seven-figure deal with Cornerstone Publishers.”
“Sydney, every agent in America is on the verge of a million-dollar deal.”
“This is real, damn it. But you are making it almost impossible for me to hold this thing together.”
“Me?” he said, scoffing.
“Connect the dots, Jack. Cornerstone is owned by
“That’s really not my concern.”
“I deserve this, Jack. Don’t take this away from me!”
Jack’s personal experience with spoiled brats in general was limited, and the fact that some attacker had nearly choked him to death demanding to know Sydney’s whereabouts didn’t make it any easier to handle this one. “Is this really why you called, Sydney? To whine about your million-dollar book deal?”
“This is important!”
“It’s more important for me to know where you are.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Then we have nothing more to talk about.”
“No, please!”
“When you’re willing to tell me where you are, we can talk.”
“You’re not listening to me!”
“Good luck with your book.”
“Good luck?” she said. “I don’t even have an agent. What am I supposed to do now, huh? What am I supposed to do, Jack?”
“Grow up,” he said, ending the call.
There was a pit in Jack’s stomach. Part of it was the possibility, however remote, that some publisher actually would pay a million dollars to keep the Shot Mom express rolling along. More troubling, however, was the realization that he probably needed Sydney’s cooperation if the police were going to find the sick puppy whose idea of a proper introduction was to grab people by the throat and send them to the ER.
Jack started back into Cy’s Place, then stopped. The meeting with Rene was just a few hours old, and Jack hadn’t made a decision one way or the other about the Laramores; in fact, he had promised himself that he would sleep on it. But if what Rene had told him was true, if the meddling of an overzealous BNN reporter had kept Celeste from getting the immediate medical treatment she’d needed, the case might actually be winnable.
The feeling inside him continued to grow. “Winnable” might be pushing it. But the case could have serious settlement value. And the overly altruistic notion that he was the world’s pro bono clinic needed to stop. He was a sole practitioner, not Mother Teresa, and he was engaged to marry a woman who was even more underpaid than Jack Swyteck, P.A. He would just have to work out a modified fee arrangement that was fair to him and the Laramores. It might actually make up for the financial hit he took defending Sydney Bennett.
To say that Sydney’s call had pushed him off the fence might have been overstatement. But there was definitely something to be said for helping people who wanted to be helped, who didn’t go out of their way to prove that they were beyond help. It was one of those moments when he wished his old friend Neil were still alive, when he would have liked to pick up the phone say, “Neil, we got a job to do.” His daughter Hannah wasn’t a bad second choice. Jack still had her number on speed dial from Sydney’s trial. She answered with a cheery “hello” on the second ring.
“Hannah, hey. Can you meet me at the institute in an hour?”
“Sure. What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”
That was one of the corny expressions she’d inherited from her father, which brought a little smile to Jack’s face.
“Partner, you and I got a complaint to draft.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jack and Hannah spent most of the night drafting the complaint against BNN. A phone call to Ben Laramore had triggered the green light. Jack had been more than reasonable in his proposed contingency fee. The suit against the Department of Corrections would have to proceed on a separate track, since suing a state agency in Florida had special prefiling procedures and notice requirements. Jack also needed time to investigate and determine if the detention center had done anything wrong. The plan was to file and serve BNN on Thursday. A quick settlement was a long shot, but BNN’s lawyers agreed to a prefiling conference at the company headquarters on Wednesday at four o’clock.
“Hotter in New York than Miami,” said Jack.
He wasn’t kidding. Jack could see the heat rising from the sidewalk as they stepped out of the cab on Sixth Avenue. Miami had its humidity, but temperatures never even got close to the afternoon highs of a mid-July heat wave in Midtown Manhattan. Three gold letters on a black marble facade-BNN-told them they were outside the right building. An air-conditioned lobby beckoned, and Hannah nearly had to trot to keep up with Jack as they crossed the busy sidewalk and approached the revolving door.
“What are the odds we walk out of here with a check?” she asked.
“Somewhere between Sydney Bennett getting nominated to the Supreme Court and Faith Corso giving up on calling me Sly-teck.” It had been Corso’s name for him ever since learning that his surname rhymed with “Sky- tech.”
The lobby wasn’t as cool as Jack had expected, and he dabbed away the sweat on his forehead as they signed the visitors’ register. A security guard led them past the bank of common elevators that served floors two through forty-nine. The ride to the penthouse was an express. The chrome doors parted, and a receptionist who could have made the cover of
“This way, please,” she said.
They followed her across the two-story lobby, the receptionist’s five-inch heels clicking on the parquet floor of maple and mahogany. The view of Central Park was one of the most impressive Jack had ever seen, and he imagined that Hannah was doing her level best not to act like a bumpkin and snap a photo with her iPhone. The view quickly got worse, as they were led down a hallway lined with photographs of BNN’s top news personalities. Faith Corso was the most prominent, staring straight at them from the focal point of the “T” in the intersection of hallways.
“Here we are,” the receptionist said, but she tripped as she reached for the door handle, nearly falling off her five-inch heels.
Subtly, so only Jack could see, Hannah rolled her eyes. Hannah was four feet eleven, always wore flats, and loved the look on people’s faces when they discovered that the shortest person in the room was also the most tenacious.
“My bad,” said the receptionist. She gathered herself and opened the heavy door to the main conference room.
A team of lawyers-three men and three women-was already seated at a long, polished table made of burled walnut. As if on cue, all six checked their watches as Jack and Hannah entered the room. Jack was familiar with the big-firm power play of making the plaintiff’s lawyer wait around for half an hour or more before defense counsel deigned to show up. This was the flip side: making the opposition feel as though they’ve kept everyone waiting, forcing them to start the meeting with an apology for being late-a position of weakness-even though they were right on time.
“Sorry y’all were early,” said Jack, refusing to play into their strategy.
The lawyer with the most gray in his hair rose and shook Jack’s hand. Stanley Mills was BNN’s general counsel and vice president of legal affairs. A round of introductions revealed that the most junior lawyer at the table was one of nineteen attorneys who worked in-house under Mills. The remaining lawyers on BNN’s side of the table were outside counsel from the Wall Street law firm of Marston amp; Qualls. Jack recognized one of them: Ted
