The King of Torts

"Solicitation is a joke. Just look at the billboards."

They stopped at an intersection. "Right now I represent the defendant," Clay said as they waited. "How do I cross the street and represent his victim?"

"You just do it. We’ve researched the canons of ethics. It’s sticky, but there are no violations. Once you resign from OPD, you are free to open your own office and start accepting cases."

"That’s the easy part. What about Tequila Watson? I know why he committed murder. I can’t hide that knowledge from him, or his next lawyer."

"Being drunk or under the influence of drugs is not a defense to a crime. He’s guilty. Ramon Pumphrey is dead. You have to forget about Tequila." They were walking again.

"I don’t like that answer," Clay said.

"It’s the best I have. If you say no to me and continue to represent your client, it will be virtually impossible for you to prove he ever took a drug called Tarvan. You’ll know it, but you won’t be able to prove it. You’ll look foolish using that as a defense."

"It may not be a defense, but it could be a mitigating circumstance."

"Only if you can prove it, Clay. Here." They were on Connecticut Avenue, in front of a long modern building with a three-story glass-and-bronze entrance.

Clay looked up and said, "The high-rent district."

"Come on. You’re on the fourth floor, a corner office with a fantastic view."

In the vast marble foyer, a directory listed a who’s who of D.C. law. "This is not exactly my turf," Clay said as he read the names of the firms.

"It can be," Max said.

"What if I don’t want to be here?"

"It’s up to you. We just happen to have some space. We’ll sublease it to you at a very favorable rent."

"When did you lease it?"

"Don’t ask too many questions, Clay. We’re on the same team."

"Not yet."

Carpet was being laid and walls painted in Clay’s section of the fourth floor. Expensive carpet. They stood at the window of a large empty office and watched the traffic on Connecticut Avenue below. There were a thousand things to do to open a new firm, and he could only think of a hundred. He had a hunch that Max had all the answers.

"What do you think?" Max said.

"I’m not thinking too well right now. Everything’s a blur."

"Don’t blow this opportunity, Clay. It will never come again. And the clock is ticking."

"It’s surreal."

"You can do your firm’s charter online, takes about an hour. Pick a bank, open the accounts. Letterhead and such can be done overnight. The office can be complete and furnished in a matter of days. By next Wednesday you can be sitting here behind a fancy desk running your own show."

"How do I sign up the other cases?"

"Your friends Rodney and Paulette. They know the city and its people. Hire them, triple their salaries, give them nice offices down the hall. They can talk to the families. We’ll help."

"You’ve thought of everything."

"Yes. Absolutely everything. I’m running a very efficient machine, one that’s in a near-panic mode. We’re working around the clock, Clay. We just need a point man."

On the way down, the elevator stopped at the third floor. Three men and a woman stepped in, all nicely tailored and manicured and carrying thick expensive leather briefcases, along with the incurable air of importance inbred in big-firm lawyers. Max was so engrossed in his details that he did not see them. But Clay absorbed them – their manners, their guarded speech, their seriousness, their arrogance. These were big lawyers, important lawyers, and they did not acknowledge his existence. Of course, in old khakis and scuffed loafers he did not exactly project the image of a fellow member of the D.C. Bar.

That could change overnight, couldn’t it?

He said good-bye to Max and went for another long walk, this one in the general direction of his office. When he finally arrived, there were no urgent notes on his desk. The meeting he’d missed had evidently been missed by many others. No one asked where he had been. No one seemed to notice that he had been absent during the afternoon.

His office was suddenly much smaller, and dingier, and the furnishings were unbearably bleak. There was a stack of files on his desk, cases he could not now bring himself to think about. All of his clients were criminals anyway.

OPD policy required thirty days’ notice before quitting. The rule, however, was not enforced because it could not be enforced. People quit all the time with short notice or none whatsoever. Glenda would write a threatening letter. He would write a pleasant one back, and the matter would end.

The best secretary in the office was Miss Glick, a seasoned warrior who might just jump at the chance to double her salary and leave behind the dreariness of OPD. His office would be a fun place to work, he had already decided. Salaries and benefits and long vacations and maybe even profit-sharing.

He spent the last hour of the workday behind a locked door, plotting, stealing employees, debating which lawyers and which paralegals might fit.

He met Max Pace for the third time that day, for dinner, at the Old Ebbitt Grille, on Fifteenth Street, two blocks behind the Willard. To his surprise, Max began with a martini, and this loosened him up considerably. The pressure of the situation began melting under the assault of the gin, and Max became a real person. He had once been a trial lawyer in California, before something unfortunate ended his career out there. Through contacts he found his niche in the litigation marketplace as a fireman. A fixer. A highly paid agent who sneaked in, cleaned up the mess, and sneaked out without a trace. During the steaks and after the first bottle of Bordeaux, Max said there was something else waiting for Clay after Tarvan. "Something much bigger," Max said, and he actually glanced around the restaurant to see if spies were listening.

"What?" Clay said after a long wait.

Another quick search for eavesdroppers, then, "My client has a competitor who’s put a bad drug on the market. No one knows it yet. Their drug is outperforming our drug. But my client now has reliable proof that the bad drug causes tumors. My client has been waiting for the perfect moment to attack."

"Attack?"

"Yes, as in a class-action suit brought by a young aggressive attorney who possesses the right evidence."

"You’re offering me another case?"

"Yes. You take the Tarvan deal, wrap things up in thirty days, then we’ll hand you a file that will be worth millions."

"More than Tarvan?"

"Much more."

Clay had thus far managed to choke down half his filet mignon without tasting anything. The other half would remain untouched. He was starving but had no appetite. "Why me?" he asked, more to himself than to his new friend.

"That’s the same question lottery winners ask. You’ve won the lottery, Clay. The lawyer’s lottery. You were smart enough to pick up the scent of Tarvan, and at the same time we were searching desperately for a young lawyer we could trust. We found each other, Clay, and we have this one brief moment in time in which you make a decision that will alter the course of your life. Say yes, and you will become a very big lawyer. Say no, and you lose the lottery."

"I get the message. I need some time to think, to clear my head."

"You have the weekend."

"Thanks. Look, I’m taking a quick trip, leaving in the morning, coming back Sunday night. I really don’t think you guys need to follow me."

"May I ask where?"