Pao’s attorney, Alan Exelrod, says the termination was in “retaliation” for her lawsuit. Kleiner attorney Lynn Hermle denies this, suggesting Pao’s exit involved job-performance issues. “A lawsuit cannot be a ticket to lifetime employment,” says Hermle. “The firm informed Ellen Pao that it would be separating her employment as the result of long-standing, documented issues and not because of the litigation or because she is a woman. The firm was also generous and fair in its offer to help her transition her career in ways that are inconsistent with retaliatory conduct. They were willing to keep her on the payroll as an employee for six months and to vest in venture funds, and then pay her severance, all without asking her to release her pending legal claims, which is entirely inconsistent with an intent to retaliate.”

At least one friend of Fletcher’s says that Fletcher urged his wife not to sue Kleiner. “Because he was worried about how it would affect her,” he says. “It’s easy to conclude: he’s prone to suing, so he talked her into it. But she was the fallback position, in her good career.” Last year, the apartment in the San Francisco St. Regis was sold, at a small loss—just one sign of the pressures the couple now faces. In September, over Fletcher’s objections, the New York judge appointed a federal trustee to oversee the bankruptcy of Fletcher’s master fund, Fletcher International. In the Cayman Islands, the court-appointed liquidator would note that some $125 million in funds appeared to have vanished. Alleging “evidence of mismanagement and misconduct,” he pointed to questionable expenditures by F.A.M., including a nearly $8 million investment by Fletcher in the company that was producing his brother Geoffrey’s film directorial-debut, Violet & Daisy, the story of two teenage assassins that is scheduled for release later this year. In December, Fletcher’s lawyers in the Dakota suit, among his many creditors, withdrew from the case because they had not been paid in months, although they were soon replaced by other lawyers, including the president of Fletcher’s bankrupt hedge fund. Pao is now giving business advice on Quora and is rumored to be trying to raise money for a start-up as she waits for her lawsuit to wind its way through the California courts, either to a settlement or, in a year or so, a very high-profile trial.

‘All these years, I really loved Buddy and I thought he was my friend,” one Dakota resident says. “We went out to dinner and the theater together. And then all this comes out of the blue. Does he really think that anybody had a problem because he was black? Was he just playing us the whole time?”

There is no question, friends say, that Buddy Fletcher believes with all his heart that he was discriminated against by the Dakota board. “That is very, very core to this,” says one friend. “I have talked to people who say, ‘I can’t believe he is playing the race card.’ I don’t think he is playing a card. Buddy is really convinced that it is a bad thing that people have done, to deny him that apartment.” It is why, friends say, he took the risk of suing the Dakota, something that so few others would dare to try. “When Buddy believes he’s right,” says one friend, “he’s not just right. It’s all about justice.” His anger, and aggrievement, which stunned some at the Dakota, were not so surprising to those who have known him longer. To them, that Fletcher was one and the same with the friendly, accommodating Buddy Fletcher most people saw. “If a change,” says one friend, “consists of not burying all your frustrations, or feelings of being oppressed, or whatever, and letting those types of things come more to the surface, rather than having a big smile on your face all the time—I guess that’s changing. Or it’s just not giving a shit anymore. If it’s always there, is it really a change?” There is the same surprise among some who know her, at the seeming transformation of Ellen Pao—at the unyielding assertiveness, even aggressiveness, in a woman who had long been regarded as quiet, reserved, a conventional corporate good girl. For Ellen Pao, friends say, as with Buddy Fletcher, it is about justice.