Attorney at Large (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by John Ellsworth

  “Jesus,” said Bat, his eyes tearing up. He folded the $5,000 and tucked it inside a denim pocket. “Jesus.”

  “Yes,” said Thaddeus. “That’s always a good prayer.”

  “I got nothing else to say.”

  “Hey! We got coffee on the way, and bagels. What do you say we stay up and watch the sun come up?”

  “Why the hell not. Yes, Boss, let’s do that.”

  “We’ll get some cards and I’ll teach you Honeymoon Bridge.”

  “I don’t gamble, Boss.”

  “It’s no gamble, playing against me, Bat. I stink at cards.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I know. That’s what they call ‘irony,’ Bat.”

  “Let’s play, then.”

  “First the coffee and snacks, then the cards.”

  “You’re on, Boss. You’re on.”

  35

  They had the beach house for a week, though Thaddeus wondered if he could actually get away with being out of Nevada for that long.

  In the end, the U.S. Attorney’s office agreed to his being gone for three days, so he was pushing it, renting the beach property for a full week. But in the end he decided to go ahead and try it, the hell with what the U.S. Attorney thought. If a fracas ensued over his absence he would plead his case to the judge, who thus far had seemed friendly enough.

  Henry wouldn’t leave his sheep, it turned out, and he hated the ocean anyway. He had worked in Long Beach during the war, at a Naval munitions dump, and he had seen enough of ships and beachcombers to last him a lifetime, he said.

  Secretly, Thaddeus was glad he refused. He wanted and needed this time alone with just Katy. And Sarai, of course.

  The beach house clung to the seashore in Malibu with the other ten-million-dollar escape pads overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

  The ocean seemed to be filling up with surfers, waders, walkers, and sailboats.

  It was an extremely busy area. Everyone wanted to get a glimpse of Malibu, if for no other reason than to say they had been there.

  Katy had found the retreat in an online listing site of exclusive Malibu rentals. Money wasn’t enough to score a rental; you also had to be someone.

  Thaddeus’ notoriety as the owner of a Las Vegas casino pulled them through and doors magically opened.

  The one-week was priced at $12,500, considered a grand bargain by the Realtor they finally had settled on.

  It was a fine home, traditional Southern California beach house with fully windowed western exposure, cantilever roof at enough odd angles to please any modern architect, long decks around all sides, and a private drive.

  There were too many bedrooms and bathrooms to count, and Sarai immediately invented a game where she would hide from her parents in different rooms and not answer their increasingly frantic calls to her. She would make them find her and broke into peals of delighted laughter when they finally zeroed in on her location.

  There was also a chef, two maids, and a personal trainer, as the eastern exposure contained a full weight room and cardio machines.

  Thaddeus was grateful for the chance to exercise and run on the beach. Katy complained about ten pounds of baby fat she was still carrying around her middle but said how thrilled she was to have the cardio workout area to try to make a dent. Thaddeus swore up and down that she had no such problem, for which she was grateful and smiled, but she knew better; the scale didn’t lie.

  Halfway through the week, the Realtor showed up—unannounced—and dropped hints that the property might be purchased for a very reasonable price. The owner, it seemed, a writer on an HBO Sunday night series, was going through a financially desperate time due to a full-scale divorce war in which she had become embroiled. The beach house had been the writer’s second thought. It could probably be picked up for a song. A song in the neighborhood of $8 million, give or take $500,000.

  The Realtor said she would even cut her percentage in half, asking only 3.5 percent for her services.

  Thaddeus poured her some coffee, listened to her pitch, and sent her on the way.

  Katy and Sarai were walking the beach searching for sand dollars, so they missed out on the presentation. For which Thaddeus was very grateful, as Katy was falling in love with the property and the area.

  The Realtor was halfway out of town when her cell phone beeped.

  It was Thaddeus.

  He had changed his mind.

  He had decided to give Katy the home as a wedding present.

  The Realtor was instructed to wrap the key in a small box with a bow, fax the papers to his Vegas office for signing by Langston Moretti, who would have the power of attorney, and who would wire the funds to the Realtor’s escrow account that afternoon.

  The Realtor nearly ran her yellow Mercedes off the road as the excitement of the unexpected sale sent her pulse racing and the adrenaline pumped. She would take care of it all, just as he required.

  Fine, he said, drop the key by this afternoon, for my eyes only.

  He was also calling a local justice of the peace and making arrangements for a quick, quiet marriage ceremony.

  The time had come; everyone was ready, especially Thaddeus, who was not only desperately in love with his bride, but who was also heeding Albert’s advice when he had run off with Ilene. “Do it now,” Albert had said. “She’s too special to put it off any longer.”

  They were married quietly, at home, at dusk, in the huge living room overlooking the Pacific, by the JP.

  Of course he would perform the ceremony, his office reported, and would personally officiate right in Thaddeus and Katy’s living room.

  And thanks for the proffer of the $5,000 stipend for his services. It was a first, he almost said, then thought better of it, gift horses and all that.

  The ceremony went off exactly at six p.m. Thursday evening. Thaddeus, Katy, and Sarai were present, along with the JP, and two witnesses. They were the young Hispanic maids who had agreed to sign off on the certificate. It was unknown whether they actually used their real names, but it didn’t matter. The marriage license was in accordance with California law, it was legal, and that’s all that mattered.

  They were each given a $1,000 bonus for their service and attendance at the ceremony.

  When it was over, everyone enjoyed an outdoor dinner, grilled over charcoal, of abalone steaks and cheese fries—Sarai’s favorite. The little girl had chocolate milk; Thaddeus and Katy toasted with non-alcoholic champagne, the JP told several funny stories of weddings where he had officiated famous movie stars and other Hollywood lights, and it all broke up at around eight o’clock.

  They put Sarai to bed and then sat outside, alone, before retreating to a seaside hammock fastened to the ocean side of the deck, where they kissed, covered with a cozy blanket.

  “I’m so grateful you agreed to spend your life with me,” he whispered.

  “Smart of me, eh?”

  She punched his side.

  “Yes, smart of both of us.”

  “And we’ve got Sarai, too. We’re the luckiest people in Malibu.”

  “In California.”

  “In the world.”

  “Thaddeus, will you always tell me the truth about us? That’s what thing I must have.”

  “Sure. You just do the same toward me. And if you do fall in love with someone else—I’ll have you both shot. No, just kidding. No, I’m not actually. I couldn’t stand to lose you. In fact, I want you to move down to Vegas and live with me. We’ll get a place, put down roots, and give Sarai a neighborhood, a community, for her to grow up in.”

  “That sounds wonderful. I agree.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “Uh-huh. I have to get admitted to UNLV Med, but I think I can. Second year is much easier admission than first year.”

  “You just made my week.”

  “I’ll see that and raise you one, Mister Gambler. You just made my whole life.”

  They had fallen fast asleep by the time Jimmy Fallon said “Hello, e
veryone!”

  The remainder of their week was spent enhancing Sarai’s seashell collection and dining at a Malibu French bistro Katy had wanted to try. Thaddeus took two surfboarding lessons, swearing after number two that he’d never try that again.

  He had seawater plugging one ear and scraped knees from being deposited with a huge crash along the shore in the foam and sand, ripped off the board by the tumultuous waves he had challenged and never subdued.

  They climbed aboard the Learjet on Sunday morning and were back at McCarran Field in Las Vegas before one p.m.

  After a quick ride back to the hotel and their condo, the newlyweds began making plans for their life together.

  By noon Monday, they had some answers. As soon as Katy had finished her first year in medical school she would transfer to UNLV, where she had already been tentatively accepted as a medical student in their second-year enrollment.

  Things were finally coming together, compromises were being made, and Katy began the process of locating a home for their small family on the outskirts of the city, which by now was burgeoning with a population in excess of 1 million souls, 95 percent of whom never set foot in a casino. That was the crowd they wished to join.

  All except for Thaddeus, who had other plans for his future in Las Vegas.

  36

  The end began innocently enough, just another day at the office.

  The day was bright and sunny, like all Las Vegas days, and as he went for his run along the Strip he saw the same preoccupied looks of people he say every day when he ran. Except this time the thought made its way deep inside his brain: they were all preoccupied with getting something for nothing, for winning big at the dice, the cards, the wheel—except it wasn’t actually going to happen for any of them. It was a ruse, a hoax—a fraud—being perpetrated by him and all the other casino entrepreneurs. Bright lights and dollar signs in the neon.

  That morning, in his huge, gaudy office, he listened to complaints and successes, except this time it was just different enough to make a game-changing impression on Thaddeus.

  Then came the married couple that would change his life.

  The couple managed to get in to see him just after his third coffee.

  They were a Midwestern couple, which Thaddeus saw from their muted grays and navy slacks and shirts even before they were introduced. What was surprising, however, was that they hailed from Hickam County, in Illinois, where Thaddeus had begun the practice of law some years earlier. Incredibly, their small soybean farm—eighty acres, been in the family 200 years—was just four miles up the road from the city of Orbit, Thaddeus’ jumping-off point.

  Her name was Bobbie and she was fifty-five, a thick, stout woman of German descent, whose hands fluttered between them like starlings when she spoke. She appeared fearless as she told Thaddeus why they had needed to see him, and several times he saw that her pale blue eyes were about to overflow with tears as she told the story of Theodore—Theo—her husband of thirty-five years.

  Theo was ten years older, sixty-five, and stricken with terminal pancreatic cancer. Which of course always comes at the wrong time, but in the case of Bobbie and Theo it had come at a really bad time. Reason was—as Bobbie explained, with Theo jumping in with the details—they had just refinanced the farm after two disastrous growing seasons in which local drought had killed off 95 percent of the harvest.

  For two years in a row they had bet on the weather favoring them; for two years they had lost that bet. It cost $3,500 in soybean seed for eighty acres, $11,500 in fertilizer to put in one crop, another $15,500 for pesticides and herbicides during the growing season, $6,500 in tractor fuel and maintenance, and $1,500 for general equipment repair and sundries, as the seed was planted and the crop cultivated, fertilized, and watched over.

  The money was spent on the come, a wager, and they had lost it all two years running. This didn’t include normal living expenses, and electricity and propane gas (country living), as well as gas for the car, insurance, medical care, dental health, and groceries, although Bobbie also planted and maintained a vegetable garden, which was watered with well water and thus thrived even when the field crops turned brown, withered up, and died unproductively.

  Theo’s life expectancy was six months.

  At first they had tried prayer and lottery tickets to dig themselves out of the deep hole dug by the refinance commitment and living costs. The note was $250,000 and it was secured by the eighty acres plus the home. They also had a CD at the bank worth another $65,000 but it had also been put up as collateral on the note. In short, every penny they had was tied up and dependent on five good years of crops and the ability of Theo to work and make it all happen until he was seventy. At seventy they had planned to sell out, take their $350,000 net worth, and move to Florida for the good life. Except Theo didn’t have five years. He had only five months and sixteen days, and counting.

  When they hadn’t won the lottery, they decided to take the $15,000 bankroll that all farmers keep buried in the barn, and journey to Las Vegas for a chance at making a fortune. Their game was roulette. They had tried betting only black. After two hours they were up $3,500. Then the roof caved in. After their first night in the Desert Riviera they were down $6,500. By the end of day two they had lost it all.

  “Now we don’t even have the money to get back home,” Bobbie cried, and the tears finally overflowed and bathed her cheeks.

  “We don’t mean to whine,” said Theo.

  Thaddeus looked him over. The man was obviously down to about 120 and fading.

  “And what do you want from me?” asked Thaddeus. He felt a huge amount of sympathy for these people, but their story wasn’t all that different from the others he heard every day, except for the six-month life expectancy of the man who had lost everything on Thaddeus’ roulette wheel.

  That was a deep thorn in Thaddeus’ side.

  He felt nothing but sympathy and sorrow for Bobbie and Theo.

  Then Bobbie sealed the deal. “He’s going to die and I’m going to get his insurance policy,” she cried, “but that’s only fifty thousand dollars. The bank will get it all. And I’ll be alone, unemployable, with no place to live and no family to go to. We never could have kids, though Lord knows we tried. I have a sister in Moline but we haven’t spoken to each other in thirty years. She’s very hateful, was always jealous of me growing up, and will have nothing to do with me. We have nothing.”

  Thaddeus spread his hands and asked again. “And what do you want from me?”

  “We want our money back,” said Bobbie. “Just give us our money back so we can make it home and have six months of groceries while we wait for the end.”

  “Fifteen thousand will get us through. We’ll play like we were when we were first married, broke but in love. Except the ‘in love’ part ain’t make-believe. We really are,” Theo added. His voice was desperate but he was too proud to beg and too strong to whine. Besides, Thaddeus could see the man was resigned to his fate. There was nothing left for him but to wait.

  A knot in Thaddeus’ chest then unraveled and his own feelings broke loose. “I’m going to do that. I’m going to give your money back.”

  “Praise Jesus!” Bobbie erupted. “Oh, my God!”

  “You’ll never know what you just did,” Theo said, and Thaddeus could have sworn that even this tough, proud man had a well of tears in his eyes too. As did Thaddeus.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and he went out of the office to speak with Maria. She nodded and lifted her phone and called for a check to be made out.

  Theo and Bobbie were downstairs twenty minutes later, prepared to cash their check at the first teller’s cage they came to, when she opened the envelope they had been given.

  Slowly the words formed on her lips when she saw the check. “Sweet Jesus,” she exhaled in one long breath.

  “Lemme see,” said Theo, and she turned the check to him.

  “Don’t make a ruckus,” she warned, glancing about to see whether they were
being watched by anyone. There was no one within twenty feet. It was safe to whisper.

  “That ain’t right,” the man said.

  She nodded solemnly.

  Theo read it again. The check read: “Pay to the order of…the sum of $250,000,” and it was signed by M.M. Herkemier, President.

  “It ain’t right but we taking it,” she said, and set off for the entrance, Theo firmly in tow. They did not stop at the roulette wheel on their way out; they did not drop a quarter in the last slot before they reached the real world.

  It was a beeline and there was no looking back.

  * * *

  That night, Thaddeus told Katy, “I can’t do it anymore. I’m taking money from people who don’t have it to lose. I’m putting the casino up for sale.”

  She smiled and continued dishing up vegetable soup from the crockpot.

  “I’ve been wondering how long it would take,” she said. “Dinner’s in five. Round up Sarai.”

  37

  Sale of the casino was easy. The money angle was difficult.

  The primary mover in American business deals, bottom line, was always taxes. What would be the tax consequences of an out-and-out cash deal? What would be the tax consequences of cash plus property? What would be the tax consequences of an installment sale? Should the purchase be made in the names of partners, an LLC, a corporation, or a single individual? What were the tax consequences? What were they!

  Tubby Watsonn steered Thaddeus to a local group of transactional tax lawyers and they took him under their wing.

  The buyers—a Silicon Valley group heavily invested in social media startups—were from California and Washington. One of them owned 3 percent of outstanding shares of Microsoft—an oil sheik’s treasury.

  California’s tax laws are very different from Nevada’s tax laws. For example, where California has state income tax, Nevada does not. So the origination and execution of the sale would take place in Nevada—Las Vegas, to be exact.