Big Law

by Ron Liebman

  I looked up.

  “Check out the total amount of damages claimed.”

  I ran my eyes back down the spreadsheet and saw the totaling of all the cases. The amount was in the billions. The firm’s contingent-fee interest in each case was also totaled. An eye-popping number.

  “So,” I said. “The firm is changing its new case-intake policies. Strange for a firm like ours, but still . . .”

  “Keep reading,” Jeremy said, cutting me off in midsentence.

  I did.

  Jeremy had somehow hacked into Carl Smith’s personal files. Attached to the spreadsheet were excerpts from Carl’s electronic diary and an assortment of e-mails, notes, and a draft stock-transfer pledge. The name of the recipient was still blank.

  “What the fuck?” I asked Jeremy. “What did you do?”

  “Paid a late-night visit to Carl’s secretary’s computer terminal. Wasn’t hard. Looked under her desk blotter. There was Smith’s password. Logged in. Easy as pie.”

  Searching a law firm’s database for new cases was one thing. There was nothing technically wrong with that. Hacking into another lawyer’s personal files, let alone the firm chairman’s?

  Everything was wrong with that.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind? There’ll be a record of your entry into Smith’s computer.”

  “Yes, that’s true. If anyone looks for it.”

  Jeremy removed his eyeglasses and started polishing his lenses with his necktie. He looked up. I could see fatigue rings under his eyes. He stared at me with a burning intensity. Something I hadn’t seen before. This was more than some young associate sitting across from me. A lot more.

  “You want to report me, fine,” he added. “But first take a look at what I found.”

  So I did.

  It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. Jeremy clearly had.

  These new mega-contingent-fee cases? The young and inexperienced supervising partners? The hedge-fund financing? Carl the intake source? A clear pattern.

  Were they all illegitimate cases? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But pairing even some of those new cases with Carl’s other actions? There it was.

  His meetings with bankers. His e-mails to them about how flush with money the firm was. His IPO efforts to be the first major law firm to go public, turning Dunn & Sullivan into a potential gold mine for whoever held large blocks of its stock on sale to the investing public. This was too clandestine. Carl was up to something. And what about that draft stock-transfer pledge? What was that all about?

  “So now what?” I asked Jeremy. “Confront Smith?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  He was right. The chances of Carl fessing up to a newly minted partner and his midlevel associate hovered somewhere between zero and none. Okay, then what? Do nothing? That didn’t work either.

  We had seen too much. If Carl was somehow intent on creating a false picture of the firm’s profitability to the bank’s underwriters and it eventually came out, we would be justifiably faulted for not having done something to bring all this to light. It was our duty to come forward with it.

  “So?” Jeremy asked.

  He had figured out our next step.

  “See the rabbi?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I needed to go see Anka Stankowski.

  Now.

  43.

  I was in Anka’s office, laying it all out.

  Had I become the Wile E. Coyote of Big Law as the Road Runner (played alternatively by Peter Moss and Carl Smith) stands at the top of a hill and pushes a huge boulder down on me? I look up at this speeding mass of granite hurtling its way to earth, and me, and then look right into the camera and murmur “Uh-oh.”

  I told Anka everything that Jeremy (without naming him) had found and what I thought it meant. She asked me if I had extracted all this troublesome information myself. I told her no, someone else had done it.

  “Who, Carney? Who hacked into our system? That’s some serious shit, to do that. Who?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “I’m not asking you to tell me, I’m telling you to tell me.”

  Despite my assurances to Jeremy, I was tempted to tell her. I wanted and needed her help, her advice, her guidance. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Anka was a powerful senior partner at Dunn & Sullivan. She was a voice that would be heard. So as Anka sat there looking at me, waiting for me to cough up the name of the hacker, I was thinking maybe I should. I mean, how could I enlist her help and at the same time hold back on her?

  Just as I was about to speak, we both heard this loud noise. A bang. No, more of a sonic crack. Coming from right down the hall. It made us both flinch. We shot to our feet. (Well, someone Anka’s size doesn’t “shoot” to her feet, but she was up out of the chair pretty damn quickly.) We both went into the hall. The sharp smell of a fired gun was in the air. And it appeared to be coming from the corner office a few doors down from Anka’s.

  That was Carl Smith’s office.

  Anka and I and some of the others raced down there. His door was shut. His secretary was standing with her hand on the knob, frozen in place. Anka shoved her aside and opened the door with me right in behind her.

  Carl was seated behind his desk. Immobile. That was the first thing we saw. Then we saw the body.

  Holy shit.

  Richard Miller was lying faceup on the floor in front of Carl’s desk. His arms were outstretched Jesus-like, that massive chest of his completely still. The left side of his face was missing. Gobs of blood and bone fragments were puddling around his open wound. (Behind me I heard someone retch.) That goo seeping out of Miller was thick and sticky-looking and coppery-smelling, and it was saturating Carl’s priceless Persian rug. In Mad Dog’s extended hand was a pistol.

  “Carl? Are you okay?” Anka asked, carefully stepping closer toward him.

  Nothing from him. He just sat there. Anka looked down.

  Carl had wet his pants.

  • • •

  It’s all over Twitter.”

  “I know,” I told Diane. “But the real details aren’t out yet.”

  The evening after Miller’s death, Diane and I were having dinner together. The date had been arranged the previous week. I was the one who had called. We were in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side at Bar Boulud, on Broadway and West Sixty-fourth Street across from Lincoln Center.

  Diane at first didn’t show. I sat at our table in this long, skinny restaurant with its blond wooden decor, wondering and then worrying that she wasn’t going to come. But she did.

  I saw her charge into the restaurant and then wait impatiently in line for the maître d’s attention before spotting me and quickly coming over.

  “Sorry,” she’d said as she hurriedly took the seat opposite mine (no kiss, no hug), “but the judge held counsel over after the jury was excused for the day. Seems he wanted to share his displeasure with both sides for whatever. You know the drill,” she added, shrugging.

  I was so happy to see her. I was just kind of nodding, sure, okay, no problem. She looked great. It was technically spring, but the New York weather was very much summer. Diane was still in her going-to-court outfit, this one noticeably lightweight, though with courtroom-appropriate dark coloring. Her hair was schoolmarm up, and those eyes were lovely as ever. The top few buttons of her white blouse were unfastened, something I was certain she’d taken care of after she left the downtown courthouse to subway it up to the West Side.

  I was nursing a vodka martini. Diane eyeballed it and then caught the waiter’s attention, wordlessly signaling, One of those, too, please. In no time the waiter slid her drink in front of her.

  That was when she told me that Mad Dog’s death was all over Twitter.

  Electronic news has its obvious advantages—you learn everything within seconds of its hap
pening. But only headlines. For real detail you need to wait. You could try cable-TV news, but all they do is talk the headlines to death.

  The police had spent the rest of the day at Dunn & Sullivan taking statements and doing forensics. By the time the medical examiner’s office had bagged Mad Dog’s remains and gurneyed him down the service elevator to street level and the waiting meat wagon, we at the firm at least were able to piece the story together.

  “You want to hear the gory details?” I asked Diane as she sipped her martini.

  “Are you kidding? Of course.”

  So I told her.

  It begins with Miller racing down the hall (past my office, as I’ve said). For the past few weeks, Mad Dog had been exhibiting more of his rage and bombast than usual. Carl had succeeded in isolating Richard to the degree that he had no place to turn. We later learned that he had tried to move to another law firm, but no one would have him. His reputation, I guess, preceded him. And then he snapped.

  He barged his way into Carl’s office, furiously kicking the door shut behind him. He took up a position at the foot of Carl’s desk, enraged. Carl said nothing, waiting him out. Miller glaring, murderous. Carl told the cops the standoff had lasted for a while, neither man speaking.

  Then Carl instructed Miller to go back to his office.

  “My office?” Richard screamed. “My office? For what? To sit there and stare into space? You’ve ruined my practice! My life! And now, you goddamn son of a bitch, it’s time to pay!”

  “Richard—” was as far as Carl got when he saw the gun in Miller’s hand.

  “That’s right,” Miller said as he followed Carl’s eyes down to the gun he was holding. “That’s right, you . . . you. You fucking, you . . .”

  At that point Miller was pretty much beyond words. He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he raised the gun and aimed it dead level at Carl’s head.

  Carl didn’t move, eyeing the gun, as he told the police, convinced that Richard was going to kill him right then and there. (Carl glossed over his urinary mishap, though the cops later joked about the wet spot they saw on this fancy lawyer’s fancy pants.)

  Miller was rabid. Carl told the police that the guy was actually growling.

  And then he pulled the trigger.

  Nothing. A click. Only a click. He fired a second time. Another click. Carl didn’t move a muscle. Miller pulled the trigger a third time. A third click.

  Carl watched Richard, perplexed, raise the pistol off his target, trying to figure what the problem was. Carl told the police he started thinking, did Miller have an empty gun? Had he forgotten to load it?

  Paralyzed by fear as he was, Carl stared straight ahead as Richard studied the gun, now angled up toward himself (Richard was no marksman and most likely hadn’t ever actually fired a gun before.) He must have looked like some kid trying to figure out how to operate a complex new toy. And of course that’s when the gun actually went off, its blast shearing off the left side of Richard Miller’s head.

  The explosion was deafening in the relatively small confines of Carl’s office. Carl watched, temporarily deaf, ears ringing, as Richard’s flesh and bone splattered on the back wall. Miller remained standing, now with only one eye still intact. His eyeglasses had been blown away, but he seemed to be staring at Carl, the expression on his face (Carl told the police) inquisitive. What the hell was that? he seemed to be thinking. Well, Richard Miller probably wasn’t thinking anything. He was dead on his feet (is that where the expression comes from?) and just didn’t know it yet.

  Then Miller let out this massive sigh, sort of a Can you beat that? And then fell backward onto Carl’s Persian carpet in the position Anka and I found him in when she barged into Carl’s office with me right behind her.

  So maybe Richard Miller was Wile E. Coyote.

  By the time I finished the story, Diane and I were midway through our meals (we had ordered somewhere around Miller’s barging into Carl’s office). It felt so good being with her. We ate in silence for a while, each from time to time glancing at the other. My apartment was only a ten-minute walk from here. I was tempted, but I said nothing about our maybe, you know, going over there to raid my freezer for ice cream. Not that I had any.

  And then our meals over, the dishes taken away, dessert and coffee declined, Diane swirling the last bit of wine left in her glass. Studying me.

  God, she was beautiful. I looked back into those green eyes that were swallowing me whole.

  The waiter dropped the check off at our table. It was late, too late for our table to turn over. So I got the impression that he didn’t care if we lingered.

  And that’s what we did. In fact, we were the last patrons to leave the place.

  We sat and talked. About a lot of things. Personal things.

  Including, for once, race.

  I talked about my father’s rancid bigotry. How I’d let it go. Gave him a pass. Telling her, what was the point? No way was I going to change him. But what about me? What was I doing with a black woman? Was that really a nonissue? Or was there some kind of illusory rebellion I was after?

  “You’re a white guy, Carney. From Hell’s Kitchen. Under the circumstances I’d say you’re doing just fine.” Here she paused. Thinking what?

  “Tell me?” I said.

  She finished off the inch of wine remaining in her glass. Then looked at me some more before responding.

  “I keep asking myself, is my attraction to you because you are white? No, I keep thinking. That’s not me,” she said. “But am I kidding myself? Subconsciously stepping up? Do I want into your world and simply won’t own up to it? A white lover? A Big Law life?”

  I had to chuckle. My world? Who in her right mind would want into my world?

  “Careful what you ask for. You’ve seen me at my worst. My advice? Give my world the kind of pass I give my old man.”

  Like I said, we sat there at that table for a good long while. Patching things up. Talking. Really talking.

  I’ve thought about that evening many times. Diane was the one lucky break I’d gotten. We were opposites in many ways. Color being just one of them. She cared for me. And I for her. I knew I needed to do whatever I could to hang on to that. Screw the rest.

  We didn’t hold hands across the table. Nothing lovey-dovey going on. At least overtly. Just us. Being us.

  Then breaking the spell.

  “Sean?” Diane asked. “How’s he doing?”

  I told her about my breakfast with my brother and how he’d looked, what he’d said.

  “I don’t know, Diane,” I said. “I hope he’s okay. That he can come to terms with his addiction. There’s a lot to Sean. If he can catch a break or two for once in his life, I know he can get himself through this.”

  Diane kept looking at me, shaking her head. “I hope he does, Carney,” she said. “I really hope he does.”

  He didn’t.

  44.

  It turned into a twofer day.

  I got both calls very early the next morning, when the guards allow inmates phone privileges. The first call came at 6:00 a.m., the second less than an hour later.

  The first call:

  A very sleepy “Hello” from me after I managed to grab my cell off the floor by my bed after knocking it off the night table while groping for it somewhere between the fourth and fifth rings. Diane rolled over and groaned. (So we wound up at my place that night after all.)

  “Counselor,” the voice said. A voice I couldn’t place but knew I knew. “Time to pay your bill.”

  My response?

  A repeat “Hello?”

  “Wake up, motherfucker. And get your fancy ass down here. I want bail, and I want it now.”

  Oh, shit. Him. The guy from the 112th Street apartment. The Hispanic drug dealer. Since our last meeting, I’d learned his name. Geraldo. Garaldo? Something or other.<
br />
  “Where are you?”

  “Where am I? I’m sitting at the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel sipping a motherfucking piña colada.”

  Still half asleep. “What?”

  Now actually screaming at me. “I’m at the Metropolitan Correctional Center! I go before the judge later today. You owe me, motherfucker. Remember? You don’t step up? All bets are off. You can kiss your junkie brother good-bye.” Then, after apparently being admonished by a guard to keep his voice down. To the guard, “Okay, okay. No problem. Aright?” Then back to me, “You comin’ or what?”

  “I’ll be there soon as I can.”

  “Get here fucking sooner,” he said, no longer screaming because the guard was no doubt keeping a watchful eye on him as he stood by the wall of inmate phones. Then he hung up.

  Just what I needed, I was thinking as I slipped out of bed, hurriedly showered and shaved. I was speed-eating a bowl of Rice Chex and mainlining coffee, Diane in the shower, when the second call came in.

  Here’s that call:

  At first I thought it was him calling back, with that same prison-inmate noise in the background.

  Then, from the other end of the line, “Bro?”

  I could hear a bunch of angry men shouting, hurling insults, just making a general racket. Oh, no, I started thinking. Him, too? On the same day?

  Yup, him too.

  “Sean?”

  “Guess I need some help, bro,” he said above that awful racket. I could picture my brother standing by the bank of phones by the wall (just like my earlier caller), one finger in his ear so he could hear me.

  “Where?”

  “Manhattan Central Booking, 100 Centre Street.”

  Manhattan Correctional Center, where the drug dealer was being held, was for federal prisoners. Manhattan Central Booking was a different jail, one for state prisoners. So at least these two weren’t in the same jail. A blessing? That would be overstating it. Better than horrible? I’ll go with that.