The Exchange: After The Firm

Chapter 4

In his rental car, Mitch called his secretary and asked her to change his travel plans. He’d missed the morning nonstop to LaGuardia. Connecting flights would take hours and send him crisscrossing most of the country. There was a direct from Nashville at 5:20 and she got him a ticket. Getting to the airport would dovetail nicely with an idea he’d been kicking around.

The traffic thinned and Memphis was behind him before an unexpected wave of exhilaration hit hard. He had just dodged an awful experience, and the rogue DEA subplot was enough to give a lawyer ulcers, at best. He had taken one for the team, notched a huge favor with Willie Backstrom, and was fleeing Memphis again, this time without threats and other baggage.

With plenty of time, he stayed on the two-lane highways and enjoyed a peaceful drive. He ignored some calls from New York, checked in with Abby, and loafed at fifty miles an hour. The town of Sumrall was two hours east of Memphis, one hour west of Nashville. It was the county seat and had a population of 18,000, a big number for that part of the rural South. Mitch followed the signs and soon found himself on Main Street, which was one side of the town square. A well-preserved nineteenth-century courthouse sat in the center of the square with statues, gazebos, monuments, and benches scattered about, all protected by the shade of massive oak trees.

Mitch parked in front of a dress shop and walked around the square. As always, there was no shortage of lawyers and small firms. Again he wondered why his old friend would choose such a life.

They met at Harvard in the late fall of Mitch’s third year, when the most prestigious law firms made their annual trek to the school. The recruiting game was the payoff, not for hard work because that was the drill at every law school, but for being smart and lucky enough to get accepted to Harvard. For a poor kid like Mitch, the recruiting was especially thrilling because he could smell money for the first time in his life.

Lamar had been sent with the team because he was only seven years older than Mitch, and a more youthful image was always important. He and his wife, Kay, had embraced the McDeeres as soon as they arrived in Memphis.

There had been no contact in fifteen years. The internet made it easy to snoop around and see what folks were doing, especially lawyers, who as a breed, and regardless of their success or lack of it, enjoyed all the attention they could generate. It was good for business. Lamar’s website was rather simple, but then so was his practice: the bland offering of deeds, wills, no-fault divorces, property transactions, and, of course, Personal Injuries!! Every small-town lawyer dreamed of landing some good car wrecks.

There was no mention of such unpleasantries as Lamar’s indictment, guilty plea, and prison sentence.

His office was above a sporting goods store. Mitch lumbered up the creaky steps, took a deep breath, and opened the door. A large woman behind a computer screen paused and offered a sweet smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning. Is Lamar around?”

“He’s in court,” she said, nodding behind her in the general direction of the courthouse.

“A trial?”

“No, just a hearing. Should be over soon. Can I help you?”

Mitch handed her a Scully business card and said, “Name’s Mitch McDeere. I’ll try to catch him over there. Which courtroom?”

“There’s only one. Second floor.”

“Right. Thanks.”

It was a handsome courtroom of the old variety: stained wood trimmings, tall windows, portraits of white, dead, male dignitaries on the walls. Mitch eased in and took a seat on the back row. He was the only spectator. The judge was gone and Lamar was chatting with another lawyer. When he finally saw Mitch he was startled, but kept talking. When he finished he slowly made his way down the center aisle and stopped at the end of the row. It was almost noon and the courtroom was empty.

They watched each other for a moment before Lamar asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Just passing through.” It was a sarcastic response. Only a lost idiot would be passing through such a backwater place as Sumrall.

“I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?”

“I was in Memphis last night, had some business that got canceled. My flight is out of Nashville in a few hours so I made the drive. Thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

Lamar had lost so much hair he was hardly recognizable. What remained was gray. Like a lot of men, he was trying to replace the thinness on top with the thickness of a beard. But it too was gray, as it usually is, and only added to the aging. He eased down the row in front of Mitch, stopped ten feet away, and leaned on the pew in front. He had yet to smile and asked, “Anything in particular you want to discuss?”

“Not really. I think about you occasionally and just wanted to say hello.”

“Hello. You know, Mitch, I think about you too. I spent twenty-seven months in a federal pen because of you, so you’re rather hard to forget.”

“You spent twenty-seven months in a federal pen because you were a willing member of a criminal conspiracy, one that tried its best to entice me to join. I managed to escape, barely. You got a grudge, so do I.”

In the background a clerk walked in front of the bench. They watched her and waited until she was gone, then resumed staring at each other.

Lamar gave a slight shrug and said, “Okay, fair enough. I did the crime and did the time. It’s not something I dwell on.”

“I’m not here to start trouble. I was hoping we could have a pleasant chat and bury the hatchet, so to speak.”

Lamar took a deep breath and said, “Well, if nothing else, I admire you for being here. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Same here. You were the only real friend I had back in those days, Lamar. We had some good times together, in spite of the pressure and all. Abby and Kay hit it off nicely. We have fond memories of you guys.”

“Well, we don’t. We lost everything, Mitch, and it was easy to blame it all on you.”

“The firm was going down, Lamar, you know that. The FBI was hot on the trail and closing in. They picked me because I was the new guy and they figured I was the weak link.”

“And they were right.”

“Damned right they were. Since I had done nothing wrong, I made the decision to protect myself. I cooperated and ran like a scared dog. The FBI couldn’t even find me.”

“Where’d you go?”

Mitch smiled and slowly got to his feet. “That, my friend, is a long story. Can I buy lunch?”

“No, but let’s find a table.”

The first café on the square was crowded with “too many lawyers,” according to Lamar. They walked another block and found a table in a sandwich shop in the basement of an old hardware store. Each paid for his own lunch and they sat in a corner, away from the crowd.

“So how’s Kay?” Mitch asked. He assumed they were still married. His cursory internet sleuthing had found no records of a divorce in the past ten years. From time to time, Mitch would recall a face or a name from back then and waste a few minutes online digging for dirt. After fifteen years, though, his curiosity was waning. He took no notes and kept no files.

“She’s fine, selling medical supplies for a nice company. Doing well. And Abby?”

“The same. She’s an editor with a publishing company in the city.”

Lamar took a bite of a turkey roll and nodded along. Epicurean Press, senior editor, a fondness for Italian food and wine. He had found some of her books at a store in Nashville and flipped through the pages. Unlike Mitch, he was keeping a file. Scully partner. International lawyer. The file existed solely for his own curiosity and had no other value.

“Kids?”

“Twin boys, age eight, Carter and Clark. Yours?”

“Wilson is a freshman at Sewanee. Suzanne is in high school. You landed on your feet nicely, didn’t you Mitch? A partner in a major firm, offices around the world and all that. Living the fast life in the big city. The rest of us went to prison while you managed to get out.”

“I didn’t deserve prison, Lamar, and I was lucky to get out alive. Think of the ones who didn’t make it, including your friends. As I recall, there were five mysterious deaths in about ten years. That about right?”

Lamar nodded as he chewed. He swallowed and washed it down with iced tea through a straw. “You vanished into thin air. How’d you do it?”

“You really want the story?”

“Definitely. It’s been a big question for a long time.”

“Okay. I have a brother named Ray who was in prison. I convinced the feds to release him in return for my cooperation. He went to Grand Cayman, met a friend there, and arranged a boat ride. A thirty-foot sloop, real nice. Not that I know much about boats. Abby and I sneaked out of Memphis with the clothes on our backs and went to Florida, near Destin. We rendezvoused with the boat and sailed off into the night. We spent a month on Grand Cayman, then sailed to another island.”

“And you had plenty of money?”

“Well, yes. I compensated myself with some of the firm’s dirty money and the feds let it slide. After a few months we got tired of the islands and began traveling, always looking over our shoulders. Life on the run is not sustainable.”

“But the FBI was helping you?”

“Sure. I gave them all the documents they needed, but I did not agree to testify at trial. I was not going back to Memphis. As you know, there were no trials.”

“Oh no. We fell like dominoes. They offered me three years for cooperation, or go to trial and face at least twenty. We all caved. The key was Oliver Lambert. They squeezed him till he choked. When he flipped we were all sitting ducks.”

“And he died in prison.”

“May he rest in peace, the bastard. Royce McKnight shot himself after he got out. Avery, as you probably know, got himself rubbed out by the Mob. The firm’s final chapter is not pretty. No one returned to Memphis. No one was from there to begin with. Since we were all a bunch of disbarred and convicted felons, we scattered and tried to forget about each other. Bendini is not a popular topic.”

Mitch stabbed an olive at the bottom of his salad and ate it. “No contact with anyone?”

“No, not at all. It was a nightmare. One day you’re a hotshot lawyer with a fancy pedigree and plenty of money, all the toys, then, bam, before you know it the FBI is raiding the place, flashing badges, making threats, grabbing computers, locking the doors. We fled in shock and scrambled to find good criminal lawyers. There were only so many in Memphis. For months we waited for the hammer to fall, and when it did our world came to an end. My first night in jail was horrific. I thought I was about to be attacked. I spent three nights before bonding out. Every day it seemed as if there was more bad news — someone else had flipped and was cooperating. I pled guilty in federal court in downtown Memphis, you know the courtroom, with Kay and my parents in the front row, all crying. I thought about suicide every day. Then I shipped out. First stop was Leavenworth in Kansas. A lawyer in prison gives the guards and other inmates an easy target for abuse. Luckily, it was only verbal.”

He took another bite and seemed tired of talking.

Mitch said, “I didn’t intend to bring up the part about prison, Lamar. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I survived and I got stronger. I was lucky because Kay stuck with me, though it wasn’t easy. We lost the house and other stuff, but it’s all just stuff. You realize what’s important. She and the kids were tough and held on. Her parents were a big help. But there were so many divorces, so many ruined lives. I hit bottom after a year and made the decision that prison would not destroy me. I worked in the law library and helped a lot of guys. I also began studying for the bar exam, again. I was planning my comeback.”

“How many of our former friends are practicing now?”

Lamar smiled and grunted as if to say none. “I don’t know of anyone. It’s virtually impossible with a felony conviction. But I had a spotless record in prison, waited my time, passed the bar exam, got plenty of recommendations, and so on. I was turned down twice, but the third time worked. Now I’m a small-town ham-and-egg lawyer trying to eke out sixty thousand bucks a year. Thankfully, Kay makes more than that so we can afford tuition.” He took a quick bite and said, “I’m tired of talking. How did you go from a beach bum to a partner at Scully?”

Mitch smiled and drank some tea. “The beach bum part didn’t last very long, got bored with it. It was okay for about a month, but then real life sort of returned. We left the islands and hiked around Europe for several months, living out of our backpacks and taking the trains. One day we found ourselves in this picturesque little town in Tuscany. Cortona, not far from Perugia.”

“Never been to Italy.”

“A beautiful town in the mountains. We walked past a small cottage just off the town square and saw a sign in the window. It was for rent, three hundred euros a month. We thought, What the heck. We had so much fun the first month, we signed up for another. The lady who owned the cottage also ran a bed-and-breakfast not far away, and she kept it filled with American and British tourists who wanted cooking lessons. Abby signed up and quickly became consumed with Italian cooking. Me, I was concentrating on the wines. Three months, then four, then five, and we leased the cottage for a year. Abby worked in the kitchen as a sous chef while I puttered around the countryside, trying to imitate a real Italian. We hired a private tutor for language lessons and went all in. After a year we refused to speak English around the house.”

“Meanwhile I was in prison.”

“Are you going to keep blaming me for that?”

Lamar folded the wax paper around the remnants of his wrap and shoved it aside. “No, Mitch. As of today I’m letting go.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

“So how did Scully and Pershing enter the picture?”

“After three years it was time to move on. Both of us wanted a career and a family. We settled in London, and, on a whim, I went to the Scully office there and asked around. A law degree from Harvard opens a lot of doors. They offered a position as an associate and I took it. After two years in London we decided to return to the States. Plus, Abby was pregnant and we wanted to raise the kids here. That’s my story.”

“I like yours better than mine.”

“You seem content.”

“We’re happy and healthy. Nothing else matters.”

Mitch rattled the ice in his empty cup. The wrap and the salad were finished, as was lunch.

Lamar smiled and said, “Several years ago I was in New York, a small business matter for a client. I took a cab down to 110 Broad Street, your building, and I stood outside and looked up at the tower, eighty floors. A spectacular building but only one of a thousand. International headquarters of Scully and Pershing, the largest law firm the world has ever known, but just another name on the crowded directory. I went inside and marveled at the atrium. Banks of elevators. Escalators running in all directions. Baffling modern art that cost a fortune. I sat on a bench and watched the people come and go, the frantic hustling of young well-dressed professionals, half of them on their phones, frowning, talking importantly. All sprinting at a breakneck pace to make the next dollar. I wasn’t looking for you, Mitch, but I was certainly thinking about you. I asked myself: ‘What if he saw me and walked over right now? What would I say? What would he say?’ I had no answer, but I did feel a twinge of pride that you, an old friend, had indeed made the big time. You survived Bendini and you’re now playing on a world stage.”

“I wish I’d seen you sitting there.”

“It’s impossible because no one looks up. No one takes a moment to appreciate the surroundings, the art, the architecture. ‘Rat race’ is the perfect description of it.”

“I’m happy there, Lamar. We have a good life.”

“Then I’m happy for you.”

“If you ever come back to the city, we would love to host you and Kay.”

Lamar smiled and shook his head. “Mitch, my old pal, that’ll never happen.”