"No. I mean that I have no reason to think that he did."

"Does that mean you have reason to think that he didn't?"

"Yeah, about a million reasons," Rachel says.

"Would you care to share them?"

"Absolutely not," Leeds says loudly. "This is getting ridiculous, Victoria. How could she possibly know such a thing unless Aaron Littman confessed to her, and you don't think she might have mentioned that little tidbit to you by now if that had happened?"

"Not if she's trying to protect him, she wouldn't," Donnelly snaps back. "Or if she was his accomplice."

Donnelly glowers at Leeds, but Rachel can see that her champion is going to back down. Donnelly sees it too, because she turns away from Leeds and resumes her questioning.

"Okay, then, as I was saying, Ms. London, was Mr. Garkov blackmailing Mr. Littman?"

"Privileged! Next question!" Leeds shouts back at her.

"It's not, Rich. Crime fraud."

"Next question!" Leeds says.

Rachel stifles a laugh. At long last, Richard Leeds has found his spine.

Retreat isn't Donnelly's style, and so she forges ahead. "Where were you, Ms. London, on the night of the murder?"

"Nope," Leeds says, steam coming out of his ears. "If you're asking for an alibi, then you should have designated her as a target. She is not answering that. Period."

"Really?" Donnelly says as if she's never heard anything so ridiculous. "A member of Cromwell Altman Rosenthal and White is not going to provide an alibi if she has one regarding the murder of a federal judge?"

"You know what," Leeds says, "we're done here."

He gets up and bolts toward the door. It takes Rachel a second to react, but she's more than happy that this is over.

35.

The first thing you learn as a criminal defense attorney is not to utter a word until you're well clear of the U.S. Attorney's Office building. That makes the twenty-five-foot-tall orange sculpture in the center of Saint Andrews Plaza the unofficial postmeeting debrief spot.

When Richard Leeds and Rachel arrive at the designated area, however, instead of talking to Rachel, Leeds pulls out his phone.

"Sam, Rich Leeds here. Yeah, we just got done . . . Not good. Much different than the way I thought it was going to go. Rachel's still here, and I haven't gotten her take on it yet, but I wanted to reach out to you right away . . . You know, maybe the best thing is for me to come up there, and we can sit down and talk this whole thing through."

SAM ROSENTHAL CAN'T SAY that he's very surprised by the turn of events, but it's certainly unwelcome news. Even after his meeting with Fitz, he still held out some hope that Rachel's interview would primarily focus on Garkov, and even without Leeds's giving an explanation, he knows that isn't even close to what transpired.

Leeds arrives at Rosenthal's office forty minutes later with Alyssa Sanders in tow.

"Traffic was murder on the FDR," Leeds says. "I told Rachel that she shouldn't be here for this meeting. I think she's back in her office. I hope that was okay."

"That's fine," Rosenthal says. "It's safer to hear it from you anyway. We're subject to an oral joint defense, right?"

"Yeah," Leeds says.

That means this conversation, in which neither lawyer's client is present, is protected by the attorney-client privilege as inviolately as any discussion that Rosenthal has with Aaron alone or Leeds engages in with Rachel. There was a time when lawyers scrupulously committed joint defense agreements to writing, but the U.S. Attorney's Office began demanding the production of those agreements, arguing that the terms of the joint defense weren't privileged, even if the substance was protected. Some judge somewhere agreed with the government, and as a result now such agreements are almost always oral.

"So, what happened?" Rosenthal asks.

Leeds shakes his head, as if he's being asked to recount a gruesome car accident. "I still don't have my head around it . . . but man, it sure as h.e.l.l sounded to me like they're thinking either Aaron, or maybe even Rachel, killed Judge Nichols."

"I need a little more specificity, Rich. What kinds of questions were they asking?"

"Alyssa here took notes, and we'll make them available to you as soon as they're typed up . . . but my recollection, and correct me if I'm wrong, Alyssa, is that they started out asking some things about Garkov, but pretty soon after that, they were asking solely about Aaron. Did he have an affair with Judge Nichols? Were Rachel and Aaron having an affair? Was Garkov blackmailing him? Did Aaron ever express to Rachel that he needed to get her off the case? That kind of stuff. I finally just shut it down. You know . . . maybe I should have pulled the plug sooner, but I had no idea that this was an angle they'd pursue."

Rosenthal doesn't care much about Leeds's performance. His focus is whether the prosecution has any evidence to support their suspicions that Aaron killed Judge Nichols. Otherwise it's all conjecture. "Did they show you any proof of the affair?" Rosenthal asks.

Leeds laughs. "Which one? Aaron and Judge Nichols, or Aaron and Rachel?"

"Either," Rosenthal says without any hint of amus.e.m.e.nt.

For Rosenthal, this isn't two lawyers gabbing about a stupid client. This is personal.

Leeds apparently gets the message. "No," he says, this time with a much more somber expression. "Rachel denied any s.e.xual relationship with Aaron and said she didn't know about him and Judge Nichols. But the a.s.sistant U.S. attorney represented to us that it was true. So is it, Sam?"

Joint-defense privilege or not, Rosenthal's objective is to get information, not give it, and so he doesn't even consider Leeds's question. Besides, right now, Rosenthal's got much bigger concerns than satisfying Richard Leeds's curiosity.

"Did they tell you anything about their evidence?"

"No," Leeds says. "There were only about ten minutes of questions before I shut it down."

Rosenthal takes this in. He doesn't want to read too much into it, because it could mean that the prosecution was saving their evidence for the end, but he's hungry for any good news and takes some solace in the fact that it may also mean that Fitz doesn't have anything.

"I really appreciate you coming down and sharing this with me," Rosenthal says as he gets up to escort them out. "What I'd like to do is get your notes by this afternoon. Is that possible?"

Leeds answers for Alyssa Sanders, even though she's going to be the one tasked with preparing the doc.u.ment. "Yeah, sure, no problem."

Rosenthal knows that keeping Leeds in the fold is going to be important. And that means he's got to keep him happy.

"It sounds like you did everything you could in there, which I'll certainly pa.s.s along to Aaron. And it wouldn't surprise me if we need to bring more of our people in. You should be Cromwell Altman's outside counsel on this, conflicts permitting, of course." He pauses a beat, allowing Leeds mentally to tabulate how much that will mean in fees, and then says, "As soon as you can run off a bill, send that to my attention, and we'll pay it within twenty-four hours."

"Great. I appreciate that, Sam. I'll send you the actual notes as soon as I get back to the office. We're also going to do a memo that memorializes the meeting, and so that will take a few days to complete. When it's done, we'll send that your way, too."

That's Leeds's way of paying himself a bonus for this work. The a.s.signment is over, but he's going to churn another twenty thousand in legal fees by preparing a redundant memo.

Rosenthal doesn't care, though. It's a small price to pay for loyalty.

AFTER LEEDS LEAVES, ROSENTHAL heads straight to Aaron's office. Aaron must be wearing a look of concern, because Rosenthal's first utterance upon entering his office is: "I take it you've already spoken to Rachel?"

Aaron knows that Rosenthal will not be pleased that he's speaking directly to Rachel because such communications aren't privileged, whereas the circuitous route from Rachel to Richard Leeds to Rosenthal to Aaron is protected. But things are often lost in translation in that game of telephone. Besides which, Aaron has no fear that Rachel is going to turn against him.

"Yeah, but she was very general," Aaron says, in an effort to placate Rosenthal. "Just that they were asking more about me than Garkov. She didn't think she gave them anything. Why, what did Leeds say?"

"The same thing, except in his version, he was the hero."

"Have you gotten back to the a.s.sistant yet?" Aaron asks. He means whether Rosenthal has officially told Victoria Donnelly that Aaron's not going to submit to an interview. "That may be the reason she took such a hard line with Rachel."

Rosenthal gives Aaron a sad smile. "I haven't, but I will now. I'll tell her that in light of her unprofessional treatment of our partner, we regrettably have no other option but to decline her request."

Aaron nods that he's on board for the strategy, but he also knows exactly how Rosenthal's message will be translated by the prosecutors.

Aaron Littman has something to hide.

36.

The prom is always held at some over-the-top locale, and an early topic of conversation for the attendees is how the current s.p.a.ce compares to that of previous years. The conventional wisdom is that the best one so far was the whale room at the Museum of Natural History, but that was six months before the economic collapse. Since then, the prom has been held in more understated s.p.a.ces, although that was entirely for show. Like organized crime and Hollywood, Cromwell Altman Rosenthal and White is recession-proof. Clients need even more legal advice in bad times, and the more serious the trouble they're in, the more they're willing to pay for it through the nose.

With the economy finally back on track, the COC (Rosenthal, primarily) decided that it was time for a blowout party again. And it doesn't get any more over-the-top than the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

More than four hundred people are in attendance tonight. Nearly all the first- and second-year a.s.sociates are present-the lure of an open bar and the opportunity to don formal wear too much of a siren song for them to resist-but the midyear a.s.sociates largely send regrets, either because they have to work (even though the prom is held on a Sat.u.r.day night) or they so thoroughly hate their colleagues that they can't bear to spend another minute with them. Those who are still on partnership track by their eighth year make their inevitable return, working the room like candidates at a nominating convention. Of course, the partners never miss any opportunity to strut around like c.o.c.ks of the walk, and so they're out in full force.

The Egyptian Room, where the c.o.c.ktail hour takes place, is as large as a football field. A narrow reflecting pool runs nearly its full length, and for tonight's party, the water is framed by candles flickering in paper bags, each approximately a foot from the next.

A sixteen-piece band plays from a stage running along the long side of the room, while each of the shorter sides has a fully stocked bar manned by four bartenders. The food is designed to appeal to every conceivable taste-Kobe beef tacos, yellowtail sashimi, vegetable dumplings for the vegetarians, and roasted-pepper skewers for the vegans-all served by a cadre of white-gloved waiters carrying silver trays.

In the corner farthest away from the band is a discussion circle led by Donald Pierce. He has a drink in one hand and his other clutches his date's waist. She's a twentysomething wannabe actress/model type. For the past ten years, Pierce has taken a different woman to each prom, each of whom bore a striking resemblance to the last and looked nothing like the exMrs. Pierce. Like a twisted version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Donald Pierce gets older each year, but his dates do not.

Two junior partners, Roland Singleton and Ira Greenberg, are laughing at Pierce's jokes as if they've never heard anything so funny in their lives. They're each wearing a twenty-five-hundred-dollar tux, which does nothing to camouflage that they were given wedgies on a daily basis back in middle school. They're both pasty complexioned, vampirish almost, the fluorescent tan that many of the Cromwell Altman lawyers sport.

As is the case with nearly every Cromwell Altman partner, their dates are several notches above them in looks, but unlike Donald Pierce, who is almost salivating at the prospect of what's going to happen after he pours enough alcohol down the throat of this year's chippie, Singleton and Greenberg seem completely uninterested in their female companions.

They're talking about work, which is pretty much all they ever discuss. For more than a month, they've been going 24/7 on a merger involving two giant telecommunications conglomerates. They speak in p.r.o.nouns and coded phrases, ostensibly so as not to disclose nonpublic information, but a casual observer would likely conclude it's because they enjoy pretending to be spies, just like an eleven-year-old might.

"I put up a fight for close to a week," Greenberg says with obvious relish, "and then I said, 'Okay, okay, you win. Your guy can be the chairman of the board, but only if our guy is CEO.' " Greenberg begins laughing at his own triumph but still feels the need to dot that i, just in case someone missed it. "I think he actually thought he pulled a fast one on me."

"Who's the GC?" Pierce asks.

"Who do you think?" Singleton replies.

They laugh as one, while the women look on with bored expressions. Pierce takes it upon himself to explain the joke.

"After a merger is consummated," he says slowly, like a second-grade teacher, "there's a battle between the law firms that represented the two parties in the merger as to which one of them is going to get the legal work of the company post-merger. To ensure that it's going to be us, we insist that our client's head guy become the CEO of the new company, and that our client's general counsel, or GC, becomes head of legal. They're the two guys who are responsible for hiring law firms. In exchange for that, we'll let the other side's guy be the chairman of the board or president for life, or whatever t.i.tle he wants to pump up his ego. All we care about is making sure that we keep the client's business after the merger."

Greenberg and Singleton laugh again, even though it's the same joke as before. The women smile politely.

"Enjoying the party?" Sam Rosenthal's disembodied voice asks the group.

He's approached them so quietly that Greenberg and Singleton both are startled by the interruption. Pierce, however, remains composed, staring right at Rosenthal, whom he clearly sees as his enemy.

"Very much so," Pierce answers for the group.

"I remember the very first gala I ever attended," Rosenthal says wistfully. "Nineteen seventy-four. Only the partners were invited." He chuckles. "All sixteen of us. We went to dinner at La Cote Basque. We didn't even have a private room, just a table in the back." He looks out over the crowd like a proud parent. "My G.o.d. And now look at us."

RACHEL COULDN'T HAVE BEEN more pleased with her Dolce & Gabbana gown. As she antic.i.p.ated, the plunging neckline has captured the attention of every man she's spoken with this evening. Even Aaron had difficulty making eye contact.

Aaron's avoided asking her more about her session with the government, but that doesn't surprise Rachel. She knows that Rosenthal's gotten the full download via Richard Leeds, and that he, in turn, pa.s.sed on the information to Aaron, keeping it all within the attorney-client privilege.

Aaron has come alone tonight, claiming his wife had a headache. Rachel knows that's code for all is not good in the Littman marriage, and she's taken full advantage of Aaron's being without a plus-one, not leaving Aaron's side unless he's getting them both a drink. She is in the midst of telling him a story about a recent dating disaster when it's obvious she's lost Aaron's attention.

"Everything okay?" she asks.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. Over there, Sam's talking to Pierce and his cronies," Aaron says. "Did I ever tell you what Sam told me when I became chairman of the firm?"

"No," Rachel says.

"After his accident, I ran the firm, but I fully expected him to return as chairman. When he came back to work, I offered to step aside, but he said no. I a.s.sumed it was because he was thinking about retiring, devoting his time to other things, but when I said as much he gave me this look because I'd so completely missed the point. He said that he'd never been married, never had any children, and that he'd devoted his entire life to the firm. 'I'm not stepping aside because I want to end my involvement here,' he said. 'I'm doing it because I'm trying to ensure that day never comes.' "

"And he was right," Rachel says.

"Sometimes I wonder."

Before Rachel can ask what Aaron means, Simon Fairbanks approaches. Fairbanks holds the t.i.tle of Cromwell Altman's director of operations, which basically means he's the guy who handles everything that's required to make a large New York City law firm run.

"Is it time?" Aaron asks.

Fairbanks nods back.

"Excuse me, Rachel," Aaron says. "I've got to sing for my supper."

Aaron strides toward the stage. As he approaches, the bandleader announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention. It is now my honor to introduce the chairman of Cromwell Altman Rosenthal and White, Aaron Littman, to say a few words."

There is a smattering of polite applause as Aaron takes the microphone.

"Thank you," Aaron says as the applause dies down. "Today is a day for us to celebrate, and not for me to speechify . . . but I would be remiss if I didn't thank you all for coming and for your dedication to our firm. The great philosopher Jerry Seinfeld once said that in the game of life, the lawyers are just the people who have read the rules on the inside of the top of the box." He pauses to allow a few chuckles and then continues. "But not here at Cromwell Altman Rosenthal and White. No, my friends, here we are the masters of the game. And so, I ask that you all raise your gla.s.ses for a toast. To our continued success."

"Hear, hear!" Rosenthal shouts.