An Invisible Client (2 page)

2

The Spanish Fork District Court sat in the middle of a field. A few homes and the high school ringed the western edge, but three sides looked out on open desert. The entire front of the courthouse, both floors, was nothing but glass, where we could sit and watch people riding dirt bikes at the sand dunes a little farther out.

Rosenberg sat down on the bench across from me. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. My partners, Marty Keller and Raimi Val, leaned against the hallway wall. They had watched only a couple of hours of testimony. As partners, we didn’t really have to go to trial. Our associates could do it all. I was the only partner who still preferred to fight it out himself. Neither Marty nor Raimi was particularly good in a courtroom, but that wasn’t why I’d joined up with them. Marty’s empathy toward potential clients and Raimi’s research skills, talents I didn’t possess, complemented my trial prowess.

“What do you want, Noah?” Rosenberg asked.

“You read the complaint. Six million.”

“That’s crazy, and you know it. The guy was a year from retirement, and he was a mechanic. He wouldn’t have made six million if he’d worked the next two hundred years.”

Raimi, Marty, and I had decided we would settle this case for anything over five hundred thousand dollars. Given the deceased’s earning capacity, that would be more than fair.

“Two million,” I said.

“Still too high.”

I leaned forward. “Did you not hear what just happened in there, Glen? Your boy just lied to the jury. I’m gonna spend the next hour going through every single thing I can think of with him. He’s so flustered, he’ll probably tell me the times he jerked off to dirty magazines as a kid. And then, when I put my client on the stand—oh, Glen, when I put my client on, there is not gonna be a dry eye in the courtroom. Her husband was her entire life. Nothing else mattered.”

Rosenberg glanced toward the attorney–client meeting room next to the courtroom, where the other attorneys and representatives of Bethany Chicken had gathered. “Let me talk to my clients.”

He rose, went into the room, and shut the door. I looked back at Raimi and Marty and winked. My client came out of the bathroom and slowly walked over to where I was seated. She sat down with a groan, leaning on the cane I’d insisted she bring to the trial. Her ankles looked swollen and purple.

“I think you’re about to become rich, Claire,” I said.

She grinned. “That’s nice.”

“What’re you going to do with the money?”

She would get a nice chunk of the money, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the full amount. Personal injury attorneys took thirty-three percent of any settlement, and if it went to trial, the fee got bumped up to forty percent. That was after expenses were reimbursed for things like investigators, mediators, stenographers for depositions, photocopies, phone calls, and court filing fees. The best scenario was the one I was in—to settle the case on the first day of the trial. If I could settle today, I would still get the forty percent and I’d save myself two weeks in court.

“I’m not keeping any of it,” she said.

“Leaving it to your kids?”

“Oh, no. Well, I’ll put some aside for my grandchildren’s college, but the rest, I’m giving away. This wasn’t about money for me, Mr. Byron.”

“Ma’am, no disrespect, but it’s always about money. No exceptions.”

She smiled a sad little smile. “You’ll come to find as you get older that money loses its luster, and the only thing that matters are the people in your life. Nothing can bring Jason back to me, but maybe I can make some other people happy with this money.”

Clearly, she and I did not come from the same school of thought. I was about to ask her something else when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw two bailiffs—younger guys—standing around with dopey grins on their faces. When I looked down, I saw what they were staring at.

A small mouse padded along near the wall. It was gray and somewhat fat, with little whiskers that twitched every so often. A baby. The bailiffs had laid out a spring trap with chocolate, and the baby mouse was headed for it.

I rose and went over there. Both bailiffs looked at me but didn’t say anything. I took my pen—a Montblanc I had picked up for fifteen hundred dollars—out of my pocket and tapped the spring on the trap, setting it off. The baby mouse heard the noise and scuttled in the opposite direction. I stood up, eyes on the bailiffs, then sat back down.

Rosenberg stepped out of the conference room and hovered by the door, away from my client. I guessed he didn’t want to see that she was a real person in actual pain. I walked over to him, and he whispered, “One point two. Expires in ten minutes.”

I grinned and held out my hand. “You’re reasonable. That’s why I like you, Rosenberg.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what you tell everyone.”

The drive back to Salt Lake City from Spanish Fork took an hour. Raimi rode with me. I liked driving with him because he didn’t talk much. He was the most brilliant lawyer I had ever met, but he couldn’t sign a client to save his life. His social skills had never really developed past high school, and I had always presumed he fell somewhere on the autism spectrum. I brought it up with him once, and he’d hinted that because his parents were Hindu they believed disabilities were not disabilities but gifts from the gods.

“You hungry?” I asked.

“No. There’s a new law clerk you need to approve in the next few days. BYU grad, top ten in her class.”

“You know I don’t give a shit about grades. They don’t mean anything.”

“They mean they’re the type of person to get good grades in law school. Probably the type of person who would work really hard for us.”

I hadn’t gotten good grades in law school. In fact, I’d nearly flunked out, and only by the grace of the relationship I had built with the dean of academics over the years was I allowed to graduate. Law school was a sham, but every student blindly believed in that sham. Schools didn’t teach anything lawyers would actually use; they proclaimed the law was a noble profession and couldn’t be sullied by teaching practicalities like marketing, sales, entrepreneurship, and client management. But the jig was up. Graduates had become less and less employable as the market flooded with lawyers, and law school applications were down nearly fifty percent from ten years ago. People were getting the message. Practicalities were the only things that really mattered.

“The top-ten people are kinda weird,” I said.

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know. What kind of weirdo forsakes their family and social life to sit in a library and study ten hours a day?”

“I did that.”

A beat of silence passed. “You sure you’re not hungry?”

“No.”

3

The offices of Byron, Val & Keller occupied the fifteenth floor of the Salt Lake Mercantile Building. We had twenty-three attorneys and forty support staff. When Raimi, Marty, and I started the firm, we’d had five thousand dollars among the three of us and only two desks. In ten years, we’d become one of the top plaintiffs’ personal injury firms in the state.

Our firm had grown to handle family law and bankruptcies, as well, but I didn’t touch that stuff. I did do some criminal defense. It wasn’t that much different from personal injury: a big faceless machine bearing down on an individual with all its might. The worst odds of winning a case were in criminal defense and plaintiffs’ personal injury. Lawyers who wanted to win had to be selective, particularly with PI, where the lawyers fronted the costs of the case. Picking only winners was important, because one crap case could bankrupt an entire law firm. I’d seen it happen when attorneys grew emotionally attached to a case—the cardinal sin of personal injury—and paid the price by investing all their money and eventually losing.

The firm across the hall had taken out a four-million-dollar loan on a medical malpractice case they’d thought was a sure thing. Even though the doctor had been drinking before the surgery, the jury found that there was no negligence on his part—juries could never be trusted to do the smart thing—and the bank called in the note. The firm couldn’t pay, and I’d watched the bank take apart the firm piece by piece and sell everything from the lamps to the computers. One of the partners, a portly man named Nick, had stood in the hallway and cried the entire three hours it took to move the furniture.

Raimi and I opened the glass double doors to our office and walked in to applause and cheers. The secretaries and paralegals had a tradition of baking a cake with my face and dollar signs on it when we settled a big case. They wanted to put the things I valued most on there, and Raimi had told them it was money and ego. Not too far off the mark, I guess. It wasn’t money itself that I cared about, but what it represented: freedom, power, and luxury . . . all tied up in one neat little green sheet of paper.

Our office manager, Sally, whom the staff called Commandant because she was so strict with them, raised a hand. “Quiet.” She leaned in to give me a single kiss on the cheek, then lit the lone candle on the cake. “For keeping us all employed.”

I blew out the candle and made a wish.

Then I headed to my office, the largest office here, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over downtown Salt Lake. On my way, colleagues slapped my back and shook my hand. We had made about five hundred thousand dollars, which was nice, but that wasn’t a massive payday. I think they were more excited because they knew I gave out bonuses whenever we had a decent settlement, and they were hoping that by treating this as a large settlement, they would get a little piece of the pie.

A year ago, I had settled a ten-million-dollar suit for three million and took everyone in the firm to Hawaii. I wouldn’t be doing anything like that for five hundred thousand dollars, but a few bucks wouldn’t be a big deal.

Sally followed me into my office, helped me take off my suit coat, and hung it on the rack in the corner. I sat down behind the glass-and-steel desk, and she took her spot across from me.

“Give everyone a thousand-dollar bonus,” I said. “And send Rosenberg a bottle of champagne.”

“He’s Mormon. He doesn’t drink.”

“Rosenberg’s Mormon?”

She shrugged.

“Okay, well, send him a basket of bread and honey or whatever.”

“Done. Next?”

“The Katz case, the blind guy who ran into the branch hanging over the sidewalk, any word from the city?”

“They want to talk resolution, but it looks like they’re not offering much.”

“It’s not worth much, but it’s a slam dunk. The city let the tree grow over the sidewalk and should’ve known people would run into it. Let Marty take that—he knows the city attorneys better than I do—but tell him I want at least a hundred thousand. The guy’s got scars all over his face that should get us to that.”

She wrote furiously on her legal pad. “Next?”

“Our billboards on I-15 look like crap. They’re all covered in dirt. Get someone from Kennedy Billboards out there to clean them.”

“It’s not dirt. It’s buildup from the smog.”

“Can they be cleaned?”

“Yes.”

“Then have ’em do it today.”

“Okay, done. Anything else?”

“Get me a latté, would you?”

“No prob. Oh, your ex-wife called. She’d like a call back.”

I rolled my eyes. “She wanna borrow money?”

“Wouldn’t say.”

“I’ll call her later. I got anything on my calendar today?”

“Nope. You’re blocked out for the next two weeks for trial.”

I grinned. Another benefit of settling cases at trial was that I would officially be out of the office until the last day of trial. “I’m going to the gym, then.”

“Your gym clothes are hanging in the closet.”

“You’re the best,” I said, standing.

“I know. Call your ex-wife. No woman likes to wait for a phone call.”

I grabbed my gym bag and started taking off my tie. “I’m sure it’s nothing important.”

4

After the gym, I headed back to the office for an afternoon consult—a referral from another attorney who felt the case was too complex for him to handle. A skinny man with glasses came into my office and sat down. He began telling me about a car accident. Within minutes, he was crying—not tears but a blubbery crying, like a child about to leave Disneyland.

I knew within two minutes that I wasn’t going to take his case. The fact was, the law was a harsh mistress. People liked to tell themselves they were unique, that everyone was special, and his or her value couldn’t be measured. Well, the law didn’t see it that way. Under the law, a person was valued at exactly how much money that person could earn. Anyone who hadn’t gone to an Ivy League school, pulled in at least six figures, or had a family business waiting for them was what PI lawyers called “an invisible client”—one who lived and breathed but didn’t officially exist.

We didn’t take invisible clients. The solo practitioners could fight over them.

After five minutes, I stopped him. “Mr. . . . James, is it?”

He nodded.

“Mr. James, I’m very sorry for the situation this other driver has put you in, but we can’t take your case.”

“Why not?” He looked absolutely shocked. Most clients I turned away had the same look, and it surprised me every time.

“Because liability is far from clear. You rolled through a stop sign, and he ran a red light. Not good facts for either of you.”

“But . . . the pain. I’m in pain every day. I can’t sleep at night. I can’t watch TV. I can’t go out . . .”

“I know, and I’m sorry, but the value of this case is just not very high. The loss of your income isn’t as high as I would need to take the case when liability isn’t clear. It’s true that pain and suffering and your medical bills are important, but those numbers don’t add up to much. I’m sorry—you just don’t earn enough.”

His face flushed pink, his lips pursed, and he stood up. “Well, you are a rat sonofabitch, aren’t you?”

He left my office, and I took a deep breath and leaned back in the seat. It was six in the evening. A few associates were still running around the office, but most of the staff had gone home. In an hour, I would hear the vacuums of the cleaning crew.

I headed down to my reserved parking space, got into my Bentley, and drove about two miles uptown to a wine bar called Gleam, where I had the valet park the car. Raimi and Marty were already at a table. This was one of our traditions, too: get trashed the night of a big settlement and find some beautiful women to spend the evening with.

“Gentlemen,” I said, sauntering up to the table, “what are we drinking?”

“Just wine for me,” Marty said. “I’ve got a date.”

I sat down. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I got a date with Penny.”

“So cancel.”

“I can’t cancel. It’s getting serious with her.” He paused. “I think I might ask her to marry me.”

Raimi kind of twitched, his version of excitement. “That’s stupendous. Congrats.”

“Marty,” I said, putting my elbows on the table, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“I think it’s time. I’m sorry, Noah. I love going out with you guys—you know that—but I’m getting older. Maybe it’s time to hunker down. I know it wasn’t for you, but I think it could be for me.”

Marty’s parents were older and had lived through the tail end of the Great Depression. Seeing them keep old newspapers for toilet paper and reuse the same grease for every meal for a week had influenced him more than he’d ever admit. Made him crave safety over risk, even when it wasn’t to his advantage. We’d gone to Las Vegas once and he bet a five-dollar chip, lost, and then skipped dinner that night to make up for it. Living the bachelor life was too much of a gamble: wait too long for the right person, and you could end up alone.

Marty, though, hadn’t seen the disadvantages of marriage. The slow separation that began like a crack in an iceberg. The marriage would splinter somewhere and both of you would be holding on so tightly you couldn’t breathe. Some people saw the fracture and still stayed married. They were the ones who sat quietly in restaurants and didn’t speak or look at one another. Other couples, like me and my ex, couldn’t stomach the thought of living a life with a person they no longer loved.

I leaned back in my seat. “What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?”

“What?”

“Breakfast cereal. Like Lucky Charms, Fruity Pebbles, Wheaties, what?”

“Um, I dunno. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I guess.”

“Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Do you eat it every day?”

“No.”

“No, of course not. Why?”

He shrugged. “I’d get sick of it.” He rolled his eyes. “A woman is not a cereal, Noah.”

“Same principle, man. Why would you tie yourself down to one woman when you can be with a different woman every night?”

“Because I love her.”

I chuckled. “Love is a creation of advertising, Marty. It exists only in your head.”

“Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine today. I thought you’d be happier for me as my best man.”

I sighed. I was being a bit of an A-hole. “I’m sorry. I’m really happy for you. Really. Penny’s a great girl.” I raised a finger in the air, indicating to the waitress that I was ready to order. “Now let’s get smashed.”

Raimi drank very little and could drive, but I was slurring my words and hitting on every woman in the joint. We headed outside and said bye to Marty, whose girlfriend had dropped him off. I had secured myself a date for later, but decided I wasn’t in the mood. Marty’s news had thrown me off more than I would admit to anyone.

Raimi drove me home. I lived at the top of a mountain near the University of Utah. We stopped in the horseshoe driveway, and I said, “Make sure to get my car from the valet.”

“I’ll get someone from the firm to drive it. Leave your garage open.” His nose scrunched up in a puppy-dog way. A tick he sometimes got when he was about to say or do something uncomfortable. “Are you really happy for Marty, or did you just say that?”

“I don’t know. Happy. Whatever. How come you don’t drink?”

“I don’t like the feeling of not being in control. I like to control everything I can. I don’t like taking risk.”

“You opened this firm with me. That was a pretty big risk.”

He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. I knew you’d make us successful. It was a good bet.”

I grinned. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve actually said to me, Raimi.”

“You’re welcome.”

I slapped his shoulder, then got out of the car.

“Hey,” Raimi said through the open window, “call Tia. She texted me and said it was important.”

“She still has your number, huh?”

“I was the one she would call to find out where you were at three in the morning.”

He had said it without any malice, just stating a fact, but it felt like an accusation. Maybe my own guilt was bubbling to the surface.

“She was a good woman, Noah.”

“She still is. Have a good night.”

“You, too.”

I turned to my home, stood in the driveway for a minute, then decided I wasn’t yet drunk enough to call my ex-wife.