Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [56]
She talked the offer over with Ben. She was sure that she would make a hell of a good D.A., but she hadn't been at all sure that she could win, and if she lost, she would be out of a job. She couldn't run for reelection to the bench and for D.A. at the same time.
Ben said she should give it a shot; she would always regret it later if she didn't. And, Ben said, it wasn't as if they were going to have to sell the dog to make the car payments if she found herself unemployed. That was a reference to the fact that Ben's scalpel earned more than ten times as much money for them as the government paid her to wield her gavel.
She ran, and won with fifty-two percent of the vote. The first time she ran for reelection, she got fifty-eight percent, and the last time, she'd garnered sixty-seven percent of the vote.
Eileen McNamara Solomon had two cellular telephones, which, when she was there, she placed in rechargers on her desk beside the office phone with all its buttons. One of the cellulars, which buzzed when called, was her official phone. She made herself available with it around-the-clock.
The second Nokia cellular had a green face, and when it was called, it played "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." This was her private line, its number known to very few people. It had been a gift from Ben, who said that, believe it or not, he had a busy schedule, too, and didn't like to be put on hold.
When the green phone began to play "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" she thought it was probably Ben, and wondered if he was about to ask her to lunch.
"Hi," she said to the telephone.
"You busy, Eileen?" a female voice inquired. She knew the voice.
"Never too busy for you, Martha. How are you?"
Eileen McNamara and Martha Peebles had met in Art Appreciation 101 at the University of Pennsylvania, and the tall, then sort of skinny eighteen-year-old Irish girl and the seventeen-year-old slight, short WASP with an acne condition had been immediately comfortable with each other.
Eileen had told Martha all about her family, then taken her home to meet "King Kong"--her brother--and her father, both bricklaying subcontractors, and her mother. Martha had been visibly reluctant to talk about her family, except to say that her mother had died and she lived with her father and brother, who was a would-be actor.
Martha had not offered to take Eileen home with her, and Eileen wondered if she was maybe ashamed of her father, or her home, and went out of her way to make sure Martha understood she didn't care if her father "had problems" or what her house looked like, or how much money there was.
It was four months before Martha finally took Eileen home, on a Saturday, and Eileen got to meet the brother, Stephen, who was light on his feet, and her father, Alexander.
Martha had shown her around the house and property, which had taken a little time, as there were twenty-eight rooms in the turn-of-the-century mansion set on fourteen acres behind stone walls on Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill, plus a guest house, a hothouse, and stables for Alexander Peebles's polo ponies.
"I never saw anything like this," Eileen had confessed, as they left the stables. "Not even in the movies."
Martha had looked at her.
"I really don't want this to change things between us," Martha said. "You're the best friend I ever had."
Eileen had never forgotten the frightened look in Martha's eyes.
"Don't be silly."
"And don't tell anybody else, please."
"Why should I?"
Eileen had never had a best friend in high school, and neither, Martha said, had she. They became and remained best friends and stayed best friends. Martha was the first person Eileen had told about Ben, right after he rear-ended her. And Martha had been her only bridesmaid when she married Ben.
And Eileen really worried about Martha, particularly after her father died,