The Book of Jonah (5 page)

The meeting had been at the back of his mind all morning, and though he'd been trying not to fixate on it, he realized it formed another reason for his good mood. Of the thirty Cunningham Wolf partners in the U.S. litigation and arbitration practice, Doug Chen was among the elite, one of the few the senior partners relied on to handle the biggest cases, the most important clients. He was also something of an iconic figure among the associates. He was an intensely—notoriously—well-groomed man: was never seen in the offices without his shoes aglow in black or brown, the Windsor knot of his tie taut in a mathematically precise trapezoid, his jet-black hair parted along a razor-straight line. All this complemented his reputation—deserved, in Jonah's experience—of being one of the best legal minds in the entire firm, if not the city: encyclopedic in his knowledge of precedent, insightful in both legal theory and application, shrewd when shrewdness was required, tirelessly attentive to detail. In fact, he probably would have been a senior partner himself except for one aspect of his character, which at once both crowned his iconic stature and was nearly impossible to reconcile with anything else that was known about him: Doug Chen was addicted to strippers. The most frequently repeated rumor was that he was no longer allowed to hold a firm credit card because, during the course of a monthlong trial in Miami, he had charged over forty thousand dollars at strip clubs. More-dubious gossip involved a three-week disappearance to Puerto Rico and a pregnant nineteen-year-old.

Regardless, he was a very important figure in the firm's hierarchy, and not someone who typically met face-to-face, one-on-one with associates. Even if, as was most likely, he only wanted to talk through the details of a brief Jonah had written or something of that order, it was a promising sign for Jonah that Doug Chen even knew his name.

Having acknowledged to himself how much he was anticipating this meeting, though, Jonah found it hard to concentrate on anything else. He ended up sorting through his Gmail account, deleting old messages, replying to neglected ones: congratulating a high school friend he'd been out of touch with on her birth announcement; writing a few lines to an acquaintance from college who'd relocated to Amsterdam.

At last it was five minutes before the meeting. He stood for the first time since arriving more than three hours earlier—buttoned his jacket, adjusted his hair in the uncertain reflection of himself in the glass of his framed law school diploma (Columbia, '05), left his office, and walked down the hall toward Doug Chen's door. He began to feel unexpectedly nervous as he went—ominously so—and he wondered if he should have spent the preceding hour reviewing the particulars of his case load. But, then, what particular was he not intimately familiar with? Doug Chen might as well ask him how to check email on an iPhone as quiz him on the details of his work, he reassured himself. He reached Doug Chen's office, found the door half open, knocked, and went inside.

The office was suitably large for a partner of this stature, the windows behind the desk displaying a half panorama of Midtown: views south toward the Chrysler Building and the more anonymous high-rises surrounding it. The long sill was bare except for a carved and polished stone—slate-colored, a quarter inch thick, about the size and shape of a magazine subscription card, held in a red wooden base. A seven-foot Mondrian was the only adornment hung on the walls. The desk was similarly bare except for a keyboard and a tabular computer monitor; absent were the broken-spined law books or bursting manila folders or rubber-banded sheaves of paper or even perfunctory family photos that occupied the desk of every other Cunningham Wolf lawyer, including Jonah. Doug Chen himself sat typing noiselessly on the keyboard.

“Please have a seat,” Doug Chen said as Jonah came in. When Jonah did, Doug Chen neatly folded his smooth and hairless hands in front of him. His brown bespectacled eyes were, as was typical for him, undiluted in their calm—eerily so, all the associates said. He looked out at everything before him with the same unvarying, unemotive scrutiny. “I understand the Ardis settlement has just been finalized?” he asked.

He seemed to have trained himself to speak at the minimum number of decibels to be comfortably heard across a desk. “That's right, Doug,” Jonah answered, trying to duplicate this volume.

“Ryan Parr was pleased with your work.”

“I've learned a lot from Ryan.”

“In general, it would seem you've demonstrated impressive proficiency in the applications of patent law.”

It was such an oddly bland comment, spoken with so little inflection, that for a moment Jonah wondered if he was being sarcastic. But sarcasm was not a tone Doug Chen likely found much use for. “Thank you for saying that, that's good to hear,” he answered.

Doug Chen made an ambiguous gesture: lifted one of his hands from the other, lowered it again. He then asked, “You're aware that we represent BBEC?”

Jonah was. And, to his mild embarrassment, his stomach made a little pirouette at the recitation of these letters. BBEC was the largest pharmaceutical company in the United States, and one of Cunningham Wolf's largest and oldest clients. Precisely what Cunningham Wolf did for BBEC was something of a mystery, at least on the associate level. Special nondisclosure agreements and a quasi-cultlike silence accompanied any BBEC case work. There was apparently a personal connection between Hank Evans, the head of the firm, and the current CEO of BBEC—classmates at Sloan once upon a time, or something like that—and the assumption was that Cunningham Wolf handled only BBEC's most sensitive cases: the class-action suits over birth defects or gender discrimination, the animal-cruelty suits, EU accusations of market collusion, and so forth. What was more immediately relevant for Jonah, though, was that associates who worked on BBEC were, as his fellow associates variously put it, made guys, they were
mishpucha
, they were anointed, they had gotten the nod. There were a lot of metaphors that got tossed around, but, concretely, associates who worked on BBEC cases were made partners within two or three years at the most. These thoughts were enough to distract Jonah from answering, so it was perhaps half a beat too late—and a bit too energetically in the context of a conversation with Doug Chen—that he said, “I'm aware of that, yes.”

“We are currently representing BBEC in a dispute with Dyomax, a biotechnology company based in Cambridge.”

“Okay,” said Jonah.

“In 2006, Dyomax brought a suit alleging that they are the holders of the patent to a molecule that is the basis for BBEC's drug Lumine. Relatively amicable discussions over the last four years have not resulted in a settlement. We now feel trial represents the best course toward achieving a favorable outcome for our clients.”

Jonah nodded. “How large a company is Dyomax?”

Doug Chen lifted and lowered one hand again. “Suffice it to say, the molecule in dispute is currently their chief asset.”

“I see,” said Jonah, and he did see—saw, or imagined he saw, that this sketch of the case had been a form of a test: as to whether he could understand the meaning embedded in a few brief sentences. Dyomax was a small company; BBEC was a giant company. A settlement hadn't been reached after four years because settlement was never the plan. Cunningham Wolf was—to use more hallway billingsgate—bleeding the goat: deploying a floor's worth of attorneys to ensure that the case dragged on with the speed and apparent progress of a World War I trench battle, all the time (and not incidentally) costing Dyomax and BBEC more and more in legal fees. The difference was that BBEC could afford it. The fact that they were going to trial meant they believed Dyomax was now on the cusp of going under. The point when the opposition could least afford a trial: that was the time to walk into court. Jonah had to admire, if not the elegance, the passionlessness and proficiency of it all. They were using the law not so much to adjudicate the dispute as to choke the adversarial party to death. “We'll go to trial soon, then?” Jonah asked.

“Based on reasonable assumption, the case will be tried next month,” Doug Chen answered. He turned to his computer monitor, typed something for a moment—and Jonah noticed there was a waxiness to Doug Chen's face, a sort of even gloss to his forehead and cheeks and chin, to the skin of his throat above his bright white collar. He returned his impassive gaze to Jonah. “I would like your assistance on this case,” he resumed. “You should anticipate working much of the remainder of the year from our offices in Boston. Aja Puvvada and I have already discussed this.”

Jonah had the self-control to nod with equanimity. “I'm eager to get started,” he said.

“Confidentiality in this matter will be of the utmost importance.”

“Of course.”

“No documents pertaining to this case can ever leave our offices. No documents should ever be photocopied or otherwise reproduced. To that end, sensitive documents have been uniquely watermarked, such that copies that are made can, if necessary, be traced back to the original document. Further, please keep digital correspondence related to this matter to an absolute minimum.”

Fuck, Jonah thought. They actually stole it.

“Also, you will be asked to sign additional NDAs, beyond whatever NDAs you may have already signed.”

“That all sounds reasonable to me,” Jonah said. But really, Doug Chen could have asked him to draw a pentagram in his own blood on BBEC letterhead, and he would have said it sounded reasonable.

Doug Chen looked at him, blinked metronomically for several seconds. “I would like to add a more personal note.” Jonah could only assume he was going to make some comment about the strip clubs in Boston—this affinity being the only trace of personality Doug Chen was known to have—and he tried to stiffen his poker face against a discussion of tipping in champagne rooms. But Doug Chen said, “I am an adherent to the principle of perfection. Associates of your generation seem taken with the deleterious notion that their duties extend no further than the execution of ‘their best.' Logically, however, one's best is only good enough up to the point at which it is not good enough. Perfection, on the other hand, is the demand and offer not of one's best, but rather of the objective best.

“Further,” he went on, “it is my strong belief that the practice of the law itself is predicated on the principle of perfection. To wit, the law is followed only to the extent that it is interpreted and executed accurately. All else is a distortion of the law and its intent. Hence, we as lawyers are doing our job correctly only if we do it perfectly. And if in achieving perfection we do not achieve a favorable resolution for our clients, I am willing to abide that outcome. We can be perfect, even where the facts may not be.”

Jonah found it hard to take this seriously—in the same way he found it hard to take seriously the fanatics who wandered around Times Square on New Year's, screaming about the End of Days. It was not that he didn't think Doug Chen meant what he said; it was just incredible to Jonah that anyone could mean it. He doubted anyone else he had ever met could have given this little speech without introducing at least the barest trace of irony. He only wished Philip Orengo could have been there to hear it, too. It was clear, though: Doug Chen believed in perfection. And this actually helped explain for Jonah the obsession with strippers. There was, after all, a tidiness to the transactional nature of the encounters in a strip club: They smoothed away all the ambiguities, all the mystery and bodily unpredictability associated with sex. This really might appeal to a mind so resistant to the idea of error and imprecision.

“Well, I'll be honest with you, Doug,” Jonah said in his “I'm being frank” voice, which he'd perfected while speaking in his law school classes and which had served him well in his career ever since. “I understand the opportunity that working on a BBEC case represents, and what that client means to our firm. If perfection is what you want, perfection is what you'll get.” But as he said this, for the first time he felt a twinge of anxiety over this new assignment. After all, hadn't he just promised to do something that was, by definition, impossible?

Doug Chen repeated his gesture of lifting a single hand. “I have no reason to believe you will not be an asset in the successful execution of this case.”

It was not exactly a pat on the back, but Jonah tried to take it as a vote of confidence. “Thank you, Doug.”

“The files will be delivered to your office this afternoon. Review everything. We'll speak again Monday morning.”

“That's fine.” Jonah stood up and they shook hands. Doug Chen's hand was cool, and, like his face, somehow surfaceless—as if there were no folds or creases in his palm. He resumed typing, and Jonah walked out the door, leaving it half open, as he had found it.

He went halfway down the hall, then couldn't suppress a muted fist pump. “BBEC,” he said under his breath. “Fuck yes.”

*   *   *

Walking down the hall from Doug Chen's office would form the peak of the sense of satisfaction with which Jonah had begun the day. By the time he had stood waiting for more than half an hour on the paved plaza outside Zoey's building, it had all but vanished. There was no shade anywhere on the plaza—if anything, its brick seemed to recirculate the blasting midday heat back up from below. He had already removed his jacket, loosened his tie, unbuttoned the button at his throat, was now engaged in the self-defeating activity of concentrating as hard as he could on not sweating. But despite (or because of) these measures, he could feel a pool of moisture forming at his lower back, on his torso beneath his chest; he had to continually wipe perspiration from his face with the back of his right hand, in which he held his phone.

In the heat, it was becoming wearying even to look for Zoey: to follow with his eyes any female who appeared from the elevators at the back of the glass-fronted lobby and walked out the revolving door at the mouth of the building. He found that the more people he stared at, the more the boundary between Zoey and not-Zoey seemed to smudge—as if he were trying to trick himself as to whom he was seeing in order to effect an immediate departure to anywhere thirty degrees cooler. At one point he went so far as to raise a hand in greeting to someone who turned out to be an Indian woman thirty years Zoey's senior, having momentarily convinced himself she might have gotten a new haircut and a spray tan since he'd last seen her.