As You Wish - Part 4

There was a lot of back and forth over whether The Company would pay for all the fees associated with Frank taking the bar exam. Some of it he didn't know about, some of it, he did. Frank wanted to take the bar in both Florida and New England. Of course The Company was only going to pay the fees associated with the Florida one. So of course, Frank told me about taking both exams, and told me not to tell anyone else.

What happened was that I'd give Frank a form to fill out, and he'd make a photocopy and fill it out twice, once for each state. And then instead of giving it back to me to get signed, he'd give it to the General Counsel to sign. After it was signed, he'd bypass me again and push the paperwork through again, saying I never sent the first one out, or lost it. I won't bore you with the details, but it took until after I'd given notice at The Company for us to sit down and figure out exactly how Frank had done it.

But before that, Remy kind of caught on that something wasn't kosher, and told me flat out that Frank had better not miss work to take the bar in New England. Well guess who called in sick? Yeah, he did. Wait, but the thing is, when most people call in sick, they call their office before they're supposed to be there. Or within the first half hour.

Frank's idea of "calling in sick" was to simply not show up, wait for us to notice, and then not be at any of the phone numbers we had for him. Eventually he'd call us, late in the day with some excuse, and let us know he hadn't died in a car accident or something. He'd previously asked me to not call his house - he didn't want his baby mama (I'd say common law wife, but there's no such thing as common law marriage in Florida) being bothered by us. I think the truth was that there were some days he was out with Talia and didn't want his screwing around exposed to her.

So Frank went to New England and took the bar. Then he took the Florida bar. Umm... hi. I work with lawyers. Members of my family are lawyers. I know stuff like when the bar is in whatever state I'm living in, and what date bar results come out.

When bar results come out, first they're only available to bar-takers initially. Later on, around 24 hours or so, they're available to the general public. So when bar results came out, I let Remy know, and we all gave Frank a lot of space so he could find out the news in his own time without us hovering over him.

Finally at the end of the day, Remy couldn't stand it anymore and when Frank walked by, Remy asked if he passed. Frank told him bar results hadn't come out yet. Remy looked at me, and I looked at the internet, where it said bar results were in fact out that day. The General Counsel asked what was going on. Remy told him. The G.C. shrugged and said that clearly Frank was too scared to look at work. He told Frank to go home early that day.

Next day, Frank came in saying he'd passed. Who the hell would lie about passing the bar? The truth is, Frank passed the bar in New England and didn't pass in Florida. But we didn't know that yet. It didn't occur to any of us to go look for ourselves. Why would we?

Around this time I found out something else to add to the long list of Frank's deception. The Brother did a lot of business with one specific guy. That guy gave him a lot of work, work which ultimately gave The Brother a lot of money. The Brother had Frank do some work for him here and there. Frank asked me for the Guy's phone number. Thinking nothing of it, I gave it to him.

Suddenly, I found myself taking calls from the Guy for Frank. Which made no sense - Frank was supposed to be somewhat behind the scenes of what The Brother was doing. There was no reason Frank and the Guy should be talking. I said nothing - it was none of my business, and maybe The Brother was giving Frank more responsibility or something that I didn't know about. It would be wrong for me to assume and jump to conclusions.

The truth is, you want to believe people you deal with on a regular basis. If you start listening to the doubts you have about them, then you're forced to admit to yourself that you're not as good a judge of character as you wanted to think you are. Remy had been really happy that he'd been able to hire a black guy. (Yes, everyone else in our tiny Legal Department was white.) He didn't want to think he'd made a mistake.

Only one more left - aren't you excited?