Bury the Lead

5




I SLEEP THROUGH the alarm and then take my time walking Tara in the park, never once looking at my watch. It wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to peer into my subconscious to find out what’s going on. I want to be late for the “investors’ meeting,” called for nine o’clock in my office.

I arrive at ten after and they’re all there, eager to get started and staring daggers at me for causing the delay. There’s Edna, my dedicated secretary, who normally doesn’t come strolling in until past ten; Kevin, my Laundromat-owning associate, who judging by the strewn wrappers appears to be on his fourth apple turnover; and Willie, the death row inmate-turned-Warren-Buffett-wanna-be. Only Laurie is missing, but she is going to participate from Chicago over the speakerphone.

Leading the meeting is Freddie Connors, the stockbroker who happily stepped into this windfall of fresh investment money by having the good fortune to be Edna’s cousin. He smiles at me. “Andy, we were afraid you weren’t going to make it.”

“God forbid” is my response.

Kevin, Edna, and Laurie all have money to invest because of me. I received a commission of over a million dollars from the Willie Miller settlement, and since I have all the money I could ever need, I split it up among them. I don’t regret doing so, and it is certainly not the reason that I’m feeling somewhat bitter.

Cousin Freddie’s style is to present investment alternatives and to encourage us to actively participate in the decision making. As a group, we have gradually split into two camps. Willie is the unlikely leader of one of the camps, and I lead the other. In Willie’s camp are Edna, Kevin, and Laurie. In my camp is me.

If this were camp color war, my team color would be beige. I study charts, look at the numbers, and make the logical, safe selection. Willie comes up with off-the-wall ideas, hatched in that fairy-tale land he calls a mind, and everything he touches turns to his team color, gold.

My team is getting its beige ass kicked.

Freddie gets Laurie on the speakerphone and then updates us on the status of our investments. In two months their collective portfolios have gone up almost eleven percent, while mine has gone down one point five. I hide my humiliation and nod wisely, as if financial retreat is all part of my grand plan.

We finally get around to discussing our options, and I talk about a telecommunications company well positioned to take advantage of a growing market, relatively debt-free, and possessing a favorable price-earnings ratio.

“An interesting idea,” Freddie concedes. “Good fundamentals . . . sound management.”

I nod smugly, appreciating the praise but acting as if I expected nothing less.

Willie makes a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “You have a better idea?” I ask.

He nods, then asks Freddie, “What was that prediction thing you were telling me about?”

Freddie looks puzzled: Willie is not the easiest guy to understand.

Willie says, “You know . . . that thing where you buy up a lot of stuff ’cause you know people are gonna want it in a few months.”

“Futures?” says Freddie.

“Yeah, that’s it . . . futures. I think we should buy coffee futures.”

Laurie’s voice comes through the speakerphone. “Why?”

Willie goes on to explain that the Olympics are coming up soon, and many of the events are going to be on late at night or very early in the morning. People will want to watch them and will drink coffee to enable themselves to stay awake. It is as dumb a theory as any I have ever heard.

It is not quite the dumbest theory Edna has ever heard, and she nods in appreciation of Willie’s wisdom. “If I don’t drink coffee,” she breathlessly reveals, “I’m asleep by eight o’clock.”

“I’m the same way,” Laurie chimes in.

“Then you must have had a gallon of it last night,” I say, becoming more and more pathetic by the moment. “Come on, people, this is ridiculous. You think the whole country is going to drink coffee to stay awake?”

“Of course not, but anybody who wants to sleep can drink that decaf stuff,” says Willie. “That’s part of the futures thing, right?”

Freddie nods. “Sure.”

Willie smiles triumphantly. “So we got everybody covered.”

The discussion goes on for a while longer, but everyone jumps on Willie’s bandwagon, leaving me alone with my price-earnings ratio. Kevin comes over and patronizingly tries to cushion the blow. “I think your reasoning is sound, Andy, but Willie’s on a hot streak, and I believe in riding hot streaks.”

“I hope you and your fat black tongue make a fortune,” I say, hitting a new low. I stand up. “Well, it’s really been fun, but I’ve got to go see a client.”

“We’ve got a client?” Edna asks, surprise evident in her voice.

“We’ve got a client?” Kevin asks simultaneously, shock evident in his.

“Yes,” I say. “We’re a law office. That’s what we do. We represent clients.”

The truth is, that’s not what we’ve been doing lately. I’ve been a little burned-out since my last major trial, when I defended Laurie against a murder charge. It was intense because of how much was personally at stake. Since then I’ve pretty much found a reason to turn down prospective clients, many of them because I thought they were guilty, but some because the cases just didn’t seem challenging or interesting enough.

People who don’t know any better are always comparing me to my father, viewing us both as hardworking, high-powered attorneys. Even putting aside the glaring difference that he was the district attorney and I am on the defense side, there is still little comparison. I can’t recall him ever missing a day of work; he often likened it to working on an assembly line where the products coming through were accused criminals. I pick and choose my cases and show up when I please.

You might say I couldn’t carry my father’s briefcase, but you’d be wrong. The truth is, I’m too lazy to carry it. And I offer as proof the shock on the part of my staff on hearing we have a client.

“Who is it?” Edna asks.

“Vince Sanders,” I say.

Laurie’s voice comes through the speaker. “Well, at least it’s not a paying client.”