Extraordinary Rendition

19

BYRON WAS NEVER COMFORTABLE when he had lunch at the Regency Hotel at 61st and Park Avenue, although he had spent many hours in the noisy and elegant room over the years. It was a favorite lunch spot for Sandy Spencer and other leading partners at SpencerBlake. Every day of the week for years, the restaurant attracted at breakfast and lunch not only the partners at SpencerBlake but a perennial cast of celebrities. Smiling, radiantly bald Ron Perelman was in the room almost every time Byron was there. Before they went to jail, Bernie Madoff and Conrad Black were constant guests. Byron had often seen Wilbur Ross and Warren Buffett, Boone Pickens and George Soros there. And there were always people in the room whom his partners called the “entertainers”-Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch, Larry King, and, at almost every breakfast for years, wide-eyed, droll Al Sharpton, that man of the people who loved expensive restaurants and the parties of celebrities.

SpencerBlake had its own table-a curved, plush bench in the far corner of the room with a view toward the Park Avenue windows. Byron had only heard rumors of the monthly tab for the use of the table: there were jokes about the $30,000 table, “$35,000 when you throw in the chairs.” Byron, who as a partner could have easily gotten the real information about the cost, never asked. He simply wasn’t interested. For years, his wife and his law partners were baffled by Byron’s almost casual attitude toward his share of the firm’s profits and his disinterest in the firm’s finances. Some of the younger partners speculated that Byron must have been the scion of one of those old money families and that he had been born into great wealth completely independent of his earnings as a lawyer. To the manor born.

Byron had paid little attention to money over the years simply because he had always earned enough to meet his needs, not because he had inherited any real wealth. His father had started his working life in the 1930s with more inherited wealth than he left to Byron when he died in 1980. The Ambassador had devoted his life to working for the State Department and never earned as much as he and his wife and son needed; for decades he had steadily drawn down on his inheritance to meet the expenses of his imperial lifestyle. When he died, he left Byron the trim, well-built, sturdy house on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine, but little else. Byron had held onto the Maine house, although he used it only two or three weeks each year. It was the only property he now owned. The two-million-dollar Fifth Avenue apartment in which he and Joan had raised their children had been turned over to Joan as part of the divorce. Byron sometimes acknowledged to himself that, as his years of high earnings as a lawyer were coming to an end, he hadn’t accumulated enough or held onto enough to retire, to buy another apartment, and to enjoy the sense of financial security that most lawyers of his age and experience appeared to have.

And yet Byron never envied the wealth or possessions or resources of other people. Sandy Spencer, who had inherited real wealth and over the years earned far more than Byron, owned a classic and tasteful mansion near the Maidstone Club in East Hampton overlooking Egypt Beach. He also had a ten-room apartment on Fifth Avenue and a smaller apartment near the Plaza Athenée in Paris. But Byron never felt any envy of the things Sandy possessed or the settled sense Sandy exuded that he would never have to worry about how well he would live for the rest of his life.

“Byron,” Sandy said as he rose from the table. “I’m glad you were able to stop by.”

Byron shook Sandy’s hand. They had known each other for decades, but they still were oddly formal with one another. They had learned their manners in all-male New England prep schools where the boys were required to wear jackets and ties and call every teacher and coach and the headmaster “Mr.” As they sat at the curved table overlooking the dining room, Byron said, “Someday we’re going to have to learn how to do fist bumps, don’t you think?”

Sandy laughed. “Byron, how the hell do you know what a fist bump is?”

“Hey, Sandy, I’ve walked around for a long time on the face of the earth, and I’ve always kept my eyes open. I even noticed fist bumps long before presidential candidates and their wives began doing them.”

“And fist bumps are-how should I say this?-cleaner, don’t you think? Less chance to pass germs through the knuckles as opposed to the palms.”

“I never thought of a handshake as a sanitation issue.” Byron settled himself into his seat, touching the cool surface of his water glass. “I’ve always tried to be a student of handshakes. I once thought you might be able to predict character through a handshake. Didn’t they teach us that at school? For example, the wet handshake is the sign of the nervous and deceitful, or so I once thought. Handshake style tells you nothing about a person’s character, I’ve learned. And the fist bump probably tells you even less.”

A waiter in his sixties approached the table. “Mr. Spencer, nice to see you, sir. Diet Coke?”

“Sure, Juan. Byron?”

“Just water, thanks.” When the waiter turned away, Byron said, “Remember, Sandy, when we started out in the seventies everybody ordered martinis at lunch?”

“Now we immediately send a lawyer who has a martini at lunch to rehab.”

“Hell, Sandy, I’m so with it these days that I not only know what a fist bump is, but I’ve heard of things like ‘dirty martinis.’”

“The Generation Z drink? My youngest daughter loves to just toss around the words ‘dirty martini.’ Better she says that than ‘dirty sex.’”

Byron casually asked, “Helena is already in college?”

Sandy was surprised that Byron remembered the name of his youngest daughter-Sandy had four children, and Byron had last been among the members of Sandy’s family at a Christmas party almost eight years earlier. But Sandy Spencer knew Byron was an immensely talented lawyer for many reasons, including a prodigious memory. “In fact, Byron, she just finished.”

“What does she plan to do? Graduate school? One of those British gap years? The Marines?”

“Now that would be a learning experience for her.”

Byron, touching the beads of water that clung to the surface of his water glass, said, “Sandy, why are we here?”

Sandy Spencer had developed the skill of gracefully adjusting to any turn in a conversation. Hearing the unexpected, abrupt edge in Byron’s tone, Sandy calmly said, “I know you never liked this place, Byron. You showed real sportsmanship down through the years in getting through places like this, lunches with clients, firm parties, Christmas parties, and the box at Yankee Stadium.”

“And let’s not forget the long weekends at conventions for federal judges that I always attended, the judicial conferences. It still beggars my mind that these federal judges let us pick up the tabs for weekends at golf resorts and that we all expect that no one would accuse us, or them, of buying and selling favors.”

Sandy smiled. “Those conferences, Byron, are for the purpose of fostering collegiality among the members of the judiciary and the lawyers who appear before them. Isn’t that the fact?”

Byron laughed. “A weekend of golf and tennis at the Sagamore fosters lots of things. Collegiality might be one of them. I don’t hear of many federal judges who spend collegial weekends with lawyers at the Legal Aid Society playing stickball in East Harlem.”

Sandy’s face, as if on cue, became serious. “Byron, I owe something to you. And that’s the ability to be direct. We had a partners’ meeting last night. A vote of ninety percent of the partners was needed to vote your expulsion from the firm. And at least ninety-five percent of the partners voted to do that.”

A system-wide pulse of emotion throbbed through Byron. He wondered whether that surge of blood was fear, or anger, or resentment, or shame. “And you called me here to tell me this?”

“I volunteered. There were other ways we could have let you know.”

“And you could have let me know this was under way, Sandy.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference, Byron.”

“Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t have done anything about it to stop it. You could have avoided this. You knew this was going to happen.”

“I did? We’ve had partners who were drug addicts, tax cheats, even a pedophile. Every one of them had the option of resigning, and every one did.”

“Byron, those of us who know you know you would never resign.”

“Am I going to be given the reasons?”

“You know the reasons, Byron. You never got permission to do the work for Ali Hussein. You never even asked for permission. You stopped doing work for firm clients. You made public statements without first notifying the executive committee.”

Byron said, “And I have a right to do all those things.”

“Do you think so, Byron? Life’s complicated. You have a right to have sex with any woman you choose, but you should have understood that in the real world in which we now live you didn’t have a right to fuck a law student who came to work for the firm for the summer. The PC world now sees that as taking cruel advantage of the vulnerable, not as a sport and a pastime.”

Byron tore a piece of bread. “She went back to school and made it clear she wouldn’t come to work for the firm. Nothing happened while she was drawing a paycheck. And she’s more than thirty.”

“Byron, you know the rules. This one is pretty basic-at the Jewish firms they have an expression that gets to the heart of this rule-‘You don’t shit where you eat.’”

“Let’s cut this out, Sandy. We’ve known each other for too long. You and all your minions, for all your liberal talk, don’t want to be anywhere near an Islamic terrorist. You have too many clients who don’t want to have a law firm with a partner who represents a Guantanamo Bay prisoner. This has nothing to do with my being with Christina Rosario. Jesus, even Bill Clinton survived Monica Lewinsky and the cigar.”

“I’m not sure where we’re going with all this, Byron. Even as we speak a press release is being circulated saying that you and the firm reached a mutual agreement that you needed to devote your full-time efforts to the representation of Mr. Hussein. The press release also recites the long list of corporate clients the firm has represented for years and says that we continue to be a prominent, business-oriented law firm. There’s a statement from me wishing you well in this new phase of your career and citing your many contributions to the welfare of the firm’s clients.”

“You know what, Sandy? No reporter will pick up a statement from yet another big law firm. What the reporters want are statements from me. Any reporter who reads your press release will call me immediately.”

“You need to think through another issue, Byron, before you call your new friends at the networks and the papers.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that you probably paid so little attention over the years to the firm that you don’t know that the firm’s partnership agreement was changed a few years ago.”

“To say what?”

“To say that partners expelled from the firm had to clear every public statement through the firm or risk losing things like their partnership accounts, insurance payments-you know, all those things that ordinary lawyers need in order to avoid living on the street?”

“It’s not a good idea to threaten me, Sandy.”

“The only real threat in the world, Byron, is the threat you are to yourself. Be careful.”

The early afternoon air on Park Avenue had that crystalline dazzle created by clear sunshine flooding over the handsome buildings, the innumerable windows, and the long and colorful median dividing the uptown and downtown lanes of traffic. Yellow taxis glinted in the sunlight. Byron had become used to these early afternoons on Park Avenue; they had been part of his life for years. He walked quickly, almost jogging, from the Regency at 61^st and Park toward the black-glass Seagram Building at 49^th and Park. All around him, hundreds of men and women walked, most of them gazing into their hands at cell phones and handheld electronic equipment. Byron was still surprised, even bemused at times, by the way people now moved, oblivious to other walkers and even traffic, transfixed by their gadgets.

Since 9/11 the security system in the Seagram Building had become more and more elaborate. Immediately after that September day, armed guards had been posted in the lobby, allowing only people they recognized into the elevators to reach the firm’s offices, which occupied the 21st through the 30th floors. Then more and more invisible but elaborate screening mechanisms had been installed. Just two months earlier, Byron, like all the other partners in the firm, had started holding the palm of his hand in front of a small unit in a turnstile near the elevators that would allow the gates of the turnstile to open. It was a handprint identification device, and it was much faster and far less obtrusive than the plastic card he had used for several years.

When Byron passed the palm of his hand over the electronic eye, nothing happened. The arm of the turnstile didn’t drop for him. He turned to the security guard stationed near the elevator, a black man who was almost as tall as a professional basketball player and who had always made friendly, knowing eye contact with Byron.

“There’s something wrong with the gate,” Byron said.

“No, there isn’t, Mr. Johnson.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the gate, Mr. Johnson.”

“Say that again?”

“You can’t go upstairs, sir.”

Another security guard, also dressed in a blue blazer and a regimental-striped tie, walked over. He was short, beefy, and muscled-up, almost grotesquely bunched into the blue blazer he wore.

“Open this,” Byron said, glancing at the name tag of the guard’s jacket. “Mr. Ricciardi, open this up. My office is upstairs.”

“You can’t go up there,” Ricciardi said. He had a Brooklyn accent.

Tall, still lithe and athletic, Byron vaulted over the turnstile. Although they were surprised, the two guards were quick. Ricciardi passed his right hand over the electronic eye with a magician’s practiced wave, and the arm of the turnstile immediately fell open to let them through. The two guards ran forward, stopping three feet in front of Byron.

“We need you to turn around and leave, sir.”

“And I need you to step out of my fucking way,” Byron said, wondering if the quaver in his body was reflected in the tone of his voice.

The guards stepped even closer to Byron. Instinctively, he pushed at Ricciardi, who stumbled to his side and did a quick and awkward dance to regain his balance. As he recovered, he raced at Byron, who was pushing at the black guard’s groping hands. It seemed to Byron that a thousand things were happening at once: he registered the fact that Ricciardi was really a street thug, stronger than Byron and enraged that Byron had deftly deflected and humiliated him. And, in the instant before Ricciardi’s right shoulder burst against Byron’s left ribs, he glanced at the elevator bank and saw the stunned, questioning look on the faces of two of his partners.

The burst of pain in his ribs and lungs was intense and fiery, but Byron controlled the instinct to cry out. Like a football lineman, Ricciardi pushed Byron backwards, trying to knock him off his feet, but Byron, who had been pushing at the big hands of the other guard when Ricciardi hit him, kept himself on his feet by grabbing Ricciardi’s head.

Somehow Byron pulled himself away from the two men. His lungs heaving for breath, he managed to keep his balance. Ricciardi was disheveled, furious, ready for more, stunned that a man who was years older than he was had managed to shake him off. In that moment, as Byron waited for Ricciardi’s next thrust, he felt his blood rushing through his entire body as if it were icy water. Ricciardi had an expression of sheer rage. This guy’s an animal, Byron thought. Run.

Breaking the moment, the tall guard spoke, “You need to leave, sir.” The voice was calm.

Embarrassed, outraged, and furious, Byron decided to leave. In order to make himself appear more collected, he tried to button his suit jacket. He groped for an awkward moment before realizing the button was torn off.

As Byron Johnson approached the revolving doors, he saw Sandy Spencer standing just inside the entrance. He had been watching. Byron stared at him: for the first time in all the years Byron had known him, Sandy Spencer looked confused and flustered. He glanced away from Byron, opening his cell phone as if taking an incoming business call. It was a ruse.