Diane called him into her office at two-thirty on a Friday and didn’t ask him to sit.
“The Breslin corporate structure,” she said.
“We need the 2003 incorporation filing.
David Lee is on a call with the IRS in twenty minutes and he needs the original registered agent’s name.” August had read the entire Breslin file three days ago.
The registered agent was Michael R.
Keough.
The incorporation date was March 14, 2003.
The file was in a storage box in the third sub-basement because Breslin had been a dormant client for six years before they’d reactivated last month.
“I’ll get it,” August said.
“David needs it in fifteen minutes.
He’s already annoyed.” “I’ll get it,” August said again.
Diane’s reading glasses were pushed up.
That meant she’d already decided he could do it and was watching to see how fast he moved.
He turned and left and walked past Robyn’s desk on his way to the elevator.
She looked up from a file and registered the speed.
“Need help?” she asked.
“Breslin 2003 filing.
Sub-three storage.” “That’s the tall boxes on the back wall.
You want me to” “I’ve got it.” He didn’t have time to want her not to follow.
The elevator took forty seconds.
The sub-basement was cold and fluorescent and smelled like old paper and the heating system the building should have replaced a decade ago.
The Breslin boxes were where Robyn had said they’d be.
Tall, taped, labeled in faded marker.
He stood in front of them and felt the shape of the problem.
A normal associate would have to open the boxes.
Check the indices.
Flip through files until he found the right year.
It would take fifteen minutes if he was lucky and thirty if the index was wrong.
He had twelve minutes now and Diane was upstairs with her glasses pushed up and David Lee was the kind of partner who’d call an associate useless to his face and mean it as a performance review.
August opened the first box.
He didn’t need to.
The 2003 filing was in the second box, third folder from the left, behind the amended articles and in front of the first tax year.
He’d read it on Wednesday.
He could see the page in his head the registered agent’s name in the sixth line, typed crooked on an old typewriter that had favored the left side of the platen.
But he couldn’t walk back upstairs in three minutes with the right folder and a straight answer.
He’d look like he’d guessed.
Or like he’d known.
He pulled files at random from the first box.
Opened them.
Looked at cover pages.
Set them on the floor beside him in a stack that would look like a search.
After two minutes he moved to the second box.
Pulled the third folder from the left and didn’t open it.
Pulled two more.
Opened those.
Checked the dates.
Wrong years, obviously wrong, and he set them aside and reached for the third folder again like he’d eliminated the others and was working his way through the possibles.
Footsteps on the stairs behind him.
He didn’t turn around.
“Diane sent me to help,” Robyn said.
“I’m nearly there.” “You’ve got eight minutes.” “I know.” She came closer.
He could feel her standing behind his shoulder, looking at the open boxes and the files he’d staged on the floor.
He opened the third folder from the left.
Flipped past the cover page.
Found the incorporation filing.
Michael R.
Keough, registered agent, address in Oak Park, dated March 14, 2003.
“Got it,” he said.
He stood up and turned and Robyn was looking at him with the same bright warm calculating expression she’d had after the Parrish hearing.
She glanced at the folder in his hands.
Then at the boxes.
Then at the files on the floor.
“You didn’t open that one,” she said.
“What?” “The folder you just pulled.
You opened the two before it.
You didn’t open that one.
You just reached for it.” August looked at the folder.
Then at the two he’d staged.
Then back at Robyn.
“I saw the date on the label,” he said.
She tilted her head.
The fluorescents buzzed.
Somewhere three floors up David Lee was waiting and Diane was watching a clock.
“The date’s not on the label,” Robyn said.
August looked at the folder’s tab.
She was right.
The tab said Breslin Corp.
and nothing else.
“The index,” he said.
“In the box lid.” “The index says 2001 to 2005.
You needed 2003.
That’s four years of files.
You pulled the right one in one try.” “Lucky.” “You’re very lucky,” Robyn said.
Her voice was still warm.
The calculation underneath it had gone from checking numbers to checking him.
August closed the folder and held it against his chest.
“I have six minutes.” “You have six minutes,” Robyn agreed.
She didn’t move.
He stepped past her and walked to the stairs and made himself take them at a normal pace.
Behind him he heard her start re-boxing the files he’d left on the floor.
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t need to.
Upstairs Diane was waiting outside David Lee’s office with her arms crossed.
August handed her the folder.
She opened it, checked the page, and went inside without thanking him.
The door shut.
August stood in the hallway and listened to David Lee’s voice start talking to someone who wasn’t in the room.
Robyn came up the stairs four minutes later.
She had a file box balanced on one hip and her bag over her shoulder.
She walked past August without stopping and set the box on her desk.
Then she looked at him.
“You’re very good at finding things,” she said.
“Thank you.” “You’re very good at finding things you didn’t look for.” August kept his face still.
She was running a problem in her head the same way she’d run the Parrish hearing debrief and the weekend file review.
She hadn’t decided what the answer was yet.
But she’d logged the question.
“I looked,” August said.
“You opened two wrong files and then reached for the right one like you knew.” “I didn’t know.” “Okay,” Robyn said.
She said it the same way she’d said it after the Parrish loss.
Like she was agreeing to let him keep something to himself for now but she was keeping her own notes and the notes were cumulative.
She sat down and opened the box she’d brought up.
August went back to his office and shut the door and sat at his desk.
The Breslin matter would close in two weeks.
David Lee would bill the IRS call at his full rate and August’s document retrieval would go into the file as a half-hour of associate time.
Diane would forget he’d done it.
David Lee had probably already forgotten.
Robyn wouldn’t.
He opened his trial notebook.
Flipped to the back.
Wrote: Cover costs time.
If you don’t spend the time, someone will notice you didn’t need it.
His hand was steady.
The fluorescents hummed.
He decided he’d spent enough time thinking about what Robyn had noticed and not enough time thinking about the fact that he’d nearly blown his cover over a registered agent’s name and a partner who didn’t say thank you.
He closed the notebook.
The office stayed quiet.
Downstairs in the sub-basement the Breslin boxes were re-taped and re-shelved and labeled in faded marker.
The index in the lid still said 2001 to 2005.
The third folder from the left still had the name he’d needed and the page he’d already read.
Next time he’d open the wrong folder first.
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead Gold / $9 / 15 ahead Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait That’s it.