he cared what happened to Bluestone and he said that he didn’t but Lou Mason did.”
Mason sat completely still, absorbing Judge Carter’s explanation. The shoe was dangling, but it hadn’t dropped. The law was built on fine distinctions. Shades of intent, percentages of fault and knowledge, real or imputed, can save a life or cost a fortune. Enough of the truth can carry the day even if it isn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The blackmail tape was of a conversation between Judge Carter and Ed Fiori, not between Mason and Fiori. Mason’s name was used, but, without the tape of Mason’s conversation with Fiori, it was a secondhand indictment. He made himself breathe.
“Blackmailing you doesn’t make any sense. If Galaxy is that worried about the case, they would just settle it.”
“They tried. The plaintiff and her lawyer want blood, not money.”
“Why come to me? Why not just go to the police?”
“Because, Counselor,” she began, drawing out the words like Mason had attention deficit disorder, “we both know that the tape is legitimate. If I go to the police, I compromise myself. I’ve done that once and I won’t do it again.”
Mason ignored her reminder of his complicity. If he didn’t say it out loud, maybe he could keep ducking it.
“We both know that any legal action I could take would have the same result. What do you expect me to do?”
“I expect you to take care of it and I don’t care how you do it. You put me in this box.”
“You could have said no when Fiori called you.”
“You don’t have kids, do you?” she asked. Mason shook his head. “How about someone you love?”
Mason nodded.
“Do you love her enough to die for her?” she asked. Mason nodded again. “Then don’t ask such fool questions.”
“I’m only a lawyer. I can’t get an injunction against the blackmailer, even assuming I can find him. You should hire somebody else.”
Judge Carter rose, gathering her coat from Mason’s sofa, not taking her eyes off him.
“If I have to hire someone else that will be one more person who will know what happened. I don’t think you’d like that. Besides, I’m not hiring you. I’m telling you. Ask your friend Mr. Bluestone to help. He’s as much a part of this as you are. Between the two of you, I’m certain you’ll think of something.”
Judge Carter was blackmailing him and there was nothing he could do about it. What had been her problem when she walked in the door had swiftly morphed from a shared burden to his problem. He came around from his side of the desk.
“I’ll need your file on the arbitration.”
Judge Carter opened her purse and handed Mason a flash drive. “The attorneys scanned everything onto this drive. It’s all there-exhibits, testimony, everything.” She didn’t shake his hand, thank him, or wish him luck.
He stood in the center of his office, watching as she walked briskly down the hall without a backward glance, past Blues’s empty office and down the back stair that led to the parking lot at the rear of the building. He palmed the flash drive, knowing at last what it was like to hold his life in his hands.
TEN
Mason spent the day reading the arbitration file. Carol Hill signed an agreement when she was hired to submit any claims against Galaxy Gaming to binding arbitration. That was okay with her. She needed the job and couldn’t imagine having to file a claim anyway.
The process was private, quick, and cheap when compared to the courts. Employers liked it because there was no jury that might have either the good sense or bad judgment to sock them with a bell-ringing verdict.
Her case was a garden-variety story of sexual harassment. Charles Rockley, her supervisor, had hit on her until it hurt. When he wouldn’t stop and her complaints to management were ignored, she sued.
Rockley started with compliments about her appearance, for which she thanked him just to be polite, even though his remarks made her nervous. He was her boss and she didn’t want to offend him. It wasn’t long before he escalated to suggestions that she wear tighter, low-cut tops to show off her shape to the customers. She demurred, reminding him that the casino provided modest uniforms for dealers, buttoned to the chin, saving the cleavage outfits for the cocktail waitresses. Rockley had laughed, explaining that he was just imagining how she would look for him.
Next he began asking her out. Just drinks after her shift, he told her. Then it was how about a late dinner, maybe a weekend getaway if she was interested. Each time she declined, explaining that she wasn’t interested and, besides, her husband wouldn’t like it.
Rockley kept at her, finally summoning her to his office one night after she finished dealing, telling her it was time for her to meet the meat. She was afraid she’d lose her job and gave in to him. Afterwards, consumed by guilt, she told him never again. He gave her a bad performance review and put her on probation.
That was Carol Hill’s story as summed up by her lawyer, Vince Bongiovanni, in his closing argument. Mason knew him by reputation. He was the hotshot plaintiff’s lawyer of the month, knocking off companies for big bucks when their employees played grab-ass with the wrong person. Each victory attracted a new wave of clients. No human resources manager looked forward to an invitation to one of Bongiovanni’s courtroom parties.
Galaxy Gaming’s lawyer was Lari Prillman. Employers liked being represented by a woman lawyer in sexual harassment cases because of the not-so-subtle message they hoped it would send. Some of our best friends are women. We even hire them as lawyers. Besides, if we were the creeps the plaintiff says we are, no self-respecting woman-not even a lawyer-would defend us.
Lari Prillman had taken advantage of that misplaced wisdom for twenty-five years, building a successful boutique practice devoted to the defense against claims made by the Carol Hills of the world. She parlayed her own good looks and charm in a male-dominated world, happily taking every advantage, God-given or otherwise. Though she could defend these cases in her sleep, she didn’t, taking nothing for granted and screwing down every fact and inconsistency. She lived by the Al Davis rule-just win, baby.
She dismissed Carol’s accusations and Bongiovanni’s theatrics as the romance-novel fantasy of a disturbed woman looking for a way to distract her jealous husband from her own indiscretions. Carol was the aggressor and the sex was consensual. Rockley backed her up.
Worse yet, Carol was banging one of the bartenders, though Lari put it more delicately, forcing Carol to tearfully admit on the stand that she had been unfaithful to her husband. A fact that Carol had failed to share with him until Lari extracted it from her under oath before Judge Carter, her stunned husband watching as Lari dismantled his wife and marriage.
Bongiovanni protested Lari’s tactics, claiming that Carol’s indiscretions were irrelevant. He was right, but that was one of the wonderful things about arbitration. There were no rules of evidence, allowing both sides to throw mud. Even if she had strayed, he argued, that didn’t make her fair game for someone who had the power to force her to submit or be fired.
Bongiovanni countered with corroborating testimony from a girlfriend of Carol’s, who recounted how Carol had complained of Rockley’s crude advances. He closed his case with the reluctant testimony of another supervisor, who admitted that Rockley had bragged that he was “getting some” from Carol Hill.
Lari Prillman had counterpunched with evidence of the girlfriend’s prior conviction for forging a coworker’s signature on a paycheck she’d stolen from the coworker. Then she cajoled the other supervisor to sheepishly admit on cross-examination that he had often bragged about his own mythical sexual exploits and had assumed as much about Rockley’s story.
After reading the file on his computer screen, Mason charted the case on the dry erase board that hung on one wall of his office. The board was low tech, but it helped him put everything in perspective and allowed him to think in visual terms, picturing parties, witnesses, and lawyers. And it helped him find the pieces that didn’t fit or that were missing.
