Dr. Estranged Love

By Loren Feldman
(Originally published in GQ Magazine - May, 2004)

Raoul (as in brawl) Felder is the world's richest, most fearsome divorcce lawyer. The only thing he enjoys more than a good fight is getting his picture in the newspapers .

Last appointment of the day. She is young and attractive, with a doctorate in linguistics and old money in the bank.

"Start from scratch," he tells her.

"Okay," she says. "I married a homosexual not knowing he was a homosexual. He's pedophilic, and he's out on bail, $3,000 bail. This man is unemployed. He's a medical doctor who's unemployed. He has killed a dog by stomping his foot in the dog's face."

The attorney nods. Of all the talents that have made Raoul Lionel Felder a world-class divorce lawyer, none is more extraordinary than his ability to keep a straight face, to listen to stories that range from tragic to outrageous, sometimes crossing back and forth, and then to convince his Fitzgeraldian clients that their pathetic and sordid lives really aren't pathetic and sordid. It is a stressful occupation. Felder recently offered to ease the caseload of a divorce lawyer who seemed to be losing his grip. The lawyer rejected the offer, and then the day after Thanksgiving he hanged himself in his son's room.

Most of Felder's clients are rich. Many of them, he says, are "moral imbeciles." There was the man who devised an electric intercourse machine, something along the lines of the Orgasmatron in Woody Allen's Sleeper. There was the woman whose husband, a banker, preferred having sex with his German shepherd. Oral sex. That story swept through Felder's office, and when the unsuspecting man had to stop by to deliver some papers, every lawyer and secretary in the place stumbled in his wake, craning for a look.

"These are pathetic people," says Felder of the clients who have paid for his Rolls-Royce, his four apartments and his two houses. "They are just pathetic human beings."

Raoul Felder is a heartbeat away from being the most celebrated divorce lawyer in the world, and thanks to his new publicity campaign, the gap between Felder and Marvin Mitchelson is closing fast. Over the years, his critics have insisted that Felder is more press agent than divorce lawyer. At the moment, he is not exactly proving them wrong.

The phone rings. Although it is already late on a bleak winter afternoon, Felder, a tall, imposing man with a thick gray beard, has had little time to practice law. His desk is cluttered not with legal briefs but with a series of publicity photos that have been retouched to camouflage his balding scalp. All day he has been fielding calls from the press, and now the producers of a local TV magazine show want to know if he will go on the air to discuss a case of his that is all over the New York papers. It involves an Orthodox Jewish couple from Brooklyn and charges of prenuptial promiscuity. Strange but true, it is the woman who is accusing her husband of having faked his vows of virginity. Though reluctant to discuss the details of that specific case, Felder is eager to do the show. Since his press agent, Howard Rubinstein, is unavailable, he makes his own pitch.

With unabashed enthusiasm, Felder tells the producers that he has just been labeled "Captain Divorce" by one national magazine and "King of Divorce" by another. He mentions his recent op-ed piece in The New York Times. He offers to talk "clean or dirty," to discuss adultery, child custody or cocaine. He recites Some of his famous clients: Mrs. David Susskind. Mrs. Carl Sagan. Mrs. Joseph Heller. Mrs. Frank Gifford. Mrs. Alan Jay Leger. Mrs. David Merrick. Brian De Palma. Richard Harris. The son of Pablo Picasso -you know. Paloma's brother. The producers promise to get back to Felder. And they will. They always do.

The press has been onto Felder since his first divorce. In that case, the client explained that his wife frequently got angry and ran away, and when she returned, it was always his short and dumpy best man who carried her bags. Could it be? No way, said the client, but Felder persuaded him to assure his best man that he knew about the affair and that it was all right, since the marriage obviously was over. The ploy worked. The friend confessed, Felder immediately subpoenaed him, and the New York Daily News ran the story under the headline "BEST MAN KISSES AND TELLS." Felder's phone has been ringing ever since.

Sometimes it's a client calling: Will the fact that I had oral sex with my husband this past weekend, a woman asks, harm the divorce action I want to file on grounds of adultery? (The answer is no, although intercourse would undermine the charges, since the law considers it condonation, or forgiveness. of all known transgressions.) Some- times it's a reporter: Is it true, a gossip columnist asks, that Madonna has contacted you about representing her in a divorce action? (No, he says. In fact, he didn't even know she was married.)

Be it clients or reporters, Felder understands their needs. And it pays. Not only have the press notices spread his reputation, they have given him an added weapon: Opposing attorneys sometimes fear that he will leak damaging photos and gossip to his press contacts. That fear may not be totally unfounded.

In one instance, a woman came to Felder seeking a divorce from her rich and prominent husband. Having been married to the gentleman for less than three weeks, the young bride did not have a strong case. But she did have several interesting Polaroid snapshots. Just before the trial was to open, Felder called the husband's attorney, the late Roy Cohn, into a private office. There stood a life-size, plywood-backed photo of the woman performing fellatio on Cohn's genteel client. Cohn gasped.

What did Felder intend to do with the photo? He now says he planned to introduce it as evidence of the "unnatural acts" the guy was forcing his wife to perform. But it seems unlikely that any judge would have believed the woman was being forced to perform these arts-especially since she snapped some of the pictures. A lawyer who was working for him at the time insists Felder blew up the photo to convey the unspoken threat that it could easily achieve wider circulation. In any case, Cohn folded his hand. The three- week bride walked away with a generous settlement, and Felder notched another victory.

Such tactics have always played to mixed reviews. Is he the best divorce lawyer in the world? Is he merely the most ruthless? Or is he just another hack who is willing to do anything to win a case and who has managed to get a lot of publicity doing it? Among his clients, competitors and victims, opinions vary greatly. All are strongly held.

"Raoul Felder has got a tremendous sense of PR," says one prominent New York divorce attorney, Norman Sheresky. "I like him, but that's the best I can say about him.

He's not a very good lawyer, but he tills a need. He really does. The need for revenge. The need to have a lawyer who will threaten to put it all in the newspapers. He's a hard-working, ambitious man, but he's a showman, a showman in a world where showmanship doesn't belong. I don't think Raoul has much of a heart. If you say something is bad for the children, I don't think he knows what you're talking about. I don't think he thinks you're sincere. I don't think he gives a shit."

Other lawyers, including some who've worked for Felder and some who've opposed him, insist that he is ever the gentleman. Felder himself acknowledges that he has lots of enemies but insists that the criticism is prompted by jealousy from those who can't match his prodigious practice. "As far as I know," he says, "I've never been accused of doing anything unethical. In thirty years in the most infelicitous practice, dealing with half-crazy people, angry people, I've never been so much as reprimanded by any discipline body. I've never even had a letter of caution. That alone ought to speak for itself."

And yet. He wouldn't want anyone to disregard this ruth- less stuff entirely. "Every case has a jugular. I don't get it in every case, but I pick it up in most. You talk about whatever talents I have I can usually pick out the weak spot of a case very quickly. I go for the jugular. It's better that way. It's a more merciful kill."

The chauffeur-driven limousine turns left onto Park Avenue and cruises north through the divorce industry's Jerusalem. Here, Felder, who generally won't touch a case unless the pot tops a million dollars, can scarcely pass a building that doesn't house at least one former client. Some hold three, four, five.

"That's a good building over there," announces Captain Divorce. "I had several there... Now, that house is where [real-estate mogul] Sol Goldman lives. You know, Mrs. Goldman is saying she was taken, but under the terms of the settlement we made, she could get $300 million... See that one? That's where I got the highest palimony award ever sustained in the United States. It was about $400.000... I had both the Steinberg divorces out of that building. He had a triplex. [After Felder had won a generous settlement for the second of Saul Steinberg's former wives, the corporate raider joked that it would be cheaper for him to just put Felder on retainer.] By the way, 57th Street is a pretty good street. You have pretty good divorces there- the economic quality, so to speak..."

Although he can give a guided tour of Park Avenue today, as a child Felder rarely made the relatively short but highly symbolic trek from Brooklyn to Manhattan. With his mother running a nursing home and his father struggling first as a veterinarian and later as a ghetto lawyer, money was tight and relations were difficult. When his older brother, Jerome, a polio victim, started writing pop music, his parents were so disappointed- "Do you know what the word shondah means?" -tha he changed his name to Doc Pomus before cowriting "Teenager in love," "Save the Last Dance for Me," "This Magic Moment'' and several Elvis Presley classics. For the last two decades of their lives, Felder's parents remained married, but rarely spoke.

After bouncing from medical school in Switzerland to law school at New York University, Felder got a job as a federal prosecutor and worked on Bobby Kennedy's Organized Crime Strike Force. In 1964, he set out to practice on his own and, thanks to the best man who kissed and told, happened upon divorce law. His income promptly jumped from about $10,000 to more than $50,000. With half of all American marriages ending in divorce, business has been growing ever since.

Today, at age 52, Raoul Felder proudly claims the largest and most profitable divorce practice in the world. His hourly fee, as much as $450, has been cited by one legal journal as the highest of any lawyer, of any kind, in the country. He claims to have attorney ever to earn fees of $50,000, then $100,000 and ultimately $1 million for single cases. His firm's annual billings approach $10 million, and because Felder has no partners -his staff of nine attorneys includes his wife, Myrna, a former Broad- way dancer, who specializes in appellate work-he person- ally pockets profits of roughly $2.5 million a year.

On any day, his office is likely to have as many as 350 active cases. Some of Raoul Felder's Greatest Hits: -> The Divorce of the Century. Sid Bass, one of the billion- aire Bass brothers, leaves his wife. Anne, for Mercedes Kellogg, who leaves Ambassador Francis Kellogg, setting off international shock waves and creating what may be the biggest divorce pot ever. Felder will earn his piece by representing the ambassador.

• The $10-Million Art-collection War. In an earlier trial, represented by another attorney, Ethel Scull wins only a handful of minor paintings from husband Robert. On appeal, Felder -thanks largely to his wife's work- gets her 35 percent of the collection. Ethel's legal bill: more than $1 million.
• The Most Unlucky Cheat. While watching news footage of the tragic San Juan hotel fire on New Year's Eve, a woman recognizes the face of her husband -supposedly off on a business trip. She calls Felder.
• The Orthodox Aryan. Beautiful daughter of wealthy German mogul marries Orthodox Jew and converts to Orthodox Judaism herself. Later, the husband claims that his wife's now-deceased father was a Nazi war criminal, the marriage fails, and the woman, who speaks with a thick German accent, retains Felder, who tells her rabbi, "I feel uneasy sometimes. I think she's measuring me for lampshades." The rabbi responds, "You don't have the right attitude. She's one of us now."
• The Whoops Paternity Suit. Young woman comes to Felder with a positive pregnancy test and the name of a Hollywood superstar. After she passes a lie-detector test, Felder notifies the entertainer in writing that the mother of his child-to-be has hired counsel. Soon, however, the woman starts to bleed. Protecting his investment, Felder sends her to the best doctor he can find. Turns out the first test was inaccurate: She is not pregnant. Whoops! Felder dispatches another letter: "Disregard previous correspondence. Situation resolved."
• The Iacocca Bluff. Gossip columns from Detroit to New York insist that Felder has been retained by Peggy Johnson Iacocca. Though cynics suggest that Felder himself must have planted the rumor, the lawyer claims it is Mrs. Iacocca who is spreading the word perhaps to intimidate her husband into a quick settlement. "I never met this lady," says Felder. "Apparently, she was just using me. It happens all the time."

Although he is divorce lawyer to the stars, the prize that has eluded Felder is national recognition of his stature. Thanks largely to one case, the biggest name in divorce is still Marvin Mitchelson. The curious thing is, though few people remember it now, Mitchelson lost the Michelle Triola-Lee Marvin palimony suit. And Felder, speaking with some expertise, says there have been many instances when the California lawyer's press notices have been more impressive than his decisions. Nonetheless, several years ago the Twin Towers of divorce considered merging their practices, with Mitchelson handling the West Coast and Felder the East Coast. They could never quite agree on particulars, but Felder remembers Mitchelson saying to him before the talks fell apart, "You may not think much of me as a lawyer, but I'm a genius with publicity."

While Felder shares that genius, he has an equally impressive ability to change roles instantly. Interrupted by a call from another whining client, Felder shifts his tone mid- syllable from Philadelphia lawyer to Jewish grandfather. Likewise, with his employees (whom he has never been accused of overpaying and who labor with the knowledge that they will never make partner) he is both a cranky nudge and the office cutup. Whether making fun of his clients' eccentricities or his own, he gets laughs. Still, Felder isn't having as much fun as he once did.

He is a throwback to the Golden Age of Divorce. It used to be that adultery was the only grounds for divorce, and you'd better have proof. And it used to be that who got what depended solely upon whose name was on the title. Gradually, however, the permissible grounds expanded, and now, under the new "equitable distribution" laws that most states have adopted, holdings get split "equitably," regardless of title and with little concern for who is at fault. As a result, most cases reach a negotiated settlement before going to trial, and the divorce lawyer, instead of trying to prove that the old man has been running around with his secretary, is primarily interested in finding his hidden bank account and placing a value on his dental practice. The work can still be challenging -but only to an accountant. The new laws may be fairer, but, for Felder anyway, they've taken the romance out of divorce.

When Felder got started, divorce lawyers had sleazier reputations but more fun. To gather dirt on opposing spouses, he and his colleagues routinely raided suspected love nests, with photographers, detectives, lawyers and jilt- ed lovers bursting in on the unfaithful as flashbulbs popped and clothing scattered. With all the plotting, scheming and drama, Felder couldn't help but enjoy himself. And when a case came to trial, the issue invariably was who was doing what to whom.

Once, under the old rules, Felder represented a white South African doctor whose wife had accused him of taking up with his black secretary. The wife claimed he not only was having an affair but had insisted upon bringing home both the secretary and the secretary's sister to tend to his needs and had even purchased the co-op next door and broken through the wall so all four of them could live together.

Although the client insisted his wife was nuts, as the trial progressed, Felder began to suspect she might be telling the truth. Nonetheless, when she completed her scandalous testimony he told the judge. "Your Honor, this case doesn't belong in court, it belongs in a hospital. I think it's quite clear we are dealing with a sick woman." The woman flipped. She grabbed an inkwell from the judge's desk, threw it across the court at her husband and screamed that he had even revised his will to make his secretary his beneficiary.

"Is that true?" Felder whispered to his client.

"Of course old boy."

The judge suggested that the woman seek psychiatric care, and the case eventually was settled on terms favorable to the husband. Was Felder troubled by the outcome? "My cross-examination of her made her look crazy." he says. "There's nothing wrong with that. That's my job."

It was several years later that Felder lost a case to a man who may have been the first to construct the Perfect Divorce. The man was Broadway producer David Merrick-42nd Street; Hello, Dolly; Fanny -and Felder's client was Merrick's Swedish-born third wife, Etan. When their marriage faltered, Etan sought out Felder, who promptly notified Merrick that his wife had retained counsel. Merrick wrote back. "What wife?" It seems that just three weeks after they had wed, Merrick somehow managed to per- suade Etan to fly to Mexico and sign a divorce decree. The happy couple then resumed normal married life, living together and raising a child. But all the while, Mer- rick had the decree filed away. When the couple split. despite Merrick's vast wealth and despite Felder's strenuous efforts and repeated appeals, the Mexican divorce was up- held. Merrick owed his ex-wife not one cent.

(P.S.: All was not lost for either Felder or Etan. When Merrick needed a lawyer to dump his fourth wife, he picked Felder. Soon after, Etan returned as Merrick's fifth wife.)

"This used to be fun," says Felder. "It was more of a game. There was the question of guilt and innocence, and it required ingenuity to get evidence. It was like a chess game, thrust and counterthrust. You'd get caught up in the cases; you felt you were doing something right. You believed in your client and your clients believed in you. Now the client hates you. There's a big antagonism toward lawyers today. So you've got a client that's not particularly crazy about you., and all the fun is out of the cases. It's really a dull area of law. It is very lucrative, though."

The upshot is that while he still makes his living off divorce, he gets his kicks elsewhere.

Positioned so he can see the front door, Felder is scanning the crowd at Elaine's. When Elaine herself sits down next to him, he perks up. Who else, he wants to know, is in the restaurant? Michael Cimino, Elaine sap evenly, is in the back, and Ed Klein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, has just left. "Ooh," says Felder, who represented Klein's former wife, "he hates me." Elaine adjusts her glasses.

Felder volunteers excitedly that he saw Elaine's recent appearance on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And, he says, it so happens that he, too, has just been booked to tape a Lifestyles segment. He is eager to do the show, of course, but a little apprehensive about its host, Robin Leach. "I don't think he remembers," Felder tells Elaine, "that I represented his wife in their divorce." Elaine adjusts her glasses.

Just this morning, Felder continues, he met with a woman from New York Newsday. He had planned to give her an hour, but she wound up staying all day. At one point he told her that his occasional winces were the result of two broken ribs suffered in a skydiving accident. In truth, he cracked them on his bathroom vanity. "I thought it sounded more romantic the other way." he says. "I wonder if she'll use it."

Later that evening, Felder will leave Elaine's and go home to walk the halls of his Fifth Avenue apartment. Rarely able to sleep more than three hours a night, he will fret over his cases, ponder his mortality and flip channels, looking for old movies and Joe Franklin. Finding neither, he'll sift through catalogues of movie posters. Then maybe he'll read from a spy novel or a military adventure book or, better yet, settle in with the first-person exploits column in Soldier of Fortune magazine.

At a little after 6 A.M, he'll be back in his Madison Avenue office, searching for first-person intrigue of his own. He occasionally works with the federal government's Witness Protection Program, handling divorces in absentia for those who have gone on to new lives. Hidden in his office's private bathroom are two pistols, an automatic and a snub- nosed .38. "I'm a pretty good shot, " he says. "I'll put a whole clip in a torso." He even has a secret identity. When a wife- abut 60 percent of his clients are female- has consulted him before informing her husband, it is often necessary to conceal his true identity during communications. To maids, secretaries, receptionists and unsuspecting husbands all over town, Felder is known only by his nom de guerre: Dr. Cohen.

In most divorce actions, Felder still recommends that his clients hire a private detective. You never know what a little surveillance and a background check might turn up. A Swiss bank account? A secret midtown pied-ŕ-terre? Felder and his favorite private eye, a former NYPD detective named Bo Dietl, will find it. "I've built up a lot of resources," says Dietl, who is famous both for solving crimes and for not always playing by the rules. "Put it this way: A lot of [my resources] hedge on legality, but I would never do anything illegal. "If, as frequently happens, the opposition refuses to grant a divorce -either out of a sincere desire to continue the marriage or more frequently as negotiating tactic -Felder and his detective will turn up something on the client's spouse something that will be grounds for divorce In one case, Felder's men discovered that not only was the client's wife fooling around; she was making porn movies, one of which was playing on 42nd Street (the husband's always the last to know) and later became, Felder believes, the first movie of adultery ever played in a court of law. "We equalize the odds by giving the client the evidence to get out," says Dietl, nodding at Felder, "We're the equalizer."

Whatever kicks Felder can't squeeze from his practice, he buys. There is nothing he likes better than making an outrageous pun," says a lawyer who used to work in his office. "It's crazy, uncontrolled consumption, and be loves to shock people. He really just can't get enough attention, and he really doesn't care if he offends... in fact, he likes to offend people."

Perhaps in reaction to his relatively poor childhood, he has become the consummate consumer. He owns a West Side apartment that his daughter will soon move out of (she attends Columbia University; his son is in high school); an East Side apartment that his daughter will soon move into; a Fifth Avenue apartment that overlooks Central Park; a weekend place in the Hamptons that he rarely visits; and a home in Palm Beach that he loves to tell people -he has never seen. In addition, he owns a corporate apartment above the Museum of Modern Art that serves as a warehouse for his movie posters, his adventure books and his out-of-season suits.

He is a shameless, though color-blind, fop. Beside his desk he keeps eight or nine pairs of custom-made monogrammed velvet slippers that cost as much as $850 each. He owns dozens of eyeglasses, more than 350 suits and more than 1,000 shirts. On weekends he dresses up in old army uniforms and combs the Lower East Side looking for more things to buy. He used to get all of his clothes custom-tailored, but he couldn't stand the wait. Now he shops at Paul Stuart, has a tailor alter everything he buys and takes delivery in days. "I love the instant gratification," he says.

When the Newsday story runs, it features a full-page color picture of the lawyer seated rakishly atop his Rolls in inverness coat and bowler hat. Among other things, the piece reports that Felder recently "cracked two ribs in an awkward skydiving landing." Lifting one copy of the paper from the stack of dozens he has had delivered to his office, Felder smiles broadly: "I'll have to send one of these to Mitchelson."

On his way to a Saturday-afternoon brunch at the Friars Club, Felder stops off at Fred, a pricey Fifth Avenue jewelry salon for those who find Tiffany and Cartier too stuffy. He tells the saleswoman that he wants to buy three gifts that cost a total of $15,000, just enough to qualify for the store's special offer of a free trip for two to Paris.

Seated at a glass-topped desk, Felder realizes he's forgotten his eyeglasses. No matter. Within five minutes, though obviously straining to see, he has selected a gold pavé bracelet for his wife, a large diamond-studded gold ring for his daughter and a pair of thick black-and-gold earrings that he says he isn't sure what he'll do with. The price is rounded to precisely $15,000, and Felder attempts to write a check but without his glasses he can barely sign his name. Taking note, his saleswoman says, "I hope you still like these things when you can see them."

He does. And so, it turns out, does his wife. With marriages crashing all around them, the Felders have stayed together for twenty-three years. After she quit Broadway, Myrna, who danced for David Merrick, entered law school and had her first child before she finished her first year. Today she is a highly respected divorce lawyer. In fact, there are those who say that the best lawyer in Raoul Felder's firm is not Raoul.

"She is the better lawyer," says William Mulligan, another prominent divorce attorney, "and most people realize that. Myrna is a great brain, a true intellectual of the law, a great brief writer."

"That must kill Raoul,'' says another lawyer.

Short, excitable and attractive, Myrna, whose sense of humor can also stand up to her husband's, dismisses the comparisons: "Nobody wants to say "I envy Raoul and I'd like to be in his shoes and therefore I can't stand him. ' It comes out better if you say, 'Don't like him, like her. "I'm sure he's the better lawyer. I'm sure he's the better lawyer."

The fact is, Myrna and Raoul are a terrific match, with perfectly complemented skills.

"Yes," says Myrna.

"No," says Raoul.

If nothing else, Myma believes, having seen so many bizarre and depraved relationships has helped them appreciate their own relationship. Around the Felder household, the phrase "Now you've got it, "stated slowly and emphatically, has been given new meaning by the husband who used it in response to his wife's bitter accusation that he cared more about his Lincoln and his job than he did about her. Another client complained that her husband tormented her night after night by Snapping his fingers as she tried to fall asleep. The night after the Felders heard that one, Myrna came to bed, only to find her husband lying there, arms outstretched, snapping away as if he were Gomez Addams ("Their house is a museum. ...").

But Myrna's success and their shared occupation have had no impact on some of Raoul's preconceptions. Oddly enough, he is of the opinion that women make "lousy" lawyers: "It's a very adversarial business and they're just not built for it'' -and he has even gone so far as to write angry letters to an airline that failed to warn him he was flying with a female pilot: "I think I have a right to know whose hands I'm placing my life in."

Yet he has hired many female lawyers, and according to several who have worked for him, he has treated them fairly. "He's an enigma," says Myrna. "Some things you don't square. You Just accept. You certainly couldn't change him."

Nor has she changed his work habits. Most nights, she is sound asleep both when he returns from the office and when he leaves in the morning. Some suspect she went to law school and joined the firm just so she'd get to see her husband. But even at the office, be- cause of their different roles, the Felders do not spend much time together. and Myrna treasures the few times she has seen her husband in action. Once, due to a scheduling conflict, she asked him to take her place defending the mother in a child-custody hearing. She arrived just in time to take a front- row seat and watch him artfully force the opposing lawyer to concede, rather timidly, that the child he wanted to separate from its mother was only 18 months old-at which point another spectator turned to Myrna, not realizing who she was, and said, "That's the end of that." Myrna, unable to restrain herself even in a court of law, started yelling, "The man in the beard is my husband! The man in the beard is my husband!"

Of course, should she ever feel differently about Raoul, one after another of her husband's competitors has come to her and issued standing offers to represent her. Anytime. Anyplace. Free of charge.

On his way to court, Raoul Felder is reminded of a cartoon. The memory has been triggered by the laughter of his client and several civilians who are sharing an elevator. They are laughing at his coat. It is an otherwise respectable trench coat that he has paid a lot of money to have an artist emblazon with two Technicolor comic-book characters: the Green Lantern takes up most of the back, somebody unrecognizable is in front. Prompted by the laughter, Felder describes the cartoon, which has a man seated behind an office desk dressed as a clown. The caption reads: "If I weren't a good lawyer, would I be wearing a clown suit?"

The client is a former local-TV news reporter named John David Klein. He is married to ABC newswoman Linda Ellerbee, but for six years they have been trying to get divorced. Early on, they had reached a settlement agreement, but then Klein charged that Ellerbee had misled him about her income, and he tried to reopen the talks. She countered that he was merely trying to take advantage of her recent success, both at ABC and as a best-selling author, to get more money.

It is a difficult case, his word against hers, with no way to prove or disprove that she lied to him, and it languished for years until Klein came to Felder. "He feels he was had, " says the lawyer, privately. "Who knows?"

The car stops outside the courthouse in lower Manhattan. Before lawyer and client step from the silver chauffeur-driven Rolls, Felder removes the handkerchief from his breast pocket and tosses it in the back. "There are a lot of poor people in here," he says. "Why make them feel bad?"

They are here for negotiations, not a trial. Felder thinks he can intimidate Ellerbee into a quick settlement, but the judge is late. On one side of a dimly lighted waiting room Klein sits on a wooden bench, eyes closed and faces straight ahead. Across the room bside a "NO SMOKING" sign, dressed casually in a sweater, skirt and boots, her hair piled carelessly atop her head, Ellerbee sits silently, reading and chain-smoking.

Though they are still husband and wife their eyes never meet. Eventually, the hearing is postponed. and everyone shuffles quietly into the same elevator. "This is as close as we get," says Felder with a tight smile. During the car ride back uptown, Klein shows his disappointment. Felder attempts to reassure him by talking about Ellerbee's lawyer. "She's nervous" he says "She's afraid to try the case, and she wants desperately to settle. She's a good person, though she's not a fireball. She tends, like most women lawyers, to get a little hysterical at times but she's okay.''

Two weeks later, they all meet again. The judge is ready and the talks begin. When Ellerbee's lawyer resists Felder's entreaties, he warns that if she doesn't make some concessions, he will walk out and let the matter go to trial. Later, during a break, he instructs Klein to wait until Ellerbee's lawyer returns and then to feign anger with him. As she walks into the room Klein yells at Felder in mock indignation, "No! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!" In private, Felder will tell his opponent that he can't control Klein and that she must be reasonable. Or they'll end up in court.

But this case isn't going to trial. These days, a divorce trial is so rare an event that a competing lawyer jokes that Felder wouldn't even remember where to sit in a courtroom. Eventually, Ellerbee and her lawyer relent and agree to give Klein a considerably large piece of the estate. After six years, the divorce will go through. On the ride back to the law office, Klein tells Felder, "I think the 'Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it' worked."

"Are you happy?" the lawyer asks.

"Happy? No. Satisfied? Yes. '' At 50th and Madison, Felder jumps off and tells his chauffeur to take Mr. Klein wherever he wants to go. When Felder gets back to his office, he asks his receptionist call a florist and have flowers sent to Ellerbee's lawyer.

"Tell him " he says, "to send the the usual.'

Loren Feldman is a free-lance writer living in New York. This is his first piece for GQ.