A First Look...

From BAD PUBLICITY by Jeffrey Frank (Simon & Schuster, Jan. 2004, 0-7432-4776-0, $22.00)

After Charlie Dingleman's defeat in 1984, he returned to the practice of law, becoming "of counsel" for Thingeld, Pine & Sconce. Much of his job required a simple talent—making telephone calls to influential people who knew his name—and Charlie was a little embarrassed by this line of work. He also was weary of telling people that it was "great being back in the private sector" and "wonderful to have time to see friends and family." He also realized that each time another group of former officeholders entered the job market, he became slightly less employable.

By the fall of 1987 Charlie was forty-eight years old and earning $215,000 a year. On his desk he kept the gavel he'd gotten as ranking minority member of the Fisheries Management subcommittee, and he sometimes tapped his desk with it, wondering what had become of the nation's fish stocks without his attention. He was miserable at Thingeld, Pine, and so apparently were the nearly two hundred other lawyers around him. One partner, a gray-haired widower in his early sixties named Alfred Schmalz, looked about to weep whenever someone spoke to him. Sometimes, when Schmalz left his door open, Charlie could see him at his desk, hunched over, rubbing his lower lip, which had a purplish discoloration. Another partner had an oral twitch; after every sentence, he'd say, "Oh yeah, yup, yup!" and it was hard to avoid the one who kept muttering "Fuckingassholes, fuckingassholes" as he walked around with his head bent. In the last three years two partners and one associate had been taken away by ambulance (two false alarms and one real heart attack) and another partner, a man in his late forties, had died in the elevator on his way to court. With good cheer, this doomed man had waved good-bye to the receptionist, and when the elevator door re-opened at the lobby, passengers on their way up discovered the body on the floor. They were in a hurry and didn't mind having the dead man along for the ride.



To read an excerpt from the upcoming novel VOYAGE TO THE END OF THE ROOM, by Tibor Fischer, click here.