Free Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow

about 600 million bucks, the third bad year in a row. To stein the bleeding, the outside directors brought in Tadeusz Krzysinski as CEO, the first person ever to advance above the level of vice-president who was not homegrown.
    Among many reforms, Tad has cracked the whip on expenses and by all accounts has been prodding Jake about his relationship with G &G, on the theory that there should be more competition for TN's legal work. Krzysinski has been heard to speak warmly of a zoo-lawyer firm in Columbus he grew to like when he was in his last incarnation, as president of Red Carpet Rental Car.
    This, to say the least, is a subject of concern at Gage & Criswell, since TN has never been less than i8 percent of our revenues. Martin and Wash have been trying to convert Krzysinski, lunching with him, inviting him to meetings, reminding him repeatedly how expensive it would be to replace our knowledge of TN's structure and past legal affairs. In response, Krzysinski has emphasized that the decision is Jake's--his General Counsel, like most, must have free rein to choose the outside lawyers he works with--a deft move since both Jake and G &G have their supporters on TN's board. But Jake has a seasoned corporate bureaucrat's lust for terrain. He covets a seat on the board, the title of Vice-Chairman, which only Krzysinski can award him, and evinces a toadying willingness to please his new Chairman, with whom in truth he seems frequently ill at ease.. . A s often happens in corporation land, there's been more talk than action. Jake has sent only a few morsels to Columbus, as he does with many other firms. But in business, like baseball, senior management is often behind you right up to the day you get the ax. Jake by now had turned to me. "This is very sensitive. Mack, I want to know about everything you're doing. And for God's sake," he added, "be discreet."
    Jake is accustomed to being an executive. He stood a moment, medium height and lean, a hand placed over his eyes. He was wearing a smart double-breasted suit, a subtle glen plaid, and his initials--J . A. K. E .: John Andrew Kenneth Eiger--a favored decorative element, had showed on his shirtsleeve when he pointed at me. "Jesus Christ," Jake said in final reflection and with nothing further left.
    Wash rose in his wake. In extremis his aging face had taken on the texture of a gourd, and he hung there, a mystery to himself, torn between remonstrating with Martin and comforting Jake, and finally chose the latter. A grade-schooler knew what he was going to say: Give us time. Don't be rash. Once we find Kamin, this can be worked out.
    Behind the thousand-year oak, Martin watched them vanish and asked me, "So what do you think?" He had his hands across his tummy, his face tucked down shrewdly between the matching braces, so that his chin rested on his fancy handmade shirt of jazzy vertical stripes.
    "I'll let you know as soon as I get feeling again in my limbs." My heart was still flapping. "I thought we weren't going to say anything."
    Martin is one of those men who abound in the legal profession whose brains seem to make them a quarter larger than life. His mind is always zipping along at the speed of an electron. You sit down with him and feel surrounded on all sides. Jesus Christ, you wonder, what is this fellow thinking? I know he's turned over every word I've said three times before I get another one out of my mouth. Accompanying this kind of intellectual hand-speed is a canny grasp of human nature. To what uses all of this is put is not necessarily clear. Martin would not be mistaken for Mother Teresa. Like anybody else who has whizzed along the fast track in the practice of law, he can cut your heart out if need be. And talking to him, as I . Y , is a kind of contest, in which his clever, warm remarks, his conveyed sense that he knows just what you mean, is somehow never mutual. I know you; you don't know me. His true residence is out-of-bounds, somewhere in the neighborhood