A Matter of Will

by Adam Mitzner

  The one business lesson Will had learned from Wolfe, however, was that kissing up to the boss never hurt. “I wish I’d done that.”

  “Yeah. Well, as I always say, if wishes were Porsches, we’d all have one.”

  Wolfe did say that a lot. Will assumed that Wolfe had heard the Scottish proverb “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” somewhere, changed it so that it wouldn’t be obvious he was plagiarizing, and been passing it off as his own wisdom ever since.

  “Today’s the midpoint,” Wolfe continued. “And I got to say, you’re going to need a goddamn miracle to survive.”

  The first quarter lasted ninety days, but because this February had only twenty-eight days, the actual midpoint date had been the day before. Still, close enough. Maybe even Wolfe had found better things to do on Valentine’s Day than take the time to tell Will he might well be looking for new employment in six weeks.

  “I know it,” Will said. “I’m doing everything I can think of to make my number. I’m cold-calling nonstop, studying the charts, watching your trades, reading everything I can find. With the market down, though—”

  “I’m going to stop you right there, Matthews. There’s only one guy to blame for your shitty ROI. And his name isn’t the fucking market. It’s Will Fucking Matthews.”

  ROI—return on investment. It was one of only two things that mattered in wealth management. Will knew that Wolfe was about to mention the other.

  “And your AUM is also in the crapper.”

  Wolfe pronounced AUM like it was a word—OM—which made him sound like he was doing a meditation chant. Everyone else articulated the letters of the acronym, which stood for “assets under management.”

  “I had a meeting with a guy yesterday who is strongly considering opening an account.”

  “Is that right?” Wolfe said, his ironic disbelief front and center.

  “Like you always say, no one is a client until the money’s out of his hands and into ours. So we’ll see.”

  Wolfe looked down at Will with a squint. Will knew that meant his boss had deduced he was blowing smoke. On the bright side, Wolfe’s disgust caused him to leave the cube.

  As soon as he was sure the coast was clear, Brian poked his head into Will’s cube. “Goddamn Wolfe. It’s like that guy has made it his mission in life to screw with you.”

  “He’s nothing if not an inspiring mentor,” Will said, his words dripping with sarcasm.

  “Forget him. Let’s go get drunk,” Brian said.

  Will’s stomach lurched, a reminder of the night before. “As inviting as that sounds, I have a date.”

  “Show me. I need to get a look at the girl who’s hot enough to make Will Matthews stop cold-calling before midnight.”

  For all Brian’s professional polish, he acted like a horny fourteen-year-old when the topic of the opposite sex came up. But Will certainly didn’t mind getting a second opinion on what he was about to get himself into that evening. He turned away from Brian and pulled out his phone. A few swipes later, his date was smiling on the screen.

  “Okay . . . that could work,” Brian said as if the woman were something he was considering buying. “Good hair, decent smile. Hard to tell from just the face, though. And it’s a bad sign if there’s not a bathing suit pic.”

  Will wouldn’t have said that out loud, but he believed it too. After all, this was internet dating. He wouldn’t have even reached out to her if she hadn’t had a bathing suit pic among her array—and if she didn’t look good in it.

  He decided to satisfy Brian’s interest a little. Another double click and there she was in a red one-piece, standing on the deck of a boat.

  “Healthy rack,” Brian said.

  Will laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell her you said that.”

  6.

  Gwen was well versed in the basic facts of the Toolan case from following online articles and what she had watched on cable news. It had already been given the moniker “Trial of the Century,” and people were calling it O. J. all over again.

  The prosecution’s case was based on the oldest story in the book: rich man kills his wife to be with his much younger mistress and avoid the costs of a divorce. The defense’s rejoinder was also a tried-and-true one: distraught wife kills herself after her husband tells her he’s leaving her for his much younger mistress.

  Jasper Toolan was not yet fifty, but he had already laid claim to two of the top ten highest-grossing movies of all time. Beautiful Agony was his opportunity to burnish his reputation with an Oscar and enshrine his name in the same small club as Spielberg, Coppola, and Scorsese. Enter Hannah Templeton, the movie’s femme fatale. The love triangle’s last cast member was Jasper’s long-suffering wife, Jennifer Toolan.

  The late Mrs. Toolan was something of an unknown quantity, largely because she hadn’t been a Hollywood type—the reason the family had lived in Manhattan, not LA. She didn’t have a Wikipedia page, and even Google revealed little more than the fact that she’d been married to Jasper. Gwen could find no reference to where Jennifer had been born; where she’d gone to school; or what, if anything, she’d done before becoming the great man’s wife.

  The answers to these questions, and undoubtedly to many more, would be doled out to Gwen over time as she worked the case. That process was about to begin, which was why she and the other fourteen members of the Toolan team were assembled in a conference room, awaiting the arrival of Benjamin Ethan.

  Gwen had taken the empty seat beside Jay Kanner, the junior partner on the case. Kanner was what happened to someone after half a million billable hours. He was in his midthirties but looked a decade older. He didn’t have a hair on his head, the dark circles under his eyes were large enough to have their own postal code, and his jowls sagged like a basset hound’s.

  “Welcome aboard,” he said. “Ready to join the circus?”

  “Is that what I’ve joined?”

  “It’s certainly different than any other case I’ve ever worked. I’m the number-two guy on it, and I’ve never even met the client. How’s that for weird?”

  “I’m a third-year associate. I’ve never met any client.”

  That was not entirely true. There were her pro bono clients, of course. And Gwen had met a corporate client once or twice, but that person was usually no one more important than a junior lawyer in the client’s legal department. She had never met a general counsel or a CEO—or anyone with clout. And in her three years at the firm, this was the first time she’d ever represented a paying individual. Taylor Beckett’s fees were cost prohibitive to anyone other than corporate behemoths and multimillionaires.

  The door swung open, and Benjamin Ethan strode into the room. He immediately took his seat at the head of the long conference table.

  Ethan looked every inch the part of hired gun for the rich and famous. Tall and thin, with floppy blondish hair that was seamlessly turning gray, he had the handsome-WASP look down pat—aided in no short measure by round tortoiseshell glasses that had been out of style for at least a decade and a boxy Brooks Brothers suit that might have been raided right out of the Mad Men wardrobe closet.

  Despite herself, Gwen felt a little giddy to be in his presence. The legend of Benjamin Ethan was etched deeply in the firm lore of Taylor Beckett—how he’d been president of the Harvard Law Review, clerked on the Supreme Court, and then made partner more quickly than anyone before or since. He’d risen to national prominence when he won an acquittal for Lawson Graves, the New Jersey governor accused of corruption back in the early 1990s. Ethan had reportedly been on Barack Obama’s short list for attorney general and later for White House counsel, but for reasons that were unclear, at least to Gwen, he’d never ente
red public life.

  Gwen scanned the faces of her colleagues. To a person, they seemed as starstruck as she was. She realized just how pathetic that made them all, but at least she was not alone.

  “Thank you all for coming. A special thank-you to the new faces. Jay will distribute the hot docs to the newcomers, which will include a chron. First things first. I want to remind you all that we are representing an innocent man. Let’s be clear: our job would be the same even if we weren’t, but the fact that we are on the side of the angels here means something to me, and I hope to you too.”

  Gwen nodded along. For the first time since she’d arrived at Taylor Beckett, she was actually excited about her work.

  “You newcomers haven’t read about this in the press, but Jennifer Toolan was a very troubled woman. We will introduce evidence at trial that she was under the care of a psychiatrist, and had been for years. Also that she was taking a pretty healthy dose of antidepressive medication, and that she had at least one suicide attempt in the past.”

  Gwen had not heard about any of this; it went a long way in explaining the defense. If Jennifer Toolan was already at risk for suicide, it made sense that her husband’s leaving her for a beautiful, much younger woman could have pushed her over the edge.

  “All of that, of course, is for trial,” Ethan continued. “The reason we’re here now is because we plan on filing a motion in limine to exclude from evidence any statement that Jennifer Toolan made that our client was physically abusive.”

  A motion in limine was a request for a judge to exclude certain evidence. It was reserved for pieces of evidence important enough that their admission at trial might change the entire legal strategy. Both sides needed to know how the court would rule before trial began.

  “No mystery what’s going on here,” Ethan continued. “The prosecution has very little evidence, and so its strategy is to paint Jasper as a bad guy. Play up the cheating with Hannah, his former alcoholism, and probably other stuff we haven’t heard about yet—and then hope to whip the jury into enough of a lather that they convict. A key point in that strategy is for them to rely on the fact that, in 2017, Jennifer Toolan filed a police report claiming that her husband had struck her. Although you might not know it if you only read certain publications, the undeniable fact is that the next day—not even twenty-four hours later, but more like first thing the following morning—Jennifer Toolan went back to that same police station and withdrew her complaint. She told the officer on duty that she had made a mistake in filing it in the first place and took back her statement that her husband had ever lifted a finger toward her.”

  Gwen had read about both the alleged assault and the subsequent recantation. She considered herself enough of a Me Too person to believe a woman who claimed to be the victim of spousal abuse. At the same time, it was logically inconsistent to say that the same woman might be lying when she later said it hadn’t happened. While she knew that Jennifer Toolan might have changed her story solely to protect her husband’s career, she was also mindful that others suggested it was very Hollywood to make false abuse allegations for leverage in a later divorce proceeding.

  “We have other strong grounds to keep out of evidence any reference to a claim of abuse. First, an abuse claim is not relevant to a murder charge a year later, and whatever probative value it has is outweighed by the prejudice. But almost more important, there is a hearsay problem here. Jennifer Toolan is not able to testify, and therefore her prior statement off the stand is inadmissible. Lastly, admitting the police report would deny Jasper his right to confront the witness giving testimony against him, namely his wife. Your job, therefore, is to find case support for each of these points.”

  When Ethan had finished, Kanner said, “After this meeting, I’m going to give you each individual research assignments. I want a summary of what you’ve found by end of day tomorrow.”

  There were groans all around about the tight deadline. Gwen, however, didn’t mind at all. A deadline the next day meant she could spare an hour that evening to keep the date she’d scheduled, although she’d have to be careful to limit her alcohol intake.

  7.

  There were a number of reasons that Will liked to take his first dates to Tao. For starters, it was around the corner from his office, at Madison Avenue and Fifty-Eighth Street, which meant that the time commitment to get there was minimal. The drinks were strong. The bar area was dimly lit but spacious enough that you could usually find a seat, and not so loud that you had to shout to be heard.

  What he liked best about it, however, was that it had a built-in conversation starter—the restaurant had been featured in an episode of Sex and the City. Although his dates had by and large been in elementary school when the series went off HBO, he’d never been out with a woman who hadn’t binge-watched it and seen at least one of the movies. His usual MO was to casually mention that one of the episodes featured a scene at Tao. His date would invariably ask which one, and he’d reveal that it was the one where Samantha met her girlfriend. From there, the conversation could turn to other Sex and the City episodes, different television shows or movies they liked, or lesbianism—all of which were fine by Will.

  Will arrived at Tao fifteen minutes early. He preferred to see his date before she saw him, kind of like the way soldiers tried to capture high ground before a battle. Another of his first-date maneuvers: he liked to have a drink in hand by the time his date arrived. That way he could tell her what he was drinking and whether it was any good. Then he’d offer a taste. If she accepted, it meant that she was at least willing to share some of his germs.

  As with cold-calling—and everything in life, Will thought, if he was waxing philosophical—the first thirty seconds were the most important. All that would follow was built upon the foundation laid in that brief window of time.

  Gwen entered the bar a few minutes after seven, which had been their appointed meeting time. Will recognized her instantly, which wasn’t always the case with online dates. Better still, he liked what he saw in the flesh. She was olive complexioned, with black hair and large eyes. Although she was wearing lawyer clothing, he could still tell the swimsuit picture was accurate.

  Gwen looked around the bar for a face she recognized. He lifted his arm and waved, and she immediately smiled. Will knew that smile meant nothing beyond the fact that she had spotted him. It was the expression that immediately followed that indicated whether she was happy to have done so. He wasn’t entirely sure what he discerned on her second take, however. He thought he saw another smile, but it might have been the tail end of the first.

  She made her way through the crowd to the sofa he occupied. He scooted over a bit, and she sat down beside him. They shook hands.

  “Nice to meet you, Gwen.”

  “And you too, Will. You look just like your picture.”

  “That’s the way pictures work, right?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Joking. Yes, I do. And I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when you walked in too. Can I get you a drink?”

  “What are you having?”

  “I normally go with something standard—a scotch or bourbon—but they had an exotic drink menu, and . . . the next thing I know, I’m holding what they call a Ruby Red Dragon. It’s actually pretty good. Grapefruit-y, if you like that.”

  Without missing a beat, Gwen grabbed the glass. “Do you mind?” she asked, but it was clear from the sparkle in her eyes that she knew Will wasn’t going to put up any resistance.

  “No. By all means.”

  She took a long swallow. Before she could pass judgment on his drink, a waitress appeared.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

  “What do you have that’s better than what he’s drinking?” Gwen said with a smile aimed at Will.

  The waitress recommended a vodka-based drink called the Lotus Blossom. As soon as she walked away, Gwen said, “God, I haven’t been here in ages. You know, it’s like one of the few restaurants
that was featured on Sex and the City that’s still around.”

  “Really?” Will said. “I didn’t know that. I’ve seen a few episodes, but I can’t say I’m much of a fan.”

  “I know. Guys aren’t allowed to like Sex and the City. They’ll take away your man card or something. But considering that you’re a financial guy, you might be interested to know that Tao generates more revenue than any other restaurant in the country.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Actually, it might be the Vegas Tao, not this one. But this one I think is tops in the city. You can look it up later and text me if I’m wrong.”

  “Aren’t you a lawyer, not some restaurant trivia specialist?”

  She smiled again. Her profile pic didn’t do it justice. Gwen had a killer smile.

  “I’m a third year at Taylor Beckett, in the litigation group. I had this case last year that involved lost profits at a restaurant. One of the things we had to do was analyze the profits of neighboring restaurants, which is how I know that the owners of Tao are making real bank.”

  Will realized that he was smiling now too. It was also the real kind, not the plastic first-date smile he usually wore. On first impression, he liked Gwen. That upped the ante of this date considerably.

  He asked about her life, and she recited what was on her profile. It sounded like a rote speech she’d given dozens of times, which made Will wonder just how many dates Gwen actually went on.

  “Do you like being a lawyer?” he asked.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not. The hours have been just crushing lately, and so that’s no fun. And I got a new case today, which is going to require that as soon as I leave you, I head back to the office. It’s a big one too. The defense of Jasper Toolan.”

  Will was impressed. That was a big case.

  “So, can you provide any insider information about it?”

  “Probably as much as you can about whatever stock Maeve Grant is selling these days. Which is to say I could, but I’d be disbarred for it. So I won’t.”