At 9:00 Friday morning, Corvane filed.
I watched it land on the public docket from my one-room office.
Corvane Medical, Inc.'s Notice of Violation of Stipulated Protective Order and Motion for Sanctions
It ran eleven pages.
Page three had the number Clay gave away on Wednesday.
transmitted to approximately 140 recipients, at least 97 of whom opened it
Kavanagh hadn't named me.
He had named the sender.
On Thursday I had paid $2,868 for a malpractice policy.
My savings were down to $5,232.
The policy covered one lawyer and one client.
At 12:15 I sat at a round table in a hotel ballroom on Seventeenth Street.
Three hundred twenty lawyers sat around me, eating chicken.
The Front Range Trial Lawyers Association gave out one big award a year.
This year it was Clay's.
Jonah had bought two seats at the Ferris Calloway table.
"You should hear his speech," he'd said.
"I've heard all of them," I'd said.
I had drafted most of them.
Now Clay stood at the lectern under a blue banner.
He held a crystal gavel up to the ceiling lights.
Trial Lawyer of the Year — Clayton R. Haverty
"Forty-one million dollars," he said.
The room applauded.
"For a widow in Lakewood."
They applauded louder.
He set the gavel on the lectern and leaned on it.
"Behind every verdict is a paralegal who thinks she wrote it."
The laugh came fast from the Ostrander Keane tables.
Then it spread.
Clay found me before it finished.
"Some of you heard about Monday."
"Delia, stand up."
"Take a bow."
Three hundred twenty heads turned.
A man at the next table raised his water glass at me.
Lorna sat two tables from the stage.
She didn't turn around.
I put my napkin beside my plate.
I stood up.
So did Jonah.
He buttoned his jacket and stood at my shoulder.
"We're standing, Clay."
Clay smiled down at the room.
"Ferris Calloway, everybody."
"They'll hire anyone."
Nobody laughed this time.
I didn't need a microphone.
The room was already quiet.
"Case 2022CV31847," I said.
"Notice of Violation."
"Filed at nine this morning."
Clay's smile held.
"Read the docket before you thank anyone."
A woman at the front table had her phone out before I finished.
Then the man with the water glass.
Then a whole table of public defenders.
"Read the docket, Clay!"
Jonah said it to the whole room.
Phones lit up across the ballroom, one table at a time.
I watched faces read.
I knew which page they'd stop on.
The man with the water glass looked up at me.
"How many people got it?"
"He sent it to 140 people," I said.
He put his glass down.
Clay looked at the Ostrander Keane tables.
Lorna was reading her own phone.
Clay looked at the gavel.
He lifted his hand off it.
"Thank you all," he said.
He walked off the side of the stage.
He left the gavel on the lectern, beside his water.
A man with a notebook rose from the press table.
He followed Clay to the coat check.
"Mr. Haverty, did you email a sealed brief to your whole firm?"
Clay took his coat and didn't answer.
The door swung shut behind them both.
The emcee studied his cards for a long time.
Then he announced dessert.
Jonah and I walked out to the foyer.
He waited until the ballroom doors closed.
"I kept your page," he said.
He touched his jacket over the inside pocket.
"It's in a folder now."
"Flat."
"It's in Ruth's case file," I said.
"Until she says otherwise."
"I know."
"So keep it."
He nodded.
Then he started to say something else.
"Delia, after this is over—"
He stopped.
He looked at the carpet, then at me.
"Not while I'm your client."
"No," I said.
"Not while you're my client."
Through the glass doors, Lorna came out of the ballroom.
She was on her phone, walking fast toward the parking garage.
She didn't look at us.
I had watched her face at Kavanagh's table.
She hadn't been surprised by anything.
The firm would answer this.
Ostrander Keane always answered.
Behind us, a hotel staffer came out of the ballroom.
She carried the crystal gavel in both hands like a cake.
"Mr. Haverty left this," she said.
"Are you with his party?"
"No," I said.
She held it out to me anyway.
I walked past it to the elevators.
I let him keep the gavel.