The Justice Game

34

Jason spent the weekend looking for a temporary office and a place to live for the next few months. He was hoping for something affordable near the beach.

The weather took a nasty turn on Saturday, with steady rain and biting winds from the northeast making for a deserted boardwalk. Still, Jason could imagine this place in the summer-teeming with tourists, surfers, and beach cruisers. He learned that the oceanfront economy relied on summer labor from nearly six thousand international college students who were in the country on temporary four-month visas. He also learned that most of them were women.

Moving to the beach permanently was not out of the question.

Each day, he approached his hunt for an apartment and office with the same level of discipline he would bring to bear on a major case. He scoured newspapers and the Internet for possible locations, mapped them out over morning coffee, and drove by later in the day. That way, he could eliminate prospects from his list without talking to somebody on the phone or, worse yet, being subject to an interminable sales pitch. He would go inside only if the place had real promise.

Each night for dinner, he returned to the Purple Cow, where his waiter or waitress would put him in touch with another table of locals looking for a free meal. On Monday night, the locals delivered the first defense verdict, and the owner of the restaurant was so excited for Jason that she comped the family’s meal on the spot.

“It’s all part of the dining experience,” the owner said. “Good burgers, purple shakes, a crazy defense lawyer. What could be more American?”

On Tuesday morning, Jason closed two deals. A one-year office lease on Laskin Road and a month-to-month residential lease for a “cottage”-the Virginia Beach term for a small detached residence located on the same property as the main house. This particular cottage was a small apartment located over a boathouse on a waterfront estate in the Bay Colony area. The house and cottage shared a backyard that looked out over a body of water called Linkhorn Bay and were located less than a mile from the ocean.

A spry widow named Evelyn Walker lived alone in the main house, except in the summers, when she rented rooms to a number of international students. She was looking for someone to help keep an eye on things, especially during the off-season when the college students weren’t around.

The cottage was the perfect size for a young single guy. It had one room on the main floor that served as a combined kitchen and living room. A bathroom and bedroom were upstairs, hanging out over the water in the boathouse. The decor was vintage 1980s. Fluorescent colors dominated-an orange carpet and lime green walls in the living room and a hodgepodge of paintings, beach trinkets, and abstract art for decorations. It wasn’t exactly a plush penthouse condo overlooking the ocean, but the price was right.

On the drive back to Richmond, Jason finally garnered the nerve to return a phone call he had received on Monday. Actually, two phone calls on Monday and one on Tuesday morning, all relegated to voice mail when Jason saw the caller ID.

“Thanks for calling,” said Andrew Lassiter. Jason thought he could still detect a tinge of panic in Andrew’s voice. “I need to get together with you for a few minutes. It’s urgent.”

It was exactly what Jason didn’t need. He had already made it clear to Lassiter that he didn’t want to get involved in his dispute with Robert Sherwood.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Lassiter responded quickly. Tersely. “It’s not what you think. It doesn’t have anything to do with Sherwood. He’s screwed me over; I’ll deal with that. This is about something else.”

“Can we talk about it over the phone?”

Lassiter’s sigh signaled his exasperation. “How far are you from your office?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Call me back from your office phone,” Lassiter said. “I don’t want to talk on this line.”

Jason called precisely thirty minutes later, and Lassiter answered on the first ring, sounding every bit as tense as he had earlier. He was trying to put the Justice Inc. controversy behind him, Lassiter said. He needed to launch out in a new direction. Perhaps Jason could help.

Jason would need a jury consultant on the Crawford case, and nobody knew more about picking juries than Andrew Lassiter. He would consult with Jason for free, just to get the marketing push that would come from such a high-profile case. From there, Lassiter could develop his own consulting business.

Jason was intrigued, but red flags shot up everywhere. “Aren’t those micromarketing formulas the property of Justice Inc.?”

“They’re my formulas,” Lassiter snapped. “But that’s another matter. I’m talking about developing new formulas, better formulas, just for this case.”

“Didn’t you sign a non-compete?”

“I’m not competing, Jason. I know for a fact that Justice Inc. is going to invest based on the outcome of this case. If they’re playing games with the gun companies’ stocks, they couldn’t possibly serve as a jury consultant-it’d be a conflict of interest.”

What he said made sense, but Jason still had reservations. He felt like a referee stepping between two angry heavyweight boxers. “I don’t know, Andrew. It just doesn’t feel right. I wouldn’t even be in this case if it wasn’t for Mr. Sherwood.”

Lassiter didn’t respond for several uncomfortable seconds. When he did, his voice seemed calmer, more resigned than the fevered pitch of just a few seconds before. “I’m going to tell you something in absolute confidence,” he said. “I need your promise that this goes nowhere.”

“Okay,” Jason said, though he wasn’t really sure he wanted to hear it. The less he knew about the dispute between Sherwood and Lassiter, the better.

“Kelly Starling worked at Justice Inc. several years before you did,” Lassiter said. “You won’t be able to tell it from her resume, because it only lists the New York firm that contracted her out to Justice Inc. for an override on her time. Same setup as you had, just a different firm. She’s an alum, Jason. I’d rather work your side, but if you’re not willing to do this, she’d hire me in a second.”

The revelation stunned Jason. His adversary had received the same cutting-edge training that he had? It was like learning your soccer coach was secretly training the other team.

Lassiter would have no reason to lie about this. He had been there. He would have known Kelly Starling.

“Interesting coincidence,” Jason said, after taking a few seconds to process it.

“Hardly,” Lassiter countered. “Justice Inc. got her involved in the case just like it did you.”

“I was being sarcastic,” Jason said. “But why do they want alumni on both sides?”

“It makes our models- their models-more accurate. It takes some of the unpredictability away if you know the lawyers and their tendencies. It’s something Sherwood started doing after a couple cases went south due to poor lawyering.”

Jason supposed this information should have been flattering. He was in the case because Justice Inc. trusted him to aggressively represent MD Firearms. But it was a little disconcerting to realize that Sherwood felt the same way about his opponent. It made him feel like a puppet, his strings being pulled by the executives in New York.

“Plus,” Lassiter added without prompting, “they know that both you and Kelly are not afraid to try a case. They don’t make money if the case settles.”

This information changed the trajectory of Jason’s thinking. Robert Sherwood wasn’t just helping Jason’s career; he was orchestrating the next big case. And if somebody like Andrew Lassiter ended up working for the other side, the results could be disastrous.

Still, Jason had that uneasy feeling of a mortal stepping onto the battlefield of the gods. He didn’t want either Lassiter or Sherwood angry with him.

“Let me call Robert Sherwood and let him know we’re thinking about this,” Jason suggested. “That way, he won’t find out from somebody else and get all fired up.”

“We don’t owe Sherwood anything, ” Lassiter insisted. “They used us, Jason. Especially Sherwood. They’re still using you.”

Jason kept his voice steady, but he was unmovable. He wanted Andrew involved, but he didn’t want to take on Justice Inc. He assured his friend that he would present his involvement to Sherwood as a done deal rather than asking for permission. “I don’t want him to find out from someone else and assume I’m out here doing stuff behind his back,” Jason said.

“You don’t owe him anything,” Lassiter repeated. “But suit yourself.”

When they hung up, Jason sighed deeply. He could feel himself getting pulled into a nasty fight between two men he highly respected. One or the other of them was going to be disappointed in him.

He worried about calling Robert Sherwood and rehearsed the conversation several times in his head. With each passing minute, he thought up another reason to delay the call.

When he finally pulled out his cell phone to call Sherwood, he received an incoming call with an Atlanta area code before he could dial out. He decided to take it. Any call would be preferable to talking with Sherwood.