Diary of a Yuppie (8 page)

"Let's go to lunch, Bob."

"Do you mind if I talk for a minute about my philosophy of law? You've never really believed that I had one."

"Right now?"

"Yes. Because I want you to hear it before I formally propose that we come back together again."

Alice gave me a long look in which I thought I could read several things. But I think that assent—or at least a willingness to consider assent—was one of them. Or was she simply debating that for the girls' sake, and my sake, or perhaps even for her own, she had better make the best of me? That I was a bit mad, but perhaps not as wicked as she had neurotically assumed?

"I'm listening, Bob."

I told her now, in all gravity, that I was determined that my firm should be a success. And not just a financial success, either: a
moral
success. I was resolved that it would be a union of highly trained, competent men and women who would do everything for a client that could be lawfully done. We should be taut, keen, hard-boiled, comprehensive. There would be no room for sentimentality and none for sloppiness. Uniform rules of office procedure would be laid down and rigidly adhered to; overhead would be kept strictly under control. Partners and associates would be paid in accordance with the quality of their labor and the fees that it produced. The perfect machinery of the firm would be totally at the service of its legal expertise.

And what would that expertise be used for? Well, first and foremost, of course, for the clients—for the skillful handling of their interests within the last letter of the law, but never a millimeter beyond. Nor would the client ever be subjected to the smallest piece of moral advice or guidance; all such matters would be strictly the client's affair. My firm would be a sharp cutting weapon to be picked up and used; weapons did not preach, but they had to be paid for. On the other hand, when we operated in the public area—and I was willing to commit us to a substantial number of hours a week for
pro bono
work—then we would show an equal zeal and an equal ruthlessness. Even should my biggest client, for example, Atlantic Rylands, object to a suit that we were bringing—say, on an environmental issue—it would be told, politely but firmly, to mind its own business.

When I had finished Alice was silent. Then she asked unexpectedly, "Do you ever see Mr. Blakelock? I wonder what he'd think of your ideals?"

"As a matter of fact I had lunch with him last week. I told him just what I've told you."

"And what did he say?"

I hesitated for several moments. But then I saw, in what I deemed a flash of true Service inspiration, that the truth was precisely what might clinch her coming back to me. "He wasn't very nice. He said that what I was really doing was putting together a firm that another Robert Service would not be able to eviscerate."

Alice's hands flew to her mouth in a gesture of combined horror and amusement. "Ah, the wicked man!" she cried. Then she got up. "Let's go to lunch, darling." Darling? I was right! "I'm starved. But don't worry; I'm on your side. I shan't be a silly ass again. At least not for a while, I hope. Oh, Bob, the world takes a lot of knowing, doesn't it?"

One thing I resolved, when I returned to work after our long and happy meal in which we split a bottle of Pouilly-Fume, was to continue to keep this journal in my office after I should have come home to my old apartment. I have no intention of taking the chance that Alice might read of my intention somehow to dispose of Glenn Deane. She has not yet learned to accept the necessity of getting rid of rotten apples or the fact that the "good life" is only bought at a price. But I am now fairly confident that Alice can learn this in time. After all, she is very intelligent.

I have told Douglas Hyde to keep a sharp eye on Deane. Douglas is my "number two" in the firm, my "executive officer," a large-featured, snowy-haired young man who never loses his temper, a silent operator who sees that life is funny without more than smirking at it, an indefatigable worker and, I guess, as ambitious a lawyer as myself. Douglas would use me, but it would be for my benefit as well as his own. He and I are a team.

W
ELL, I HAVE
"done the deed."

For Glenn at last was guilty of something gravely out of line with the policy of our firm. At a meeting in my office of the executive committee, consisting of him, myself, Douglas Hyde and Peter Stubbs, he actually suggested that three of "his" associates, because of the "splendid" work they had done for his client Ace Investors, be given an extra award of five thousand dollars apiece despite the fact that the Christmas bonuses to the lawyers and staff had already been announced.

"But that's preposterous!" I exclaimed. "It would throw our whole compensation scheme out of whack. What can you be thinking of, Glenn?"

"I'm thinking of three crack lawyers who have worked their asses off and deserve to be rewarded for their missing posteriors."

"All our people work hard."

"Not like mine, kiddo. Not like mine."

"That's ridiculous! And even if it were so, it's no reason to make invidious distinctions. We can't run a firm if every partner is going to demand special treatment for his associates."

"Every partner? Am I every partner?"

"All right, any partner."

"That's hogwash, Bob, and you know it. The partners who bring in the bacon are entitled to have their minor requests honored without all this haggling. Hell, I'd vote the same bonus for your people."

"But I'd never ask it. That's the difference between us. This business of firms within firms has got to stop. This business of partners acting as lobbyists for their own departments. Quit being such a mother hen, Glenn! Your chicks are no more yours than they are Peter's or Doug's or mine."

Now why did I have to be quite so nasty? Was I spoiling for a fight? I was. I had the feeling that a showdown was due between us and that it was better to push it while I held the good cards.

Glenn, I should explain, now seemed to me the very embodiment of all that was wrong with our world. He was violent and undisciplined. He grabbed whatever it pleased him to grab. And having no morals, or even any guiding principles, he protected himself in the only way such a creature could—with a bodyguard of unquestioning dependents. Wasn't that the way all civilizations were fated to end, with Alarics and Attilas leading troops of blindly loyal ruffians into bloody and ruthless battle against each other? Where the loyalty of the lesser to the greater brute was the only quality left that could even be said to resemble a virtue?

Glenn, at any rate, called for a vote, although, as a committee, we had always acted on consensus. When he lost, three to one, he announced furiously that he would take the matter to the firm, which he proceeded to do at the next of our biweekly lunches.

These lunches, which were faithfully attended by every partner not actually in court or at a closing or out of town, were held in a private dining room in a midtown lunch club. After a first course of general chatter, I would call the meeting to order and initiate the discussion of firm matters. It was then that I responded to Glenn's demand for the three bonuses denied by the committee:

"Let me say at once, gentlemen, that I regard the question of compensation as within the exclusive jurisdiction of the executive committee. That committee cannot be reversed. It can only be abolished and a new committee appointed in its place. A vote in favor of Mr. Deane's resolution is in effect a vote to abolish the committee."

"I don't give a damn how I get my bonuses," Glenn retorted in his most grating tone, "so long as I get them. If abolishing the executive committee is the only efficient way to run this firm, then I say let's abolish it!" He glared defiantly around the table. "And, yes, I
do
so move. Are you going to second my motion, Lew?"

"I second it, Glenn."

"Address the chair, please!" I called out.

"I second it, Mr. Service." Lew Pessen was Glenn's particular sidekick.

"Very well, the motion is made and seconded," I announced tartly. "Before it is voted on I ask every partner to consider carefully the effect of this procedure on the future of the firm. You will be deciding whether you wish to be managed by rules or by whim. You will be deciding whether every policy of your chosen managers will be subject to reversal by any disgruntled partner who shouts for special treatment."

"Can't we just vote on a simple bonus question without all this emotion?" cried Glenn.

"I want to finish, Mr. Deane. I want to emphasize the extreme gravity of this vote on the welfare of the firm." I paused here for several seconds. "Very well, will all those in favor of the motion please raise their right hand."

Three hands in addition to Glenn's were promptly raised. The motion was lost. But four was a dangerous dissent. I resolved that the war with Deane should now be to the death. As he was volatile and I was patient it should not be too long before I found the proper time and cause.

And indeed my opportunity came sooner than I expected. Only a week after the turbulent partners' lunch meeting, in a discussion with Douglas Hyde about the firm's reaction to our now distributed Christmas bonuses, I made an important discovery. The reaction had been unanimously enthusiastic.

"Even with Deane's disappointed trio?" I asked sharply.

"Even them. They don't seem disappointed at all. In fact, I hear they seem particularly smug about something."

I jumped up from my desk. "That's it, then!" I cried. I was too excited for a second to say more.

"What's
it
?" he demanded.

"They've been paid their five g's!"

"You mean Glenn paid their bonuses out of his own pocket?"

"No, no, he'd never do that. Glenn fork over fifteen thousand bucks? Dream on. Ace Investors must have paid it."

"Because they're so happy with our legal services they'll pay bonuses to our associates?"

"Hardly. They would have taken it out of our fee."

"How could they do that?"

"Very simply. By reducing our bill by that amount."

"But we'd have known!"

"Not unless Glenn chose to tell us. Don't be dense, Doug."

"Oh, I see what you're getting at. Glenn cut the firm's bill by fifteen grand and asked the client to pay his three associates directly."

"Exactly. Ace Investors would have regarded it as irregular, but Glenn must have insisted that it was important for his three clerks' morale to feel the direct appreciation of the client. And, of course, he would have guaranteed the firm's approval. So they went along. Glenn Deane robbed his partners to pay his pets!"

"How do we prove it?"

"I suggest you call one of your pals at Ace Investors, Doug. Tell him you have a bookkeeping problem. Ask him if the payments to the three associates were for five g's or twenty-five hundred."

"Won't he be suspicious?"

"Why? Won't Glenn have told him the firm approved the payments?"

Thus I discovered that the payments had actually been made. There was no time to lose. Douglas confirmed my suspicions on a Monday; the morrow was the day of our next partners' lunch. I even wondered if I dared wait so many hours. Should I call the firm into special session in the conference room that very afternoon? If Glenn found out that I knew, he would have the chance to go to the partners, one by one, and plead his case. I should have lost the needed elements of surprise and shock.

But even as I debated my course of action he came to see me. I could always tell when Glenn knew he was in trouble; his oiliness became almost unbearable. It was as if, with his general contempt for the world around him, he wanted to satisfy himself that he could prevail over his opponent's worst opinion of him. "You think I'm a hypocrite," he would seem to be saying. "Well, damn right I'm a hypocrite! And a brilliant hypocrite like me can overcome an ass like you with all his cards face up on the table!"

"We haven't been seeing much of each other lately, Bob," he began with a kind of leer. "I don't know why that should be. After all, we're really the daddy and mummy of this firm, aren't we?"

"Which of us is the daddy?"

"Oh, you are, dear boy, you are. With my big paps and ass I might be an old milking mater, mightn't I? When are we going to lunch?"

"How about Wednesday?"

"You're on, kid. And by the way, if you should come across any little irregularity in the compensation of my associates, don't get too excited. If it's laid at my door, I can always make adjustments. Even, if absolutely essential, at my own expense."

"What sort of irregularities do you have in mind?"

"Mere details, my friend, mere details. We can talk about it on Wednesday."

I breathed a sigh of relief as he left my office. He actually trusted me to wait! Surely this was a sign of weakness. I looked forward now to what I should do the next day. Why not? I had suffered enough humiliation from Glenn. I had offered him chance after chance. Now I should simply destroy him. And enjoy it!

At the partners' lunch on Tuesday I waited until the usual time for the discussion of business. Then I rose.

"I have an announcement of the utmost importance to make," I called down the table. An ominous silence fell. "Following which, I must ask for the resignation of a partner. If that partner chooses not to resign, I shall move that we dissolve the firm and re-form it without him. If the firm rejects my solution, I shall submit my own resignation."

"Who the shit do you think you are?" Glenn shouted at me. He had had more than one of the cocktails that we served before the meal. "Is this Bobby Service I see before me, or Robespierre demanding the head of Danton from the Committee of Public Safety?"

"You have only to listen, Glenn," I retorted coolly, "and then judge for yourself. It is indeed your resignation that I am asking for. I submit that you reduced a bill to Ace Investors by fifteen thousand dollars on the understanding that it would issue checks of five thousand each to three associates designated by you. And I don't have to tell anyone in this room who those three associates were."