The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari | Page 3

"hunger." We won, of course, and the business executive
who had been charged with brutally killing his wife was now a free
man � or as free as his cluttered conscience would let him be.
My own education that summer was a rich one. It was far
more than a lesson on how to raise a reasonable doubt where none
existed � any lawyer worth his salt could do that. This was a
lesson in the psychology of winning and a rare opportunity to
watch a master in action. I soaked it up like a sponge.
At Julian's invitation, I stayed on at the firm as an associate,
and a lasting friendship quickly developed between us. I will
admit that; he wasn't the easiest lawyer to work with. Serving as
his junior was often an exercise in frustration, leading to more
than a few late-night shouting matches. It was truly his way or the
highway. This man could never be wrong. However, beneath his
crusty exterior was a person who clearly cared about people.
No matter how busy he was, he would always ask about Jenny,
the woman I still call "my bride" even though we were married
before I went to law school. On finding out from another summer
intern that I was in a financial squeeze, Julian arranged for me to
receive a generous scholarship. Sure, he could play hardball with
the best of them, and sure, he loved to have a wild time, but he
never neglected his friends. The real problem was that Julian was
obsessed with work.
For the first few years he justified his long hours by saying that
he was "doing it for the good of the firm", and that he planned to
take a month off and go to the Caymans "next winter for sure." As
time passed, however, Julian's reputation for brilliance spread and
his workload continued to increase. The cases just kept on getting
bigger and better, and Julian, never one to back down from a good
challenge, continued to push himself harder and harder. In his rare
moments of quiet, he confided that he could no longer sleep for
more than a couple of hours without waking up feeling guilty that
he was not working on a file. It soon became clear to me that he was
being consumed by the hunger for more: more prestige, more glory
and more money.
As expected, Julian became enormously successful. He
achieved everything most people could ever want: a stellar professional
reputation with an income in seven figures, a spectacular
mansion in a neighborhood favored by celebrities, a private jet, a
summer home on a tropical island and his prized possession � a
shiny red Ferrari parked in the center of his driveway.
Yet I knew that things were not as idyllic as they appeared on
the surface. I observed the signs of impending doom not because I
was so much more perceptive than the others at the firm, but
simply because I spent the most time with the man. We were
always together because we were always at work. Things never
seemed to slow down. There was always another blockbuster case
on the horizon that was bigger than the last. No amount of preparation
was ever enough for Julian. What would happen if the
judge brought up this question or that question, God forbid? What
would happen if our research was less than perfect? What would
happen if he was surprised in the middle of a packed courtroom,
looking like a deer caught in the glare of an intruding pair of headlights?
So we pushed ourselves to the limit and I got sucked into
his little work-centered world as well. There we were, two slaves
to the clock, toiling away on the sixty-fourth floor of some steel and
glass monolith while most sane people were at home with their
families, thinking we had the world by the tail, blinded by an illusory
version of success.
The more time I spent with Julian, the more I could see that
he was driving himself deeper into the ground. It was as if he had
some kind of a death wish. Nothing ever satisfied him. Eventually,
his marriage failed, he no longer spoke with his father, and though
he had every material possession anyone could want, he still had
not found whatever it was that he was looking for. It
showed, emotionally, physically � and spiritually.
At fifty-three years of age, Julian looked as if he was in his
late seventies. His face was a mass of wrinkles, a less than glorious
tribute to his "take no prisoners" approach to life in general
and the tremendous stress of his out-of-balance lifestyle in particular.
The late-night dinners in expensive French restaurants,
smoking thick Cuban cigars and drinking cognac after cognac,
had left him embarrassingly overweight. He constantly
complained that he was sick and tired of being sick and tired. He
had lost his sense of humor and never seemed to laugh anymore.
Julian's once enthusiastic nature had been replaced by a deathly
somberness. Personally, I think that his life had lost all sense of
purpose.
Perhaps the saddest thing was that he had also lost his focus in
the courtroom. Where he would once