by Ron Liebman
“My office. Three p.m. today. Strongly suggest you be there.”
• • •
The weather was just as out-of-season warm in Wallingford, Connecticut, as it was in New York.
Peter and his wife, Patricia, sat together in the small room provided for families at Wallingford’s Gaylord Hospital, the one Josh had been rushed to after the accident and to where they had sped from Washington, D.C., after Peter had gotten the call.
The doctor had just left. The situation was not good.
A freak accident. Those were the headmaster’s words when he’d called Peter at his law office. Josh had fallen through the window of an upper-floor dormitory at his boarding school.
Choate’s campus was the picture-perfect setting for most anyone’s notion of an elite boarding school. A patrician mini-world of gentle rolling hills and dynamically understated buildings, it was first among a handful of New England academies prepping the sons and daughters of affluent and noteworthy families (plus just enough minority scholarshippers for cover) for the Ivy League majors. The boys’ dormitory room was located in Hill House. Administrative offices were on the lower floors, dorm rooms on the floors above.
The boys were only horsing around good-naturedly, physically energetic, as young boys so often are. Peter’s son just lost his footing as he and one of his floormates were locked in their approximation of a wrestler’s grip.
A slight push backward, a slip on the polished wood floor. The kids were in underwear and socks. And out the window he went. No screams, just a free fall, the other kids momentarily stunned by the uncanny silence. No one in the lower-floor offices saw anything. But they heard the thump when Josh landed. They, too, later thought back on that eerie silence.
He had survived the fall, though he broke his neck. The doctor had told Peter and Patricia their son would most certainly live. But would he be paralyzed for life?
“Possibly, though hopefully not,” the doctor had said.
Paralysis from a broken neck was not always permanent, he explained. And preliminary tests indicated that Josh’s spinal cord, while badly bruised, had not been severed. That was a good sign. Time was needed, and recovery would be slow. In his experience, the doctor told Peter and Patricia, patients often regained some motor and mobility skills. Time would tell, he repeated, as he left them for his next scheduled surgery.
• • •
Moments after Peter had gotten off the phone with Josh’s headmaster and raced home to collect his wife for the drive up to Connecticut, the New York Law Journal reporter he had invited to meet with him that day got off the elevator and entered the lobby of Peter’s law firm’s reception area.
“Julia Grossman to see Peter Moss,” she told the attractive and smartly dressed receptionist.
The receptionist provided the warm and welcoming smile she’d been instructed to deliver to all guests. If she took in this young reporter’s disheveled appearance, lumpy body, and bad hair day, she hid it well. Instead, still beaming, she called down to Peter’s office. And then, after a brief exchange with Peter’s secretary:
“I’m so sorry, Miss Grossman,” the receptionist told her, “but it seems that Mr. Moss has left for the day.”
“No, that can’t be right,” said Ms. Grossman, instantly annoyed. “He invited me down from New York. We have a scheduled meeting.” And then, with a quick glance at her oversize man’s wristwatch, “In fact, it’s to begin right now. So call again,” she instructed the receptionist.
This young journalist was primed for anger at the least provocation. The New York Law Journal was the only job offer she’d gotten after graduate school. She had wanted better than that. She was better than that. She wanted the New York Times. And she was determined to write enough provocative stories to get their attention.
The receptionist did as she was told.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she told Grossman once again. “But Mr. Moss has left for the day.”
With that, the reporter turned on her heel and marched herself out of the firm’s lobby.
Peter had indeed offered to meet with her, promising an exclusive story, so long as she didn’t attribute it to him.
Julia Grossman had taped the call. Here’s the salient part:
Grossman: But you’re not denying that those people working at the Indian plant were injured, many of them fatally?
Moss: That’s not the point, Julia. Bribing judges, falsifying evidence, and then using a court judgment to award a king’s ransom to some greedy and corrupt lawyers. That’s the point.
Grossman: And your proof?
Moss: Come down to D.C. and I’ll prove it. Like I said, so long as you agree to keep my name out of it, I’ll show you bank documents generating large amounts of cash. I’ll show you everything.
Then, a little further on in the call:
Grossman: Say, listen, I don’t have enough to write about this yet. But what have you heard about Dunn & Sullivan going public? That would be a first for an American law firm, wouldn’t it?
Moss: Going what?
Grossman: Going public. An IPO? What have you heard?
On the tape there is a long period of silence. This was clearly the first that Peter Moss had learned about Carl Smith’s plans. He was stunned. He needed to think this through.
Sands were shifting.
So when Peter finally spoke up, it was only to get off the call.
Moss: Why don’t you come down here tomorrow around eleven? We can talk some more. I promise I’ll show you what I’ve got. Answer all your questions.
Grossman: Okay. See you then.
And the call ends.
In a cab to Reagan National Airport and the Delta shuttle back to Manhattan, the reporter, iPad on her lap, began tapping out the story she was going to e-mail to her editor immediately after landing at La Guardia.
As far as she was concerned, there was only one explanation for Moss’s behavior. A change of heart. Cold feet. It had happened before. This wasn’t the first time some source had blown her off. In fact, it was happening all too frequently these days. She was determined to show Moss (and hopefully the New York Times, if they ever started paying attention to her work) that there was a price to be paid for dissing this determined reporter.
She was going to teach Peter Moss not to fuck with the power of the pen. Julia Grossman pressed the RETURN tab on her virtual keyboard and began a new paragraph to broaden the scope of her story. Now she would have two targets.
Dunn & Sullivan.
And Peter Moss.
34.
Same day, 3:00 p.m.
Iván Escobar pointed to one of the low-slung easy chairs across from the nine-foot sofa where he was perched as his secretary ushered Carl into his office.
“Take a seat,” he ordered Carl.
Iván’s office was even more elaborate than Carl’s, though not in the antique-mausoleum style Carl favored. Here everything was sleek, angled, and glossy. His front-door-size desk, set aslant at the room’s other end, was all glass and steel, with neither a pen nor a sheet of paper anywhere in sight. A Hollywood studio head would kill for this office.
“Beatrice,” Iván said to his secretary as she stood awaiting orders. She, too, was that fictive studio head’s “casting couch” notion of an assistant: tall, flowing blond hair, copiously busted and stiletto-heeled, with legs up to her ears. She wore a navy-blue, thigh-high sheath that looked as if it had been meticulously painted onto her torso. “Please bring the gentleman something.” Then, to Carl, “Coffee, tea?”
Carl shook his head. He didn’t want coffee from this son of a bitch. What he wanted was to put his hands around the bastard’s neck and slowly squeeze the life out of him.
“No?” Iván said, shrugging an Up to you. Then, to Beatrice, “Thank you, dear. That’ll be all.”
Iván took the time to watch his
secretary’s sultry exit. Once the door closed, he threw a mischievous wink in Carl’s direction, purposefully ignoring Carl’s scowl.
“So,” Iván continued, as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
A fat beam of sunlight released from a covering cloud slowly bled its way across Iván’s massive fiftieth-floor office, passing first over him and then Carl before once again disappearing behind a cloud. Iván waited as Carl sulked. I could just picture these two overdressed dandies in this Manhattan face-off. Eyeball to eyeball. High noon in New York City.
Then.
“Has my wife seen the photos?”
Iván nodded. “And the video, too. Didn’t send that to you,” he said, adding, “Want to watch it with me?”
Carl ignored that.
“Let me have the paper,” he told the divorce lawyer.
Iván reached over to the glass side table by his elbow and picked up a copy of his list of demands. It was identical to the one Carl had ripped to pieces at their earlier meeting in Dunn & Sullivan’s conference room.
He leaned forward, placed it on the low coffee table (also glass, of course), and once again slid it Carl’s way.
“You know the drill, Carl,” he said. “No changes. No deletions. Sign where it says ‘Agreed.’”
Carl picked up the document. He reached inside his suit-jacket pocket and retrieved his reading glasses. He spent precious little time reading, then took a fat Montblanc pen from his jacket, laid the paper back on the glass table, and scribbled his signature.
“I’ll have a more comprehensive divorce and settlement document prepared in due course,” Iván told him.
Without another word Carl rose from his chair and walked out of the office.
By the time he’d made it down the elevator to the building’s cavernous lobby, he was in an absolute rage. No way was this divorce lawyer ever going to let up on him. This was far from over. Carl could see that. He stood at the building’s entrance deep in thought as crowds of New Yorkers rushed by.
Keep in mind Carl’s fist was still holding on for dear life to that coconut.
The way to stop this wasn’t with that asshole upstairs. No, that was a dead end. It was with that stupid alcoholic bitch of a wife. Her.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, Carl silently decided. He knew what he had to do.
But like they say, be careful what you wish for.
35.
Things not to say to your girlfriend:
Why is it so hard for you to understand? Or: You call that helping?
And yes, I said them. Am I sorry?
Oh, yeah.
So we were at dinner. Diane and me. That night we had made the pilgrimage to fashionable Williamsburg and were seated at one of those newish pop-up-style restaurants dotting this ultra-hip enclave’s streets where postadolescent chefs gather a daily assortment of disparate ingredients and then hurl them into saucepans straddling leaping burner flames and perform culinary alchemy.
Despite my black mood, I couldn’t believe the savory jolt of what I was eating. How did that scrawny kid-lady (ninety pounds soaking wet) in the restaurant’s open kitchen, tattooed and pierced like some sideshow freak, do that? Unbelievable. On one side of my plate: prunes, peppers, and Kobe beef. On the other: turnips, essence of artesian beer, curded water-buffalo cheese, peppercorn-suffused bison-bacon bits.
Diane was toying with her vegetables (one or two I’d never even heard of), shifting her dinner from one side of the plate to the other as I droned on. I gulped down some more wine and then helped myself to the bottle resting between us. Imbibing in moderation? Fuck it. Instead I drained the last drop and, without asking if we should get another, raised and jiggled the empty at the guy who was serving us. He nodded okay from across the room but gave me that look I’m pretty sure waiters reserve for alcoholics.
In the last several days, I had been babbling nonstop.
When I look back, I see how utterly tone-deaf my whining had become. As I said, I was both frightened and angry. And feeling sorry for myself.
And, I was pushing Diane to the limit.
“I mean, give me a fucking break,” I was telling her (again). “Why does all this have to be on me?”
Diane placed (slammed?) her fork on the table. She let out enough air to pump up a sagging tire. Shook her head.
“For crying out loud, Carney. Get a grip. If it’s too much for you? Leave. Your law firm can easily find some other partner for the case. Go someplace else. No case is worth what you’re putting yourself through. Get another job.”
“You call that helping?” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words like oozings from a neglected wound. Shaking my head in mock agreement. “Oh, that’s really helpful. Just throw my hands up in defeat and walk away. Then go and take some low-paying, low-stress law job. Like what? Become a prosecutor?”
Diane stared at me across the table as I reached for the new wine bottle.
“You think my job’s so much less than yours? That I’m not as committed as you?”
I shouldn’t have said what I’d said. I didn’t even believe it. Remember, I’d seen Diane in court. She was good. Really good. And, like all busy, overworked, and underpaid prosecutors, she had an overflowing caseload. So did I apologize?
No. I drank instead.
And that’s when I went for the Why is this so hard for you to understand? Right there.
Diane didn’t respond. Well, not at first. She looked at me and kept looking. You know, I think I actually saw it in her eyes, could read her thoughts as precisely as if she’d written them in ink on the face of her linen napkin, which she was tossing atop her dinner plate. That’s it, Carney. That’s it.
“Good luck with your case,” she said as she got up and walked out of the restaurant.
36.
This is embarrassing.
I wish I could portray myself throughout this story as some kind of lawyer action hero. But I faltered. I just did. To this day I’m uncertain exactly what got me to pull out of the deep end of that cesspool of self-pity into which I had so stupidly cannonballed. But I did. And I was proud of that. No matter what happened afterward.
So, back on dry land, first things first: I called Diane’s cell about a million times before she picked up. She said we needed a break. When a woman says that to a guy, “break” is spelled O-V-E-R.
I didn’t push it. Told her I understood. Would she take my calls? Could we at least keep an open line?
“Carney,” Diane said. (I heard the sigh.) “Look, we can always be friends. . . .”
When a woman says that . . . well, you know.
And that’s how we left things.
But was Diane right? If I couldn’t stand the heat, did I need to get out of the kitchen?
No.
There was no foolproof way out for me. I wasn’t going anywhere. There were now two cases pending against me, one in federal court and the other before the bar. Damaging accusations had been leveled. People would remember the charges. Without a clear on-the-merits vindication, those charges would dog me throughout my career. I needed to see things through, stay in the game.
Heat or no heat, there I was. I just needed to be smarter. I needed to learn how to keep my head down when necessary and up when needed. I was in for the duration. At least that way I had a fighting chance. And there was this large class of Indian plaintiffs. Not one of them knew my name. But they were counting on me.
The New York Law Journal reporter who Peter Moss had stood up added in her two cents with an article about the GRE litigation and how a bunch of big-firm lawyers, on both sides, were papering the case to death and suing one another while no one seemed to care about the plant workers who’d been grievously hurt, and so on. Her article disclosed the disbarment proceeding pending against me that was s
upposed to be strictly confidential. No one ever discovered the source for that leak.
Meanwhile the slump that the country’s top law firms were struggling through as their revenue stream kept dropping generated even more stories about the death of Big Law. Hallway gossip buzzed. A good deal of it fueled by worries that if the ships of the Big Law armada were taking on water, everyone on board was going down with them. It was an overreaction, but there was a kernel of truth there as well.
A sizable number of those law firms were laying off lawyers and staff, cutting hourly rates in a desperate attempt to keep clients, and merging with other law firms in the futile hope that two insolvent law firms combined would miraculously become one solvent law firm.
Big Law was indeed in trouble, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. So long as there was a corporate world and a Wall Street dangling big bucks, there would be top-tier, high-priced legal talent available. But there was clearly trouble brewing. Let’s call it a Big Law “market correction.”
And all the while Carl was busy cooking Dunn & Sullivan’s books.
Here’s a small slice of some more transcribed testimony. The person deposed was Dunn & Sullivan’s chief financial officer. I say “was” because by the time of the deposition he had lost his job and had been unable to find another. I recently rewatched the video taken at the deposition. This CFO, some weasel in a suit jacket the same pale gray as his complexion, keeps mopping his brow with a paper towel handed him by his lawyer.
Deposing Lawyer: So let me get this straight. You changed accounting entries. Turned some law-firm liabilities into assets, and simply wrote off others. All to make the firm look financially healthy when it really wasn’t. You did all that so that the bank’s underwriters would be fooled into believing that a pre-IPO Dunn & Sullivan was not only solvent but flush with money in the bank?
CFO: (mopping his forehead and then studying the wet and limp towel as though it might contain some magic disappearing potion) I respectfully refuse to answer based on my Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.