Something Unfortunate

Chapter 6

SIX

After Frank Oliver’s door slammed, a suffocating silence settled over the south and west hallways of the office’s thirty-first floor. Life went on in the rest of the firm, spread out over several floors, but nobody moved in these halls. Except for Frank, the section’s attorneys followed an open-door policy, but no sounds came from any of those open doors except the clicking of fingernails on keyboards and the shuffling of papers. Joey Stephens and Clint Raymond exchanged glances across Clint’s desk, but neither said a word. An unwritten rule prohibited conversation immediately after an Oliver-Hargrove donnybrook.

After a few minutes, Clint said, “I guess it’s safe to go out now.”

Joey stood and stretched. “I assume you and Paul will debrief Ken, but I’m not sure you can get anything out of him that we didn’t hear, anyway.”

“You underestimate the interrogative abilities of Mr. Mustang and me. Who knows what insights brilliant minds like ours can glean with a few well-honed questions?”

The sounds of footsteps on carpet outside Clint’s door and the jingle of change in a pocket interrupted their conversation. Paul Mustang walked in the door.

“Ah, here’s my esteemed co-inquisitor now. Welcome, Mr. Mustang.”

Paul smiled and nodded. “Mr. Raymond,” he said with mock formality. “And Mr. Stephens.”

Clint stood and brushed past Joey. “Well, Mr. Mustang, shall we proceed to speak with our partner, Mr. Hargrove?” He affected the same mock formality Paul had introduced to the conversation.

“Yes, let’s,” Paul said. The two men left the office, walking arm-in-arm.

“Geeks,” Joey said.

“Yes,” Clint answered over his shoulder. “But we both make more money than you.”

Joey laughed as he headed back to his own office.

“Joey,” Clint called.

Joey stopped and turned around

“Why don’t you come with us? We can’t protect you forever, so maybe it’s time for you to graduate to the big leagues.”

Ken Hargrove sat behind his desk, rocking slightly in his chair, waiting for Clint and Paul. He knew the routine as well as anyone. He was also getting pretty damn sick of the routine. It had been mildly amusing at first, then later annoying, but now it was getting to be more than he could take. He wanted to do something – anything – to put an end to Frank Oliver’s dictatorship. But he knew that he couldn’t do anything on his own. Any solution or any action would require a united front by the section members. And maybe some help from the firm’s management committee, demanding that Frank put an end to his periodic assaults. Before he could make a move with the committee, though, he first had to inject some backbone into the partners closest to him.

Clint Raymond followed Joey Stephens and Paul Mustang into Ken’s office then closed the door behind him. Ken seemed surprised to see Joey but didn’t say anything.

Paul stepped over the broken chair and sat on a small couch to the side of the desk while Clint slipped into the other half of the antique chair set – the one still standing. Apparently, Ken hadn’t been able to manipulate Oliver into destroying that one. As Clint sat, he adjusted the mini-blinds to block sun from Paul’s squinting eyes. Joey leaned against the wall by the door, arms folded. Ken leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. The lawyers looked uneasily at each other for a few seconds. Finally, Clint pushed a broken armrest across the floor with his foot.

“Cheap construction,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s the way they did things a hundred years ago,” Ken said. “He was going for a field goal and – ka-bang; instant kindling.” He smiled and added, “Funny thing, I always hated those chairs, but Carol insisted I get ‘em. And you know how it is when your wife insists.”

“Look at the bright side,” Paul said. “If you’re lucky, it can’t be fixed, then you get to demand that he pay for it.”

“That would be the time to keep your mouth shut about how you always hated it,” Clint said.

“I made that demand already, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I doubt I’ll ever see a dime out of him. I bet he holds me responsible for the chair breaking in the first place.”

Joey looked at Paul and Clint, who nodded in agreement. It appeared that, as the newest partner, he hadn’t been privy to some of the Frank Oliver craziness that had gone on behind closed doors with other partners, but he couldn’t make sense of what Ken had said.

Ken guessed Joey’s thoughts. “You’ll figure this stuff out before long,” he said. “See, Frank will look at it this way: I deliberately pissed him off so he would do something like kick a chair, and I knew the chair would break but I didn’t stop him, so when he did it, it was my fault. He probably even thinks I got an antique chair in the first place knowing something like this would happen someday.”

“That reminds me of the time he borrowed my briefcase to take with him to New Orleans for a Fifth Circuit argument,” Clint said. “He decided to look at the briefs on the plane, so he grabbed the briefcase to take them out, but when he noticed that the combination wasn’t set on zero-zero-zero, like he sets his, he changed the numbers. Of course, that locked it. But when he tells the story, it’s all my fault because I didn’t use the same combination he did. Then it was my fault for having a briefcase with a combination lock, in the first place, and finally it was my fault for not telling him what the combination was. He never accepted that changing the numbers on the plane had anything to do with it. It was always all my fault.”

“Same principle here,” Ken said.

Clint turned serious. “We joke about this a lot, but I really think the man has got some serious psychological problems. That’s just not normal behavior.”

“None of it is normal,” Ken said. “I’m a little concerned something unfortunate might happen to me.”

“What does that mean?” Clint asked.

“Just something Frank said.”

“I’m with Clint,” Paul said. “We’ve laughed about this before, but it’s starting to affect all of us, and none of it makes any sense. He’s lost it and I’m afraid that, if we let it go, he’ll take down the whole section. I’m already worried about how much business we’re going to get in here next year. I’m not as busy as I was this time last year, and I don’t see it getting any better next.”

“So, you finally think it’s really something to worry about,” Ken said.

“Damn right I do,” Clint said. “My files have all got gray hair, and I don’t see much new business coming in to replace it.”

“How much of it do you think is Oliver,” Joey said, “as opposed to just the normal ebb and flow of legal business?”

“Ebb and flow is one thing,” Clint said, “but I think that some of our clients are sending new business to other firms. That’s a whole different ballgame.”

“I know for a fact that they are,” Ken said.

“How do you know that?” Clint asked.

“Ernie Nabors at Centennial Energy has done it. He told me so. When I asked him why, he said his higher-ups don’t want to get caught up in our family feud over here. I can only assume that means he’s found out, somehow, about Oliver and me being cross-ways.”

“How does he know about that?” Clint asked.

“He wouldn’t say. But we’ve either got a leak or –”

“Oliver has badmouthed you directly to the clients,” Paul said. “Either way, it’s a problem, and either way, he’s in the middle of it.”

“So, what are we going to do about it?” Joey asked. He’d been a partner for only a few years but was learning firsthand about the bad blood behind the scenes, and it was a real eye-opener for him. And troubling as hell.

Nobody said anything for a while as the four lawyers put their collective minds to the dilemma. The truth was, they all knew they probably wouldn’t do anything, other than b***h about the problem. They knew they were pretty much powerless to do anything, anyway. What stroke they had with the firm’s management committee was a function of the fact that, historically, they were, members of the firm’s most profitable section. One way or another, Frank Oliver had managed to keep Erwin Christopher’s clients on board while also bringing in new clients. No one in management was overly anxious to rock the boat when it came to interfering with the section’s internal politics.

On the other hand, if clients were starting to give their new business to other law firms, how much longer would this be a profitable section? The section’s business had already started to wane, which was inevitable when older work dried up as litigation cases began to resolve, but new work wasn’t coming in to replace it. If that continued, and there was every reason to believe it would, they soon would no longer be profitable enough to command any significant influence in the firm. Law firms were notorious for their “what have you done for me lately” mindsets. While the section had not yet reached that point, it was headed that way at a rapid pace. The problem was that firm leadership seemed unwilling to recognize even that possibility. But once it materialized, it would be too late.

“I say we try with the management committee, anyway,” Ken said. “If we present a united front, maybe they’ll at least call a meeting to air this all out. That’s what we need.”

“I think Ken’s right,” Paul said. “If nothing comes of it, then nothing comes of it, but at least we’ll have gone through the right channels. Damn it, that’s what they’re there for in the first place. If they don’t do anything, we’re no worse off than if we never tried.”

“I guess we can always find out if we’re no worse off,” Joey said.

“What do you mean by that?” Paul asked.

“I was a history major, and history tells us there’s nothing worse than a failed coup.”

“It’s not a coup,” Ken said. “No one’s saying we want to kick Frank out. We just want him to treat us right.”

Paul pointed at the broken chair. “What specifically triggered this little outburst?”

“He found out that Ernie Nabors has been talking directly to me on a couple of files. That would have been bad enough by itself, but Ernie told me that Frank had already called one of his bosses and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was the company’s lawyer, not me. So, when he found out I was still talking to Ernie—”

“How’d he find out?” Joey asked.

“I don’t know,” Ken said. “But he did. That’s why he was bent out shape to start with. Then, when I told him Ernie actually wanted to meet with me –”

“I think I can see where this went,” Joey said.

“What bothers me most about it,” Ken said, “is that Frank called Ernie’s boss. Not so much that he called him, but that he apparently tried to dictate who the client could and could not talk to.

“Well, there’s how Ernie found out about the family feud,” Clint said. “He just put two and two together. No one had to tell him the obvious.”

“And it’s not just the problem with Centennial. It makes me wonder what he’s saying to other clients. It’s bad enough he treats us like crap, but when he does it to clients, no wonder they’d rather send their business somewhere else. I don’t blame ‘em. Would you want to pay seven figures a year to a bunch of lawyers who are too busy fighting among themselves to handle their work right?”

“That’s why we’ve got to go to the committee again,” Paul said. “It’s not just personalities and internal politics. It’s economics. That’s why we’ve got at least a chance to get some action this time. If they think this hurts the bottom line, they’ll do something out of their own self-interest. Nothing motivates lawyers like self-interest.”

Paul looked at Clint, who still seemed to have reservations, although it appeared to make sense to everyone else. After about thirty seconds, Clint nodded.

“I guess you’re right. But if we’re going to do it, we’ve got to emphasize economics.”

“Of course,” Ken said.

“And I mean only economics. That’s the only way we’ll get their attention, so we can’t come across as kids crying to daddy because big brother wouldn’t let them play with his toys.”

“So,” Ken said, “are we all agreed that we present a united front to the management committee on this?”

Paul and Clint both nodded, but Joey sat still.

“Joey,” Clint said, “if you want to leave this to us, we’re okay with that. You don’t have the track record with him that we do and, so far, he doesn’t seem to have designated you as an enemy.”

“It needs to be all of us,” Joey said.

“I’ll take point,” Ken said. “I’m already the lightning rod so I’ll take the brunt of it. But y’all have got to back me up.

“Deal,” Clint said. The others nodded their agreement.