The Deposit Slip

by Todd M Johnson

Marcus stood in the great room of his cabin overlooking the lake. He watched as the sky, abandoned by the sun setting over the far ridge, faded from orange to deep purple. Beautiful, he thought.

  Whittier sat on the couch behind him, reviewing some papers; allowing Marcus this quiet. Good. Maybe someday he’d live up to his potential after all.

  Marcus reflected on how seldom he stood in this room these days, or even visited his cabin just an hour south of Ashley. He looked down to the broad yard that swept to the lakeshore, fading into shadow. His eyes were drawn to the corner of the yard where the swing set used to stand.

  He never understood why his wife failed to ask for the cabin in the divorce settlement. Was she afraid he would fight for it, like he fought for everything else in his life?

  He told himself he wouldn’t have. Generosity suited this place steeped in the memories of their daughter and son—four and two when the divorce was finalized. He’d never know. She asked for little, and he offered no more than she asked. Mostly, she asked for the children. He agreed. It was the only battle he could ever recall declining. Why? The one time he relinquished control. Look how it ended. Now they were gone.

  Marcus felt the weight of his thoughts settling over him. Not now, he told himself and rejected the train of images vying for his attention. He needed to focus.

  Marcus cleared his throat. “I’ve decided we need to try a different tack with Neaton than we did with Goering.”

  “How?”

  Marcus turned and strode to the table in front of Whittier. Neaton’s letter was lying there, and he picked it up. It listed thirty bank witnesses his opponent wanted to depose starting in a week. The letter also demanded production of any documents the bank had not previously sent to Goering.

  “We’re going to give Neaton what he wants on the documents,” Marcus said. “In fact, we’re going to give him every document we can gather that’s even remotely relevant to this case.”

  Whittier shook his head. “I thought the strategy was to stall—make them work for everything they wanted in the case.”

  “That was the strategy with Goering. Neaton’s different. But I didn’t say we’re going to roll over on the witnesses. I said we’ll give him documents.”

  Franklin’s face remained blank. “Why do anything different with Neaton? He dropped out of Paisley. His father was a felon. Doesn’t paint an intimidating picture.”

  Marcus swallowed his growing impatience. He hated explaining himself. “I didn’t say he was intimidating, Franklin. I said he was different from Goering. Last night I spoke with two attorneys Neaton worked with at Paisley. They both said Neaton is a workhorse. He prepares meticulously, seldom delegates. He reviews every document in a case himself—never relies on others’ legal research. Even preps his own witnesses.”

  “So he’s got a big ego.”

  Marcus shook his head. “I think it’s safer to assume that Jared Neaton is a perfectionist. So we use it against him. We give him all the documents he wants; we back a truck up to his place with every piece of paper we can drum up. He’ll be swimming in work and he’ll drown in it—especially if he’s still dragging from the Wheeler trial.”

  A smile emerged on Whittier’s face. “A document dump.”

  “Yes. Work with Sidney to gather up documents from the bank. Everything you can lay your hands on. Have them copied and numbered to drop on Neaton a few days before the depositions start.”

  “You know,” Franklin began tentatively, “I won’t have enough time to review the documents well before giving them to Neaton. What if I miss something critical?”

  Marcus shook his head in the negative. “I already told you. There’s nothing to miss. Just get him the documents. Now, the witnesses—that’s another matter. Send Neaton a letter telling him we won’t cooperate with so many witnesses so close to trial. Let’s give him a fight on that front.”

  The junior partner nodded. “Got it.” Whittier cleared his throat. “Uh, Marcus, I had another idea too.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a Paisley secretary, Yvonne Taylor, who’s still friends with Jessie Dickerson—the paralegal who went out the door with Jared two years ago. Dickerson is very loyal to Neaton. Taylor thinks she’s maybe got a thing for him. Anyway, Taylor sensed from recent comments that Neaton is extremely tight on money now.”

  “So?”

  “So, after we took those steps to cut Neaton off from Clay Strong, I had an idea that I followed up with Accounts Receivable. Neaton took some Paisley clients with him when he left, including a few business clients. What if we had the commercial group on the twenty-fifth floor take a run to get back those clients? Offer some lowball rates. If Neaton’s still mending fences since his trial, there may be some ticked off clients we could take away. Up the pressure on him.”

  Marcus was impressed. “Excellent, Franklin. Do it.”

  As Whittier gathered up his papers, Marcus thought he looked like a puppy who’d just been thrown a treat. Good. He had some long days ahead collecting documents and preparing for the inevitable motion Neaton would bring to force them to produce the witnesses for depositions. Maybe this would energize him to get through it without too much whining.

  Ten minutes later, Marcus could hear Whittier’s tires crunching gravel as they retreated down the driveway. He stepped back to the great room window and gazed out into the dark.

  Keep on the pressure. Don’t let Neaton breathe. Use his strengths against him. Lessons of a lifetime of litigation. It was going to be fine.

  But would it be enough? When it was over and he had the prize in this case, would it be enough to focus on setting things right?

  Looking out into the moonless night, into the trees beyond the faint light cast from the picture window, Marcus could imagine the sound of lapping waves on the shore. His attention drifted for a moment, and more sounds emerged—the laughter of children around a long disused fire pit just beyond the tree line. The familiar pain began to descend upon him again, like a suffocating blanket. Only this time, instead of struggling, he embraced it—preferring it to his aching solitude.

  Just a little while longer, he assured himself. Just a little while longer and he’d have what he needed to clean things up, to recover the only thing he ever regretted letting slip away.

  It was never too late if you had the will to act. He’d convince her she was wrong. He’d convince her to come back.

  17

  Jessie drove the dark road in silence. She usually listened to the radio when she drove. Here, outside of Ashley, fifteen minutes of searching hadn’t yielded a single station that suited her. She finally gave up and focused on watching for the next turn on her drive to the Larson farm. Besides, it gave her time to think things over.

  This whole thing was moving quickly out of control. When Jared had told her his plans for her to stay with Erin, her first silent reaction was anger—serious anger. But she held her peace and said she understood. It was Jared she didn’t understand.

  Jessie had spent most of her twenties working with lawyers. Most attorneys ranged a narrow spectrum from the banal to the boring—usually predictable, seldom interesting. At Paisley, they all thought themselves interesting because they were driven and ambitious. But ambition wasn’t interesting. Ambition just had its own standards of conformity and conventionality.

  Jared was that rarity for Jessie—an unpredictable attorney. Jessie didn’t really know many unpredictable men. She’d always been good at forecasting how they would react to things. Jared was less easy to calculate. And in the years she had worked with him, Jared had never yet seriously disappointed her in how he treated a client—another rarity at Paisley. But she’d never figured out its source.

  Still, integrity, unpredictability: neither of these attributes were what really attracted Jessie to Jared. Jared was attractive because he was unfinished.

  She’d had her share of suitors in the halls of Paisley. She was young and she knew she was pretty enough. They were d
rawn to her energy, as well as her utter lack of awe around the power brokers.

  But Jared was different. He’d worked the long hours, serving his mentor, Clay. But his ambition was more raw, less self-conscious. In their quest for partnership, the others contorted themselves into icons of success to impress the partners. Jared withheld more of himself in the process, as though the money and status were a means, not an end. He was . . . unfinished.

  The hand-lettered sign came into view in the headlights, and Jessie turned onto the gravel driveway. As the bright lights spotlighted the farmhouse amidst the glimpse of gray and brown fields, Jessie felt as though she were seeing a castle surrounded by a moat. Jared mentioned that Erin was lonely at this place growing up with her father. The isolation was palpable in that brief image.

  Erin greeted Jessie at the door and welcomed her in. The client was courteous, slim—and very pretty, of course. She showed Jessie to the office that doubled as a guest room on the second floor, next to her own bedroom. Jessie stowed her bag before coming down to the kitchen, where Erin was making some decaf coffee.

  Jessie apologized again for intruding, and Erin brushed it aside. After all, it saved costs, didn’t it? Jessie wondered for a moment whether she had any idea how rapidly Jared’s resources would disappear once the depositions began.

  As she chatted with Erin over coffee at the kitchen table, Jessie searched for clues to Jared’s attraction to this client and her case. True, there was a hint of vulnerability—and a sincerity he would find appealing. It couldn’t be as simple as appearances, could it?

  They chatted for nearly an hour. At last, when Erin offered Jessie more coffee, she declined, saying she needed to get to bed. Jessie excused herself and headed to the guest room.

  All that—vulnerability, sincerity, beauty—was all too easy, she thought as she closed the bedroom door behind her. Jared wasn’t just attracted to this woman. He was putting everything on the line for her and in the process ignoring danger signs about the case. He may want to make some money on this, but he’d passed up rich cases before based on risk.

  No, there was something special about this woman—or this case—to Jared. Sitting on the bed, the door closed, Jessie felt near to tears. She shook it off. Even alone, she seldom gave in to that reaction.

  Maybe staying here was for the best. Maybe it would give Jessie the clue to understand what was really driving Jared. Before things were irretrievable. If they weren’t already so.

  18

  Clausewitz said that war is just diplomacy by other means,” Clay had said. He’d been on his game that day. Feisty, expansive. Preparing for a big trial, Jared recalled. “I tell you that litigation is just war by other means. A war for the hearts and minds of the judge and jurors. Of course, in the courtroom no blood is spilled,” he had finished. “At least none that reaches the floor.”

  After what Clay had pulled, Jared wondered why his words kept floating back at moments like this. Because he’d taught Jared most of what he knew about being a trial lawyer, echoed the obvious response. Clay’s memory may now be stained with betrayal, but there were few corners of a case that wouldn’t always remind Jared of his mentor.

  Jared had received the letter from Whittier three days earlier. It had announced that the bank would not voluntarily produce the thirty witnesses Jared wanted, with all the language signaling a fight: “Your deposition requests are unduly burdensome”; “inadequate notice”; “too little time prior to trial”; and so on.

  It had taken an effort, but on just a few days’ notice Jared had successfully scheduled this emergency motion for a court order forcing the bank to produce its employees for depositions. The judge would never let him take all thirty employees he asked for, which was why he’d padded the list. Jared could probably pare the list down to twenty-five employees safely—maybe even twenty. Any fewer and he risked missing the real gem: the honest witness who knew something about the deposit.

  Sitting at counsel table, he looked up at Judge Lindquist wrapped in his solemn black robes. Jared concluded that he was beginning to understand this judge’s style. Lindquist presided like a sullen Napoleon over the battlefield of his courtroom. If you disturbed his peace with a motion, it’d better be a good one, and you’d better be prepared, or the judge would let you know about it. That was important to understand, since he was the only person in the room with the power to make a decision—or to issue a sanction.

  Jared looked wearily around the courtroom while awaiting the judge’s signal to begin his argument. Apart from preparing this motion, he’d spent most of these past seventy-two hours reviewing documents. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get through all the boxes before the depos started. However many depositions the court allowed, he’d have to press ahead with them and just try to get through the documents as fast as possible.

  After document review and preparing this motion, Jared had used the few remaining hours talking to witnesses and trying to focus his discovery—without success. No one could point him to proof of the deposit. So how far would Judge Lindquist let him go with the bank witnesses?

  He glanced over at Stanford scrutinizing his notes. Jared guessed he’d probably moved his operations for the case up to his cabin on Lake Silbin an hour or so south. Jared had been there once on a firm event, and the place suited the man: wrapped in pines on several isolated acres, it had the trappings of a solitary fortress.

  The judge nodded at Jared, who stood and walked briskly to the podium. “Always look optimistic, like you’re chafing to make your case,” Clay had exhorted the associates. Jared took a quick final breath before launching into his argument.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Jared pressed his points as Judge Lindquist listened, head resting on his hands, his face taut but noncommittal. Jared made a final point, then summarized his pitch.

  “Your Honor, I have been in this case for only a month. We are committed to meeting this court’s trial schedule. But without the depositions we are requesting, the estate of Paul Larson is left accepting the defendant bank at its word about its employees’ knowledge regarding the ten-million-dollar deposit. We believe it is highly unlikely that the bank has been diligent probing its own employees’ knowledge about this deposit slip—certainly not as diligent as we will be.”

  In legalese, Jared had just accused the bank and its counsel of lying about the knowledge of the bank employees. He scrutinized the judge’s face for a sign—a gesture, nod or smile—that would signal his reaction to Jared’s arguments. Lindquist’s face remained closed.

  Jared felt a mixture of satisfaction and dread as he saw that it was Stanford who stood to argue in response. Whittier, apparently sidelined as not up to the task, remained planted at counsel table, looking studiously away from Jared and up to the bench. The downside was Stanford was so much better.

  “Your Honor, I’m sorry that Mr. Neaton feels compelled to challenge the truthfulness of the good citizens operating the oldest bank in this county,” he began, gesturing toward Sidney Grant seated in the rear of the courtroom. “I am sure that Mr. Neaton’s regret about taking this case is motivating his unwarranted charges. Faced with no proof of this alleged deposit, plaintiff’s counsel now wants to depose every bank employee in a fruitless search for evidence that doesn’t exist.

  “Your Honor is well aware,” Stanford continued in a pained voice, his arms outstretched, “that discovery cannot be a fishing expedition in which an attorney throws a line into the water and hopes something will bite. Mr. Neaton has taken on this frivolous lawsuit and now asks this court’s permission to muddle around in a vain hope he can make something of it. He should be denied.”

  Stanford went on along these lines for several minutes before halting, his face relaxing into a portrait of reason. “And so, Your Honor, we suggest this court permit Mr. Neaton five depositions. That is ample to confirm what Mr. Neaton has already been informed: that the deposit simply doesn’t exist.”

  As Stanford returned to his seat, Jare
d rose to respond—until the judge, rousing himself at last, waved him back into his seat.

  “Mr. Neaton, I can finish this one for you,” the judge began. “You’re going to repeat that you shouldn’t be compelled to accept what the bank tells you about the knowledge of its employees. That’s well and good—but Mr. Stanford is also right: litigation isn’t a green light to build a case from scratch. You’d better have some basis for your claims before you start the lawsuit—or you know the consequences.”

  Jared winced inside at the reference to Stanford’s threat of Rule 11 sanctions against him and Erin.

  “So let me make this short and sweet,” the judge continued. “Mr. Neaton, I always have sympathy for second counsel on a case. So I will permit you ten—not five, not thirty—but ten depositions to conclude this case. And you, Mr. Stanford,” the judge turned his face to Stanford’s table, “will cooperate to permit Mr. Neaton to complete those depositions in the next three weeks.”

  Jared saw the satisfaction on Stanford’s face as his opponent began to rise. “No, Mr. Stanford,” Judge Lindquist said with another wave of his hand. “I can also save you a trip to the podium. You want to tell me you’re bringing a summary judgment motion to dismiss Mr. Neaton’s claims before trial.” Stanford nodded.

  The judge motioned to his clerk, who handed him a thick bound book. “Looking at my calendar, you may schedule your motion for any date up until two weeks before trial.” He handed the book back to his clerk and set Jared in a piercing look.

  “Mr. Neaton, I have given you your discovery. Maybe not as much as you would have liked, but all you’re going to get. Use it wisely. Because if you do not have admissible evidence to support your claim by the date of that summary judgment motion, you needn’t worry about trial, because that will be the end of your case.”

  Jared looked across the room at Mrs. Huddleston, sitting on her couch speaking softly to Shelby Finstrude at her right.