Private Sector (13 page)

“You mean, isn’t it the ambition of all public-sector lawyers to join big firms?”

“I didn’t put it like that.” But it was certainly what she meant. The third-year scramble at law schools is all about a certain pecking order, starting with prestigious big firms, then smaller, less prestigious ones, then your mother’s brother with that small real estate titles business.

The lucky few who make it to prestigious big firms assume that we who don’t are envious swine who’d do anything to escape our dreary jobs and Lilliputian paychecks. There is a modicum of truth in that, somewhere; I, however, count myself as an exception. Near-poverty suits me fine. It relieves me of so many burdens, temptations, and difficult choices.

I threw my legs off the couch and the momentum brought me to my feet. But regarding her point, I said, “Law isn’t all about making money or prestigious titles.”

Whoops—I looked around to be sure the walls were still standing. But it appeared the building’s pilings were sunk deep enough in the muck of greed and avarice to keep it upright.

“Why do you practice law?” I asked Sally.

“What does that mean?”

“This firm, twenty-hour days, overbearing partners, the race to bill . . . why?” Note how cleverly I sidestepped her father and grandfather.

“I love law.”

“
What
do you love about law?”

“I. . . I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Think now, Sally.” She looked away, and I added, “You don’t look like you’re having fun.”

“Really?”

“You look overworked, miserable, and empty.”

Her nostrils flared. “Thank you.” Anytime, Sally.

I stretched and yawned. I had arrived the night before dressed comfortably in jeans and a sweatshirt, so I slipped out of my sweat-shirt and reached for one of my new oxford button-downs. She pointed at three or four round scars on my torso and asked, “How did you get those?”

“Poor timing, bad luck . . . the usual way.”

“Is Army law that dangerous?”

“Before my life turned to crap, I was an infantryman.”

“You sound like you enjoyed that.”

“Yes. . . well.” I rubbed my forehead and confessed, “Infantrymen kill people. You know, people piss you off, and . . . Look, I know this sounds sick . . . you’d be surprised how gratifying . . . not that I think about it all the time . . .”

She edged away from me. “You’re serious?”

“My. . . well, my counselor . . . I mean, surely you’ve heard of post-traumatic stress . . . I’m making swell progress, she says. As long as . . . you know, nothing exacerbates my condition. Please, don’t mention it to anyone. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

She was staring at a blank wall, and I suggested, “Perhaps you can leave, so I can change.”

“Yes . . . of course.” She left and returned a few minutes later, placed the exam on my blotter, and said with newfound courtesy, “Incidentally, we have a flight at nine.”

“Who has a flight?”

“The protest team. You’ll want to shave and clean up. Jason Morris is sending his private jet. I. . . I know this is hard for you, but a good impression is important.”

“Just don’t tell him about . . . well, my condition, okay?”

She gave me a long stare before she left me to ponder this new possibility. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the whole firm learned the Army had sent a homicidal idiot into its midst.

Still, it certainly couldn’t hurt to piss on the shoe of the firm’s biggest rainmaker.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

C
Y, BARRY, SALLY, AND I CONGREGATED AT THE PRIVATE-PLANE TERMINAL AT Dulles International and were promptly ushered aboard a twin-engine Learjet. The plane’s interior was specially outfitted for the rich and pampered, with four plush leather chairs collected around a conference table, and a pert young stewardess named Jenny who sported a fab tan, great legs, a rock-hard fanny, and the perky, upbeat manners of an aerobics instructor. “Come on, everybody, let’s get those seatbelts buckled now.” Big smile, clapped hands, the works. Save me, please.

But the lovely Miss Jenny jibed with something else I had heard and read about her employer. Mr. Jason Morris was reputedly a cocksman of renown, rumored to have balled half the eye candy in Hollywood and assorted other famous ladies. If those tabloids with splashy headlines about who’s been sneaking in and out of whose boudoir were to be believed, Mr. Morris was quite the little sneak.

But exactly how poor Jason managed to scrape together all that moolah, between dashing off to Bimini with this bimbo this week, and the Hamptons with that hottie the next, was, you can bet, a question I’d like to know the answer to. There was even, reportedly, a mile-high club among his formers. I idly wondered how the striking Miss Jenny occupied herself while her boss screwed his lovely guests into the fine leather of my seat. The onboard breakfast: eggs benedict, side orders of kippers and bacon, brioches, and orange juice with a hefty jolt of gin. Was this the life, or what?

And in fact, Cy and Barry were stuffing their greedy faces, knocking back loaded juices, and mumbling joyfully between themselves as Sally and I played ambitious junior associates and perused the same legal packets that had been stacked on her desk the day before. The documents were wordy and composed in that murderous syntax lawyers employ to confuse their clients and justify high fees, but the matter at hand was fairly simple. It boiled down to this:

The DARPA original request for bid was built around three essential requirements. One—the network, or pipeline, in techie lexicon, had to be capable of transmitting streaming video on sixteen channels simultaneously, so the scientists of DARPA could work collaboratively. This is something like cramming sixteen different television stations across one wire and onto one TV screen. Two— the network had to be completely secure, impervious to jamming, eavesdropping, hackage, or leakage. Three—the personnel administering the network had to possess Top Secret clearances.

I browsed swiftly through the technical malarkey regarding gigabits, frequencies, routers, switches, and so forth, then dozens of spreadsheets, business plans, and financial estimates, the sum of which made it clear that Jason’s boys had creamed the contenders. The next best bid was 25 percent above Morris’s. Ticket prices rose steadily from there.

On November 15, the Department of Defense had publicly declared Morris Networks the victor. A day later, an attorney representing AT&T visited the Pentagon Contracts office and posed a number of due diligence queries. He learned that a baffling exception had been granted to Morris Networks. The requirement for employees with Top Secret clearances had been waived.

Thus, the basis for contention number one in both AT&T’s and Sprint’s protests. Why had said waiver been granted?

Contention two was more open-ended, and long-winded, the long and short of it challenging how Morris Networks could conceivably perform the work at the price it had bid.

I closed the last document and looked up. Sally, beside me, was still thumbing through the pages. She had started at least the day before and still hadn’t finished. Good lawyers read fast—it’s a fact. I recalled Cy informing me she had barely made the top half of her law school class, and I found myself wondering how she had made any half.

I looked at Cy and commented, “This is very interesting.”

He laughed. “We deserve six hundred an hour just for reading through that verbose horseshit.”

“Six hundred an hour?”

“That’s my going rate.”

Wow. I mean, wow. Cy made more in a morning than my monthly salary. I asked, “Could I pose a few questions?”

Barry smiled in his unctuous way and replied, “Sure. What part confuses you, Sean?”

“Barry, did I say I was confused?”

“Uh . . . no. Sorry if I offended you.”

He wasn’t sorry, and I was contemplating the precise manner of his death when Cy shot me a black look.

I wasn’t really in the mood for another lecture about how we should all be big pals, and share jockstraps and so forth, so I asked, “Why did Defense waive the clearance requirement?”

“It was unnecessary,” replied Barry. “Whoever wrote the bid apparently didn’t understand how networks are run. Typical for government and military people, really.”

Perhaps a garrote for Mr. Bosworth. Gradually tightened, exquisitely painful . . . But I asked, “Did Morris approach the Department to have it waived?”

“Did you read the whole requirement?” Cy asked me.

“I did.”

“You saw it’s a twenty-four/seven network that extends to fifteen hundred sites?”

“Yes.”

“And do you recall the manpower requirements?”

“It varied by bid. Between a hundred and fifty and five hundred network managers and administrators.”

“Very good,” Barry commented. Just for the record, I needed neither his approval nor his condescension, and I rejected the garrote. He should hang by his Gucci necktie, I decided. In fact, his feet were kicking and his eyes were bulging as he added, “Top Secret clearances cost approximately two hundred and fifty thousand per head,
and
take a year or longer to obtain. That adds tens of millions to the cost of the program.”

“So?”

“So Morris simply pointed out that the requirement was unreasonable. An absurd waste of taxpayer dollars.”

“That was it?”

Barry replied, “Procedures are built into the contract that allow the Defense Department to check Morris’s security, so it’s also superfluous. It didn’t hurt that the contracting people wanted the low bid.”

Sally peeked up and said, “That makes sense to me.”

But it still didn’t make sense to me, and I asked, “Then why are AT&T and Sprint protesting?”

The two men exchanged intriguing glances. After a brief pause, Cy informed me, “About a year ago, Jason hired Daniel Nash as a board member.”

“I see.”

“But Danny had nothing to do with this,” he swiftly added. “Danny’s not stupid. Nor is Jason, who well appreciates the need for firewalls between Danny and the Department.”

Incidentally, the Daniel Nash who’d just entered the conversation had spent two years as Secretary of Defense under the previous administration, a former congressman whose most remarkable quality turned out to be his utter lack of remarkable qualities. After a long career on the Hill poking his nose into defense issues and spouting off like a defense expert, he had, to put it generously, been a big flop as Secretary of Defense. Mr. Nash turned out to be great at throwing barbs and javelins at the Pentagon, and not quite so good at dodging them.

Yet he was not entirely without talents. In fact, he turned out to be quite good at wallowing in a lifestyle money can’t buy: traveling in his luxuriously outfitted 747, staying at five-star hotels, and hobnobbing in regal milieus with an assortment of corporate leaders and foreign bigwigs. His deputy was reputed to be the most overworked man in Washington.

Were one possessed by a cynical nature, one might even suspect Mr. Nash was feathering his nest for a prosperous afterlife, stuffing his Rolodex to exploit after he returned to the private sector; for instance, as a board member of Morris Networks, which clearly hadn’t hired him for his managerial competence.

I allotted a respectful silence to contemplate Cy’s assurance before suggesting, “However, it’s possible we have at
least
the
appearance
of a serious violation, right? There’s what? . . . a two-year ban on Nash trying to influence his former department?”

Cy chuckled. After a moment, he replied, “They’ll damn sure make that case. But Danny swears he kept away from the whole damn thing.”

“No doubt.”

Slightly put out that I didn’t seem to be swallowing the assurance of an esteemed firm partner, Barry said, “Daniel even volunteered to take a lie detector test. We’ve advised him against it, but the offer’s still on the table. Would a guilty man do that?”

I always love that question. And why did I suspect that if the government actually said, Okay, Danny boy, let’s go ahead and hook your ass to the dirty liar meter, the boys and girls from Culper, Hutch, and Westin would prevail and the offer would be abruptly withdrawn?

I muffled that suspicion, however. For the time being, I was one of those boys and girls, and therefore was expected to know where my bread was buttered. Though it was their bread being buttered. And the department I worked for getting screwed. I can’t tell you how much I love being thrust into situations where I have conflicting loyalties.

It was time to move past this point, however, so I asked, “Exactly how does Morris Networks come in so much cheaper than the competition?”

“A number of factors,” Barry explained. “For starters, Morris Networks is a much newer company.”

“Oh. . . newer.”

Barry smiled coolly. “Its entire network is state-of-the-art and not bogged down with old legacy systems, like Sprint and AT&T. Newer systems are more reliable, less manpower intensive, cheaper to operate and maintain.”

“And that accounts for a twenty-five percent advantage over the next nearest competitor?”

“Partly. Jason also runs a flatter, leaner organization. He’s a more efficient manager, without the huge overhead of the bigger companies. Trim off that fat and you don’t have to spread the costs as far.” He smiled and added, “But you obviously lack business experience, so this is probably over your head.”

Cy apparently decided to head off a murder and swiftly said, “But these are good questions, Sean. Spend some time with Jason’s people. You’ll end up a believer.”

I said, “I’ll bet you’re right.” But I was lying.

I mean, having a key requirement waived for a company with a former Secretary of Defense in its pocket does tend to stretch the imagination in certain directions.

When it comes to Defense Department contracts, industry loves this little game that kicks off with the lowball bid. A few years later, the winner returns to the Department and says, “Whoops, hey, boy, this is embarrassing, but a funny thing happened on the way to fulfilling the bid. There were. . . well, a few unforeseeable problems. . . cost overruns. . . adjustments for things you guys failed to clarify in your request for bid . . . one or two acts of God, and, uh . . . we mentioned this is embarrassing, right? . . . Could you guys wrench that money spigot a bit more to the right?”