Breach Of Promise

“It’s kind of expensive.”

“Oh?”

“About three hundred dollars.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll just hope Santa can bring it, and if he doesn’t, I won’t be disappointed.”

“Bob, since we bought the house, this year is going to be tight. Isn’t there anything else you want?”

“Just one thing. It’s what I really, really want.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t want to know.” He got out and slammed the door. Nina could see Hitchcock inside the house, scrabbling at the window and barking a greeting.

“I do. What do you really want?”

“I want to visit my dad.” He ran for the door, slipped his fingers under the potted plant to extricate the key, and unlocked the door while she stood on the driveway feeling as if she had been hit with a snowball the size of a snowman.

Bob’s father, Kurt, a man she had loved once but never married, now lived in Germany. A ticket to Germany would wipe her out.

So this would be one of those holidays where she would worry that she could not do right by Bob. She worked too hard, she worked long hours, she lived in a little cabin, and she couldn’t be both mother and father. And she couldn’t afford to give him what he really, really, wanted.

At eight-thirty, while Bob was in the shower, the phone rang.

Sandy, who never called Nina at home, spoke. “I was cruising around the Net,” she said, chewing on something. Nina wondered, not for the first time, where Sandy lived. She had never been invited to find out. “I was thinking about that Mrs. Markov.”

“What’d you find?”

“A case. I wasn’t sure you knew about it. Maglica v. Maglica.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Down in Orange County. You ever hear of the Maglite?”

“A little flashlight? I use it to take the dog out for a walk.”

“Well, there you go. The guy invented it. And he and his so-called wife built up this huge company. They had a falling-out and she sued him.”

“For what?”

“Breach of contract. She asked for half the company. Unlike these other cases in this old brief of yours I’ve been looking at, this one went to a jury.”

“And?”

“The jury gave her eighty-four million dollars, mainly for her services to the company.”

“Wow.”

“Of course, I’m just a badly paid peon without a brain in her head getting it all wrong.”

“Oh, stop it, Sandy. It sounds interesting. Give me the Web address and I’ll look it up before I go to bed.” Sandy gave it to her.

“Are you taking the case?” Sandy asked.

“I’m still deciding. Most signs pointed to no, but then I got the glimmer of an idea at the law library-too soon to talk about, though. And now this case you’ve found shows somebody has won at least once in a similar lawsuit.”

“Markov’s another Maglica,” Sandy said.

“What’s so special about this case that you’re spending your evenings doing research without being asked?”

“Lindy Markov helped some girlfriends of mine a few years ago without putting them through a lot of bureaucratic bilgewater. Now she needs help.”

“And here’s another thing,” Nina said. “She needs a firm in Sacramento or San Francisco, a firm with the resources and capital to carry the case. There’s so much money at stake.”

“But…”

“Think about what your average thug will do for fifty bucks on the street.”

“I’d rather not,” said Sandy.

“Now multiply that take by a couple of million… and consider how far our friend Jeffrey Riesner might be willing to go to mug Lindy Markov.”

“That’s exactly what I have been thinking,” Sandy said. “Now listen. He had a palimony case out of Placerville some time back. And here’s what he did.” Sandy avoided saying Riesner’s name the way some people avoided curse words. “He associated in this dude from L.A. who handles all the Hollywood people. Winston Reynolds. He’ll want to do that again for this case.”

“Unless we beat him to it,” Nina said.

“You see the beauty of it. Slip the big gun away before he even notices your fingers in his pocket.”

“Mom!” Bob yelled from the bathroom. “Bring a towel, quick! Bring a bunch of towels!”

“Hang on, Sandy,” she said. “What’s the matter?” she shouted holding her hand over the mouthpiece.

“Oh, man,” he said, “too late. Oh, man, oh, man.”

An hour later, after the flood in the bathroom had been cleaned up and Bob was finally in bed, Nina threw on a sweater and took the dog out for his last walk. The moonless night blazed with stars, a sight she had forgotten about while living in San Francisco in the days before she became downsized and divorced. She could hardly believe that she was into her second year of solo practice, hanging in there and even developing a reputation.

Hitchcock ran with his nose to the ground, nuzzling at the foot of the tall trees and around the bases of the dark cabins. His black fur blended into the dark. Cassiopeia and Orion splashed across the sky. She gazed up, waiting for a shooting star with the same feeling of anticipation she had been fielding all day. Why was it when you wanted to see one of those silver streaks lighting up the black sky, you never saw it? That kind of thing liked to tickle and tease the corners of your peripheral vision, and never gave any warning.

At the door to her house, she hurried in to catch the phone.

“Nina,” Lindy said, “I couldn’t wait till morning. A friend gave me your home phone number. I know it’s late. I promise I won’t talk long.”

“A friend, eh?” A flinty-eyed friend built like the Rock of Gibraltar, Nina bet. She had a strict rule about giving out her home number, but Nina was beginning to understand about how it must be for spectacularly successful people like Lindy. The usual rules did not apply to her. She assumed a smooth pathway over obstacles and found one, or threw money down to create it. “What can I do for you?” she asked, trying to insert the brisk professional note back into her voice that a barking dog awaiting his ball had a way of dispelling.

“I borrowed some more money,” Lindy said. “Five thousand. Could we start with that? I may be broke, but I still have my friends. Alice Boyd just took out her checkbook and wrote me a check, and some other women have offered to do what they can.”

“But Lindy, I’m a sole practitioner. I’m really sorry but that won’t be enough.” She felt terrible. She really wanted to help Lindy but five thousand wouldn’t scratch the surface of the kind of expenses they would incur. Nina didn’t see how she could take the case under the circumstances without bankrupting herself.

“I believe I can get my hands on at least another twenty thousand, maybe even thirty before the trial. And then, when we win…”

“You mean if.”

“When,” Lindy said firmly, “we win, I’ll pay you ten percent of whatever I’m awarded by the court.”

The words rang in Nina’s ears. Ten percent. If the court awarded her half the Markov assets, that would be in the realm of ten million dollars. Cut that in half to be realistic, and you still came up with an unbelievable figure.

Her fingers clenched the phone. She was unable to speak. So here it was, streaking across a black sky. Her big chance. A case with a heart to it, and issues that were unresolved in California law. Something that might set a precedent for other women like Lindy, who had worked behind the scenes only to be left with nothing. A case that might make her rich.

A case with one big flaw: a client with no money.

Even if she could somehow scrape together the money to keep them afloat as they prepared for a trial, how could she justify taking such a risk? If Lindy lost, Nina could lose everything.

But an opportunity like this one wouldn’t come knocking again. She had lived long enough to know that.

She had some assets left. And there had to be lots of ways to get the money they would need. Maybe she could associate someone else in who would assume some of the risk for a big payoff…

Lindy was talking. “People are so amazing. Everyone’s doing what they can for me.” She sounded moved. “I treasure my friends.”

“I guess they treasure you, too.”

“If that’s true, I’m lucky,” Lindy said. She didn’t say anything else. She waited for Nina.

“Meet me at my office at nine tomorrow morning,” Nina said. She hung up, pushing away a nasty little feeling that told her she had no business taking this case.

4

Fifteen days later, Nina stood up as Judge Curtis E. Milne of the Superior Court of El Dorado County materialized from the wall behind his dais. Or so it appeared. Actually, a nondescript, burlap- textured partition extended out in front of his personal back door to the courtroom, and he merely came out and sat down behind his tall desk, but the effect was that of a magical manifestation. A Baraka chief from the Congo would have appreciated this encouragement of superstitious respect.

Unfortunately, many California judges these days got no respect from the office they held-they had to put up with lawyers who no longer bothered to control their tantrums and defendants who dissed them to their faces.

Judge Milne, an ex-district attorney with fifteen years on the bench, was an exception. His bailiff, Deputy Kimura, had toured the courtroom, meticulously collecting bubble gum and newspaper litter before Milne came in. Any disturbance or other breach of protocol while Milne’s court was in session meant expulsion or worse. “The Judge,” as he was called by the little community of Tahoe lawyers who appeared before him on a regular basis, was actually a small, balding senior citizen, but in Nina’s mind he stood ten feet tall in his black robes and his voice erupted like a volcano.

When the judge came in the courtroom fell silent except for the interminable noise of the ventilation system, and all rose. Although the Order to Show Cause had been taken off the morning Law and Motion calendar and had been specially scheduled for two o’clock, the place was packed with reporters and other community members. Photographers lounged in the public hallway outside the courtroom, and several TV vans waited outside the courthouse. The Markovs were private people, but they were monstrously rich. Everyone wanted to watch the action in this particular family feud.