The Speed of Life

by James Victor Jordan

  When Georges asked to be excused to take Ryan’s call, his new associate, Jake Marley, wearing a single earring and a gray suit, quipped, “It’s good to know that an annual high-six-figure book of business trumps firm business.”

  Patricia London, a junior partner, the faintest hint of a blue stripe in her bleached-blonde hair, said, “Rainmaking is firm business.”

  Smiling, Georges said, “A boyhood friendship trumps business. Pat, why don’t you lead the team through the Qatar construction contracts.”

  Patricia said, “You have time for friendship? I wish I had time for my wife.”

  When Georges returned to the room, Patricia said, “So boss, you going to tell us about a new matter that will further separate us from our families?”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Georges said. “It’s just a racquetball date. Tomorrow. Noon.”

  Turning from a chart detailing the I.R.S regulations contributing to their client’s challenges, Patricia said, “That’s when we’re having the initial IMF and Qatar Bank negotiations.”

  “Take Jake,” Georges said to Patricia.

  Patricia was visibly flustered, but Jake deadpanned, “Good strategy. We soften them up, then you come in for the kill.”

  Georges replied, “I admire your instincts. But more precisely, if I’m not there it will be easier to play our cards closer to our vests. They won’t be certain about what we really want, and so in trying to coax that from us, they may reveal more of their hand than they otherwise would.”

  “What do we want?” Jake said.

  “Exactly,” said Georges.

  The next day after racquetball, during lunch in the dining room of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, its white and green marble floors gleaming, Ryan, who’d easily won the first two games and had eked out a victory in the hard-fought third game, said, “You lose a step, Old Pal, or are you pandering?”

  Georges accepted a refill of his white bone China coffee cup and said, “I only pander to major clients.”

  Then Ryan outlined his plan to form First Global Enterprises, which would then acquire First American Bank and rename it First Global Bank. Enterprises would then acquire Orion Trading, Ryan’s oil-and-gas ventures, and his Real Estate Investment Trusts all to be operated as separate subsidiaries.

  “We’ll grow the bank to enhance our access to global financial markets,” he said.

  “You’re a visionary,” Georges said.

  “If it works,” Ryan said, “in a year, assuming favorable market conditions, we’ll take FGE public.”

  Georges said, “Julian Barnes in our DC office would be an excellent choice to lead the regulatory-compliance team.”

  “I like Jules,” Ryan said. “But I’ll want him to report to you and I’ll want your team to handle the bank acquisition, SEC compliance, and if this project works out, to handle the FGE IPO.”

  The men turned their attention to their salads; a waiter refilled their gold-rimmed water glasses.

  Ryan said, “I plan to groom Al Rosen to be president of the bank.”

  Georges coughed.

  “You okay?” Ryan said, pushing away his salad aside.

  Georges said, “You wouldn’t be telling me this unless you wanted my opinion, which is that if Al Rosen is the sharpest arrow in your quiver, then maybe you should hold off on the bank acquisition until you can recruit actual talent.”

  Ryan smiled. With a little wave of his hand, he said, “Technocrats are a dime a dozen. With dad gone, with Antigone . . .” and his voice trailed off. He was referring to his younger sister, from whom he’d been estranged since their father had passed three years before.

  Refocusing, Ryan continued, “. . . gone too— what I’ll get with Al as president of the bank is loyalty and discretion and no one supervising him who would sabotage me. I’ll need someone on the ground, in the trenches reporting to me. He does have street smarts, and he’s ethical—”

  “That’s what you have outside auditors for,” Georges said.

  “I don’t trust those clowns. Too many of them can be bought and sold. And in the past few years, their mistakes have cost me millions,” Ryan said. “I trust Al. On the football field, he always had my back.”

  “Did Al even graduate from high school?” Georges said.

  “We’ll have someone in your Miami office meet with him regularly, provide him continuing education, so he’ll know what to look out for.”

  Georges said, “You pay me for advice, not consent, but I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re adopting Al Rosen as one of your rescue-a-good-guy-down-on-his-luck projects.”

  “You do know me,” Ryan said. “Following my suggestion, First American promoted him to V.P. of International Business Development. I hear that the clients like him.”

  He finally understood. Al Rosen hadn’t advanced on merit, he’d advanced on Ryan Hunter’s misguided sense of loyalty and charity.

  In the second conversation, sixteen years later, Ryan was devastated. Though they spoke on the phone, the grief in Ryan’s voice was unmistakable.

  “I don’t know which treachery is worse,” he said, “Carolyn’s menopause-induced desertion of the family or Al stabbing me in the back. How could he? Did he think he wasn’t adequately paid? And he makes me a suspect. The U.S. Attorney in Miami has served me and each of my businesses with subpoenas. They want every scrap of paper I’ve ever seen, every electronic communication— Let me read this: From the beginning of time until the present.”

  “I’ll call Hank Smythe-Russell, have him file motions to quash the subpoenas or negotiate a reasonable scope of the demand,” Georges said.

  “I will not,” Ryan said, “engage counsel to represent me in a criminal investigation. I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve got nothing to hide. If nothing else, divorce makes your life an open book financially. But I’ll tell you Georges, it hurts, deeply hurts to discover you’ve been a friend of devils: your spouse, your good friend from childhood.”

  Georges had taken a red-eye to Miami that night and had met with Ryan the next day, pleading, cajoling, doing all he could to persuade Ryan to hire criminal counsel. It wasn’t until Georges threatened to bring Ryan’s sister, Antigone, into their discussion that Ryan capitulated, and Hank Smythe-Russell unleashed a battalion of top-notch seasoned criminal defense lawyers on the U.S. Attorney’s office.

  And Hailey had been blind to it all? Blind to the inevitable grief that would befall her as it had Ryan? Maybe she was an innocent spouse. But at her core, most likely, she just didn’t care about the source of her wealth, about the people she’d hurt. Either way, he could never love such a woman. Melvin Levine had done him a great service those many decades before when he’d ripped the winds from his youthful sails, the breath from his solar plexus, his first love from his life.

  Aurora stops a few feet from Hailey’s room, removes her engagement ring and slips it into her clutch. The stone is a round, deep-cut, two-carat solitaire, a near-flawless diamond, exquisitely set on a white-gold band. As soon as she saw it, she knew it was right.

  Georges puts his arms around Aurora, pulls her close and kisses her. But she pushes him away. “You’ll mess up my makeup,” she says, taking a compact and lipstick from her purse.

  “You’re breaking up with me?” he says.

  She looks at him lovingly, the rancor vanished once more from her face. “I told you, Georges Bohem. You’re not getting out of this alive.”

  “So, what is it?”

  She doesn’t answer him.

  “You haven’t told Hailey about us,” he says, the tone of his voice lifting toward the end of the sentence as if inquiring. It’s a question and a statement of wonder.

  Turning her head slightly to the right and then the left, Aurora presses her lips together, inspecting the result of her lipstick repair.

  “She is obviously over me,” he says.

  “Oh, she is,” Aurora says. “I’m just not sure she’s over me.”

  The tension in his shoul
ders eases. “That’s a good one,” he says.

  Four weeks earlier, Georges ran into Estella in the attorney lounge in the downtown Miami federal courthouse on Fourth Avenue, a magnificent mirrored-glass high-rise, the curved structure a letter “S” standing on its side. Estella was talking to a slender lawyer with shaggy, thinning hair and an earring, wearing a red-and-black checkered shirt with buttoned collars, a gray sport coat, brown slacks, and a too-thin tie. Georges, wearing a navy-blue suit that fit as if he’d been born in it, a white shirt, and a red power tie, made a little bowing gesture to Estella and extended his hand to the other lawyer.

  “Georges Bohem,” he said.

  “Theo Langford,” the man said, shaking hands with Georges.

  Georges said, “Enjoying Miami?”

  “To be honest with you, Mr. Bohem—”

  “Georges, please call me Georges,” Georges said.

  “To be honest with you, Mr. Bohem, I’m so fucking busy, working to protect you, to protect us all from critical terrorist threats, the scourge of drug cartels and gun smugglers that I’m not happy being dragged down here for a hearing on these bullshit motions.”

  “You could have argued telephonically,” Georges said. “I wouldn’t have objected.”

  “Bud,” Estella said, “we have a tradition of civility among counsel.”

  “Listen young lady,” Langford said, turning on Estella, “I would have waived oral argument on these piece-of-shit motions. But your boss, the god damn United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who has supposedly recused your entire office from this case, calls my boss and says I have to be here.” Langford stormed off.

  “Young lady?” Estella said.

  Georges said, “What’s he like when he forgets to takes his meds?”

  “Georges,” Estella said, enunciating each syllable, peering intently into his eyes, “Why the hell haven’t you returned my calls. Calls. That’s plural.”

  “Mea culpa,” Georges said. “I haven’t figured out what to say, exactly. But something’s—”

  “Where’s Andrew?” Estella said, clenching her jaw, her fists.

  “Billie Bower—” Georges said.

  “Billie Bower,” Estella said, tears welling. “I helped raise that boy. How could he? How could he have done that to me?”

  “You don’t know that Billie knew that van Keet was going to, to—”

  “Rape me?” Estella said.

  “There was no testimony, no evidence that Billie knew what van Keet intended to do. But the LSD,” Georges said. “It belonged to Billie Bower, not to Andrew.”

  “Did Andrew tell you that?”

  “I can’t tell you what Andrew told me. But I can tell you what you must know. Andrew would never use or sell.”

  “But he was charged,” Estella said, “with possessing the LSD. He pled guilty.”

  “If it was LSD.”

  Estella looked at Georges with surprise.

  “No one representing Andrew ever had it tested, even bothered to look at the tablets. Gnossos tells me the drugs were misplaced. They’re gone from the evidence locker.”

  “Damn,” Estella said. “Why didn’t Gnossos tell me, tell the court?”

  “Gnossos didn’t prosecute the drug case. Andrew’s lawyer at the time told Andrew that if he implicated someone else, he’d also be charged with conspiracy. If Andrew were white, he wouldn’t have been arrested. Have you ever heard of a charge of possession of intent to sell thirty doses of LSD? A peril of being young, male, and black in the south Florida.”

  “You think it’s different in Beverly Hills, in New York City?” Estella said.

  “That’s fair,” Georges said.

  “I don’t know a federal or state prosecutor, and I know all of them in this county, who would judge a criminal defendant by the color of his or her skin,” Estella said, becoming too emotional to say more. A long moment passed.

  “I have cheerful news,” Georges said.

  Regaining her composure, Estella said, “What?”

  “Andrew is applying to law school,” Georges said. “He wants to be a civil rights lawyer.”

  “He tells this to you, but not to me?” Estella glares at Georges. “It’s your fault we’re estranged. Your fault. It’s all your fault.”

  She turns to leave but Georges puts his hand on her elbow and she turns back toward him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Georges said, “He’s not estranged. He followed my advice, did what I told him to do to best protect his legal interests. We talked about how much that hurt you. If he were convicted, it would have hurt you even more. He’s safe, in the Everglades. With your mother. Hank will have the possession conviction set aside. You’ll see him soon.”

  Estella’s consternation is still palpable, but Georges sees something he hasn’t seen before. He sees in Estella a modicum of relaxation.

  “She’s a firecracker, your mother,” Georges said. “She wanted to know what I’d studied as an undergraduate. I told her I’d majored in philosophy—.”

  “Tell me you didn’t do that,” Estella said.

  “. . . So she asks me about Kant’s conclusion that there can be no proof of the existence of God, do I agree that a belief in God is a prerequisite to moral behavior? I had to admit that I was a little rusty on German Idealism.”

  “I’m sure you got an earful,” Estella said.

  “I got more than that,” Georges said. “I got a tutor. She gave me an assignment: read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.”

  “The whole book?” It’s incomprehensible.”

  “That’s what I thought when I was an undergraduate,” Georges said. “Maybe that’s why I went to law school. But this time I’ll have a personal tutor.”

  “I have an unusual family,” Estella said.

  “Don’t we all?” Georges said.

  Estella said, “The Honorable David Paz is never late.” Her fists unclench. “Let’s go.” Then she stepped close to him, slipped her hand between his shirt and his tie. Between her index and middle finger she slid her hand down the tie. Speaking too softly for the other attorneys in the room to hear her, Georges tie still resting between her fingers, still stroking it, she said, “Why do you always look so damn good? And smell so good, too?”

  Georges took his tie from Estella.

  “For a scoundrel of a defense lawyer,” she said, her voice still soft.

  “What is this?” he said jovially. “Aurora Goldin litigation strategy?”

  A young man – red hair, bad teeth, bad suit, bad breath, having a bad hair day, and a bad shaving day as well, who didn’t appear as if he were old enough to shave, let alone have a bar card, walked up to Estella and Georges, moving into their personal space, either oblivious that he was interrupting a private conversation or doing so intentionally.

  “Hi Estella. Want to have lunch?”

  “Fredrick,” she said, “this is Georges Bohem. Now if you’ll—”

  “Really?” Fredrick said, apparently agog. He extended his hand. “So pleased to meet you.”

  Georges ignored the offer of a handshake. He picked up his briefcase, handed Estella hers. “Excuse us Fredericks—” he said.

  “Fredrick, no s,” Fredrick said.

  Georges took Estella’s elbow and, as if they were seasoned dance partners, led her in a 180- degree turn toward the exit to the lounge.

  Fredrick called after them, “Estella? Lunch?”

  Walking toward the elevator, Georges said, “Estella, you’re a knockout.” He scratched his head. “Sorry, poor choice of words.”

  She laughed.

  “I have few firm rules,” he said. “But this one is ironclad. I never become involved with anyone I work with even if we’re on the same side of the table.”

  The conversation stopped while they rode the elevator and resumed when they stepped off. It was ten after nine.

  “I’m not sure we’re on the opposite side of anything,” Estella said.

  Geo
rges stopped walking. “That’s very good news,” he said. “May I tell Hank that you’re dropping the charges against Ismael Erasmus?”

  “Is Ismael ready to talk?” she said. “Give Aurora the information she wants about Ryan Hunter?”

  “Why does Aurora have a bee in her bonnet about Ryan? There isn’t a document related to him that she doesn’t have and there isn’t a person he knows she hasn’t interviewed and offered immunity to. You’re not on a cold trail because there never was a trail.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Estella said.

  “No,” he said. “But I am on the rebound.”

  “That’s a plus,” Estella said.

  “I’m old enough to be your father.”

  “Another admirable virtue,” Estella said.

  She hurried up the hallway and in to the courtroom.

  When Georges entered a minute or two later, Estella was already at the counsel table standing beside Langford on the plaintiff’s side. Aurora stood at the counsel table on the defendant’s side.

  The judge was speaking. “The motion of Ms. Verus, representing the United States Attorney, to have Mr. Langford admitted pro haec vice is granted. Now you were saying, Mr. Langford? Oh, yes. Your motion to have the pending motions denied because Mr. Bohem is late is denied. Get a reservation on another flight back to D.C. This matter is on second call.”

  Aurora said, “Your Honor?”

  “Yes, Ms. Goldin? Ah, I see your lawyer. Mr. Bohem are you ready?”

  “Yes, your honor,” Georges said, walking to the counsel table and standing next to Aurora.

  The clerk said, “In the matter The United States of America vs. Joshua Alfred Rosen, the motion of Aurora Goldin as guardian ad litem for Jacob Arnold Rosen to intervene in and to dismiss this action or in the alternative to dissolve the asset-seizure order and cross motions will now be heard.”

  After the formality of the attorneys stating their appearances, Langford said, “Your honor, foremost among the reasons why this motion is frivolous is this conflict of interest, Ms. Goldin is an assistant United States Attorney—”