Rage of Angels
If you loved him, Jennifer wondered, how could you have slept with all those other men? The answer might have lain in that sad, homely face and plain figure.
“Can you help me, Miss Parker?”
Jennifer said cautiously, “Paternity cases are always difficult. I have a list of more than a dozen men you’ve slept with in the past year. There are probably others. If I have such a list, you can be sure that Curtis Randall’s attorney will have one.”
Loretta Marshall frowned. “What about blood samples, that kind of thing…?”
“Blood tests are admissible in evidence only if they prove that the defendant could not be the father. They’re legally inconclusive.”
“I don’t really care about me. It’s Melanie I want protected. It’s only right that Curtis should take care of his daughter.”
Jennifer hesitated, weighing her decision. She had told Loretta Marshall the truth. Paternity cases were difficult. To say nothing about being messy and unpleasant. The attorneys for the defense would have a field day when they got this woman on the stand. They would bring up a parade of her lovers and, before they were through, they would make her look like a whore. It was not the type of case that Jennifer wanted to become involved in. On the other hand, she believed Loretta Marshall. This was no ordinary gold digger out to gouge an ex-lover. The girl was convinced that Curtis Randall was the father of her child. Jennifer made her decision.
“All right,” she said, “we’ll take a crack at it.”
Jennifer set up a meeting with Roger Davis, the lawyer representing Curtis Randall. Davis was a partner in a large Wall Street firm and the importance of his position was indicated by the spacious corner suite he occupied. He was pompous and arrogant, and Jennifer disliked him on sight.
“What can I do for you?” Roger Davis asked.
“As I explained on the telephone, I’m here on behalf of Loretta Marshall.”
He looked at her and said impatiently, “So?”
“She’s asked me to institute a paternity suit against Mr. Curtis Randall III. I would prefer not to do that.”
“You’d be a damned fool if you did.”
Jennifer held her temper in check. “We don’t wish to drag your client’s name through the courts. As I’m sure you know, this kind of case always gets nasty. Therefore, we’re prepared to accept a reasonable out-of-court settlement.”
Roger Davis gave Jennifer a wintry smile. “I’m sure you are. Because you have no case. None at all.”
“I think we have.”
“Miss Parker, I haven’t time to mince words. Your client is a whore. She’ll have intercourse with anything that moves. I have a list of men she’s slept with. It’s as long as my arm. You think my client is going to get hurt? Your client will be destroyed. She’s a schoolteacher, I believe. Well, when I get through with her she’ll never teach anywhere again as long as she lives. And I’ll tell you something else. Randall believes he’s the father of that baby. But you’ll never prove it in a million years.”
Jennifer sat back, listening, her face expressionless.
“Our position is that your client could have become impregnated by anyone in the Third Army. You want to make a deal? Fine. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll buy your client birth-control pills so that it doesn’t happen again.”
Jennifer stood up, her cheeks burning. “Mr. Davis,” she said, “that little speech of yours is going to cost your client half a million dollars.”
And Jennifer was out the door.
Ken Bailey and three assistants could turn up nothing against Curtis Randall III. He was a widower, a pillar of society, and he had had very few sexual flings.
“The son of a bitch is a born-again puritan,” Ken Bailey complained.
They were seated in the conference room at midnight, the night before the paternity trial was to begin. “I’ve talked to one of the attorneys in Davis’s office, Jennifer. They’re going to destroy our client. They’re not bluffing.”
“Why are you sticking your neck out for this girl?” Dan Martin asked.
“I’m not here to judge her sex life, Dan. She believes that Curtis Randall is the father of her baby. I mean, she really believes it. All she wants is money for her daughter—nothing for herself. I think she deserves her day in court.”
“We’re not thinking about her,” Ken replied. “We’re thinking about you. You’re on a hot roll. Everybody’s watching you. I think this is a no-win case. It’s going to be a black mark against you.”
“Let’s all get some sleep,” Jennifer said. “I’ll see you in court.”
The trial went even worse than Ken Bailey had predicted. Jennifer had had Loretta Marshall bring her baby into the courtroom, but now Jennifer wondered if she had not made a tactical error. She sat there, helpless, as Roger Davis brought witness after witness to the stand and forced each of them to admit they had slept with Loretta Marshall. Jennifer did not dare cross-examine them. They were victims, and they were testifying in public only because they had been forced to. All Jennifer could do was sit by while her client’s name was besmirched. She watched the faces of the jurors, and she could read the growing hostility there. Roger Davis was too clever to characterize Loretta Marshall as a whore. He did not have to. The people on the stand did it for him.
Jennifer had brought in her own character witnesses to testify to the good work that Loretta Marshall had done as a teacher, to the fact that she attended church regularly and was a good mother; but all this made no impression in the face of the horrifying array of Loretta Marshall’s lovers. Jennifer had hoped to play on the sympathy of the jury by dramatizing the plight of a young woman who had been betrayed by a wealthy playboy and then abandoned when she had become pregnant. The trial was not working out that way.