The Book of Jonah (28 page)

He discovered that setting up a new Gmail account on an iPhone was logistically a little complicated, but eventually he managed it. Next he did a Google News search for “BBEC”—found an article in the
Wall Street Journal
titled
BBEC CLOSES IN ON COURT DATE WITH CAMBRIDGE START-UP
. The use of the phrase “closes in” suggested the reporter had some idea what was going on. He wrote her an email from the new dummy Gmail account, [email protected]:

i have access to documents related to bbec/dyomax … including internal bbec correspondence btwn upper leadership … should be of interest to wsj … 100% anonymity a necessity … pls advise with next steps …

He figured he was probably being a little overcautious with the cryptic language, with the lowercase letters and the ellipses. But why take chances? He wanted to do the right thing, but he did not see that he should sacrifice his career in the process.

As he stood up from the curb, he found that his tranquillity had blossomed almost into happiness. At last he was free of the guilt, he was free of the lying, he was free of the moral degradation that he had too easily allowed to become a part of his career, his relationships—his life. He would leave all that behind him now—just as he left behind the veggie burger, which had gotten rather unappealingly bloody, tossing it to the curb.

He got into a cab and told the driver to take him to Beth Israel. It was not the closest hospital, but it seemed appropriate. As he rode uptown, he scrolled through his emails—saw that he'd received one from Becky:

Hi Jonah!

I've been calling, but no answer! I guess you are buried at work. I wanted you to hear the great news from me, tho … Danny proposed over the weekend!!! Of course I said yes.:-p Anyways, let's get together soon and I'll tell you the whole story. (You would not believe how nervous he was.) I'm so glad we got to hang out on Friday & you got to know Danny a little better. Let's all get together soon!

Love, your newly engaged cousin,

Becky

Jonah thought for a moment, and then replied:

Hey Becky,

Good to hear from you. There's something I should have told you a couple days ago. I saw Danny kissing a guy in the stairwell at your party. I wasn't going to say anything, but I realize now that wouldn't have been right. Give me a call so we can talk further.

Love,

Jonah

Only later, when it was far too late, would he realize that one obvious indication he was maybe not thinking too clearly when he wrote this email was the fact that he'd begun it, “Good to hear from you.” But as he hit send, all he felt was a further unburdening, a greater affirmation of his thinking, and—worst of all, it would seem in retrospect—a stirring of pride at this latest evidence of his newfound integrity.

*   *   *

When Jonah arrived at the ER, his injury was deemed noncritical—or anyway, not so critical that he wasn't made to fill out insurance forms and then sit for an hour beneath a TV blaring
The Price Is Right
with an ice pack pressed to his nose. When a nurse finally called his name, he was led into a little curtained treatment room, then waited there for twenty minutes. Eventually an extremely harried doctor appeared—an Indian woman, about his age, in a white jacket and glasses. She asked him a few cursory questions, didn't really seem to listen to the answers, studied his nose from various angles. After about a minute of this, she injected anesthetic into his face, then left the room for another twenty minutes. When she returned, she immediately took his now-numbed nose between her fingers and began shifting and pulling at it, sensations Jonah could feel only as a phantom tugging at his neck.

“You won't need surgery, so that's something,” she said as she worked on him. “Though there may be some crookedness. But that's what plastic surgeons are for.” She placed a splint over his nose and began to wrap it into place. “Leave the splint on for at least twenty-four hours,” she said. “Try not to get it wet.” She spoke with a lovely accent, British with Southeast Asian inflections—reminded Jonah of a reporter on the BBC. “I'll write you a scrip for the pain. Have you ever taken any prescription pain medication?”

“No,” he answered.

“I'll make it mild, then. The nurse said someone hit you? With a stapler?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You should file a police report,” she said perfunctorily, and began to write the prescription.

She was a little plain, maybe—but with her precise elocution, the small silver-framed glasses she wore, she had an undeniable librarian cuteness. “Where are you from originally?” he asked her.

She glanced up from writing and scrunched her brows behind her glasses, as if she didn't quite follow. “India,” she answered.

A doctor was just the sort of person he should have in his life now, he thought. And considering the fact that he was single as of this morning, he said, “I know with the nose I'm probably not looking my best, but when this comes off, maybe we could have dinner sometime?” He was feeling liberated indeed.

She gave him a witheringly disinterested look. Maybe this happened to her often. “I'm married,” she said. “Take the Adonine once every four hours, no more.” She handed him the prescription and left.

He didn't take the rejection too much to heart. For all he knew, she really was married—and besides, his nose was broken. In any event, he'd just been exercising new freedoms, rather than making an earnest attempt to pick her up. And if he did decide he felt any lack of companionship in the wake of breaking up with Sylvia, he could always try to resurrect things with Zoey. Maybe this time it would even work out.

He picked up his prescription and went home. He showered with his bandaged face stuck out on the other side of the curtain, put on a clean suit, took an Adonine, went into work. He'd left early the day before, he was coming in late today, but those facts dovetailed nicely into a single lie he'd devised in the shower: that he'd slipped and fallen on the subway stairs and broken his nose. As he rode the elevator up to the twenty-ninth floor, he thought about the changes he would make in his career. Going forward, he would work exclusively on cases in which clients were trying, say, to protect themselves from ongoing patent infringement, or to redress brazen acts of intellectual property theft—cases, in other words, in which Cunningham Wolf was helping an indisputably wronged client obtain justice. There weren't many of those cases, of course. But he was willing to accept a more humble career in order to adhere to his new values.

As the elevator doors opened, he felt a sudden twinge of anxiety, and realized that at least some of this thinking had been preemptive bargaining. But as he stepped out of the elevator, the first person he saw was a summer associate he'd worked with over the last several months—and he was dressed in charcoal suit and polished brown shoes. The associate said hello to Jonah, and Jonah responded with a
de rigueur
nod—and he was satisfied that he had finally found his way back to the right side of things, that his sacrifices had been acceptable.

Then, as he walked down the hall, his phone chirped with a voice-mail message, caller unknown. He experienced a new foreboding over this—but dismissed it as maybe an effect of the pain med he'd taken. He listened to the message. “You are a terrible person, Jonah,” the caller said—a male voice he didn't recognize. “You are a terrible, terrible person. Just remember, one day you will stand before Jesus and answer for all you have done.” That was it. Only on the third listen did he realize that it was Danny.

He supposed this meant the wheels were in motion. This reaction, however, surprised him—though obviously it shouldn't have. But somehow he'd assumed his email would just—dissolve the whole issue. Regardless, Jonah reminded himself, Danny was the one responsible, and if Danny was angry, he should be angry with himself. Jonah was only the messenger. And as for Jesus, well, Jonah felt he was a greater authority on such subjects than Danny was.

Well-being thus preserved, Jonah continued to his office. Dolores was at her desk—made a show of busily typing as soon as he approached. “Good morning, Dolores,” he said. She didn't answer. “I want to apologize again for yesterday.” She seemed only to type harder. It made him uneasy, though, to think that she remained unhappy with him, so he said, “Again, I really am sorry, and it won't happen again. I promise.” Still she didn't acknowledge him—and finally he went into his office and closed the door.

He looked to the corner where the BBEC files had been stacked—they were gone. He turned and saw that his desk was empty, too: the computer, papers, books that had covered it all missing. For a terrified instant he thought he was having another vision, this one more thorough in the bareness of things it exposed—but he recognized almost immediately that the suffocating intensity of the other visions was lacking. More, his phone was still on his desk, his law school diploma was still on the wall. But the immediate terror only gave way to sinking dread—which was not much of a relief. He didn't need the instincts he'd developed over 17,500 hours to know what was happening here. As omens went, a cleaned-out office was as bad as it got. He opened his office door—now Dolores was gone, too. He saw her hurrying down the hallway toward the bathroom.

“Oh—” and before he could say “fuck,” the phone on his desk was ringing. He considered not answering it—but not answering wouldn't change anyone's mind, wouldn't undo anything that had been done. “Hello?” he said into the phone.

“Hi, Jonah, it's Scott Baker,” the man on the phone said affably. “Why don't you come over to Doug Chen's office so we can talk.” Scott Baker was a partner, but he never took cases, he never met with clients, he never appeared in court. He was, as the hallway knew well, Cunningham Wolf's internal fixer. A phone call from Scott Baker: That was as bad as omens got.

“Will there be an … HR representative there?” Jonah asked, his nose suddenly aching.

Scott Baker laughed. “Seriously, Jonah?”

“What I'm asking is, do I need an attorney?”

“Well, there are lots of them in the building. See if anybody wants to come with you.”

You will stand before Jesus and answer for all you have done, he thought as he hung up the phone.

What the fuck had he been thinking?

It had been only a few days since he last visited Doug Chen's office, and the scene inside was nearly identical: the Mondrian, the stone sculpture, Doug Chen silently typing at his spotless desk
—
everything pristine and spare and smooth. The only difference—not an inconsequential one, unfortunately—was that Scott Baker was perched on Doug Chen's windowsill, swinging his legs insouciantly. He was dressed in khakis, a shirt with no tie, sneakers. You had to be a very, very good lawyer to get away with charging tens of thousands of dollars in lap dances on your firm's credit card; you had to be an even better one to be a Cunningham Wolf partner and get away with wearing that. I am so fucked, Jonah thought.

But Scott Baker smiled pleasantly as Jonah came in. He had a puffy face and a doughy build, his cheeks and nose very red—like a hapless middle-aged man who always comes back from vacation sunburned. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from Doug Chen's desk. Jonah did; Doug Chen went on typing.

“Well, first things first, you're fired,” Scott Baker began, swinging his legs. Jonah nodded grimly. He had his hands folded in his lap—had to make an effort to keep from slumping forward in the chair. “So what happened to your nose?” Scott Baker asked.

“My ex-girlfriend hit me with a stapler.”

Scott Baker chuckled with amused sympathy, as if he were hearing this story over drinks at a bar. “Jonah, this is not your day. So was it before or after you got your nose broken that you emailed Ashley Salomon at the
Journal
?”

Jonah sighed heavily. “That was fast,” he said.

“Next time you're sending an anonymous email, do it from an iPhone that your employer doesn't own. Jonah, if you had been Deep Throat, Richard Nixon would still be president.” And he chuckled again good-naturedly.

The phone, Jonah thought. Of course. “You really track all of that?”

“I don't know what you mean by ‘all of that,' but put ‘BBEC' into an email and send it to the
Wall Street Journal
, and yeah, we'll take a look. So anyway. You wrote the email, and then your ex broke your nose?”

“She broke my nose, then I wrote the email.”

For the first time, Scott Baker glanced at Doug Chen, who continued typing as if the room were empty, silent. Scott Baker looked back at Jonah. “And you didn't actually send anything, right? I mean, that would make this all a lot simpler.” Jonah shook his head. “We figured that,” Scott Baker answered. “By which I mean, we didn't find anything missing. You can't Xerox those files, by the way. Special paper. They won't scan, either. Did they put you on any pain meds or anything like that?”

“Adonine,” he answered.

“You took one of those and wrote the email?”

“No, I actually wrote it before I…” Jesus, he thought, as Scott Baker glanced again at Doug Chen—why didn't he just plead guilty to breach of contract right now? “I don't think I should say anything else.”

Scott Baker made a waving gesture with his hand. “We'll assume you didn't send anything. That's really the most important point.” He hopped up, took a manila folder he'd been sitting on from the windowsill, handed it to Jonah. There were two stapled documents inside. “So here's how this works,” Scott Baker said. “In the first document you attest that you didn't send any material documents, BBEC or otherwise, to anybody in the media, or anybody not in the media, for that matter—you know, anybody sentient or otherwise—and we'll agree to refrain from jumping on you with both feet for violating your NDAs, which, incidentally, have bite, and I know because I drafted them. Of course, if it turns out you did send anything…”