by Alan Hruska
“On the contrary,” Braddock says. “I think my coming to your office raises your status tremendously.”
“Which, no doubt, will be reflected in your bill.”
Braddock smiles. “I leave billing to younger partners.”
“Speaking of whom…”
“Ah,” says Braddock. “You’ve heard about Mac’s accident.”
“Everyone’s heard about Mac’s… accident. I simply wanted to confirm that you, personally, would take charge of the lawsuit.”
“I’ve always been in charge of the lawsuit.”
“I think you know what I mean.”
“I’ll oversee the case,” Braddock says.
“We want you to try the case, Ben.”
Braddock waves his hand at this. “That’s months in the future.”
The door opens to admit the one man in the company having the rank to walk in on this meeting. “Judge Braddock,” he says. “Brett Creighton. Good to see you again.” They shake hands, and Creighton eases his frame into one of the unoccupied wing chairs.
“You two know each other, then?” says Rand.
“We frequent the same charity affairs,” Braddock says. “Dragged by our respective spouses. Or do you go willingly?”
“Depends,” says Creighton with a smile.
“I asked Brett to join us, Ben. As a director and future CEO of the company, he is one of your clients.”
“Delighted,” Braddock says.
Creighton pulls his chair in closer. “Marcus and I have talked at length about the importance of this case, not only to the well-being of our company, but to its viability. And I don’t mean simply winning the case sometime in the future. I mean shoring up the market appraisal of our future, giving the shareholders who have stayed with the company—who have not sold out—the confidence that we are doing everything possible to win. And while I’m not a trial lawyer, Ben—I’m a simple accountant—I do realize the importance of appearance in a case like this.”
“Appearance?” says Braddock, chewing on the word, as if unfamiliar with the concept.
“Marius… Marius Shilling… has suggested the possibility that you might be thinking of turning this trial over to a junior associate.”
Braddock looks at Creighton without expression.
“Apart from the impact such a move would have on the judge—” Creighton interrupts himself. “We simply want to make sure that you can free the time from your crowded schedule to devote yourself to this case. That’s not unreasonable, Ben. For litigation of this magnitude, we have the right to expect the top counsel in your firm, not an inexperienced associate. You see my point?”
“I do,” says Braddock, getting up. “And I will lavish upon it all the attention it deserves.”
“What about an assurance?” Rand snaps.
“Marcus. When I head out this door, I will endeavor to walk the eight or nine blocks to my office. I can give you no assurance that I will arrive there safely or at all. What I can assure you of is that my firm is populated by the best and smartest trial lawyers in this city—and, most probably, the country. Collectively, we will give you the best defense that money can buy. So you consider whether you want that. Okay?” he says, grinning once out the door.
Alec at home, waiting for the phone to ring, leaps when it finally does.
“Harvey?”
“Yessir.”
“Whatta you got?”
“What you asked for. Whatta you expect?”
“So let me have it.”
Harvey lets out a troubled grunt. “I gotta tell ya. I put a tail on her this afternoon. Saw her take her kid to the playground with a bodyguard. She did not look unhappy, Alec. I’m not sure you wanna be messing with this. And as far as the case goes, she’s off limits now. We can’t trust her. Thankfully, we’ve still got the other witness, Carl Raffon.”
“What do you mean, she didn’t look unhappy?”
“What I said. Playing with her kid, laughing.”
“She’s putting it on for the kid.”
“You think that, fine. I was there. You weren’t. Which is where you should stay. Away from her.”
“You’re thinking about the case.”
“Of course I’m thinking about the case.”
“This doesn’t have much to do with the case,” Alec says.
“Well, that’s where your head should be, boy. Braddock was summoned today to U.S. Safety. I gather he refused to commit to try the case personally. And he didn’t rule out the possibility he might turn it over to you.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“To me?” Alec says. “Not one of the other partners?
“If we have a list of happiest clients…” Harvey begins.
“Doesn’t include Gen. Rand.”
“Got that right.”
FIFTY-ONE
Alec arrives at his office at eight fifteen in the morning, which is early for lawyers who work late. Joni, in greeting, starts by reading a message that’s already a half-hour old. “Judge Braddock—”
“I know,” says Alec. “Don’t even stop at the men’s room.”
She shrugs apologetically.
Braddock is pacing as Alec walks in. “You know what you lack?”
Alec sits on the sofa. “We’ve been through this. A reputation.”
“So what’s taking you so long?”
“Well, there was that price-fixing case—”
“Yesterday’s news. Generally, you need three hits. Three big cases with headlines before anyone takes you seriously.”
“Then I’ve got a ways to go.”
“Fortunately, from your standpoint, there’s an exception to the general rule. It’s the mega-case. Immediate worldwide attention. Front page every day. Lots of photographs. Television news clips. Interviews. You getting all this? Is it sinking in?”
“As applied to me?”
“There someone else here?”
“Just you and me,” Alec says.
“That’s what I thought. And you know what’s on my trial calendar now?”
“Your schedule’s impossible?”
“So how the fucking hell am I supposed to try your goddamn diesel oil case? You think of that? You and that goddamn lush you work for? And every other partner here is in the same position. Too damn busy to deal with what we had before to take on Macalister’s slush pile now.”
Alec knows it’s an act, can see where it’s going thanks to Harvey’s warning and still doesn’t believe it.
Braddock descends wearily to his desk chair. “I never intended to try that case. It’s either Mac from his hospital bed—or you.”
Alec takes a deep breath. “The U.S. Safety case,” he says, as if repeating a proposition too incredible to be taken as true. “Me.”
“There something about this you’re failing to grasp?”
“The client sitting still for it, for one. How’d you pull that off?”
“I haven’t,” says Braddock. “That you’re going to have to achieve for yourself.”
He shoves at Alec across the desk a batch of court pleadings. “This case. Definition of mega. Don’t fuck it up!”
FIFTY-TWO
Phil’s apartment spans the entirety of the tenth floor in a new high-rise condominium on Central Park West. The fashionable prewar co-ops on the Upper East Side wouldn’t seriously consider him. Knowing that, Phil didn’t bother to apply. Under condominium rules, however, no board approval was necessary, and in any event would not have been a problem. On the contrary, the building he bought into was happy to have him. Their problems, at the time, were with unions. And, upon the closing of the deal on Phil’s apartment, those problems suddenly disappeared.
Phil breakfasts late in a small sun room off the kitchen offering a view of the park. The doorman, a slow-witted young man named Benny Forcaccio, rings up from downstairs. Benny is a cousin of Joey Forcaccio’s, who is the opposite of slow-witted and a rising star in Phil’s firmament. Benny owes his job to Phil
and attaches great significance to any request Phil makes, however small. The present office is simply to announce the arrival of Carrie’s father, Conner Madigan, which Benny does with the solemnity appropriate to a convocation.
Phil has summoned Conner after not having laid eyes on him for almost a year. And he notices—it’s unmistakable from the unsteadiness of the smile, the flabbiness of the face—that the interval has been rocky for Mr. Madigan.
“Have a seat, Conner,” Phil says without further greeting.
“Good to see you, Phil,” says Conner, doing as he’s told.
“Coffee? Breakfast?”
“Oh, no, I’m just fine.”
“Eat a big breakfast, do you? Early riser? Maybe, this hour, you’d like a bit of… sherry?”
“That’d be just grand, Phil, thank you.”
Phil goes to a wall cabinet, inspects some bottles on the shelf. “Or something stronger, perhaps?”
“Wouldn’t mind,” sings out Conner.
“A bit of the Irish, is it?”
Conner stammers, “It’s a little early, but… a bit of the Irish? Couldn’t say no to that, couldn’t.”
Phil brings a double shot of the drink to the table.
“Thank you,” Conner says, raising his glass. With eyes rolling to the ceiling, he sips primly.
“My pleasure, sir.” Phil butters a wedge of toast, takes a bite of it. “Asked you to come, Conner, because of your daughter.”
“Carrie? She a problem?”
Phil grins. “It’s funny. Most parents would say, ‘Is she all right?’”
“Well, I know she’s all right. All cleaned up now. After five, six weeks in that rehab.”
“So you’re current?”
“Of course I’m current. I’m her dad.”
“Thing is, Conner, I don’t like her attitude. For instance, she’s been cheating on me.”
“No!”
“’Fraid so.”
“Oh, Jeez!” he says.
“Yeah. Pretty flagrant. Some kid, a young lawyer. She moved in with him.”
“Jeez, I didn’t know, Phil.”
“She’s back here now.”
“So that’s okay, then?”
“Hardly. She doesn’t want to be here.”
“I’m so sorry, Phil. I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, for one thing, sorry’s not going to cut it.”
“I’d do anything to help, Phil. You know that. Let me have a chat with her.”
“A chat, you say. You think that might help? Somehow, Conner, I don’t think you do. That’s just sop for me, right?”
“Tell me what to do, Phil, I’ll do it.”
“You’re not drinking, Conner?”
He reconsiders his glass. Head back, he takes a belt.
“The point is,” Phil says, “there’s nothing you can do. It’s I who must do something. To you, I think.”
Conner’s eyes widen.
Phil laughs. “Heady. This feeling I can do anything I want… to you, to your daughter. You know, I still beat her on occasion. Tie her down, lash her with a belt.”
“I gotta go, Phil.”
“I don’t think so, old man.”
Conner, looking sick, turns his head in the direction of the bottle.
“Like another?” Phil asks, rising and plucking Conner’s glass en route. “The beating doesn’t help. Doesn’t change her basic behavior.” He fills the glass to the brim, then plunks it down in front of Conner, spilling some on the tablecloth. Then Phil lowers himself into his chair, observing the now terrorized lawyer. “So I’ve decided on something different.” Phil smiles, throws his head back and shouts toward the open door, “Vito! Get the fuck in here!”
In seconds, the henchman appears. “Vito, you know Conner Madigan?”
“Sure,” Vito says.
“Ask my wife to join us, will you. Tell her her dad’s here.”
“Sure, boss,” Vito says and leaves.
Phil pours some coffee, gives Conner another smile. In a few moments, Carrie and Vito come into the room. She’s still in her bathrobe. Her face is bruised. “What the hell’re you doing here?” she says to her father.
Conner shrugs, too frightened at this point to say anything.
“Here’s the thing, sweetheart,” says Phil. “This house isn’t sweet. It’s a drag to come home here. I think it’s you. So I asked myself, what haven’t I tried? And somehow that makes me think: this old sot, how many blows to the head could he take and survive? I don’t know if you give a shit, but we can find out, and in any event it’s an interesting question.”
FIFTY-THREE
Alec stands on the Avenue of the Americas, having just emerged from the subway. He’s hatless, feels the wind whip his face and hair, but he’s not quite ready to cross the street. There, occupying half a city block, rears a new glass tower of forty-two stories built as a monument to the power of Telemarch News—and to its founder and chief executive, Jocko Rush. When Alec enters that building, his life will unalterably change. Either of two possibilities, success or failure, will play out on a worldwide stage. There’s nothing in between, and there’ll be no escaping the limelight. He wonders how many novitiates in any profession are given such a conspicuous rite of passage. The sensation in his gut is a mixture of presentiment and dread.
Lawyers would kill for the chance Ben Braddock had just handed him. To Alec the blessing is mixed. Before leaving the office, he calls Harvey.
“There it is, boy,” Harvey said. “Your test. Race for the roses. Good timing. Should take your mind off the other thing. And prevent you from acting suicidally.”
“You’ll keep the watch?”
“What do you think?” Harvey said dourly, having been asked this too many times.
“At the first sign of trouble—”
“Yes?”
“We’ll go in.”
“And do what?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Oh good,” said Harvey. “Had me worried.”
For the general counsel of a company the size of Telemarch News, Bill Templeton has a relatively small, spare office. Danish modern desk and credenza. No files, no books, no clutter. Suits him, Alec thinks.
They’ve worked together before: the Milwaukee libel case, other defamation suits; and Alec has often sat in for Bill to read copy before putting an issue of one of the magazines to bed. Alec wonders how it became his lot to become involved with so many addicts. Templeton is what Macalister calls a “dry drunk”—an alcoholic whose brute power of will crushes the drink out of each day, but not the desire. His fingers still stretch with a tremor. His fleshy face always looks as if powdered after a raw shave. He smokes Lucky Strikes, two packs a day. He speaks in whispers delivered staccato. He makes huge decisions, daily and fast.
Telemarch runs six TV stations and publishes twelve magazines, half on a weekly basis. At any given time, more than one hundred libel actions pend against it, and it has never lost or settled any. Braddock, Macalister, and other Kendall, Blake partners have either won such cases or forced the claimants to capitulate. But these were cases made easy because, as each article had gone to press, Bill Templeton had made the right decisions about what could and could not be published.
The man rarely smiles, and greets Alec without doing so. “What do you know about Leland Franks?”
“What’s been in the news,” Alec says, taking a seat. “He purports to have the ‘as told to’ autobiography of Spike Ikuda—supposedly ‘told to’ Franks by Ikuda himself.”
“And what do you know about Ikuda?”
Alec shrugs. “Again, news accounts. Megalomaniac. Recluse. Creator of—what do the Japanese call it?—a zaibatsu. Electronics companies, media giants like yours, hotel chains.” Alec pauses, weighs his words. “Jocko Rush’s main competitor.”
Templeton doesn’t blink. “Ikuda hasn’t made a move yet, but Franks and Franks’ publisher have just sued us for an injunction.”
�
�To stop what?” Alec asks with some surprise.
“Our news magazine—”
“World Week?”
“Right, our hard news magazine. Saturday night—tomorrow—we’re printing an article exposing the Franks manuscript as a fraud. It’ll be on the newsstands Monday morning.”
“I thought you were serializing the manuscript in Flash?”
Templeton finally breaks a smile. A small one. “We made that deal. Provisionally. To get, shall we say, closer to the situation. The catch was, we could walk away if the manuscript proved phony.”
“And you now think it is.”
“We know it is. We’ve just found what Franks copied it from. A bio written by a guy named Tanaka who actually knows the facts. He worked for Ikuda for thirty years—helped build the empire—and then the two had a spat. Apparently, Tanaka offered the manuscript to a couple of publishers, which is probably how Franks got it—it’s how we did—but then Tanaka thought better about publishing and pulled it back. Franks added a lot—publically known stuff—but the Tanaka material is what gives it enough authenticity to let Franks palm it off as Ikuda’s own work. Half the people in the world seem to believe that. We’re doing a side-by-side. Print passages of the Tanaka manuscript alongside Franks’ so-called autobiography. That should be the end for Mr. Franks.”
“Why doesn’t Ikuda disclaim it?”
“He issued a press release doing just that.”
“And?”
“Until he says so in person, few will believe it.”
“And he won’t surface.”
“Which is what Franks was gambling on, until we came along.”
“Great story.”
“We like it,” says Templeton, rising. “So I assume you know how to defeat a claim for an injunction?”
“Sure,” Alec says.
“Good. There’s an executive committee meeting going on now down the hall. Jocko’s office. I’ll bring you in. You’ll tell ’em how you’d do that.”
“This minute?”
“Little less, actually,” Templeton says, consulting his watch. “Shall we go? It’s the other side of the building. The one with the view.”
Alec’s walking down the hall listening to Templeton, all the while trying not to panic, putting thoughts together on the fly, focusing on the timing, the judge, the possibilities of appeal. Too quickly there’s the door. Then they’re in, with no signs of their being noticed. An elongated table, a gaggle of suits, everyone talking, smoke billowing from ashtrays and lungs.
