Skinny Island

by Louis Auchincloss

  “Don’t worry if he never gives you a compliment. That’s not his way. He won’t ever knock you, either. A thing is either right or it has to be done over. There’s no place for praise. And none for abuse.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because clerks don’t exist for him. They’re simply tools.”

  “Well, he treats his tools better than some of his partners do.”

  “You know what the good workman doesn’t blame.”

  “Ah, yes. It’s true. He blames himself.”

  “Who else? There’s no one but Childe in the world of Theodore Childe.”

  They were interrupted here by another associate who joined their table, and Brendan never asked his informant what he had meant. He knew that the latter was one of those who talked for effect, that he hated to have his ideas analyzed. Yet Brendan kept turning over in his mind Jim’s loosely uttered thought in the weeks that followed. By luck or by inspiration his luncheon companion seemed to have hit upon an important aspect of Childe’s personality.

  When he lunched with Childe now, or when he dined, as he did on two occasions, at his dark, cold apartment, filled with heavy inherited furniture, to meet his big, hollow, uninteresting wife, Brendan noted how little change there was in the pleasant tone with which Childe dutifully took up, one by one, the topics of general interest headlined in the evening paper. It was as if he were thinking: “All right, now is the time of the social hour. In the social hour we discuss the events of the day. When the social hour is over we go back to work.”

  Did anyone exist for Childe but Childe himself? Yet the man saw people. He saw his wife; he saw Brendan; he asked the questions necessary to show a proper human concern. But Brendan could not get away from an idea that now came to dominate his thinking about his boss: that Childe’s social life was a routine that he obliged himself to go through, that the people in it were mere characters in a play who had had to learn their lines as he had had to learn his. Except no—perhaps Childe was the only actor, and the others marionettes whose strings were pulled by the angel (or demon) who was composing the lines of the comedy (or tragedy) of Theodore Childe.

  Brendan lunched again with Jim Moher.

  “You said none of us existed in Childe’s world. Is that even true of his family and clients?”

  Jim turned out to be a less casual observer of Childe than Brendan had supposed. He too had clerked for Brendan’s boss, for several months. “I don’t know so much about his family, though I suspect the dumb, yackety wife doesn’t count for much. But the clients—or client—is another matter. He’s only got one, hasn’t he?”

  “Certainly only one that I’ve ever worked for.”

  “East River Trust. Natch. That’s his whole life. He grew up with the outfit. It was a small bank twenty years ago, but it’s been swelled by mergers, and he’s managed each time to hang on to the account. When they came here they insisted the firm take him in as a partner. It was a package deal.”

  “But Guide’s a damn good lawyer.”

  Jim’s mouth puckered into a circle of doubt. “He’s a good enough draftsman. And he’s accurate, I grant. But he’s limited, specialized. If the firm ever lost that bank, they’d have no more room for Theodore Childe, and he knows it.”

  “But how did it all start? There must have been something in his life before East River.”

  Jim shrugged. “Who knows? The Childes were an old family who lost their shirts in twenty-nine. Theodore, from what I gather, grew up on handouts and scholarships in a grubby, faded-gentry kind of way. He latched on to that then-little bank as a life saver. And he’s been hanging on for dear life ever since!”

  Only a month after this interchange Brendan had cause to find out just how dedicated to his client Childe was. East River Trust was trustee under the will of Luke Selden, the late great pharmacist, and the trusts largely comprised stock in Selden Chemicals. To protect the trustee in its policy of keeping so many eggs in one basket—which for years had been of immense profit to the beneficiaries—East River Trust had settled its accounts judicially every five years. But at the very end of one of these periods a contraceptive pill produced by Selden had caused, or was believed to have caused, a spate of illnesses and even deaths; lawsuits had proliferated, the stock had crashed, and it was feared that the company might go into receivership. The beneficiaries of the Selden trusts, oblivious now of the vast benefits accrued to them by the policy of hanging on to the family stock, sued East River for a surcharge which, if granted, might cripple the bank.

  Brendan found that once again, as before his selection by Childe, his waking hours were all devoted to his job, now the preparation of the defense. The firm’s litigation department handled the court arguments and briefs, but the research was conducted by Childe and Brendan, who rapidly became experts in the science of contraception. Brendan was at first amused, then concerned and at last alarmed at the passion with which his leader attacked his task. Childe worked as long hours as his associate, tearing through files as if his very life were at stake. When he had any cause to refer to the plaintiffs or their counsel, his voice would assume a rasping bitterness.

  “When you think of the years in which East River has taken such risks to enrich these useless parasites, don’t you wonder that even such scabrous slugs as they are could have the gall to turn and rend their benefactor?”

  “But, Mr. Childe, some of them are infants. Their guardians have to sue.”

  “Have to bite the hand that fed them? Don’t give me that. And there are only two infants, anyway. How does that excuse the others?”

  “Because if there is a surcharge, and they haven’t sued, they can’t share it.”

  “Poppycock! That’s just an argument to excuse their rapacity. The kind of reasoning offered by shysters to induce greedy idiots to sue!”

  Brendan did not pursue the discussion, as he could see that his superior was not quite rational on the subject, and, besides, Childe’s animosity towards his opponents hardly affected the preparation of the case. But it did begin to appall him that the older man should put quite so much emotion into the fate of a bank. It was beginning to look now as if the case could probably be settled. The first flurry of motions over, there was less apparent danger that the bank would go under. Yet Childe continued to carry on as if the plaintiffs were doing something damnable in seeking redress from a trustee which had handled their portfolios in such a way as to reduce them by half.

  As the days passed Brendan had even graver doubts. Was Childe’s state of mind perhaps a thermometer that demonstrated how unhealthy was the moral state of the whole business world? Did these lawyers and bank officers and trust beneficiaries care about an art or a social cause or a war or a religion or even another human being as they cared about these questions of commissions and surcharges? And what was he, Brendan Bross, doing wasting his young years in other people’s money battles that he did not even care about?

  It was at this point, on a hot July day when the humidity outside seemed to penetrate the very ducts of the air conditioning, that Brendan came across what he was always thereafter to think of as the memorandum.

  It recorded a discussion, at a private club in the city, between Rex Henderson, senior trust officer of East River, Theodore Childe and an economist, now deceased, one Dr. Slocum Oursley. Oursley had expressed his opinion very forcibly on the precarious nature of the drug business and the possibility of stomach poisoning from the use of certain types of vitamin pills. Attached to the memorandum was a page, written out apparently during the conference in the large handwriting of the doctor, in purple ink, giving examples of certain formulas used by Selden Chemicals that he felt to have inherent dangers. There was a third document in the file, apparently just for office purposes, signed with Childe’s initials, and dated two years after the recorded discussion. It read: Word reached us today of Dr. Oursley’s suicide, apparently in a fit of depression. He is now considered discredited and has for years been fulminating against the c
hemical companies.

  Brendan assumed that this closed the matter and that the formulas condemned by the depressed “expert” were harmless. At any rate, he did not intend to worry about them. They could wait until his opponents brought them up, which seemed unlikely. After all, his opponents were interested in contraceptives, not vitamins.

  Yet only two weeks later counsel for the plaintiffs asked to examine East River’s files “pertaining to a discussion of chemicals with the late Dr. Oursley.” Brendan brought the request to Childe’s office. The latter’s answer, he thought, came just a bit too quickly.

  “We never talked with Oursley. Why would we have? He was a known crank.”

  “But, Mr. Childe, I saw your memo about him. You met him at the Metropolitan Club.”

  “I don’t say I didn’t know the fellow. Everyone knew him. I may even have chatted with him at the Metropolitan. He was always buttonholing people. You couldn’t shake him off.”

  Brendan still assumed that he was faced with a memory gap. “No, no, I don’t mean that. I mean a serious conference with you and Mr. Henderson about the danger of certain vitamin pills.”

  “My dear fellow, you’re dreaming.”

  “I’m not, sir! I can show you the file.”

  “Henderson would never have listened to an idiot like Oursley. And anyway, what do vitamins have to do with the price of eggs? We are dealing with contraceptives, aren’t we?”

  “Maybe so. Maybe the conversation was quite irrelevant. But our opponents have asked for it, and I suppose we shall have to produce it.”

  “If it exists.”

  “But I’m telling you, sir, it does exist. I saw it myself, only two weeks ago.”

  “Well, you’d better produce it, then. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  When Brendan returned to the conference room, which was piled high with all the files and documents of the case, and opened the box in which he was sure he had seen the memorandum, it was not there. The box was filled with correspondence, as he had remembered, but the brown folder at one end, containing only three papers and labeled “Oursley meeting,” was unquestionably gone. Brendan spent the afternoon frantically searching in other similar boxes of letters, but to no avail.

  When he returned to Childe’s office at six, the latter had his hat on, preparing to leave for the day. Brendan fancied that he could detect a hard little gleam of hostility in those usually tranquil eyes.

  “Well, Brendan?”

  “I couldn’t find it!”

  “What couldn’t you find?”

  Ah, but that was wrong, that was fake! Childe always remembered everything.

  “The memo about Dr. Oursley.”

  “Does it not occur to you, my deluded friend, that you may not have found it because you only dreamed of its existence?”

  “Did I dream, too, of a paper written in purple ink, presumably by the deceased doctor, listing certain formulas used in vitamin tablets?”

  “I’d be the last to deny the ingenuities of your imagination, young man.”

  “Mr. Childe!” Brendan exclaimed now in a stronger tone. “That document has been removed from the file. Your attitude of unreasonable disbelief makes me suspect that you know it was removed. I must ask you please to give it to me so that I may submit it to opposing counsel!”

  As Childe continued to stare at him, the Indianlike cheekbones over his long pale cheeks were studded with deepening red. Brendan took in, and realized at the same time that his superior had taken in, the simple fact that Childe’s failure to dismiss him from the room and possibly from the firm itself, amounted to a tacit admission of guilt. When Childe at last spoke it was almost as if he were begging for a compromise.

  “And supposing it has been destroyed?” he asked. “How then should I return it?”

  “Has it been destroyed?”

  “I say supposing.”

  “Then that fact must be submitted to counsel and eventually, I assume, to the court. I imagine we can plead that it was due to some kind of error.”

  “But how will anyone ever establish what was in these ‘lost’ documents?”

  “I presume you read them, as I did.”

  “But even if I had, would anyone believe me? Particularly if I testified that they were not unfavorable to my client? That they were, indeed, irrelevant to the case?”

  “If they were irrelevant, why were they destroyed?”

  “That is just what the jury would ask.”

  “Well, why were they?”

  “Didn’t you say yourself, it might have been a mistake?”

  “Was it?”

  “Well, supposing it was?” Childe’s tone was beginning to be desperate. “Suppose they had been destroyed by mistake? Would anyone believe it? No! Look at your own face. You don’t believe it! So that my testimony as to what was in them—or yours—would never for a minute be credited. Everyone would assume that Oursley had warned us about the contraceptive, and that we had done away with the evidence. We should have unfairly ruined our client!”

  Of course this was true. Why then had the wretched man destroyed the file? Brendan could only suppose it was because he was afraid that a court might feel that a careful fiduciary, warned about one possible negligence, should have been alerted to the possibility of others, that defective vitamins should have put the trustee on notice of possibly defective contraceptives. Oh, no, it was absurd, and the vitamins, by all evidence, were not defective, and Oursley was an old fool, but Childe might have become so fanatical about his client, so terrified of its potential bankruptcy, so exhausted by the long fight, as to lose all sense of reality.

  “I am sorry that should be the case,” Brendan said firmly. “But it cannot alter my duty to come forward with the facts. If you will not do so, Mr. Childe, I must. I must call plaintiffs’ counsel and tell them what I know. I shall probably have to tell it in court, too.”

  Childe’s features now became contorted. He leaned over his desk, breathing hard. Brendan was afraid for a moment that he was going to vomit. But when he looked up at last, it was with a hard, contained hatred. “Do your damndest, you little swine! You’re just trying to destroy me and my client. Why, I don’t know, unless you’re some kind of crazy radical. Just be warned, anyway, that I shall deny under oath there was ever any meeting with Oursley, or that I prepared any such memorandum. You are off the case as of this minute, and I shall suggest to our managing partner, Mr. Phelps, that you be discharged from the firm, or at least given a leave of absence on condition that you seek psychiatric help. Good day, sir!”

  “Good day! Of course, I shall go immediately to Mr. Phelps myself. It is obviously my duty to offer the firm an opportunity to redress the impropriety before taking it to court. My duty not only to the firm, but to the client.”

  “The client!” Childe almost shrieked. “What the hell do you care about my client? Get out of here!”

  Laurison Phelps dominated his great firm as few senior partners did in the 1980s, when it had become more the custom to rule by executive committee. But Phelps had some of Napoleon’s superiority to delegation; his mind could cope with a problem of interoffice mail routing in the same hour that it was engaged with a brief in a multimillion dollar antitrust suit. He reveled in his own genius and versatility, and loved to astonish people with his grasp of seemingly trivial details. He was a small, shaggy man, with laughing eyes and a rasping voice that contributed all the command presence that he needed. He pretended to laugh at his own dictatorship, but it would not have been wise for anyone else to do so. His pose was one of nostalgia for a mythical past when law firms had been small bands of gifted and liberal individuals, dedicated more to their profession than to its emoluments—before, as he liked to put it, they had become “mere machines for the manufacture of fees.” But woe to the associate or even partner who fell behind in that species of manufacture!

  The large office in which Brendan now stood before his senior was itself designed to substantiate this pose. The wa
lls were covered with Phelps’s collection of political cartoons and engravings, going back to Nast and Daumier, most of which showed pompous and conniving attorneys in ridiculous or degrading situations. Brendan was well aware that he could not anticipate what stance Phelps would adopt even in a crisis as grave as the one he had just described. No matter how critical a matter, the senior partner could never forgo the delight of surprising his audience. Only a few months before, Brendan had witnessed Phelps’s elucidation to an elderly female client of the mysteries of the generation-skipping tax. What he had outlined to the dazzled crone had not indeed been the bill passed by Congress, which Phelps had not even read, but a far better-conceived tax constructed in Phelps’s fantasy on the spur of the moment! It was done, of course, more for the benefit of the listening associate than for the ignorant client. Phelps had known all the time that Brendan would follow his mental acrobatics, admire them and, when it came to drafting the required will, ignore them in favor of the actual statute that it was his more plebeian job to understand and apply.

  “So, Brendan,” Phelps responded now, rubbing his hands as if he and his associate were about to embark on the pleasantest of chats. “As I decline to act, you will? You are determined to strike a blow for decency and honor? I almost envy you!”

  “I shall do what any lawyer in my position should do, sir.”

  “‘When duty calls or danger, be never wanting there!’ Of course, of course. I could argue that no matter what the truth or falsity of your charges against Mr. Childe, a paramount duty to our client prohibits a public revelation. But I admit that is questionable. So let me state again that I do not believe your charges. I do not believe for a minute that Mr. Childe destroyed that file or even that it existed. The only thing I want to do is present to you the consequences of what you are proposing to do, even under the worst assumption, i.e., that Childe is guilty. Shall I proceed?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Sit down, then, my boy, sit down.” When Brendan had done so, Phelps proceeded to rub his cheeks violently, as if trying to scrub off some tightly clinging dirt. Fortunately for Brendan’s ease of mind, he recognized this as an accustomed mannerism. “Have you ever stopped to observe, my friend, that when a crime is committed by an amateur, it is—nine times out of ten—an unnecessary crime? That it is usually, in fact, the one event bound to bring on the very catastrophe it was designed to avoid?”