Not only did Jason not play “too busy,” he actually came to the office building of Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley to let me badger him into taking a mere $5,000 on a worthless claim.
Bonita led the young man into my office, and then mouthed the words Have mercy behind his head.
Nobody offered him coffee.
I worked my way through the standard settlement spiel, with special emphasis on the fact that Jimmie didn’t have any money and if Jason had to try this sucker in front of a jury, I’d personally guarantee he would lose big.
“My client won’t take less than a quarter of a million,” Jason the imbecile said to my impeccable presentation.
“Don’t be greedy,” I said.
“It’s not up to me. My client won’t take less than a quarter of a million.”
This time I laughed.
When I stopped laughing, I reiterated, as if greed had made big, dumb Jason deaf, “Look, it was only a slow-speed rear-ender with modest property damage. No way anyone was really hurt by tapping fenders. And, even if you had a case you could win at trial, there’s no pot of money to be had anywhere. Back home, we have this saying: ‘You can’t get blood from a turnip.’”
“My client won’t take less than a quarter of a million.”
So, okay, this was boring, I thought, and stood up as a prelude to dismissing Jason. “Thank you for your time,” I said.
“You keep saying Mr. Rodgers is broke, but my law firm’s investigator reported Jimmie has approximately two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of Exxon-Mobile stock,” Jason sputtered.
This time I laughed so loud, Bonita actually stuck her head in the door, with a quizzical look.
“Jason thinks Jimmie is worth a quarter of a million,” I said.
Bonita laughed too, and closed the door behind her.
“You need to get a better investigator. When you do, you’ll find out Jimmie is broke, old, and unemployed. His Social Security is minimal, and the law doesn’t allow garnishment of Social Security anyway.” Actually, I wasn’t at all sure that was true, so I said it with extra conviction in my voice. “Now go away until you come to your senses.”
“I’ll bring you my investigator’s report.”
“Do that,” I said. “Now, good-bye.”
Jason the fool left. I ranted at Bonita for a few minutes over how stupid this case was, how stupid Jason was, how stupid Sunny the claims adjuster was, and how stupid the practice of law was. Bonita smiled and nodded, probably not listening to a word. Eventually I ran down in my rant, went back to my office, and presumably Bonita returned to her work while I pecked away at my piddling files.
When Rasputin started squawking at unignorable levels, Bonita stuck her head in my door and said, “I think I will take my lunch break now and feed your bird.”
“Yeah, me too. I’m going home for lunch.”
We parted company and I sped home to Tulip Street, eager to wash my hands and face, and eat something cool and clean and organic, and be alone, in the clear, open spaces of my own house.
All the way home, I chewed my lip and fretted over Angus and Miguel. I was so deep in my worry that I almost clipped Jimmie’s car, parked as it was on the street, but blocking about half of my own driveway. Good, I thought, I can send him out to Lenora’s to help her. Then I realized I’d have to lead him out to the sanctuary since I couldn’t begin to describe how to get there, plus Lenora wouldn’t know Jimmie from Adam’s house cat, and he wasn’t the sort who universally made good first impressions. But at least I knew where Jimmie was, and that was momentarily reassuring.
Inside my house, at my kitchen table, Jimmie the delinquent grass cutter was sitting with Dolly. They were drinking coffee. Mine. Bearess was snuffling across the kitchen floor, alternately rolling and eating a leftover muffin from Saturday and leaving a trail of crumbs. When she bumped into me, she gave me a doggy snort and a lick, then went back to distributing muffin crumbs around my kitchen.
Seeing as how I needed Jimmie to help Lenora, I didn’t yell at him. Instead, I greeted my uninvited guests as if they were welcome and asked Jimmie if he could help a friend of mine for the next few days.
“Sure,” he said, but he smiled at Dolly, not at me.
“I’ll have to lead you out there, it’s way out in northeast Manatee County.”
“Sure,” Jimmie said.
Bearess lost interest in actually eating the muffin, and smashed it with her big paw into a greasy pile of mush right in front of the sink. After I cleaned that up, I politely declined Dolly’s offer to fix me a sandwich, and fixed my own salad while Jimmie and Dolly flirted with each other. When I couldn’t stand listening to them anymore, I asked Jimmie if he knew anything about video cameras.
“Sure, I can work one of them.” He smiled at Dolly big time, as if knowledge of the on-and-off buttons on a camcorder qualified him for a sleepover.
“I used to work some for a woman who filmed weddings. I was real good with a video camera. Man, that was a great job,” he said.
“So, why’d you quit?” I asked.
“Didn’t quit. Got fired. They’s this open bar at my last wedding. I hep’d myself plenty and then clumb up on the table and recited some Sylvia Plath—you know that one about her daddy?”
Dolly corrected his pronunciation and grammar and said she much preferred the romantic poets over the moderns, and I ignored her, instead explaining to Jimmie that he needed to follow the man suing him until he could get a video of him doing something like playing golf, lifting weights, or building a brick patio.
“Got’cha,” Jimmie said. “Prove him the faker he is.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe Dolly’d like to go with me.”
“Only if she signs a waiver of liability. You too. Can’t have y’all getting hurt and suing me or the law firm. I’ll bring home the firm’s video camera and some film tonight. But meantime, as soon as I’m finished here, I’d like for you to follow me out to a wildlife sanctuary and help the woman who runs it. Just do anything she asks you to do, all right? I’ll pay you. Don’t let her pay you.”
“Sure,” Jimmie said. “Dolly, would you care to join me?”
As it turned out, the idea of cleaning out cages filled with soggy newspapers full of bird poop didn’t much appeal to Dolly, and she said a polite, but firm, no thank you to Jimmie’s kind invitation.
Naturally, when we got out to Lenora’s, after only two misturns down identical-looking dirt roads and Jimmie, following in his ancient car, honking at me on every turn, there was no sign of Lenora’s old Volvo. Instead there was a trendy-looking little SUV. The front door of the old cracker house that served as a bird-and-animal rescue center was open, so we walked right in. Instead of Lenora, we found a wide, squat man, with the big arms and thick neck of a former football player, or a wrestler.
“Adam, U.S. Fish and Wildlife,” he said, after I introduced myself and Jimmie. “Lenora and I have been working on this place for years.”
As Adam wasn’t wearing a uniform, I assumed this was a day-off venture, and I was glad to know Lenora had someone else to count on.
“I’m Lenora’s friend, and I’ve brought my…er, gardener, Jimmie Rodgers, to help out. He will do whatever you tell him to.”
“Is he bonded?” Adam asked, staring first at me, then at Jimmie, then back at me, with the suspicious eyes of someone with law-enforcement experience.
“Yes,” I lied.
After a few more exchanges, Adam seemed to accept Jimmie and gave him a preliminary order. As Jimmie trotted out to gather cleaning supplies, I asked Adam, “Do you expect Lenora today?”
“No.”
“Could you tell me where she is?”
“She’s not here.”
“Then, please tell me her last name.”
“I thought you said you were her friend.”
I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “I was out here both Saturday and Sunday. I took a jay home with me. But we were working too
hard to discuss personal details like last names. I just want to know if she’s all right.”
“She’ll be fine.”
Jimmie came back into the room, whistling and carrying a jug of bleach and a handful of rags. “You gonna stay and help out?” he asked, looking at me.
Yeah, like I was going to handle bleach in my gray Brooks Brothers suit. “Busy day at the office, sorry, got to run.”
I left, but not before I gave Lenora’s guardian my business card and a request that he ask Lenora to call me.
By the time I drove back to Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, it was nearly three and I slammed my way back inside my own office. I pulled out some depositions in an active legal-malpractice case and started churning away.
Depos are boring as a rule, and I lost interest fifteen seconds into the project. I jumped up and stuck my head out the door. “You file my notice of appearances for Angus’s estate and Miguel in that stupid orange-defamation case?”
“Yes. And I’ve done a notice of death in Angus’s case. I’ve asked Rachel to research whether the cause of action dies with him, and to prepare a rough draft of a motion to dismiss if it does, and I will have a draft of an answer to the two complaints ready for you to review by tomorrow.”
“You’re drafting the answer?”
“Yes. I’ve admitted the defendants’ names and addresses, and I have said ‘without knowledge’ in response to the other allegations in the complaint. That’s how you always draft answers to the complaints, isn’t it?”
Well, yes, but I had a degree from a state university’s law school that gave me the technical right to deny knowledge. I wasn’t sure what I thought about my secretary practicing law. Besides, all of this strongly suggested that nobody needed me. “You know I’ll have to add the affirmative defenses, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Bonita said, her face resting in her neutral, but attractive, expression.
“Well, I’ll certainly look it over,” I said, then remembered to say, “Thank you.”
“If you would like to talk about Angus—”
“Later,” I said, not entirely trusting myself to talk about that, even to Bonita, who often acts as my therapist, and I shut myself back in my office. I picked up the stupid, boring depos, highlighted some stuff to better absorb later, and then put them down again. I jotted fifteen minutes on my time sheet, and booted up my computer. I couldn’t get my mind off Angus and Miguel. So I was going to go with that flow.
The last meaningful things Angus had said in my presence concerned M. David Moody. M. David Moody had some interest in me right before he learned whether there was a special circle in hell for Big-time Mine CEOs who gouge the earth and leave ponds of radioactive crap behind. M. David had wanted Antheus Mines to dig up east Manatee County by the west fork of Horse Creek. Angus had wanted to stop M. David and Antheus. Both of them had been murdered.
My client and my anti-client.
Linked by phosphate.
That felt like a circle I needed to figure out.
Starting with M. David the devious.
Within seconds, I’d typed Angus’s client number into the LEXIS computerized legal-research system, and gone to the major news database, and punched in M. David’s name, limiting my search to the last two weeks.
In quick order, I read through the standard newspaper stories about his murder—facedown in a phosphogypsum pond had actually made for some modest national attention. It seems the weirder the murder, the broader the publicity. But none of the stories had anything to add to what I already knew.
So, I went further back, and concentrated on business news.
In no time at all, I read enough to be horrified by the mess the Boogie Bog corporation had left. Angus had told it right at the meeting—billions of gallons of toxic sludge, the by-product of processing the phosphate ore into fertilizer, was stored on-site behind what the company and the press euphemistically called earthen dams. In other words, all that kept that radioactive semiliquid waste from pouring out and over all in its path was a pile of dirt around it.
I didn’t feel too secure.
But I was damn glad I didn’t live down the hill from Boogie Bog.
Up until now, I’d thought Manatee County was a pretty neat place, a county that had all Sarasota had to offer, but with lower real estate prices and less pretentiousness.
But billions of gallons of poison sitting behind piles of dirt sort of made me rethink that one.
As for Boogie Bog, again, Angus had it right. The corporation had just cashed in its chips and left all that toxic sludge for the state of Florida to clean up.
Only, there was no way to clean it up.
I remembered what Josey had said. It was like nuclear waste—there’s nothing safe anyone can do with it.
From that research, I segued into the corporation business stuff on Boogie Bog. One news story in a Florida business magazine indicated that a year before the Boogie Bog Corporation declared bankruptcy, M. David had resigned as its CEO and sold all his stock back to the corporation. Because the stock was privately held, its value at the time of sale was set by a CPA’s independent accounting at a high price, based on the corporation’s land, physical plant, and equipment holdings as well as its balance sheets, which, of course, had been inflated to improve the company’s credit worthiness. However, because the corporation had insignificant ready liquid assets, it had to borrow the money to buy back M. David’s shares. Taking on the additional loan had proved to be the debt that broke the already fragile back of the camel, so to speak.
In other words, M. David had gutted the corporation.
Some of his colleagues in Boogie Bog had not been as financially lucky as M. David had been. When Boogie Bog’s corporate finances hit bottom, so did much of their individual fortunes.
Perfect motive, I thought. Any of the damaged Boogie Bog corporation players could have killed M. David for revenge.
But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how Angus fit into that picture.
Outside my window, I heard the sound of various cars starting up, and glanced up. Yep, after five. The worker bees were going home. I should do likewise since I was clearly not accomplishing anything. But, not wanting to be caught in the five o’clock traffic, or worse, have Jackson see me leaving at five, which was way too early for an attorney to leave this office, I settled back in my red leather chair and concentrated.
On M. David.
He didn’t just take the money before the ship went down, he took the money that made the ship go down. Just like him. He’d increased his fortune, skated clear of the coming bankruptcy, and probably slept soundly at night, proud, I rather imagined, that his actions effectively dumped Boogie Bog’s toxic waste on the good taxpayers to deal with.
Yeah, okay, that made his manipulative coup de grace in trying to ruin my life before I was twenty-five seem pretty minor. But I was still mad.
And M. David would know that. I mean, the man wasn’t stupid, and I hadn’t been shy in expressing my attitude toward him. Given our history, I couldn’t even imagine why M. David had a file on me, and had apparently been planning to make an appointment with me.
While I was cogitating, Bonita stuck her head in the doorway. “Anything else you need before I leave?” She was holding Rasputin’s cage, and the jay punctuated her question with loud, insistent squawks.
“No, thank you,” I said.
Good nights all around, and I was alone.
Alone in my office, I did what I do. I started to make a list of things I knew and the things I needed to learn. The first thing I wrote down was: “Find Miguel.”
And that took me right back to the explosion. A wave of nausea passed through me as I remembered. This time, instead of blocking the memories, I pressed through them, mentally examining the details of what I had seen and done that night. And what Miguel had done that night.
One detail surfaced insistently. Miguel had been so emphatic that I should flee. Why, I wondered, had Miguel insiste
d I run away?
And why, really, had I?
Yeah, like most Americans, I had some basic, ingrained instinct to avoid the police, honed perhaps in my case beyond the norm by an adolescence spent living with Delvon and Farmer Dave growing marijuana and avoiding truancy, social workers, juvie hall, and high school expulsion by good timing and luck.
Then, like the bad fairy of negative thoughts had just sprinkled me with paranoia dust, I suddenly realized how convenient it was for Miguel that he had stepped back from the boat even as Angus stepped onto it.
Like that actor who puts his irritating wife in a car and then suddenly remembers he left something inside the restaurant and is, thus, conveniently out of the way when someone shoots his wife to death.
Stepping aside from death at the right moment is suspicious.
While that suspicion licked at me, I couldn’t figure out any reason Miguel would want to kill Angus. Or blow up his own sailboat.
But if he had, then he surely would not want me hanging around to say to the police: “Oh, hey, wasn’t that good timing that Miguel stepped back from the boat just before it blew?” Like he, Miguel, knew exactly what was coming.
Was Miguel a killer?
I chewed unhappily on that anxiety until it was time for me to go home. On my way out, I stopped in the equipment room and picked up a video camera and some blank tapes for Jimmie, and headed toward my house.
My house. Home, my sweet haven and harbor.
Yeah, okay, so wrong again.
Chapter 11
At my front-door stoop, Dolly and a man with long, red hair were jumping around, throwing air punches at each other while a small contingent of my neighbors watched.
Delvon—with his usual grand entrance.
Bearess ran over to me in a doggy frantic way, barking at me as if I were supposed to do something.
After studying the situation for a second, I could tell Delvon wasn’t really trying to hit Dolly, he was just self-defensively dodging and feinting. Dolly, however, appeared ready to smash his face if he’d just hold still and let her land a punch.
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