He paused when the door opened. “Ah, Janice.”
She came in with a large silver tray and laid it upon the low table. There was a silver coffeepot and two white china cups and a crystal creamer and a crystal sugar bowl with a fine silver spoon. On a doily set upon a china plate perched an array of fancy cookies. It looked as if the Queen were coming to join us. I was grateful for the respite as my eyes had begun watering. My eyes water whenever I am under attack, a condition that was hell in elementary school, and I was under attack now. In less than a minute Prescott had exposed every weakness in my case. As Janice poured for me, I tried to squeeze back the tears.
“The project never made a dime,” I said before taking a sip of coffee. It was so exquisite it startled me for a moment, rich and crisply bitter. I took another sip. “As soon as you took our money it all went down the tubes. I’ll make that very clear for the jury.”
“The real estate market died on us,” said Prescott. “Everyone on the jury will know that. They can’t sell their houses either.”
“Your projections weren’t even close.”
“They were only projections. We never claimed we could predict the future.” He put a shrug into his voice. “It was a business deal between businessmen that went bad. Business deals go bad every day without any fraud involved. We can go on all day like this, Victor, back and forth, but that’s no way to find common ground. Our clients want to fight to the end.” Then he flashed the smile of a diplomat greeting an unworthy adversary whom protocol required him to flatter and said the words I had been waiting to hear. “But I have convinced them that the economics are in favor of our working something out.”