Legal Tender (5 page)

“Pink or turquoise?”

“Turquoise.”

“Lucky break.”

“You got that right.”

The phone rang, and she reached for it as I wandered down the hall with my messages, scouting for associates. The hallway was empty, so I strayed casually into the law library, which doubled as our conference room. Nobody was there either. The round, egalitarian conference table was bare, surrounded by thick federal reporters, their gold foil volume numbers running in shiny rows. Maybe the associates were out to lunch. Or on job interviews.

I left the library, went back down the hall, and climbed the spiral staircase to peek at the upstairs offices. Each one was the same size, none smaller than Mark’s or mine, and each associate had been given a thousand-dollar office allowance to decorate it. Between our sexy caseload and permissive management, R & B attracted the best and the brightest from the local law schools—Penn, Temple, Widener, and Villanova. Our associates were all Law Review or close to it, and we paid them like the demigods they thought they were. What could they possibly have to complain about? And where the hell were they?

I walked down the hall, checking office after empty office. They’d put all sorts of crap up on the walls, and I hadn’t uttered a peep. Bob Wingate’s office was a memorial to Jerry Garcia; Eve Eberlein’s was redone in feminine chintz. The only businesslike office belonged to Grady Wells, a Civil War buff. It was furnished simply and the walls were covered with antique battlefield maps in wooden frames. Grady kept a map chest with skinny drawers in the corner, but he wasn’t in his office.

Nobody was in, anywhere. I considered snooping to see if there were any résumés lying around, but decided against it. I was committed to our individual liberties. Also, I might get caught.

I headed into my own messy office, kicked my pumps onto the dhurrie rug, and moved some papers so I could curl into the cushy maroon wing chair behind my desk. A client once told me that my sloppiness was the mark of a true outlaw, but he was wrong. I was just a slob, nothing political about it.

I unlocked a rickety desk drawer and pulled the file of computer printouts that listed the associates’ hours. Whoever was working the hardest could be the most unhappy. I read down the list of associates, ignoring the administrative hours, looking only for billable time. Fletcher, Jacobs, Wingate. Most of the associates were billing two hundred hours a month. Hard time, so everybody should be miserable. Even Eve Eberlein showed a hundred and ninety hours so far. I tried not to think about which activities she considered billable.

I flipped backwards to the previous months. The times rang true except for Renee Butler, who’d put in a rugged April on trial in family court. Renee had been Eve’s roommate since they graduated from Penn with Wingate, but the two women couldn’t have been more different. Renee was black, slightly overweight, and committed to her practice of domestic abuse cases. She was all substance to Eve’s pure form. Was Renee one of the associates who wanted to leave? Was there a way to find out?

Of course.

I tossed the time records aside and crossed the room to the unmatched bookshelves against the wall. Law reviews and treatises were mixed with clippings and reprints, and I forgot where I’d put the legal directory. Damn. I scanned the cluttered shelves.

Eureka! I yanked the directory off the shelf, found the listing, and called. “Meyers Placement?” I said weakly, when a woman picked up. “Uh … I may be out of a job soon and I need to talk to someone.”

“Hold please,” she said, then the phone clicked and another woman came on, with a professionally soothing voice. “May I help you?”

“Yes, I’m calling from R & B, Rosato & Biscardi? I need to find a job, I think.”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“I, uh, can’t say. I’d die if my boss found out. She’s a real bitch.”

A surprised laugh. “Well, you can send us a confidential résumé. Address it to—”

“Am I the only one from R & B who called you? Or have you gotten a call from Renee Butler?”

“I’m not at liberty to give out that information.”

“But I’m not the only one, am I? I won’t send my résumé if I’m the only one.” I was hoping she’d see her exorbitant fee slipping away.

“No, you’re not the only one.”

“Is it Jeff Jacobs or Bob Wingate? I bet it’s one of them.”

“I can’t confirm either of those names.”

“I know Jenny Rowland’s miserable here. She says it sucks.”

“I really can’t reveal our clients, dear. I do have three résumés from R & B, but that doesn’t mean we can’t place all of you.”

Three résumés? Three associates wanted out? That was almost half the crew. My heart sank. I didn’t listen to her sales pitch, just waited until she stopped talking, thanked her, and hung up.
Three?
What was going on?

I felt stricken. I’d talk to Mark about it as soon as he got back. A firm our size couldn’t sustain that sort of blow, not now. Mark’s commercial business practice was booming; my First Amendment practice, representing media clients against defamation suits, was finally at the point where it subsidized the police misconduct cases. Mark and I were bringing in a million in billings a year and paying ourselves a hundred thousand each, not to mention feeding thirteen mouths. Doing well and doing good, with a genuine rock ’n’ roll esprit. Until now.

I looked back at my desk, piled high with messages, correspondence, and briefs. I’d better stay ahead of it if we were heading into crisis mode. Damn. I pushed my worries to the back of my mind and set to work, ignoring the sounds of the associates as they got home. I heard them laughing and joking, then the ringing of phones and the song of modems as they got back to work. Two of them, Bob Wingate and Grady Wells, were arguing a point of federal jurisdiction in the hallway, and I cocked my head to listen. Sharp, sharp lawyers, these. I liked them and was sorry that three were unhappy. Maybe I’d try to talk them out of leaving. Right after I spanked them.

* * *

At the end of the day I shook off my work buzz and went downstairs. I could hear from the commotion Mark had returned. The whole firm usually met at the end of the day in the library, and I gathered he was holding forth down there, regaling the associates with war stories from the Wellroth trial. Did you hear the one about the water pitcher?

But when I reached the library’s open door, I saw it wasn’t our usual in-house confab. Mark was sitting at the conference table with Eve, and next to her was Dr. Haupt from Wellroth and a bluff older man I recognized as Kurt Williamson, the company’s general counsel. I veered left to avoid interrupting them, but Mark stood up and motioned to me.

“Bennie, come on in,” he said expansively, but there was an edge to his voice I didn’t like. His jacket was off, his silk tie loosened. “I have some good news for you.”

“Good news? About the trial?”

“No, on another matter. Other
matters
, in fact. Kurt is sending us two of Wellroth’s largest new matters, including the structuring of its joint venture with Healthco Pharma. A major, major deal.” His eyes were sending nasty signals, which I read as a so-there after this morning’s debacle.

“That’s wonderful,” I said, though what I meant was, that’s lucrative. “Mark is a terrific lawyer, Kurt, and I know he’ll do a great job with it.”

“He has so far,” Williamson said, nodding. “His opinion letter gave us a whole new perspective on the joint venture. Did you see it?” He leaned over the table and handed a thick packet of papers to me.

“Nice work, creative work,” I said, skimming the opinion letter for the second time. No opinion left R & B without my review because of the malpractice exposure; I’d seen it when it was a research memo prepared by Eve and Renee Butler. I flopped the memo closed and handed it back to him. “Very creative.”

Eve smiled tightly at the praise and so did Dr. Haupt, or at least I think he did. The fissure in the lower half of his face shifted like a fault line.

“I agree,” Williamson said. “One of the problems with the pharmaceutical business is controlling the product once it’s developed, as you can see from our present dispute over Cetor. Developing a successful product is a complicated process, often involving interlocking patents. Interdependent patents, more than a dozen.”

“That many?” I said, though he didn’t seem to require any response to continue. Corporate clients love to talk about their business. Listen or somebody else will.

“Even more. In the joint venture, the rub is which company will control the patents should a successful product be developed. Mark’s idea was that half of the interdependent patents should be held by each party. All the patents would be rendered useless except in combination with the others.”

“Really,” I said, though I remembered it from the memo. “So the patents would fit together.”

“Like keys to a lock.”

“Amazing,” I bubbled, though the simile had been mine. I had edited out the metaphor the memo had used, comparing the patents to keys to a treasure chest. It was too cute for an opinion letter, where the language is supposed to be so bland nobody could remember it, much less hold the firm liable for anything.

Williamson stood up, smoothing his bumpy seersucker jacket. “Well, I really must be going. The Paoli train calls, and so does my wife.”

Mark and I laughed in unfortunate unison. We always laugh at our clients’ jokes, but we try not to be so obvious about it. “I’ll walk you out,” Mark said, rising to help Williamson gather his papers. Dr. Haupt rose, too, and Eve put the file back together, working smoothly.

“Thanks again, Kurt,” I said to Williamson. I shook his hand as he left, and he mock-withered in my grip.

“Still rowing, are you?” he asked, smiling. “I haven’t sculled in ages. I’m getting older.”

“You too? What a coincidence.”

Williamson laughed as Mark gave him one of those elbow touches that qualify as business intimacy, and Williamson let himself be cuddled out. Dr. Haupt followed silently, leaving Eve and me alone in the conference room. I decided to be nice to her. “Congratulations on the new business, Eve.”

She continued gathering the papers, but she was frowning. “They’re sexist, even Dr. Haupt. He didn’t even acknowledge me.”

“Hey, Eve,” called a boyish voice from the door. It was Bob Wingate, the Deadhead with gaunt cheekbones, sunken brown eyes, and an alternative pallor. Dressed in a Jerry T-shirt and khakis, he ambled into the library and climbed onto the window seat. “How goes the Wellroth trial?”

Eve masked her pique. “Great, just great,” she said, and I chose not to contradict her.

“Cool.” Wingate nodded. “Did Mark let you do a witness?”

“Sure. I cross-examined two of them and argued a motion at the end of the day. An evidentiary motion.”

“Fuck,” Wingate said, scratching his longish hair. “I worked my ass off all day on one brief. When’s he gonna let me have a trial? I’ve done almost fifty depositions in two years. I think I’m ready, don’t you?” He bumped his black high-tops against the wall, making scuffmarks on my paint job.

“Wingate, stop with your heels,” I said.

He looked at me like an injured child. “When am I gonna get some trial experience, Bennie? I’m ready. I can do it.”

“Ask Mark. You didn’t want to work for me, remember?”

“It wasn’t you, it was your cases. And he always puts me off.”

“Then keep after him.”

Wingate sulked in the window seat as Eve sat down, fiddling with her charm bracelet: a gold locket, a silver key, a tiny heart. I wondered if Mark had given her the bracelet; he’d never given me anything so expensive.

“I thought that went very well, didn’t you?” Mark said, returning like the conquering hero. “Eve?”

“Fine,” she said, smiling. “It went great.”

“What went great?” asked Grady Wells, drifting into the library, dressed in a gray suit and Liberty tie. Above his broad shoulders was a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses, an easy smile, and thatch of curly blond hair no amount of water could civilize. It was the only unruly thing about Grady, a tall North Carolinian with Southern manners and an accent that fooled opposing counsel into thinking he was slow-witted. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“We’re talking about the Wellroth trial,” Wingate said. “Eve did two witnesses. Meantime, what are you dressed as, Wells?”

Grady looked down at his suit. “A lawyer, I think.”

“But isn’t this your Ultimate Frisbee night? The last night of the season? The big party?”

“I have to miss it. I’m meeting a client.”