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even come close to catching them, He was probably the kid who, in gym class, was so uncoordinated he’d trip over the paint on the floor. “There are a couple of document boxes in the trunk of my car. I want you to go through them for me.”
    “Should I set up a case file?” he asked, stooping to retrieve the keys.
    “Not yet. I also don’t want you to tell a single soul about this.” I pulled out my copy of the L.A. term sheet and slid it across the desk to Sherman, briefly summarizing the Monarchs’ financial situation. “I want you to take a close look at the lease agreement between the city and the team.”
    “What am I looking for?”
    “Anything that would prevent the Monarchs from moving the team.”
    “You mean like a specific performance clause?”
    “Exactly.”
    As a rule, a contract cannot force a party to do what they do not want to do, it can only make them pay damages if they fail to perform as specified. If you rent an apartment, the lease states the amount you must pay in rent. It may also prohibit certain behaviors like keeping pets or causing damage. What it doesn’t say is that you must actually live in the apartment. A specific performance clause was the exception to that rule. Just like the name implied, if one is included, it means that the parties agree that a specific action will be performed. In recent years they had become standard in most agreements between professional sports teams and the municipalities that owned the stadiums they played in. It was a way of obligating teams to play all their home games in the stadium throughout the duration of the lease period. But the Monarchs’ lease had been signed nearly a decade ago. I prayed that their agreement with the city predated this trend.
    “Anything else?” asked Sherman, whose other admirable quality was his disinclination for small talk.
    “Yes,” I replied. “If you find a stray $18 million salted away somewhere, be sure to let me know.”
     
    I spent the rest of the day fighting over commas with the Brandts, who seemed determined to interject themselves into a process they didn’t understand with the same instinct that drives a dog to mark its territory. While deep down I knew that Stuart was right—they were the client and therefore paying for the privilege of being as irritating as they pleased—it didn’t make it any easier to be lectured on the finer points of syntax by flesh-peddling high school dropouts for whom English was a second language.
    By the time I slipped the final pages into the fax machine, it was well past midnight. Naturally, Stuart Eisenstadt was long gone. Exhausted, I put Cheryl into a cab with instructions to sleep in the next morning. Then I began to make my weary way back home.
    As a rule I like the small hours of the morning. The darkness softens the edges of the city, and the deserted streets seem to offer up the illusion of freedom. But tonight I felt restless and dissatisfied, unable to savor even the minor satisfaction of having gotten the Avco letter out on time.
    No doubt a good part of my disenchantment was personal. There seemed to be a great deal in my life right now that was either unsettled or outside of my control. After Russell died I had drifted, almost without thinking, back into what could best be described as an arid relationship of convenience with Stephen Azorini. No longer the black sheep of North Shore Country Day, Stephen was now the eminently presentable CEO of a successful, high-tech pharmaceutical company that was also my most important client. We accompanied each other to business dinners and charity balls, with most of these evenings ending in Stephen’s bed. This had now been going on long enough and publicly enough that almost everyone assumed there was a level of commitment and affection between us that; frankly did not exist.
    Stephen loved his business first and himself second, while I was still in love with my dead husband and in no hurry to offer up my heart