“Tunkie” Southerland is probably one of the better lawyers I know, but like me, he is so disorganized he spends half a morning looking for his files. He writes beautifully, though, and ghosts appellate briefs for a number of lawyers in Blackwell County.

Frank D’Angelo, a transplanted Yankee who couldn’t get into law school up North, knows a lot of bankruptcy, so he will come in handy, too.

“If you need some furniture,” Clan says, choking back a belch, “the building manager has a basement full of odds and ends that she’ll rent dirt cheap.”

It all seems too easy, but by 7 p.m. I’m the newest tenant of the Layman Building, and with the help of a janitor I possess some temporary office furniture. And by this time tomorrow I’ll have a telephone and my name on the directory.

Now, if I can just acquire more than one client….

Granted, my office looks like Goodwill South, but it will keep until I can drive around this weekend to some secondhand furniture stores. I know I can get some halfway decent stuff if I’ll take the time to look. In the meantime, if I have any clients I can interview them in the conference room, which is only two doors from my office. Clan has told me to call the federal district court clerk’s office and put my name on the list for criminal appointments for indigent defendants.

The feds pay forty an hour, which is forty more than I’m getting on anything else except Chapman. I decide I will call when the phone is installed. I glance around the bare walls and realize my diplomas and other junk are at Mays amp; Burton, assuming they haven’t dumped them into the trash. I can pick them up first thing in the morning. I’ve had enough of the free-enterprise system today.

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