by Alan Hruska
Alec says, “But you did.”
“Finally,” Jack says. “What happened was so extreme, it gave us grounds for mandamus. Obviously, mandamus is a disfavored writ. Almost never granted. It requires the Court of Appeals to make a public spectacle, as it were, of a lower-court jurist. Call him out for outrageous behavior. We filed such a petition, and the Court of Appeals granted it. The Court’s opinion excoriated Eustace Ettinger and made him stop the absurd practice, but otherwise you’d never know he even read it. Same sort of outlandish conduct goes on, except now he’s actually attending the trial, and it’s beginning to move. While the travesty was happening, we’d slimmed down the team. Now it’s got to be ramped up. Big time. And immediately.”
Alec says, “Which brings us to the reason for this meeting.” He stands as Stamper takes a seat.
Braddock says, “You need more help too?”
“You know I do, Judge.”
“Yeah, I know, but these people don’t. Make it good. It’s not a friendly audience.”
It wasn’t. They knew what was coming. Litigation partners and associates were already working hundreds of hours more per year than other lawyers in the firm. To put additional manpower on the jobs that had to be done would result in a raid on the associates of the other departments—corporate, trusts and estates, and tax—and maybe even on the partners themselves. Alec’s transaction file project, for example, could be done by a team of corporate associates, headed up by a corporate partner. Projects in the computer case could also be done by corporate lawyers, or even trusts and estates or tax lawyers. No lawyer in any such field would want such an assignment. It would sidetrack his own career. And who the hell wants to work that hard anyway?
Alec lays out the situation in the Allis-Benoit litigation: the Mid-Atlantic Power & Light case already being prosecuted, the threatened government criminal action, and the almost certain suits by 125 public utilities waiting in the wings under the aegis of a standstill agreement that would end, either if the Mid-Atlantic case did or the government brought one of its own. “We have one hope to stave off massive losses and bankruptcy for this client,” he says. “We have to find out what actually went on in more than a hundred extremely complicated heavy-electrical-equipment sales transactions—which means a lot more than merely analyzing the documents. Price cuts on these deals were under the table. They had to be, because part of the announced price policy was to open the company’s books to all customers. So we have to talk to the salespeople involved. And while they’ll be instructed by management to open up to us, they won’t want to. They probably lied plenty to sales managers and customers about what other customers got, and among the last people they’ll want to tell otherwise is us.”
Randall Conn, head of the corporate group, says, “I know Donald Strand, the Mid-Atlantic CEO. I play golf with him. Has anyone approached him about settlement?”
“Two problems,” Alec says. “One, I hear he’s impossible to deal with.”
“He’s tough. He’s the head of a power company. But he’s also damn smart.”
“Doesn’t help us now, because of the second problem. He thinks he can’t lose. There’s only one way to show him otherwise.”
“Your transaction file project.”
“’Fraid so.”
Ben Braddock says, “Tell them about the new judge you got.”
“Hal Richardson,” Alec says. “Some of you may know Mark Porter. He recused himself, and Hal was appointed.”
“I know Mark,” says Ted Wright, head of Trusts and Estates. “Classmate of mine at Harvard. “Why’d he step down?”
“Honest guy,” Alec says. “Predisposed against us, and admitted it.”
“Just like that?”
Frank Macalister breaks in. “Nothing in litigation is just like that. Our young friend here led him carefully into the light. The lesson was brilliant and painless. But now we have a judge in Hal Richardson who will be open to our defense. If we can prove it. Which means, if this project Alec’s proposing gets done.”
“We know Hal Richardson pretty well,” Alec says. “He represented Pharmex in that case we won years ago for our client, Biogen. Price-fixing case with issues very similar to those in the Allis-Benoit case. Hal’d be moved by the facts we think this project can establish.”
No one says anything for almost a minute. Finally, Ted Wright raises his hand. “I doubt that I’m qualified to help much on your project, Alec, but if Jack can find some financial or market analysis I can do on the weekends, you’ve got my Saturdays and Sundays. And, of course, nights when needed.”
Not exactly the start of a bandwagon, but others then volunteer, no one happily—how could they be? “You understand,” says Randall Conn, looking at both Alec and Jack. “We all have a choice coming out of law school: go for litigation or lead the less exciting, less glamorous life of a corporate lawyer. Many of us chose the latter, precisely because we don’t want the crazy hours you people put in. And we each head large practices. Now you’re asking us not only to work as hard as you—to do something we aren’t even trained for—but to work, in effect, as your senior associates. It’s not a job brimming with rewards.”
“What about saving the firm?” Braddock snaps. “Because if we lose these two cases, there’s not going to be much left of your cushy lives.”
The assemblage chooses to treat that with quiet laughter and as a signal the meeting has been adjourned. As they file out, Braddock holds Alec’s arm and leads him to the other end of the room. “You just bet the firm,” he says. “I hope you realize that.”
“I bet the firm?” Alec says.
“You will get what you want, Alec. Because everyone here will do what they have to do, and do it damn well. But there’ll be a price. My guess—most of those guys are sick of hearing about how much harder you’re working. And I doubt they’ll forgive you for dragooning them into your wars.”
“You see an alternative?”
“No,” Braddock says. “But I don’t think even you know how bad it is. You talk about 125 claimants waiting in the wings. Jack’s got ten times that. We let his crazy judge issue a decision, we’ll get a thousand new cases coming down on our heads. Every customer of U.S. Computer. Every competitor, domestic and foreign. And they won’t just go away if we win the government case on appeal.”
“And in my case,” Alec says, “it’s not just the utilities. It’s—”
Braddock breaks in impatiently. “We can’t let Jack’s case go to judgment. We can’t let your case even go to trial.”
Alec laughs. “Yeah, what I’ve been saying.”
“Okay,” Braddock says, slumping into a chair. “No pressure. No pressure on you at all. You simply have to figure out a way to make both cases disappear, stop the other thousand or so claimants from suing, keep both clients alive, save the jobs of several hundred thousand people and your own law firm. And make all that happen almost immediately. You can do that?”
“You say both cases?”
“Yeah,” Braddock says. “Jack’s great. You need smash-mouth litigation, Jack’s your man.”
“He’s in charge of that case.”
“And will stay in charge.”
“But I’m somehow supposed to make it go away.”
“I just said.”
“Right.”
“So you up to that?”
“Piece of cake,” Alec says, wishing he meant it.
“Let me tell you something,” Braddock says, then takes a moment to reflect. “You think I’ve just handed you an impossible job. There’s no such thing. Not for a partner of this firm. Because you walk into a room—any room, anywhere—courtroom, statehouse, White House—you are already credentialed. The test here is the highest in the world. Everyone knows it. And when you pass it, you have access to anyone you need. No exceptions. Anyone. So you have, for all practical purposes, unlimited credit. To do what others would regard as impossible. All you’ve got to do is perform.” He looks at Alec for another mom
ent, as if to make sure his point has sunk in, then gets up and leaves him standing alone in the basement.
TEN
Sunday morning. Alec and Sarah go running on the reservoir track in Central Park. As a family of two, they observe few rituals, but they practice this one religiously every Sunday Alec is in New York.
When Sarah was four, Alec and her mom, Carrie Madigan, fell in love. This, according to the books Sarah was then fond of, would have been an event, not a process. “So where did it happen?” she wanted to know. Which turned out to be easy for Carrie to answer. She trotted her daughter out to one of the bridges over the bridle path that ringed the reservoir track. “It was here,” she told Sarah. Which was absolutely true, although, at the time it happened, Carrie was the only one who knew it.
When Carrie met Alec, she was estranged from her husband, Phil Anwar. Sarah has of Phil only the little she can remember and the great deal she’s been told. Although he was not unkind when, rarely, he had time for her, Sarah’s memories are mixed. She knows Phil went to Maine to kill Alec, because she was dragged along as bait to draw her mom away from the fight. She heard the gunfire while hiding under a bed. She knows Phil beat her mother, because she heard the cries and saw the wounds. And she knew Alec, from the first moment until the present day, as the kindest man in her life, one who loved her mother and Sarah too, and would protect either of them with his own life. As he already had.
And will think he has to do again, she knows, once she tells him of the Angiapellos. If there’s a problem with Alec, it’s his presumption that only he is capable of solving her problems, that she can’t cope for herself. It might have been true ten years ago, she concedes to herself, but not now. The sooner he realizes that the better.
Their routine is to enter the park at Ninety-Seventh Street, jog on the paths leading up to the track, then sprint to the first bridge and stop at the benches there for a few moments before jogging the rest of the lap. They go out just before seven in the morning, in good weather and bad. For a teenager, getting up that early on a Sunday morning takes an unusual sort of devotion to ritual. Sarah doesn’t think of it that way, however; rather, as something she likes doing with someone with whom she likes doing it.
That morning, as Alec gets up from the bench to resume their jog, Sarah says, “I’ve met someone.” She stays put on the bench and stares firmly at the ground in front of her.
“Oh?” He settles back down. “A boy?”
“He’s a basketball player,” she says, and still looks away. “You used to be an athlete, right?”
“Track team.”
“No wonder you run so fast.”
“I was a high jumper,” Alec says. “Who is this boy?”
“A boy,” she says, as if they’re all interchangeable.
“So, having raised the subject, why are you now trying to change it?”
“I’m not!” she says.
“Is he someone your age?”
“A little older.”
“A year?”
“He’s a senior.”
“That’s two years, Sarah.”
“Yeah.”
They’re both dressed in woolen sweats, caps, and gloves. The temperature is no more than thirty degrees, but a rising sun warms through it. She says, “I’ll tell you his name, but I don’t want you to freak out, okay?”
“Then you’d better tell it to me quickly.”
“Tino Angiapello.” She looks at him now.
“Ah,” he says.
“He’s adopted,” she says quickly. “He’s not really a cousin.”
“Okay.” It’s a tentative statement, not approving.
“But his adoptive uncle is Sal Angiapello.”
“The man who took over… your father’s… businesses.”
“You’re my father,” she says.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” she says. “And you know what I mean.”
“Yes.” For him, too, it’s a statement of love.
Neither now shows any sign of leaving.
Alec says, “Your meeting this boy….”
“He found me. Tino did. He came looking for me, actually.”
“He told you this?”
“Yes.”
“He tell you why?”
“I think he told me as much as he knows.”
“Which is?” Alec asks.
“His uncle asked him to do it.”
“Right,” Alec says, with a grim snap to the word. “Okay, I’m glad you told me.”
“Nothing’s happened.”
“It will,” Alec says. “Sal Angiapello wants your money.”
“Yes. That’s what Tino says. It seems he feels entitled to it.”
Now Alec does get up, and Sarah follows. “Let’s get back,” he says.
“We haven’t finished our run,” she says. “And it’s Sunday morning. What can you do? No one’s up but us.”
“I have friends in the district attorney’s office. And I have their home numbers. They’re probably building a case against Sal Angiapello now.”
“He hasn’t done anything yet. To me.”
“They can pull him in,” Alec says. “Talk to him. Scare him. And he has done something. He’s tracked you down. Sent one of his henchmen to see you.”
“Tino’s at Trinity,” Sarah points out.
“Doesn’t mean he’s not loyal to his uncle.”
“Actually, on this, I think Tino’s on my side.”
“And what?” Alec says. “We should just wait for this young man to tell us what Sal Angiapello is thinking?”
“He’s our best source!”
Alec puts his hands on her shoulders. “Look, my love. When it comes to your happiness, your health, and your safety, I’m not willing to take risks. Any risks.”
“For God’s sake,” she says, “what could they do to me? I’m one of them. I’m blood.”
“I don’t even want to think about what they could do to you. And I’m certainly not willing to trust you to an incipient mafioso who’s a teenager.” Alec lowers his hands. “How long have you known this kid?”
“I just met him. A couple of weeks ago.”
“And you’ve spent how much time with him?”
“Are you grilling me?” she demands to know.
“Sarah!”
“Not much,” she relents. “I dunno. A couple of hours.”
“And you’re willing to believe that, out of loyalty to you, he’s ready to defy his uncle, the most powerful, most vicious mobster probably in the country?”
“I’m not sure of it, Alec!” she says, suddenly raising her voice. “No, how could I be? But I know if you get the cops involved in this, I’ll never find out.”
Somehow, in that outburst, he sees so clearly her mother. Which makes him see himself with Carrie on another weekend morning on the other side of this track.
“Okay,” Alec says, going to the railing on the bridge. “You see what you’re doing? You like this boy, I can understand that. But you’re fifteen.”
“Sixteen,” she says, ambling over to get in his face.
“At any age, much less at yours—you don’t put yourself in jeopardy for a boy you hardly know.”
“You should meet him,” she says. “And you will. I’ve invited him to my birthday party.”
“We’re having a birthday party?”
“A dinner. You, me, Jesse, and Tino.”
“Oh, yes? You’ve made the reservations too?”
“We don’t need reservations. We’re staying home. Jesse and I will do the cooking. It’ll be much easier to talk.”
“You’ve thought all this out?”
“Just now.” Sarah turns back to the track. “Come on, Alec.”
“Home?”
“No,” she says. “To the other side of the reservoir.”
“Home’s closer.”
“There’s better. I’ve got a bridge for you there. One that will put you into the right frame of mind for thi
s conversation.”
In his office, Alec calls Harvey Grand. He dials the call himself, a private number, and Harvey picks up. “Alec?”
Harvey is the private investigator for Kendall, Blake. He’s a lawyer and has a practice but devotes himself predominantly to unearthing otherwise unobtainable facts for the firm’s partners—principally Alec. How he does this, no one at the firm is anxious to learn. Alec has a good general idea, although he’s never asked for particulars. Harvey is uniquely and extraordinarily plugged in to almost every government agency, state and federal, including the FBI and the IRS, and many other offices and departments, public and private, here and abroad, having useful files on every POPI (person of possible interest) on the planet.
Alec says, “Sal Angiapello.”
Harvey says, “Stay away from him.”
“Wish I could.”
“His cousin wasn’t enough for you?” Harvey says. “Look, this guy may be emotional about his family—even emotionally sentimental—but anyone outside? Christ, he’d step on you as casually as an ant.”
“Sal has an interest in Sarah. Or, at least, her money.”
“Ah,” Harvey says.
“You saw this coming?”
“It’s a lot of money.”
Harvey is on his speaker box. Alec can tell from the slight echo.
“What can you tell me about him,” Alec says, “that I haven’t read somewhere?”
“How the hell do I know what you’ve read?”
“The latest was the piece in LOOK magazine.”
“You mean the mobster going legit? Now a real estate genius? Which is, of course, PR bullshit.”
“Why you think I’m calling you, Harvey?”
In the momentary silence, Alec pictures the large man in his finery, striding about his office, collecting his thoughts. Then Harvey’s voice on the box, “Phil, as we know, was a brutal and sadistic monster. Sal is all that plus weird.”
“Like how?” Alec asks.
“Like, for one thing, he owns an island off Sicily.”
