Authors: Louis Begley
Jack, you are talking to me in a way I find offensive and mystifying. That’s a bad combination. What have you got to reproach Jon with?
You really don’t know? Well, it doesn’t matter. Just wait until Monday. You’re still getting the
Wall Street Journal?
There was a little squib about the Wilco litigation ten days ago that might have alerted you. The article they’ll be running on Monday will tell you all you need to know.
I buy the
Journal
from time to time, at the candy-store counter. I’ll certainly buy it on Monday. Now will you please tell me what you are talking about.
A trifle, Schmidtie, a mere trifle. Nothing to ruffle the feathers of a retired millionaire, who knew how to leave the firm while the going was good. We were—I use the past tense advisedly—counsel to the Balser family, the controlling shareholders of Wilco. You do realize who the Balsers are? Excuse me, of course, in your new life you’re likely to have lunch with them twice a week! They’re clients of Lew Brenner’s, own everything in sight in Canada. They were clients when you were still on board. Suntech, the folks who last year sold Wilco their navigational systems company in exchange for Wilco stock, have sued the Balsers and all the former management of Wilco. Usual stuff you’d expect from an outfit like Suntech. Claims of fraud, manipulation of the stock price, and rape and incest for good measure, just because the stock is down. Way down, to tell you the truth. They also got
the SEC riled up enough to start an investigation of its own. We put your Jon Riker in charge of the case. The bankruptcy business is dead, so we’re using him as an all-purpose commercial litigator. Remember? You wrote he was fully qualified! In fact, I’ve got to hand it to you; there was no problem with the quality of the work. He wrote a great brief demolishing most of Suntech’s claims and got permission from the court to file it with the supporting affidavits under seal, on the ground that they contained trade secrets and compromising statements about unrelated third parties. The court’s decision on confidentiality was, of course, published. But your son-in-law had a thing going with a lady lawyer representing another, unrelated company that’s being sued by Suntech, where Suntech is making pretty similar claims. She’s a senior associate at Wolff & Wolff. That much is clear.
If only I could make him stop, thought Schmidt, if only I could go back to the moment before I began to hear this story.
DeForrest continued: Rather presentable, I gather. Jewish girl. Miss Vogel. You know, birds of a feather! You’ll get to read about this too in the
Journal.
Seems he gave her a copy of the sealed brief and affidavits, violating—you see what I’m saying, Schmidtie, don’t you?—violating the very same court order he’d gotten the court to issue. No one would have been any the wiser if this had ended right there, on the pillow. But Miss Vogel cooked up a brief of her own, making arguments straight out of the brief Riker had filed under seal, and filed her brief in her client’s case with Suntech. The Suntech
lawyers—the Crumfeld firm, no less, representing Suntech in the Wilco case and Miss Vogel’s as well—read her brief, and the shit hit the fan. You do get it, Schmidtie? Those arguments simply couldn’t have been made without knowledge of Riker’s brief and affidavits. The predicates wouldn’t have been there. Where Miss Vogel’s information came from was so obvious to the Crumfeld lawyers that they moved to have the court appoint a special master to investigate the leak. Guess what! Your son-in-law had the gall to stand up before the master and deny he’d given the broad his brief! But Miss Vogel’s a better lawyer than he. She told the master, yes, she’d had the opportunity to study the brief and the affidavits but didn’t think there was anything confidential about them. There was nothing on their covers that said so. And you know what? The master believed her. So do I. That fathead Riker must have given her the papers without the stamp
FILED UNDER SEAL
on them!
Oh!
Yes. The Balsers have fired W & K from the federal court case Riker was handling—that was a no-brainer—and from all of Lew’s other matters, companies that are in fine shape. Quite a chunk of business we lost, not to mention the professional embarrassment. Lew is apoplectic. The Balsers have told us they will make a claim against Wood & King, the amount depending on what happens in the Suntech lawsuit against them. We’ve already returned the fees they paid thus far, we’ve written off all the unbilled time, and we’ve offered to pay the cost of bringing replacement counsel up to speed.
The district court has yet to rule on Riker. If you ask me, the judge will hold him in contempt. And the partners are meeting next week to throw him out of the firm.
Shouldn’t you get someone outside the firm to look at this first? A retired judge, like Tony Dixon?
Thanks for your suggestion. You always were naive, Schmidtie, and you haven’t changed. Buzz Williams has been advising us. This is an assignment for a former prosecutor. He doesn’t think much of Riker’s story. You’ve got to put two and two together: He’s sleeping with Miss Vogel, and Miss Vogel gets to study the brief. A prima facie case, if there ever was one. That’s how Buzz sees it.
I am awfully, awfully sorry.
Well you might be. I never liked that fellow myself. Wrong background, wrong values, I never felt comfortable with him.
That was that. If DeForrest and enough of the boys made up their minds, and they had someone like Williams to lean on, Riker was a dead duck in the firm. Nothing this naive retired partner said could help. Besides, for all he knew Buzz Williams had done a good job and they were right.
Look, Schmidt said to Carrie. They’ve taken away the crane.
For weeks the gracile machine had labored, piling Mycenaean boulder upon boulder, erecting a barrier between the Jackson house, at the edge of Georgica Pond, and the breakers that gouged the beach and the dune on which the house was dangerously perched. Under them, vast sheets of black plastic, the corners of which had been tucked absurdly into crevasses between the boulders and secured by smaller rocks. In a few days it would be the bulldozer’s turn to shovel the
mountain of sand that had been brought in from Lord knows where until the boulders were out of sight under a smooth surface ready to be planted with sea grass. The barrier would hold forever or until the next big storm.
Hey, that guy is spending a fortune. What a jerk! Why doesn’t he move his house or something.
He can’t. Not enough room on his plot of land. He has no choice.
Shit, Schmidtie. You mean he will just keep doing this over and over, like a kid making sand pies?
Unless he gives up and lets the house fall down. What would you do?
Move into your house, dummy.
And what if my house falls down?
Hey, what’s with you? I’m falling down, not your house. We’re going to walk all the way to Montauk?
They had reached the jetty made of stones as huge as Mr. Jackson’s, which had been flung into the ocean before Schmidt first knew this beach. The storms had let them be, perhaps because they were useless. So many endeavors with little to show for them. He put his arm around Carrie’s waist and, suddenly tired himself, whispered, Let’s go home. We’ll swim another day. And mindful that change is said to keep sorrow at bay, he added, Let me take you out to dinner.
She orders shrimp in hot sauce, steak au poivre, and a raspberry tart. Schmidt likes to watch her eat. Where did she get those easy and natural manners, such complete elegance? Observing the merry revelers at O’Henry’s? Not likely. Except
for a few oddballs, including himself, of course, they are a repulsive lot, with no manners at all. Perhaps a crash course in old movies about old money, with focus on the two Hepburns, Katharine and Audrey, Leslie Caron, and Ingrid Bergman. Or is it something God given, like perfect pitch or a slum kid’s knack for booting the soccer ball? Her fabulous, healthy appetite is another gift of nature: she has no food manias and no worries about excess calories. They will be burned off as though in a flame, for instance when she makes love. Schmidt leans back. Seize the moment. He wishes he could smoke in this place, but even though the hour is late, and the room half empty, the old biddies at the table on the other side would jump him. A brandy? She might have a sip from his glass. When Charlotte was at college, yes, already then, when he took her out to a restaurant in Boston, alone or with her friends, there were intimations of conflict. Did she really have to dress up? Was she going to get back to the dormitory by ten, so she could get her paper done for tomorrow, and why did he order that third cup of coffee when no one else was having any? All insignificant and easily resolved, if he had kept his mouth shut, or had at least kept smiling. Why couldn’t he have done just that? After all, these conflicts didn’t involve matters of high principle; they were about her refusal to be affable. Could he lay a sincere claim to being always imperturbably pleasant? He would have liked her to be kittenish with him, like certain daughters he had seen in the old movies he had studied, like Carrie without the sex. Charlotte managed it occasionally, and then at once they would
become very good friends. Mostly, though, she gave the impression that he got on her nerves. Isn’t it the truth that she got on his as well?
Right then, the Puerto Rican kitten piped up: Schmidtie, you want me to cook on Friday or you want to bring Charlotte here or the Automat?
“Here” was the hotel in Sag Harbor with a wine cellar Schmidt envied and a supply of first-class cigars that he wished he could smoke on the premises. A plague on tobacco abolitionists. Can’t those cranks stay at home or wear gas masks when they go out? For two centuries, cigar smoke had accompanied the end of a meal. Where had they learned that it spoiled the taste of food? The Automat was another ball game, a temple of undercooked tuna, black on the outside, not quite raw when you got past the crust of pepper, and of dubious room temperature—Schmidt’s bête noire, given his conviction that tuna should be eaten raw or out of a Bumble Bee can—shiitake mushrooms on spinach leaves, and fifteen varieties of bottled water. Clientele fat or anorexic: living reminders that it’s all in the genes, baby. If you haven’t the right metabolism, give up. Don’t bother wrecking your knees as you pound the highway under the noonday sun in your three-hundred-dollar professional running shoes.
This place will be mobbed and noisy, he replied. The Automat and everywhere else too. Why don’t we have something easy at home? I’ll get a roast chicken or a duck and some cheese. Once upon a time she liked cheese. Who knows? Perhaps she still does. If she doesn’t, you and I will eat it.
That wouldn’t be right. Not for her first evening with us. I’ll make the dinner. I don’t have classes on Friday afternoon so I can shop on the way home. Like a surprise party.
You’re my love. Don’t let it hurt your feelings if it turns out that she can’t eat this or that. She’s always been picky. God knows what kind of diet she’s on.
Don’t worry. Hey Schmidtie, I haven’t ever seen you so sad. It’s because of the trouble between them?
It has to be. There is no other reason.
They’ve got no kids and you aren’t crazy about him. Maybe they should split. It’s heavy, but you’ll get her back.
I don’t want to think like that. Besides, somehow I don’t believe it. I’m afraid that everything—good or bad—will just put more distance between us. She’ll think that deep inside me I’m gloating, because once more I have told her so. She may be right. Perhaps she’s got my number. There is another thing: if I get her back, what do I do with her? All the time, I rub her wrong. She doesn’t want to be on the telephone with me, telling me how she’s doing, what she’s thinking, day-to-day kind of stuff. That’s what she did with her mother. With me it’s usually to pick a fight. You haven’t seen her take the trouble to come out here to see whether the old man is doing all right.
That’s because of me. She knows I’m here. She’ll do it if I go.
Never. You’re my love. If you leave me, it will have to be because you’ve stopped loving me or you love someone else better.
Hey, remember? When I asked you to tell me that you want me to be faithful, and you wouldn’t? That really hurt my feelings. Schmidtie, there won’t be anybody. Not as long as you want me.
Then don’t worry about what Charlotte thinks.
C’est moi pour lui, lui pour moi pour la vie….
His own unhoped-for sparrow. He took the long hand that lay close to his on the table and kissed the palm. Rather than wipe a tear that was perhaps forming, he blinked and blew his nose. He was desperately happy at her side, in such fabulous luck.
The waiter, profile of a Sioux warrior, thick black hair tied in a ponytail, brought the check and gave Carrie the onceover while Schmidt counted out twenty-dollar bills. Flesh calls to flesh. Will this fine, loyal girl think Schmidt wants her when all he has to offer are geriatric caresses? Unless tedium, living alongside a fuddy-duddy retired gent shuffling among memories, does it first. Count your blessings, Schmidtie: it won’t be long before you are really alone.
H
EY
, you want to see what I’ve cooked?
She had stuck her head out of the kitchen door to get him to come in from the garden, where he was busy giving Jim Bogard a hard time about the job his men had done edging the flower beds. He wanted clean, straight lines. Instead, he had gotten gentle curves, as though they’d been plotting bond yields during a week of market doldrums. And why hadn’t they mulched, when he had especially explained that he wanted the place to look trim and fresh? Not that it mattered: Charlotte wouldn’t be in a mood to notice. Still, getting things right was important to him, for the pleasure afforded to the eye, and as proof that he hadn’t let himself or the place slide. Schmidt left Bogard scribbling in his notebook, promising that the work would be corrected that very afternoon. What a strange way to write for such a gritty and wiry little man: huge capital letters that ended in manic curlicues, followed by script too small for Schmidt to make out without his reading glasses. But at least Bogard didn’t
belong to the insupportable genus of handymen and gardeners who refuse to take notes on what the client wants, claiming they will remember. During his entire professional life, Schmidt had not tolerated a young lawyer coming into his office without a yellow pad and pencil. Why bother explaining a problem or giving instructions if in the next five minutes what he said would be forgotten or distorted? Or not taking notes during a meeting? Idle hands, idle hands.