Chapter 9: I Barely Know Him
At four forty Ruth put the committee's resolution on the table in front of me and told me not to touch it until outside counsel had finished speaking.
I did as I was told, in my own trust, in my father's building.
The independent committee had spent the day with performance reports, renewal terms, conflict disclosures and the firm's written response. I had seen none of it. I had not been asked a question, and I had not cast a vote, and that is precisely why the resolution is worth the paper.
Outside counsel read it aloud.
The Hale Family Trust would not renew the Wexler firm's vendor contracts at the expiry of the current term. No new matters would be assigned. Existing files would transfer under supervised preservation protocols over thirty days.
Non-renewal. Not termination. There is a world of difference and Victor built the difference into the calendar decades ago.
The reasons were listed in order and Grant was not the first of them: missed reporting deadlines going back four years, rate changes that had never been explained in writing, conflict controls the committee described as inadequate, and — last — the firm's decision to let a single partner dominate its largest client relationship for fifteen years without that partner ever once meeting the trustee.
He was not the whole reason.
He was named in every one of them.
The vote was unanimous, on the date Victor's board had fixed years before Grant chose a restaurant.
Ruth handed me the recusal certificate first and waited while I signed my acknowledgment of it. Only then did she give me the resolution. Nineteen years she has worked in that office and she does not skip a step for anybody, including me, including that day.
At four fifty-three the notice went to Martin Voss.
At four fifty-eight he called.
I'm placing Grant on internal suspension, he said. Effective now. Pending review of his conflict disclosures and his stewardship of the account.
Is that the firm's decision?
It's mine. The partners vote tonight.
Somewhere behind him Grant said something I couldn't make out, and Martin covered the receiver, badly, the way people always do.
Grant. Stop. Your badge is suspended. Leave it on the desk.
The line went.
At half past five Owen and I went to the firm to witness the transfer of the trust's sealed client inventory. Outside counsel did all the handling. I did the counting, because counting is not handling and Owen had explained the difference to me twice in the car.
Eleven file cases. Four encrypted drives.
And one legacy Hale access token, undisclosed, sitting behind a row of file folders in Grant's desk drawer — nine days after he certified in writing that he held no Hale material and no Hale credential anywhere.
Martin bagged it himself. He didn't hand it to an assistant and he didn't ask me to look at it. He put on a glove, sealed it, signed the outside, and read the number to outside counsel.
That token turned a conflict problem into a preservation problem, and every lawyer in that room understood it at the same moment.
Grant was standing at the far end of reception holding his suspension letter. Half the lights on the floor were already off. Martin had gathered the associates who worked Hale matters and told them their positions were protected through the reassignment; I'm told Grant asked whether his compensation would receive the same courtesy.
It would not.
You came to enjoy this, he said.
I came because your firm found trust property in your drawer.
It's a token, Nora.
So was the ring, I said. Look how that turned out.
Owen coughed into his sleeve and studied the carpet.
Then the lift opened behind us and Sabrina came out with two associates from litigation, mid-sentence, something about drinks upstairs.
Grant moved toward her.
Sabrina.
She stopped, because everybody stopped.
He held the letter up like a warrant.
Tell them, he said. Tell them what's been going on. Tell them this is personal.
Her face adjusted by one careful degree, and I have thought since that it was the most professional thing anyone did in that building all day.
One associate looked at the other. Then, to Sabrina, in the tone of someone who has already decided the answer is a story: Is it true, about you and Grant?
Sabrina looked past him — at the conference room, where Marcus Vale was closing the review binder and putting the cap back on his pen.
Then she laughed.
God, no, she said. I barely know him, really. We just worked together.
Grant did not say anything. There was nothing available to him that would not have made it worse and, to his credit, he seemed to know it.
Martin's assistant arrived with a cardboard box and asked for his badge, his firm phone and his keys.
He put them in one at a time while the lift held its doors.
Badge.
Phone.
Office key.
At four minutes past six the partners ratified the suspension by secure vote.
At ten past six the non-renewal receipt was logged into the firm's own records.
And at eleven minutes past six, Sabrina posted a photograph from the rooftop bar eleven floors above where Grant had been standing. There is a glass, and a hand, and beside it on the table, quite clearly, Marcus Vale's watch.
Grateful for the people who show up, it said.