Murder by the Book

I will try not to dwell at length on my motives. To me they are of more concern than the events themselves, but to you and others it is the events that matter. All you will care about is the factual statement that I wrote the anonymous letter to the court giving information about O'Malley's bribery of a juror, but I want to add that my motive was mixed. I will not deny that moving up to the position of senior partner, with increased power and authority and income, was a factor, but so was my concern for the future of the firm. To have as our senior partner a man who was capable of jury-bribing was not only undesirable but extremely dangerous. You will ask why I didn't merely confront O'Malley with it and demand that he get out. On account of the source and nature of my information, which I won't go into, I did not have conclusive proof, and the relations among the members of the firm would have made the outcome doubtful. Anyway, I did write the informing letter to the court.

Starting a habit, I said to myself, of not signing things. I resumed.

Q'Malley wai disbarred. That was of course a blow to the firm, but not a fatal one. I became senior partner,

and Kustin and Briggs were admitted to membership. As the months passed we recovered lost ground. In the late summer and fall of last year our income was higher than it had ever been, partly on account of Kustin's remarkable performances as a trial lawyer, but I think my leadership was equally responsible. Then, on Monday, December 4, a date I would never forget if I were going to be alive to remember and forget, I returned to the office in the evening to do some work and had occasion to go to Dykes's desk to get a document. It wasn't where I expected to find it and I went through the drawers. In one of them was a brown fiber portfolio and I looked inside. The document wasn't there. It contained a stack of neatly assembled sheets of paper. The top sheet, typed like a title page, said "Put Not Your Trust, A Modern Novel of a Lawyer's Frailty, by Baird Archer." Through curiosity I looked at the next sheet. It began the text, and the first sentence read "It is not true that all lawyers are cutthroats." I read on a little and then sat in Dykes's chair and read more.