“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s all right. She beat it,” he says. “But you never know how long you have to spend with those you love. So for the past two years, I’ve spent what extra time I had with her instead of here. And I’m afraid Nick-he was one of our newest additions-I’m afraid he fell through the cracks. I can’t but think that maybe whatever he got involved with… Metz I mean… well, that perhaps it was the result of his seeing his potential here as somehow limited. You knew him best. Did he ever say anything?”
“He… ahh… well there’s no denying he was disappointed,” I say.
“So he told you. I knew it. And I have to blame myself. I was just too damn busy to pay attention.”
“You can’t help something like that,” I tell him. “I know. I’ve dealt with it.”
He looks at me, a question mark.
“I lost my wife to cancer six years ago.”
“I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right. I know what it’s like. The time it takes. Your life stands still. But time doesn’t. You stop living for a while. It took almost a year after she died before I could function fully again.”
“Then you do know. Thank God I didn’t have to go through that. But you live with the constant thought that maybe you will. And in the meantime, the firm kept going, growing. It’s what happens when you get too big. You start going for quantity instead of quality.”
“You’re saying Rocker, Dusha is getting too big?”
“I hope not.” He smiles. “All the same, Nick got caught up in that machine. No doubt he viewed his problems as a bad mix with corporate chemistry, that he didn’t fit in. After all, he came here from a solo criminal practice. He may have fit better than he knew. But I wasn’t around to tell him.” At the moment Tolt is not looking at me as much as through me, to the wall beyond, taking personal stock, and not pleased with the picture he is seeing.
“Twenty-nine years with the firm. I’m sixty-seven years old. Pretty soon they’ll put me out to pasture. And I suppose I should go gracefully. Still, I’ll think about Nick and wonder whether if I’d been here he might still be alive.”
“Perhaps you need to be a little more fatalistic,” I tell him.
“What do you mean?”
“Lincoln had to get out of bed every morning knowing that before his day was out, he would likely have to review casualty reports. He considered himself lucky if these contained thousands of names, and not tens of thousands. After a year of this, he came to view the war as the result of God’s hand at work, punishing the nation for the sin of slavery, and that he was just a tool. Lincoln came to believe that no matter what he did, or how he exhorted his generals, he couldn’t end the war until God was ready.”
“So you think I should be more like Lincoln?”
“Oh. I think everybody should,” I say.
“You’re not a fatalist, you’re an idealist,” he says.
“No. I’m a cynic because I know it’s not going to happen. But I understand your feelings.”
“I thought you would. You’re different than Nick,” he says.
“In what way?”
“You see what is practical, what’s doable. Too many of the people here don’t. I can’t judge Nick, because I didn’t know him well enough. So I won’t. He and I may have been better suited than I’ll ever know, because I didn’t take the time or have the time. I don’t want to make that mistake again. Life is too short not to know the people you work with. So I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” he says, “and I’d like to get to know you better. I would like you to come to work for the firm.”
I look at him, shocked, round eyes.
“We’ll double whatever you’re making in your current practice. And we’ll find a place for Harry. I have Harvard grads doing research for me. They could take lessons from him.”
Harry in a place like Rocker, Dusha would be like a lit cigarette next to black powder.
“I don’t think that would work.”
“I don’t want you to give me an answer right now. Think about it. Take it back to Harry. Get out your calculators and see what you both need to come on board. Think about it,” he says. “I see no reason why the two of you couldn’t continue to work together. We’ll find adjoining suites, put you both under contracts, after a year, you’d both have an ownership interest, partners. You’d report directly to me,” he says.
“I’m flattered,” I tell him. “But I don’t think…”
“Don’t think about it right now. Give it some time. We can talk after you get back from your trip.”
What can I say? I’m looking at my watch, time to go. Adam grabs the phone off the sidebar behind him, orders up his car and the driver, then walks me out the door to the elevator.
“Just press G-One, down to the garage, first level. My driver will meet you there, get your bags. Give him your keys, he’ll move your car into one of the spaces in the garage until you get back. Give him your flight and he’ll be out in front of the terminal to pick you up. Oh, and one more thing. Here, take one of these.” He hands me one of the firm’s newsletters, eight pages in four colors folded like a tabloid. “A little something to read on the plane,” he says.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
With the roar of the jet engines, the kinetic drag of acceleration presses me back in my chair. A few seconds later, we lift from the runway and climb quickly to a thousand feet.
The pilot throttles back to cut noise, and we glide out over Ocean Beach, a few shimmering blue specks of backyard pools, past Sunset Cliffs, and the rolling line of surf. The flight crew gooses the powerful turbines again and the Boeing 737 climbs rapidly, heading north up the coast.
We settle in at cruising altitude and I pull the attache case from under the seat in front, take what I want from it, and put it back. On the tray table in front of me is the newsletter from Tolt’s firm, a file with Tresler campaign statements that Harry had collected, and Nick’s small handheld device.
I settle back in the chair and open the newsletter. Just below the fold I see my name in bold headline type.
MADRIANI and HINDS
SETTLE CLAIM
FOR RUSH ESTATE
This is why Adam handed it to me. The story is not long, a few inches. It talks about the firm’s key-man policy. Adam has taken the opportunity to boost this as one of the perks of partnership.
In two short sentences, the article covers Nick’s death, the date, and the fact that he was caught up in a drive-by shooting while talking with a client in front of the federal courthouse. The last two graphs read like a promotional brochure for Harry and me.
“Those who knew Nick Rush will be happy to learn that even though Nick’s death was tragic and untimely, local attorneys Paul Madriani and Harry Hinds of the Coronado law firm of Madriani and Hinds effected a sizable insurance settlement ($3.8 million) for Nick’s family and survivors.
“The settlement was grounded on evidence that Nicholas Rush was the innocent and unintended victim of a drive-by shooting, thereby availing his heirs of insurance reparations under the life insurance policy’s double indemnity clause for accidental death.”
Lawyers, more than most, like to feed and water illusions of their own prowess. But I know that settlements like this don’t happen unless insurance adjusters and the people they report to are operating under the influence, in this case of Adam Tolt.
I suspect Adam realizes, as well as I do, that it was a symbiotic relationship. We used each other. I wanted to maximize the dollar figure and get settlement as quickly as possible and get out of it. He wanted to dry clean the skirts of the law firm. If Tolt hadn’t suggested his office as the location for a settlement meeting, I would have.
I assumed it would take several meetings and a few months to hammer something out and nail it down.
