Legal Tender

work. I geared up for the next step as the elevator whisked me silently toward Grun.

The doors opened with a hydraulicswoosh onto 32, the Loser Floor. Every big firm has a Loser Floor. It’s where you find the low-wattage lawyers who attract lint more easily than clients and spend way too much time with their families. At Grun, the losers lived on the same floor as the conference rooms and were viewed as equally productive.

I looked around the empty offices and for the first time the Loser Floor seemed like heaven to me, not corporate hell. It was deserted, with everything mine for the taking. None of the losers were in this early, being losers, so I borrowed an office, a computer, and an office directory, and went to work. Or rather, Linda Frost did.

She found Grun’s New York office in the directory and picked out the people she needed. Then she wrote a memo to the personnel office in Philadelphia, informing them that a new associate, one Linda Frost, would be arriving from the New York office this Friday to prepare for trial in a very important securities matter, RMC v. Consolidated Computers. The memo requested Personnel to issue Ms. Frost a Grun ID card, a building pass, and a set of keys, and also to list her on the computer directory in the building’s lobby. Given the traditional close communication between Grun’s Philly headquarters and its branch offices, it would take Personnel two or three years to catch on.

For good measure, Ms. Frost backdated the memo to last week, printed it, and stuck it in a confidential interoffice envelope. Then she stomped on it, crumpled it up, and ripped off an edge to make it look lost in the interoffice mail before she set it in the nearest out box. It would produce the desired effect as soon as it reached Personnel, which would hop to, since it’d apparently screwed up. Again.

Next, Ms. Frost typed a memo to the billing department, requesting a client code and matter number for RMC v. Consolidated Computers. She opened the matter as a “transfer” from the New York office so that it wouldn’t be flagged by the New Client Committee, set up to screen out those wannabe clients who couldn’t afford to be gouged by Grun. In addition, the industrious Ms. Frost wrote a memo to the facilities department, reserving Conference Room D on the 32nd floor for “the foreseeable future” for her exclusive use on the above-captioned confidential securities matter.

Finally, she fired off a note to the supplies department, ordering a computer and office supplies be sent to Conference Room D for use in trial preparation, and sent a separate note to the kitchen, requesting that a sandwich be sent up every day at noon, with a Diet Coke and a carton of whole milk, such meals to be billed to RMC v. ConsolidatedComputers.

I sent the last memos by e-mail, so that in a nanosecond, I would have a new identity, an office, and a job. An entirely new life and citizenship. True, it was temporary, valid only within the Silver Bullet, like a corporate green card. But for the time being, I was hiding in plain sight.

But wait, a loose end. I sat back in the Loser Chair and thought for a minute. Other lawyers might become curious about the redhead in the conference room. Maybe they’d inquire, even stop by. No lawyer is an island. Hmmm. I called up a blank screen and tapped out under today’s date:

TO: All GRUN PARTNERS and ASSOCIATES

FROM: LINDA FROST

RE: HELP!

I am an associate from the New York office presently in Conference Room D on the 32nd floor, working on RMC v. Consolidated Computers, a massive securities matter with extensive document work. Although the case is dry and somewhat technical, I would appreciate some help, as trial is in two weeks in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. I cannot promise your time would be billable, since this client is extremely touchy about its bills. Anyone wishing to lend a hand in this difficult case should feel free to stop by at any time.

Perfect. It would send any lawyer worth his billings screaming in the opposite direction. I’d be dead and petrified before I’d see a partner or an associate from this firm. They’d slip the food under the goddamn door, like I carried Ebola. I hit theSEND button on the e-mail menu, feeling a swell of satisfaction.

I was back in business.

23

I spent the morning in Conference Room D, working and watching wage slaves bring me a computer, a phone, and office supplies. I thanked them enough to be polite but not memorable. Between their visits, I studied Mark’s file, which was spread out at the far end of the conference table, shielded from view by a bunker of dead files from one of the other conference rooms. I kept the door closed, so the room was soundproofed against the losers trundling in at nine o’clock. Didn’t they know the day was half over by then?

My best friend Sam Freminet would have arrived at work bright and early. He would already be at his glass runway, billing time in his office just floors above me, on the polar opposite of the Loser Floor, the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast was home to Grun’s heavy hitters, rainmakers, movers and megashakers: the offices of high-density department heads and Executive Committee members, not to mention the throneroom of The Great and Powerful. Pay no attention to that man behind the client.

I scanned the computer printouts of Mark’s checkbook and found two additional cash payments to Sam Freminet, for one thousand each, in the months before Mark was killed. The midday sun edged onto the papers, but I wasn’t distracted. I was wondering why Sam, he of Gold Coast and gold card, had taken cash payments from Mark.Sam?

I powered up my new computer and fiddled around until I remembered how to find the New Matter Reports, the listing of the new cases opened each month. The New Matter Reports were supposedly put on the computer to alert the partners to possible conflicts of interest, but the real reason was so they could say, LOOK AT THE BUSINESS I’M BRINGING IN! I’M PAYING FOR YOU, CHUMP! And of course, the time-honored, MINE REALLY IS BIGGER THAN YOURS. YOU’RE GONNA NEED A CRANE FOR THIS MOTHER.

I selected number 4 from the menu.

SEARCH WHICH ATTORNEY? said the computer.

I tapped out Sam Freminet.

SEARCHING FOR NEW MATTERS OPENED BY MR. FREMINET, said the computer.PLEASE WAIT.

“Sure,” I replied, just to have someone to talk to. I thought of Grady, but pushed that thought away, and fast. There was no contacting him. The cops had to be watching, maybe tapping his phone. Then I thought of my mother. Dare I call?

THE INFORMATION YOU REQUESTED IS ALMOST READY. PLEASE WAIT.

I half expected to hear a littleca-ching. Maybe the screen would turn green.

HERE IS THE INFORMATION YOU REQUESTED. IT IS CONFIDENTIAL AND SHOULD NOT BE RELEASED TO THIRD PARTIES WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN APPROVAL OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

“Kiss my ass,” I said, skimming the long roster of Sam’s new matters. Twenty-one corporate bankruptcies: Rugel Industries, Lafayette Snacks, Inc., Zaldicor Medical, Quaker Realty Trust, Genezone, Ltd., Atlantic Partners. Apparently solid, certifiable, and marked Approved, meaning they had passed the New Matter Committee. New business, each one a transfusion of fresh whole blood, keeping alive the body corporate. Sam was doing great. Why did he need cash from Mark? By the same token, why would he care about the executor’s fee?

Maybe the clients weren’t paying, or couldn’t. They were bankrupts, after all. Or maybe Sam’s receivables were low, and The Great and Powerful was withholding his distribution check. I needed more information, namely Sam’s monthly billings and his partnership distribution record.

I clicked around the computer menus, looking for the billing information, but no soap. It was computerized, but I’d never seen it because it was hidden. Associates couldn’t access those menus, Grun being as free with information as the Kremlin. So my first task was to convince the computer I was a partner, preferably Sam, since it was his information I was after. To do it I’d have to guess his password. I thought a minute and typed in:

DAFFY DUCK.

WRONG PASSWORD, said the computer.

I tried:FOGHORN LEGHORN.