CHAPTER 15
In a perfect world I would have not only driven Claudia home but also made her a cup of tea, chatting with her until she’d drunk it and drifted off to sleep. Having spent thirty-six hours at the hospital before being dragged in front of the M8cM panel, my roommate was starting to resemble an ambulatory corpse. But today of all days I was acutely aware of the world’s imperfections, and I had to settle for putting Claudia in a cab and sending her back to Hyde Park by herself.
As we were walking out of Joan’s office her receptionist handed me a message from Cheryl. It said that Gabriel Hurt was returning to the West Coast earlier than expected. The only time he was now available to meet with Delirium was two o’clock at the Four Seasons. I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to two. I hoped that the words your secretary will coordinate written on the message pad meant that Cheryl had managed to get in touch with Millman and that he and Bill Delius’s graduate student were on their way.
As I watched Cheryl’s taxi disappear from view I realized that I had ten minutes and the Four Seasons was nine blocks away. I suddenly felt exhausted, as if I’d lived half a dozen lifetimes since I’d stood beside my mother on the courthouse steps that morning. As I stepped out into the street to flag down another cab I tried to remind myself that this was what I lived for.
I had the driver drop me at the corner of Walton and Michigan. The entrance to the hotel is on Walton, but the street is one-way the wrong direction. At this time of day it could easily take ten minutes to just make it around the block. On foot, I made it to the Four Seasons breathless, but with two minutes to spare.
The actual lobby of the Four Seasons is on the fifth floor of the Magnificent Mile building. All that greeted guests on the street level was a smallish marble foyer with a security desk and a bellman’s station. It was here that I found Millman pacing like an irritated jungle cat. Doing his best to stay out of his way was a scraggly youth with dirty blond hair pulled into a scrawny ponytail and what I’m sure he hoped passed for a goatee on his chin. Fie was dressed in a pair of enormous blue jeans, so wide they might have been wings, a rumpled plaid shirt, and a pair of much-worn black Converse high-tops.
I’m not normally the sort of person who likes to touch people in the course of conversation. I was raised believing that unless you’re engaged to be married, a handshake is more than enough. But as soon as I spotted Millman, I cast repressed Waspdom to the winds and put my arm around his shoulder. The gesture was meant to reassure, but I was the one who was relieved when all I smelled were Altoids on his breath. Delius’s computer prodigy might look like a dopey skateboard delinquent, but at least he hadn’t driven Millman to drink. It was much too early to tell what effect he would end up having on me.
Millman introduced us. The young man’s name was Floyd Wiznewski, and he looked so nervous that you’d think he was about to meet God, or the Lord High Executioner, or both. I put my arm around him, too.
“Listen,” I said, as Millman pushed the button to summon the elevator. “Gabriel Hurt is a man just like anybody else. He chews his food. He gets wet when it rains. Don’t let him scare you.”
I looked at Floyd to see how he was taking this. He looked like he’d just swallowed a mouse.
The elevator stopped, and we stepped out into the lobby, opulent by any standards but all the more incongruous for being on the fifth floor. I didn’t know anything about Floyd Wiznewski, but judging from his expression, I guessed he’d never been inside a four-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel before. I sent Millman to the desk to have them call up to Hurt’s suite and did my best to keep Floyd from gaping.
“I went to see Bill Delius this morning,” I said, walking Floyd slowly past the fountain and the indoor plantings of orchids toward the bank of elevators that whisked people silently between the fifth floor and the penthouse.
“How’s he doing?” Floyd asked. Either he had some kind of weird speech impediment or all the moisture in his mouth had disappeared from nervousness.
“He seemed much better than the last time I saw him,” I said truthfully, neglecting to add that the last time I’d seen him, he’d been clinically dead. “He was so relieved when I told him that you were going to be meeting with the Icon people,” I continued, passing with a tiny blip of guilt into the realm of pure invention. “He told me that you’d been with him right from VI,” I said, hoping I was getting the jargon right, “and that nobody understood how he coded things better than you did.”
Floyd seemed to relax a little, or at the very least he seemed to be breathing.
“I assume you’ve seen Star Wars,” I ventured, knowing it was like asking a priest whether he’d ever heard of a book called the Bible. “Then maybe you’ll remember that throughout the whole movie Luke Sky-walker never seemed nervous. Now I’m sure that there are some George Lucas fans out there who’ll tell you that it was because of the Force, that he knew what his destiny was and so he wasn’t afraid. But I actually think the explanation was simpler than that.”
“Of course it was the Force,” protested Floyd, indignation overriding his nervousness. “That was the whole point.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe it was that Luke knew from the first time that he saw the message from Princess Leia that the Rebel Alliance was no match for the Death Star. It was hopeless. It was the classic David-versus-Goliath situation. He wasn’t afraid, because he had absolutely nothing to lose.
“Now I’m just a lawyer, not a Jedi master. I can’t tell whether it’s our destiny to make a deal with Icon and go on to greatness. But what I can tell with complete certainty, is that, at this point in time, we have absolutely nothing to lose by trying.”
A butler was summoned to the hotel lobby; he had a special key to the elevator that would allow it to take us up to the penthouse. Millman muttered something about feeling like he was in a James Bond movie, but when the doors opened, we stepped over the threshold of what looked like a very well appointed college dormitory on the night before exams. Icon had apparently taken the entire floor. Kids no older than Floyd, and some who looked younger, padded around in their stocking feet, talking on cell phones and babbling about bugs and beta versions.
An acerbic-looking young man in a custom-made suit was waiting to receive us. I smothered my instinct to introduce myself and shake his hand. In Silicon Valley the rules of corporate behavior are the inverse of those in the rest of the universe. In the computer world, formality is the exception, and power rests with the least well dressed person in the room.
We were escorted into the penthouse living room, which looked like a room in my parents’ house but with an even more spectacular view. With the city spread out in one direction and the lake in the other, it was easy to be distracted from the chaos going on all around us. Several people I recognized from the transaction team lounged around the room, either pecking at their laptops or with their cell phones glued to their ears. The wreckage of lunch was strewn over the coffee table. I eyed the cold shrimp as I scanned the room for signs of Gabriel Hurt. I spotted him in a distant corner of the room playing pinball.
We waited, awkward and ignored, in the center of the room. I thought about Gerald Packman and his chess clock and realized that in his own way Hurt was every bit as controlling.
“Well, hi there!” he announced genially once he’d finished his game and crossed the room to join us. “I’m trying to get back up to my old college score, but I must be getting old or something.” We all laughed dutifully. “Where’s Bill?” demanded Hurt.
“He wishes he could be here, believe me,” I answered quickly. “Unfortunately he’s still in the hospital. He’s sent you Floyd Wiznewski in his place. Floyd’s been working with Delius on the project from the very beginning.”
“Pleased to meet you, Floyd,” said Hurt, keeping his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. He turned to the dark-suited man who’d met us at the elevator. “Darren, will you please take Mr. Millman to review the numbers with the guys fro
m banking?”
The seeds of an objection formed themselves in my mind, but I deliberately ignored them. Icon held all the cards and called all the shots.
“Oh, good, there’s Mindy!” exclaimed Hurt. “Mindy, this is Kate Millholland. She’s the one who sent me the game.”
“Cool,” said Mindy, an athletic young woman whose white jeans and white T-shirt made her look like some sort of hip private nurse.
“Mindy, will you take Kate into the dining room and treat her to some of your famous Reiki?”
“No, thank you,” I answered, thinking that I was being offered something to eat.”
“No, no, I insist,” said Hurt. “Consider it a thank-you for the game. Besides, you look like you could use it.” Mindy gave me the same beatific smile you see on the Moonies who accost you at the airport and invited me to follow her into the dining room.
“Just take your shoes off and lie down on the table,” she said, pulling the curtains and dimming the lights. The table was covered with bed sheets and there was some kind of incense burning in little brass pots on top of the Sheraton sideboard.
“Excuse me?” I inquired with as much poise as I could muster, which frankly wasn’t much.
“Don’t worry,” replied Mindy. “I’m only going to do your hands, feet, and head. There’s no need to get undressed.”
“And what exactly are you going to do to my hands, feet, and head?”
“Didn’t Gabe tell you?” she asked, tipping her head back and laughing. “I’m his personal masseuse.”
I considered for a moment. Then I sighed and hoisted myself up onto the table. In less than a minute, I found myself listening to Indian sitar music while Mindy pressed the various spots on my feet that she assured me were connected to my internal organs. There was also something about trying to visualize different colors that I didn’t quite follow. Not that I was actually paying any attention. All I could do was keep thinking to myself that they didn’t do this kind of thing in any other business.
By the time I left the Four Seasons, I felt much better, though I couldn’t decide whether it was because Mindy had succeeded in releasing my toxins or because I had the draft copy of a deal term sheet in my hand. As the doorman held the door of the cab open for Millman and Wiznewski, who were heading to Morton’s to celebrate, I realized that I hadn’t even told Floyd that because Delius had given him shares in Delirium in lieu of a raise the past two years, he was about to become a millionaire. As they pulled away from the curb I decided it was okay to save it. He was already walking on air from having beaten Gabriel Hurt at pinball.
From elation to desperation in under three blocks— anyone who didn’t like the ride should avoid transaction work. As I crossed Michigan at Chicago Avenue to get back to my car, something at the news kiosk caught my eye. From the front page of the afternoon’s Sun-Times, a picture of my mother and me looked back at me. The headline was big enough to read from the corner: SOCIALITES BATTLE HOSPITAL GIANT. I could hardly wait to hear what Skip Tillman was going to say about this latest public service announcement for Callahan Ross from the women Millholland. I figured it might not be a bad time to start thinking about a new job—in Australia.
A quick phone call to Cheryl confirmed my worst fears. Not only was Tillman beating the drums for me, but my mother was on the warpath. According to Cheryl she was calling every couple of minutes. From what my secretary told me, it sounded like she was in the middle of a full-fledged nervous breakdown.
Driving back to the office, I tried to set that particular anxiety aside and called Jeff Tannenbaum with the good news about Icon. I felt entitled to have someone share in my sense of victory, if only for as long as it took for me to drive back into the Loop. Besides, there was a ton of document preparation that needed to be done and Tannenbaum was the one who was going to get stuck doing it.
By the time I got upstairs to my office, Cheryl was looking a bit shaken. My mother, the undisputed world champion of underling abuse, had clearly gotten to her. I asked her to bring me a cup of coffee and pulled out my emergency stash of M&M’s as I settled down to wait for my mother to call.
It didn’t take long. Cheryl hadn’t exaggerated when she’d reported that my mother was on a three-minute schedule. But, if anything, Cheryl had played down the thermonuclear intensity of her anger. Perhaps she was afraid if I knew the kind of tantrum my mother was having, I wouldn’t have come back to the office at all.
“Where have you been?” snapped Mother. “I’ve been trying to reach you for almost an hour.”
“I was out of the office on another matter,” I replied matter-of-factly. “Why have you been trying to reach me? Has something happened?”
“Has something happened?” she echoed sarcastically. “Has something happened? Not unless you count my complete and utter public mortification as ‘something.’ „
“Why don’t you just tell me what happened,” I suggested as I emptied the bag of M&M’s on top of my desk and began sorting them by color.
“I was in the middle of doing my live interview with CNN. We were all set up in a lovely private dining room at the Ritz-Carlton, and I was talking to that very pretty girl, Suzanne or LuAnne or something like that, you know, the one with the dark hair and those startling periwinkle eyes? Well, it was all going along quite well...”
“Just tell me what happened.”
“This horrible little man barged in and right on camera he thrust this nasty wad of papers into my hand.”
“What kind of papers?”
“Legal papers. It turns out he was some kind of process server,” she declared, sounding aghast. “I’ve been sued by HCC on national TV!”
I told myself that I should have seen it coming. If I’d been in HCC’s place, it was exactly what I would have done—gone after my mother with both barrels for violating the confidentiality agreement. However, even I had to admit that suing her for $540 million in damages for derailing the company’s negotiations with the archdiocese was a truly sharklike touch. Naturally my mother, who’d managed to live her entire life blissfully unaware of the evil that lawyers do to each other, was beside herself. Even so, she couldn’t say I didn’t warn her.
I decided that the time had come for us to start playing hardball. I buzzed Cheryl. I told her to call Abelman & Associates and set up a meeting with whichever senior investigator had time to see me right away. I figured I was entitled to as much in my role as would-be girlfriend.
In spite of my distress, or perhaps because of it, I felt a sense of relief when a few minutes later I pushed through the revolving doors of the Monadnock Building. The Monadnock was a historic treasure. Once slated for the wrecking ball, the lovingly restored Victorian masterpiece was now the unofficial home of Chicago’s defense bar. On any given afternoon celebrity defense lawyers and their equally well-known clients could be seen crossing the mosaic floor of the lobby on their way to see the judge.
I took the wrought-iron staircase up to the second floor and made my way down the narrow corridor to the smoked glass door whose Sam Spade lettering indicated that I’d reached the offices of Abelman & Associates. The small waiting room was empty, as usual. The sensitive nature of Elliott’s business made it awkward for his clients to have to wait. I gave my name to the receptionist, a motherly woman in her fifties who I remember Elliott had said was a retired matron from the county jail. She beamed at me knowingly and ushered me back to Elliott’s office, where the boss himself stood unexpectedly there to greet me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, giving me a long hug and then stepping back to hold me at arm’s length long enough to give me an inquiring look.
“That depends on how you define okay,” I said. “I’ve got all my teeth and my limbs are still attached, so I guess that’s something. However, my love life is not progressing nearly as smoothly as I’d hoped, and several other parts of my life seem to be bumpy, as well.”
Elliott bent his head and kissed me slowly, making a very satisfactory effort t
o remedy my first complaint. It was lovely while it lasted—all six seconds of it—until a young woman barged in with a stack of files and bumbled out again, embarrassed and stammering out apologies.
“We don’t seem to be able to catch a break,” sighed Elliott as we pulled apart and drifted to our respective places. His desk was an antique deal table of well-worn oak with an old-fashioned wooden office chair to go along with it. Behind him was an antique telescope in perfect working condition, a gift from a grateful client.
“So what are you doing back in town?” I asked. “Did you get a summary judgment?”
“No. The judge is giving her instructions to the jury this afternoon, but Carlson thinks that the earliest we’ll get a verdict is tomorrow afternoon. I was worried because I jobbed out that background investigation you needed on Cypress Computer, that outfit out of Seattle, and I wanted to check in and see how things are going. I know how important this computer thing is to you.”
“As it turns out we don’t need the information anymore,” I said. “I’m sorry. The good news is we were able to make a deal without it. The even better news is that my client will be able to pay whatever bill you send them.”
“That good?”
“That good. But I’m still sorry you made the trip for nothing.”
“I had to come back anyway to get some work started for a new client. As soon as I finish up, I’ll be heading back to Springfield to help keep the vigil.”
Never having been a trial lawyer, I’ve never had to endure the suspended animation of waiting out the verdict. However, I’d heard enough from other people to understand the reasons the legal team needed to suffer through it together. For everyone who’d worked on the trial, the agony of waiting rendered even the simplest of tasks beyond their attention and made them unfit to be with normal people. I imagined them filling in the hours back at the Ramada pacing the halls and talking over the evidence and arguments of the trial. Suddenly I felt ashamed for barging over like a spoiled child and demanding my share of Elliott’s attention.
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