By Wednesday August had a motion to compel and a migraine that sat behind his left eye like a stone.
The Breslin deposition had run Monday and Tuesday two hundred pages of transcript that made his head ache in ways that had nothing to do with the Tempo sense.
Robyn’s backgrounds had been clean and thorough and correct about everything except the one thing that mattered: Douglas Breslin was a man who lied to his own lawyer mid-sentence and believed it by the time the court reporter’s fingers stopped moving.
By Thursday morning he was standing in Judge Hollins’s courtroom, watching opposing counsel finish an argument that would have sounded better if the man delivering it had believed a word of it.
The gallery was empty except for Marcus Hale in the back row with a coffee and a legal pad he wasn’t writing on.
August adjusted the file in front of him and waited for Hollins to nod.
The nod came.
He stood.
“Your Honor, Mr.
Breslin sat for deposition Tuesday and refused to answer sixteen questions on the stated ground that they called for privileged communications.
The privilege log he produced lists a single date March ninth, two years ago and names no participants, no subject matter, and no basis for the claim.
Rule 26 requires specificity.
We don’t have it.
We’re entitled to it.
We’re asking the court to compel answers or strike his affirmative defenses entirely.” Hollins looked at him over reading glasses that made her eyes hard to parse.
She was younger than Parks and carried herself like a woman who’d made up her mind before the hearing started and was letting the lawyers talk because the record required it.
“Mr.
Parrish,” she said.
“Your client produced a log.” Parrish rose.
He was older than August by twenty years and heavier by forty pounds and he carried himself like someone who’d logged enough hours in this room to know exactly where the cameras weren’t.
“We did, Your Honor.
And it complies with the rule.
The communications at issue occurred during a meeting between Mr.
Breslin and his corporate counsel on March ninth regarding litigation strategy.
That’s sufficient under Shelton.
Mr.
Quill wants the specifics so he can argue around the privilege.
The rule doesn’t entitle him to a road map.” August watched Parrish’s hands.
They were still.
His breathing was even.
The argument wasn’t good but the man delivering it believed it was, or believed enough of it to sell it without effort.
That made him either careless or confident, and August was betting confident.
Which meant Hollins had already told him informally that the motion was going nowhere.
He looked at the judge.
She was holding the privilege log at an angle that suggested she’d read it once and hadn’t needed to read it twice.
Her pen sat capped on the bench.
She wasn’t taking notes.
She’d stopped taking notes before August stood up.
He’d read the wrong person.
“Mr.
Quill,” Hollins said.
“What’s insufficient about the log?” August pulled his attention off Parrish and back to the bench.
Hollins was waiting.
He could feel the Tempo sense pulling at the room the clerk, the court reporter, Marcus in the gallery but he forced it down and focused on the woman in front of him.
She wanted this over.
She’d decided before he walked in.
Parrish had filed a short opposition that cited Shelton and called it a day, and Hollins had read it and marked the motion denied in her head, and now she was giving August sixty seconds to talk her out of it or confirm she’d been right to stop listening.
He tried anyway.
“The log doesn’t name the participants, Your Honor.
It doesn’t identify the subject matter beyond ‘litigation strategy,’ which is broad enough to cover every conversation Mr.
Breslin’s ever had with a lawyer.
It doesn’t tie the communications to any specific litigation.
And sixteen separate questions were refused on the basis of this single entry.
We can’t evaluate the claim.
We can’t narrow our questions.
We’re asking the court to enforce a privilege we can’t test.” Hollins capped her pen.
She hadn’t uncapped it.
“The rule requires a description sufficient to enable other parties to assess the claim.
Mr.
Breslin’s log identifies the date, the general subject, and the capacity of the participants.
That’s a description.
It may not be the description you want, Mr.
Quill, but it’s sufficient under Shelton and I’m not going to require more.
Motion denied.
Next case.” August stayed on his feet half a second longer than he should have.
Hollins was already looking past him.
The clerk called the next matter.
Parrish packed his file and left without looking back.
Marcus was still in the gallery when August turned around.
He was smiling.
August walked out.
The hallway was cold and institutional and empty except for a paralegal he didn’t recognize texting near the elevator.
He made it to the stairwell before he let himself stop moving.
First loss.
He’d read Parrish right and Hollins wrong and it hadn’t mattered which one he’d read because Parrish wasn’t the one making the ruling.
He’d spent two days prepping a motion for a judge who’d decided it from the opposition brief and he’d walked into the courtroom still thinking the argument was the thing that mattered.
He sat down on the stairwell landing and set his bag beside him and tried to breathe past the headache.
The Tempo sense was still pulling.
He could feel the shape of the hearing in his head Parrish’s stillness, Hollins’s capped pen, the clerk’s boredom, Marcus’s satisfaction and under it all the thing he’d missed.
Hollins hadn’t just been impatient.
She’d been reading him.
Watching to see if the new associate could adjust mid-argument or if he’d keep selling a motion that was already dead.
He’d kept selling.
He pulled out his phone and opened a memo.
Typed: Judge first.
Opposing counsel second.
The person who rules is the only read that matters when there’s a ruling from the bench.
The headache flared and then settled.
He sat with it.
After a minute it didn’t feel like pain.
It felt like the moment after a misaligned bone set itself right sharp first, then correct.
He stood up.
The stairwell stayed cold.
He walked down three flights and crossed the lobby and made it back to the office by noon.
Robyn was waiting outside his door with a file and a look that said she’d already heard.
“Parrish called it in,” she said.
“He’s fast.” “He’s connected.” “Same thing.” She held out the file.
“Breslin’s corporate filings.
You said you wanted them yesterday.
I’m late.” August took the file.
“Thank you.” “You’re not going to ask me if I heard.” “You already told me you heard.” She tilted her head.
The bright calculating warmth was back, and under it something that looked like it might be sympathy if he gave her room to show it.
“Hollins is fast.
She rules from the bench on everything under a million dollars.
You argue to Hollins, you’re arguing to a decision she made over breakfast.” “I know that now.” “Parrish knew it before he walked in.” “I know that too.” Robyn studied him.
He could feel her running the numbers, checking whether the loss had rattled him or taught him or broken something she’d thought was load-bearing.
He kept his face still and waited.
“Okay,” she said.
“You know it now.
That’s the part that matters.” She left.
August went into his office and shut the door and sat down at his desk.
The Breslin file went into the drawer.
The corporate filings stayed on top of the desk where he could read them if he decided losing once wasn’t enough for the week.
He opened his trial notebook instead.
Flipped to the back.
Wrote: Tempo two people, same time.
Witness + judge if the judge rules live.
Parrish was selling; Hollins had bought three days ago.
Read the buyer.
His hand was steady.
The headache was gone.
He closed the notebook and let that be the whole of it.