No Accident Page 8

Crash left, and Luke and Alan sat at the table with Alan’s young colleague, who didn’t introduce himself to Luke and wasn’t introduced.

  “I’ve seen the TV news, and I know what the problem is,” Alan said. “Sheila’s trying to pressure you into an expensive divorce settlement by bad-mouthing you to the press.”

  “By lying about me to the press,” Luke said firmly. “Not to mention all our philanthropic friends. Making me look like some sort of charity deadbeat. It was her idea to cancel the gift to the cancer center.”

  “I know,” Alan said softly.

  “And now I don’t know if they’ll keep me on the board. Same with the board of trustees for the museum. Once one domino falls, they all fall. And she knows that.” Luke’s shoulders drooped a little, and his voice became emotional for the first time. “Tell me, Alan, what kind of screwed-up world do we live in where I have to pay her to stop messing up my life? She doesn’t have any kids to raise. She has a degree, she can work. Why does she get to sponge off my success?”

  Alan gave a resigned shrug. “Our matrimonial law was designed for a different time. The law is always slow to catch up with social developments. But what matters is you’ve got the right team on your side.” He patted Luke on the arm.

  “I’m glad for that,” Luke said, more composed. “There was no one else I considered for the job.”

  “We were just glad we could build on the close relationship between Boswell & Baker and Liberty Industries,” Alan said.

  “So has she got a lawyer yet?” Luke said.

  “It’s no one we’ve heard of before.” Alan tapped the table in front of his associate. “What’s his name again?”

  “Bradley D. Pitcher,” the associate said crisply.

  Alan shrugged dismissively. “A nobody. That’s good for us. Only a handful of divorce lawyers in town are worth worrying about, and they’re all hell on wheels. God knows why she didn’t pick one of them.”

  Luke smiled to himself and chuffed a little laugh. “God knows,” he said. “Anyway, it’s not her lawyer we need to worry about. It’s her. She’s smart, Alan, cunning. All she needs is a mouthpiece to do her bidding.”

  The associate busily scratched out notes on a thick legal pad.

  “That’s right, kid,” Luke said to him. “Write that down, get it tattooed.” He turned to Alan. “Now we need to pressure her. I’ll tell you a secret, Alan: she’s vain.”

  Alan laughed despite himself, and Luke laughed with him.

  “Oh, you’re not surprised?” Luke said. “She’s vain, and she spends a lot of money. She can’t stand not to keep up appearances.”

  “Keep going,” Alan said.

  “So what I want you to do,” Luke said, “is to find a dozen young lawyers like this guy here, and put them to work drafting every motion they can think of.”

  Alan nodded. “The longer we delay a settlement, the more she’ll spend and the more desperate she’ll get.”

  “Right,” Luke said. “Resist everything, assist on nothing and delay, delay, delay.”

  “Luke, it’s great to have a client who gets it,” Alan said. He thought of all the billable hours this strategy would mean. “You’re a dream come true.”

  “I know. So, delaying is part one of the Luke Hubbard strategy.”

  “And part two is?”

  “That’s what I want you to tell me. Part two is: find me a way to shut her up.”

  “But the First Amendment—” the young associate started, but Alan tapped the table at him again.

  Alan nodded thoughtfully, then said. “Luke, it’s impossible to stop people from gossiping. But let’s consider the tactical opportunity here.”

  “I’m listening . . .”

  “We simply let her talk. We give her enough rope to hang herself with. She’ll pay the price when we get in front of a judge. Remember—the judge has a lot of discretion.”

  Luke considered the proposal. “That’s . . . creative, but I want her to stop now. I can’t just stand by while she makes me look like an ass.”

  “We could ask for a restraining order,” the associate said. The partner turned and glared at him. Luke seemed not to hear; he was pondering.

  “God, it’s so simple,” he said finally. “I’ll just fire her.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Thanks, Alan. I didn’t ask. I’m going to do it.”

  “It’s going to look terrible to the judge,” Alan said.

  “You don’t understand, that’s where part one of my plan works its magic. Without a job, she’ll be hurting for money even more. She’ll beg me to settle with her.”

  “Firing her will invite a sexual harassment claim against you and the company.”

  “That’s crap,” Luke said airily. “I’m not firing her because she’s a woman, I’m firing her because she’s a heartless medusa.”

  “Now, Luke, I’m guessing that up till now, your wife has had good performance reviews, has been well respected in the company?”

  “Sure, I’ve protected her,” Luke said. “I mean, she does fine.” Alan regarded Luke skeptically, and Luke laughed. “Come on, she does H.R. How hard can it be? It’s not like she’s got revenue projections she needs to hit.”

  Alan nodded sagely. “I thought that might be the case.” More profound nodding followed, and Luke realized that a lawyerly shift in course was coming. “Firing your wife under the current circumstances would expose the company to a serious risk of liability under employment law.”

  “Fine, Alan, I get it. That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  The lawyer shifted on his seat, but his voice was reassuring when he spoke again. “The problem is that your interests diverge from the company’s here. We think the better approach is to let the board of directors decide whether to fire her.”

  “I’ve listened to people like you say ‘no’ my whole career,” Luke said. “And if I had followed that advice, Liberty Industries would still be a sleepy little family company. No, worse—it would be bankrupt by now.”

  “Mr. Hubbard, a conflict like this is explicitly covered by the board’s policies,” the young associate piped up. He was pointing to a document that he had pulled from a folder.

  “Nobody asked you, junior,” Luke said.

  Alan jumped in. “Given our representation of you in the divorce and the company in other matters, if you fire Sheila we’ll have a conflict of interest under the bar’s ethics rules. We’ll have to get a waiver from the board of directors.”

  “Last time, Alan: not gonna happen.”

  The young associate looked at Alan, who looked at Luke.

  “Then we may not be able to continue representing you in your divorce,” Alan said.

  Luke clapped his hands together. “Ah, so that’s it. You’re worried about covering your own asses.”

  “It’s not a situation we want to be in, but there are ways to resolve it for everyone’s benefit.”

  “I’m sure there are,” Luke said mockingly. “Look, Alan, we’ve known each other a long time, so don’t try to sweet talk me, OK? You’re worried about a conflict? I’ll make it real easy for you. You withdraw from my divorce, and I’ll make sure you lose every piece of business you have with Liberty Industries. Every deal, every litigation, every last one.”

  Alan’s voice remained even. “The Boswell firm has had a long and productive relationship with—”

  “It should be called the ‘Hubbard firm’ after all I’ve done for you,” Luke countered. “When you first started working for me, you guys could barely afford to hire associates. You didn’t know how to do a merger. You didn’t know how to do a stock offering. I made you. And I can un-make you.”

  Alan looked impassively at Luke. Luke stared back without blinking. Only the young associate showed frenzy in his eyes. It was Luke who finally rendered the verdict.

  “All I’m asking you to do is your job. You give the advice. I’ll make the decisions.”

  * * *


  Brad was trapped. His office door was closed, and between him and the door stood Sheila. Brad had never seen Sheila this way. She had started out calm like always, serious but calm, until she delivered the news.

  “He fired me.”

  She repeated the phrase every minute or so in between creatively profane bursts of vitriol that made the veins in her forehead stand out. Each time the vitriol ran out, she said the phrase again, and saying it stoked her anger anew.

  “The son of a bitch fired me!”

  Her pale skin reddened as her rant wore on. The color came in blotches that grew larger till her entire face, from neck to scalp, was an unnatural shade of red, beyond a sunburn, beyond heat stroke. The contrast with her golden blonde hair was unsettling. She looked like a figure from a lurid Andy Warhol portrait.

  “He would be nowhere without me! Nowhere!”

  Cindy, her eyes wide with concern, cracked opened the office door to see what the commotion was about. As Sheila cast a glance toward the ceiling to implore unnamed gods for aid, Brad discreetly shook his head at Cindy, and she vamoosed.

  “His ingratitude is astounding. I should be the one firing him. I put my career in the back seat to help him get to the top. But who does he pull up with him? That cheap whore of his, that mail-order bitch!”

  As she carried on, Brad stopped being frightened and even began to feel calm. He knew how to handle clients like this. Many of Brad’s criminal defendants succumbed to fits of anger when they finally realized they were going to prison. For Sheila, being fired came with the same shock and disappointment. And for once she had reacted like anybody would react, not like the inscrutable blonde cyborg who first walked into his office.

  “Sheila, we can deal with this,” Brad said gently. “You’ve let Luke get you maybe a little overexcited about this? That’s what he wants.”

  “Overexcited” didn’t begin to describe his client’s tantrum, but “hysterical” was a word Brad didn’t feel bold enough to utter. Brad got the sense that all her yelling and cursing kept her from crying. From his perspective, crying would be even worse. Anger was always unpleasant, but it was never awkward.

  “Oh yeah?” Sheila said. “What’s your plan to deal with this? Read some cases? Scratch your ass?”

  Brad kept his poise. Clients often lashed out at their lawyers. And when they did, their lawyers calmed them down. It was what lawyers got paid for. He kept telling himself that.

  “Sheila, this will only harm him in the long run. It’ll only harm him in front of the judge.”

  “Oh, thanks for the tip. Well, right now it’s harming me. He wants to take everything away from me, Brad. And the only reason he has any power is because I helped him get it.”

  Sheila leaned over the desk and jabbed a finger toward Brad’s chest with each sentence, and Brad leaned back in his chair to avoid contact. His words hadn’t calmed her down. If anything, she was getting angrier.

  “He couldn’t have built Liberty Industries on his own. We were supposed to be a team.” She rose to her full height, pushing back the hair on her forehand in one firm sweep. “Oh, the times I covered for him, the times I had his back. The stories I could tell you.”

  “Why don’t you sit down and tell me?” Brad’s chair was tilted as far back as it would go. His voice didn’t reveal the alarm he felt, but his face couldn’t hide it.

  “Why don’t you find a way to fix this?” Sheila said.

  “Fix this?”

  “Yes, you idiot. Fix this. Find a way to make Luke give up.”

  “Give up?”

  “Are you lawyer or a parrot?”

  Yeah, litigants love to “give up,” Brad thought. Wake up every morning wondering how quickly they can “give up.” Two weeks earlier, it was “show up and take instructions.” Now it was “make him give up.” He shouldn’t be surprised. He was going to have to earn his fee, after all. Fine, then—it was time for some tough love.

  “Sheila. Number one: control yourself.” She came out of her snit and looked at him in surprise. “Good. Number two: Luke is not going to give up. Surprised? No. You’re not. Number three: Luke has the money and the power, so he has the leverage and . . . he . . . is trying . . . to make you give up. Yes.” She started to look defiant again. “Number four: I won’t let him, but—Number five: I need you with me.”

  Sheila nodded with religious fervor.

  “Do I need to count higher?” Brad said.

  Sheila shook her head and collapsed into the chair. Then she started crying.

  Oh, great, Brad thought, why didn’t I just let her keep screaming? Her sobs were soft and tentative. Because I’m her lawyer, he thought. Brad came around to the front of his desk and put an arm around her shoulder. That comforted her.

  Brad knew he wasn’t a handsome man, and he was fine with that. Here for once he had his arm around a beautiful woman, and to his surprise he wasn’t thinking about a beautiful woman, or the smell of her hair or how she filled out her skirt. He was thinking about his adversary and about how to stop him.

  He was thinking like a lawyer.

  The paper for this case had started coming in, a lot more of it than he had expected. Eighty hours this week—eighty billable hours—just to get through the first set of motions and other worthless bundles couriered to his office door once or twice a day by Luke’s lawyers. He’d already billed beyond the amount of the retainer, and he’d meant to speak with Sheila today about arranging payment of his first month’s bill, but now obviously wasn’t the right time for that. Sheila’s getting fired opened a whole new legal front on which Brad could attack Luke. But Brad’s priority had to be getting Sheila some interim alimony, and fast—for both of their sakes.

  The bright side was that the divorce saga appeared in the local tabloids almost every day. Even ugly guys were photographed for the paper now and then; with any luck, that would start happening soon for him. Some free publicity about his winning a great settlement for Sheila would certainly help revive his legal practice. In fact, this case was so high profile that it could do what Brad had hoped his hardware-store class action would do—bring him to a point where new clients looked for him rather than the other way around. This case could be his salvation yet, if he could find a way to save Sheila.

  11

  The night after he was fired, Alex drank to fall asleep. But he didn’t drink enough to stop from dreaming. He had the Pamela dream, the one he’d had off and on for a year, even since before she left him. Each time the dream moved a little further along. In the dream, Pamela had warned him not to buy any more houses and then left when he did so anyway. This time Alex dreamed that he negotiated a miraculous deal with the banks in which they forgave all the mortgage debt and gave Alex an option to purchase a mansion in Bel Air. Alex raced around town to find Pamela, to show her that he had repaired his finances and to beg her forgiveness. He finally found her on Rodeo Drive, where he spotted her through the picture window of an expensive boutique. He approached the window and tapped on it with a fingernail to draw her attention from her shopping. She didn’t look up. Then he rapped the window with his knuckles. Then he called her name and pounded his fists on the window, over and over until the glass undulated like a sheet being unfurled onto a newly made bed. But she didn’t hear him. No one heard him.

  Alex woke up sweating. These dreams weren’t fair—he was always the bad guy. Alex remembered the indelicate way Del had broken the news that Pamela was cheating on him: “Dude, your fiancée’s sleeping with this dude I know.”

  She didn’t deny it when he confronted her. In fact, she was almost eager to confirm her infidelity. What a contrast to the modest, almost shy girl he fell in love with.

  He first fell for her light brown hair and nerdy glasses. She didn’t realize how pretty she was, which was refreshing, and though she could talk all day to a class of second-graders, she sometimes got tongue-tied around people her own age. She was tongue-tied around Alex at first. It was endearing, and Alex felt like
a hero for making her comfortable around others and giving her confidence.

  After two months, he introduced her to his family, and she got along with them as if she’d known them her whole life. Mom loved her and was delighted they had so much in common. They were both schoolteachers, they both liked sappy movies. Less in common than you think, Mom, Alex thought, looking back.

  After a year, they weren’t yet talking about marriage, but it was clear they were moving in that direction. Everything got more serious. Pamela wanted Alex to be more financially secure. Alex wanted that, too. By then he had quit The Chronicle, in part because he hoped he could eventually make more money in the insurance industry, maybe move into management. Alex was aware that part of his motivation for making money was recovering some of the status his family lost when his father was convicted of fraud.

  But Pamela didn’t have Alex’s adventurous nature—or foolhardiness—when it came to his real estate investments. She thought it was cool when Alex bought his first investment property—she was dating a sexy wheeler-dealer. The second investment was less popular—shouldn’t they pay down the mortgages on the first investment property and the house by the beach a little first? She was vocally nervous about the next investment property, but Alex explained his rationale over and over until she acquiesced.

  Before they got engaged, Pamela made Alex promise not to buy any more houses. But three months later, the market was still red hot, and Alex got a call from a broker about an opportunity that looked great on paper and would be gone in a day if Alex didn’t take it. So Alex took it.

  Pamela felt betrayed, of course, but Alex sat with her for four hours that night, talking about their future together, and Alex explained how all his investments were meant to jump-start their nest egg so that he could provide her with the financial stability that she needed. There was a lot of soft crying on her part—she was never a screamer—but by the end of the evening, she wasn’t upset anymore, and she said that she loved and trusted him. That was what Alex needed to hear. He believed it, and he’d learned his lesson—no more houses, he promised himself. Alex’s aggressive investing had been the source of a lingering quiet conflict between them, and Alex felt like bringing the issue out into the open had strengthened their relationship as they prepared for marriage. He was wrong about that.