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Authors: Peter Blauner
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white-collar criminals: tax dodgers, inside traders, insurance company defrauders, and various cold-blooded bankers and corporate accountants who never had to listen to their victims scream. To his surprise, he found he was good at it. Clients liked his smarts and street-fighter attitude. He began to diversify, handling contracts and real estate deals. After a couple of years, New York magazine called, wanting to include him in a cover story about the ten toughest lawyers in the city. Fifteen months later, the Times gave him a profile of his own in the D section. Soon he was making enough money to go into debt; he borrowed cash to buy the town house so he could sock away a few thousand a year in zero-coupon bonds for Alex’s college education fund. Without meaning to, he’d become a kind of rising star.
But he keeps the MC 5 and the Ramirez brothers around just to assure himself he hasn’t completely sold out.
“Well, I don’t appreciate you ramming these people down our throats,” Todd says with a click of phlegm.
“And I don’t appreciate you not discussing this merger with any of us,” Jake snaps back.
“The Greer, Allan people are very sensitive about who they represent.”
“Listen, Todd.” Jake feels something like a diving bell slowly lowering itself into the pit of his stomach. “Out of seventy lawyers here, I’ve brought in five percent of this firm’s business last year. Including the Anderson real estate group, ABT cable systems, and Bob Berger over at BBH. Hakeem Turner alone paid us a quarter of a million dollars to defend him in all his cases. So don’t tell me who I can represent.”
“Most of the clients you just mentioned probably would’ve come over because of the firm’s reputation before you arrived.” Todd comes back to his seat as if he’s rushing the net to return a backhand. “And they’d probably stay with us if you decided to leave.”
“You want to put that theory to the test?” Jake says, loosening up his shoulders like he’s getting ready for a brawl.
Mike Sayon, his jacket almost completely covered in broken walnut shell, looks at Charlie Dorian. Charlie looks at Todd. Todd looks back at Mike with a smile like a tight belt on a fat man’s waist. And all at once, Jake realizes he’s never felt comfortable around these men. For ten years, he’s been laughing at their vaguely anti-Semitic jokes. Emulating their pretentious faux-English style of dressing with the Savile Row shirts and the bench-made shoes. Enduring their loud, frustrated wives at those endless, boring $500-a-plate charity balls to support the historic preservation of some damp footpath in New Canaan, Connecticut. Putting up with their practice of billing some destitute old widow seven or eight times what she owes to settle her late husband’s estate while some tax-evading corporate client haggles over every cup of coffee and phone call on the expense account.
And doing all of it fourteen to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, while his son was growing up and his wife was struggling to raise the boy and start a career of her own.
The voice in Jake’s head says quietly but firmly: No more.
But before he can say the words out loud, the intercom box on the table buzzes.
“Mr. Schiff,” says a secretary’s voice. “Your wife is on line four. She says a strange man has been following her and she needs to speak to you immediately.”
Jake looks up at Todd and nods. “To be continued.”
“My breath is bated,” says Todd.
8
Three hours earlier.
A playground on the corner of Seventy-seventh Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Broken pieces of sun in the tree branches. A boy and a girl on a seesaw. A redheaded child in denim overalls climbing a pyramid of logs. John G. stands behind the brick bathroom house, smoking crack from a glass pipette. The rock goes snap, crackle, pop in the bowl and a dragon of smoke rises toward the sky.
The past is the present and the present is the past.
He’s
But he keeps the MC 5 and the Ramirez brothers around just to assure himself he hasn’t completely sold out.
“Well, I don’t appreciate you ramming these people down our throats,” Todd says with a click of phlegm.
“And I don’t appreciate you not discussing this merger with any of us,” Jake snaps back.
“The Greer, Allan people are very sensitive about who they represent.”
“Listen, Todd.” Jake feels something like a diving bell slowly lowering itself into the pit of his stomach. “Out of seventy lawyers here, I’ve brought in five percent of this firm’s business last year. Including the Anderson real estate group, ABT cable systems, and Bob Berger over at BBH. Hakeem Turner alone paid us a quarter of a million dollars to defend him in all his cases. So don’t tell me who I can represent.”
“Most of the clients you just mentioned probably would’ve come over because of the firm’s reputation before you arrived.” Todd comes back to his seat as if he’s rushing the net to return a backhand. “And they’d probably stay with us if you decided to leave.”
“You want to put that theory to the test?” Jake says, loosening up his shoulders like he’s getting ready for a brawl.
Mike Sayon, his jacket almost completely covered in broken walnut shell, looks at Charlie Dorian. Charlie looks at Todd. Todd looks back at Mike with a smile like a tight belt on a fat man’s waist. And all at once, Jake realizes he’s never felt comfortable around these men. For ten years, he’s been laughing at their vaguely anti-Semitic jokes. Emulating their pretentious faux-English style of dressing with the Savile Row shirts and the bench-made shoes. Enduring their loud, frustrated wives at those endless, boring $500-a-plate charity balls to support the historic preservation of some damp footpath in New Canaan, Connecticut. Putting up with their practice of billing some destitute old widow seven or eight times what she owes to settle her late husband’s estate while some tax-evading corporate client haggles over every cup of coffee and phone call on the expense account.
And doing all of it fourteen to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, while his son was growing up and his wife was struggling to raise the boy and start a career of her own.
The voice in Jake’s head says quietly but firmly: No more.
But before he can say the words out loud, the intercom box on the table buzzes.
“Mr. Schiff,” says a secretary’s voice. “Your wife is on line four. She says a strange man has been following her and she needs to speak to you immediately.”
Jake looks up at Todd and nods. “To be continued.”
“My breath is bated,” says Todd.
8
Three hours earlier.
A playground on the corner of Seventy-seventh Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Broken pieces of sun in the tree branches. A boy and a girl on a seesaw. A redheaded child in denim overalls climbing a pyramid of logs. John G. stands behind the brick bathroom house, smoking crack from a glass pipette. The rock goes snap, crackle, pop in the bowl and a dragon of smoke rises toward the sky.
The past is the present and the present is the past.
He’s
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