Water's Edge Read Free Page A

him through this crisis.
    ______
    The hour that passed before McGraw’s e-mail hit Tom’s in-box seemed like a week. When the senior partner’s name finally popped up on his screen, Tom counted to five before opening it.
    Tom Crane will be leaving the firm at the end of the day. We wish him well in his future legal endeavors.
    A couple of minutes later there was a knock on his door.
    “Come in,” he said, steeling himself for an onslaught of sympathy that might or might not be genuine.
    Mark Nelson, his laptop under his right arm, stuck his head through the doorway. “I got a terse memo from McGraw ordering me to meet with you about your files. A minute later the one about you leaving the firm hit my server. I called McGraw’s office to get more details, but he didn’t have time to talk to me.” Mark ran his hand through his hair. “Did the request for time off to shut down your father’s practice have anything to do with it? I had a feeling that wouldn’t sit well with McGraw.”
    “No.”
    Mark came in and closed the door behind him. “What happened?”
    “McGraw didn’t send you anything about Crutchfield Financial?”
    “No.”
    Tom broke the news.
    “That will be bad for a lot of people,” Mark replied. “Did my name come up?”
    “Only in connection with reassignment of files.”
    “I’m sorry, man.”
    Tom studied Mark for a moment. He didn’t sense any phoniness in his colleague. They weren’t close friends, but they’d been through many legal wars together. Combat of any type has a way of bonding men together.
    “I thought you’d be the one to make partner.” Mark shrugged. “I’d even started floating my résumé to other firms a month ago. Last week I had an interview with a medium-sized firm in Sandy Springs.”
    “But if our firm—” Tom corrected himself: “If Barnes, McGraw, and Crowther lets you stay—”
    “I’ll hang around. The other job was a pay cut, but at least it was a job. I can’t expect Megan to start married life with a husband drawing unemployment benefits.” Mark sat down across from Tom and opened his laptop. “I bet Sweet and Becker would offer you a job, maybe even a partnership on the spot. You’ve hammered them several times, and Nate Becker has a lot of respect for you.”
    “How do you know that?” Tom asked in surprise.
    “He told me. A friend and I signed up to play in a charity golf tournament and ended up in a foursome with Becker and one of his associates. He talked about you the whole round and asked me a bunch of questions.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
    “Would you have cared?”
    “No,” Tom admitted. “It would only have fueled my ego.”
    “And today your ego needs a little fuel. But Becker wasn’t asking for social reasons. You’re on his radar as a possible hire.”
    Sweet and Becker was a solid law firm, not nearly as large as Barnes, McGraw, and Crowther but with a good core of clients. On the downside, the smaller firm might not be a suitable match for Pelham Financial.
    “Don’t start daydreaming about your next job yet,” Mark said, interrupting Tom’s thoughts. “Turn on your computer, and let’s get started on the transition. If the firm is going to fire me, I don’t want it to be because I fumbled a handoff from you.”
    Mark already knew bits and pieces about most of Tom’s cases because of biweekly status meetings. When they reached the new Linden Securities case, Tom mentioned what McGraw told him about the fraud committed by their client’s broker. Mark raised his eyebrows.
    “What did McGraw say when you told him you already suspected that?”
    “I didn’t get a chance. It came up after he cut me loose. If I’d interrupted him at that point, it would have seemed like a last-ditch effort to save my job.”
    Personnel decisions by the partners, no matter how capricious or arbitrary, rarely affected bottom-line profit. There was always a fresh pool of top-notch legal talent anxious for