“Would you like some coffee or a soft drink, Victor?” asked Prescott. He reached to a phone sitting on the coffee table between us and pressed a button. The pretty woman who had led me to the office immediately appeared. “Janice, a coffee for me, please. And for you, Victor?”
“Coffee, black.” Janice left without taking a request from Madeline.
“We’re not here to argue, Victor,” said Prescott, which was a lie, because that was precisely why we were there. “The syndicators have asked that I take a more personal interest in this case as we approach the trial. Glancing through the file, I noticed your name wasn’t on the complaint. It was filed by a Samuel Guthrie.”
“He was my partner, but he left the firm.”
“Yes. Joined Blaine, Cox, Amber and Cox, didn’t he?”
“They gave him a very handsome offer.”
“Married an Amber, I understand. Their youngest, the pretty one. I was invited to the wedding but was overseas at the time.”
“I couldn’t make it either,” I said, though I hadn’t missed it because I was overseas. I think there was something on television I needed to see that night, The World of Disney on Ice maybe, or something.
“I suppose the marriage might have had something to do with the offer.”
“Something.”
“That leaves you with two lawyers now, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.” Prescott had done more than merely glance through the file.
“I assume Mr. Guthrie took a number of his clients with him,” he continued. “But he didn’t take this case. Tell us why not, Victor.”
“Because it barks,” said Madeline.
I glanced sideways at her and let out a soft growl under my breath.
“Do you know what the key to any successful law practice is, Victor?” asked Prescott.
I couldn’t help my bitter smile. “Obviously not, sir.”
“Objectivity,” he said, with a rich man’s certainty. “It’s all too easy in this business to take positions that satisfy our emotions but that ultimately hurt our clients. It’s all too easy to let our passions stir.”
I tried but failed to imagine passions stirring in the formal upright man before me.
“Now we’ve given you all our files and you’ve found nothing,” he continued. His graveled voice, still precise and formal, now gained a touch of anger, just a hint, but just a hint was enough to send me slinking back in my chair. “Some minor discrepancies between the information we received and what went out in the prospectus, yes, but not enough to show a pattern. And you won’t be able to prove reliance on the prospectus anyway. Nobody reads those things. You can be assured the jury will learn of the many charitable organizations our clients support, the many philanthropic boards they sit upon. And in the end the jurors will view your clients as fools with so much money they were willing to throw it away on any twisted tax shelter that promised they wouldn’t have to pay their fair share. Frankly, Victor, if we go to trial we’re going to bloody you, and you know it.”
He paused when the door opened. “Ah, Janice.”
She came in with a large silver tray and laid it upon the low table. There was a silver coffeepot and two white china cups and a crystal creamer and a crystal sugar bowl with a fine silver spoon. On a doily set upon a china plate perched an array of fancy cookies. It looked as if the Queen were coming to join us. I was grateful for the respite as my eyes had begun watering. My eyes water whenever I am under attack, a condition that was hell in elementary school, and I was under attack now. In less than a minute Prescott had exposed every weakness in my case. As Janice poured for me, I tried to squeeze back the tears.
“The project never made a dime,” I said before taking a sip of coffee. It was so exquisite it startled me for a moment, rich and crisply bitter. I took another sip. “As soon as you took our money it all went down the tubes. I’ll make that very clear for the jury.”
“The real estate market died on us,” said Prescott. “Everyone on the jury will know that. They can’t sell their houses either.”
“Your projections weren’t even close.”
“They were only projections. We never claimed we could predict the future.” He put a shrug into his voice. “It was a business deal between businessmen that went bad. Business deals go bad every day without any fraud involved. We can go on all day like this, Victor, back and forth, but that’s no way to find common ground. Our clients want to fight to the end.” Then he flashed the smile of a diplomat greeting an unworthy adversary whom protocol required him to flatter and said the words I had been waiting to hear. “But I have convinced them that the economics are in favor of our working something out.”
I felt a thrill ripple through me just then, the thrill of a settlement on the horizon, of money in my bank. Without changing a card, my poker hand had grown brawny.
Keeping his eyes focused on mine, he said, “Madeline, what were the most recent figures discussed?”
“Plaintiffs demanded half a million dollars,” she said through a smirk. “We offered five thousand.”
“It hadn’t seemed worth pursuing,” I said.
“Well, let’s try, Victor,” said Prescott. “Even if you won everything you’d win what? A million dollars?”
“We’ve asked for punitives.”
“Yes, and we’ve asked for sanctions for the filing of a frivolous lawsuit. We’ll say a million. You received tax benefits on the losses of about thirty percent, so let’s put actual compensatory damages at seven hundred thousand. Now tell me honestly, Victor, since this is all off the record, at what do you put your chance of actually winning? Five percent? Ten percent?”
“Fifty-fifty?” I hadn’t meant it to, but my answer ended up being phrased as a question.
“That’s a joke, right?” said Madeline.
“Be reasonable, Victor,” said Prescott. “We’re trying to work together here. Let’s put it at ten percent.”
“It’s not worth seventy thousand dollars,” said Madeline.
“Ten percent, Victor? Seventy thousand dollars. What do you say?”
One third of seventy thousand dollars came to something like twenty-three grand, enough to pay off our firm’s bills and make payroll and rent for the next month. I had to hold myself back from shouting yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. “It’s not enough,” I said. “You couldn’t try this case for less than a hundred thousand, and you still might lose. I’d go back to my clients with an offer of two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Of course you would,” said Prescott.
“I told you it wasn’t worth discussing,” said Madeline. “Guthrie we could talk to, but Victor acts like he’s on some crusade.”
“You’re using my hourly rate against us, Victor,” said Prescott. “That doesn’t seem quite fair. Ninety thousand.”
“I don’t set your fees, Mr. Prescott,” I said, even as I figured. If we could pull in thirty thousand from this case, I thought, I could even take a draw, start to pay down my credit card bills. I put down the coffee cup so it wouldn’t rattle as my nerves started to pop. “For two hundred thousand we could settle this today.”
“One hundred thousand dollars, Victor. And we won’t go higher.”
Madeline said, “That’s way too high for this frivolous piece of…”
“One-ninety,” I said, cutting her off.
Prescott laughed. It was a deep, genuine laugh, warm in its way. It was so authoritative a laugh that I had to struggle not to join in, even though he was laughing at me. “No, we’re not splitting the difference, Victor. One hundred thousand dollars, that’s as high as we go.”
“That’s not going to do it,” I said. But threes started to jiggle like belly dancers before my eyes. Thirty-three, three hundred, thirty-three. Thirty-three, three hundred, thirty-three. It had a golden sound to it, like bangles sweeping one against the other during a slow, seductive dance. Thirty-three, three hundred, thirty-three. And thirty-three cents. “One hundred and eighty thousand,” I countered.
“You’re disappointing me, Victor,” said Prescott. “I thought we could reach an accommodation.” He leaned back again and looked away from me, toward the window and the view. “I have instructed Madeline to begin trial preparations tomorrow. Once we start spending money on the trial, paying experts, compiling exhibits, organizing the documents, once we start all that, I can’t offer the same amount. So this offer is only good until you leave this office.”