law don’t think you’re worth stamping out,” says Pam. “This involvement in a high-profile case could change that.”
I know this already, of course, and press her for some usable advice. “So what can I do?”
“Consider relocating to Camden,” she says. “It’s the armpit of the Eastern seaboard but just a short drive over the Ben Franklin Bridge so you can still do jobs for me when I need you. Beyond that, your only hope of avoiding endless harassment and probably worse is to somehow come out of this murder investigation with a friend at Bernstein’s, preferable Mr. B himself, someone to keep the hounds of hell off your back.”
Which brings us to my biggest problem. One that actually seems to interest Pam to the extent that she questions me about it closely. Today’s earlier meetings with Bernstein’s Fab Four. One of whom might now be planning to do me in.
“What were they like, these four suspects?” she asks.
“Three suspects,” I correct. “We eliminated Clarisa Thomas.”
“So you didn’t bother interviewing her.”
“Actually I did.”
“So tell me about Clarisa Thomas first. Nice lady? Dress well? Sexy? File her own teeth or send them out?”
Pam’s eyes have taken on a lawyer’s glint that makes her look like a nasty buddha. Truth is, she really wants some inside information about a murder case that has the whole city buzzing. Like most lawyers she lives to gossip. Jerking people around and distorting truth is just a sideline.
“Clarisa’s a piece of work,” I begin. “My age. Fifyish. Very well turned out. Gave me a bit of flirt to establish better repore, maybe get me on her side. Since Bernstein himself probably told her to answer my questions, she maybe figured I was a good side to join. Seemed confused about why we were chatting at all.”
“From what you’ve told me so far,” says Pam, “I am, too. You’re good at beating information out of people. Not bad at reading body language. But interviewing? After the cops have done their number and maybe people inside the company have done the same? Even given your undeniable intellectual gifts, I don’t see the value of calling you in on this one.”
“Connors, my contact in the company, says the place is a beehive of rumors. Everybody knows I visited with Myron before he got killed. Probably also know I’m some kind of researcher...”
“In the old days we’d call you an unlicensed PI.”
“Yes, Pam. But these ain’t the old days.”
“Does that ever bother you. Bernie? The fact that we’ve gotten old and useless, that our time is passed, that we now spend our days doing shadow repetitions of things that once seemed to matter?”
Pam is pulling his chain. Which I don’t mind and kind of enjoy most days. The worst things happen to you when a lawyer, a dentist or a car mechanic takes your complaints too seriously. Still, I have a lot to do this evening and need to get back to my own place fairly soon. This discussion can’t be allowed to drift.
“I figure Joe Connors is using me to send a message. He’s telling the killer, who I’m guessing he already knows from his internal investigation, that we’re getting very close. Scare the bastard. Get him to make another mistake or two to sew the case up even tighter.”
“If that’s true, Bernie my boy, you might be right to think said killer could go for you. In fact, if this clearly demented individual had wigged out and tried to whack you this afternoon, they could even have made a citizen’s arrest on the premises. Maybe have Mitch Bernstein do the cuffing. Have a film crew on site to record the event.”
“You know, Pam, for lawyer, you’re pretty smart. I think you might actually have pegged the way the Bernstein people expect things to go down. Though not at their place.”
“Tell me. But first, do you know who killed Myron Hamish?”
“Think so. Though like I said. it wasn’t Clarisa. In fact, once she saw I was just going through the motions with her, she treated our get-together as something of a joke.”
“The nerve of that woman. Treating Bernie Kahn like a joke. Tosh.”
Pam lets her spectacles slide a half inch further down her nose, a popular gesture with lawyers and other professionals who grow rich by making other people feel small. Pam does the move pretty well. Probably took it as a law school elective.
“So, Bernie. Other than commiting murder. Did the slinky and stylish Clarisa rise to her present exalted position by going down for Mitch Bernstein? You can tell me. I’m the soul of discretion.”
“Haven’t a clue. Doubt it, though. She comes across as very tough and very focused. I’m betting she takes over when Bernstein moves to City Hall.”
Pam looks disappointed. What’s the good of getting the inside scoop on a local scandal if it doesn’t have a sleazy sex angle? She sighs. “All right. If that’s the best you can do. Gimme the skinnies on the other bozos you met with, then tell me who killed Cock Hamish, then come up with a good reason why I shouldn’t throw you out of my office.”
I proceed to give the requested mini profiles of Bernstein’s Fab Four male contingent. There’s Kyle Wells, the organization’s nuts and bolts guy. Ex-marine, piercing blue eyed real man gaze, a crew cut so retro it could get him stopped by the shore patrol, the kind of rigid posture the Tin Man needed a good oiling to correct. Kyle came across as persnickety and irritable. A guy who expects long and loyal service to be honored and rewarded, and expects loyal executives like himself not be bothered by the likes of a Bernie Kahn.
“So when he’s not getting the rewards he thinks he deserves,” says Pam, “he bludgeons Myron to death and then does the kid in Powelton in a fit of repressed sexual rage. I could get him off with three years on manslaughter raps if he pleads post-Gulf War Syndrome.”
“You probably could. But I don’t think he did it.”
“Shit,” says Pam. She hasn’t supported an American military action since the marines planted the Stars and Stripes atop Mt. Sarabotchi, and this hostility is automatically carried over to the entire of military, whose members she suspects are all guilty of some war crime or other.
“So tell me, Bernie. Why didn’t he do it?” Kyle’s innocence clearly peeves her.
“Not his style,” he replies. “Not his officer’s training. A good marine officer only gets to the veins-in-the- teeth part after he’s planned out his assault. Beating a runt like Myron with a piece of cable in the middle of a work day just isn’t the way it happens. Neither is that crazy follow up with the Powelton girl.
“Kyle,” I continue, “doesn’t come across as a dummy, either. He’s smart enough to realize he’s risen as high as he’s gonna rise in an organization that will always show its liberal Philly roots. He did tell me one thing that was interesting, though.”
“Which was?”
“Something about Joe Connors. Said Joe has this thing about Mitch Bernstein. Not sexual, mind you. Not exactly sexual, anyway. But definitely more over-protective than is usually considered normal. And this, mind you, from an ex-marine who ranks loyalty to employer right up their with faith in God. Kyle also said Joe Connors has a dark side most people don’t see until they know him for a while. A really nasty temper, too.”
“Quite the little bestiary they have running things at Bernstein’s,” says Pam.
“Quite.”
“So tell me about the other two beasties you spoke with. Those other captains of the free enterprise system.”
Pam’s view of corporate America is as negatively distorted and predictable as
her view of the military. Talking to her is like being back on the ice cream line at J.P. Licks in 1979. I can almost taste the Mango Delight. Best to humor her a bit with my description of Malcolm Eggers, Bernstein’s sales maven. For her benefit I make him as politically incorrect as possible. It isn’t all that hard to do.
Malcolm, I explain, is one of those ‘new men’ unleashed by Maggie Thatcher’s economic revolution in the United Kingdom. A pushy Brit whose kind was long kept down by an ossified class structure that certainly stifled innovation and kept down low-born innovators but at least honored good manners. Ruthless, angry, endlessly hungry and totally uncivil people like Malcolm Eggars were finally given a chance to exhibit their peculiar talents when the Iron Lady decided to remake British society into an island replica of Ronald Reagan’s morning in America. A place where the most driven and acquisitive could at last get everyone else’s second helping of gruel before the upper classes stole it all.
This particular manifestation of sick Brit has the predictable shaved head, put-on swagger, a nervous system so wired it keeps him bouncing even when he’s sitting, and an English gutter accent leavened with at least one piece of American slang per sentence. He sized me up in an obvious way when we introduced ourselves in The Fishbowl and suggested I shag the woman who had just left.
“Great piece of ass, mate. Everyone says so.” Big wink.
“I see it now,” says Pam. “Terrance Stamp in ‘The Limey.’ Malcolm Eggers as Terrance. He kills Myron Hamish because Myron is bonking his long-lost daughter, the Powelton girl. When he goes to see the daughter to explain what he’s done, she rejects his efforts to reconcile and he knocks her off in a spasm of parental rage. I couldn’t bargain this one down to manslaughter, but if we get some protests organized in London, I can delay the execution for fifty, maybe a hundred years.”
I nod a no. “I don’t think Malcolm did it.”
“Shit,” says Pam. “Why not?”
“Underneath the bluster he’s a pussycat. The shaved head, the exaggerated handshake, the dirty talk and putdowns. Classic pussycat. There’s also the music angle.”
“What’s that about?”
“Myron Hamish, for all his faults, really loved music. This gave him the background to work with his market composers. When I threw out the names of some classical composers to Malcolm in The Fishbowl, he thought they were war criminals. The guy’s a peddler. He sells ads on the Bernstein network and hustles whatever other financial products the company produces. He could never take over a music-based department. So there’d be no reason for him to kill Myron.”
“Which brings us to the last person you met with today.,” says Pam. Clearly exasperated. “Tell me, Bernie, please tell me, this guy is the murderer.” She looks down at her watch to impress upon him the importance of a proper answer.
“Except for a follow up chat with Joe Connors, Ron Pinkman was the last one I spoke with at Bernstein’s today.”
“And you think Pinkman did it?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Thank God. Gimme some dope on him so I can regale my select roster of friends and clients with inside knowledge. Then tell me why you’ve been wasting so much of my time.”
I clue in Pam on my reading of Pinkman’s personality and why he’s almost certainly the one who did the dirty deed. Then tell her about my subsequent conversation with Joe Connors, and after that, on the phone my chat with Jay
Lombardi. Finally, I lay out the reasons she should come by my place that evening.
Pam makes a wonderful display of reluctance about this last suggestion. So much work to do. Can’t let her real clients down. A reading backlog of old law journals. But in truth she would never miss the show that’s scheduled to play out on Irving Street this evening. It will let her mix and mingle with low-lives and power people, witness the arrest of the decade, probably get her some free TV time, and who knows, maybe even land her a new client or two.
“I’ll be there at six, six-thirty,” she says. “And for this, Bernie Kahn, you are going to owe me big-time.”
“Bring some popcorn, Pam. This show’s gonna be a double feature with five color cartoons.”
Pam shoos me away without answering. With considerable effort I extract myself from her client chair and head for home.
