In Love and Law

by Drake Koefoed

  “They came at me with the bats. I shot them. I don’t know them.”

  “Someone sent a couple of thugs with bats to get Doc Holliday.”

  “I thought I was Dave Mather. I don’t know who they were or why.”

  “I thought you were Dave Mather, too, Doc. You left the scene as it was, and that was that.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t pull the masks or anything.”

  “No.”

  “Did you see them in the newspaper?” “I did, but I didn’t know who they were.” “What you did is get some guns for your lionesses.” “Right.”

  “You, me or Hank, someone poses a threat, we will think about shooting. What will Marie or Chrissie do?”

  “They will react as trained. They will shoot to kill. No fucking questions asked, no second chance. They tried to hurt me, Mel. They might try to hurt my princess, or my niece. I can’t have that.”

  The shotguns suddenly started firing rapidly. “Hank’s doing a mad minute.”

  “An exercise designed to reduce a soldier’s reluctance to fire.”

  “We brought them up here and told them we were going to teach them to shoot, just in case. And we really brought them up here to train them to kill. If you want my confession, that is just what we did.”

  The shotguns started in again. “Hank is stripping away that veneer of civilization, and making them ready to react with deadly force.”

  Mel looked down. “I’ve spent my life trying to keep people from being like this.” “Man is the deadliest predator that ever existed on this planet. T. Rex is a joke compared to us. We would grind him up for hamburgers. We would kill him with our spears or our chopper gunships. We would exterminate him for the hell of it. The girls are not being corrupted. They have been threatened, and now they are getting ready to protect themselves and their own. Getting in touch with their inner lioness. If they had cubs, they would be so ruthless and mean it would take your breath away. You are not here to change what we are. You’re here to preserve the fragile structure of civilization when we are not busy destroying everything in sight. Pretty soon, they may need to meow for the big kitty cat, and then it will get really fucking ugly.” “I’m trying to reason with the big kitty cat.”

  “How can you do that? The big kitty cat is fundamentally unreasonable. When the lioness meows, he will come, and he will kill. He won’t think or reason or discuss things like civilized cats. He will kill. Her meow will shut off his rational brain. He will destroy anything he perceives as a threat, and think about it later, if ever.”

  The shotguns started up again. “You know the difference between an Army sentry and a Marine sentry?”

  “Tell me.”

  “An Army sentry shoots first and asks questions later.”

  “The Marine sentry?”

  “He shoots first and he doesn’t ask questions.”

  “In another context, it would be funny.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll gather up my girls and guns and head home.”

  “Will, if I can have some chance to solve this… please tell me what’s going on.”

  “If I can, I will. We’re not against each other except in a trivial way.”

  “I know.”

  Will went back to his car. They were sitting around. The trash and brass was picked up. They were kind of subdued. They got in the car. Will took off. “I could get some gravel for your car lot, favorite niece.”

  “I would like that. It’s a good time with no cars there.”

  They went to the house, and he got the dumper and picked up some gravel. She took her tow truck to the DMV and got a license to tow with it. She put it on her corporate insurance. She was pretty deep into debt with Hank, but he wasn’t complaining. They took the gravel to the lot, and Will spread it as best he could. Marie went to work on it with a shovel and rake. The neighbor came over. “I’m Saul Silverberg. I own the gas station next door.”

  “Pleased to meet you Saul. I’m Marie Estofan. I own this car lot.”

  “You’re pretty young to be a car dealer.”

  “Well, I’m just starting. My uncle, William Ames, just filed my application for a dealer license. My sales manager, Jeff Alan, is the only one with a license for now. Say, are you going to let me use your bathroom?”

  “Oh, I guess so. Are you going to buy gas at my station?”

  “I’m going to bring you a lot of business. I could get you Phillipa, but it might be kind of hard to get the Gulfstream 5 into your station.”

  “Do you know the folks at Phillipa?”

  “Yeah. Hang on a sec.” She went in the office, and took a catalog out of a large cardboard box. “Hot off the press. My uncle shot most of this. He shot 6 thousand pix of Marcie Della.” Saul looked at the catalog. “This is the same William Ames who is running for DA?” “And a lot of things.” “I have a friend with a tractor who could grade your lot.” “What would he charge?” Saul made a call. Irv, would you do a quick grading job on the car lot next door? Kind of. I’d like it to look nice.” “$25 for a fifteen minute push around.” She got on her own phone, and got Will. He agreed to bring her another load of gravel right away. “My gravel is on the way. So if he can come in an hour or so to spread, that would be really nice.”

  “He will.”

  Jeff came with a car and parked it at the curb. “Marie, are you going to keep working on the gravel?”

  “Saul is getting a guy to do it with a tractor. Will is going to bring some more gravel right away.”

  “I need to store 5 cars here. As soon as the gravel is laid, If I may. I had them somewhere else but they got real strange about it, and, so…”

  “It’s no problem. Oh, cool, Will is here. She went inside and made a couple of calls. She had her towing license and her dealer license. Hank wanted her and Will and Chrissie to go out to dinner. The Sheriff had approved her carry permit but she needed to pay her fee and be fingerprinted. She told Will about all of that, and he spread the gravel on her lot. Irv came and flattened it out. Will paid him, and Marie went in to struggle with her book keeping software to record the debit. She finally got it. She drove Will back to his office, leaving the 10 wheeler on the lot. Jeff rode with them, and talked a mile a minute to Will. Jeff called a mechanic to look at the trade in car. He came over, and had it starting in a few minutes. Stan from the auction called, and sold her five cars sight unseen for $1000, which Hank paid. She shuttled drivers and cars around until dinner time, and then she went with Will to the house. Will had been doing paperwork for the last few hours, and was kind of worn down.

  Chrissie was still at work. Sharon Isabel was still at Will’s office. They were trying to figure out how to sell Will’s criminal practice off if he became DA, and also how to split the money from current work. There was enough to go around, but it seemed almost impossible to see who had earned what. Partnership would not work because Will was going to need to get completely out if he was elected.

  Chrissie came home, which brightened things. Marie and Hank sat together, laughing about the ridiculous things going on in the court.

  Will was talking to someone on the phone, about car lot business. “I would, and my niece might, but my wife isn’t going to go for it. Rick, there is no way. She’s an assistant district attorney. No she can’t. “The appearance of impropriety.” She won’t. She is very ethical, and she isn’t going to, even though there is nothing actually wrong with it. No, my wife is not talking to you about it. She will not. She will not! Whatever. He put the phone in his pocket. “You called me your wife.”

  “Same as. Hank is my Dad, Marie is my niece. You’re my wife. You don’t know where you stand? You’re my princess. My one and only.”

  “That isn’t like being married.”

  “Marriage is a contract with the state, inviting it into your most personal relationship.”

  “I don’t care about the state. Marriage is where you get up in front of your friends and relatives, and mine, and you say that you
will have and hold me and love and cherish me in sickness and in health, for so long as we both shall live. And you put a ring on my finger that says you belong to me, and I belong to you, and we’re real serious about it.”

  “I thought we had that settled.”

  “Never settled until you make the promise. I don’t want a diamond. They come from a criminal conspiracy.”

  “A week ago you were ready to dump me over the Marcie thing.”

  “I still wonder about her.”

  Hank started his laptop, flicked some keys and moused around. “Since this is still not dead, let me show you some things.”

  “I’m not looking at those pictures again.”

  “You want him to marry you, you had better look at them again.” “You don’t tell me…”

  “I do. Look. Listen. Yes, your father in law does tell you. Respect your elders and listen.”

  “Here we have a pic. What does it show?”

  “He’s there with her and she is naked.”

  “What’s he wearing?”

  “Jeans, a T shirt. Some really old jeans.”

  “And some old tennis shoes. This is what he would wear to seduce the most beautiful woman in America? A notebook in his pocket, a camera in his hand, a pen behind his ear, his hair isn’t even combed. He’s looking at her. Now I can’t imagine having that bosom in front of me and not looking at it, but what he is looking at is?”

  “Her face. That’s pretty nice, too, isn’t it?”

  “How would you characterize his expression?”

  “Thoughtful.”

  “She has just said something about the work, and he is thinking about it. They are talking about the shoes.”

  “Well, maybe they are.”

  “Next one. She is putting her pants on. Not taking them off. They are laughing. Someone said something funny. Is her makeup messed up? Is her hair mussed? Has she just had sex?” “No.” “What does Will do when you have sex?” “Not your business.” “Is it not the fact that he kisses you all over the face about 500 times” “Well, he does tend to do that, yes.”

  “So if he had just done it to Marcy, which I am absolutely certain he has never done, would her makeup look like this?”

  “No.”

  The P.I.s camera is three minutes and 21 seconds ahead of Will’s. Here she is, doing a pose with her back to the camera. She’s just fooling around. The P.I. has her there, and so does Will. The next frame the P.I. has is eight minutes later. She’s nude again. This time, she does several pix where she is fooling with the strap on the sandals. But there are like, a minute and 30 seconds missing. Will was just standing there? “No. He is sitting at the table with the camera. The pic shows her with the side of her breast showing. The ones he deleted there at the table. What do you think they showed? Look at Marcie. See how she is kind of blushing?”

  “He is telling her those show too much and he has to delete them, and he does it. Will is that what happened?”

  “Yes. I don’t let my girls show their nipples. They can be kind of showing through a leotard or something, and we look the pic over carefully. Some of my best shots get deleted because they are just over the line. I don’t do porn. I do sexy, suggestive, sure. But I shoot ladies, not whores, and if one of them decides to cross the river, I give her a kiss on the cheek, hand her her portfolio, and forget her. It isn’t about what I have seen. It’s about a lady’s reputation. Let me give you an example. Hank, would you guys go to the kitchen for a few minutes?

  “Say I was shooting you, Chrissie.” He unbuttoned her blouse. “Oh, it is so nice in here.” “But if I was just shooting, let’s say we have the blouse like this. He put it back a little. Now I want the bra a little higher. He put his hand inside and lifted it a bit, and pulled it smooth.

  If you were modeling underwear or lingerie, you might get comfortable with having a photographer do something like that. We get pretty used to each other, and most of the girls doing that kind of work are pretty blasé about it. Lots of what may look like sexual conduct isn’t. However ridiculous it might look, I can sit at a table with a naked woman and argue about whether a shot shows too much or not. In the film age, I used to sometimes get mad about pix I considered too suggestive, and I would put the negs in an envelope and give it to the model. I once went to visit a girl who had some of those, and her husband had printed one of them poster sized and put it in the living room. Now, true or false, we are all done with the Marcie in the buff thing?” “We’re all done with it.” Hank and Marie came back in. “You gotta remember, Hank, how hot those are. If she is going to be seen with nothing on, it will be when she chooses to be, and she will be shot by Marc Douglas or Laureen Hall for a centerfold, not by some P.I., and she will charge more for that set of pics than Bill Gates spent on his house. Don’t let anyone get a copy.” “I’ll delete them.”

  “If that weasel published those pictures, which gun would you shoot him with?”

  “The one in the charger over there. ‘Mr. Spence, William Ames in Oregon. Would you like to do a case for the hottest supermodel on the planet? That would indeed be Marcie Della. She’s right here.’ Think I could get an editor to testify as to what the one and only set of nude pics of Marcie would be worth? Maybe Larry Flynt?”

  “Diabolical. Discover your way up the food chain, joint and several liability. Poor little Marcie in three different dresses a day. Each one of which you could pick up for the price of a supertanker. All of them modest and very fashionable just enough close fitting for the men, and all the glamour the women can stand. Her injured innocence! Her very proper outrage! She could do it by instinct, with nothing needed but to put her poor little mistreated self on the stand.”

  “She certainly could. A judgment Warren Buffet would have trouble paying. I won’t think of Spence. You’re already prepared to try it. And you’ll never want for a thing for the rest of your life. Last of all, will you want for anything by Phillipa.”

  She went in the bedroom, and came out in a pair of black leather boots with gold buckles and little straps that didn’t need to be there, but looked great.

  “She picked these out for me. Some that she got one size too big just so she could give them to me. I’m sorry I thought bad about her.”

  “She’s devious, manipulative, cruel and heartless when she isn’t busy being considerate, kind and generous.”

  “She would have.”

  “Yes, just for the hell of it. Give her the cookie jar, and she will run around giving them all away, and then break the jar over someone’s head.”

  “One of a kind.”

  “You’ll see when you meet her.”

  “You think I will?”

  “She is going on the road for Phillipa. Phillipa is buying her her very own Lear jet, or if she wants to take all her shoes with her, she can use Phillipa’s Gulfstream. You think I’m kidding. You’ll know it’s her when you see a Rolls out front. A Cadillac limo would be a hardship. But she might wear a pair of Levi’s and a shirt from the thrift shop to go trout fishing, and she will bait her own hooks.”

  Chapter 7 Vessel in Distress, A Salvage tug is Underway Musical Theme; how I want you by Karyn White Will was in the office. Marie had gotten up at 5 am and gone to clean the windows at the auction. She had come back in the Toyota for breakfast, and then taken the tow truck out to pull a car out of a ditch. She was shuffling cars and washing them. Sharon Isabel was doing court, so Will did paperwork and returned calls. The phone rang. There had been an accident. Marie was at the hospital.

  Then there was another call from an Alan Lawrence, who was coming over to the office with her. She was fine, he said, just a little shook up. Will looked out the window, and an 18 wheel car hauler was there. A tall man got out of the truck, and then Marie did, leaping out like she was going to do a swan dive, but landing on her feet with the man making sure she didn’t fall. They came in. “Alan Lawrence. I hit your niece’s car.”

  “It was my fault, Will. I made a boo boo. I was looki
ng at his cars, and I was in the right lane. He went out to the left, and so I started by him on the right, and I didn’t see he was signaling a right turn. See, he has cut out.”

  “Cut in. Like when you tow a car, it goes closer to the curb than your tow truck did.”

  “Oh, I know that. But I didn’t know Alan would need a whole lane, so I went in there, and then he was sliding to a stop, and then my car got sort of smushed. Alan was afraid I was hurt, but I’m not, and we went to the hospital, and it turns out I have worker’s insurance, so I won’t owe them anything, and then Alan picked up my car, but we’re going to throw it away. See, he has this totally great trailer with winches and things, so he just picked my car right up.”

  “It’s a Sterling Road master. Your rig, Alan?”

  “Yep. I haul cars nationwide.”

  “Well, you just met Oregon’s newest dealer the hard way. Is your rig damaged?”

  “Hardly a mark. I won’t be making a claim on her insurance. I am asking if it is all right to take her to lunch.”

  “I don’t think you need to ask. You will treat her like a lady?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “She is an adult. If she wants to eat with you or sleep with you, it’s up to her.” Alan blushed. “You can probably fit the truck in behind her office.” “I can. I want to rent that spot for $65 a month.” “Did you run this by the Chairman, Marie?” “He’s fine with it.” “Let me see your license, Alan?”

  He handed it over. Will scanned it and returned it. He made a phone call. “Caroline, can you do me a 3 for a guy who is waiting?”

  “You will be parking at the edge of the pavement, just on her property?”

  “If that’s OK.”

  “If you are completely on her property, you will probably be covered by her insurance for vandalism and such. We’ll have to check and make sure.”

  “I’m not worried. I have insurance anyway.”

  The phone rang. “Will? Caroline. He’s fine, Honorable discharge US Army. Owns the truck and trailer. Credit good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So we will rent you a space yes. The only thing we have against you is that you’re a Doggie.”