A Minor Fall

by Price Ainsworth

  I thought that Michelle saw having a baby as an opportunity for her to stop practicing law, at least eventually, and devote herself to raising a child. I guessed that was what she wanted. I knew this is what she thought she was supposed to do. I wanted to have a baby because I thought Michelle wanted to have a baby. I had not figured out how I was going to be available at five o’clock every evening to coach Little League, but I looked forward to doing that, as my father had done. I told myself it would work out, or I would figure out some way to make it work.

  Without discussion, we had left the condoms upstairs in the drawer of the nightstand again on the night of the Alvarado verdict, just as we had been doing for the last three months on those occasions when our schedules permitted us to have sex.

  At the office on Monday, I sat at my desk, returned calls, and read mail until about 10:30. I decided that nobody was going to congratulate me anymore about my win without prompting, so I went to the kitchen, got some coffee, and drifted down to Mr. Peters’ office. I knocked and went in. Mr. Peters was not there, but three associates were. They were standing around the antique telescope in Mr. Peters’ office, taking turns looking through it. A warm sun glistened against the high-rise window.

  “Davy,” Eli said, “you’ve got to check this out.” They had focused the telescope on the rooftop swimming pool of the Four Seasons Hotel, twenty floors below. While July and August can be unbearable in Houston, late February can be glorious—warm and bright, with everybody getting a jump on summer activities like golf and sunbathing that much of the country can only imagine while sloshing through frozen bus stops and train stations. The male lawyers in New York had only their dog-eared copies of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. We had the real thing.

  Several women were around the pool that morning, and more seemed to be coming out and positioning themselves in reclining chairs to face the sun. As I stood back from the telescope awaiting my turn, I looked out across the skyline and wondered how many bankers, lawyers, accountants, and energy traders were doing just what the four of us were doing. Identifying the women by the color of the few small pieces of clothing they were wearing, we rated the women on their desirability. The morning’s consensus winner, a dark-haired, already tanned beauty in a revealing, multicolored two-piece, got up and left as a group of new arrivals began taking up the empty chairs. We took that as a sign that it was time for us to start thinking about lunch.

  Eight of us had started at the firm within two years of each other. We were colleagues and friends, but there was an acknowledged level of rivalry among us. Each of us knew that the amount of money we brought into the firm constituted our grade, and we competed to see who could get the best cases assigned to him, who could turn the cases the quickest and for the most money, and who could curry the most favor from the partners who ran the firm. The competition was somewhat diluted by the fact that each of us had been paired with a different partner, but I understood that the competition among the associates was a reflection of the more intense competition that was taking place among the partners. Of course, each of these levels of competition resulted in more and more money being brought into the firm, thereby benefiting all of the partners, and, in theory, all of the associates. In the end, it was all about money, and that fact was certainly acknowledged.

  Each of the associates except Rod was new to Houston. We had all finished clerkships with federal judges or the Texas Supreme Court or had short stints with prestigious defense firms. We all came from good law schools and middle-class or upper middle-class families that were proud to point to the first lawyer in the family, again with the exception of Rod, whose father was a respected trial lawyer himself. This was the first job that any of us held that actually put some money in our pockets. We were all passably good-looking. Admittedly, Rod was nothing less than handsome, and nobody, to my knowledge, but me had ever noticed my overly developed right jaw line. Having Sullivan’s private tailor come by the office to outfit us in handmade suits and sport coats didn’t hurt. The practice, despite the state legislature’s attempts to “reform” the tort system to protect insurance companies and tortfeasors, was thriving. We saw ourselves as young princes, surveying our realm of Harris County. Life, in all of its abundance, was there for the taking.

  We split up for lunch. I don’t know where the other guys went. I was meeting my boss at Damian’s, an expensive Italian restaurant where Sullivan ate four times a week. He had probably been there since it opened that day, but I knew he would not yet have ordered lunch. He was seated in the bar area with his female paralegal Theresa—Sullivan called her “Riza,” and because he did, we all did—and three cronies who were defense lawyers from major firms around town. They were each drinking Sea Breezes.

  As soon as Timothy Sullivan walked in the door, the staff at Damian’s would shout their hellos, and the bartender would start scurrying around to slice up fresh grapefruits for the juicer. Sullivan didn’t always drink Sea Breezes throughout lunch, but it was a good bet that he would start with one. The sweet, pulpy grapefruit juice blended with vodka and cranberry juice in a perfect combination that made for a good appetite and sometimes delirious afternoon. A phone for outgoing calls was discretely placed by Sullivan’s table near the bar, and a never-ending stream of lawyers, businessmen, and politicians would drop by the table for a Sea Breeze or two and then blissfully drift off into the bright Houston sunshine.

  Over the two years that I had worked for Sullivan, I learned a lot about people while I was sitting in that restaurant bar. Cases were considered, deals were made, arguments were held, and time was frittered away like so many used grapefruit rinds. One time, I remember a shoving match that resulted in one lawyer knocking another into a Jeroboam of red wine that had been displayed on an old Tuscan sideboard. The bottle broke, and what seemed like gallons of red wine flowed down the wall and escaped along the baseboards while several, white-jacketed busboys and waiters hurried to staunch the flow with white napkins. They wrung out the napkins into a grey, plastic tub that a busboy would use to clear a table. The maitre’d rushed over to apologize for placing the bottle in such an obviously precarious position, and he assured Mr. Sullivan that it wouldn’t happen again. Peace resumed, and the bartender went back to slicing grapefruits to feed the steady whir of the juicer.

  My purpose in coming to Damian’s that day was not just to seek attention. Sullivan had left a message with my secretary Eileen telling me to join him regarding a new case we were taking.

  As I walked into the bar, Sullivan waved at me and proclaimed to the others seated around the table, “Gentlemen, I believe you know my associate, Eugène de Rastignac?” I shook hands with the defense lawyers, said hello to Sullivan and Riza, and sat down. I heard a smiling Riza whisper to Sullivan, “Rastignac? Does that make you Goriot or Vautrin?” I was disappointed that I could not place the literary reference to the characters in Balzac’s novels but was impressed that Riza could. Probably Sullivan had previously referred to someone by the name of Balzac’s ambitious social climber in her presence, and in an effort to keep up, Riza had read Balzac’s La Comédie humaine in its entirety. After a minute or two of pleasantries, the defense lawyers got up and left.

  “Are y’all hungry yet?” Sullivan asked; and, without waiting for an answer, ordered us each a Sea Breeze. “We’ve got someone joining us in a few minutes, so let me tell you what’s going on. By the way, good work on that Alvarado case.”

  Tim Sullivan was an almost distinguished looking, grey-headed man of sixty who always wore a coat and colorful tie, unless he was on the golf course. He had broad Irish hands that permitted him to lift a ball out of a deep rough, a ruddy complexion, and a thick waistline that was testament to the fact that he had enjoyed a professional lifetime of too many veal chops and excessive alcohol. While his suits were the expected $600-per-hour lawyer attire (navy or grey, chalk stripes in both, and brown gun check or grey Glen plaid on Fridays), his shirts and ties and suspenders were always outlandish
combinations that would appear cartoon-like or foppish (or both) on others, but on him came across as an outgrowth of his flamboyant, winning personality. He was charming without effort, and usually smiling as if he had just heard a joke to which the rest of us were not privy. He could quote the Persian philosopher Omar Khayyám’s The Rubáiyát at length. He never settled a case at mediation without exclaiming:

  Some for the Glories of This World; and some

  Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;

  Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,

  Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

  He could drink and not get drunk. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that he was always losing because he took them off or set them on his head to read. He could make conversation with anybody about anything, and he had the largest working vocabulary of anybody I had ever met.

  I will never forget the trip to New York to take depositions where we spent the evenings at the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis Hotel with Sullivan conversing with the parade of humanity that sat down next to him at the bar in sequential fashion. Sullivan loved the art nouveau mural by Maxfield Parrish, and it seemed to me that Sullivan’s role at the bar was not too different from King Cole’s in the painting—listening to petitioners who came to him for advice. It did not matter who they were, men or women, executives or debutantes. In a few minutes, they knew each other and they told him very personal information. Sitting there quietly observing on my barstool, I almost came to the conclusion that each of the interviewed patrons had come there with the hope of meeting Sullivan and telling him something that they had been needing to tell someone.

  During a short lull between bar patrons, Sullivan leaned over to me and whispered, “Human beings have a need to talk to someone. They want to know that somebody else agrees with them and is on their side. All those hours you spent in ‘Trial Advocacy’ class in law school . . . did anybody ever tell you where the word ‘advocacy’ comes from? I’m no Latin scholar, but don’t you imagine it has something to do with ‘adding a voice?’ You can learn as much about ‘advocating’ sitting right here at this bar as you can in all the damn trial advocacy classes combined. You have to be able to talk to people to be able to advocate for them. Conversation can be man-to-man or woman-to-woman, but if it happens to be man to woman, and they are both practicing heterosexuals, then there’s an extra spark. Watch,” he said as a particularly pretty woman with an expensive haircut sat down next to him and put her small beaded purse on the bar.

  He ordered her a glass of wine and tossed off a few trusty lines from Khayyám:

  You know, my friends, with what a brave Carouse

  I made a Second Marriage in my house;

  Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed

  And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

  In a few minutes, the woman began telling Sullivan about how messy her recent divorce had been and how nasty her custody fight was going to be.

  He could do the same thing when picking a jury.

  In many ways, he was like a father to me in my early adulthood. I watched him, learned from him, and wanted to be like him. I found myself repeating phrases he used and mimicking his gestures. I downloaded The Rubáiyát off the Internet. Like my real father, he often gave me very good advice. But, unlike my real father, Sullivan was rich. He had all the trappings that wealth brought, and it was the trappings of wealth that I found so alluring. I laughed at him one time during trial, when a concerned tool pusher and his young wife explained to Sullivan in the hallway outside the courtroom that the in-trial settlement offer the defendant had just made was a lot of money to them. They understood that it was not that much to Sullivan, but to them, it was a fortune. I expected Sullivan, whom I thought sincerely cared about his clients, to say something like, “It’s your case, and you have to decide what’s best for you.”

  Instead, I was shocked when he told the young couple, “That’s right. I’m richer than three feet up a bull’s ass, but I didn’t get that way making bad decisions on settling lawsuits. Now, get back in that courtroom, and let’s get the case to the jury.” Of course, the verdict, which was by no means a foregone conclusion, came back for the plaintiffs in an amount substantially greater than the offer.

  “Thanks for the champagne. I guess the defendant will appeal,” I said.

  “Not if Gath can avoid it. I’ll bet he doesn’t want his name appearing on the reported case. I think you can settle that case, because Gath will get shit in his neck,” Sullivan said knowingly. Many of Sullivan’s favorite sayings contained the word “shit.” “Getting shit in your neck” was how Sullivan described the emotional condition that panicked litigators suffered when they determined that they had better settle a case rather than continue to pursue it.

  “Offer to drop the pre-judgment interest, and I predict he’ll pay the verdict,” Sullivan continued. “I can’t see Gath getting involved in a complicated appeal based on legal technicalities. The man doesn’t know much law and he isn’t curious.”

  With that said, he moved on to new business. He had accepted the referral of a complex “pollution” case in eastern Kentucky. The case involved over one hundred parcels of property, small farms and rural acreage, with several hundred plaintiffs claiming varying degrees of ownership in the different pieces of property. The plaintiffs asserted that the defendant, Boyd Oil Corporation and its successors, had systematically harvested oil from the Martha Oil Field near Paintsville, Kentucky, in a manner that left “TENORM,” technologically enhanced radioactive material, on the plaintiffs’ properties. Allegedly, the recovery technique of water-flooding the field had permitted radioactivity contained in subsurface shales to come to the surface. The “technological enhancement” was the water. Wherever the water went, the radiation went.

  The case had been filed several years earlier after another group of claimants had successfully sued Boyd on similar claims. The referral lawyers in Kentucky had exhausted their bank accounts prosecuting the case, and they were looking for help—both to try the case, and to defray the expenses.

  “A buy-in?” I asked.

  “A million dollars to them up-front and we pick up the expenses from this point forward,” Sullivan deadpanned. “We’ll get sixty-six percent of the forty percent contingency fee.”

  “A million dollars,” I repeated.

  “Actually, one-point-two,” Sullivan said. He was always referring to millions of dollars as “something-point-something.” This had led the associates to refer to settlements or verdicts in our cases as “sevenpoint-five thousand dollars” or “two-point-three thousand dollars.”

  Sullivan admitted that it was a huge undertaking. Apparently, he had already discussed it with Peters, the other partners, and the bank. The firm had set up a separate line of credit for the case. It wasn’t the kind of case in which we would typically get involved. While there was the risk of personal injury presented by the radiation, the case was framed as an injury to the environment with damages, including the cost of remediation and the decrease in property values.

  “Where is Paintsville?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard of Butcher Holler and Loretta Lynn? That’s where it is. Look, Davy, here’s the deal. We can’t all work on this case. It will be a tremendous discovery battle. Every client will have to answer interrogatories and requests for production and then give deposition testimony. Boyd has lawyers in Kentucky, Washington, DC, and Houston. They will paper us to death with motions. We need to assign one lawyer in the firm to be the point person on this. You’re that person. We’ll shift most of your other cases over to Eli, Rod, and the others. I’ll help you. Of course, I’ll be there for trial. We all will help you, but you are going to be our radiation lawyer.”

  In my mind, I was already asking if this assignment was a reward or a curse. Sullivan must have sensed my concern, even though I was trying to look interested in what he was saying. Taking on the referring lawyers’ 1.2 million dollars of debt for this case seemed en
ormous. Could any case have the potential payday that would warrant such an investment?

  “I can tell what you’re thinking,” Sullivan said. “No, you and Eileen are not going to have to handle all of the paperwork. We’re going to get you some help. I’ve asked a contract lawyer who has a lot of experience in putting together computerized client databases to join us for lunch. If you like her, we’ll hire her on an hourly basis. I’ve also talked to an environmental lawyer in Lexington. I think he might be willing to come on board. So, what do you think?”

  There really was nothing I could say, other than, “When do we get started?”

  “Right now,” he said and stood up as a tall, dark-haired woman in a handsome beige suit walked up to our table. She might have been a few years older than I was, but she was one of those women who will be as good-looking at fifty as she was at thirty-five. Beneath the soft-shouldered suit jacket, she wore an ecru silk shell and a small, diamond cross pendant. The suit skirt stopped just above the knee and her stockingless calves were muscular and tanned. She said hello to Tim, and he introduced her to Riza and me. She was Beth Sheehan. Unbeknownst to her, she was the winning contestant at the Four Seasons pool that the St. Jude Squad had watched through the telescope earlier that morning. She sat down, and I noticed that Riza moved her chair a little closer to Sullivan. “Beth, Davy Jessie here is our firm’s expert on TENORM pollution,” Sullivan said, and winked at me. “He’s the lawyer with whom you’ll be working most closely in the next few months. Can we get you a Sea Breeze before lunch?”