The Mourning Sexton by Michael Baron Read Free Book Online

room at the Missouri Athletic Club, Bellows had vowed to “nail that Jewish prick to the cross some day.”
    That was eleven years ago. Since then, Bellows's book of business had apparently grown to irresistible proportions because he was now a senior partner at Hirsch's old firm. Although Bellows's nastiness and holier-than-thou attitude enraged his opponents, Hirsch knew that Jack the Ripper was one formidable adversary.
    Back from commercials.
    The male anchor: “Three winters ago, a law clerk to United States District Judge Brendan McCormick died in a tragic one-car accident while driving the judge to his annual staff Christmas dinner.”
    Cut to a head shot of Judge McCormick.
    The male anchor continued in voice-over: “That young clerk, Judith Shifrin—”
    Cut to a photo of Judith, the one from her law school yearbook.
    “—lost control of the car on an icy road and rammed into a tree. The force of the collision killed the twenty-five-year-old woman. Judge McCormick, seated in the passenger seat at the time of the accident, escaped serious injury but spent the night in the hospital.”
    Cut to the first page of the file-stamped petition that Hirsch had filed four weeks ago.
    The male anchor, in voice-over: “That was three years ago. News Channel Five has learned that a wrongful death action has recently been filed on behalf of the deceased woman. The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages against Ford Motor Company and two other corporations.”
    Cut to the male anchor. “Today, the lawyers for Ford Motor entered their appearance in the case, and our own Rob Drennan was there.”
    The camera pulled back to reveal a bearded guy in his late thirties seated in the chair next to the male anchor. The anchor turned to him with an avuncular smile. “Rob?”
    Drennan nodded and faced the camera, which moved in tight. “That's correct, Mel.”
    His grin faded. “This is no ordinary case.”
    Grave expression. “The victim was a law clerk to a powerful federal judge. The defendants include some of the nation's largest corporations. And the plaintiff's lawyer himself is no stranger to controversy. Ten years ago, attorney David Hirsch was the managing partner of one of this city's oldest and most powerful law firms and a rising star in Democratic politics.”
    Cut to a head shot of Hirsch, taken about fifteen years ago as he addressed a bar association group.
    “But in a turn of events as swift as it was bizarre, Hirsch was first implicated in the drug-related death of a prostitute—”
    Cut to a front-page headline from the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
:
    PROMINENT ST. LOUIS ATTORNEY UNDER ARREST
    F OUND IN E AST S IDE M OTEL WITH D EAD P ROSTITUTE
    Police Say Wild Night Ended in Fatal Drug Overdose
    “And then, at the end of that same week, FBI agents raided his law firm's offices, seizing two years of billing records on his clients.”
    Cut to a shot of the imposing lobby of Hirsch's former law firm—the legend M ARDER M C F ARLANE LLP carved in marble over the entranceway—as men wearing FBI windbreakers loaded boxes of records onto a freight elevator.
    “Federal agents had acted on a tip from one of Hirsch's riverboat casino clients, whose audit of its legal bills uncovered more than forty thousand dollars in phony charges by nonexistent court reporters, copy services, and the like. Hirsch was indicted on various federal charges for the embezzlement of more than a million dollars from clients of his law firm.”
    Cut to a shot of a U.S. marshal leading a handcuffed Hirsch up the stairs of the federal courthouse.
    “And finally, at the end of that same month, nine women—all current or former secretaries and paralegals at his firm—filed suit against him for sexual harassment. By the time David Hirsch entered prison one year later, he was divorced, disbarred, and about to become destitute. That final blow landed three weeks after he entered prison—”
    Cut to front-page headline from the
St. Louis