Chapter 6 - The Mechanics of Deposition
The conference room on the twenty-fourth floor of the midtown tower smelled of ozone, polished mahogany, and the bitter, citrus-scented cleaning fluid used on the leather executive chairs.
It was nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning in early December.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city of Chicago stretched away beneath a thin blanket of wet snow, the gray waters of Lake Michigan blending seamlessly into a low, slate-colored sky.
I sat at the wide end of the conference table, wearing my charcoal Theory suit with an ivory silk shell beneath the lapels. My hair was gathered into a smooth, architectural twist, secured with two tortoiseshell pins. My hands rested flat on the polished wood, manicured, clean, unadorned save for a thin platinum band my mother had given me upon my graduation from business school.
My wedding rings had been placed in a safety-deposit box at the Northern Trust branch on Michigan Avenue forty-eight hours after the court hearing.
Beside me sat Rebecca Hale, her litigation files arranged in three neat, color-coded stacks before her.
Across the table sat Grant and Arthur Sterling.
Grant looked terrible.
The weeks of suburban bachelorhood had stripped him of that effortless, manicured gloss that had once defined his presence. His skin had a dull, grayish pallor, the result of takeout meals and disrupted sleep, and his navy suit hung slightly loose across his broad shoulders, indicating a loss of eight to ten pounds. His tie was knotted slightly off-center—a detail I noticed with a strange, clinical detachment.
Sterling sat with his gold Montblanc pen unscrewed, his expression settled into an aggressive, combative scowl.
The court reporter, a slender young man with wire-rimmed glasses, sat at the end of the table with his digital stenotype machine, his fingers hovering over the keys like the legs of a mechanical insect.
"This is the discovery deposition of Grant Parker," Rebecca Hale announced, her voice clear, calm, and resonant in the quiet room. "Taken pursuant to the Illinois Supreme Court Rules in the matter of Parker versus Parker, Case Number 26-D-4102. Mr. Parker, you have been sworn. Please state your full legal name and address for the record."
"Grant Alexander Parker," he replied. His voice was husky, clearing his throat twice before continuing. "Five-eighty-four Hawthorne Lane, Glen Ellyn, Illinois."
Rebecca opened the top folder in her red stack.
"Mr. Parker," Rebecca began, her tone conversational, almost gentle. "I direct your attention to what has been marked as Petitioner’s Exhibit 12—your verified financial affidavit submitted to the court on November eighteenth. Is that your signature on page eight?"
Grant glanced at the document Sterling slid toward him. "Yes."
"And did you swear under penalty of perjury that the statements contained within this disclosure were true, complete, and accurate to the best of your knowledge?"
"Yes."
"On page three, line twelve, you state that your current monthly gross income from employment is nine thousand three hundred and thirty-three dollars. Is that correct?"
"Yes," Grant said, his jaw setting into that familiar, defensive line. "That reflects my base salary of one hundred and twelve thousand dollars."
"And on line fourteen, under 'Anticipated Bonuses or Incentive Compensation,' you entered the word 'None.' Is that correct?"
"Yes. As I explained to my attorney, my company experienced an internal restructuring in the third quarter that eliminated our discretionary bonus pool."
Rebecca did not look up from her legal pad. She turned one page.
"Mr. Parker, who is the parent corporation of your employer, Apex Medical Systems?"
Grant blinked. A tiny, nearly imperceptible flicker of uncertainty darted across his eyes. "Midwest Industrial Holdings."
"And are you familiar with an internal executive circular issued by Midwest Industrial Holdings on October twenty-eighth of this year, regarding the Fourth Quarter Subsidiary Leadership Incentive Allocation?"
Arthur Sterling’s hand came down flat on the mahogany table. "Objection. Relevance. Beyond the scope of standard domestic financial discovery."
"It goes directly to the veracity of his sworn financial disclosure, Mr. Sterling," Rebecca said without raising her voice. "And your client has verified this document under penalty of perjury. He may answer."
Sterling grunted, waving his hand in an irritated, dismissive arc. "Answer if you know, Grant."
"I... I receive a lot of corporate emails," Grant said, his fingers tightening around the edge of the conference table. "I don't recall every circular."
Rebecca picked up a single sheet of paper from her blue stack.
"I am handing you what has been marked as Petitioner’s Exhibit 13," Rebecca said, sliding the document across the polished wood. "A certified copy of the executive payroll authorization for Apex Medical Systems, dated November twenty-fourth—six days after you signed your financial affidavit under oath."
Grant stared down at the paper.
His face went from gray to an intense, suffocating crimson. The color started at his collar and flooded upward across his cheeks, turning his ears a bright, violent scarlet.
"Do you see your name on line four, Mr. Parker?" Rebecca asked.
Grant did not answer.
"Let the record reflect that the witness is reviewing the document," Rebecca said for the court reporter. "Line four lists an approved fourth-quarter sales performance incentive in the amount of fifty-four thousand two hundred and eighty dollars, payable to Grant Alexander Parker on December fifth. Did you receive that disbursement three days ago, Mr. Parker?"
The room went dead silent.
The only sound was the faint, rhythmic click of the stenotype machine recording the absence of human speech.
Arthur Sterling leaned over, his spectacles sliding down his nose as he scrutinized the payroll authorization. He squinted at the corporate seal at the top of the page, then at the transaction code at the bottom.
Sterling looked at Grant.
The look on the elderly lawyer's face was not anger; it was the cold, murderous disgust of a high-priced advocate who has just discovered that his client has committed perjury in a recorded proceeding with documents that opposing counsel can authenticate in thirty seconds.
"Grant," Sterling whispered, his voice dangerously low. "Did you receive this payment?"
Grant’s hands began to shake.
He pulled them from the table, dropping them into his lap beneath the wood, but the tremor was visible in the line of his shoulders.
"It was... it was a retroactive adjustment," Grant stammered, his eyes darting frantically between Sterling, Rebecca, and myself. "It wasn't finalized when I signed the disclosure. The regional director told me the pool was frozen—"
"The pool was approved by the executive compensation committee on October twenty-first, Mr. Parker," I spoke for the first time.
My voice cut through the conference room with the quiet, devastating finality of a guillotine blade dropping into its groove.
Grant flinched as if struck across the mouth.
"The public filing was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November second," I continued, looking directly into his terrified, bloodshot eyes. "Two weeks before you signed an affidavit telling a circuit court judge that you were living on eight hundred dollars a month while asking her to force your wife to pay your mortgage."
Sterling took off his reading glasses. He placed them on the table with a soft, definitive click.
"Ms. Hale," Sterling said, his voice entirely devoid of its customary courtroom resonance. "I request a fifteen-minute recess to confer with my client in private."
"You have ten minutes, Arthur," Rebecca replied, closing her red binder. "And when we return, we will be discussing the voluntary relinquishment of the Glen Ellyn property and a consent order for statutory child support based on an annualized income of two hundred and twenty thousand dollars."
Sterling stood up. He did not look at Grant.
"My office, Grant," Sterling commanded, turning on his heel and walking out the heavy mahogany double doors.
Grant remained seated for three seconds.
He looked at me across the twelve feet of polished wood that separated our lives.
The man who had stood in our kitchen two months ago, sneering that I had nowhere to go without his salary, looked like an empty suit hung on a wire hanger. The power, the leverage, the manufactured superiority that had sustained his cruelty for five months had evaporated like dew under an industrial searchlight.
"Emily," he whispered, his voice cracking with a ragged, pathetic desperation. "Please. If Sterling withdraws... if Judge Miller refers this to the State's Attorney for perjury—"
"You should have thought about the State's Attorney before you filed an affidavit claiming your daughter’s mother was mentally unfit to avoid paying twelve hundred dollars in child support, Grant," I said softly.
He stared at me, his lower lip trembling slightly.
"You're destroying me," he said.
May you like
"No, Grant," I replied, opening my briefcase to store my notes. "I'm simply reconciling the ledger. You wrote the numbers. I'm just calculating the balance."
He stood up, stumbled slightly as his knee caught the edge of the chair, and hurried through the double doors to face his lawyer.
