Bitter Business

owners had managed to rebuild, going so far as to duplicate the tacky red vinyl banquettes of the original dining room. It did, however, take a few months after the grand reopening for the smell of smoke and charred plaster to disappear and for the restaurant’s full complement of roaches to return.
    We were late enough to miss the worst of the dinnertime crowd. The old Chinese grandma who spoke no English but handled the seating showed us to our table. I didn’t even bother looking at the menu. I always order the same thing: six pot-stickers, which I refuse to share, and an order of shrimp with tomato ginger sauce. Stephen, who is a tremendous food snob, always feels the need to remind me that they make the shrimp sauce with ketchup. That’s probably why I like it. Stephen ordered shrimp toast, a whole sea bass with red chilis, and a Tsing Tao beer for each of us.
    “So what did you do today?” I asked, taking a swallow of beer.
    “Mostly tried to get caught up,” he answered, holding his glass up to the light. Satisfied that it was clean, he poured his beer into it. “I’ve spent so much time going back and forth with the Swiss that I’m at least two months behind on everything else. I don’t know why I let you talk me into turning the hematology division over to Richard. I still haven’t been able to find anyone to take his place downtown.”
    Richard Humanski was Stephen’s former personal assistant, a brilliant young man long overdue for promotion. The fact that I’d suggested that Stephen promote him to head the hematology research division had become a familiar lament. But the truth is, Richard had been turning down offers from Stephen’s competitors for quite a while and it was only a matter of time before ambition overrode loyalty. Stephen knew full well that if he hadn’t given Richard his own division to run, some other company would have. That didn’t keep him from complaining to me about it whenever he felt overwhelmed at work, which was pretty much all the time.
    Stephen took a long swallow of beer. “So what do you think is going to happen to that plating company?” he asked. “Do you think that there’s any chance they’d want to unload their specialty chemicals division?”
    “Why?” I demanded. “Are you interested?”
    “Maybe. They make some very interesting proprietary compounds that we use in some of our hospital supply products. I might be interested if we could pick it up for the right price.”
    “If it comes up, I’ll tell them you’re interested,” I answered noncommittally.
    “From what I hear, it’s a tidy little operation. But I don’t see how it fits in with plating. Who knows? Maybe they’ll need the cash if they’re going to buy out that one shareholder.”
    Part of me felt uncomfortable discussing the affairs of one client with another. On the other hand, Lydia had advertised her intention to put her shares on the market in no less a public place than the Wall Street Journal.
    “I’ve got to tell you,” I said as our appetizers came, “I have no idea what is going to happen with this company. For all I know, Jack Cavanaugh is on the phone right now trying to find another lawyer to replace me. I’m sure my stunt standing on the chair impressed the hell out of him.”
    “Maybe he should consider hiring a minor-league hockey official to break up his family meetings. He’d charge a hell of a lot less an hour and he’d even bring his own whistle.”
    “Thank you. That makes me feel so much better.” I stirred the soy sauce around on my plate with the end of my chopsticks. “This case depresses the shit out of me. And it’s not just the dead people and the funerals. A week ago I thought I was a pretty competent lawyer. Now I realize that there’s a big difference between the kind of technical knowledge that I have and the—I’m not sure what to call it—the kind of old-fashioned lawyerly wisdom that Daniel Babbage took to the grave with him.”
    “I’m sure that he didn’t have it at your age either. In lawyer years, you’re still a baby. You don’t have gray hair or a potbelly or anything yet.” Stephen helped himself to a piece of shrimp toast. It looked ridiculously small in his enormous hand. “I did something else this afternoon. I went looking at real estate,” he said, taking a bite.
    “What kind of real estate?” I demanded, chopsticks poised in midair. I knew that Stephen had long dreamed of moving his research facility