by John Grisham
“Why are you up so early?” his mother asked.
“Judge wanted to go out.”
The kitchen table was covered with thick Sunday newspapers, and the way they were strewn about gave the impression his parents had been reading for some time. Theo glanced at the coffeepot and saw it was almost empty. He glanced at the clock—6:45. “You guys are up early too,” he said.
“Couldn’t go back to sleep,” his father grunted.
“Who wants pancakes?” his mother asked. She didn’t cook often, and Theo and Mr. Boone knew they should take advantage of every opportunity. “With sausage?” Mr. Boone asked.
“Of course.”
“What kind of pancakes?” Theo asked.
“What kind do you want?”
“Blueberry.”
“Blueberry it is.” She was already opening the fridge.
Theo poured himself some orange juice and took a seat at the table. A headline in the Strattenburg Gazette caught his attention. It read: COMMISSIONERS UNDECIDED ON BYPASS. He picked it up and started reading. It was not written by Norris Flay but by another reporter. According to the story, two commissioners were in favor of the bypass; two “had problems” with it; and the fifth seemed hopelessly undecided. The loudest supporter was a Mr. Mitchell Stak, a fifteen-year veteran of the County Commission and its current chairman. Mr. Stak owned a hardware store south of town and claimed the bypass would not affect his business in the least. This appeared to be true. As a businessman, a retailer, he was described as a rabid pro-growth commissioner who had never voted against a new subdivision, shopping center, apartment complex, mini-mall, car wash, or anything else that might add to the area’s “economic development.” A conservationist described Mr. Stak as being a “terror to our clean air, clean water, and quiet streets.” Stak fired back with a beauty: “The tree huggers would keep us in the dark ages.”
The report went back and forth with the pros and cons, and it was obvious that hard feelings were developing and tensions were high. As he read, Theo noticed a knot forming in his stomach. Why was he getting involved in such a nasty fight? He was just a kid and this was a real war being fought by some hard-nosed politicians. Then he thought of Hardie and the Quinn family farm. He thought of Judge and the thugs who beat him.
He read on as the sausage began to sizzle in a skillet. His mother hummed in her bathrobe as she cooked away. His father was lost in the business section of the New York Times. Judge was whimpering at the back door, no doubt excited over the fresh aroma from the kitchen. Theo let him in.
The public hearing on the bypass would be held before the County Commission in just over two weeks, and from all indications it would be a regular brawl. Mr. Stak boasted that 75 percent of the people in the county were in favor of the bypass and his supporters would flood the public hearing with a massive show of strength. Hogwash, said Sebastian Ryan of the Stratten Environmental Council, the bypass is favored by a slim minority and most of those are business people who want to make a buck. The opponents would turn out in record numbers.
For the first time, Theo actually thought about going to the public hearing. It might be a cool thing to watch! Hundreds of angry citizens, all squaring off in front of the five county commissioners. It promised to be a controlled mob scene, probably with deputies scattered around the room to keep the peace. Theo doubted his parents would allow him to go, but he liked the idea. He decided to think about it and maybe ask them later.
Over pancakes and sausage, Mrs. Boone said, “Let’s go to the early worship service.”
Mr. Boone nodded and said, “Sure.”
“I like it,” Theo said. He really didn’t have a vote in matters involving church attendance, but that rarely stopped him from offering his thoughts on the matter. The early service was more enjoyable. It ran from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and was not as stuffy as the main worship hour at 11:00 a.m. The dress was more casual and the sanctuary was not as crowded.
“Then you guys had better hurry up,” his mother said. Theo and his father exchanged looks of polite frustration. It was just after 7:30. They had well over an hour to get ready. Mr. Boone could shower, shave, and get dressed in about twenty minutes. Theo, not yet shaving, could do it in fifteen. Both knew it would take Mrs. Boone at least an hour to get ready, yet she was telling them to hurry. But both remained quiet. Some things were not worth discussing.
* * *
After lunch, and long after church, Theo reluctantly went to his room to begin work on a book report. It was to be a three-page analysis of the main characters in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, one of Theo’s favorite books. He liked the book but he didn’t like the idea of spending a good chunk of Sunday afternoon writing about it. Nevertheless, he trudged up the stairs and closed his door. But he couldn’t find the book. He looked everywhere, then went downstairs to the den and searched some more.
“Maybe you left it at the office,” his mother said. Bingo! That’s exactly where the book was.
“Be back in a minute,” Theo said. He took off on his bike and ten minutes later slid to a stop at the rear door of Boone & Boone. He unlocked it and stepped into the little room he called his office. He found the book where he’d left it, on a shelf next to his Minnesota Twins poster schedule.
Theo could not remember the last time he was all alone in the family’s law office. The place was always busy with lawyers on the phone, clients coming and going, printers rattling away, Elsa up front running the show and directing traffic, and Judge sneaking around looking for either another nap or something to eat. Now, though, on a Sunday afternoon, there was not a sound. It was eerily dark and quiet as Theo eased through the hallway and walked to the front window by Elsa’s desk. The conference room, with its dark leather chairs and book-laden shelves, was somber and still. Theo decided he preferred the place when there were people around.
The old wooden floors creaked as he headed back to his office. It had once been an old storage closet. To get there he always walked through two larger storage areas, filled with countless white cardboard boxes stacked neatly together. Things were changing, though. The digital age was dragging older lawyers like the Boones into the world of paperless files and storage, and not a minute too soon, in Theo’s opinion. Why destroy so many trees to produce so much paper that becomes useless almost as fast as it is filed away? He’d had these discussions with his parents. At the age of thirteen, Theo was already a tree hugger.
There was a table where Dorothy and Vince placed files before they were officially boxed away for permanent storage. As Theo walked by it, something caught his attention. It was the name JOE FORD in bold letters on the side of a large expandable file. Evidently, Mr. Boone, having been fired by Joe Ford, was cleaning out his files and putting them away. This was somewhat unusual because Mr. Boone was notorious for leaving stacks of old files around his office for years after they were no longer needed. His brother Ike had the same habit.
Theo took a step closer and looked at the tabs in the Ford file. There was one labeled Sweeney Road. He knew better than to pry, but then Theo had a habit of being too curious, especially around the office. He opened the Sweeney Road file, flipped through a half inch of papers, and found what he thought he might find. The document was called an option—a rather simple title, and it gave the buyer the option, or the right, to buy two hundred acres of land from the seller, a Mr. Walt Beeson. Who was the real buyer? On paper it was an outfit called Parkin Land Trust (PLT), a corporation that had just been created and done so in a way to conceal the faces of the people behind it. Since the option he was holding came from one of Joe Ford’s files, it was pretty obvious to Theo that Fast Ford had set up another company to hide behind.
Most documents regarding land and land transactions were required to be filed for public record in the county courthouse. Options, though, were not recorded, and Theo knew this. As he read on, it became clear the rumor
s were correct. Mr. Beeson would sell his two hundred acres near Sweeney Road to PLT if, and only if, the county commissioners voted to approve the bypass. At that time, PLT would pay Mr. Beeson the sum of $10,000 an acre, or a total of $2,000,000. If the county commissioners rejected the bypass, then PLT would owe Mr. Beeson the cost of the option, $50,000, and walk away.
There was a paragraph requiring both parties to keep the option as quiet as possible. Secrecy and confidentiality were crucial to the deal, which appeared on the surface to be a straightforward option. Nothing illegal. Developers like Joe Ford did their business by picking the next hot real estate spots and building on them. If they guessed right, they made a lot of money. If they guessed wrong, they lost a lot of money.
Theo wondered how Ike had learned of this deal, but he really wasn’t surprised. Ike had a knack for hearing things around town. Theo kept flipping pages. The option was signed by Mr. Walt Beeson, as seller, and by a Mr. Frederick Coyle, a vice president of Parkin Land Trust. No sign of Joe Ford, yet. Under another tab, Theo noticed the words Parkin Land Trust, Inc., and he pulled it out. It contained the documents of the newly created PLT Corporation, a company Mr. Boone had put together only a month earlier. Theo scanned the documents, the office notes, even the handwritten scribble of his father, something he easily recognized. The new company had four owners, or stockholders: Joe Ford owned 50 percent; Frederick Coyle owned 20 percent; Stu Malzone owned 20 percent; and Peter Kyzer owned 10 percent. Theo had never heard of Coyle, Malzone, or Kyzer, and he quickly scribbled down their names. He placed the file in exactly the same position he’d found it, and hustled back to his office. If he needed to see it again, he knew where to find it.
He locked the rear door of the office and sped home. Upstairs, alone with Judge and with his door locked, he opened his laptop and began searching the white pages. He quickly found the addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of Coyle, Malzone, and Kyzer, all of whom lived either in the city or county. Theo searched Mr. Coyle and learned he had been sued by a business partner six months earlier. Theo made a note to check the file in the courthouse. A Google search of Mr. Kyzer produced a recent story in a local business magazine featuring him and his string of gas stations where an oil change cost $20 and could be done while you waited. He was forty years old and loved to fly helicopters and duck hunt, among other things.
There wasn’t much to be found on Mr. Stu Malzone, but one brief entry from an old copy of the Strattenburg Gazette put icing on the cake. It was a wedding announcement two years earlier. Stu Malzone, age twenty-three, had just gotten himself engaged to one Belinda Stak, age twenty-one, daughter of Mr. Mitchell Stak. Both bride and groom were students at Stratten College. The engagement photo showed the smiling faces of two young people who looked younger than their ages.
Theo checked the white pages again to verify what he almost knew to be true—there was only one Mitchell Stak in Strattenburg.
His head was spinning as he tried to line up the facts and put them in order. Mr. Joe “Fast” Ford was secretly buying land to develop to make a killing when the bypass was built. To do so, he set up the PLT Corporation to hide behind. The five county commissioners would vote to approve or not approve the bypass. The loudest supporter of the five was Mr. Mitchell Stak. His son-in-law, Stu, now twenty-seven years old, had been given a 20 percent share of PLT by Joe Ford, and done so in a way that it would not be made known. On paper, a 20 percent share was worth $400,000, and that was before Joe Ford set about developing the land. It was safe to assume that the 20 percent share would be worth far more after Joe Ford leveled the property and covered it with motels, strip malls, fast-food joints, and parking lots.
Theo suddenly had a knot in his stomach, a thick, throbbing sensation that made him feel sick. He walked to his bathroom, splashed some water in his face, and said a few words to Judge, who seemed completely unconcerned.
* * *
An hour later, Theo was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer open and neglected on his chest. He hadn’t been able to finish a single paragraph.
He kept thinking about his father. Woods Boone was a well-respected lawyer who took great pride in ethics and professionalism. He was scornful of other lawyers who cut corners and got into trouble. He served on Bar Association committees to promote proper behavior among lawyers. And on and on. How could his father be involved in such a shady deal? He had prepared the paperwork to create the PLT Corporation, and had represented Joe Ford for years. Mr. Boone had even supported the bypass during family discussions.
Theo admitted to himself there was a good chance his father did not know Stu Malzone. In fact, he’d probably never met him. Maybe he had never met Mr. Coyle and Mr. Kyzer. Theo wanted to believe his father was working only for Joe Ford and doing what the client asked him to do. Theo clung to this belief, but he was still bothered by what he had discovered.
No crime had been committed; not by Joe Ford and certainly not by Mr. Boone. But something was wrong. If it was true that a close member of Mr. Stak’s family would pocket a nice profit from the approval of the bypass, and if this were made known before the vote, then Mr. Stak would be humiliated and maybe run off the County Commission. Making it known before the vote might kill the bypass.
Theo knew, though, that he was in possession of information he wasn’t supposed to have. Once again, he had sniffed through the secret files of Boone & Boone and allowed his prying eyes to see things that were forbidden.
Now what was he supposed to do? Maybe Ike would know.
Chapter 23
By the end of the school day on Monday, the little gang of activists had put together an impressive list of almost 400 kids who played soccer at the complex. Chase, the mad scientist and computer whiz, and sometime hacker, in the eighth grade, had been recruited to join the effort. Using the videos of the license plates taken by Theo and April the previous Saturday at the complex, the team made a list of all the cars, trucks, and vans. Meanwhile, Chase attacked the county’s online vehicle registration records, and in less than thirty minutes had found his way into a file listing the names and addresses of all owners. These names led to a lot of kids’ names.
Some names led to Facebook pages and e-mail addresses; others did not. Not immediately anyway. But the longer the activists toyed with their list, and tweaked it, and added to it, the more solid information they had.
Their plan was taking shape. They even had their own Facebook page and called it, “Bypass to Nowhere.”
* * *
Unlike most of the mandatory Monday afternoon visits, today Theo really wanted to talk to Ike. Around 5:00 p.m., he left Judge at the office and raced away on his bike. Ike’s office was only five minutes away from Boone & Boone, the firm he had cofounded twenty-five years earlier. That firm had prospered well over the years, while Ike was banished to the bush leagues with no license to practice law and little to do but prepare tax returns for people without a lot of money.
“How’s my favorite nephew?” Ike asked as Theo fell into a rickety chair.
Same question every Monday. Theo, Ike’s only nephew, replied, “Great, Ike, and how’s everything in your world?”
Ike smiled and waved his arms around as if to say, “Look at my world. It’s beautiful.” It was not. It was cramped and dingy and depressing, and Ike’s world was not a happy one. “Couldn’t be better,” he said. “You wanna beer?”
“Sure,” Theo replied.
Ike reached into a small refrigerator partially hidden under a credenza and pulled out two drinks—a bottle of beer and a can of Sprite. Theo got the green one as Ike popped another top. Bob Dylan was singing softly in the background.
Ike took a long slurp and said, “So how’s school these days?”
“School is a boring waste of time,” Theo said. “I should be in college getting ready for law school.”
“You’re thirteen years old
, not exactly college material. You’d look pretty silly walking around a college campus with a mouth full of braces.”
“Thanks, Ike, for reminding me.”
“Stick with the eighth grade for now. Straight A’s still?”
“Close.” The last thing Theo wanted was another painful discussion about his grades. He wasn’t sure why Ike thought he had the right to pester Theo about his grades. “I met Joe Ford last week,” he blurted, to radically change the subject.
Ike took another sip and said, “I’m sure that was a real thrill. Where?”
“At the office. He was there seeing my dad on some legal matter. He’s the kind of guy who thinks talking to a kid is a waste of time.”
“If Joe Ford can’t make a buck off you, then he has no time for a little chitchat.”
“Then he fired my dad. He got mad when he saw me and Judge in the newspaper vowing to fight the thugs who want to build the bypass.”
“That was a bit strong.”
“So. I was mad. And Dad got mad too when Boone and Boone lost such a valuable client. I’m not sure why our little law firm represents people like Mr. Ford, but I guess that’s none of my business.”
After a long pause, Ike said, “Look, Theo, I’ve never met Joe Ford. I guess I know some things about him, same as most folks in town. I doubt if he is a crook. Let’s just say he’s a typical businessman who’s always looking for the next opportunity. That’s the American way, right? And guys like Ford need lawyers, so there’s nothing wrong with your father doing legal work for him. A law firm has gotta pay the bills, Theo.”
“What if I saw something?” Theo blurted. “Around the office, some old files, you know what I mean, Ike?”
