Page 5

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S asha bypassed Jake’s coffee shop in the lobby and jogged up the stairs to the second floor. She let out a relieved sigh when she emerged into a dim corridor. The offices of McCandless, Volmer & Andrews were empty, which meant nobody would ask her why she was running late or whether something was wrong.

She stopped at the lobby doors and reached into her oversized bag to fish out her key card. Behind her, a floorboard creaked. The hair on her nape rose. A wave of adrenaline rushed through her, just as it had the previous night.

She dropped the card back into the tote, let the bag fall to the floor with a thud, and whipped around, shifting her coffee mug from her dominant to non-dominant hand in one smooth motion. The liquid inside was hot enough to slow down an attacker if she splashed it in their eyes, but she wanted to leave her left hand free in case she could land a clean punch. Her brain synapses fired these messages, fast and clear, and the fog that she’d been under lifted.

She faced … a dark, empty hallway. There were no motion sensors here. The light switch was on the wall on the other side of the locked lobby doors—a fact that had never bothered her until now. Her gaze shifted to the door at the end of the corridor, which swung gently on its hinge.

She might be alone now, but she hadn’t been a moment ago. As she stepped toward the doorway, the groaning elevator approached. It shuddered to a stop and sounded its chime. Then the doors parted, and Caroline Masters, the firm administrator, stepped off the car.

“Sasha, good morn—. What’s wrong?”

“Did you see anyone on the ground floor while you were waiting for the elevator?”

Caroline frowned. “Of course. There’s a line out the door at Jake’s.”

“Anybody else? Somebody headed for the stairwell, maybe.”

The older woman’s gaze shifted to the door at the end of the hallway for a moment. “No. Why?”

Sasha shook her head and mustered up a smile. “No reason. It must’ve been my imagination.”

She felt Caroline watching her as she grabbed her bag and waved her card in front of the reader. Caroline trailed her inside and flipped on the hall lights. Sasha kept moving.

“Please ask Eleanor to come see me when she gets in,” she said over her shoulder.

“Certainly. Let me know if you need anything in the meantime.”

“Thanks, I will.” She pretended not to hear the unasked question in Caroline’s voice as she hurried down the hall to let herself into her office.

There had been someone behind her. She knew it in her bones. She’d heard the creak. Felt the warning tingle on the back of her neck. Seen the door swinging in the would-be intruder’s wake. But whoever they were, and whatever they wanted, they weren’t here now. And she had work to do.

She put the incident in the hallway firmly out of her mind, booted up her laptop, and passed the time until Ellie arrived at the office scrolling through articles about Citizens to End Oppression and other modern offshoots of the original sovereign citizen movement. This, at least, was a useful task in contrast to her efforts the previous night to wade through the circular reasoning and complete fantasies that populated the complaint Gray Simmons had filed.

During her summer clerkship after her first year of law school, her judge had marveled at the innovative twists that pro se litigants came up with. As the sucker charged with making sense of the arguments, applying the law, and drafting decisions that treated them seriously, she’d been less impressed. The pleadings were sometimes utterly divorced from reality. But the most bananas argument she’d encountered had nothing on Gray Simmons’ pleading. She had no idea how to begin to respond to the fantastical interpretations of the Constitution and statutes he’d set forth in the complaint. The thought of trying made her head throb.

A light rap on her door interrupted her deep dive. She raised her head to see Eleanor Prescott smiling at her from the doorway.

“Caroline said you wanted to see me,” Ellie said.

“Come on in. I have a case for you.”

The junior lawyer launched herself into the room with all the excitement of Mocha being promised a peanut butter dog treat. Sasha suppressed a smile. She could remember, just barely, when she was a baby lawyer with that same eager puppy energy. Although she was inexperienced, Ellie was whip-smart. More than that, though, she had a strong sense of self and unshakable integrity, which was more than Sasha could say for Ellie’s late father. Cinco Prescott had been the bane of Sasha’s existence when she worked for him and somehow managed to be a thorn in her side even after she left his firm.

“Billing number?” Ellie rested her legal pad on her knees and sat with her pen poised.

Right down to business, Sasha thought. “Bill it under the firm administrative number.”

“Oh, pro bono?”

“Not pro bono. This is a favor for a friend.”

Bare emotion flickered in Ellie’s eyes. It took a moment for Sasha to place it. Worry.

She leaned forward. “You’re not at P&T anymore, Ellie. You don’t have to worry about your billables. This work counts.”

Assuming the system hadn’t changed in the decade-plus between Sasha’s employment there and Ellie’s, the younger attorney had come from a firm where she had to meet hour quotas for billable work, pro bono work, and administrative work. And if that weren’t onerous enough, if she went over in one category, the extra hours didn’t roll over to make up a shortfall in another one. So the most effective way to break an associate’s spirit had been to load them up with pro bono and/or admin work, making the high billable hours requirement virtually impossible to meet.

Ellie’s face softened with relief as she smiled. “Right. I guess I’m still hardwired to tense up at the thought of admin hours.”

It’ll take her nervous system some time to feel safe, Sasha thought. The lawyers at Prescott & Talbot walked around in a constant state of hypervigilance.

All she said was, “I get it. Believe me.”

“Thanks. So who’s the client?”

“Daniel Steinfeld Krav Maga in Squirrel Hill. He’s been sued in federal district court.”

“Are we representing Mr. Steinfeld or the business?”

“That’s a good question. I believe Daniel has an LLC, but double-check the corporate filings with the commonwealth. I may be wrong about his corporate structure.”

“Doesn’t it specify on the complaint caption?”

“He’s been sued as a free person.”

“Pardon?”

“You heard me correctly. The plaintiff is a sovereign citizen so everything is drafted through that lens. We can’t rely on this complaint for any statements of fact.”

“Oh-kay,” Ellie drew out the two syllables. “So the plaintiff’s representing himself.”

“Nope. There’s an attorney involved. His name is Gray Simmons.”

Ellie jotted the name on her legal pad.

“How much do you know about sovereign citizens?”

“A little. They believe the federal government is illegitimate so that means they don’t have to pay taxes or register their vehicles. That sort of thing. There’s also something about the gold standard.”

Sasha nodded. “You’ve only scratched the surface, but you’re essentially correct. The movement’s evolved over the decades. There are multiple organizations now, all with slightly different ideologies and theories. We’re interested in Citizens to End Oppression, or CEO.”

“Oppression?”

“Right. Based on a, shall we say, unique reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, they believe we’re all enslaved. John Boone, the man who sued our client, is evidently a leader of the local unit of CEO.”

She waited to continue until Ellie’s pen stopped moving.

“Okay, so the part where they reject U.S. currency is relevant here because Boone hired Daniel to run a Krav Maga boot camp for thirty people—members of his organization, I believe.”

“Why do they need to know Krav Maga?”

This was a question Sasha didn’t want to consider too carefully because there were no good reasons. Just a few years ago a member of a different sovereign citizen group had shot and killed a police officer. Much like the world at large, this group seemed to lean toward violence.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “It’s not material. What is material is that Boone and Daniel entered into a contract, and after Daniel performed the work, Mr. Boone tried to pay him using a negotiable redemption note.”

Ellie scrawled the words then stopped and looked up at Sasha with tented eyebrows. “I’ve never heard of a negotiable redemption note.”

“That’s because it doesn’t exist. The complaint cites the definition section of the U.C.C., claiming it defines a negotiable redemption note. It does no such thing, although it does define various negotiable instruments. Simmons literally pulled discrete words from several definitions to cobble together a description.”

“Is it a fake check or pretend money or what?” Ellie wondered.

Sasha flipped to the back of the complaint and pointed to an exhibit. “Here’s a copy of it. It looks more like a certificate. I should have thought to get the original from Daniel.”

“I’ll call him when we’re done here,” Ellie said. “Is it okay to send a messenger over for it?”

“Absolutely.” The tension in Sasha’s shoulders eased the tiniest bit as Ellie took on the task without being asked to or given instructions for how to do it. “And, thank you.”

“Of course. So I’m guessing Mr. Boone tried to pay Daniel with this funny money, and Daniel rejected it?”

“Dead on. They went around and around for three months. Finally Daniel told Boone the invoice was ninety days past due. Daniel gave him an ultimatum: pay it in legal U.S. tender or Daniel would file in small claims court. Boone didn’t pay, and Daniel filed.”

“And Simmons removed it to federal court?” Ellie guessed.

“No, Boone did nothing. He let Daniel get a default judgment against him, and then he filed a new original action in federal court.”

Ellie was shaking her head, and Sasha knew what question was coming.

There were only two ways to get a case in front of a federal court: diversity jurisdiction, which requires that the parties be residents of different states and the amount in controversy exceed seventy-five thousand dollars, and federal question jurisdiction, which requires the claim to arise under federal law and be supported by a well-pleaded complaint. On its face, Boone’s complaint met none of these requirements.

She explained, “He filed under federal question jurisdiction, citing the Constitution, internal Federal Reserve guidelines, and the good old U.C.C. It’s the antithesis of a well-pleaded complaint.”

“So we’re going to ask the court to remand it back to the state court? Or will you ask for dismissal?”

“We need to research this, but my inclination is to answer the complaint and file a counterclaim.”

“Counterclaim? What grounds?”

Sasha was curious to see what she’d come up with on her own. “Take a guess.”

Ellie tapped her pen against her lips and thought. “Well, it’s financial fraud.”

“It is,” Sasha agreed. “Which is a crime. So we could refer that to the Department of Justice but we can’t bring a criminal cause of action in a civil case.”

A frown creased Ellie’s lips, and a matching furrow appeared on her forehead. Sasha sipped her coffee and waited for her to think it through.

Finally, she ventured another guess. “So, what are you thinking? Fraud in the inducement?”

“Exactly. The contract didn’t specify the payment method. It’s reasonable for Daniel to have relied on payment being in the form of generally accepted currency.”

“You really want to stay in federal court?”

“I do. We have a better chance of getting the DOJ to take a close look at this group if there’s a pending federal action. While our primary goal is to ensure Daniel is paid, we might as well try to shut down this group, too, if we can.”

“I love it. This is great!”

She clearly meant it. She was bouncing in her chair with excitement. Sasha imagined this case was probably more interesting than anything Ellie had worked on until now.

“Hang onto that energy, because you’re going to need it. When you read the complaint, you’ll see. It borders on gibberish.”

“Okay. Do you want me to start analyzing the arguments and doing the case research?”

“I do, but your first assignment after you get that instrument from Daniel is to find out everything you can about Gray Simmons. He works out of a firm in Peters Township called the Sinclair Law Group.”

“You want me to research all his published cases?”

“Yes, get copies of his cases and any press reports about them, but I also want you to learn everything you can about him as a person.”

Ellie’s pen stopped moving. “What?”

“I realize it’s an unusual request, but this is an unusual case.” Sasha paused. “Did you know Prescott & Talbot has a private investigation firm on a retainer?”

She shook her head. “I had no idea.”

“They do. We don’t. When we want to look into the background of a witness—or in this case, opposing counsel—we do it ourselves.”

This wasn’t strictly true. By ‘we’ she meant Naya Andrews because Naya could find anything on anyone. But Naya was a name partner and running a burgeoning transactional practice. She didn’t have time to play PI anymore. One of the things Sasha had to do if she didn’t want to be so tired all the time was learn to delegate. Just because Naya might be able to do it faster and better didn’t mean she could go to Naya, just like she couldn’t keep writing all her own briefs and checking all her own citations. And Ellie wasn’t going to learn how to do it unless she did it.

“Okay, so where do I start?”

Sasha gave her credit for asking instead of pretending she knew what she was doing.

“Start by asking Naya to take twenty minutes to walk you through the most effective and efficient way to do background research on a person. And take copious notes.”

“Anything else?”

“Just one thing. Don’t call Daniel’s studio. It will roll to voicemail and he won’t listen to it until his classes for the day are over. I’ll give you his cell phone number.”

She picked up her cell phone to get his number and noticed that Daniel had texted her. She opened the thread.

“Oh, he sent some pictures from the boot camp,” she told Ellie. She pulled up a group photo and read the message attached to it.

“This is Boone,” she said, pointing to a tall, rangy man in the center of the photo.

She was about to enlarge the picture to focus on Boone, but Ellie’s eyes passed over John Boone and landed on the man directly to his right. Her face went white.

“Ellie, what’s wrong?”

“I saw him this morning.”

“Boone?”

“No, him.” She lifted a finger and pointed toward the man next to Boone. “He was in the alley.”

“Our alley?”

“Yep.”

“You’re sure?”

Ellie met her eyes. “I’m positive. Why? Who is he?”

She turned her laptop around so Ellie could see the screen and clicked on the tab for the Sinclair Law Group. “That’s Gray Simmons.”

“What?” Ellie gaped.

“Close the door.”

After Ellie did as instructed, Sasha gestured for her to sit back down.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I parked in the back lot, and, as I was walking around to the front of the building, I ran into two men in the alley. They startled me.”

“And one of the men was Simmons.”

“For sure.”

Sasha frowned and swiped to reopen the text from Daniel. “Was the other one Boone?”

Ellie leaned in for a closer look. Then she shook her head. “No, this guy had a sturdier build.”

“Another lawyer maybe?”

“I doubt it. He was wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt, like maybe he’d been out for a run.”

Sasha cocked her head. “Did they say something to you?”

“No, they heard me coming and jumped apart. You know the way people do when you catch them talking about you?”

“Huh, that’s odd. And this was when you got here?” She checked her watch.

“Yeah, he was literally skulking around in the alley. That’s strange, right?”

Sasha flashed back to the sensation that someone was behind her this morning and then to the sudden burst of light that filled the hallway the night before.

Yes, she thought, that’s extremely strange .

But she said, “It’s probably just a coincidence.”

Ellie gave her a long look. “I thought you don’t believe in coincidences.”