IT HAD ONLY BEEN TWO WEEKS since Will had filed his response to the Reichstad lawsuit and served it on the opposing side—the offices of J-Fox Sherman. The case was still in its infancy.
So the item in Will’s morning mail took him by surprise. As he sat in the lobby of his office, Will opened up the envelope from Kennelworth, Sherman, Abrams & Cantwell.
In it Will found a Notice of Deposition from Sherman. Will’s opponent had announced his intention to take the testimony of his client, Reverend Angus MacCameron, by deposition. It was scheduled to take place at Sherman’s offices in D.C. the following week.
It was not the fact of a deposition that startled Will. Such procedures were the lifeblood of any lawsuit. Depositions—the giving of pretrial testimony—were usually taken in the offices of one of the attorneys and were more informal than a court proceeding, with only the opposing attorneys, a court reporter, and the witness present. With no presiding judge in attendance, they often created a free-wheeling kind of psychological drama as one attorney questioned, probed, and cajoled the opposing party under oath. At the same time the other attorney would object, obfuscate, distract, and defend, all the while hoping that his client would not make that one thoughtless, careless, case-destroying admission that the court reporter would dutifully transcribe for the court, for the jury later to read.
The thing that intrigued Will Chambers most was the fact that it was coming so early in the lawsuit. Conventional litigation wisdom was that you go to written discovery first—questions that would have to be answered under oath, or written demands for the other side to produce notes or documents that might relate to the issues of the case.
After getting the responses to written discovery a lawyer would then have a factual road map and could set up a deposition of the other party in order to gain live testimony on the precise issues—aiming for the center of the target with questions like heat-seeking missiles. The lawyer could hammer at the weak points as well as ask questions designed to fill in the blind spots of the case.
So why, Will asked himself, was Sherman racing to take the testimony of MacCameron so quickly out of the gate? Was it merely bravado from one of Washington’s finest trial lawyers? Perhaps, although Sherman was too arrogant to feel he needed to impress anyone else. He was the kind of lawyer that just assumed you were already in awe of him.
Will was mulling over that question when he walked into the coffee room. Betty was pouring herself a cup.
“You know something, Will,” she commented, “I’ve read the Washington Herald every day since you had the telephone interview with that reporter. I don’t think they ever ran that story.”
Will merely grunted in response, discovering a little sourly that Betty had taken the last full cup of coffee, leaving only a sinister black film at the bottom of the pot.
“Betty, how about making some more coffee?”
“How about you and I talking about my raise? Then we can talk about my making some more coffee.”
“End of the day, today. We’ll talk.”
“I’ll be there,” Betty said, half-smiling and walking back to her desk.
The promise to give Betty a raise had slipped his mind. He had been preoccupied over the last two weeks. He had received inquiries from about a half-dozen prospective clients—however, only two had panned out. This was not good news. He was starting to shift into some heavy-duty anxiety about his professional future.
Will had met with his mortgage lender in an effort to borrow some cash against his house. But he was told, flatly, that he was already mortgaged to the hilt. In fact, the state of the house—with its uncompleted renovation—made it bad collateral for another loan.
Will had also been busy trying to negotiate a higher buy-out figure from his former partners. Despite his confrontational final meeting, he somehow believed that they would cut him some slack. But now that they were no longer returning his calls, Will was feeling desperate.
The only complex litigation he had was the MacCameron lawsuit, and he wondered how long it would be before the money from the fundamentalist preacher’s tiny magazine would start drying up.
Will buzzed Betty on the intercom and asked her to get J-Fox Sherman on the line. He knew that he had to buy some extra time before exposing his client to deposition questioning from someone as cunning as Sherman.
Besides, Will was still unsure about the facts of such an unusual, complicated case. He was not expecting a report back from Tiny for at least another two weeks. Will had asked the big private eye to contact each of the archaeological experts who had written articles critical of Reichstad’s handling of the 7QA fragment. In Tiny’s interviews, hopefully some damaging information about Reichstad or his discovery of the fragment would surface. He was looking for any information they had in their back pockets—the kind of stuff that would be too controversial or scandalous, perhaps, to have made it into their polite scholarly writings.
Betty’s voice came over the intercom, telling Will that Sherman’s office was on the line.
Will picked up the phone. It was the receptionist from Sherman’s law firm. Chambers asked for Sherman, and he was transferred to the receptionist in the litigation department, and after that, to the personal secretary for J-Fox Sherman. Then Will was put on hold for several minutes.
Finally, Will was able to explain to Sherman’s secretary that he needed to speak to Sherman personally about a case they had pending together.
In a few minutes Will was transferred again.
Then he heard a man’s voice at the other end.
“Mr. Sherman, Will Chambers here. I am calling on the Reichstad vs. MacCameron suit.”
“I am not Mr. Sherman,” the voice at the other end responded. “I am Mr. Sherman’s chief law clerk. Mr. Sherman cannot talk to you right now, he is unavailable. Can I help you?”
“I need to talk to Mr. Sherman personally about a deposition he just scheduled on one week’s notice, in a new lawsuit that isn’t even out of the cradle yet. I would like to get that deposition moved down the track a week or two.”
“Oh yes, I’m familiar with that case. You would like to get the deposition adjourned for a few weeks?”
“That’s what Mr. Sherman and I need to talk about.”
“Just a moment,” the law clerk said. And then Will waited on the line for another ten minutes.
When the voice came back on the other end it was the law clerk again.
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Sherman regrets that he will be unable to reschedule the deposition. He looks forward to taking the testimony of your client next week at the exact time and date indicated in our Notice of Deposition.”
“Mr. Sherman was capable of speaking to you.”
“Why, yes,” the clerk replied.
“Then he is fully capable of speaking to me about this.”
“No, I’m afraid Mr. Sherman is too busy to talk to you.”
“Mr. Sherman’s not attempting to intimidate me, is he?” Will bulleted back. “Because if he is, then Mr. Sherman is going to end up taking my self-improvement class—I call it ‘phone etiquette for the self-impressed, self-aggrandizing D.C. lawyer who likes to hide behind his support staff so he can try to look lofty and powerful.’”
After a moment of silence, the law clerk said, “I will inform Mr. Sherman of your comments, Mr.…” and then the law clerk stifled a little laugh and said primly, “I am sorry. We’ve never heard of you before. What is your name again?”
“Let me make it easy for you,” Will responded abruptly. “Just remember me as the lawyer who ended up winning this case,” and with that, he slammed down the phone.
After spending twenty years in courtrooms around the nation, Will Chambers had learned at least this much: Every lawsuit is like a war. So he had developed the habit of naming his bigger lawsuits after famous military conflicts. Some were like the War of 1812. Others were like the Civil War. Still others he labeled the War of the Roses, or the Hundred Years’ War.
After his short conversation with Sherman’s office Will was already visualizing the contours of this particular legal battle.
D-Day—Omaha Beach, he thought to himself. The only problem was that, unlike General Eisenhower, he was not commanding a massive invasion force. Yet the analogy still seemed to fit. After all, it seemed certain that there were going to be heavy casualties.
He called for Betty to contact MacCameron and tell him that he had to be in Will’s office at one o’clock the next afternoon. Will would finish his initial planning and review in the morning, and then he and MacCameron would immediately start planning for the deposition.
For a fleeting moment, Will’s concentration was interrupted with a vision of the casualties of war—of old newsreel footage of soldiers’ bodies, floating in the waters off Normandy. Then he realized how absurd that thought had been.
No matter what the casualties of this case might be, Will mused to himself, at least no one would be trying to kill him.