Rattlesnake & Son

by Jonathan Miller

  The traffic thinned out at the top of the hill. I tried to cheer myself up with Santa Fe memories.

  La Bajada Hill held an important place in my life. I once commuted from an affordable home in Albuquerque up to a dream job in Santa Fe, a La Bajada Lawyer. That didn’t work out of course, and I had rolled back down the hill to Albuquerque with my tail between my legs.

  Still, there is something special about Santa Fe, the City Different. I had met Luna in Santa Fe at a New Year’s party for the governor way back when. That was another lifetime ago. And, long before I married her, I had a one-night stand with Luna in Santa Fe, at my parent’s old house there.

  Unfortunately, I left her for someone else. What the hell was I thinking? “Remember that crazy girl, Lia Paz, that I defended on murdering the governor’s wife?” I asked.

  “Lia Spaz,” Luna said. “She was mentally ill, not crazy. There’s a difference. You chose her over me back in the day. How did that work out for you?”

  “Big mistake,” I said. “But I corrected it when I realized I had been in love with you all along. I lost touch with her after I heard she married some Navajo and went out to the Rez. I chose you the next time I saw you, however. Love at second sight.”

  “So, why are you bringing Lia Spaz into our car?”

  “You are the beauty and refinement of Santa Fe—the City Different—while Lia Spaz was the unrestrained suburban sprawl—the city the same—of Albuquerque.”

  “I guess that’s a compliment. But now I’m not Santa Fe or Albuquerque. Not even.”

  “So, who are you, or should I say, where are you?”

  She sang like Tony Bennett: I left my heart in Truth or Consequences.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Once we get this matter settled, I might move back there and open a law practice. The barracuda wants to swim down the Rio to the muddy waters of Elephant Butte reservoir.”

  We were the perfect balance, the yin and the yang. Luna had the logic necessary to be a great lawyer, while I brought the emotion. She was the head, while I was the heart. My whole career I followed my instincts as opposed to Luna, who followed the letter of the law.

  A mile past La Bajada Hill, we descended and passed a sign that said: do not pick up hitchhikers. prison facility.

  At that moment, the barbed wire of the massive Penitentiary of New Mexico in view, I realized I was full of shit.

  If she was yin, I was the sin and not yang. How many people were housed in the Pen because I had failed the most basic of legal tasks? Motions I didn’t file, arguments I didn’t make, documents I didn’t read? Maybe the dream was telling me something when the judge told me over and over again I had not secured the proper evidence and stipulated my soul away. The reason I had failed so badly in these three hearings was simple. I was lazy.

  I should have taken an extra minute to explain to Chuy that he was probably going to get time and made sure that he understood. I should have taken an extra minute to read Innosense’s plea agreement before approving it. I should have checked the jail log to see if Feliz was still in custody and found a forwarding number.

  I had viewed my clients as letters of the alphabet, as files and not members of the human race. If my own son had gone to trial in real life, would I have done the same to him? I already knew the answer.

  When we passed the first Santa Fe exit, I remembered that I had promised Marley to take him to Santa Fe, and that the little Santa Fe diner two hundred miles south was but a poor reflection of this town.

  We took the next exit, Exit 282, Saint Francis Drive. What was Francis the patron saint of? I was no saint, and certainly not worthy of a saint like Francis, that was for sure.

  “Can we win this case?” I asked.

  “Depends on the definition of win,” she said, looking at an email.

  • • •

  I hoped there would be a delay in getting to the courthouse, but I made every green light on Saint Francis Drive, a minor miracle. After a few twists and turns through downtown Santa Fe’s narrow streets, we arrived at the courthouse.

  Damn it.

  The three-story adobe building looked like it was right out of a Georgia O’Keeffe, during her steroids period. It stood above the banks of a sunken little stream called the Santa Fe River.

  Even worse, we found parking right next to the building, despite all the fall tourists. I couldn’t delay my fate any longer. Inside the dark courthouse lobby, Anna Maria was holding Chuy’s infant, who was already bawling. Penny the Puta was nowhere to be seen.

  Next to them was Innosense—with an S—and the Innosense-ettes. Innosense and company were dressed entirely in white. My final accuser, Feliz, wasn’t there, but a lawyer in a charcoal suit glared at me. He gestured to the Feliz family sitting in the back row, dressed in black.

  “My papa was deported because of you!” a boy about Marley’s age said on cue.

  “I’m sorry,” I said before Luna grabbed my arm.

  A man in a blue, glen plaid suit and vivid crimson tie ushered us into the ornate courtroom. At first, I thought he was opposing counsel, but he was the bailiff. People dressed nicely here in Santa Fe.

  I recognized the ancient lawyer sitting at the table for the disciplinary board, Jovanka Smith. Her hair, as always, was in a tight gray bun. She had been a prosecutor in Aguilar when I first started. Actually, I’d thought she was dead, and was amazed she was still in practice. She must be in her seventies by now. She fit in perfectly with this courtroom that could be a chapel back in territorial days.

  “Dan, sorry to see you under these circumstances,” she said. “You were so good back in your first case all those years ago.”

  That was Chuy’s father’s case, Jesus Villalobos. I had so much zeal for my cause, zeal for the fight back then. What had happened?

  Mold.

  My practice had become overcome by mold after Luna left me. Like the bathroom, mold had taken over many corners of my life, and I had never bother to remediate it.

  Justice Veronica Chairez came out, dressed in a black robe with a pink bow. She used to be a district court judge but had since been elevated to the New Mexico Supreme Court. She would be the justice conducting this status hearing, the “hearing about the hearing.”

  Unfortunately, she stopped when she saw me and saw Anna Maria. She had dated me and was related to her.

  “My soon-to-be-fired clerk must not have recognized the names. I’ll have to recuse myself unless you can work this out,” she said. “I’ll give you a minute.”

  Justice Chairez went back into her chambers, but left the door slightly ajar. This hearing could be pushed back for months, and I would continue to be a lawyer on the roof. Then it hit me, what I needed to do. It was my turn on the breakdown docket.

  There had indeed been a message in my dream. Marley wasn’t the only one sending me a message, I was sending a message to myself. While Luna could win the case for me, what would that gain for me if I had lost my soul? Time to regain my life, my practice, my soul—and remediate the mold.

  Before Luna could stop me, I walked to Jovanka’s big oak table. “Can I talk with you for a minute before we start?”

  “You are represented by counsel,” she said. “I can’t talk to you.”

  “I’m still a lawyer and I’m firing my counsel, so I can do this myself,” I said. “Sorry, lawyer. I mean sorry, Luna.”

  “Are you sure?” Luna asked.

  “I’ve got this,” I said to her. Luna stayed at the table as back-up.

  I faced Jovanka. “I will admit to the allegations in the complaints, in each of the three cases. I will pay whatever costs and go on probation with a public reprimand that you can print up in the bar bulletin. While on probation, I will only do legal work supervised by a lawyer in good standing, Luna Cruz over here.”

  Jovanka laughed. Not what I ex
pected. Was she rejecting my proposal out of hand?

  “Ms. Cruz is way ahead of you. That was what she already proposed, and the disciplinary board has already accepted,” Jovanka said.

  She handed me a piece of paper that she must have just printed, because the page was warm to my touch. “Your lawyer already wrote it up and emailed it to me.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that Luna had already written up the stipulation to the probation. That’s what she meant by it being up to me.

  Jovanka looked at me. “One year’s probation,” she said.

  “Ninety days,” Luna said before I could sell myself out.

  “Six months,” said Jovanka.

  Luna looked at me, and nodded. “Done,” I said.

  “And the court costs down in Cruces,” Jovanka said. “The expense of flying in five experts from Australia.”

  “That was overkill and you know it,” Luna said, still at her table. “He’ll pay for one flight, round trip.”

  Jovanka gave me a figure I was actually able to cover the cost by check. Luna had brought my check book without telling me. I wrote the check and handed it to Jovanka.

  “What about the immigration consequences for your poor client?” Jovanka asked, not taking the check from my hand. “He was deported.”

  I thought of Ogado and his magic immigration loophole. “I can refer Felix’s immigration case to Abe Ogado who moved into my office.”

  Still holding the check, I texted Ogado with my other hand. “It’s Dan Shepard. Can you do an immigration case for me as a favor? You can expand your files into my space.”

  “Sure thing,” the text came back momentarily.

  “Anything else?” Jovanka asked. She still hadn’t taken the check.

  I thought for a second. Mitch Garry was still doing a trial before Judge Comanche. Perhaps he could work in a motion to reconsider for Chuy’s eighteen-year sentence.

  I had to sit down next to Luna, check in hand, for this one. I texted him, praying he was on a break in trial and the opposing counsel owed him a favor. Luckily, both were true. He texted back immediately that he could get it done within the next week or so.

  “Any writing advice?” he texted back. “Suffering from writer’s block.”

  “Avoid dream sequences.”

  “Two down, one to go,” I told Jovanka.

  “What about your third client, Innosense Schwartzbaum?” Jovanka said. “She lost everything because of your negligence. You might have to write another check. A big one.”

  I didn’t have another check to write and didn’t want to ask one favor too many of Ogado or Garry. I thought for a second of Allegra, the documentarian who was looking for a subject of her next documentary about women returning from prison. I rushed back to Innosense who had been staring at me with daggers at the back of the courtroom for the entire time.

  “How would you like to be a star?” I asked her.

  She smiled after I gave her Allegra’s card.

  “We’re good,” Innosense said. “I’m dropping my charges.”

  “I guess that makes me innocent,” I said.

  She didn’t understand me. “It’s ‘Innosense with an S.”

  I suddenly understood what that meant.

  • • •

  The agreement signed, the check about to be cashed, I took a deep breath. I was still a lawyer, although a lawyer on probation for six months. Luna would be the next link in the breakdown docket, as she had to review documents that I drafted, and sign for me, if necessary. All funds would have to go to Luna’s trust account, not mine. Fine with me.

  Luna called the glen plaid bailiff over. “Looks like we won’t need a hearing,” she said.

  We went through a few preliminaries with Justice Chairez, and everyone waived conflicts for the hearing. I had expected her to look down at me, and expected myself to feel embarrassed, but instead I felt relief. I felt peace.

  “You look good, Dan,” Justice Chairez said. “Hopefully, I’ll see you here arguing a case as a lawyer in six months.”

  My stomach finally settled. “That’s an amazing coincidence that all three people I needed to solve this case moved into my office building."

  “Who said it was a coincidence?” Luna said with a guilty smile. “I set it up.”

  Anna Maria and the rest of her clan went over to talk to Justice Chairez. Anna Maria tried to hand the baby to Justice Chairez, who pointedly refused to take it.

  “Let’s talk in my office,” the justice said.

  All of them walked through the door behind the courtroom, and the bailiff made sure the door closed behind them.

  Were they trying to reverse the decision?

  Soon after, the bailiff emerged from the justice’s office and indicated that Justice Chairez needed to meet with Luna.

  What was going on?

  I waited outside the building and stood by the Santa Fe River. Some river, it was a creek, barely a few feet wide that flowed a few feet below street level. This creek flowed to the Rio Grande which flowed to the ocean. I took a pebble and threw it down below.

  “What was that about?” I asked Luna when she met me outside.

  “Anna Maria wants me to adopt Chuy’s son, Juanito. If Chuy does get out he’ll go to the Delancey Street program up in Espanola for treatment for two years and can’t have any contact with anybody. Penny the Puta is going to jail on a probation violation of her own. Drugs.”

  I didn’t know which was tougher—Delancey Street program, or prison. “You told them no, right?”

  “Not yet.”

  • • •

  We weren’t ready to head back to Albuquerque. There was nothing at home for either of us. The hearing was over, and Luna’s adrenaline had faded. She popped another Crotaladone from a pill bottle she took out of her purse.

  Was her whole body shaking as the pill went down her throat?

  “Go easy on them,” I said. “I lost our son, I don’t want to lose his mother.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “Let’s walk upstream.”

  It was like a date, with a third wheel missing. We wandered around the City Different—through galleries and museums. “Marley would love this place,” we said after every turn on every adobe street.

  Then we saw a bus marked academy parked in a museum parking lot. It could have been the bus for Albuquerque Academy, a Native American academy, or half a dozen charter schools with grandiose names. Still, this bus was the same shade of purple as Caldera Academy.

  Through sheer force of will, Luna stopped her tears before they began. Marley should have been on that bus with the dozens of smiling kids. It was too much for her. She had to sit down.

  I sat with her on a bench at the banks of the river and held her hand. We sat there for nearly an hour before she felt strong enough to move. She opened her pill bottle again, but after a moment, this time put it away. “You’re right,” she said. “These things aren’t helping me.”

  I wasn’t so naïve to think she’d never pop another pill, but at least she recognized that she might have a problem.

  “I want my life back,” she said. “I want my son back.”

  “I don’t know if I can help you with that,” I said.

  “I think you can.”

  “How?”

  “I need your moral support, as well as a place to live for the next few weeks as I work through this.”

  “Work through what?”

  She pointed at the purple bus. “We’re gonna sue Caldera Academy.”

  Chapter 33

  Contributory Negligence

  Drafting the lawsuit didn’t happen during the warm October or a cold November. Luna was still in shock; the barracuda was treading water.

  “I’m sorry, Marley, I’m not ready yet,” I heard her shout a few times in
her sleep from the guest room. She kept her door open in case he came back.

  She started running in the Sandia Mountains, up the eight miles of steepness of the La Luz trail. Maybe she believed Marley was waiting for her around the next switchback, or perhaps he was at the 10,000-foot summit, if she could just get there in time.

  The rest of my days, I worked at closing my Albuquerque practice and tried to help Luna finalize her severance from Dragon Moon.

  We were becoming a team again. Team Marley. Well Team Marley’s Ghost.

  But there was still a barrier between us. Luna would sometimes disappear for hours at a time, after she got back from her runs. One night, I noticed that the urn was missing along with Luna. When she returned, ostensibly from second run for the evening, I noticed a heavy back pack, I then looked at the empty counter.

  “Do you have the urn in there?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Are you running with it?”

  “I was at first, just to be one with my son, but I sensed that he wanted his ashes spread. I Fed-Exed some of the ashes to friends back in Westchester, and some to friends back in India and had them spread it over places he loved. If you must know, I just took an Uber down to the hospital where he was born, the one downtown, and spread some ashes just as the sun set. For one moment, there at the hospital, I felt something, felt his presence. That moment is gone. I don’t know if I can ever find it again. It’s like my part is done.”

  She opened the backpack and put the urn on the counter. It vibrated for a moment, but the shaking must have been caused by a passing truck, right?

  • • •

  Thanksgiving came and went. We skipped the meal, Luna spent the time drafting the pleadings from her makeshift office. She had a big supply of power bars and Ensure drinks handy to keep her strength up. She confessed that she was down to one Crotaladone, a day.

  That next morning, we stayed home for Black Friday. It’s not like we would shop at the mall for our son for Christmas. Remembering the dream, I had to tell her something that could break the case wide open. “Check out Pat Chino’s employment and service record. And the other guy, the counselor, he had a dishonorable discharge or something!”