BREACH OF PROMISE

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Slumped between Jeffrey Riesner and his female associate Rebecca Casey, Mike Markov studied the table in front of him.

  Nina gave Lindy a moment to compose herself.

  “You considered this your wedding,” Nina said.

  “Yes,” said Lindy.

  “You knew this was not a legal marriage in the State of Nevada, in that you had not taken out a marriage license and in that the wedding was not officiated over by a priest or other designated official.”

  “Yes.”

  “Once you divorced your first husband, why didn’t you just run down to city hall and get a license?”

  “By then, we were settled together,” she said slowly. She paused, looking around the courtroom. “We had moved in together, found a house, and gotten the business going. Mike always said we didn’t need a piece of paper to prove our love. He said, ’Lindy, we are man and wife.’ Our lives were living proof we belonged together. He told me he was with me because we loved each other, not because the state decreed it. We had both been married briefly before. His breakup had been bitter.”

  “Did you want to get married legally?”

  “It came up several times during our relationship. I’d start thinking about it. But I never doubted him when he assured me we were together for life, in it for good and bad, forever.” She looked weepy again. “He thought formal marriage was for people who didn’t know what a real marriage was. I think it might have been more decent to be married. I felt ashamed that we weren’t officially married, but I wanted to believe him when he promised it would never make a difference. I loved him. I trusted him.”

  Now Nina, using simple questions, took Lindy through the beginnings of Markov Enterprises, the early years when the Markovs had lived on a financial edge and moved to Texas, where the business had failed.

  “You continued to use the name Markov in all business and personal dealings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your clients assumed you were married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Mike introduce you as his wife on social occasions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you introduced as his wife at business functions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Over the years, have many acquaintances, both personal and business, assumed you and Mike were married?”

  “I believe everyone thought we were. I never talked about it, and neither did he.”

  “So when it suited his convenience to be married, Mike Markov was a married man, and when it no longer suited him, he wasn’t?”

  “Objection, Your Honor. Leading the witness,” Riesner said without rising from his seat.

  “Sustained.”

  “Did you and Mike ever have any children?” Nina asked.

  “The business took the place of a child for us. We gave birth to it. We nurtured it. It grew—”

  Riesner snorted audibly. Genevieve had coached Lindy on that answer, and it sounded coached.

  Well, they had brought in the mantra.

  In the afternoon, Winston handled the questions. For the first time in the past few years, Nina had the opportunity to sit at the counsel table and watch the jury while someone else carried the questioning.

  One thing she noticed immediately. Cliff Wright perked up and paid attention when Winston talked. He laughed appropriately. He did not pick his nails. Wright liked Winston, preferred him to her. She wondered why.

  And how did Winston appear so fresh? While the rest of the court wilted in the late afternoon, Winston’s warm, copper-colored face looked invigorated and ready to go. He was relaxed and utterly in control of the courtroom. During the days of depos and trial prep, Winston had kept such a low profile that Nina had begun to wonder if she had made a mistake in hiring him, that he had been grossly overrated. Now, seeing him in action, she understood his success. You couldn’t dislike him.

  “Mrs. Markov,” he said to Lindy. “You said this morning that you worked alongside Mike Markov for many years at the company you both began.”

  “That’s right. Literally alongside. We even shared an office.”

  Winston strolled over to a stand next to the table. “Your Honor, we would like to submit to the court’s attention photographs taken of Lindy and Mike Markov in happier times.”

  Riesner turned immediately to Rebecca with a whisper to show his complete disinterest. They had fought over showing the photos at a pretrial hearing and Riesner had lost.

  The first board, a stiff, dry-mounted picture blown up to the size of a large poster, showed two desks, side by side. Behind one desk, Mike Markov beamed. Behind the other, Lindy beamed. Across the gap in the desks, they held hands.

  “Will you describe this picture for me?” asked Winston.

  “Objection, Your Honor. A picture is worth a thousand words,” said Riesner. “It speaks for itself.”

  “Even a thousand words may not explain the circumstances in which the picture was taken, I’m afraid,” said Milne. “Proceed.”

  “That’s . . . that was our office at Markov Enterprises. The office at our first manufacturing plant.”

  “Located here in town?”

  Lindy nodded. “On the hill going up from the ’Y’ intersection. We have offices there, plus a production facility.”

  “For how many years did you and Mike share an office?”

  Lindy said, “Always. The whole time. We liked being close to each other. We consulted with each other constantly.”

  “What does that sign on your desk read?”

  “Executive vice president.”

  “Now, during the years Markov Enterprises has had its principal place of business at Lake Tahoe, what exactly has been your job description?”

  “There wasn’t one. I did whatever needed doing, as I always had before. Marketing strategies, advertising campaigns, production timetables. I oversaw the day-to-day operating expenses. I helped develop long-term financial plans along with Mike and our accounting service. I trained our sales force and organized our employee benefits package. I hired and fired and promoted and dealt with the unions. As the business grew, my responsibilities grew. And I kept trying to think of new products like the Solo Spa.”

  Winston seemed to need to study the pictures for a long time. Hands behind his back, he stood far enough away so that the jury had a straight shot at them. “What was Mike Markov’s title?”

  “President.”

  “You had desks the same size?”

  “Yes.”

  “If someone came in from the factory, for example, needing something, who would that person speak with first?”

  “Whoever happened to be in, Mike or me.”

  “Would you say when anything important came across your desk, it usually found its way to Mr. Markov’s desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if anything important landed on his desk, he rolled it over to you at some point?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Winston took a marker pen out of his pocket, stared at it for a moment as if surprised to find it there, walked up to the picture, and playfully drew a circle around the two people and two desks. Turning back to Lindy he said, “Though you were two people, as far as your clients, your employees, and your business problems were concerned, the two of you operated as one unit, would that be correct to say?”

  The linking of hands in the photograph served to emphasize the image he was suggesting.

  “Objection!” said Riesner. “Vague. Leading.”

  “Sustained. Leading.”

  “Did you work together as a unit?”

  “Yes. Like parents raising a family.”

  “You shared equally in decision-making?”

  “Nothing major happened in our business without my consultation and approval.”

  “You dealt directly with clients?”

  “Yes.”

  “When someone called, say, a new shop interested in carrying your products, who talked to the client?”

  “We both did.”<
br />
  “How did you do that?”

  “Any important phone calls that came in, Mike would signal me to pick up. Afterward, we discussed the deal and made a decision together.”

  “Did employees at the business think you ran it together?”

  “Objection,” said Riesner. “Calls for speculation.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Right,” Winston said. “We’ll get into that later.”

  And, with Winston leading Riesner on a merry chase through the labyrinthian legal subtleties of testimony, eventually he did, taking Lindy through a description of a conference she had planned and run while Mike recuperated from exhaustion in Las Vegas.

  She came off well, Nina thought as Winston wound things up with Lindy. You had to like someone who worked so very hard, who took responsibility, who loved her job and her man so loyally.

  Didn’t you?

  18

  “Where’s Paul?” Genevieve whispered the next morning as Judge Milne took his place. “I would have thought he’d want to see some of this.”

  “We don’t need him anymore,” said Nina, ignoring Genevieve’s perplexed look.

  The trial started off with Winston, who wanted to unman the defense’s biggest weapon right up front. “I have here a copy of a document entitled ’Separate Property Agreement’ that appears to be signed by you. Have you ever seen this before?” he asked Lindy.

  Nina, taking notes next to Genevieve at their table, continued to marvel at the transformation Genevieve and Lindy had brought about in Lindy’s appearance. Her simple clothing, lack of makeup, and graying hair made an utter contrast to the glamorous woman who had greeted Nina at the Markov party. She looked worn out, and therefore more vulnerable. She looked thin rather than muscular, and therefore weaker.

  Taking the exhibit, Nina looked it over. Meantime, Winston waited quietly at the podium, directing the courtroom’s attention to Lindy.

  “Yes,” she finally answered, looking at Mike. “A copy of it at my deposition. And before that, thirteen years ago.”

  “How close can you come to a date?”

  “Sometime in the mideighties, I’m not sure when; right after we came to California, Mike had me type up a paper and sign it. It was a one-page document.”

  “What did you think you were signing?”

  “It started off with saying something about how much we trusted each other. Then it talked about separating our assets.”

  “Did you consult an attorney before signing this paper?”

  “No.”

  “Did Mike suggest you might do that?”

  Lindy smiled slightly. “At that time, Mike didn’t like attorneys. He just asked me to sign it. He wrote it in the motel room in Sacramento where we lived when we came out from Texas.”

  “What was happening at that time in your relationship?”

  Lindy was looking at Mike again. Mike tried to look indifferent and failed. Rachel leaned forward from her seat behind him and whispered something.

  “We were broke. We had liquidated our business in Texas. I’ve never seen Mike in such a bad state. Until now.”

  “Move to strike the last two words as nonresponsive,” Rebecca said from next to Mike.

  “The jury will disregard the last two words.”

  “When you say ’bad state,’ what do you mean?”

  Lindy said carefully, “Mike had failed before. He was angry. I think he felt helpless. He talked a lot about his ex-wife, how she had taken everything he had saved during his years in the ring. He thought our business troubles were a direct result of starting out with no money, and he blamed her.

  “Every day, we got dunning letters. Creditors made phone calls. Our agent there was trying to sell off the assets and salvage something for us. We were living in a motel in Sacramento run by a gloomy man who called every morning at eight o’clock and said, ’Your rent is due,’ like we were criminals climbing out the back window. That little room was so hot. Cockroaches ran in the kitchen all night and the back balcony looked out over a sewage ditch. It was August and over a hundred degrees day after day. I’d sit at the dressing table all day and make calls and write letters, trying to get some money in, and Mike would just lie on the bed. Mike started—he got angry at me.”

  “Why?” Winston’s soft, sympathetic voice.

  “I was handy,” Lindy said. “He’s a proud and stubborn man. He started imagining that I was going to leave him as soon as the agent sent our check, take the money and get as far from him as I could. Then he said he was going to disappear one day and I’d be better off. He was having such a hard time, I didn’t know what he would do.”

  “And what was your response to that?”

  She had everyone’s attention. Nina saw a few unconvinced looks, and hoped Winston’s next few questions would erase those.

  “I told him he could have all the money when it came, and put it in a bank account just in his name, if it would make him feel better. I wouldn’t take anything. That way he wouldn’t have to worry anymore that I would leave him or something.”

  “You offered to give him your share of the check?”

  “It made no difference to me, as long as we were together.”

  “If you made yourself penniless, a pauper, made yourself completely powerless, gave up everything, he would feel better? Then you couldn’t leave him? He needed you to sacrifice all you had to shore up his bruised ego?”

  Lindy pushed herself up. “I never said that!”

  At the same time, Riesner jumped up from his chair and began objecting.

  And at the same time, Winston calmly said, “Withdrawn.”

  Milne called Winston and Riesner to the bench. Leaning away from the jury so he wouldn’t be heard, Milne hissed a few words to Winston that had Winston nodding his head and promising he’d never do it again. Winston had sprung that inspired cruelty on Lindy; it had certainly never been rehearsed in the office conference room. Nina was sure it was spontaneous; he hadn’t prepared that outburst of eloquent questions that had forced Lindy into a protective stance and made the real relationship spring to life for the jury.

  Now, as Winston received his dressing-down, the jury had plenty of time to sit there and think about Mike and Lindy, about a man’s irrational and sour fears when he hits bottom for the second time, and a woman’s willingness to give too much to help him.

  Nina knew she couldn’t have done that to Lindy. She would feel too much compunction. Also, she felt Lindy’s mortification at having these things stated so baldly. Lindy looked shamefaced, like a wife admitting to but excusing a husband that beats her every Friday night.

  Dynamite, Genevieve scribbled on her pad for Nina’s benefit.

  “What happened then?” Winston now said. The lawyers had returned to their places. Lindy sat very straight and stared straight ahead. She no longer trusted Winston.

  “I had found a space we could use to set up a boxing ring and a supplier who would set us up on credit. That week a check came from the agent. All we had from seven years of hard work. Twelve thousand five hundred dollars. That night, Mike asked me to type up and sign this exhibit.”

  “Referring to Cross-Complainant’s Exhibit One. And you have already testified that you signed it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, let me ask you this, Lindy.” Winston’s voice dropped, and everybody leaned in closer so as not to miss a word. “Let me ask you this simple but important question.”

  “Yes?” Lindy was all but vibrating, knowing what was coming.

  “Why did you sign this document?”

  In the silence that followed Nina heard Mike’s stentorian breathing.

  “Because Mike said we would get married if I signed it. We’d get married and try to gut it out.”

  A mass exhalation. Several jurors wrote that statement down.

  “He promised to marry you?”

  “Yes. You know, legally.”

  “So long as all the money and power were kept completel
y in his hands?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. So long as—his property was kept separate. He needed that. It was important to him, and it didn’t matter to me, don’t you see?”

  Winston started to comment on her reply, then thought better of it. He thought for a moment, tapping his hand on his chin, and Nina saw again how he used pauses to suck in all the wandering attention. She was learning from him.

  He said eventually, compassionately, “But you didn’t get married.”

  Lindy explained again how Mike pocketed the agreement and left for Texas to sign the final paperwork terminating their business there. Winston let her talk.

  “When he got back, I kept saying to Mike, let’s do it, it’s so simple, just go to a justice of the peace and make it official. But“—she held her palms up and shrugged—”we just never did.”

  “You opened a checking account to deposit the check?”

  “Mike did, yes.”

  “Was your name on it?”

  A wary shake of the head. “No.”

  “Did you move?”

  “Oh, yes. Within a week. To an apartment near Howe Avenue.”

  “Was your name on the lease?”

  “No.”

  “Did you lease the exercise facility and sign some contracts for services and equipment?”

  “No.”

  “Mike did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the business begin making money?”

  “It took off, and we never looked back,” said Lindy with whatever pride Winston had left her.

  “Did the business eventually incorporate as Markov Enterprises and were stock certificates issued in that name?”

  “Yes,” she said, and in a voice Nina could barely hear, she added, “and my name wasn’t on them.”

  “Did you protest to Mike?”

  “No. I just asked him again—this was about ten years ago. Could we—let’s get married, I said. Like you promised. And he said when the time was right. And I let it go.”

  “You relied on his promise?”