Page 11 of The Lawyer's Quandary
Their conversation continued, and Greg’s phone rang insistently on the table just as their pizzas arrived. Mark glanced at the screen at the same time Greg did. “Steven?”
Greg nodded and answered the phone.
“Greg, it took some convincing, but Connors and Wilson are ready to talk to you. I’m just hoping they don’t back out.”
ChapterFour
“Okay. Don’tworry. When is a good time for me to come down? Or do they want to come up here to be away from prying eyes.”
“Can we meet on Thursday evening?” Mark could hear Steven pretty clearly.
Greg swallowed hard, and Mark could see that he was trying to see how open his calendar was. He flipped though his phone. “Yes, I’m free. We can meet on campus and work out where to go for some privacy. Tell the guys not to worry—this isn’t the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Right, because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Steven said in a comic voice.
Mark smiled, but Greg laughed. “Another Monte Python fan,” Greg said with surprise. “I’ll see you and the guys on Thursday.”
“Can Mark come if he’s free? I think having someone there the guys know might make this easier.”
Mark heard and nodded.
“Yes, of course. Just ask him when you see him.” Greg ended the call and shoved his phone in his pocket. “It looks like things might be starting to come together.” He sat back with a smile and inhaled the aroma of their pizzas.
Mark grew quiet as he thought about what he’d just heard. “Do you not want people to know about us dating?”
Greg’s eyes popped wide. “No. I guess I’m just a private person at heart and didn’t want to speak for you. My dating life has nothing to do with my work life, and I have to keep them separate. It’s not up to me to decide if you come along—it’s upto the guys. And they need to be the ones to ask you and decide for themselves. What if Steven wants you there, but Wilson doesn’t?”
Mark got it and began nodding slowly. “This is case caution.”
“Exactly. A good part of my job is to protect my clients’ confidentiality, and that means not assuming things. So if they decide to ask you, I’d be more than happy to have you there.” His smile was wicked and filled with delight at the same time.
“Cool. I can live with caution. I have guys coming to me all the time with personal problems. Last year, I had a freshman come into my office and ask me how he should tell his mom and dad that he was gay and that he had a boyfriend. Last semester, I had a kid crying on my shoulder because he got his girlfriend pregnant, and he didn’t know what to do. These kids have adult problems sometimes, and they’re not ready to handle them. They think they are, but….”
“What do you do?”
Mark shrugged. “What do you do when someone comes to you with a problem? You listen and then you try to help them work it out. You suggest a legal remedy most of the time. Mine usually involve getting them to talk to parents or girlfriends. I suppose for both of us, there can be a lot of yelling, but hopefully in the end, we arrive at a solution.”
“Yes. That’s my job in a nutshell. How did things work out?”
“Well, the boy who got his girlfriend pregnant, they broke up after she lost the baby. He’s still on the team and seems to have learned his lesson. The other boy, he spoke to his grandparents, who helped ease the way with his mom and dad. They’re still a couple, and the boyfriend comes to every swim match and cheers his boyfriend on at the very top of his lungs. Sometimes, we get a really good ending, and sometimes….”
Greg nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes, things just turn to crap. But we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen this time. What was done to these kids should not have happened, and come hell or high water, I’m going to put a stop to it.”
“How?”
“Well, we go to the board first, and if we don’t get satisfaction, then we’ll file suit and take it to the court of public opinion. Let the news media rip the college apart. I think we could probably get a story like this on CNN if we had to. But that has to be a last resort. I don’t want to put the players on display, and the media will demand that sort of thing. But Steven has said over and over that his goal is for Bates to be removed and to protect other players. We may have to go the full-blown media option in order to make that a reality. But I hope not.”
Mark leaned forward. “So how do we make this an airtight case? How do we make it so that the board had no choice but to act? It’s going to be hard for these players to stand up and tell their tales in front of a bunch of people.” Mark couldn’t imagine doing that at their age.
“In an ideal world, we’d catch him in the act. Get him on tape or record him talking about it, though the last thing he is going to do is tell anyone what he’s doing. But catching him in the act is going to involve putting one of the guys at risk, and so is trying to get him on tape. But that puts someone in harm’s way, and I hate the idea.”
“I get that. But let’s not rule it out. This is a predator and someone who has likely gotten away with this behavior for some time. He probably thinks he’s safe. After all, no one has come forward before, and he has no reason to believe that someone has now. So maybe we can force an error on his part. I don’t know how we do that, but there has to be a way.”
Greg finished his pizza and sat back in the seat, drinking his soda. “There are ways of recording someone, but I cannotbe part of it. See, it’s legal to take video of someone, but it is not legal to take video with sound, not without a warrant. That’s why surveillance cameras don’t have sound. It would be easy to get it, but you can’t. So whatever you do, it has to be something that I don’t know about. I’m an agent of the court, and I have to abide by all the rules of evidence. You’re a coworker and a private citizen, so it’s possible that you could install a camera in his office as long as it doesn’t show anything outside that room. Now, that shouldn’t cause any issues with the law. The college might not like it, but there aren’t any legal issues.”
Mark understood exactly what Greg was talking about.
“You know, that’s a very interesting thought experiment. I mean, since his office is just within the locker room, but still separate from the changing areas, is it part of that or is it just an office?” Greg posed.
