The Inglorious Arts

by Alan Hruska

  “And yet…”

  “What?”

  “It was a measure of how much you loved her.”

  “And what are you saying? I went through hell for her and wouldn’t for you?”

  “You make it sound ridiculous.”

  “It is ridiculous!”

  “No,” she says, now almost screaming, “it’s not! We don’t have that sort of love, Alec. We never will. We can’t. You were drained by that love, and by Carrie’s death. You are always thinking of Carrie. As you should be. No one recovers from a love that strong. That I’m her sister doesn’t make it better for me. It makes it worse. Being a close substitute makes it worse! I’m sorry to be so goddamn melodramatic, but that’s the way it is. And it sucks for me. Do you see that?”

  Alec stands where he’s standing for what seems like a long time. “I see what you’re seeing,” he says. “Maybe someday you’ll see us more clearly. But not now. I hope you have a great trip, and a safe one.” He picks up his bag and leaves the apartment. Getting on the elevator is like a parachute jump from a dream.

  THIRTY-THREE

  A very tall building in downtown Philadelphia houses the corporate headquarters of the Philadelphia Electric Company, which supplies power to the southeastern quarter of Pennsylvania. Locally, the company is referred to as PECO, and the building as the Tower of Light. The CEO, a small, plain man named Hewitt, has a corner office on the top floor. Alec and his team meet there with Harold Kohn, Hewitt, and other senior utility management. Masking the intensity of the agenda, their greetings are quite cordial. In contrast, through eight-foot-high windows, an impending storm turns the sky purple with rage.

  Alec has brought with him his senior associate, Trevor Joffrey, and the general counsel of his client, Larry Rilesman. Joffrey is there mainly to take notes. Rilesman is there to bear corporate witness to the events, which will determine the viability of Allis-Benoit—and his job.

  Kohn turns out to be a silky man of medium height, thickening waist, thinning hair, and easy, confident manner. From a weekend under tropical sun, his balding pate, and the noticeable rest of him, are tanned to walnut or splurged with freckles. He takes a seat at one end of a sofa and invites Alec to sit at the opposite end. Everyone else he ignores, including the executives of his own client, apparently regarding them as nonessential to at least the opening round of these proceedings. Alec—despite everything he’s been told about Kohn—likes the man almost immediately.

  “Let me net out the problem,” says Kohn to Alec. “We both know whom we represent, so for brevity, I’ll use personal pronouns. You have a contract claim against me for almost a million dollars. I have an antitrust claim against you for many millions. Trouble is, my claim lapses before yours does, in less than a month, so if I don’t bring it within that time, and if you sue me thereafter, I will have been stripped of my best weapon—a potent antitrust counterclaim.”

  “And I can’t agree not to bring my suit,” Alec says. “For if I were to relinquish my claim to avoid yours, I’d owe many millions to many other utilities.”

  “So,” says Kohn, “in anticipation of the fact that you might sue me at some indeterminate time in the future, I have to sue you in a matter of days. Right?”

  “I don’t think so, Harold.”

  Kohn’s smile is as warm as the beach he just came from. “Do you have a plan?” he asks.

  “Not a plan, no. But I do have a few thoughts.”

  The storm announces itself with a lightning crack that illumines, then shakes, the city, including the Tower of Light. Given the temperature outside, it should have brought snow, but instead bursts into a rainstorm of torrential proportions.

  “Theatrical!” says Kohn admiringly. “Must have cost you a bundle, these pyrotechnics. But we’re unimpressed. We make electricity. More horsepower than almost any other utility in the country. Admittedly with your machines. But once we file that antitrust claim—” he wafts one hand before him like a seer—“I see a stampede of other utilities galloping to join the herd. We will pound your company into the earth. No longer will it produce anything. No longer will it be your company, or, perhaps, anyone’s. I’m sure you have that vision too, or you wouldn’t be here. And yet you come down here with just ‘a few thoughts’?”

  “They are what I have,” Alec says with a smile.

  “Then they’d better be very powerful thoughts.”

  “That will be for you to judge.”

  Kohn gazes out the window. “Well, it’s raining outside. The club course will be closed. I suppose I will listen.” He folds his arms and gives Alec a look of calm expectation.

  “The first thought,” Alec says, “concerns your word potent. The claim you have is not that, and it is very far from being that. This is obviously not a case in which competing manufacturers met in hotel rooms and fixed prices. The fact is they didn’t meet. They didn’t speak. They had no contact with each other whatever. What happened was a weak company matched a strong company’s price book—and then proceeded to cut prices below that book on every transaction it wanted to win. That’s not a price fix. It’s the opposite of a price fix. And you know that happened. In fact, you know as well as I that your antitrust counterclaim not only lacks potency, it would, quite soon in the process, be thrown, if not laughed, out of court.”

  “I know this, you say?”

  “I do,” says Alec. “We’re talking about heavy electrical equipment your client just bought from mine. They got an invoice from us reciting book prices. But they didn’t pay book prices. They got tons of free goods under the table. Literally tons.”

  “It must have been a very large table,” Kohn says, deadpan.

  “It was your table, Harold, so you would know. And the payment terms? Were they book? You know they were far more lenient than that. So when you offered to represent all American public utilities, you did not offer a contingency deal. You offered only your customary fee arrangement. Very wise, Harold. Very knowing.”

  Kohn again looks out at the storm. “It’s still raining,” he says.

  “Time for another thought?” Alec asks.

  “Just one, yes. A very basic one. I’d like to know how I can know for certain that, if I were to let my claim lapse, you won’t sue me?”

  “That,” Alec says, “is the one thing you cannot know for certain. Because, as we’ve been saying, there can be no agreement by us to waive that claim. On the other hand, you are perfectly free to conclude that we will act as rational businessmen.”

  “Rational?” Kohn muses. “How do you define that?”

  “If you don’t sue us, but we nonetheless later do sue you, we could expect to be on the receiving end of a rather large amount of corporate ire. For many years, PECO has been one of our largest customers. The amount of business we could expect to lose as a result of PECO ire is likely to be many times the amount we might collect on such a claim. One way for you to predict what we will do is to consider what a reasonable man… let us say, you yourself, would do in our place. Very likely that prediction would be accurate. Predictions, of course, are not certainties. The more insightful the man making them, however, the more likely they are to come true.”

  “So what you are saying to me—”

  “I’ve already said. No more or less.”

  Harold reflects for a moment, then smiles again. “I see that Allis-Benoit has finally found themselves a lawyer.” He rises and says to his group, “Shall we caucus for a moment?”

  When they leave for another room, Rilesman whispers to Alec, “How the hell did you know there were free goods on our sale to PECO? You talk to our guys? Because they told me there weren’t any.”

  “They told me the same thing.”

  “So? What did you do? See it in the files?”

  “They haven’t sent me the files, Larry. They’ve been dragging their feet. But you saw. Kohn just effectively confirmed it.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. But what did you do—just wing it? Our salesman says he didn
’t do it, and you tell Kohn he did?”

  “Right,” Alec says. “I didn’t believe your salesman. It was the way he said it, then didn’t send me the file. And there wasn’t much downside, Larry, in reading it that way. If there were no price cuts on that deal—to PECO, one of our largest customers—Kohn would know he had a case and was going to sue us. What allowed this meeting is that he knew about the cuts. What he wanted to find out is whether we knew. Because, in this weird market, salesmen get fired if they don’t hide the price cutting that got them the business.”

  Promptly Kohn returns, leading his silent group of suited executives, and, with metaphorical aplomb, the storm outside diminishes. “The way I see it,” says Kohn, not bothering to sit, “you and I, Alec, are like two old-fashioned gunslingers. We’re in the middle of the street, both armed, both recognizing it’s too damn dangerous to draw our guns. So there we stand. And are likely to stay without moving. A standoff, one might say.”

  Alec says, “You understand, we have no agreement, express or implied, about anything.”

  “I understand,” Kohn says, rolling his eyes, as if questioning his own sanity.

  On the street, three cars are waiting, for Alec, Trevor, and Rilesman, who are traveling in different directions. And three drivers hold umbrellas under which the lawyers can talk. Rilesman says, “So you think that’s it? A month will come and go, and no utility will sue us?”

  “Yes,” Alec says. “That’s it.”

  “I haven’t told you. We’ve settled the coal case for half what we owe. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. They took so little because they thought the utilities’ litigation would wipe us out before we could pay them anything.”

  “Congratulations,” Alec says, wanting to be off.

  “So one day,” says Rilesman, waxing philosophical in the rain, “an $8 billion exposure, hanging there over our heads, about to cripple us, one of the greatest companies in the economic history of America—next day, problem’s gone. No one else even saw it. And no one will even know how close we came to extinction.”

  “Be well, Larry,” Alec says. “Trevor’s due in Washington, but I’m sure he could stay for a quick drink. I’ve got to get back to New York.”

  Rilesman restrains him by the arm. “You did all this. You made it all disappear.”

  Alec laughs, getting into the car.

  “I hate you,” Rilesman says, and probably means it.

  “You’ll get over it,” Alec says with a grin, and leaves.

  In the car, heading down Market Street for the turnoff to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Schlomo says, “You know, our car service takes messages and distributes them on our intercom.”

  “Yeah, I gave my secretary the number.”

  “Well, that explains it.”

  “What?” Alec says. “She call?”

  “I’m told she did.”

  “Now you tell me?”

  “I figured I’d let you kvell for a while.”

  “How thoughtful. What’s the message?”

  “Call the chief judge. I have the number.”

  “I know the number,” Alec says. “Find me a goddamn pay phone.” Schlomo swerves back to the curb. “Quarters!” Alec says, and gets a handful. He jumps out, grabs the phone in the booth, deposits the coinage, and dials. When the clerk announces his name, Chief Judge Kane picks up at once. “I have good news for you, young man. What’s your fondest wish of the moment?”

  “Eric Stapleton is gone? Kicked upstairs?”

  “Fonder?”

  “He’s been replaced by Breck Schlumberger.”

  “Wish granted,” Kane says. “Schlumberger, dean of the Yale Law School, is now assistant attorney general of the United States, in charge of the Antitrust Division.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I do many things, Alec. Most of them useful. Kidding is not one of them. Now, can you turn this into something productive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like getting Schlumberger to agree to arbitrate the government monopolization case against your computer client?”

  “Better,” Alec says. “We can get him to drop the case.”

  “What?”

  “Stipulation of voluntary dismissal.”

  “He’ll sign that?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Alec says. “After 10 million documents and thousands of depositions, it’s a simple case. Market definition. If the relevant market were U.S. only, we don’t monopolize it, because the Japanese are coming, as are the Chinese and Koreans. If the market is global—and anyone with a functioning brain can see that it is—the charge of monopolization is ridiculous, because the Japanese companies are already close to dominating that market. Not only will Breck see this, he will delight in ending litigation that his predecessors have been flogging for years.”

  “So you’re saying I can now forget about the case.”

  “Not entirely. A stipulation of dismissal must be ‘so ordered’ by the trial judge.”

  “And what?” says Kane. “You’re suggesting Ettinger might not sign it? The government wants to relieve the federal court of the largest case on its docket—the largest, most burdensome case in the history of jurisprudence—and the sitting judge tries to stop that from happening?” The chief judge’s laugh roars into the phone. “I’d love to see him try that!”

  “You granted my wish,” Alec says. “I grant yours.”

  “You’re not actually going to tempt him to do something that absurd?”

  “I won’t have to, Judge. It’s in his wiring.”

  Hanging up, Alec places a collect call to Lee Norris, who says, “Down on your luck?”

  “I’m in a phone booth in Philadelphia. Used my last coins to call Rivvy Kane.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s over,” Alec says.

  “Okay, I’ll play. Hunger and famine? Racial intolerance? The case?”

  “The latter. Stapleton is being appointed deputy attorney general. The new head of the Antitrust Division will be my old classmate, Breck Schlumberger.”

  “I’ll be damned,” says Norris. “Ol’ Breck, going back to the wars.”

  “Did he take your class?”

  “No,” Norris says. “He took con law from Tommy the Commie. Emerson. But you and he were friends?”

  “Still are.”

  “And he will throw this case out?” Norris asks. “After the government has spent $100 million on it? And while a staff of twenty government lawyers will scream bloody murder? To say nothing of a federal judge who will go absolutely berserk?”

  “Sweetens the pot from Breck’s standpoint.”

  “So… you’ll call him?”

  “I shouldn’t be involved,” Alec says, “and don’t have to be. He’ll love dealing with Jack and the rest of the team. The way Breck operates, he’ll basically want the case argued before him. Three, four, maybe five sessions should do it, our guys arguing against the government staff. The stupidity of the government case will end up infuriating him. He’ll probably prepare the stipulation of dismissal himself.”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “Yes,” Alec says. “I am.”

  “Is this the doing of the chief judge?” Norris says.

  “I didn’t ask him to appoint Breck.”

  “But it was Kane who gave you the news?”

  “It was, yes.”

  “Quite a result,” Norris says. “And what’s going on in Philadelphia?”

  “That’s over too.”

  “Your Allis-Benoit litigation?”

  “Ten minutes ago.”

  “And then you heard from the chief judge about Breck?”

  “Just now in the phone booth,” Alec says.

  Norris’s laugh is softer than Kane’s, but there’s nothing in it but warmth. “At least once in their lives,” he says, “every person in this world should have such a ten minutes.”

  When Alec steps out of the booth, he holds his face up to the rain. This minute, he thinks, shou
ld be the best of it. Except for the new hole in his life.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Sal Angiapello arrives back in New York fully refreshed. His private jet lands at Westchester Airport. His luggage is handled and transported by minions. He has word delivered to Lou DiBrazzi to meet him at his apartment on Central Park West. On the drive there, as rain streaks the windows, he leisurely checks the mail placed on the backseat of his limousine. Mail sorting is done by Joe Gura, a cousin of the man who manages his Ionian estate.

  Upstairs, Sal brings DiBrazzi into his study. “So, report,” Sal says, leafing through additional envelopes that have been hand delivered, apparently that morning.

  “All went smoothly,” DiBrazzi says. “She’s in the house in Fort Lee. Arrived on time. Two men held her. I gave her the needle.”

  Sal nods, as if hearing of the successful delivery of a rug. “I think it’s now time for the young one,” he says. “I want them brought to the island and made ready.”

  “Very good,” says DiBrazzi. “Of course the young one is still being guarded.”

  “So?” Sal remains standing, indicating he wishes the meeting to end.

  “I’m just mentioning it, boss. The people protecting her are professionals.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “It’s a question of the best time, boss. Thought I should consult you on that. When she’s in school—”

  “No,” Sal says.

  “I agree,” says DiBrazzio. “But she also spends time at your nephew’s apartment.”

  “Hmm. No. I’d rather he didn’t… observe this.” Sal sits at his desk. “You have an alternate plan?”

  “Side street. We’ll track her with a couple of vans. At the right time, swoop in. Give her the needle. Get her inside. Fend off whoever with silencers. There’ll be a couple of casualties at most. Forty-five minutes later, she’s in the back of a plane, in a bag, naked, and scared outta her mind.”

  Sal visualizes the scene, then tilts his head in approval. “Don’t screw this up,” he says.