Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [6]
To his surprise, Casimir liked the study of law, and immediately showed a flair for the business aspects of the profession. The day after the Packers--in an emotional ceremony-- retired The Bull's jersey, Casimir J. Bolinski, D. Juris, announced the opening of his law offices, in which he intended to deal with the relationships between professional athletes and their employers. He started, rather naturally, by representing professional football players, but as word spread throughout the world of sports about how successful The Bull had been in securing pay far beyond the expectations of the players, professionals from baseball, basketball, and even a number of jockeys--the creme de la creme, so to speak, of the world of sports--began to beat a path to his door.
"The way it is, Mickey," Casimir had explained, "is when I first quit the game, the guys would come to see me and say 'How they hanging, Bull? What's this bullshit about you being a lawyer?' and now they come in, shaved and all dressed up in suits, and say, 'Thank you very much for seeing me, Dr. Bolinski.'"
Antoinette Bolinski had been thrilled to find out that D. Juris stood for "Doctor of Law," and that she was thus entitled to refer to Casimir as "my husband, Dr. Bolinski." She immediately began to do so. The phrase had a really classy ring to it, and if the other lawyers didn't want to use the title, screw them.
As once the fabled defense of the Detroit Lions had crumpled before The Charging Bull in that never-to-be-forgotten 32-zilch game, the assembled legal counsel of the Bulletin gave way before Dr. Bolinski's persuasive arguments that the few extra dollars they were going to have to spend on Mickey were nothing compared to the dollars they would lose in lost circulation if Mickey moved over to the Inquirer or the Daily News.
"Jesus, you're dumb, Mickey," Casimir had said later. "You've got the fucking Pulitzer, for Christ's sake. You should have known that's worth a whole lot of dead presidents' pictures."
As a result of the negotiations by Dr. Bolinski on behalf of Mr. O'Hara with the Bulletin, Mr. O'Hara's compensation was quadrupled, and it was agreed that the Bulletin would provide Mr. O'Hara with a private office and an automobile of Mr. O'Hara's choice, equipped as Mr. O'Hara wished; and that he would be reimbursed for all expenses incurred in his professional work, it being clearly understood this would involve a substantial amount of business entertainment.
With one exception, however--Mickey was the sole supporter of his widowed mother, and had been having a really hard time paying her tab at the Cobbs Creek Nursing Center & Retirement Home--his new affluence didn't change his life much.
After toying with the suggestion of Dr. Bolinski that he have the Bulletin buy him either a Mercedes or a Cadillac, Mickey had chosen the Buick Rendezvous. A Caddie, or a Kraut-mobile, he reasoned, would piss off most of the people with whom he worked. By that he meant the police officers. It was said--with more than a little justification--that Mickey knew more cops by their first names than anyone else, and that more cops knew Mickey by sight than they did the police commissioner.
Mickey knew that most--certainly not all--of Philly's cops liked him, and he attributed this to both reciprocation--he liked most cops--and to the fact that he spelled their names right, got the facts right, and never betrayed a confidence.
As he did most nights, Mickey O'Hara had been cruising the city in the Rendezvous when one of the scanners had caught the "possible armed robbery" call. He was then five blocks south of the Roy Rogers on South Broad Street.
"Possible, my ass," he had said, aloud, then put the gum-ball machine on the roof, glanced in the rearview mirror, and made an illegal U-turn on Broad