Becoming name partner and having my name on the front door would be the pinnacle of my existence. I knew it was a large leap, but I’d earned it. Deserved it. Other associates didn’t clock in the same hours, bring in the same clientele, or deliver the same results. Plus, as a newly minted millionaire, I was chasing my next thrill. There was something terribly numbing about seeing the hefty paycheck rolling in each month and knowing that anything I wanted was within reach. Partnership wasn’t only a challenge; it was a middle finger to the city that had purged itself of me when I was fourteen.
“Now, now, no need to get lippy.” Traurig chuckled. “Look, kiddo, Cromwell is open to the idea.”
Kiddo. Traurig liked to pretend I was still on the cusp of adolescence, waiting for my balls to drop.
“Open?” I said, snorting. “He should be begging me to stay and offering me half his kingdom.”
“And here’s the crux of it.” Traurig gestured with his hand, making a show like I was an exhibit he was referring to. “Cromwell thinks you’ve gotten too comfortable, too quickly. You’re only thirty-two, Christian, and you haven’t seen the inside of a courtroom in a couple years now. You serve your clients well, your name precedes you, but you don’t sweat it anymore. Ninety-six percent of your cases settle out of court because no one wants to face you. Cromwell wants to see you hungry. He wants to see your fight. He misses that same fire in your eyes that made him pluck you from the DA’s when you got in hot water with the governor.”
My second year at the DA’s office, a huge case had landed on my desk. It was the same year Theodore Montgomery, the then Manhattan district attorney, got slammed for letting the statute of limitations run out on a few cases due to overwhelming workload. Montgomery tossed the case on my desk and told me to give it my best shot. He didn’t want another outrage on his hands but also didn’t have any staff to work on it.
That case turned out to be the one all Manhattan talked about that year. While my superiors were chasing white-collar tax crooks and banking fraudsters, I went after a drug lord who’d run over a three-year-old boy, killing him instantly, to make it to his daughter’s glitzy sweet-sixteen birthday. A classic hit-and-run. The drug lord in question, Denny Romano, was armed with a line of top-notch lawyers, while I arrived in court in my Salvation Army suit with a leather bag that was falling apart. Everyone rooted for the kid from the DA’s office to nail the big, bad, macho man. In the end, I managed to get Romano convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison. It was a small win for the poor boy’s family and a huge win for me.
Deacon Cromwell had cornered me at a barbershop when I’d been fresh out of Harvard Law School. I’d had a plan, and it had included making a name for myself at the DA’s office, but he’d told me to look him up if I ever wanted to see how the other half lived. After the Romano case, I hadn’t had to do anything—he’d come back to me.
“He wants to see me back in court?” I practically spit out the words. My appetite for winning cases was healthy, but I had a reputation for coming in real hard at the negotiation table and walking away with more than I promised my clients. When I did show up in court, I made a spectacle of the other side. No one wanted to deal with me. Not the top litigators who charged a cool two grand an hour only to lose a case to me, and not my ex-colleagues from the DA’s office, who didn’t have the resources to compete.
“He wants to see you sweat it.” Traurig rolled the lit cigar between his fingers thoughtfully. “Win me a high-profile case, one that you cannot tie together in a sweetheart deal in a fully air-conditioned office. Show yourself in court, and the old man will put your name on the door, no questions asked.”
“I’m doing a two-person job,” I reminded him. This was true. I worked unholy hours.
Traurig shrugged. “Take it or leave it, kiddo. We got you where we want you.”
Leaving the firm at this stage, when I was a breath away from becoming a partner, could set my career years back, and the bastard knew it. I was going to either suck it up or get a partnership at a much smaller, less prestigious firm.
It wasn’t the way I’d wanted tonight to go, but it was better than nothing. Besides, I knew my capabilities. Depending on court schedules and the case I’d pick, I could be made partner in a few short weeks.