Chapter 33: The Firm Opened His Books
Owen sent the package to Martin Voss on a Thursday, by courier, with a cover letter that used the word cooperation four times.
That is the polite version of a siren, Owen said.
My father had a rule, I said. If a man overbills you once, it is a mistake. Twice, it is a system. Three times, it is a business model.
The firm opened a fraud review by Monday.
Fraud review sounds mild. The first morning was not.
Outside counsel. Forensic accountants.
Five years of expense reports, pulled and read by strangers.
Each charge was matched to a matter number, client invoice, and card statement.
I know this because Martin called me himself, which he had never done.
Senior partners do not call clients' wives. They call clients.
He was finally understanding which one I had always been.
Whatever she gave you, it checked out, he said. Every folio. Every code. Every date.
They started with his reports, obviously.
I am glad, I said.
He paused. Nora, this is going to be very bad for him.
It already is, I said. This is just the part where it becomes official.
The review committee met in the big conference room, the one with the windows Grant used to point at when he gave tours.
They summoned him on a Wednesday morning.
No agenda. No subject line. Just a time, a room, and the words attendance required.
He thought it was about reinstatement.
Martin told me that part later, and for one second I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost is a small word, but it is exactly the right size for what I felt.
He put on his good suit.
He practiced his face in the mirror of the lobby elevator, the face that said this has all been a misunderstanding between friends.
He stopped at Sabrina's desk on the way, out of habit. It was empty. Cleared. She had resigned the Friday before, in two sentences, with no goodbye.
Then the elevator opened on the fourteenth floor, and Sabrina Cross walked out of Martin's office.
Martin described it to me the way senior partners describe everything. Flat, factual, no mercy anywhere in it.
She had been in there for two hours, he said. With the committee and outside counsel.
She brought a timeline. She brought receipts.
She answered everything they asked, and she did not embellish, which is how they knew it was true.
She walked past Grant in the hallway.
She did not slow down.
He said her name, and she looked at him as if he were furniture in a house she had already vacated.
Then the elevator came, and the doors closed, and she was gone.
He stood there in his good suit, in the hallway of the firm he used to point at, and he understood.
They were not calling him in to give him his job back.
They were calling him in because she had just finished taking it.
The committee did not shout either. They laid his own hotel folios on the table one by one, like cards in a game he had invented.
They asked who authorized the charges.
He said, I can explain.
They asked why a client billing code appeared on a vineyard weekend in June.
He used the word strategy four times in one answer. Outside counsel wrote that down too.
Then they thanked him with the committee's practiced courtesy, and he understood that too.
Martin stopped on the line. I waited.
Nora, he said at last. When this review finishes, there will not be a firm left for him to come back to.
I looked out my office window at the lake, flat and gray, giving nothing back.
I know, I said.
That was the point.