Mary, Mary, Shut the Door

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “You know for white male oppressors, we’re not having a lot of fun running this country.”

  “Our turn will come. Until then, we go home, grab a bite to eat, and go to the gym. The state bench press meet is Thanksgiving. If we’re going to have any chance, we can’t let our training slack.”

  “What if we get a call at the gym?”

  “We go. And we bitch the whole way. That’s why we’re Short Fuse, remember?”

  They sat in Mickey’s office and filled out affidavits of service and billing sheets for the day. Each one rummaged through the “Icebox” as the other recorded his work. Mickey double-checked the forms and countersigned them.

  “Find anything?” He asked nonchalantly.

  “Yeah. One,” Sean said.

  “Who is it? Let me see.”

  Sean handed him the papers.

  “I remember this guy. A deadbeat dad. You guys’ll love tagging him. Good hunting. Remember, call the attorney first, make sure it’s still valid and what they’ll pay. Get it in writing and see if they’ll pick up your expenses. Remember when you had to eat that all day parking bill? See you tomorrow.”

  Sean took the papers back, nodded to Mickey, and the brothers left his office. In the car, Sean pointed to the case citation.

  “See that. Chelsea Lyn Dougan v. Burle Hitchens.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “I saw that name today. On a sign. It was the house next to Lorelei Petty. The contractor’s sign. He was remodeling the house. It said, ‘Burle Hitchens’; it even had a phone number.”

  “That’s crazy. If this guy was doing business openly in this county, Mickey would have found him. DBA’s, corporation lists. That’s the first thing he does.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t working back then. Time passed, he got more confident, used his name, no one came after him.”

  “Or it isn’t the right guy. Same name, wrong guy. We already tagged the wrong man once today. That’s plenty.”

  “Two Burle Hitchens? Maybe. We’ll check it out tomorrow at the courthouse.”

  “What do you think we can get for this?”

  “The original fee was two hundred. All for us. It may be worth more now.”

  “That would be sweet.”

  They pulled into their apartment complex, hurried by the pool they rarely had time to visit and bounded up the stairs of their building. The apartment was empty when they entered. Their mother had left a note on the refrigerator.

  “I’m working the late shift. It’s a favor for Marge. I owe her one. Don’t worry about me. It’ll be fine. Love, Mom.”

  “Look at this, Matt,” Sean said, handing his brother the note.

  “Don’t worry, my ass. When will she get off?”

  “Eleven.”

  “We’re going over.”

  “Matt, they have escorts now.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Hey, okay. I’m not arguing with you.”

  Their mother’s parking-lot rape four years earlier at the hospital was never far from either of their minds. Nor the fact that her attacker was never caught.

  “Let’s change and go to the gym. We can come back and eat later,” Matt said.

  “What’s the rush?”

  “Might be some chicks we can impress. I mean we almost got shot, right?” He joked.

  They impressed no one that evening. Matt put up 315 at a body weight of 162. His brother, with his longer arms, did 245 at the same weight. The only women in the gym were a couple of Spandex encased Barbies being fondled between reps by their Kens and a bodybuilder who outweighed them by fifty pounds. At eleven they were in the hospital parking lot where they could watch their mother leave the emergency-room staff exit and walk all the way to her car. She’d never have let them come to pick her up, saying they couldn’t run over to protect her all the time; she had to be able to go to work; that’s why they have the escort service. And they’d never rely on anyone else. So she wrote them notes and admonitions that they silently ignored. If she ever saw them in the shadows, she never said.

  Matt was profoundly agitated at these times, a small part of himself wanting someone to try and accost her, to give him the reason to release four years of fury. He imagined that there’d be nothing but melted steel around a crater where he and the attacker had both vaporized.

  They recognized her escort as Lucius Weems and watched her go to her car. Matt waited for her to back out and head for the exit as Sean swung by in the Subaru. He jumped in and they left by another exit and were home, watching Wild Things, nodding in solemn agreement that Denise Richards was the hottest woman they’d ever seen when they heard her key in the door.

  The next morning, they were on the phone at nine to the law office of Joe Anthony, who told them that the Motion for Judgment was still valid. They had served papers for other cases Anthony had handled.

  “Do you know where this guy is?” he asked.

  Matt said, “No. We’re just cleaning house for Mickey. Toss out the ones that aren’t servable, get updates on whatever we haven’t served yet. We’re still looking; we want to be the ones to get this guy.”

  “Well you better get on it. The statute of limitations is running out on this one.”

  “When does that happen?”

  “End of the month. If you don’t find him, he walks away scot-free on this.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He hasn’t paid child support in ten years. With interest, he owes his ex-wife over a hundred thousand dollars. This is an out-of-state case. The judgment was in Louisiana. They’ve got a statute of limitations of ten years. Even with the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, Virginia can’t enforce an out-of-state judgment after ten years. So he gets to give his wife, his kids, the state of Louisiana the finger. That’s what it means. The paper you have is a Motion for Judgment. It has its own clock, a year. Once we filed that, it stopped the clock on the statute of limitations, but if we don’t serve him in a year, then the wife’s suit is dismissed and his clock starts up again. Our year is up in a week. I could non-suit the case and re-file it in six months, but his ten years is up in two weeks, so there’d be no point. It’s now or never.”

  “What if he gets served and runs again?”

  “That’s the biggest problem. You find him, we have to keep an eye on him until we get into court. He has twenty-one days to file a reply. In that time he can liquidate his assets and flee. We go into court, we win the legal battle. But it means nothing. She doesn’t get a cent. What I’d love to do is have you serve him, then go get an ABJ on him. I could file that on any motions day.”

  “What’s an ABJ?” Matt asked.

  “Attachment before Judgment. If I could go in and show he was a flight risk, I could get the court to attach all his assets immediately, so even if he goes, all his money stays here. It might not cover all he owes, but it’s a start.”

  “What do you need for that?”

  “Evidence that he would not honor the notice of suit. See, this guy hasn’t been served yet, you haven’t been able to find him, so I can’t argue that. That’s why we’d need to keep him under surveillance. So we’d know where he went if he ran, and he will. If you boys did the surveillance, what would it cost?”

  “Uh, we’re twenty-five dollars an hour each, plus expenses. If we did it in shifts, that’d be six hundred dollars a day for three weeks, uh, twelve thousand, six hundred dollars.” Matt was woozy just saying the number. He wrote it on a pad for Sean to see.

  “My client can’t afford that.”

  “Well, we could only do it for a week. We’ve got to go back to school.”

  Sean shook his head and grabbed the paper. He wrote, “I’ll go back late. My friends’ll cover for me. This is too good to pass up.”

  “That’s still four grand. She can’t afford that. If she could, we wouldn’t be chasing him.”

  “We have a deal with Mickey. On these old papers, if we can serve them we get to keep all the money. How m
uch was he getting for this one?”

  “Because of the amount of money at stake, he was getting two hundred for the paper. That would have been a hundred for you. I’ll tell you what, since we’re almost out of time. If you find this guy, it’s worth five hundred dollars, all to you.”

  “How about our expenses?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Money to informants, stuff like that.”

  “Up to a hundred dollars, with an invoice.”

  “Okay, we’ve got a deal. We’ll send you a letter to confirm this.”

  “Good luck guys, you’re running out of time.”

  “Is there any information you can give us on this guy? A description, work history.”

  “Yeah, he’s a big guy, about 6 feet, over two hundred pounds. White, brown hair, brown eyes. Anything other than that would be ten years old. He was a custom builder back in Louisiana. There was a significant discrepancy between his declared income and what his clients said they paid him, as I recall from the filings. That was a big issue in establishing the child support. He was getting paid in cash a lot. I’ll check the file, see if we have anything else that would be useful. If I come up with anything, how do I get in touch with you?”

  Matt gave him the cell-phone number. “It’s on all the time.”

  He hung up the phone and pumped his fists. “Yes. Five hundred and a hundred for expenses.”

  “Let’s go to the courthouse and see what they have on this guy. It’s like you said, he had to be in hiding until recently or Mickey’d have found him,” Sean said.

  They grabbed their jackets and line danced out of the apartment, singing, “Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide.”

  Matt said, “If that’s our theme song, we ought to find out whose song it is.”

  Their mother rolled over in bed, her arms clasped across her chest, her fists under her chin and said, “Martha and the Vandellas. Good luck, boys,” as she heard the door quietly close.

  Two hours later they sat in the cafeteria of the Fairfax County Circuit Court building reviewing their notes. They had a home address and phone, office address and phone, and state corporation filings for the last two years for Burle Hitchens and DNT Contracting.

  “This makes no sense. He hasn’t been hiding. We should have found him first time out of the box a year ago.”

  “Who cares, Matt. Whoever Mickey gave this to didn’t. They screwed up and it’s our good fortune. Let’s call him, make sure he’s at the job site or at his office, and go pay him a visit. Easiest five hundred bucks we’ve ever earned.”

  In the car they dialed DNT’s office number from the sign.

  “DNT Contracting.”

  “Is this Burle Hitchens?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Sean Ellis. I saw your sign on a house in my neighborhood. I’m thinking about adding a deck on to the back of my house, maybe making it a covered porch. I was wondering if I could talk to you about the job.”

  “Sure. Why don’t you come by the office? I’ll show you some pictures of other projects we’ve done.”

  “Great. What’s the address?”

  Hitchens gave it to them and they hung up. His office was in his house, on Route 123, down near Lorton, Washington, D.C.’s prison. They pulled into the dirt driveway and parked next to a white pickup truck. The house had a wide, raised front porch that ran across the front, supported by columns at the corners. It was a white wooden salt-box with dormers on the second floor. The windows were open, and gauzy white curtains billowed with the breeze. The backyard had a chain link fence with a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign. The truck had a bumper sticker that read, “White men can’t jump. We don’t have to. We hire black men to do that.”

  “I’m gonna love tagging this guy,” Matt said.

  “You want to do it?” Sean asked.

  “I don’t care. We’re splitting the money, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can do it. It should only take a minute.”

  “Okay, you write notes for the affidavit.”

  Sean climbed out of the car, walked across the packed dirt yard, up the steps to the porch and knocked on the door. The door was opened by a large man and Sean stepped inside.

  Matt flipped over his pad and began to note the address, time of day, and who went to serve the papers, when he began to realize that Sean was gone longer than a simple “Tag, you’re served.” Hitchens knew they were coming. He’d be ready to meet Sean. Maybe he was on a phone call and Sean had to wait outside the office. Matt reached down and felt around for the foot long steel bar by the edge of the front seat. He looked around to see if there were other vehicles out back. There were none. If Hitchens made a run for it he’d have to come out the front to get to his truck. Matt thought he’d just slide out and liberate some air from one of the truck’s rear tires.

  Just as he opened the car door, he saw Sean walk out of the front door. He bounded down the stairs and strode briskly to the car like he was all done and ready to go, but he wasn’t smiling. He should have been smiling.

  Sean slid into the car.

  “What’s the matter? Wrong guy?”

  “Oh no, he’s the right guy. That’s the problem. I know why he wasn’t served before.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He just offered me a thousand dollars to forget that I found him. He said, ‘Oh, you guys again.’ Somebody in the office found him and he bought them off.”

  “Yeah, so what, you papered him, right?”

  “Not exactly. I told him I’d come out here with someone else who knew where he was. So he offered you a thousand, too. I told him I had to come out and get you to agree. He says he can get the money, in cash, of course, this afternoon. Anyway, I started thinking.”

  “You can stop thinking. We aren’t doing this.”

  “Hear me out. This guy says taking the money isn’t a crime. We’re not sheriffs, we’re not officers of the court. We can’t be bribed. If we don’t file an affidavit that says we couldn’t find him, then we haven’t committed fraud. We just walk away. That’s all he’s asking. Walk away with two thousand dollars. Somebody else has already done it.”

  “Sean, we can’t do this. Mickey gave us this chance. We’d be stabbing him in the back. Hell, we have to tell him that somebody else sold him out. We’re doing this for the summer, we’re passing through. This is his life. We can’t ruin his reputation.”

  “Yeah, but two grand sure would make our lives easier.”

  “No doubt. What do you think a hundred grand would do? We’ll make more money some day. So this year we’ll eat a lot of ramen, we’ll mooch off all our friends, we’ll go inactive at the fraternity. It’ll pass. If we do this, that woman and her kids will never get that money.”

  “I know, I know. There’s got to be a way to take the money and then paper him. I have no problem lying to a weasel like him.”

  “I don’t know man. That’s real iffy. We’ve just got his word that it’s not a crime. If you take it, maybe it’s some kind of conspiracy to commit fraud even if we don’t do it. It’s his word against ours. We’d spend all the money in legal fees just trying to hold onto it or stay out of jail. Let it rest. Go back inside, tag him and go. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. Anyway, if I did it what kind of motto would we have? Whatever it takes or best offer.”

  Sean walked back to the house and knocked on the front door. Hitchens yelled, “Come on in. Have a seat. I’m on the phone. Just be a couple of minutes.”

  Sean sat with the papers rolled up batting them against his open palm. Five hundred bucks wasn’t bad. Two grand was a whole lot better. But Matt was right. He’d known it before he opened his mouth but sometimes, just talking things out, they’d come up with better plans than either one of them had on his own. They’d served a lot of papers that way. The perfect solution was keeping the money and serving the guy, but that wasn’t an option. He wondered how much they still needed for tuition. Their campus
job in the cafeteria covered meals, and loans took care of room. That left tuition and books; oh well.

  “All right, kid, come on in.”

  Sean walked into Hitchens’s office. He was a big man, now well over two hundred pounds, Sean guessed, with long mutton-chop sideburns and a droopy left eye.

  “What’ll it be? If I was you I’d take the money. If you serve me, I’ll just get a friend to say I was at their job site when you claimed to serve me. Some place nice and isolated, no witnesses, just me and a friend. Your service’ll be dismissed, my ten years’ll run out. That bitch isn’t getting one penny of my money. No way. Paying you off is just the cost of doing business. I accept that. It’s easier, cleaner that way. No publicity, no court appearances, no hassles. Do the right thing, kid. Easiest two grand you’ll ever make. It’s a win-win situation. What do you say?”

  Sean was adrift in this new sea of words. If the service was dismissed as bad, would they lose the five hundred? Could this turn out to be a complete loss, no service, no money? This guy had beaten the system for ten years. He sure sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Sean had to make a decision. The wrong one would carry a lifetime of consequences. Wasn’t this why they got the big bucks?

  “Okay, this is what I’m going to do …” Sean spoke slowly, laying down a path of words like breadcrumbs; maybe someone would find him before he committed an irreversible act.

  “What we’re going to do is take the money. That’s what we agreed to, Sean, right?”

  He looked back at the doorway. Matt strode in and reached out his hand to shake Burle Hitchens’s. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Hitchens. This is a win-win situation.”

  “What the hell?” Sean said, relieved, confused and angry all at the same time. He stared incredulously at his brother like the RCA dog, his head cocked to the side.

  “Sean, what’s our motto? Whatever it takes, right? Well this is what it takes. Trust me.”

  A mechanical chirp interrupted them. Matt pulled a phone out of his pocket and pushed a button to answer the call.