“Send me the documents,” he said.
“On it.”
“Colt, the defamation claim is going to be very hard for him to make stick because everything you said in that video was either verifiably true or clearly stated as personal opinion. He’s fishing.”
“I know. He’s just trying to make this worse. See if he can shame me into giving him what he wants.”
“He wants you distracted and spending resources. Don’t let him have that.”
“I don’t intend to.”
We talked for another fifteen minutes. By the time I hung up, Cody was back in the kitchen. “The cavalry is ready,” he said.
“Thanks for calling them.”
“And what did the lawyer say?”
“I need to scan the paperwork and get it to him,” I said. “He’s not worried.”
“Good.”
My father was making calls of his own to people he’d known forever. The kind of people who had long memories and short tolerances for exactly the kind of behavior Judd Mathers was currently trying to engage in.
“He’s going to lose,” Cody said simply. “You know that.”
“I know. He’s just going to create a shitstorm.”
“He picked the wrong Anderson to mess with,” Cody said with a grin.
“They all would have been the wrong one,” I said.
Cody grinned. “True.”
The entire day was sucked up by Judd’s bullshit. My phone rang while I was jotting down notes for my attorney. Things that occurred to me from some of the meetings with Judd. I didn’trecognize the number but it had a Texas area code. Could be my attorney calling from another line.
“Colt Anderson,” I answered.
“Mr. Anderson.” The voice was older and unfamiliar. “My name is Gerald Morrison. I’m an investor in the Surfside port development project.”
I went still. I knew him. Not personally, but we’d been on plenty of calls together. “Mr. Morrison.”
“I’ll keep this brief because I don’t imagine either of us wants this conversation to be longer than it needs to be.” He paused. “I wanted to call you as a courtesy. You did me a courtesy when you reached out to warn me about the direction things were heading. I felt I owed you the same.”
“I appreciate that,” I said carefully.
“Judd Mathers has retained a firm that specializes in online reputation management,” Fitch said. “And I use that term loosely because what they actually do is the opposite. They’re very good at generating a particular kind of online narrative. Coordinated. It looks organic but it isn’t.” Another pause. “He’s planning to go after your family publicly. Your business history. Personal matters if he can find them. He wants to position himself as the victim of a coordinated smear campaign by a powerful family because a member of said family got cold feet. I understand there might be another angle.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Another angle?”
“He’s going to try to make you the villain of his story,” he continued. “And he’s going to do it at scale. Social media and interviews with a few journalists he has relationships with. He wants to get ahead of whatever legal proceedings are coming and shape how the public sees it before you have a chance to respond.”
“When?” I asked.
“My understanding is soon. Days, not weeks.”
I exhaled slowly through my nose. “Why are you telling me this?”
A brief silence. “Because I’ve been in business for forty years and I know the difference between a man who made a mistake and corrected it and a man who never intended to do right by anyone. You can guess which category I feel you fall in.” He exhaled loudly. “And because I’ve already made my own calls this morning. I’m out of the project. Two others are following. Mathers is going to find himself very short on capital. A wounded animal will attack.”