There is one cardinal rule in law practice: Thou shall not covet a lawyer’s secretary.
It was two o’clock Monday afternoon 25 years ago; Sam, my co-counsel hadn’t called me back. The tax court brief was due soon and there was still much to be done.
It was just another day at the office. I had worked as a CPA for a couple of years and then with a small tax law firm for another, before resolutely striking out on my own. In order to pay the bills, I associated myself with several sole proprietors in Jacksonville who, more or less, specialized in tax and estate matters. I shared offices with one of these lawyers. Mr. Rogers, 50 years my senior, was typical of these solo attorneys. He, of course, didn’t have to work. I remember vividly his regaling me with stories from the 1930s of his precedent-setting victories over the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Rogers stood six feet, his 30 inch waist bearing a belt at least eight inches too long, buckled on the side, usually holding up a well-pressed pair of seersucker trousers. I can still envision him, a cigarette dangling from his lips in Humphrey Bogart style, making it difficult for me to concentrate on the facts of the case before us, as he tilted his head backwards, his eyes squinting to avoid the ascending irritating smoke, the ever-growing ash threatening to momentarily ignite my hours of research. Each of Mr. Rogers’ shirts bore the same distinctive bum hole, two inches to the left of the third button down from his collar, the result of his inevitable miscalculation of the appropriate time to use his ashtray. He was also extremely hard of hearing and I suspected that, when he was not in sympathy with the conservation, he merely turned off his hearing aid. As I picture that day so long ago, I saw him when the discussion was not to his liking, in slow motion, hanging up the telephone with the other party still speaking, reminding me of a drowning man being sucked under water while calling for help. For the pearls of wisdom on tax matters, many of which were in terms of the 1939 Code, I would be treated to tales from the Depression law practice, one of which he was especially proud, being his repossession of a 1939 La France hook and ladder truck, which he used to double-date.
Sam was also another example of the tax sole practitioner in Jacksonville at the time. The story was that Sam, then in his late fifties, had been with a local firm and had been assigned a substantial client. Much to the dismay of his employer, he had the good fortune to be recognized by the client for his legal abilities and the client had set him up in his own practice. Sam and I had hit it off from the beginning, both being opera fans, and we had worked together to help gather support for our local opera company. (Our reward was being made non-singing spear carriers in Aida.) So, while I had no voice to speak of, Sam could indulge his interest with music lessons during working hours, and I, like Bob Cratchett, was required to eke out my daily living from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. filling out 1040s. Thus, Sam, unlike me, was not required by finances to keep regular office hours.
Fortunately, Sam’s office and mine were in the same building. In fact, the three sole proprietors I mostly associated with were all in the Old Barnett Bank Building. The building was reminiscent of one from a Mickey Spillane movie. The doors had opaque glass which were in keeping with the porcelain water fountains and marble floors. Probably one would have felt right at home if he had stepped back in time to 1929 when the building was erected. The edifice, the tallest in Florida when built, had not suffered a major renovation since its opening. It had only been a couple of years since the elevators had been automated, probably one of the last in Jacksonville.
In any event, when Sam hadn’t called me back, I picked up the telephone and dialed his number one more time. No answer. While this was a little strange since Sam, unlike I, had his own secretary, it could have been that she was merely filing in his library or taken a late lunch.
(Remembering back so many years, it was my ambition to have my very own secretary.) I knocked on Mr. Rogers’ door and, after politely curtailing a story of how bell bottom trousers were all the rage in the 1920s on the campus of the University of Tennessee, told him that I was going down to see Sam, since time was growing short for the brief. On the way down to Sam’s I tried to envision his secretary with the youthful southern drawl, with whom I had talked just this morning by phone.
The brass elevator doors opened and I got off on the seventh floor and walked directly to Sam’s office, opening the glass door while trying to recall the name of Sam’s recently hired secretary. She wasn’t at her desk and, at first, I thought no one was in the office. But, then I noticed two cowboy boots in front of the reception desk, placed as if the desk were a couch and someone had taken them off before retiring. My eyes were drawn to the left side of the desk, from where four stocking feet extended. My first inclination was to turn around, realizing I had undoubtedly stumbled onto some mid-afternoon assignation. But, then, the lure of a scene better than a daytime soap opera, got the better of me. Rationalizing to myself, “What if they need medical assistance?” I craned my neck to see behind the desk while walking to Sam’s library in a studied nonchalant manner just in case the trysting couple might notice me. I made it to the library, thinking the lascivious duo must really be inebriated. However, since the library was a dead end, I had to retrace my steps. Walking again toward the office entrance, I came face-to-face with the bootless, but otherwise fully clothed, middle-aged man, who was so soused his eyes looked past me. Feeling rather awkward for casual conversation with a female’s feet still extending from under the desk, the only words which came to me were, “Don’t mind me. I’m just here to return a book.” Closing Sam’s door behind me with the drunk still trying to focus, I thought, “Wait till Sam hears about this.” On my way back up to the 17 th floor, I was thinking that possibly the police should be called, but I dismissed the thought of upsetting the afternoon for the secretary. “Let Sam handle it.” When I casually mentioned the incident to Mr. Rogers, he looked at me incredulously, for once not prefacing his remarks with a tale from the ‘40’s and in a rebuking voice which reminded me, though I might be paying half the rent, I was still only slightly more than an office boy, “Of course we’re calling the police. Now.” Feeling rather foolish by my own lack of resolve, I attempted to reassure Mr. Rogers that there was nothing more to it than what I had seen. But, I conceded discretion might best be served by calling the police. Let the authorities make the call as to what was what.
Ten minutes later, the police called and asked me to step down to the seventh floor again. The offices were swarming with detectives and uniformed policemen. The reception area was roped off and the medical unit was placing the sheet over the female body lying behind the desk. The plain clothed officer in charge informed me that the secretary had been dead less than thirty minutes, having received five bullets, two of which were still in her body, the other three imbedded in the wall behind her. Apparently, my powers of observation were less than impressive to the detective who asked for a description of the drunk who was nowhere to be found.
I have often thought lawyers, maybe especially tax lawyers, make terrible witnesses. Even so, I did my level best to describe the man I had encountered in Sam’s office and was, all in all, quite pleased with my display of observant power in profiling him. I quickly realized how inept I appeared to be when another witness, who had seen the inebriated killer stumbling out of the building, described him as being of a different age, wearing different clothes, and of a different height and build than I had related. From the look the detective gave me after my description, I surmised this only confirmed the detective’s contemptuous opinion of lawyers.
A few days later, the assailant was arrested by the police. He was a mill worker who had recently broken up with the secretary whom he killed. Ironically, he was known as “The Rock” because of the emotional stability his co-workers observed in him. But, he also had a drinking problem. I remembered looking forward to the telephone call from the police where I would be able to go down to the lineup and identify the killer. The call never came. I must assume that the detective was so unimpressed with my powers of observation that he felt I would only strengthen the defendant’s case.
Sam, understandably, was unnerved by the whole incident. He, fortunately, had taken off the afternoon for a voice lesson and, after seeing three bullets in the wall behind his receptionist’s desk, gave me no further help on the brief and I finished it myself. In my reverie, I tried to remember the outcome or even the issues of the brief, but the significance of the case was lost.
Of course, I described the happenings of the day to my wife, Linda, that evening. Later, I read to her the newspaper account of the entire incident when “The Rock” was finally convicted of second-degree murder. Linda’s reaction - “You had a close call, Mike.” Of course, I knew Linda had my best interest at heart and was only concerned for my welfare. “If you’d come into that office sooner, he’d have shot you as well as the secretary. And, you know, if that had happened, no one would have believed that you weren’t having an affair with that woman, and do you realize how angry I would have been with you?” Not exactly the reaction I had wished from my lifelong companion. But then I mused, “How absurd a response, my being a good Presbyterian Sunday School teacher without more than a speeding ticket to blemish my character.” My final memory of the incident was having lunch the next day with a close friend and explaining Linda’s unwarranted reaction. “What do you think Saunders?” He looked at me, thought a minute, and said, “She’s right. That’s what we all would have thought.”