Big Law (21 page)

I was met with silence, other than the sound of the clicking keys. Rita had warned me that Carol would be difficult. “That woman guards Stuart’s schedule like he’s the Gawd-damn Prezzie-dant and you’re tryin’ to find a good time to assassinate him.”

“Who did you say you are?” she finally responded in an accusatory tone.

I decided I’d better put it in as simple terms as possible. Short clear sentences. “My name is Mackenzie Corbett. I’m an associate at F&D. I’m working on the Highlander deal and have a document that I need executed by Stuart.” I paused for a moment to let that sink in before I continued. “I just want to check with you to determine the best time to come by his office to obtain the signature. It will only take a minute of Stuart’s time,” I added, trying to sound as cheerful as I could.

Type, type, type. “Well, I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” she responded flatly. I waited a moment for her to expand on that.

Silence.

Okay, I’ll try this from a different angle. “Is Stuart in the office today?” I asked.

“Nope.” Type, type, type.

“Ummm … will he be in the office tomorrow?”

“Nope.”

I pressed my fingertips into my temples. “Is there any time I can just get a minute with him so he can sign this document? It’s the purchase agreement for the Highlander deal—the extremely large and high-profile deal that Pegasus Partners is doing. I only need a minute and I could meet him wherever he is.” I stopped just short of pleading.

“Have Oren sign it.” As if I wouldn’t have thought of that.

After ten minutes of explaining to her in the most patient tones I could muster that the only authorized signatory was Stuart, she finally started to relent.

“Well, Stuart’s on a hunting trip. In Michigan. I have to warn you, he does
not
like to be bothered when he is in Michigan. So this better be
important
, McDonald.”

I was on the 10:05
A.M
. flight from LaGuardia to Detroit Metro. It was a Biglaw first for me—hunting down a client for a signature—but I was no longer fazed by the extravagant steps taken to coddle millionaires. In this case, billionaires. Because if there was one thing Biglaw had taught me, it was that the more important a person becomes, the less capable he is of completing a simple task on his own.

“Unless someone goes out there and physically puts the fucking page in front of him, we’ll never get it,” Ben had explained. And that someone was me, McDonald Corbett. From the Detroit Metro airport, I took a Town Car out to Hoist Lakes, a remote hunting area in southern Michigan. Seven hours after I’d called Carol, I was pulling up to Bearhurst Lodge, Stuart’s enormous log cabin, secluded from civilization deep in the dense woods.

It looked like the kind of place where the Unabomber might live, if the Unabomber had been a billionaire. Security cameras lined the narrow driveway leading up to a cedar log home large enough to be mistaken for a hotel. But despite the opulence, it still had the same kind of vibe as the isolated shack you see on the news after they’ve found twenty-five bodies buried on the property—it was creepy.

“He’ll be hunting until dinner time. You are to wait for him in the sitting room,” Carol’s email had instructed. Now, standing here in front of the menacing house wondering what (or who) was buried underneath it, her email reminded me of the beginning of a bad horror movie.

The camouflage-clad man that opened the door led me to the cavernous sitting room. “You can wait in here,” he muttered, gesturing towards the couch. His moustache was so bushy I couldn’t even see his lips move when he talked. I wondered how he even ate with that thing hanging down over his mouth. I sat uneasily on the brown leather couch as he turned on his heel to leave. “Stuart will be back at dusk,” he called ominously on his way out of the room.

I sat stiffly on the edge of the couch, barely daring to breathe until I could only faintly hear his thudding footsteps. I looked down at my watch.
5 p.m
. Sitting there, surrounded by rifles and mounted heads of various animals, my mind started to race.
When exactly is dusk this time of year. 6
P.M
.? And does dusk mean twilight or sunset or the
time in between? And why would you use the term “dusk” instead of just saying a time? Oh God, am I going to make it out of here alive?

I glanced around the room. Dead animals were everywhere—four huge bearskin rugs were spread out on the floor; there was a lamp shade that I was pretty sure was real zebra skin; and scattered around the room were full-sized stuffed wolves, each with its teeth bared, looking like it had won the man-beast battle when it had clearly lost. My eyes stopped on the deer’s butt that was mounted above the glass-top table with the wooden bald eagle base. A butt? He mounted a butt? Why would you mount a butt? I mean, mounting an animal
head
as some sort of trophy I get. Not my thing, but I understand it. You went eye to eye with the beast and that was what you had to show for it. Mounting an ass? That was a new one to me.

I took a break from staring at carcasses to check my BlackBerry. I drew a sharp breath in when I saw what was waiting for me in my inbox.

I felt like my throat was closing up from stress. This whole deal, months of work, was now sitting on my shoulders. It was either triumphantly return to the office, signature in hand, or wind up mounted on the wall of Stuart’s study. I stared at the looming, oak grandfather clock, watching the second hand tick away precious time, and prayed dusk was soon.

Finally, an excruciating hour later, a man entered the room. He was dressed head to toe in camouflage, with a vest that had at least twenty zippers, and tall black boots that he tucked his pants into. Any skin that was exposed was covered with what looked like black shoe polish. He was still carrying his rifle.

Was I going to be met with enemy fire? I stood up and stuck out my hand. “Hello, I’m Mackenzie,” I said, my voice shaking. I was hoping he would introduce himself in turn, as I had no idea if he was Stuart Higgins or one of the other gun-wielding men I’d seen wandering around outside. Instead, he stared at my hand, turned his back to me, and went to sit in the large zebra-print arm chair in the corner of the room, furthest from where I was sitting.

I hesitantly sat back down on the couch. Maybe he doesn’t like to be touched? Or spoken to directly? I was going to have to play this carefully. I waited a minute before starting. “Umm … I’ve just come here to get the purchase agreement for Highlander Hotels executed.” Nothing.

Maybe he was deaf? Surely Ben would have mentioned that.

Unable to deal with the uncomfortable silence, I plodded forward. “Carol said she’d let you know that I was coming. Umm … I’m sure you know that the purchase agreement has been negotiated for the Highlander Hotels deal and it’s ready to be signed … uh … by yyyou,” I stuttered.

Ignoring me, he slowly reached his hand up to his head, grasped a small tuft of hair with his thumb and forefinger and started to twist the tuft back and forth. When that chunk of hair resembled a dreadlock, he moved onto the next chunk of hair. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor.

Okaaaay. I guess this is Stuart Higgins. This is the man, the myth, the legend.
I had heard Stuart was quirky, but this was a bit more than quirky—it was downright strange.
I’ll just wait for him to talk to me
, I swiftly decided. We sat there in silence, as his fingers moved from one tuft of hair to the next.

Tick, tick, tick
, the clock seemed to be screaming as my BlackBerry blinked manically.

When he finally spoke, about half of his head had been twisted into tiny dreadlocks. “Are you going to give me the document?” he asked, in a barely audible voice with his eyes still fixed on the floor.

“Oh, yes!” I popped up and grabbed the file that was sitting on the table in front of me. “I just need one signature, right next to the red ‘sign here’ tab.” I walked across the room and placed the folder, open
to the page, on the small wooden table in front of him. I clicked open a pen and placed it on top of the opened document. I stood there for a second trying to look relaxed as I waited for him to scroll his signature, but it just felt like awkward hovering so I returned to my seat.

He slid the document to the side of the table, leaned over, and crunched his left hand into a fist. I probably would have been scared that I was about to be punched if he wasn’t so … weak looking. Even in his camouflage and wielding a rifle he looked like a white Steve Urkel. He even had the pronounced hunch. He placed his other hand on the table, palm open to the clenched fist, and proceeded to tap the clenched fist as if it were a ball. Then he moved his palm-open hand to the other side and tapped the fist back. He was playing tennis with his hands. His face broke into a grin as he followed the “ball” back and forth with his eyes.

Well, now I’ve seen everything
. I did my best to look away, feeling like I was interrupting a private game. But glancing at him through the corner of my eye, I couldn’t stop wondering how this guy had managed to make billions of dollars, make hundreds of people under him millionaires, have teams of lawyers grovel over him, and become a titan of industry. Gordon Gekko, this was not.

I thought back to the group of strange kids I’d known in high school. Where were they now? Probably running billion dollar companies somewhere.

After a few minutes, Stuart stopped his tennis game, picked up the pen, clicked it open and closed for another few minutes, looking at it with the fascination of someone who was looking at a pen for the first time, then finally signed the document. Acting as if putting the pen down too forcefully might detonate an explosive, he very tentatively placed the pen on the file folder and gently put his hand on top of it, resting it there for a minute. Then he stood up and, without a word or a glance in my direction, walked out of the room.

Awash with relief, I leaned back on the couch and exhaled.

Standing in the copy room six hours later, my body limp from my adrenaline roller coaster, I felt like I was going to pass out. But the
finish line was so close I could taste it. I just needed to make a copy of Stuart’s signature page before delivering the original to Highlander’s lawyers. Unfortunately for me, the simple act of operating a copy machine was proving to be overwhelming. It was a task that a secretary would normally attend to, but after the work I’d gone through to get that signature, I didn’t want it out of my sight. With my mind half asleep, I pulled the signature page out of the folder, slid it onto the copier and, unfortunately, into the side of my finger.

Ouch!
I flinched and stuck my bleeding finger in my mouth. My mind filled with self-pity.
Can my luck get any worse?
I pulled my finger out to take a look. It was really bleeding. I winced and put it back in my mouth, reaching down with my other hand to flip over and align the paper on the copier. That’s when I saw it—the drop of blood covering the S in Stuart. I’d soiled the original signature page! Frantically, I scanned the copy room for a paper towel, a tissue, anything to wipe off the blood and minimize the stain, but there was nothing. Why wouldn’t a room that carries ten different colors of “sign here” tabs have one freaking roll of paper towels? I grabbed a plain piece of paper, crumpled it up, and began rubbing. Images of Lady Macbeth washing her hands of Duncan’s blood flooded my mind.
Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say!
After a few frantic strokes I lifted the wad of paper to assess the damage.

The blood was now covering all of Stuart and part of the H. I stuffed the blood-stained page inside the file folder and darted down the hall, my hands shaking.

“Mackenzie!” I heard a voice belt out behind me.

I whirled around, panic pulsing through my body.

“What are you doing here?” Ben asked incredulously. “You need to get the signature page over to Highlander’s lawyers. Is that it?” He gestured to the file I was clutching.

There was a dim ringing in my ears and my mouth went bone dry.
Remain calm.

I gulped for air. “Yes, I was just making a copy of it before delivering the original,” I finally answered, my voice trembling.

“Well, get it the fuck over there. Everyone is waiting.”

I nodded briskly and continued down the hall to Rita’s cubicle.

“Rita,” I whispered anxiously, gesturing for her to come into my office and shut the door.

“Geez, hon, you look like ya’ve seen a ghost or something,” she said. “What’s the matt-ah?”

“Rita, I fucked up.” My voice shook as I slid the soiled signature page out of the folder and placed it on my desk. The stain looked browner than it did in the copy room, causing a fresh wave of anguish to wash over me. I squeezed my eyes shut as a sharp pain shot through my chest. It was as if my lungs could only reach twenty percent capacity, and for a brief moment I wondered if I was having a heart attack.