30

Two days after he filed suit, Wyatt Jackson rolled out of bed in his RV, fed Clients, and made coffee. He was getting ready to boot up his computer and check the day’s headlines when Clients started pawing at the door. Wyatt threw on his spring coat and opened the door to let the dog out. Clients hesitated, noticing the drizzle, and decided suddenly that he did not have to go.

“C’mon,” Wyatt said. He nudged the dog with his foot, and Clients tiptoed out onto the wet grass. Wyatt noticed a newspaper in a plastic bag at the bottom of the RV steps and picked it up. He didn’t subscribe to the paper—why bother when you could get your news online? Besides, they probably didn’t deliver to campgrounds.

He pulled the paper out of the bag and read the note attached to the front. It was typed in large font.

You’ve been playing in the minor leagues. Welcome to the big-time.

The Patriot

Clients finished his business, and the two of them went back inside. The paper was the morning edition of the Washington Herald, and Wyatt immediately wondered how the Patriot had managed to deliver it to the KOA campground so early in the morning. He must have been right outside Wyatt’s door just a few hours ago. He knew where Wyatt lived.

The article about Wyatt began on page three, where the paper ran national political stories that didn’t make the front page. The headline: “SEAL Member’s Lawyer Leaves Trail of Unhappy Clients.”

It was a classic hit job that made Wyatt fume. Any lawyer who had practiced for nearly forty years had a few skeletons buried. But this reporter had dug up every bone and made it seem like Wyatt was a walking malpractice suit.

There had been about a dozen clients who alleged ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal. Wyatt was actually proud of that record. When criminal defendants got convicted, their appellate lawyers almost always argued that the trial lawyers had been ineffective. But Wyatt had put up such fights that it had only happened a few times in his career.

The reporter had talked to clients who complained from their jailhouse cells that Wyatt had not interviewed the right witnesses or made the right legal arguments or, in one case, had fallen asleep during trial. Wyatt remembered that case—a white-collar defendant with lots of testimony from accountants. Wyatt hadn’t missed a thing during his short nap, but the appellate lawyer made him sound like Rip Van Winkle. The article contained a quote from the client, who said that Wyatt nodded off so much he “looked like a bobblehead doll” during the testimony of an expert witness.

Several other clients complained that Wyatt had dropped their cases on the eve of trial. They said Wyatt had promised them he would handle their entire case for a flat fee but then made demands for more money. When they didn’t pay, he made a motion to withdraw and left them high and dry.

Like the best hit stories, it had a grain of truth. Wyatt had left a few clients on the eve of trial, but that was because he was supposed to be paid by the hour and he had already burned through their retainer. Their families couldn’t come up with additional funds, and Wyatt was not going to spend weeks of his life working for free. At least not for the guilty clients—he had done it a time or two for the innocent ones who couldn’t come up with more money.

Toward the end of the article, the reporter quoted a few clients who were actually satisfied with Wyatt’s work and a couple of lawyers who said what a tough old codger he was in the courtroom. The reporter noted that he had attempted to contact Wyatt by phone and e-mail but had received no response.

The whole thing felt like a vicious sucker punch, and there was nobody Wyatt could punch back. He couldn’t file a defamation suit against the Herald, both because he had thrust himself into the public spotlight and because everything in the article was technically true. The only thing he could do was use the article to feed his venom against the people who had undoubtedly set this up—Philip Kilpatrick and John Marcano.

He lit up a cigar and glanced through the article a second time, highlighting the most incendiary sentences. He went online and read comments from those who were predictably trashing his good name and all other lawyers along with him. For about thirty minutes, the hit job had thrown him off-balance. But soon the old Wyatt was back, plotting ways to exact his revenge.

The problem was that he had a weak lawsuit. He had filed it primarily to draw attention to the allegations the Patriot was making. Apparently the Patriot didn’t like that approach. But Wyatt had learned in nearly forty years of trying cases that the other side fought most viciously when you were really onto something. And this article had required a lot of investigation.

“Looks like we’ve struck a nerve,” he said to Clients.