Read Online An Invisible Client by Victor Methos - Free Book Online Page B

Roger Nyer was one of the worst insurance adjusters to deal with. He was known as Nyer the Denier because his policy was to outright reject any claim and then negotiate only when he saw the attorneys were serious about pursuing it. This case was a simple car accident where the driver at fault had been drunk, and my client was disabled to the point that she couldn’t work. It should’ve been settled months ago, but instead, Nyer had dragged it out for a year.
    Jessica poked her head in. “Noah, Ms. Whiting is on the phone. She said something about waiting for you before they have the ice cream?”
    “Oh, right. That. Tell them I can’t make it.”
    “Will do.”
    I put my feet on the desk and waited for Nyer to call. He never called on time. He had to establish control as quickly as possible, and making a person wait was one of the easiest ways to do that. So I opened Twitter and began flipping through some of the accounts I followed: Ferrari, a few success accounts, and a couple of personal injury ones. It bored me, so I stared out my windows and thought about Tia.
    I had known she would move on at some point, but I hadn’t expected marriage, even though that was a perfectly logical step for her to take. It’d been three years since the divorce, and she had a right to find happiness.
    I wasn’t so much bothered that she was having sex with another man—I’d slept with many women since the divorce. Love was something else. Love was the little things. Holding her when her grandmother died and she cried in my arms. Making dinner together. Lying on the grass at the park and watching the clouds. Love was giving our cat a bath that he hated. Sex and dating didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that she would do the little things with him now. The little things that, somehow, we had stopped doing. And by the time we realized our relationship was broken, it was too late.
    My phone buzzed, and Jessica said Nyer was on the line, twenty-five minutes late.
    I answered. “Hey, Roger. How are ya?”
    “Fine. I’m calling about—”
    “Before you get into it, let’s just agree not to jerk each other off, Roger. We’re both professionals who have done this too many times to count. I’m going to start high, and you’re going to start low. We’re gonna haggle for an hour and probably not reach any agreement. Let’s save that—I’m not in the mood today. You tell me the highest amount you’re willing to offer, and I’ll tell you the lowest we’re willing to take. Let’s see if they overlap at all.”
    Silence on the other end.
    “Roger?”
    “I’m here. Who would go first?”
    He was smart, this Roger. “I don’t know. You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you. What if we both say it at the same time?”
    “That’s childish.”
    “It would save us both an hour, Roger, and probably an arbitration. Let’s just try it.”
    “Fine. We’ll try.”
    “Okay, on the count of three, we both give the figure. At the same time, okay? On three.”
    “Fine.”
    “One . . . two . . . three—blah.”
    “Two fifty. Shit! You fucker!”
    I laughed. “Two fifty it is, Roger. Draft it up.”
    “You’re a damn—”
    “I know, I know. Draft it up and send it over with the check. Have a good one.”
    I hung up. He would never trust me again, of course, but it wasn’t as though we’d had a good relationship before.
    I rose to get a few other things done around the office, my mood lifted, and my ex effectively fell out of my mind with the thought that I had just made eighty-three thousand dollars.

12
    That afternoon, I handled a preliminary hearing on a criminal case: a stockbroker accused of market manipulation, which he’d confessed to on video. It was a hopeless case that we would eventually have to deal on, but for now, I wanted to put on a show for the client. Marty was supposed to cover it for me since I was still technically out of the office for the Bethany Chicken trial, but I