Charlotte

The day Ben Hanratty saved my brother’s life, I left my apartment on a damp, foggy Friday in South San Francisco to see a lawyer in a strip mall.

Not my idea, trust me.

I’d never hired a lawyer before. I’d never even dealt with one for anything like this. And I definitely had never hired a lawyer in a strip mall. But it had to be this lawyer—so it had to be this strip mall.

I’d seen the place before. I’d passed it by maybe a dozen times. On the edge between a neighborhood and an industrial swath of the city, set at the back of a parking lot, once the site of a long-ago Blockbuster Video and now broken up into a haircutting place, a pet food store—and, according to the small sign on a glass door, a lawyer’s office.

Benjamin Hanratty, Attorney.

The door was locked. The glass was frosted, so I couldn’t see if anyone was inside, but my internet search for Ben Hanratty, attorney, had not led me wrong. I imagined the rent was cheap, which didn’t sound promising.

I knocked on the glass; no answer. I clutched my shoulder bag and waited, my heart beating high in my chest. Get it together, Charlotte. He’s just some old, fat lawyer in a suit. He probably sees people like you every day. No reason to panic. I could handle this. My brother was sitting in a cell, and I was just going to tell this old, fat lawyer to get him out. Or else.

Jeremy had never been in trouble before. I’d thought he was trying to get a job, so the call from prison was a surprise, to say the least. And it wasn’t just that my little brother was in prison that was surprising—it was what he’d told me with his one phone call. Get me Ben Hanratty, and only Ben Hanratty. As soon as you can.

I was ready to knock again when the door opened and a fiftyish black woman came out, a huge handbag over her shoulder. She didn’t seem surprised I was there. She stepped past me, closed the door behind her, and locked it, glancing at me with a cynical expression.

I looked at my phone. Four thirty. Was she going home? I’d just gotten the call from Jeremy half an hour ago. “Am I too late?” I said.

The woman turned all the way toward me and frowned. “Are you the new girl?” she asked.

“Sorry?”

“The new girl,” the woman said patiently. Her gaze went up and down me. “Did he tell you to come here this late? Sounds like him. Yeah, that’s going to be a problem. He’ll eat you alive.”

That made no sense. I cleared my throat and lifted my chin a little. “I’m looking for Mr. Hanratty,” I explained.

“Like I say, that’s going to be a problem.” The woman stepped toward me. “You want this?” she said, holding out the key she’d used to lock the door.

What? “I don’t—”

“Take it,” she said, picking up my hand by the wrist and placing the key in my palm. “You may as well. Just go in and make yourself at home—he won’t care. This is my last day, anyway. Tell him Coreen quit, and if he wanted to know why, he should have shown up every once in a damn while.”

Oh, God. I opened my mouth, but she kept on.

“Tell him his office is a mess and he’s not paying me nearly enough to go through any of those godawful boxes,” she said. “Tell him he’s also not paying me enough to deal with the creeps who come by looking for him. You got tattoos and a ring through your eyebrow, you’re a damn biker. Does he think I was born yesterday?”

“I—”

But she was going good now. “Tell him I have a college degree, which means I don’t pick up his dry cleaning or answer his phone. At least I don’t answer it anymore, because I stopped. It was mostly collect calls from prisoners, anyway, and I have no way to pay the charges.”

“Maybe I can explain—”

“It figures he’d replace me with a chippy like you,” she said, taking me in with a cynical eye.

That surprised me out of my shock. “I’m not a chippy,” I protested. I wasn’t sure what a chippy was, but it didn’t sound good. I looked down at myself: knee-length skirt of dark jersey, white T-shirt, belted coat against the chill, black flats. It wasn’t exactly formal wear, but it was what I’d put on to get my brother out of jail, and all of my body parts were covered. “These are just clothes,” I said.

“Uh huh,” Coreen said, disbelieving. “My mother knew a chippy when she saw one, and that’s what she’d call you. Pretty, and a hundred pounds soaking wet. ‘Yes, sir! I’ll fetch your dry cleaning, sir!’ No wonder he hired you.”

“Hey,” I said, even though he hadn’t hired me.

Coreen shook her head. “I’m just giving you advice. I don’t blame you, because he’s a good-looking bastard, I’ll give him that. But he’s a hazard, honey.”

“A hazard?”

“Yes, he is. He’s one of those condemned buildings they just rip down because it can’t be saved—not the walls, not the wiring, nothing. You go in one of those houses, you’ll inhale asbestos and get tetanus from a rusty nail. You get too close to Ben Hanratty, you’ll be heartbroken by lunchtime, and pregnant just from all the testosterone wafting around in there.”

I stared at her open-mouthed after this speech. There was so much of it, I didn’t know where to start. I’d just come here to hire a lawyer. Heartbroken? Pregnant? And I weighed a lot more than a hundred pounds.

She lifted her chin. “That’s my advice,” she said, brushing past me to leave. “Make sure he pays you in advance, at the beginning of the week, or he’ll forget. And he’s probably a firecracker between the sheets—I wouldn’t know—but he’s never gonna marry you. Woman to woman, girl.” She walked into the parking lot and pressed the button on her key ring, her car beeping back at her.

I watched her get in her car and drive away. I looked at the key in my hand. What was I supposed to do with this? Despite what Coreen had said, I couldn’t just walk into a strange lawyer’s office. That seemed unethical, especially since I wasn’t his employee like she thought. Wasn’t there confidential stuff in there? Files and whatever?

But the man I’d come to see—the man I absolutely had to see—wasn’t here. Should I leave? I couldn’t—this was too important. It couldn’t wait until morning, if lawyers even worked Saturdays, which I had the feeling they didn’t. I had to see Ben Hanratty, and no one else, right now. I didn’t have much time.

Just him, and only him, Jeremy had said during his phone call. Do whatever you have to do to hire him. Ben Hanratty, Charlotte. Get him. Promise me.

I’d promised. Jeremy was in a holding cell, and I was here, determined to bargain whatever I could to get this man to work for me. To get Jeremy out of that cell, where I was sure he didn’t belong.

If only my lawyer would actually show up.