5

GEORGE RYDER WASN’T SURPRISED to find that the hallway leading to his office was still dark. It was only 7:15 a.m.

Minutes earlier, he got off the elevator at the main reception area of Walters, Cassidy & Breen on the thirty-first floor of the Spalding National Bank building, checked his mail slot for messages and slowly climbed the internal spiral staircase that connected the three floors occupied by the firm.

Made of light oak, with the stairs covered in beige industrial carpeting, the staircase was de rigueur for any law firm moving into new quarters in the 1980s. WC&B had committed itself to renting the space about a year before construction came to an end in 1984. The older partners were split on whether it made sense to move from where they were situated for many years to expensive new offices in a building several blocks away. But the younger ones, led by Doug Fiore, helped carry the motion to relocate by voting almost unanimously to sign a lease for ten years with an option for ten more.

Business improved dramatically, year to year, in the second half of the eighties. The partners’ soaring earnings allowed them to overlook the fact that overhead increased almost twenty percent after the move was completed. But things changed dramatically when the real estate boom suddenly became a bust at the beginning of the new decade. Although the bankruptcy lawyers were often working seven days a week to keep up with the demands on their time, the recession affected the billable hours and fees for almost every other department of the firm.

A number of associates, part of the groups hired out of law school in 1988 and ’89, were let go. When the WC&B Executive Committee reacted to the prolonged slowdown by announcing that the partnership track was being extended from seven years to nine, several other associates resigned and looked for work elsewhere. In 1988, the firm brought eleven new lawyers on board, with much fanfare about challenging Harding & Reynolds as the State’s largest law firm. But by 1993, the number of law school graduates it recruited for openings was down to four.

Ryder had stopped at the takeout shop in the lobby for a cup of coffee and a bran muffin. He knew that Anna, the Nicaraguan woman who prepared the pots of coffee in the kitchens on each of the firm’s three floors, wouldn’t be at work yet. He justified ordering the muffin, which his overweight body didn’t need, by telling himself that the fiber it contained was good for him. As he rode up on the elevator, Ryder saw that some of the coffee was leaking out into the bag.

Entering the dark hallway on the thirty-second floor, he was forced to use his right elbow to push the two light switches into their “on” position before walking down the corridor to his office. Ryder was several inches over six feet and weighed in the neighborhood of 260 pounds. Every so often, at his wife’s urging, he went on a crash diet and took off anywhere from twenty to thirty pounds. But inevitably his will power deserted him and he started each day at work with the purchase of a muffin or Danish pastry.

Ryder lurched slightly several times as he moved along the corridor. His baggy blue suit had gone too long without being cleaned and pressed. When he reached his office, he dropped his heavy briefcase onto the sofa that sat along a side wall and switched on the light. Several yellow pads were on his desk. He turned one of them over so he could put the wet paper bag down onto its cardboard backing.

The office had a view that overlooked the federal courthouse at one end of Kennedy Plaza. When WC&B first occupied the new building, Ryder chose that location for himself with the seventh highest seniority in the firm. He stood at the window for several seconds while removing his jacket, then hung it up on the plastic hanger he kept behind the door. As he collapsed into the large executive chair at his desk, a sigh of exhaustion escaped from his lips before he was aware of it. He opened the bag and was upset to discover that some coffee had seeped into most of his muffin, turning it soggy. “Damn it!” he grumbled.

George Ryder knew he was in trouble. In the last year and a half his labor practice lost five good clients. Only one of them, a sausage manufacturer, went out of business. It was another victim of society’s changing attitude toward eating meat.

A larger client, Bell Coated Plastics, was a victim of Doug Fiore’s matter-of-fact approach to the recession. Ryder had done a significant amount of work in guiding the company through a long strike. As a result of the losses it took during the work stoppage, Bell’s payments to the firm were not in significant amounts. Confronted with the matter, Ryder assured Fiore that they would be paid in full and urged him to be patient. But Fiore was concerned about the number of clients whose payments for services rendered were already overdue. As a consequence, he lobbied for and got a green light from a majority of his Executive Committee to shut off legal services for clients who were 120 days behind in their accounts unless they paid a quarter of the outstanding balance the next time they needed professional advice. Fiore expected the new policy to help the firm’s cash position. Soon afterwards, Ryder was forced to give that message to Harry Bell when he called to discuss a new employee grievance. Bell thanked him for all the help he was given in the past and told Ryder to tell the firm’s managing partner to shove his new policy up his ass. So Bell Plastics was gone, but WC&B received a check each month reducing the balance owed. It was the same amount Harry Bell was paying regularly before he rebelled at Fiore’s directive and kissed them goodbye.

The other three clients Ryder lost were sold to larger companies based outside of Providence, and their legal work went with them. The law firms benefiting from such corporate takeovers were most always located in the home city of the acquiring company. One of these former clients was a large printing and mailing firm that had several different unions representing various groups of employees. The contract negotiations for each group every two or three years, along with the inevitable grievances that had to be settled or arbitrated, had provided steady work for Ryder.

When George Ryder first joined the firm thirty-two years earlier, it was known as Walters, Holt, Miller & Cassidy. It was his first job after graduating from Harvard Law School. He lacked the confidence and personality for bringing in new clients, but did excellent work within his area of expertise. He quickly earned the trust of those clients whose labor problems were normally handled by lawyers senior to him. As time passed, Ryder inherited a good deal of that work for himself, and when David Miller drowned during a vacation in Florida, he suddenly became the senior labor law specialist. A year later, he was elected to serve on the Executive Committee. It was the same year Doug Fiore became an associate at the firm.

Ryder remained on the Executive Committee for four years, took a year’s leave of absence from the firm to have major surgery on his back, and then returned to the firm and his position on the Committee. It was just in time for him to be its only member to vote against shortening the partnership track for Fiore from seven years to six. The Committee’s willingness to allow the exception came in response to Fiore’s threat to take his burgeoning practice elsewhere.

Ryder recalled how surprised he was when the older lawyers in the firm backed his candidacy for managing partner after Bob Gorman announced that he no longer wished to continue in that role. Gorman, a good friend, saw to it that his Executive Committee recommended Ryder as the candidate to replace him. It was George’s twentieth year with WC&B.

His opponent in that election was Steve Breen, a skilled and dynamic litigator who brought his own large practice into the firm five years earlier and was rewarded by having his name included in the renamed partnership. Breen’s strength came from the partners who felt that the position should be in the hands of a rainmaker, someone with the ability to attract new business. They preferred a leader who could push the firm in certain directions through an implied threat of taking his important list of clients elsewhere if he wasn’t a happy camper.

Ryder expected to lose the election, and was speechless when he learned from Gorman that he was the new managing partner. All of his peers stood and applauded when he entered the meeting room from the lounge where he and Breen were awaiting the results of the vote. But later that same night he learned from an Executive Committee member that almost half the partners voted for his opponent.

Like Gorman before him, Ryder held the position for six years. But unlike his predecessor, he did not resign. Rather, he was voted out of office by his fellow partners—it was 19 to 16, he recalled—who were in favor of certain changes being advocated by his challenger, Doug Fiore.

Ryder got up from his chair and moved uneasily to the window. He didn’t want to think back to that election or the infighting that went on between himself and Fiore at the time. He realized, 20/20, that he made a fatal mistake in not recognizing how fast Fiore’s star was rising. It would have helped him to inquire, much earlier than he did, whether his announced rival really had all the votes in his pocket that he bragged about. He opened the window to let in some fresh air and sipped the last few drops of coffee. It was already cold. He flipped the cup, basketball style, into the wastebasket next to the wall. Margaret Cardoo walked past his office and waved to him as she said “Good morning.” He waved back, silently. Someone else said “Hi, George” a few minutes later, while he was staring out the window, but was gone before Ryder could recognize the voice or return the greeting.

Ryder closed his office door quietly and sat down at his desk. Opening the top drawer, he pulled out the yellow sheet of paper with the numbers he wrote down the day before. It revealed that his billable hours for the entire year, through December 10th, were 982. That was down from 1,351 the year before and 1,668 the year before that. The totals for fees billed out to clients credited to him were just as discouraging. At one time those numbers were counted on to fall somewhere between four and five hundred thousand dollars annually. But the figure reached just $267,000 the prior year and was only $203,000 this year, to date. He was being paid more money than he was bringing in.

Ryder carefully reviewed his list of clients. He saw that a large part of the work he did during the year was for Ocean State Wire & Cable. God help me, he told himself, if I ever lose that account. The situation he was in forced him to realize that it would be a good idea to call Brad Hanley, Ocean State’s president, and invite him to dinner.

The problem was exacerbated by Ryder’s knowledge that he had very little work scheduled to do the rest of the month. There was nothing on his calendar for that day or the next. He could hope to hear from one of his clients, or perhaps be asked by Paul Castillo, the firm’s junior labor law specialist, to help out on some matter. But Castillo stopped doing that some months earlier, and Ryder suspected that Fiore was behind it. No one had to remind him that as bad as his performance looked on those weekly computer printouts, he was also burdened with the thought that the managing partner of the firm hated his guts. The only question in his mind was how soon Fiore would try to push him out the door.