Chapter 16 Julian
“Julian. Sit.”
I put my briefcase down and take the chair on front of Richard’s desk.
He slides a single sheet of paper across the desk.
It’s a letter on the firm’s letterhead addressed to me.
It begins with the words We are pleased to offer you, and the next words are the position of partner, and the words after that I do not, for a moment, take in at all.
I glance at him. My boss is grinning from ear to ear.
I read it. The numbers are at the bottom. The numbers and buy-in terms are good. Really good. The start date is the first of January. All I need to do is accept.
I set the letter down on the desk between us.
“Thank you. This is amazing.”
“Thank yourself. You earned it.” Richard finally stands. He comes around the desk, putting out his hand. I stand too, and we shake. He claps my shoulder once, the way he has clapped my shoulder for years, and he goes back to his side of the desk and he sits.
“The waterfront put it over the line,” he says. “I’ll be honest with you. It put it over the line in February. I was waiting for the right moment.”
“It hasn’t gone to planning yet.”
“It will. And when it does, it’s going to put us on a different map. You’ve put a marker down with that scheme. I want it on our masthead. I want you on our masthead.”
I do not have a thing to say to that. I sit and I let him say it.
“There’s a piece in Architectural Review coming in the spring. They want to do a profile. We’ll set it up after planning.”
“That’s wonderful.” Wonderful is an understatement. Architectural Review. My mother is going to be over the moon. This is it. This is what I have worked years for.
Richard leans back in the chair. “I’ll admit I was worried earlier this year with that whole prime match thing,” he starts.
I keep my face still.
“It was a messed-up situation. Anybody could see that. I was, frankly, worried about it at the time. You disappear for two weeks to go and live in some one-horse town to comply with some piece of bureaucracy that frankly I have always thought was nonsense, but you handled it well. That’s what I wanted to say.
You did the thing the Bureau required, you came back, you put your head down, you delivered.
You haven’t said a word about it since. I respect that.
I want you to know I respect that. The job hasn’t suffered.
The waterfront didn’t suffer. You handled it the way a partner handles a thing. ”
“Thank you.”
“It is what it is. That’s the only sensible way to look at any of this.
The Bureau picks names out of a hat and tells two people they have to make a life together and ninety percent of the time it works and ten percent of the time it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, you sign the paperwork and you move on. ”
I make a noise of agreement. I haven’t moved on. Not even a little bit. I see Wyatt when I close my eyes every night. I see the look on his face when he saw the name on my laptop. The look of sheer betrayal.
But it’s not completely my fault. All he had to do was talk to me and he couldn’t even do that.
Richard nods once, satisfied. I take the opportunity. It is a small one and I take it before I have decided to.
“How is the Parish Ridge development going?”
His face shifts a fraction.
“It’s fine. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious really. The whole thing had the town really riled up while I was out there. And you’ve just reminded me of it.”
He makes a small dismissive sound. “It’s fine.
You know how these things go. The locals are still kicking up a fuss, there’s a town volunteer lawyer trying to make a name for herself, somebody filed an objection to the dewatering schedule, somebody else wrote a letter to the county.
It’s the usual. The yokels will always find something to complain about.
Legal has it under control. We’re on track. ”
“Right.”
“Brent’s been running point. He’ll tell you the same. We’ve put the second phase on hold for a quarter to let the noise die down, but that’s a scheduling matter. Don’t worry about it. You’ve got bigger fish.”
“Right.”
“Julian.”
“Yes.”
“I need you to focus on waterfront. The next four weeks are critical. Do not get distracted.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
He picks the partnership letter up off the desk and turns it round and slides it back to me.
“Take it. Read it again at home. Have a lawyer look at the buy-in. We’ll talk again Friday.”
I take the letter. I fold it once, carefully. I put it in the inside pocket of my jacket.
“Thank you, Richard.”
“Thank yourself,” he says again.
We shake hands again at the door and I close it behind me on the way out.
I take a deep breath. I do want to know what’s happening out there, although in my heart, I already know. The company has its flaws but thoroughness isn’t one of them. We have a shit-hot legal team who specialize in handling objections from local people.
The development is going ahead. The only question is whether Wyatt has completely run out of water yet. If he hasn’t, he will.
The bigger question is why he wouldn’t take the money. The Linden Group always puts aside money for that kind of thing. He’s just being stubborn.
Still, instead of going back to my own office, I walk toward the south side of the floor, where Brent Payley’s office is, two doors down from the senior associates’ bullpen.
His door is open and he’s on the phone.
He looks up when I appear in the doorway. He grins at me and waves me in and points at the phone and rolls his eyes, and I stand in the doorway and I wait.
He finishes the call. He hangs up. He stands. He comes round the desk with both hands held out.
“Duffield. Look who it is. The man of the hour.”
“Brent.”
“I just heard. Richard’s PA was in here ten minutes ago with the Christmas cards, she let it slip.” He pumps my hand. “Congratulations. About time. I mean that. About time.”
“Thanks.”
“Sit. Sit. I’ve got five minutes before my next call. What can I do for you?”
I sit. He sits. The room is smaller than mine and it has the wrong light in it, fluorescent rather than the warmer fittings the senior offices have.
Brent has hung four framed prints on the wall behind his desk that are all of city skylines from the same rough angle, three of them from cities he has never been to.
“Just wondering how Parish Ridge is going,” I say. “We didn’t get a chance to catch up.”
He pulls a face.
“Oh, God. Don’t make me think about Parish Ridge.”
“That bad?”
“That place. Honestly, Duffield. I don’t know how you stuck it for two weeks, match or no match. The first day and I was begging to come home by lunchtime.”
“It’s not that bad,” I say laughing despite myself.
“It is exactly that bad.” He laughs. He sits back. “I saw you, you know. At the meeting. The second town meeting, the one you came to. I saw you walk in with your rancher. I almost lost it. I had to look at the lectern for thirty seconds and breathe.”
“You hid it well.”
“I was trying not to laugh. I’ll tell you that for nothing. You with the rancher. Sat in the back with the wife of the mayor. I was going to text you for two days afterwards and I forgot.”
“It’s fine.”
“How are you? Really. After all that?”
“Fine. It didn’t work out. The Bureau closed the file.”
“Probably for the best, my friend.”
“Oh yeah, definitely. How is the project going?”
He waves a hand. “It’s going. The county zoning board’s hearing an objection in December. We’ll roll over them. We always do.”
“What’s the substance of the objection?”
“They usual. They don’t like the dewatering.
They want more compensation. They’ve been after compensation since day one.
Some of them took the first offer, some of them held out for a higher one, and now there’s a small group of holdouts who think if they make enough noise they can squeeze us for more. ”
“Right.”
“Honestly, between us, I feel for them a little bit. It’s not a lot of money. But the thing is, it was never a lot of money, because it was never a lot of land. Have you driven that road? The valley between the highway and the ridge?”
“I have.”
“It’s just miles of dust, my man. It was never worth what they think it was worth.
The mineral rights are zero. The ranching is marginal.
Half of them are running cattle on land their grandfathers ran on at half the carrying capacity.
We’re paying them above market. Above market.
They know that and we know that. The ones still kicking up a fuss are the ones who think Linden has bottomless pockets and they can hold out for a bigger number. ”
“Right.”
I don’t think that’s what’s happening, but I don’t say so.
“Well,” I say carefully, “Sounds like you’ve got it all in hand, one way or the other. Richard was asking me about it, and suddenly I was reminded of the place all over again.”
He chuckles. “Poor you. Pity we can’t excise trauma directly from our skulls. And living in that place is enough to give you serious PTSD.”
I’m reminded that Payley and I were never that close. He always was a bit of a dick.
I stand and we shake hands again. He claps me on the shoulder on the way past.
“Don’t be a stranger upstairs. I’ve been hearing about your parents’ Christmas drinks for nine years and I have not had an invitation yet, Duffield. That is a stain on our friendship.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You do that. Congratulations again.”
I walk back along the corridor. My office is at the far end. I close the door behind me.
I take the partnership letter out of my jacket pocket.
The yokels will always find something to complain about.
Wyatt is a weird guy. There’s that shyness that Donna told me about and he barely has a word to say for himself, but he does have genuine cause to complain. I also doubt he’s holding out for more money just for the sake of it.
But then what did I expect Brent to say? I know how these developments work. Yes, they build more much-needed houses. Yes, they bring in much-needed jobs, but they do come at a cost. That’s what the compensation is for. The company isn’t completely without empathy.
Still. I open my laptop. I navigate, slowly, into the project drive. I have not opened the project drive for years. The environmental impact assessment is in its own folder, separate from the rest.
There are two versions. There’s the one that the company has done, and then the one that it has shared publicly. There’s nothing wrong with that. All companies keep sensitive information back. Besides the full report is almost four hundred pages long.
I had skimmed it once at schematic stage, or I thought I had. I may have only read the executive summary.
And let’s be honest, I hadn’t understood half of it.
I open it now and start reading.
On page sixteen of the hydrogeology appendix, it says that the projected water drawdown is permanent. It extends across the entire south-east quadrant of the development radius for the operating window of the project, and the operating window of the project is forty years.
I am pretty sure that the published summary did not say that. I navigate to the published version and click on it.
The phone on the desk rings. I look at the display. The display has a Parish Ridge code. I look at the display for a full second before I pick up the receiver.
“Hello.”
There is no voice on the other end.
“Hello?” I say again.
Then, distantly, on the far side of the room from the receiver, I hear Wyatt’s voice say, “Who’s on the phone?”
A younger voice says, “No one.”
The line goes dead. I press the redial button.