The sharpness of her tone took Michael Moretti aback. “I want to see you. I think you and I should have a little talk.”
“What about, Mr. Moretti?”
“It’s nothing I’d care to discuss on the telephone. I can tell you this, Miss Parker—it’s something that would be very much in your interest.”
Jennifer said evenly, “I can tell you this, Mr. Moretti. Nothing you could ever do or say could be of the slightest interest to me,” and she slammed down the receiver.
Michael Moretti sat at his desk staring at the dead phone in his hand. He felt a stirring within him, but it was not anger. He was not sure what it was, and he was not sure he liked it. He had used women all his life and his dark good looks and innate ruthlessness had gotten him more eager bed partners than he could remember.
Basically, Michael Moretti despised women. They were too soft. They had no spirit. Rosa, for example. She’s like a little pet dog who does everything she’s told, Michael thought. She keeps my house, cooks for me, fucks me when I want to be fucked, shuts up when I tell her to shut up.
Michael had never known a woman of spirit, a woman who had the courage to defy him. Jennifer Parker had had the nerve to hang up on him. What was it she had said? Nothing you could ever do or say could be of the slightest interest to me. Michael Moretti thought about that and smiled to himself. She was wrong. He was going to show her how wrong she was.
He sat back, remembering what she had looked like in court, remembering her face and her body. He suddenly wondered what she would be like in bed. A wildcat, probably. He started thinking about her nude body under his, fighting him. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number.
When a girl’s voice answered he said, “Get naked. I’m on my way over.”
On her way back to the office after lunch, as Jennifer was crossing Third Avenue she was almost run down by a truck. The driver slammed on his brakes and the rear end of the truck skidded sideways, barely missing her.
“Jesus Christ, lady!” the driver yelled. “Why don’t you watch where the hell you’re goin’!”
Jennifer was not listening to him. She was staring at the name on the back of the truck. It read Nationwide Motors Corporation. She stood there watching, long after the truck had disappeared from sight. Then she turned and hurried back to the office.
“Is Ken here?” she asked Cynthia.
“Yes. He’s in his office.”
She went in to see him. “Ken, can you check out Nationwide Motors Corporation? We need a list of all the accident cases their trucks have been involved in for the past five years.”
“That’s going to take a while.”
“Use LEXIS.” That was the national legal computer.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m not sure yet, Ken. It’s just a hunch. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”
She had overlooked something in the case of Connie Garrett, that lovely quadruple amputee who was destined to spend the rest of her life as a freak. The driver may have had a good record, but what about the trucks? Maybe somebody was liable, after all.
The next morning Ken Bailey laid a report in front of Jennifer. “Whatever the hell you’re after, looks like you’ve hit the jackpot. Nationwide Motors Corporation has had fifteen accidents in the last five years, and some of their trucks have been recalled.”
Jennifer felt an excitement begin to build in her. “What was the problem?”
“A deficiency in the braking system that causes the rear end of the truck to swing around when the brakes are hit hard.”
It was the rear end of the truck that had hit Connie Garrett.
Jennifer called a staff meeting with Dan Martin, Ted Harris and Ken Bailey. “We’re going into court on the Connie Garrett case,” Jennifer announced.
Ted Harris stared at her through his milk-bottle glasses. “Wait a minute, Jennifer, I checked that out. She lost on appeal. We’re going to get hit with res judicata.”