Chapter 119

Monday brought a host of interesting things to my life.

The best came in the form of a 5-foot-11-inch African-American supermodel. Jersey Williams had a brief break in her shooting schedule and decided to pay a visit to Nashville before jetting off to Paris or Rome or some other exotic locale.

In truth, she was headed to South America for a photo shoot involving snow skiing in the Andes but it made Brian and Dom happier to think of her in a bikini on white sand beaches so we pretended.

In truth, I didn’t expect to spend much time at all with her. She arrived while I was doing my morning therapy (and she didn’t really come to visit with me anyway). She went out to lunch with Liz (and Skye and Jill and, of course, Dom, Brian and Bobbi and Dayton).

They got back just in time for the second of my surprises, this one unwelcome but not unexpected.

I was sued.

I was sued for $10 million.

I wasn’t alone, though. The process server didn’t have to go far to hand paper to the other litigants. Brian, Dom, Ryan and, of course, Liz were also named in the civil action that cited us for doing, among a litany of other heinous things, “using excessive force” and “committing dangerous acts that led to permanent disability” for the six plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs were, as if I need to tell you, the six fucking scumbags hired by another fucking scumbag to kidnap (and probably rape and torture) my girlfriend. I was thankful that my mother had decided to take a couple of days with Mickey and Bev at their (former) weed plantation to give Liz and me time to work out how things were going to go. She would not have been impressed by my response.

“Fuck you,” I said as I crumpled up the notice into a nifty ball and tossed it in the man’s face that had come to serve it.

Even left-handed I caught him right in the nose from six feet away. He held up his hands in surrender as Dayton gently moved me away.

“I’m just the guy hired to bring this to you,” he noted as he backed away. Dom and Brian, who was still on crutches, had wadded their notice up, as well. Only Jill, who had accepted Liz’s on her employer’s behalf, was taking the time to read it.

“Do you work solely for the attorney that filed this?” she asked.

“No, Ma’am,” the young man said. “I’m just a process server for the county.”

“Good,” she said with an evil smile. “If you have a card, our attorney will contact you this afternoon. She will have some papers for you to deliver to these pieces of shit. You know who they are, don’t you?”

The man nodded glumly.

“A job’s a job,” he said plaintively.

“We understand,” Jill said with a diplomacy I didn’t know she possessed. “And I’m sure Travis is sorry for tossing it back in your face.”

She was wrong. I wasn’t the least bit sorry. I nodded contritely anyway when she turned to give me a pointed look.

“I’ve been punched in the mouth, had a woman hit me with pepper spray and had a guy spit in my face,” the man said with a shrug. “It’s no big deal. Like I said, the county tells me where to deliver these and who gets them. If I want to keep a paycheck coming in, I gotta take what I get.”

This time my contrition was genuine.

“My bad,” I said.

Again, he shrugged it off.

“Do you have a business card?” Jill asked. The man nodded and presented it. He was careful to maintain his distance but, to his credit, he didn’t run away.

“Are you contracted solely through the county?” Jill asked as she read the text on the paper.

“I can take private jobs if you want me to,” he said.

“We do,” Jill said before anybody else could speak. “You can expect a call from our attorney in a couple of hours. We already have the countersuit prepared. If they believe a jury is going to give a bunch of kidnappers $50 million for getting the shit kicked out of them, what do they think the injuries on our side are worth?”

“Not to mention loss of consortium with Liz Larimer,” I added helpfully. “That’s got to be worth $100 million right there.”

I hadn’t been pleased when Liz’s attorneys had wanted to add that to our countersuit but I’d come around. After all, it was true (even if it was a bit embarrassing). The frequency and intensity of our sexual activities had diminished greatly because of the injuries I had sustained.

Jill scooped up the discarded summonses before we went into the house.

“How bad?” Liz asked.

“Fifty million,” Jill said, glancing at the document again, “ten million from each of you.”

“That will put my bank account pretty far into negative numbers,” Brian said. “Jill might start looking around for a new sugar daddy.”

“Assholes,” I said angrily as I sat down on the couch. I hadn’t showered since my workout and I usually avoided the nice furnishings while I was sweaty. But I needed to sit down because I was so angry that my legs were shaking.

“You had to know this was going to come,” Jersey pointed out.

I looked at her through hooded eyelids. She wasn’t part of the inner circle so, in my opinion, she had no standing to chide me about much of anything.

“We knew,” Liz said. “It doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Particularly for Travis,” Jill said. “He’s still not used to the way Liz’s world sometimes works. This is a clear ‘pay me to go away’ nuisance suit. They think we will want to avoid publicity and offer them a few grand each to drop the matter.”

“And, if it weren’t for Travis, I probably would,” Liz said, moving behind me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “But he has a sense of right and wrong that hasn’t been warped yet. To him, a payoff is the same as admitting he did something wrong. We know he didn’t but, to him, it’s tantamount to an admission of guilt. So, we’re going to lower the boom on them. They’re going to be served this afternoon with a countersuit for the pain and suffering they caused, for loss of income that I will suffer because of Travis’s injuries, for the money Dom and Brian and Ryan are out because they are off work for an extended period of time and for ... for just being total peckerheads. We’re asking for $250 million and I think we’ll get it.”

“But you’ll drop the suit if they drop theirs, right?” Jersey inquired.

“No,” I said firmly. “They might. I won’t speak for anybody but me. I will not let them shift the narrative. I will take this to a fucking jury and I will take the 17 cents a day they make in prison. If those cocksuckers ever get out, they won’t have two fucking nickels to rub together. If it comes down to it, I’ll see their kids in foster care and their wives in homeless shelters. I was happy to leave them alone so long as they left us alone. You would have thought they would have figured out that we don’t do things halfway. But no! Well, one of them felt my foot in his mouth. The rest of them are going to feel it on their necks. And I will never let those fuckers up.”

“I see,” Jersey answered, looking not at me but at Liz. Liz had left off squeezing my shoulder and had moved to massaging my neck. It wasn’t helping my tension any but it felt pretty good.

“It’s more than just a vendetta,” Jill said. “Well, it’s still a vendetta, I suppose. But it’s also serving notice on the next person that comes after Liz with a frivolous lawsuit. Last year, we paid out half a million to one jerk or another. Somebody tripped outside a meet and greet and we settled for $25,000; somebody claimed Liz ripped off one of her songs and we paid her $10,000. Every month for the past four years somebody has dipped in LLE’s coffers over some bullshit allegation that was just easier to throw money at than it was to throw time at. Well, we have some time on our hands now and we’re going to make these guys an object lesson for the next person that wants something free.”

“Damn straight,” Dom said with a firm nod.

“A lot of what they did can’t be quantified in monetary terms,” Liz explained. “It’s the general unease that we all feel in public; it’s the fact that my chief of security is going to have to leave field work; it’s the fact that Travis might never be able to toss a baseball with our children. You can’t put a price on those things. You can’t put a price on the fact that he and I ... can’t do a lot of the things we used to do ... up there.”

She gestured with her head to the upstairs where our bedroom was.

“It’s like Travis said,” Liz continued. “We were willing to let it go. They were going to prison for their actions and we were content with that outcome ... so long as they were content to accept what they have coming to them. But they are trying to lessen their culpability. They are trying to put this at our feet. This wasn’t our doing! We didn’t show up at their place of employment and try to grab them into a van. We didn’t run over one of them with a vehicle or hit them with metal rods from behind. Yes, I have the money to pay for this to go away. But I also have the money to fight this to the bitter end. And so long as the people these men hurt want to fight this, I’ll spend every single penny I have to help them along.”

The original lawsuit was the lead item when the news came on at five o’clock. I wondered just how slow a news day it was when I saw promos for the coverage starting two hours before the broadcast.

I decided the crime rate in Nashville must be exactly zero when the newscasters’ faces appeared on the screen. Once again, my inexperience with Liz’s true popularity showed.

“A strange development in the case involving country music icon Liz Larimer today,” the stern-faced man read from his Teleprompter. “The six men that stand accused of attempting to kidnap the singing star have filed a civil lawsuit against Liz Larimer and four of her employees, seeking damages in the tens of millions of dollars. We have our legal analyst, former state Superior Court Judge Andrew Henley, in the studio. Judge, what’s your take on the situation?”

The camera panned to a wizened old man that looked to be 80 years old if he was a day.

“It’s what we call a nuisance suit,” the man said, shaking his head. “I’ll be frank. There is no way this will ever get in front of a jury. Any judge with a lick of sense will toss it out the moment it hits his docket. The plaintiffs are looking to make a quick buck. They’re hoping Liz Larimer will offer a settlement to dismiss the suit. Personally, I hope she doesn’t. This suit has exactly zero merit. I wish I was still on the bench. I’d like to give those men a piece of what’s left of my mind.”

“Thank you, Judge Henley,” a woman said in a pleasant voice. “As expected, Liz Larimer’s spokesmen referred us to her attorney for comment. In an unexpected twist, the attorney agreed to be interviewed live only on Channel Six Action News. Coming to us from Los Angeles is renowned attorney Stella Ballard. Ms. Ballard, thank you for joining us.”

Another new face appeared. This one was in her middle to late 50s. She had brown hair, starting to gray, and she wore a dark blazer over a white blouse. A caption below her face confirmed just what the anchorwoman had stated: Stella Ballard, renowned defense attorney.

“In this case, it’s my pleasure,” the attorney said.

“Did the filing come as a surprise to you?” the woman in Nashville inquired.

Stella frowned and shook her head sadly.

“Unfortunately, no,” she answered. “It’s the American way, after all. Those who lose, sue. Well, I think the video pretty well showed who the losers were in this matchup.”

“I would say it was the men left bleeding on the ground after their cowardly attack,” the judge’s voice intoned.

The woman in Los Angeles smiled slightly.

“That was my take, as well, Your Honor,” the attorney said. “As you just noted, they’ll lose again. But this time, it will be a double loss. Just minutes before the courthouse closed, an associate of mine in Nashville filed a countersuit on behalf of Ryan Davis, Dom Salducci, Brian Evans, Travis Blakely and Liz Larimer. We’re asking for damages to compensate my clients for their injuries, for their loss of revenue and for pain and suffering inflicted during the, as Judge Henley so eloquently stated, cowardly attack. We’re asking for $250 million in damages and an unspecified amount in punitive damages – and we’ll be awarded at least that much.”

There was a slight gasp in the studio. I didn’t know if it came from the anchors or the judge because the camera still showed the Los Angeles attorney – whose face was now set in a feral smile.

“And, I want it known to the plaintiffs and their attorney, we will take this to a jury,” Stella said, illustrating every word with a thrust of her finger at the camera. “We will force these men to testify under oath. We will force them to admit their wrongdoing and we will take every single possession they have or ever will have. There will be no settlement. There will be no withdrawal. As one of my clients has said, if we have to, we will garnish the 17 cents a day these men will make during their prison stay just so they can’t have commissary money. This isn’t about anything more than right versus wrong. We’re right and we’re going to make them pay in the only way the courts permit for suggesting that we were somehow at fault for what transpired that day. Whatever money we somehow get from this group of lowlifes will be donated to charity.”

The attorney glanced to the side for a moment and raised an eyebrow.

“It seems Mr. Byron Jenkins, the attorney that represents the original plaintiffs, wishes to speak to me,” she told the audience. Without further ado, she shifted slightly in her chair and lifted her telephone. The camera panned away for a moment before returning to Stella’s face.

“Interesting,” she said into the receiver. “Apparently you’re not watching Channel Six. I’m doing a live telecast and I just informed everybody that we will take this to a jury, Mr. Jenkins. We will not settle out of court – unless, of course, your clients can produce the $250 million we are seeking. We will not offer a penny to the men you represent. You have thrown the dice and they’ve wound up snake-eyes. Your clients will pay the price.