The Commission

Chapter 3 — The Lawyer’s Math

Elena Marsh’s office was on the fourteenth floor of a downtown Phoenix building with a view of the state capitol, and everything in it — the desk, the diplomas, the orchid sweating in the corner — said the same thing: I win cases, and I bill accordingly.

Diana had paid four hundred dollars for the consultation. It was the most expensive hour of her life, and it hadn’t even started yet.

“Let me make sure I understand,” Marsh said, reading Diana’s notes through rimless glasses. “You closed a twelve-million-dollar listing. Your commission was six hundred thousand. At funding, the developer’s attorney produced an addendum — which you say you never signed — cutting your commission to fifty thousand.”

“That’s right.”

“And you have a copy of the addendum.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have the original listing agreement?”

“Yes.”

“Any emails referencing the addendum? Any witnesses to the March meeting who saw what you signed?”

Diana thought back to March third. Preston’s conference room. She had signed the listing agreement — six pages, she remembered initialing each one — and then Preston had talked for an hour about his vision for the Saguaro House launch, and his assistant had brought in more papers, and she had signed… what? A stack. She had signed a stack, because that was what you did at pre-listing meetings, and she had been so hungry for the listing she would have signed a confession.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t remember every page.”

Marsh nodded like Diana had just confirmed a diagnosis. “Here’s the math, Ms. Voss. And I want you to hear it straight, because nobody else will tell you straight.”

She turned a legal pad toward Diana and wrote as she talked.

“Forensic handwriting expert: five to eight thousand dollars, and even then, experts disagree, and juries find it boring. Filing and discovery against Cole Development Group: they will bury you in paper. Howard Pryce is the best real estate litigator in this state, and he bills at nine hundred an hour, and Preston Cole will happily spend two hundred thousand dollars to avoid paying you six hundred. “Your retainer with me would be thirty-five thousand. Total cost to get to trial: eighty to a hundred and fifty thousand. Timeline: eighteen to twenty-four months.”

“He’ll depose you for two days about every document you’ve ever signed,” Marsh went on. “He’ll subpoena your brokerage’s files, your assistant, your bank records. He’ll file a counterclaim — tortious interference, probably, something expensive to defend — and offer to drop it if you drop your suit. That’s the playbook. I’ve seen it three times. It works three times.””

Diana stared at the numbers. They looked like a different kind of forgery.

“And your odds,” Marsh continued, “are a coin flip. Best case. It’s your word against a signed document. You say you didn’t sign it; they say you did. Without a witness or a paper trail proving the forgery, a jury sees a successful agent with buyer’s remorse over a deal she agreed to.” Marsh set down her pen. “I believe you, Ms. Voss. But belief isn’t evidence, and evidence is expensive.”

“What if I can’t afford eighty thousand dollars?”

“Then you take the fifty, and you learn the most expensive lesson in Scottsdale real estate.” Marsh’s voice softened, fractionally. “I’m sorry. If it helps — you’re not the first agent to sit in that chair about Preston Cole. You’re not even the first this year.”

Diana walked out of the office without signing the engagement letter. She stood on the sidewalk on Washington Street with the four-hundred-dollar consultation ringing in her ears like tinnitus and watched the light rail slide past, full of people whose worst problem that day was probably a parking ticket.

Eighty thousand dollars. She had forty-seven thousand in credit card debt. She had a tuition envelope on her kitchen counter — twenty-eight thousand dollars, due Friday — with money she no longer had. The fifty thousand from Cole would cover tuition and barely dent the rest. It was designed that way. It was a number calculated to keep her quiet and keep her grateful, and the worst part was that a month ago it would have felt like a fortune.

Leo was at the kitchen table when she got home, doing long division with his tongue caught between his teeth.

“Mom,” he said without looking up, “am I still going to Palm Court next year? Tyler says his parents might move him to public school because of money.”

Diana hung up her keys. Her hand left a damp print on the hook. “You’re going to Palm Court,” she said. “Don’t worry about money. That’s my job.”

“Okay.” He looked up and grinned. “Can we still get the dog?”

She laughed — it came out wrong, cracked in the middle — and kissed the top of his head. “We’ll talk about the dog.”

After he was asleep, Diana sat at the kitchen table with her laptop and opened a new folder. She named it COLE, in all caps, like a warning label. Into it she put the scan of the addendum, the listing agreement, the settlement statement with its beautiful, lying $600,000, and Elena Marsh’s card.

Then she sat back and looked at the folder, and she thought about what Marsh had said — you’re not the first agent to sit in that chair about Preston Cole — and she thought about the signature that someone had practiced, and practiced, until it looked like hers.

She couldn’t afford to sue him. That was a fact, and facts were facts.

But Marsh had said something else, underneath all the math. She had said: belief isn’t evidence.

Fine, Diana thought, and opened a blank document and typed, at the top: WHAT I KNOW.

Beneath it:

1. I did not sign the addendum.
2. Someone practiced my signature until it looked like mine.
3. Marsh says I’m not the first.

She stared at the three lines. It wasn’t much. Three lines on a screen, and it was everything she had in the world.

Then I’ll go find the evidence, she thought. And she saved the file inside the COLE folder, and went to bed, and dreamed about signatures — hundreds of them, whole pages of her own name, written by hands she couldn’t see.