Skinny Island (23 page)

Brendan assumed that this closed the matter and that the formulas condemned by the depressed "expert" were harmless. At any rate, he did not intend to worry about them. They could wait until his opponents brought them up, which seemed unlikely. After all, his opponents were interested in contraceptives, not vitamins.

Yet only two weeks later counsel for the plaintiffs asked to examine East River's files "pertaining to a discussion of chemicals with the late Dr. Oursley." Brendan brought the request to Childe's office. The latter's answer, he thought, came just a bit too quickly.

"We never talked with Oursley. Why would we have? He was a known crank."

"But, Mr. Childe, I saw your memo about him. You met him at the Metropolitan Club."

"I don't say I didn't know the fellow. Everyone knew him. I may even have chatted with him at the Metropolitan. He was always buttonholing people. You couldn't shake him off."

Brendan still assumed that he was faced with a memory gap. "No, no, I don't mean that. I mean a serious conference with you and Mr. Henderson about the danger of certain vitamin pills."

"My dear fellow, you're dreaming."

"I'm not, sir! I can show you the file."

"Henderson would never have listened to an idiot like Oursley. And anyway, what do vitamins have to do with the price of eggs? We are dealing with contraceptives, aren't we?"

"Maybe so. Maybe the conversation was quite irrelevant. But our opponents have asked for it, and I suppose we shall have to produce it."

"If it exists."

"But I'm telling you, sir, it
does
exist. I saw it myself, only two weeks ago."

"Well, you'd better produce it, then. I'll believe it when I see it."

When Brendan returned to the conference room, which was piled high with all the files and documents of the case, and opened the box in which he was sure he had seen the memorandum, it was not there. The box was filled with correspondence, as he had remembered, but the brown folder at one end, containing only three papers and labeled "Oursley meeting," was unquestionably gone. Brendan spent the afternoon frantically searching in other similar boxes of letters, but to no avail.

When he returned to Childe's office at six, the latter had his hat on, preparing to leave for the day. Brendan fancied that he could detect a hard little gleam of hostility in those usually tranquil eyes.

"Well, Brendan?"

"I couldn't find it!"

"What couldn't you find?"

Ah, but that was wrong, that was fake! Childe always remembered everything.

"The memo about Dr. Oursley."

"Does it not occur to you, my deluded friend, that you may not have found it because you only dreamed of its existence?"

"Did I dream, too, of a paper written in purple ink, presumably by the deceased doctor, listing certain formulas used in vitamin tablets?"

"I'd be the last to deny the ingenuities of your imagination, young man."

"Mr. Childe!" Brendan exclaimed now in a stronger tone. "That document has been removed from the file. Your attitude of unreasonable disbelief makes me suspect that you know it was removed. I must ask you please to give it to me so that I may submit it to opposing counsel!"

As Childe continued to stare at him, the Indianlike cheekbones over his long pale cheeks were studded with deepening red. Brendan took in, and realized at the same time that his superior had taken in, the simple fact that Childe's failure to dismiss him from the room and possibly from the firm itself, amounted to a tacit admission of guilt. When Childe at last spoke it was almost as if he were begging for a compromise.

"And supposing it has been destroyed?" he asked. "How then should I return it?"

"
Has
it been destroyed?"

"I say supposing."

"Then that fact must be submitted to counsel and eventually, I assume, to the court. I imagine we can plead that it was due to some kind of error."

"But how will anyone ever establish what was in these 'lost' documents?"

"I presume you read them, as I did."

"But even if I had, would anyone believe me? Particularly if I testified that they were not unfavorable to my client? That they were, indeed, irrelevant to the case?"

"If they were irrelevant, why were they destroyed?"

"That is just what the jury would ask."

"Well, why were they?"

"Didn't you say yourself, it might have been a mistake?"

"
Was
it?"

"Well, supposing it was?" Childe's tone was beginning to be desperate. "Suppose they had been destroyed by mistake? Would anyone believe it? No! Look at your own face.
You
don't believe it! So that my testimony as to what was in them—or yours—would never for a minute be credited. Everyone would assume that Oursley had warned us about the contraceptive, and that we had done away with the evidence. We should have unfairly ruined our client!"

Of course this was true. Why then
had
the wretched man destroyed the file? Brendan could only suppose it was because he was afraid that a court might feel that a careful fiduciary, warned about one possible negligence, should have been alerted to the possibility of others, that defective vitamins should have put the trustee on notice of possibly defective contraceptives. Oh, no, it was absurd, and the vitamins, by all evidence, were
not
defective, and Oursley was an old fool, but Childe might have become so fanatical about his client, so terrified of its potential bankruptcy, so exhausted by the long fight, as to lose all sense of reality.

"I am sorry that should be the case," Brendan said firmly. "But it cannot alter my duty to come forward with the facts. If you will not do so, Mr. Childe, I must. I must call plaintiffs' counsel and tell them what I know. I shall probably have to tell it in court, too."

Childe's features now became contorted. He leaned over his desk, breathing hard. Brendan was afraid for a moment that he was going to vomit. But when he looked up at last, it was with a hard, contained hatred. "Do your damndest, you little swine! You're just trying to destroy me and my client. Why, I don't know, unless you're some kind of crazy radical. Just be warned, anyway, that I shall deny under oath there was ever any meeting with Oursley, or that I prepared any such memorandum. You are off the case as of this minute, and I shall suggest to our managing partner, Mr. Phelps, that you be discharged from the firm, or at least given a leave of absence on condition that you seek psychiatric help. Good day, sir!"

"Good day! Of course, I shall go immediately to Mr. Phelps myself. It is obviously my duty to offer the firm an opportunity to redress the impropriety before taking it to court. My duty not only to the firm, but to the client."

"The client!" Childe almost shrieked. "What the hell do you care about my client? Get out of here!"

Laurison Phelps dominated his great firm as few senior partners did in the 1980s, when it had become more the custom to rule by executive committee. But Phelps had some of Napoleon's superiority to delegation; his mind could cope with a problem of interoffice mail routing in the same hour that it was engaged with a brief in a multimillion dollar antitrust suit. He reveled in his own genius and versatility, and loved to astonish people with his grasp of seemingly trivial details. He was a small, shaggy man, with laughing eyes and a rasping voice that contributed all the command presence that he needed. He pretended to laugh at his own dictatorship, but it would not have been wise for anyone else to do so. His pose was one of nostalgia for a mythical past when law firms had been small bands of gifted and liberal individuals, dedicated more to their profession than to its emoluments—before, as he liked to put it, they had become "mere machines for the manufacture of fees." But woe to the associate or even partner who fell behind in that species of manufacture!

The large office in which Brendan now stood before his senior was itself designed to substantiate this pose. The walls were covered with Phelps's collection of political cartoons and engravings, going back to Nast and Daumier, most of which showed pompous and conniving attorneys in ridiculous or degrading situations. Brendan was well aware that he could not anticipate what stance Phelps would adopt even in a crisis as grave as the one he had just described. No matter how critical a matter, the senior partner could never forgo the delight of surprising his audience. Only a few months before, Brendan had witnessed Phelps's elucidation to an elderly female client of the mysteries of the generation-skipping tax. What he had outlined to the dazzled crone had not indeed been the bill passed by Congress, which Phelps had not even read, but a far better-conceived tax constructed in Phelps's fantasy on the spur of the moment! It was done, of course, more for the benefit of the listening associate than for the ignorant client. Phelps had known all the time that Brendan would follow his mental acrobatics, admire them and, when it came to drafting the required will, ignore them in favor of the actual statute that it was his more plebeian job to understand and apply.

"So, Brendan," Phelps responded now, rubbing his hands as if he and his associate were about to embark on the pleasantest of chats. "As I decline to act, you will? You are determined to strike a blow for decency and honor? I almost envy you!"

"I shall do what any lawyer in my position should do, sir."

"'When duty calls or danger, be never wanting there!' Of course, of course. I could argue that no matter what the truth or falsity of your charges against Mr. Childe, a paramount duty to our client prohibits a public revelation. But I admit that is questionable. So let me state again that I do not believe your charges. I do not believe for a minute that Mr. Childe destroyed that file or even that it existed. The only thing I want to do is present to you the consequences of what you are proposing to do, even under the worst assumption, i.e., that Childe is guilty. Shall I proceed?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Sit down, then, my boy, sit down." When Brendan had done so, Phelps proceeded to rub his cheeks violently, as if trying to scrub off some tightly clinging dirt. Fortunately for Brendan's ease of mind, he recognized this as an accustomed mannerism. "Have you ever stopped to observe, my friend, that when a crime is committed by an amateur, it is—nine times out of ten—an unnecessary crime? That it is usually, in fact, the one event bound to bring on the very catastrophe it was designed to avoid?"

"I don't know that I follow you, sir."

"Richard Nixon destroyed his presidency by unlawfully covering up an episode that, let alone, would have proved at most a temporary embarrassment. Richard Whitney, a Stock Exchange president, was jailed for embezzling three relatively small sums of money, without which the house of Morgan would have bailed him out of all his financial troubles."

Brendan continued to stare at this glibly talking little man. "How am I to relate this to what Mr. Childe has done?"

"Very simply. Childe, according to you, has destroyed evidence which, introduced in court, would not have substantially strengthened the plaintiffs' case. But when the jury finds that it has been done away with, it will blacken the defendant in its eyes. It will result, if not in a plaintiffs' victory, at least in a settlement less advantageous to our client than could have been otherwise obtained. Poor Childe will have placed a gun to the temple of his cherished bank and pulled the trigger. You will see now what I mean by the folly of the amateur in crime. By his own act Childe will have brought on precisely what he has most sought to avert. Is it any wonder that some psychiatrists saw an element of the suicidal in what Nixon did?"

"Do you imply the same of Mr. Childe?"

"Well, he will have certainly achieved his own ruin.
If
he destroyed that file. And wasn't there something seemingly deliberate in the way he left the evidence for you to discover? If, of course, he left it?"

As Brendan stared at the senior partner he began to wonder if the whole thing were not to Phelps simply a fascinating drama, an enthralling case history. Could detachment be carried further? Or was it voyeurism, so long as Phelps himself preferred psychiatric terms? Had he not just virtually admitted that he believed his partner guilty?

"Let me consider first the results of your acting as you propose," Phelps continued. "And secondly those of your not doing so. After the court has received your information, our client will certainly discharge us as counsel. The firm will be tarnished, but not destroyed. One can live anything down these days—in time. Except for Childe himself, who may be disbarred, if your testimony is believed. His life, we must presume, will be ruined. As for East River Trust, it will be obliged, as I have already indicated, to seek a settlement considerably harsher than it deserves. And what are the social goals to be anticipated from your noble conduct? Is a criminal punished? But surely poor Childe, if guilty, could not suffer much more than he must be suffering now. Very well, what about deterrence? Will Brendan Bross's gesture have prevented a further crime by Childe? Hardly. For even if Childe did what you suppose, it is obviously a once-in-a-lifetime felony, and he will have been too scared by the confrontation you've already had with him to try the like again. So now let us consider the scenario where Brendan Bross decides to take no further step with respect to the supposedly suppressed evidence."

"You mean where I fail my duty to the bar?"

"We are speaking hypothetically, sir." For the first time there was a hint of sharpness in the senior partner's tone. "Allow me, if you will, to finish. The litigation comes to its proper conclusion, with a settlement satisfactory to our client and in keeping, I must insist, with the best economic interests of the community. Our distinguished law firm continues its distinguished career, minus one partner who, if actually guilty, will probably soon elect a quiet retirement. And Brendan Bross..."

Here Phelps paused, contemplating his associate with twinkling eyes. Brendan's heart swelled with a sudden spurt of satisfaction and anger as he thought he spotted the game.