Impasse (3 page)

This was Stu's theory of the case, and his demand letter laid it out in painstaking detail so that Jennings would know exactly what they were up against when considering whether to settle. He included a vivid quote from Sylvia describing the enduring image of a small blue sports car taking flight and blocking out the sun.

“Bad news, pal,” Clay said, propping his feet on the desk as Stu walked into his office. “I'm going to have to fire you.”

Clay wore an aging navy suit, yet he made it look good, filling out his fitted white shirt with a healthy chest. He also had hair that never seemed to need combing, but simply fell into place. Stu's own shirts were a boxy traditional cut, which helped to hide holiday weight gains. And he could comb his hair for an hour without ever getting it to fall right; although, at his age, he supposed he should just be thankful he didn't have a horseshoe of thin hair framing a shiny bald spot.

“You can't fire me,” Stu replied. “We're partners. We'd have to dissolve.”

“Like a body in acid.”

“Morbid, but yeah. Now, show me the letter.”

Clay held it up, teasing. “You sure you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I'll give you a hint. They think your theory of liability is novel.”

Stu gritted his teeth, annoyed. “So now they'll move for summary judgment and try to dismiss our case? Fine. Bring it on. But if we get past the motion, we'll have sufficient leverage to settle. Their exposure could be more than our demand letter requested. Sylvia is going to need care for the rest of her life.”

Clay laughed. “You and your legal speak. It's so cute. We all know they don't want a crippled plaintiff in front of a jury.”

“Quadriplegic. Please practice
not
saying
crippled
.”

“I don't think I'll need to practice.” Clay finally handed over the letter.

Stu ripped it from his partner's hands like a kid reclaiming a stolen love letter. In the middle of the neatly printed page of thick linen paper from Shubert, Garvin & Ross et al. resided an awful run-on sentence, typical of lawyers. Stu skipped to the bottom. Below the horrific sentence was a single number. A big number.

“Oh my,” Stu said quietly.

“Oh yes,” Clay replied. “It appears your novel theory has scared the proverbial shit out of them.”

Stu read the counter offer again, while Clay extracted from his desk a bottle of Booker's bourbon—126 proof and sixty bucks a bottle. Clay poured Stu a glass and one for himself. The one for himself was symbolic—he was on the wagon. After downing his own tumbler of Booker's served neat, Stu read the letter once more, carefully. The sentence was still awful, but it didn't modify the number.

“Just one sentence and a number?” Stu said.

“Just
that
number.”

“Wow. Sylvia is going to be pleased.”

“Fuck Sylvia and her motorized golf cart. I'm pleased!”

“I am too. This is a good result.”

Clay smiled. “A good result? It seems to me that thirty-three percent of nine million is somewhere around three million, if I'm not mistaken. That's better than good. That's fucking awesome.”

Stu frowned.

Clay's smile disappeared. “Why are you frowning? Don't frown. I hate it when you frown.”

“It's not that simple.”

“Obviously, I don't have an extensive background in mathematics, but if you grab a calculator, I think you'll find that I'm right on this one.”

Stu was accustomed to explaining the law to Clay, who often neglected its finer points. It was a daily ritual, good news or bad. But Stu was not adept at softening blows, which was one of the reasons Clay handled the clients. Stu hardly noticed the devastating effect his words were having on his partner.

“Remember that attorney with the bushy hair in Fall River? Roger Rodan?”

“No. Why?”

“Last year Rodan challenged another lawyer's contingent fee as excessive on appeal, and he won. Now, by law, even a contingent fee must reflect either the work done or the risk involved. In our case, we wrote one demand letter. And we didn't invest more than nominal cash to pursue it. Very little work. No risk. Ergo, no basis for a three-million-dollar fee. If we had borrowed money to do extensive discovery or we had written briefs and gone to motion, that would be a different story. But we didn't. And the courts especially frown on a windfall fee when the plaintiff needs the money for their care, versus, say, when a punitive award is given. And Sylvia definitely needs the money for her care.”

“What are you saying? We don't get our thirty-three?”

“Not if Sylvia contests it. No. The court would reverse it and give us what they consider ‘reasonable' under the law.”

“She won't contest it. She'll be delighted with six million.”

“Others might ask the question. Her family. Her friends. And if she, or someone on her behalf, did contest our fee, it would likely result in disciplinary action by the bar under the unreasonable fee provision of ethics rule two-point-one. We'd risk formal reprimand or even a license suspension.”

“I can take that risk.”

“I can't.”

“You mean you won't.”

“Right, I won't.”

“What if we reject this offer? Can you win the motion that justifies a higher fee?”

“Sylvia would have to reject the offer.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But she loves you. Better yet, she doesn't understand a fucking word of your legal jargon. She'll do whatever we advise.”

“And I'd advise her to take this. It's a good offer. It meets her needs and minimizes her legal fees.”

“Our fees! It minimizes
our
fees!”

Stu finally heard the panic in his partner's voice and tried to offer some consolation. “I think we might be able to justify charging four hundred thousand dollars. It's a stretch, but…”

“Two hundred for each of us?”

“Yeah. Minus taxes. Minus overhead.”

“Minus my right arm and my left testicle. You're making this sound better all the time.”

“You want the truth, don't you?”

“Sure. Keep going, sunshine.”

“Listen, it's almost two years' salary for a week's work. Our rent is suddenly no longer an issue, at least for a year or two. I can get the stupid elevator fixed, or at least the door, for God's sake. Pauline will stop bitching for a raise, because we can finally give it to her. You can probably even pay off that BMW you should never have bought. We ought to be happy with that. Look at me: I'm happy. I'm smiling and taking slugs of your ridiculous whiskey.” Stu fought to maintain his grin as he sipped the fiery tonic, contorting his face in a way that should have amused his partner.

But Clay's dark eyes narrowed, the playful light in them extinguished. “It's just that my half of three million would change my life,” he mumbled. “Two hundred doesn't. I'll wake up tomorrow the same goddamned guy I am today, only with the rent paid through next December.”

Stu hadn't contemplated a life change. He might have won at trial and gotten more, a lot more, but it was a safe, clean, substantial payday that he'd created from nothing, and they were doing the right thing.

“Well,” Stu said, “here's to paying the rent.”

Stu raised his tumbler. Clay didn't meet his toast. He ignored the glass in favor of staring out the window, as though watching his dream drift away with the passing clouds. Then he turned to stare past the tumbler at Stu himself. It was a curious stare, like that of a bird deciding whether a grain on the ground might be a seed, or merely sand, before plucking it up to eat. “It seems we're at a bit of an impasse,” he said.

Stu braced himself for further argument.

But then Clay sighed. His mood seemed to pass, and he clinked his own tumbler against Stu's. “All right. It saddens me to say this, but if you won't let me get rich this way, I'll just have to find another.”

Stu was relieved that Clay had processed the defeat and acclimated. Adaptation was his partner's best trait, and it served him well; he could not be kept down for long. He did, however, drain his symbolic glass of 126-proof whiskey in one gulp.

 

CHAPTER 3

When Stu arrived home, Katherine was wrapping up a workout with five other sweaty women from the South Dartmouth Athletic Club, the gym she'd insisted they join for a lifetime initiation fee of ten thousand dollars, plus regular dues that rivaled a car payment. She'd argued that if Stu met one client there, the club would pay for itself. The trouble was he didn't go, he didn't meet anyone, and, thus, it didn't pay for itself. Instead Katherine went, Katherine met people, and they paid for it each month.

The living room was a sea of brightly colored Lycra. All wives of professionals. Some were rich, and the others thought they were, except for Katherine, who considered life in their not-quite-two-thousand-square-foot home at the east end of William Street in South Dartmouth akin to abject poverty. The others all lived on the waterside of Rockland—on Flagship Drive or Mosher Street or the ocean-view end of William, overlooking Clark's Cove.

Margery Hanstedt was busily perspiring on their leather couch in a pink unitard, but Katherine wasn't likely to say anything; Margery owned three restaurants. She was married with kids, but was also a ferocious flirt and wore makeup to the gym to advertise it. Holly Plynth was married to a doctor. Jenny Plantz-Werschect
was
a doctor. Stu recognized the fourth woman in the blue shorts and should have remembered her name, but couldn't—an increasingly common problem as he approached forty. He wondered momentarily if his memory lapses were due to his age or the fact that the identities of people wandering in and out of his life simply didn't matter much anymore. Unless the person was a relative or a client, they were just another face in the parade of humanity that came and went. There was no romantic intrigue to be had—he was married—and, without children, he had no connection to parents. He tried not to make eye contact with Blue Shorts so he wouldn't have to guess her name or reintroduce himself.

Katherine smiled when he entered, a bigger smile than she spent on him when he found her alone. She was more generous with affection when others were present. A bit backward, now that Stu thought about it.

“Stu! We just finished a session of extreme power-cross. Jill is from the SAC, but she does home training.” Katherine gestured toward a harsh-looking woman in a sports bra cinched so tight it squished her chest as flat as the trio of angry abs below it. She looked serious and expensive—she almost certainly charged extra to do house calls. “Jill, this is my husband, Stu.” Katherine lowered her voice. “He doesn't work out.”

“I bike,” Stu said defensively.

“Stationary bike,” Katherine clarified, as though it didn't count. “In front of the TV.”

“I watch sports while I ride.” In the presence of six exercising women it sounded better than admitting he watched
Weird Worlds
on the Syfy channel and only flipped to football when Katherine walked in.

“He could lose a few,” Katherine said so they could all hear. It was the opposite of what she'd said to him privately that morning.

Also backward,
Stu noted.

Jill looked him up and down, evaluating him like a shopper debating a loaf of bread from the day-old bin. “I could rip you up in a month,” she said. Then she tilted her head for a better view of his backside. “Maybe two.”

“Sounds great,” Stu said, thinking that being “ripped up” sounded excruciating.

Margery flipped her sweaty hair, spraying more droplets onto the couch. “You work with Clay Buchanan, don't you?” she said, casually bringing up his handsome—and single—partner.

“He's the first name on the sign.”

Katherine frowned. “I told Stu to fight to have our name first, but he doesn't have a taste for confrontation anymore.”

“Funny trait for a lawyer,” Jenny remarked. Jenny was known for making anti-lawyer remarks. It was rude, but a lot of doctors hated attorneys. Stu didn't blame them. Lawyers sued doctors.

“Well, tell Clay hello for me,” Margery said, sticking out her sweaty pink chest.

“Will do,” Stu said, wondering if he was supposed to also relay the message she was sending with her fuchsia-colored boobs. “I'll be seeing him later this evening.”

“On a Friday night?”

“Stu's turning forty,” Katherine whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.

“No party,” Stu announced. “You all heard me. I'm not dying. No black balloons. No novelty candles that I can't blow out with my aging lungs. No rented wheelchair.”

Katherine rolled her eyes toward her friends. “And no fun.”

The women shared a laugh at his expense, and he hated them and their brightly colored clothes for a moment. Then he walked into the kitchen and forgot about them; there was leftover pizza.

Stu microwaved a slab of Canadian bacon and pineapple, his favorite. It was a small, temporary slice of happiness. He should have felt elated about Molson; as soon as Clay obtained Sylvia's agreement to the settlement, it would officially be a big win for him. But he didn't feel elated; he felt fucking depressed. Clay was right about nothing changing after the case was won. One of the settlement terms would be a non-disclosure agreement; nobody in town could know what he'd done for his client or that he'd bested three other lawyers. Ergo, no public boost to his reputation. And the money didn't really change anything. Clay was right about that, too. It just made paying bills more comfortable. Today he'd turned forty years old, and he was the same goddamned guy he was yesterday.

For a moment he was miserable enough to allow himself to think the dark thoughts. They could cheat Sylvia and collect a huge fee, and he could leak the settlement terms. Odds were he'd get away with both—Clay was also right about that. But he'd always been the good kid, the Cub Scout, the responsible student, the nice young man with whom parents were comfortable sending their daughter to prom, all the happy sappy stuff. At the DA's Office he'd taken an oath to uphold the public trust, and years of making decisions that affected people's lives forever while under the glare of public scrutiny had cemented those indigenous ethics in him. He was a rule-follower. He didn't push the envelope. Never had. Never would.