An hour later, Webb was back at Bing and McGee.
“Hello, Mr. Webb,” said Jordan Marvin. “I’m glad I was able to fit you in on such short notice. It’s nice to meet you.”
Webb decided that paying $250 an hour for someone’s time also earned you the right to be called mister.
Jordan stepped out from behind her desk. Her office was down the hall from the reception area. Unlike the foyer, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, her office had one small window that showed the backside of a brick building across the alley.
And unlike the motherly receptionist who had carefully counted Webb’s five hundred dollars and as carefully handed him a receipt, Jordan Marvin was tall and slim and wore a dark blue pantsuit that managed to seem both feminine and businesslike.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Webb said. He still couldn’t get her fee out of his mind—$250 an hour. No wonder it was nice for her to meet him.
She pointed at one of two leather chairs in the corner of her small office. There was a coffee table between the two chairs. On it were a notepad with leather binding and a pen. Beside the notepad sat a white carafe and two white coffee cups on saucers. Nice china.
“Coffee?” she asked.
Webb nodded.
“Cream?”
Webb nodded again.
She poured the coffee and added cream. The coffee tasted great. But then again, when a person was paying—
Webb told himself to get over the cost. He had decided to spend the money and come here, so there was no sense whining, even if it was silent whining.
Jordan picked up the pen and notepad. She opened the pad and lifted the pen, poised to take notes.
“I understand,” she said, “that you believe a music producer named Gerald Dean has not fulfilled his legal obligations to you?”
“My grandfather made a provision in his will for Gerald Dean to be paid to produce some of my songs,” Webb said. “When I asked Dean why he hadn’t finished it by the time he promised, he told me he’d hired studio musicians who charged him more than expected and that I owed him more money. When I asked to see the invoices they gave him, he dragged his feet. I still haven’t seen them.”
She jotted down a few sentences. “You have a contract to show me?”
Webb dropped his head. “No. My grandfather set it all up before he died. Dean said it was cool. Told me he had lots of references. That I didn’t need to worry.”
She tightened her lips.
Irritated at Webb? Or irritated at the producer? Or both?
“It gets worse,” Webb said. “That’s why I knew I had to come back here. I played a song for him earlier this week. On Tuesday morning. A song that I wrote. Music and lyrics. In his studio. This morning, an artist he’s developing played the song at an audition I was at and said the two of them wrote it yesterday.”
Saying this brought back the emotions, and Webb had to set his coffee cup down because he felt an urge to throw it through the window.
“You have my sympathy,” Jordan said. “This is a difficult situation. Can you prove you wrote the song? Lots of musicians make rough demos. If you did, and the time stamp on the electronics shows you wrote it before Mr. Dean says he wrote it, that will go a long way toward solving this legally.”
Webb shook his head. “It was just something that came to me on Monday night. I was so excited about it, I wanted to play it for someone, so when I was in his studio on Tuesday morning, I played it.”
“Just to confirm. You played it live. Not from a demo tape.”
“Yes.”
Webb did. She wrote it down.
“And to confirm, you said you heard it at an audition two days later, and the artist told you that she and Mr. Dean wrote it.”
“That’s right.”
Jordan tapped her front teeth with her pen. Webb noticed a smudge of red lipstick on one of her teeth. “The difficulty is that it’s going to be your word against his.”
“You need to believe me,” Webb said. “That’s the way it happened.”
She gave him a grim smile. Webb noticed the lipstick smudge was now gone.
“It doesn’t matter whether I believe you,” Jordan said. “What matters is what we can prove.”
Webb noticed that she dodged saying whether she believed him. That mattered to him. But he didn’t push her on it.
She spoke again. “It’s even more complicated than you think. Just before you showed up this afternoon, our receptionist received a letter from a law firm across town. They are representing a producer named Gerald Dean who wants to initiate a legal action against you.”
“Because our files did not show you as a client, there was some confusion,” Jordan said. “Our receptionist, however, cross-referenced all our recent calendars and realized you had come in yesterday. So she gave the letter to me, as you had set up an appointment with me. You’d given us your cell number when you made the initial appointment, so I was going to call you as a courtesy. Then the receptionist got your incoming call to set up this appointment. And since you’ve engaged me with the retainer, with your permission I suggest we deal first with the legal action about to be taken against you. After that we decide what to do against Gerald Dean.”
Webb stood. He had to. He really wanted to go into Hulk mode. Rip, destroy, crush. But that wouldn’t do him any good. He paced to the window and back to the chair.
Jordan hadn’t moved. “Gerald Dean’s legal action is to ensure you don’t make any slanderous statements about his integrity.”
Webb couldn’t help himself. He thumped his thigh with his fist. “I’m the innocent one.”
“Please sit,” she said. Her voice was so calm that it served to calm Webb. He sat.
“Let me explain the situation. Do your best to see it from a legal perspective, not a personal one. Unless we can prove your accusation against their client, you can expect a lawsuit for slandering his reputation if you make that accusation anywhere public.”
“But—”
She held up a hand. “It will not go well with you in front of a judge. I took the liberty of making an informal call to my colleague at the other law firm. He says the check you made for payment bounced.”
“I took money out of my account so it would bounce,” Webb said. “I thought that would be easier than trying to get it back.”
“Heard of a stop-payment request?”
Webb had no answer.
“That makes you look bad, as you can see. And he says his client has a video of you physically threatening him, and that on the same video you clearly make the slanderous accusation.”
“It isn’t slander. It’s true!”
“Not to an impartial judge.” She paused. “You need to hear me out on this. Gerald Dean has also hired that law firm to take you to court for the bounced check and to get a restraining order against you. Legally, you appear to be in a bad position.”
Webb leaned back in his chair, suddenly exhausted by the unfairness of this.
“It’s going to be expensive to fight,” she said. “You should know that up front.”
“I’m the innocent one,” Webb said, “but it’s going to cost me?”
“That’s how the legal system determines who is innocent. And if you lose, they are seeking damages of $50,000. Plus his legal expenses.”
“I don’t have the money,” Webb said. “To fight or to lose.”
She spoke softly, as if to lessen the blow. “Their offer is that if you formally sign an admission that Gerald Dean is the writer of the song and lyrics titled ‘Rock the Boat,’ no further legal action will be taken.”
She paused. “And they have given you until noon tomorrow to sign the admission.”