Wildcat Wine

by Claire Matturro

“Yeah, Henry, do a descriptive word search of all his files on his hard drive, will you, while I keep looking.”

  I headed next to Kenneth’s credenza, found his liquor stash and contemplated a generous sample of his Absolut, but then reminded myself to focus on the task at hand.

  “Er, it’s, ah, password protected,” Henry muttered.

  I stood up a minute, and tried to think—Kenneth’s wife had left him, he had no children, he had no pets, so what might he use for a password?

  He had that sailboat that Jackson liked to rant about. There on the desk where the rest of us had pictures of children or spouses, and where I had a photo of Benny hugging Bearess, was a photo of Kenneth’s boat. I squinted at the tiny print on it—it looked like it spelled out The Esquire. Trust Kenneth for something pompous.

  “Henry, try esquire. If that doesn’t work, try esquire with numbers at the end, or the beginning or the middle.”

  “Got it,” he said, with unusual assurance for him. I peered over his shoulder for a moment as he typed in “Esquire” and “1Esquire” and “Es1quire.” Then I was grateful that he was doing that tedious task and not me, and went back to plundering the credenza.

  Not two minutes later I found, stuffed in the recesses of the dark back corner, a Winn-Dixie grocery sack. That sack so surprised me, I jerked up and hit my head on the overhanging fern, cursed in surprise at hitting a hanging basket, and thought any number of simultaneous things, none of which made sense.

  “Find something?” Henry asked.

  “Ah, don’t know yet. You?”

  “Not yet.”

  I dug back to the paper sack, and pulled it out and looked into it. Sure enough, it was full of crumpled cash.

  Henry had stopped typing various versions of the word esquire, and turned around and looked into the sack.

  “Oh my Lord. What do you think that’s about?”

  Precisely.

  “Nobody keeps cash around in a sack, not unless there’s something . . . funny . . . about it,” I said.

  Henry nodded.

  “I’m going to take this as . . . evidence. We can . . . maybe”—okay, blackmail was the word I started to say, but then wordsmithed it to something softer for Henry’s sensibilities—“use it for leverage . . . you know, against Kenneth and whatever he’s doing to Bonita.”

  I studied Henry to see how he might be taking this.

  “Good idea.”

  Henry was so easy.

  Finding that sack of money was weird. Scary weird. How on earth would Kenneth have known I would arrive at home alone on a dark night with a Winn-Dixie paper bag full of green cash money? Definitely a bit weird.

  Also, a bit criminal. Let’s see, he hit me, that’s battery, he stole something, that’s robbery. My heart leapt in joy at the thought of a pilloried Kenneth, mired in the criminal-justice system on the charges of robbing me.

  But there was an obvious problem with ratting out Kenneth to the police: How did I explain that sack of money in the first place without tying Dave, Benny, and me to a dead man in the swamp? And though I was admittedly no criminal-law scholar, even I suspected there might be something illegal about finding a dead body with a sack of money, and keeping the money without mentioning it to anyone in Officialdom.

  No, this was a private matter.

  “Let me handle it,” I said. “Trust me, okay, Henry, and don’t, please, don’t tell anyone about this sack of money. And don’t tell Bonita. You know how she . . . you know the way she sighs when she’s disappointed, don’t you?”

  Henry nodded, and I understood that he understood that Bonita might tolerate us breaking into Kenneth’s office on her behalf, but she wouldn’t want me stealing money from him, and that, to her and Henry, was exactly what my taking the money would look like.

  “Okay.” I smiled at Henry. “Deal.”

  “Bonita told . . . confided in me what that son of a bitch is doing to her. Claiming he’s got this proof that Benny and Armando aren’t Felipe’s sons, threatening her with it. Trying to reopen that case, and get the money back. Over such a, such a . . . such a—”

  “Spurious claim?” I offered.

  “Wholly ridiculous accusation.”

  That too.

  “You know, I’d love the chance to . . . to . . . to—”

  Henry always did have trouble picking words, especially verbs. “Yeah. Me too,” I agreed, knowing the gist if not the actual terminology.

  “Let’s do . . . something, let’s . . .” Henry paused, his normally placid manner sliding out beneath this Henry version of anger. “Let’s stop him.”

  “Yeah. Let’s.”

  So, without formulating the details, Henry and I became fellow conspirators in a vague, general plan to stop Kenneth from hurting Bonita.

  We never did find anything to indicate what, if any, evidence Kenneth had that Benny or any other of her children were not the natural children of Felipe. We never did figure out Kenneth’s password.

  But I took the sack of money and Henry drove us to his office, where we counted the bills. After musing over the amount, he put it in a briefcase with a lock and shoved it into the bottom drawer of his desk.

  As I drove home, I realized that there weren’t many people I would trust with $15,000 in cash money. I guess I thought more of Henry than I’d given either of us credit for.

  And then, later that night when I wasn’t sleeping, I realized the particular way Henry had phrased his rant against Kenneth. That Kenneth was “threatening” Bonita. That wasn’t how Bonita and Henry, both experienced in the ways of litigation, would have phrased a rant at an attorney who was merely doing the bidding of his client.

  Henry hadn’t said the bottling company was suing Bonita.

  He had said Kenneth was threatening her.

  That merited some attention.

  The next morning, emboldened by years of smoldering contempt, plus evidence that Kenneth had knocked me out in my own front yard, I pushed into his office after only a tap-tap at his door. For some reason, his door wasn’t being guarded by his secretary, a thirty-something blonde named Cristal who could have been a Victoria’s Secret model, but actually seemed to be proficient, and not at all stupid, as her name, her hair, and her flaunted body would suggest to those who buy into blond jokes.

  Kenneth, sitting behind his huge rosewood antique desk, glowered at me. Behind him, an oil painting of a monarch butterfly took up several feet of wall. “What do you want?”

  I didn’t bother to smile. The man wasn’t stupid. “We need to talk. About Bonita. Why are you threatening her?”

  His normally snide face was passive. He didn’t respond by word or expression or gesture.

  The phone rang.

  “Get that for me. Cristal’s out today. Girl vapors, I guess. She was out yesterday too.”

  “Get it yourself.”

  “Look, I can’t answer my own phone. It doesn’t look right. Just act like my secretary. That’s not too hard for your backwater education, is it?”

  I jerked up the phone. “Kenneth Mallory’s office.”

  Blah, blah, blah on the other end. But the speaker did identify himself as a claims adjuster for one of Kenneth’s insurance companies.

  “No, I’m sorry, but Kenneth can’t come to the phone. He’s just checked into a twenty-eight-day rehab center, you know, for people addicted to cocaine, and his files will be referred to—”

  Kenneth jumped up from behind his desk and showed amazing speed in snatching at the phone, but I hung it up before he could wrench it out of my hands.

  “You little bitch. Who was that?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Like hell. Now who was it? You’re going to call them back and explain—”

  “Like hell.”

  We glared at each other. Then Kenneth punched in our receptionist’s number and demanded to know who had just called him. Our receptionist called Kenneth “Pig Lawyer” behind his back, and judging from Kenneth’s reaction, she wasn’t
forthcoming about who had called him.

  Already very tired of Kenneth, I said, “Look, I know you’re threatening Bonita, that you are planning to file an action against Bonita on behalf of the bottling company, to vacate the award in her husband’s death. You deny that?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  Overlooking this, I plowed on toward my ultimate goal. “You are going to convince the bottling company to drop this case against Bonita.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or else I report you to the police for assaulting me and stealing that sack of money out of my front yard.” I was, of course, ardently hoping he wouldn’t realize I was possibly, probably, in no legal position to hurl that first stone.

  Kenneth shoved past me to the credenza and yanked it open. In no time at all he saw that the money was gone.

  He spun around at me like a whirling dervish of evil and said, “You bring that money back to me.”

  “As soon as you agree to talk the bottler out of its planned suit.”

  Of course, I saw right off the problems with this plan. Kenneth hadn’t filed the complaint yet, and he could promise he wouldn’t, but as soon as I gave the money back, he could file the complaint anyway, or the bottling company could just hire another lawyer and another private investigator and go right on. And, of course, if Kenneth did persist in the lawsuit, and even if I took the chance of getting Dave, Benny, and me in trouble by reporting Kenneth to the police, that sack of money would be gone and I’d look like an idiot with a bogus complaint, and Bonita would spend the next five years of her life in court proceedings.

  I had to admit that as it stood right now, Kenneth had the better hand.

  Chapter 16

  That night, glad to see my truly suck-ass day nearing its natural end, I parked my car in my carport, walked out to the mailbox on the street, gathered in my daily quota of catalogs and bills, walked up the driveway to my front door, and stopped.

  There was a dead fish lying across the stoop in front of my front door, and a rolled sheet of white paper was stuck in its dead-fish mouth. I stared at it. Behind my door, Bearess started barking.

  At the barking, my new grandmom popped out of her house and cheerily shouted across her unnaturally green lawn, “Hello, dearie, how are you feeling?”

  Grandmom walked on over to where I was still staring at the dead fish, wholly unsure of the proper course of action.

  “Did you see who put this here?” I asked her.

  “Why no, but isn’t it a nice big bass. So glad it’s a bass. I never did understand you locals, how you could eat those mullet.”

  I glared at her. What good was a neighborhood spy if she missed the essentials, like who left a dead fish on my doorstep?

  Grandmom bent over and studied the dead fish. “Looks pretty fresh. The eyes are clear, no fishy smell. We could have fried fish tonight. I’ll make the coleslaw if you’ll make the hush puppies.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I’ll clean it, don’t worry. I’m just not good at hush puppies. It’s a southern thing.”

  “What?”

  “Dinner?”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Or we could bake it, a nice fish like that.”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Would you like to come over to my house? Or shall I come over here?”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” I shouted, to which Bearess responded with a howl of doggy frustration from behind my front door.

  “Well, listen, dear, you better let that dog out. And see who sent that nice fish.” Grandmom pointed at the note.

  I pulled the note out of the dead fish’s mouth.

  “BUTT OUT” had been sprawled in large, childish letters in black highlighter.

  Obviously Kenneth’s handiwork, I thought, though the language was a bit crude for a man who liked to put on airs. I contemplated calling the police, calculating risk versus benefit, and keenly aware of the law of unintended consequences.

  “Maybe garlic bread would be better than hush puppies. But you know, whoever left you that fish really should have iced it.” Grandmom picked up the bass and sniffed it. “It’s fine, really. Dinner in an hour? You just come to my house. I don’t have dog hair all over everything.” Grandmom started off back to her house, carrying the fish.

  “I don’t have dog hair over things, and I’m a vegetarian,” I shouted after her.

  “I’m Methodist myself, but we’re known for our tolerance of other religions,” Grandmom said, and slipped into her own house.

  I let Bearess out in the backyard before I punched in 911 and reported a dead fish and a sinister note, to a dispatcher who couldn’t care less but transferred my call to a police officer who was so uninterested as to decline my polite invitation to come out and actually investigate. Apparently, you can’t pick up fingerprints on a dead bass, even if your neighbor hasn’t already skinned and filleted it.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning I conducted my new daily ritual and phoned Philip Cohen as soon as I woke up, which, given the bad dream about being beaten with dead fish, was 5:30 A.M. Yeah, sure, that’s not generally regarded as a civilized time, but he had said I could call him at any time, and I was perilously behind in my law practice and knew this would be a long, busy day, and that I also had to do something about Kenneth and the money and the dead fish and Bonita, and maybe I should check on Benny too, and calling when I first woke up, predawn or not, seemed to be a very efficient use of my time.

  Also, okay so spank me, I wanted to see if that woman answered Philip’s phone again.

  She didn’t.

  He was very glad to hear from me in the predawn hours, and once we got past that, I asked per my daily ritual if Dave was still in jail.

  He was, but it looked good for his release sometime later this morning. Blah, blah, blah, and I cut Philip off before he billed for another five minutes. After I hung up, I fixed and drank a gallon of coffee and, with the idea of actually working on billable files today, I skipped an early-morning workout at the YMCA and managed to get to my office long before the morning rush hour.

  Having managed to beat Bonita to work, which rarely happens, I looked at my calendar, took dull notice of the afternoon’s scheduled deposition in a really very stupid car-motorcycle case—a drunk in a car hit a drunk on a motorcycle in the middle of a four-way-stop intersection, both traveling at higher rates of speed than they should have been, and the drunk on the cycle was suing the corner convenience store for putting up a spotlight that he claimed blinded him to the oncoming drunk in the car, and not, like, say, those seven beers and whiskey chasers. Angela should be handling these depos, as I had progressed in my career beyond car wrecks. But in her current state, I didn’t wholly trust Angela to use enough words to do a proper examination.

  Stumbling over Bonita’s boxful of something that looked like Girl Scout cookies—was it that time of year already?—I pulled out the files to review. If I was going to do car-wreck depos all afternoon, I needed to be prepared by knowing every word in the pleadings and the interrogatories so I could get the deposed witnesses to admit to the facts in the light most favorable to my client, the man who owned the store with the spotlight. Trying to get my mind around the fact that I was defending a big, bright light, I trudged back to my desk with volumes of paper.

  Having plunked the file on my desk, I had started grinding coffee beans when I heard a tap-tap-tap on my window and saw Gandhi motioning toward the back door. Against my better judgment I let him in.

  Once he was standing inside my office, I spoke in official lawyer voice. “Gandhi, I appreciate that we will need to get together and work out a new defense if the appellate court sends your case back for a trial, which, as I’ve mentioned, is most likely to happen, but let’s wait until that remand does, in fact, occur.”

  Translation: Leave.

  “Keisha is breaking up with me.”

  Sigh. I wasn’t his counselor, I wasn’t his confidante, an
d though I was his lawyer, I had other cases to work on.

  “She says I am not serious enough about things.”

  A man in a yellow Nehru jacket who channels lost cats and counsels space-alien kidnap victims. Not serious? Get real.

  “She says I’m insincere.”

  Well, duh. The fake Indian routine and the dyed hair and fake tan might just possibly, maybe, perhaps, have suggested that notion to Keisha the crystal lady.

  “But I love her and I want to marry her.”

  Nothing in my training or personal life qualified me to give advice on love relationships. But I thought I’d give it a whirl anyway.

  “Okay, go to Brock, my hairdresser, and he can get the dye out of your hair, stay out of the tanning salon, and don’t even think about that fake-tan cream, pop out the brown contacts, get a normal T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and at least an antique diamond ring, possibly one with rubies or emeralds, and propose to her at sunset on Island Park.”

  Okay, the antique diamond ring with rubies and a proposal at sunset at Island Park were my fantasies, but I figured, hey, there’s bound to be a core of universal appeal. “Oh,” I added, “promise a lifetime of serious sincerity.”

  And leave my office so I might be able to do some legal work for which I am trained and for which I can bill.

  “I will try this. Thank you.” And he walked out, closing the door politely behind him.

  But not ten minutes later, my phone rang. I snatched it up and grunted a sort of hello.

  “Lilly?”

  “Tired?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I was hoping you could come down to the jailhouse.”

  Oh, yes, my favorite place to hang. “Why?”

  “Dave is being released, but before he goes, I have some questions I want to ask him, and he says he won’t talk until he sees you. Actually, I’ve got some questions for you too.”

  “Philip Cohen is Dave’s attorney. Call him.”

  “I need to see you, ask you a few things, and Dave insists upon you being there when I question him. About that man in the swamp. And Earl. I think, maybe, there’s some connection.”