by Mike Farris
“So you don’t think I can handle this?”
Patterson held his hands out, palms toward Tripp. “Don’t go getting your feelings all hurt, Tripp. I still want you as lead counsel.”
“You’ve never told me who to use before. Why now?”
“Tripp—”
“What the hell is going on, Bill?”
Patterson smiled self-consciously. He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “I’m taking heat from my board of directors about how much we’re paying in attorneys’ fees. It’s starting to take a big bite out of profits.”
“That’s the cost of doing business these days,” Tripp said. “Verdicts and judgments’ll take a bite out of profits, too. In fact, they can swallow ’em whole. For every hundred thousand dollars you pay me, I save you millions.”
“I know you do.”
“How long have we known each other, Bill?”
“It was the board’s decision to ask for Bay, not mine, so I’ve got no choice. I report to them.”
“Screw the board, Bill. Have you forgotten what happened in Asia?”
Patterson hesitated again, weighing his answer. “You watched my butt, I watched yours. But that was a lot of years ago. This is different. This is business.”
“Business, my ass.”
“Some of the directors want to audit your bills. So maybe the question, Tripp, is what do you want? Go along with them on this or get audited?”
Tripp stared at Patterson. He couldn’t believe what he had heard. Audit his bills? No one had ever done that before. And he couldn’t let that happen now. He knew his fee statements wouldn’t withstand close scrutiny.
“I save you millions,” Tripp said.
“That dog won’t hunt no more. I’ve got to keep costs down, and using Bay’s a good way to do that. Just go along with it, and maybe we can squash all this audit talk. Neither one of us wants that.”
Tripp sat silently for a moment, letting what he had heard sink in.
“Okay, fine,” he said at last. “You’re the boss.”
*
Thirty minutes later, a furious Tripp Malloy screamed through traffic in his black Mercedes. He gripped the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white. Rage contorted his face.
He punched the dashboard. The imprint of his knuckles lingered on the padding for a second then faded.
Traffic clogged near the now vacant site of the old Texas Stadium as drivers rubbernecked at a hapless motorist changing a flat tire. Tripp jammed on the brakes, swung across the next lane onto the opposite shoulder, floored it, and swung around the slowing traffic. A driver sounded his horn. Tripp checked his mirror to see who had dared question him.
He held up his fist and slowly extended his middle finger.
Then he put his middle finger in his mouth and clamped down. His teeth sank in, drawing blood.
Chapter Six
I stood by my office window and gazed at downtown Dallas from sixty floors up. It had been a hectic morning at the courthouse, where Meg and I had finished a pretrial conference for a case scheduled to begin the next week. In fact, the whole year so far had been hectic, with three trials in the first six months, a billable hours godsend. Billable hours were, after all, the lifeblood of a law firm—more valuable than gold.
My hours had been low for the past two years, dropping my compensation and, even before my recent unpleasantness, lowering me into the category of the unimportant partners—those whose voices went unheard in partnership affairs, drowned out by our higher-billing brethren. There were two reasons for the drop. First, I wasn’t a rainmaker, so I didn’t have a constant source of files to bill. And second, I was honest. I didn’t pad my time as most of my partners did. So, the twelve- to fourteen-hour trial days—twelve to fourteen real hours—had filled my timesheets for the first half of the year.
I turned from the window and sat down. Papers and files cluttered the desk, begging for organization. Boxes of documents sat scattered around the handsome cherrywood office furniture. Blow-up charts lined the walls underneath framed diplomas and licenses. When I got time, I was going to straighten up this mess.
“Muckleroy!”
Tripp Malloy’s voice carried into my office. His angular frame followed closely behind. I could tell he was angry by the furious tic just below his left eye. It gave his cheek the appearance of a pulsating bag of worms.
He loomed over my desk, leaning on his knuckles. I was tempted to slap him. Instead, I promptly stood, forcing him to look up at me rather than my looking up at him. He stepped back.
“Have you been talking to Bill Patterson?” he asked.
“Who?”
“You know who I’m talking about. Bill Patterson at Patterson McBain.”
“Not in a long time.”
“Then why is he demanding that you work on this new file?”
“What new file?”
“You mean you don’t know?” He looked genuinely surprised, as if it had never occurred to him that I really wouldn’t know.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Are you telling me that Bill Patterson hasn’t already talked to you about working on it?”
“Like I said, I haven’t talked to Bill in at least a year. He’s your friend, not mine.”
“You betcha he’s my friend. He’s been my friend since our army days. And he’s been my client for more than twenty years. And you want to know why?”
I knew he wanted me to profess my ignorance, but I kept my mouth shut for once. This was his show, his chest-pounding, and I chose not to participate.
“Because he knows I go balls to the walls for him,” he said. “I do whatever it takes to win. Whatever it takes. That’s what he wants. That’s what he demands.”
“No matter how much it costs? Or no matter whether the costs are unnecessary? Like spending thousands summarizing depositions and reviewing documents when you don’t need to?”
Tripp narrowed his eyes, which kicked his facial tic into overdrive. “Who have you been talking to?”
It took a minute for his words to sink in. I had probably just gotten Meg into trouble.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just forget about it.”
“Forget nothing. I want to know who’s been talking to you about my case.”
“No one. Just forget it.”
He fell silent. Then he raised his eyebrows, and I knew that he knew. “A little pillow talk, Muckleroy?”
I cocked my head like a dog. “What?”
“I hear things.”
I felt my face redden, matching Tripp’s. “Put a lid on it.”
He held his hand up, palm toward me. “Sorry,” he said, though his face betrayed the apology. “But I want to know what she’s told you.”
“She just said you’d lined up a lot of work on a case that you’d already won.”
“Why would she be talking to you about that? That’s not your case, and it’s none of your business.”
“It’s not her fault. I was trying to get a handle on her schedule and her workload, and she told me about it. I just couldn’t figure out why you had her working on a case that was over.”
“She has no clue what it takes to run a lawsuit. I get results because I know what to do, and results cost money. Bill Patterson knows that, and he’s willing to pay for it. He’s never questioned a single bill I’ve ever sent him.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t know what questions to ask,” I said.
“Is that a threat?”
“Just an observation.”
Tripp jabbed his bony finger in my face. “You will not talk to Bill Patterson, you got me?”
I ignored the impulse to slap his hand away. “What about the new case?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“The new file,” I said. “If I’m going to work on it, I’ll have to talk to Bill.”
Tripp dropped his hand. I imagined his mind spinning, trying to deal with my unquestionably reasonable inquiry.
“All communicati
on goes through me,” he said at last.
The bottleneck approach. I had seen this before, by other partners afraid of losing influence with their clients. Rather than trusting their partners, they assumed that they were waiting to steal their clients at the slightest opportunity. The solution, they believed, was to funnel all communications through themselves. In each case, the inevitable result had been breakdowns in communication, delays in returning phone calls and transmitting information, a general inefficiency in file management, and disgruntled clients. And probably malpractice. The upside, though, from the bottlenecking lawyer’s standpoint, was that it increased his billable hours.
Tripp lowered his voice to a guttural whisper. “Just remember who’s calling the shots on this thing.”
We stood across from each other, engaged in a silent war of wills.
“I assume you’ll send me a copy of the file,” I said.
“Get your secretary to copy it.”
He spun on his heels and left. I sat back down, struggling to regain my composure. I was deeply disturbed by Tripp’s open defiance of the ethical principles of our profession. Maybe my problem with him was nothing more than a matter of semantics. Maybe we just interpreted ethics differently.
Or maybe he just didn’t care.
I was betting on the latter.
*
Downtown dinner clubs were an institution in Dallas. For the rich and powerful, memberships in them were just as vital as memberships in country clubs. How else could the pretentious impress each other in the middle of the workday? For most of the partners at Black West & Merriam, the Skyline Club, on the sixty-eighth floor of a downtown skyscraper, served as the center of pretense. Elegant, with white tablecloths and tuxedoed waiters, it overlooked Dallas through glass walls high atop the heart of downtown. At the far west end, the club housed a bar and lounge for high-class whistle wetting. On this day, two members of Black West’s Management Committee sipped drinks in a corner.
Matt Cunningham, youthful-looking at fifty-two-years-old, sat on a couch, wearing a three-piece pinstripe suit, unaware that vests had long since gone out of style. Managing Partner Alvin Peoples slouched in a Queen Anne chair and dug in his ear with a car key. At sixty-four, his white hair had a yellowish tint to it. He was coatless, wearing a short-sleeved, white dress shirt with a tie that stopped six inches above his belt. His fashion malpractice diverted attention from his partner’s outdated vest. His perfect teeth clenched an unlit cigar, ten inches long. As he talked, he periodically cleared his throat, hawking up phlegm and spitting it into a linen napkin. He represented the elegant Skyline Club’s worst nightmare—gross, but too rich and powerful to exclude.
Tripp Malloy stepped to the bar and ordered a glass of wine then joined his two partners. Unlike them, he was the epitome of fashion—his hair helmeted in place, red suspenders matching his silk tie, white shirt stiffly starched, and a tailored thousand-dollar navy suit. He sat in a chair at the end of the coffee table, forming the bottom of the U in the conversation pit.
Alvin spun a newspaper around on the table so that The Dallas Morning News headline screamed at Tripp—SWANTECH EXEC KILLED BEFORE GRAND JURY. Below the headline, an unsmiling Jim Halloran’s face.
“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” Alvin said. He clenched his teeth in a spasm, the resulting knot in his cheek muscle giving him the appearance of a child with mumps. His cigar teetered precariously downward as his teeth cut through the tobacco.
“How’s Steve taking it?” Tripp asked.
“I don’t know. He’s on his way here now from the airport.”
“He’s here,” a voice said from behind them. They turned to greet Steve McGinnis—the blood-splattered lawyer who had accompanied Jim Halloran to the federal court in New York. A virtual clone of Matt Cunningham, both in age and dress—right down to the vested suit—Steve was breathless, having hustled to the meeting from the parking garage.
“How you holding up?” Alvin asked.
“Nothing alcohol won’t cure.” Steve flagged down a cocktail waitress and put in his order for a gin and tonic. “Okay, so what’s so important that we need an emergency meeting of the committee?”
“Seems Tripp’s got a problem,” Alvin said.
“That’s what the Management Committee’s here for,” Steve said with undisguised sarcasm. “To solve Tripp’s problems.”
Tripp managed a smile, but the two men’s dislike for each other was no secret.
“What is it, Tripp?” Alvin asked.
“I may need to get rid of an associate.”
Chapter Seven
A blonde-haired receptionist sat behind a mahogany counter in front of an impressionistic mural. She wore a headset and furiously worked a switchboard, directing the calls that poured in at Black West & Merriam. In front of the counter, leather chairs arced around a glass coffee table. Clients occupied several chairs, waiting for their lawyers to start the meters running, if they weren’t running already. Across the way, behind glass walls, a deposition proceeded in a massive conference room. At least a dozen lawyers flanked the marble-topped conference table, asking questions of a beleaguered witness, ferreting out their versions of the truth, and billing thousands of dollars an hour among them.
Red-faced and cheek ticking, Tripp Malloy marched through in a furious stride, oblivious to those he passed.
“Malloy.”
The sound of his name brought Tripp to a stop. He raised his head and looked for the speaker. A mountain of a man emerged from one of the leather chairs. Tripp hesitated for an instant then mustered up a phony smile.
“Horace, I didn’t know you were here.”
“I’ve got to talk to you,” Horace Swanson said.
“I’m kinda busy right now. I wish you’d made an appointment.”
Swanson picked up a manila folder that lay on the floor beside his chair and held it out toward Tripp. “I don’t need an appointment for you to do something about this.”
“What is it?”
Tripp took the folder, opened it, and took out a legal-looking document. At the top, the caption announced that a lawsuit had been filed in a Dallas County District Court.
“What you swore would never happen,” Swanson said.
“They sued you?”
Swanson’s voice came out in a growl. “They go through it step by step, exactly what we did…exactly what you told us to do. And they call it fraud.”
Tripp glanced around to see if anyone was listening. He stepped closer to Swanson and lowered his voice. “I never told you to commit fraud.”
Swanson made no effort to keep his voice low. “What you told me was that I could take money from the LOA account and use it to pay the commissions for Advantage. You also told me to set up a new corporation offshore and transfer assets from LOA into it, then to shut LOA down. You may even remember that you sketched out exactly how the money should flow. You assured me that it was legal, but now I find out it’s not.”
Tripp grabbed Swanson by the arm and pulled him away from the other clients. Still speaking in a lowered voice, he said, “That’s not what I told you to do.”
“That’s exactly what you told me to do. And now they’re suing me individually. Something called alter ego or piercing the corporate veil, or some crap like that.”
“I think you must have misunderstood what I said. But let me have this, and I’ll file an answer. Once we get all the facts sorted out…then we can take care of it.”
“You’d better,” Swanson said. “Or I’ll sue your ass nine ways to Sunday, because I didn’t misunderstand nothing. What they’re suing me for is exactly what you told me to do.”
“I’ll handle it. I’ll handle it.”
*
John Shaw—thirty-eight, dark-haired, tan, and devilishly good-looking—sat at a table at a “gentlemen’s club” near Bachman Lake in northwest Dallas. He had been there since mid-afternoon. Topless, g-string-clad women danced on the stage as he folded twenty-dollar bills and lined
them up in front of him, waiting for the next table-dance.
In his eighth year as a partner at Black West & Merriam, Shaw was riding the fast track. Already in the top quarter in the firm’s compensation scale, he was slated to make over seven hundred fifty thousand dollars this year. He also projected originations for the firm approaching three million dollars based on four major clients who were defendants in thousands of product liability lawsuits nationwide. He surely would move into the top one percent next year.
Shaw headed a group of twelve lawyers, four partners and eight associates—all male—who worked exclusively for his four clients. Two of those associates sat at the table with him, as did the regional representative of one of the clients. Shaw had paid their cover charges, bought all their drinks, and even used his firm credit card to make a cash withdrawal of eight hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. Later that evening, he would spring for dinner in a private dining room at the club, along with four dancers. A private show and lap dances would follow.
Shaw kept receipts for all the expenses, which he would submit the following day to the firm’s managing partner for reimbursement. He also kept track of the hours he was spending there that day, as did his associates. Those hours would be called research on fee statements to the client.
*
I watched Meg work her way around the courtroom. Smartly dressed in a royal blue skirt and jacket, she dueled with one of the plaintiff’s experts, who seemed surprised that she understood the technical aspects of his testimony. Opposing counsel seemed equally befuddled. He consistently tried to disrupt the flow of her questioning with objections, only to have her shoot them down with solid legal reasoning and proper interpretations of the evidence rules. For the most part, the judge allowed her questions to stand.
We’d been in trial for three days, now winding up the plaintiff’s case in chief. The expert would be the last witness of the day. By evening recess, Meg had tied him in knots, using his own testimony to wrap the bow. Our client left after the judge excused the jury, as did the other trial participants. Meg and I were the last to leave the courtroom after ordering our exhibits for the next day and packing our briefcases with documents we would need that night to prepare for upcoming witnesses. We took the elevator to the ground floor then crossed to the parking lot where I had parked my Jeep Cherokee.
