I nodded, the fight in me fading.
“That was a setup, Kay. I wasn’t there by accident. Berger sent me.”
“Why?”
Glancing around the restaurant, he replied, “Because Berger’s worried. The firm’s just getting started in New York, and you’ve got to be aware how hard it is to break into this city, to build up a solid clientele, a good reputation Last thing we need is an asshole like Sparacino driving the firm’s name into the gutter.”
He fell silent as the waiter appeared with the salads and ceremoniously uncorked a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. Mark took the obligatory first sip and glasses were filled.
“Berger knew when he hired Sparacino the guy’s flamboyant, likes to play fast and loose,” Mark resumed. “You think, well, it’s just his style. Some lawyers are conservative, others like to make a lot of noise. Problem is, it wasn’t until some months back that Berger and a few of us began to see just how far Sparacino was willing to go. You remember Christie Riggs?”
It took a moment for the name to click. “The actress who married the quarterback?”
Nodding, he said, “Sparacino masterminded that one from soup to nuts. Christie’s a struggling model doing a few TV commercials here in the city. This was about two years ago, at the same time Leon Jones was making the covers of all the magazines. The two of them meet at a party and some photographer snaps a picture of them leaving together and getting inside Jones’s Maserati.
Next thing, Christie Riggs is sitting in the lobby of Orndorff & Berger. She’s got an appointment with Sparacino.”
“Are you telling me Sparacino was behind what happened'” I asked in disbelief.
Christie Riggs and Leon Jones had been married last year and divorced about six months later.
Their tempestuous relationship and dirty divorce had entertained the world night after night on the news.
“Yes ” Mark sipped his wine.
“Explain.”
“Sparacino fixes on Christie,” he said. “She’s gorgeous, smart, ambitious. But the real thing she’s got going for her at the moment is she’s dating Jones Sparacino gives her the game plan. She wants to be a household name. She wants to be rich. All she’s got to do is draw Jones into her web and later start crying in front of cameras about their lives behind shut doors. She accuses him of slapping her around, says he’s a drunk, a psychopath, fooling around with cocaine, smashing up the furniture. Next thing you know, she and Jones are splitting and she’s signed a million-dollar book contract.”
“Makes me have a little more sympathy for Jones,” I muttered.
“The worse part is I think he really loved her and didn’t have the smarts to know what he was up against. He started playing lousy ball, ended up in the Betty Ford Clinic He’s since dropped out of sight. One of America’s greatest quarterbacks is washed up, ruined, and indirectly you can thank Sparacino for it. This kind of muckraking and slandering isn’t our style. Orndorff & Berger is an old, distinguished firm, Kay. When Berger began to get a scent of what his entertainment lawyer was doing, Berger wasn’t exactly happy.”
“Why doesn’t your firm just get rid of him?” I asked, picking at my salad.
“Because we can’t prove anything, not at this point. Sparacino knows how to slide through without a snag. He’s powerful, especially in New York. It’s like grabbing hold of a snake. How the hell do you let go without getting bit? And the list goes on.”
Mark’s eyes were angry. “When you start looking back through Sparacino’s professional history and examine some of the cases he handled when he was a one-man show, it really makes you wonder.”
“What cases, for example?” I almost hated to ask.
“A lot of suits. Some hatchet writer decides to do an unauthorized biography of Elvis, John Lennon, Sinatra, and when it comes pub time, the celebrity, his relatives sue the biographer and it makes the network talk shows, People magazine. The book comes out anyway, with the benefit of incredible free publicity. Everybody’s fighting over it because it’s got to be juicy to have caused such a stink.