Stuart Woods - New York Dead

“It’s okay, really it is.”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go home and try to get some sleep this afternoon.”

He did his best to hide his disappointment. “Next Saturday?”

“Absolutely.”

The next Saturday was much the same.

Another letter came from the bank, this time a flat-out demand. Stone, his back against the wall now, called a real estate agent.

“I think it’s wonderful what you’re aiming at for the place,” she said, “but I guess you know what the New York residential property market is like right now. In good times, with the place finished and ready to move into, we might get three, three and a half million for this house. Right now, for an immediate sale, we might be lucky to get three hundred thousand.”

Stone was shocked. “Is the market that bad?”

“It is. Listen, you’re lucky; at least you’d get something out of a sale. I’ve got clients with perfectly beautiful town houses who are being forced to sell for far less than they paid, and they’re having to pay off the rest of the mortgage out of savings.”

Bright and early on a Monday morning, Stone presented himself to be examined for admission to the bar of New York State, along with about fifteen hundred others. Like everyone else, he labored over the questions. There were occasional gaps in his knowledge, but, on the whole, he thought he did well; certainly, he aced the questions on criminal law. Now there was only the waiting.

He got home feeling enormously relieved. He had finished his study for the bar and the varnishing of the library at the same time. Now, if Cary could just get a break in her work schedule, maybe they could…

The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Bill Eggers.”

“Hi, Bill.”

“How’d you do today?”

“How’d you know?”

“I have spies everywhere.”

“Well, I did okay on criminal law, at least.”

“Good. How about dinner tomorrow night?”

“Fine.”

“The Four Seasons, at eight thirty?”

“Sounds good.”

“Don’t bring anybody. It’s just you and me.”

“If you promise not to put your hand on my knee.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not cute enough. By the way, I might have some news for you.”

“What sort of news?”

“Let’s wait and see.”

The Four Seasons was busy, as always. The hum of voices from the Pool Room echoed enjoyment of the surroundings and the food, but Bill Eggers had a table in the Grill, next to the bar.

“It’s quieter here,” Eggers said. “It’s crazy at lunch, but at dinner everybody wants to be in the Pool Room. Here, we can talk.”

Stone wondered exactly what they would be talking about. This felt something like a job interview, but he couldn’t see Woodman amp; Weld hiring a thirty-eight-year-old novice as an associate.

They had a drink and dawdled over the menu. Eggers seemed in an expansive mood, relieved over the resolution of his Los Angeles case. “It was a bastard,” he said. “A bicoastal divorce case of one of our biggest clients. He was claiming New York residence, and she claimed they lived in California – she wanted community property.”

“Who won?”

“I did. The LA office is mostly into entertainment work, so I did the dog work while they fronted for me in court. Don’t worry about the lady; she’s doing very well out of this, but she’s not getting the thirty million that community property division would have given her. She’s pissed off now, but she’ll get used to living on the income from six million.”

“You do a lot of divorce work?”

“I’m sort of the firm general practitioner. I have a lot of clients whose personal legal work I handle, and that often leads to divorce work. It’s nasty sometimes, but, if you can keep a certain detachment, you can live with it.”

“Must be lucrative.”

“Not all that much. We only do divorce work for the firm’s existing clients, and we don’t charge them the earth. In the case of the men, when they see what the wife’s lawyer is demanding, they’re grateful to us for not taking them to the cleaners; in the case of the women, they’re grateful to us for not demanding high fees. That builds client loyalty.”

“I should think so.”

They ordered their food, and Eggers chose what Stone thought must be the most expensive bottle of wine on a very expensive list. If Stone had been interested before in what Bill Eggers had to say, now he was really interested.

Eggers tasted the wine and nodded to the sommelier. When the man had gone, he turned to Stone. “What do you know about Woodman amp; Weld?”

“Not very much,” Stone admitted. “I get the impression that it’s a prestigious firm, from what I read in the papers, but I’m not very clear on why it might be so.”

“Good. That’s pretty much the impression we like to convey. We see that the people who might need us know a lot more, but we keep a fairly low public profile.”

Stone sipped the wine; he thought he had never tasted anything so good. “It’s a lovely burgundy,” he said to Eggers. “Thank you.”

Eggers nodded, pleased that his largess had been noted. “Let me give you the scoop on us. We’ve got eighteen partners at the moment, and thirty-six associates. That’s certainly not big by Manhattan standards, but it’s big enough for us to be able to cover a lot of bases. There are seven corporate specialists – we tend to attract companies somewhat below the Fortune Five Hundred level, outfits that don’t have huge legal departments; we have four estate planners – that’s very important to wealthy individuals – and, just as important, four tax specialists, all Jewish. Nobody seems to take a tax lawyer seriously who isn’t Jewish. We’re something of a polyglot firm – blacks, women, Irish, Jews, Italians – not unlike the New York Police Department, I expect. That’s important to us, because the firm is active in liberal Democratic causes – you’d be surprised how much business comes in that way. Finally, there are three generalists – two of them Woodman and me.”

“I liked Woodman when I met him.”

“Woodman is a genius, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a client man, first and last; he inspires trust. Also, he has a facility for going into a meeting – corporate, tax, whatever – and immediately grasping the issues involved. Clients think he knows everything , which isn’t exactly true, but he can give that impression effortlessly. I’d be willing to bet that he could engage you in conversation about a homicide investigation and make you think he was an ex-cop.”

Their first course arrived, and they dug in.

“You didn’t mention any criminal lawyers,” Stone said between bites.

“We don’t have a criminal lawyer as such, although you’d be surprised at how much criminal work comes our way. Nowadays, it’s the corporate executive or stockbroker who’s stepped over the line; also, our clients’ kids get into trouble – drugs, rape, sometimes even murder.”

“How do you handle that?”

“In different ways. If it’s something big, we refer to a hotshot mouthpiece; more often, we bring in a consultant and handle it internally. A client likes it when his own lawyer seems to be in charge. Of course, there’s a fine line there; we have to make the judgment on when an outsider best serves the client’s needs. We can’t afford to make a mistake and underrepresent a client. We’re very, very careful in the matter of malpractice, and we’ve never had a suit against us.”

“That seems a good area to be careful in.”

“In short, Stone, we’re a class act. Every single partner is as good as any lawyer in town at what he does and better than ninety-nine percent of the field. We’re low profile, highly ethical, and extremely profitable. I will tell you, in confidence, that no partner in our firm is taking home less than half a million a year, and that’s the low end. I made a million two last year, and it wasn’t my best year.”