by S. D. Thames
“I’m taking care of it,” David said.
Robbie snatched the reel from David’s hands. With a few tugs and a shake, he miraculously had the line straightened out. “Keep your thumb here when you cast.” He crammed the handle back into David’s hands. “Dumbass.”
David noticed that Robbie had lost his shirt. His midriff and chest were covered in burn marks, as if Robbie had crawled out of an incinerator at a young age.
“What are you looking at?” Robbie said.
David averted his glare from Robbie’s scars, felt the heat growing on his shoulder. He was getting crispy. He took a breath, and then threw a cast over the side of the boat, keeping his thumb pressed lightly over the line as it ran out the tip of the rod. A second later, the lure landed about twenty yards east of the boat. David was ready to congratulate himself for the successful cast. He started to tug on the fly, trying to mimic the way he imagined a sea bug would rush its way through the water looking for something to eat without being eaten. The fly reached David sooner than he’d like, which meant he’d have to cast again. He raised the rod and let the line fly once more.
The instant David’s fly hit the water, Frank yelped and grunted as he jerked his rod in a series of pops. David stared at violent flashes of silver streaking atop the crystal-green water.
“Nice one, Frank,” Robbie said as he watched the fight. “Let him run.”
Frank scooted toward the bow and lowered his rod. Then he clicked his reel and jerked the rod with a loud pop.
Over the expanse of the waters, the fish was jerking back and forth like a firecracker. The tendons and muscles in Frank’s arm bulged as he teased the fish closer to the boat, closing the line between them with every inch the fish gave up. “Come on, baby.” Frank seemed mesmerized by the fight.
David watched Frank and the tarpon play this game for what seemed an hour. He found himself gripping the rail tightly and made the mistake of looking directly overboard at the ripples in the water. This seemingly ignited the Bloody Mary lingering in his gut. Without thinking, he leaned over the rail and tried to heave, spewing a few ounces of clear liquid overboard.
“Are you puking?” Frank gasped. “I’m reeling in a tarpon, and this guy is puking on my boat.”
David felt the boat spinning. He tried lying down, but hopped back up the instant his back touched the molten deck.
Frank’s rod was now hanging over the rail as low as Frank could hold it, a sure sign that the fish was close. “Get the gaff, Robbie. I’m keeping this one.”
Robbie grabbed a rod with a long hook on the end. He leaned over the bow and guided the line in. “Almost there,” he grunted. Then he swooped down and snatched the fish out of the water.
The fish landed on the deck and flopped around, struggling for air. It looked almost as exhausted as Frank.
“Might be your best of the year,” Robbie said.
Frank put on a meshed glove and grabbed the fish. It smacked into Frank, but he tightened his grip and gave the fish no room to move. “About a buck thirty.”
Robbie knelt down and turned a knob on the deck. Then he raised the door to a deep ice locker under the floorboard. David stared down into the empty space. “You could fit a shark in there,” he said.
“Or a lawyer,” Robbie sneered. Then he took a black club and knocked the tarpon on the skull until it stopped shaking. He dropped the game into the well and locked the hatch.
David turned to the console where Frank was resting, still catching his breath. He sipped his drink, nodding proudly at David.
“Well, my work is done.” He unzipped the pouch to his fanny pack. “Time to celebrate.” He pulled out a joint fatter than a cigar and looked at Robbie. “I’ll give you two hours to catch something. Then we’re going in.” Then he looked to David. “Smoke with me.” Frank lit the joint with a black zippo bearing a white skull and crossbones. In no time, he was smoking it like a cigarette, with short and frequent tokes. “It will help your nausea,” he said, the most empathy David had ever heard in his voice.
Now it was David’s turn. He remembered the sweet taste of this weed from the last time Frank cajoled him into smoking. He took it and exhaled a quick hit, as though he were seasoning his lungs for a big one. Then he followed up with the coup de gras and held it as long as he could.
“That’s my boy,” Frank said. “Bet you never smoked anything like that in Jersey.”
“How’d you know I was from Jersey?” David asked.
“You told me.”
“I know you’re from Boston.” David could tell he was already high.
“Good for you.” Frank glanced at Robbie, who was flipping his line over the opposite side of the boat. “It’s grown in some retired scientist’s greenroom. It’s the only thing that makes it bearable.” Frank adjusted his sunglasses and pointed to his head.
“How bad is it?” David asked.
“The glaucoma? Apparently I let it go too long. They say I could be blind next year. I’ve seen a lot of shit in my day. I’ll tell you that.” Frank looked out at the unending waters of the Gulf. “But this is what I’ll miss seeing more than anything.”
David liked Frank’s honest, reflective tone. He stared at the clear blue sky and emerald waters that melded together in a blurry line in the heat of the horizon.
“Not too bad when you’re high either, is it?” Frank asked.
David felt like he was nodding, but couldn’t tell if he really was. He stared at the horizon again and saw brilliantly colored rays emanating from the crystalline sun like tongues of fire. Then he glanced down in amazement at the sight of mutating micro larvae jumping out of the ocean like fireworks ready to spawn. “This stuff laced?” he whispered, and took another modest hit.
Frank choked on laughter and took the joint back. “Nothing but pure THC.” He looked at the joint. “I hope.” He shrieked with laughter, revealing a missing molar David had never noticed. “Nothing to get paranoid about out here, is there? Nothing for miles. No one out to get ya, David. Except us!” Frank grinned madly.
David sensed Frank was about to start screwing with him. While the buzz had quelled his nausea, he felt a different uneasiness overtaking him: a churning sense of fever, anxiety, dread, and paranoia.
Frank smacked his dry lips and wetted them with another drink. “So let me ask you this, Mr. Lawyer. This is a hypothetical question, but one I’ve always wondered about. Let’s say Robbie and me, we was to drive this boat out another hundred miles. And let’s say we had a body in that cooler where we put Mr. Tarpon. And Robbie were to chop it up with a machete, and throw it over the side of the boat and feed the fishes with it. Now if you were my lawyer, and I told you about that, could I trust you with that information?”
“It would depend.”
Frank laughed as though David’s answer was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “What could it possibly depend on?”
“Two things, really. One, whether you had already committed the crime or were about to. And two, whether I knew you were going to offer false testimony about the crime.”
Frank removed his sunglasses and squinted at David. “Hell, I’m not gonna testify about it. And let’s say I had already committed it.”
“In that case, I could be bound to keep it confidential.”
“Is that so? You hear that, Robbie? He can’t tell no one about what you did.”
Robbie told Frank to shut up, but Frank was laughing too hard to notice.
He finally calmed down and assured David, “I’m just fucking with you. And I hope you’re not gonna bill me for this.”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you’re about to kill someone.”
Frank erupted with laughter. “Good one. You’re really growing on me.” He started chewing on his lower lip and stared at his attorney. “Seriously, man, you’re red as a lobster. Better get some sunscreen.”
David moved his shoulders in circles and felt the crispy burn
.
Frank returned his shades and smiled. “I got an idea. Let’s go swimming.”
“Hell, no,” David said.
Frank dropped his shorts and pulled them over his sandals. “I’m serious. You’ve never enjoyed a high until you’ve been in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico with the sharks and tarpons swimming by.” Now butt naked, Frank pulled David by the arms and led him to the bow. “Let’s go.”
David glanced down at Frank’s shriveled penis, a cigar butt in an ashtray of pubic hair, and he realized that Frank, naked and baked out of his mind, had every intention of putting David overboard. Just as David was about to resist, he decided to give in and take a swim. So he followed Frank’s lead and climbed over the rail. As he reached the zenith and was about to jump, Frank gave him a quick push that sent him overboard.
David hit the warm Gulf waters with his eyes closed. He stayed in a tight ball as he sank into the salty water and waited for his own buoyancy to raise him up again. The instant he emerged for air, he could hear Frank’s insane guffaw echoing over the water.
“Let’s go,” Frank yelled. He charged the console, cranked the motor, and grabbed the wheel. In no time, the boat was darting away, steered by Frank, his wrinkled ass gleaming in the sun. An air horn honked obnoxiously.
Fear overtook David. Frank was mad enough to leave him in the middle of the water. And no one would ever know he was here. He could wash ashore in a few weeks. Just as the boat had nearly disappeared, David saw it veer to the right and then circle back toward him. In no time, the boat whipped by again and passed him, and then at the last moment it steered to the left to miss him. David bounced up and down like a bobber in its wake. His arms and legs were tiring. He struggled for breath.
He was sure now that the boat was leaving for good, accelerating, leaving him to drown.
But no, it was really moving in a perfect circle, with David at its center, and the boat’s wake was forming a current around him. The current moved faster, and he felt something grabbing his feet and pulling him under. It was as if he were stuck in a maelstrom that Frank had summoned, and Frank acknowledged that by waving and saluting to David as he passed again. Perhaps this would be his last pass before he left David to die.
David felt consciousness escaping and wondered if they would pull him out of the water. Because something really was pulling him down, and quickly.
David awoke in a cold sweat. He would believe it was all a dream—getting high with Frank on the boat, nearly drowning in the Gulf, being pulled out of the water by Robbie as Frank laughed so hard he started coughing up bile—if it weren’t for the fever-inducing, blistered sunburn on his shoulders that was keeping him from sleeping more than an hour at a spell. It was no dream, but it didn’t seem like reality, either.
He stumbled to the bathroom and looked for aloe or anything else cool and soothing Lana might have left behind. He found nothing.
Downstairs, he downed three aspirin in the dark kitchen. The pain was only getting worse. He had no choice but to run to the store. So he grabbed his keys, slipped on his flip-flops in the utility room, and walked out the garage.
As the garage door rose, the first thing he saw was Ed Savage’s silver Yukon, shining under the moonlight and blocking the Saab in the driveway.
David opened his car door and removed his garage door opener. Then he walked to Ed’s Yukon. He pulled on the passenger door, but it was locked.
The window rolled down and Ed asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
“You’re blocking my driveway. So move your car or drive me to the store.”
Ed looked at David for a confounded moment.
“I haven’t got all night, Ed.”
David heard the door unlock. He hopped in and put on his seatbelt. The cooled leather seat felt soothing on his back.
“Where to?” Ed murmured.
David could smell the alcohol on Ed’s breath and remembered Ed’s recent warning at lunch: if he’d been drinking, David should just run.
“Walgreens,” David answered.
“I hope you’re sick.”
“Rest assured.”
David enjoyed the awkward silence on the ride to the store because he knew it was more awkward for Ed.
Ed came to a stop at a red light and glanced at David. “They scheduled the appeal for oral argument.”
“I know. I should be thanking you.”
“For what?”
“First you give me my first jury-trial win. Now I’ll win my first appellate argument.”
“I’m going to enjoy watching you burn.”
A few minutes later, Ed parked his Yukon outside the drugstore.
“You need anything?” David asked as he hopped out of the car. “Hershey bar? Women’s World?”
Ed didn’t answer or move.
It took David less than four minutes to find a squirt bottle of aloe.
“Sunburn?” the clerk asked as she rang it up for David.
He nodded and handed over his credit card. “By the way, if the police ever come here investigating my death, tell them it was Ed Savage.”
“Ed Savage?” she repeated rather blankly.
Ed was sitting in the same hunched position he’d been in when David left. David fell into the passenger seat, and Ed glanced at the bag curiously.
The ride back was more silence. David felt Ed growing more frustrated the closer they got to the town house.
“So, Ed, you can’t sleep tonight?”
“You know, there’s nothing stopping me from driving you out to the beach, cutting your throat, and leaving you to die.”
“Nothing but me.”
Ed sighed. “You better hope you don’t win this appeal.”
“I hate to break the news to you, but this appeal is the last thing on my mind, Ed.”
“I wish I could say the same thing.” Ed seemed short of breath as he pulled the Yukon back into David’s driveway.
“Ed, it’s never too late to put some money on the table. I’m not trying to be crass here, and I’ve been straight with you since we sued you, but you don’t have a chance in hell of winning this appeal.”
Ed stared at him with black eyes. “You know you lied.”
David shook his head. “Ed, I’m sorry, it’s over.” He hopped out of the Yukon and closed the door.
Ed rolled his window down. “When this is over, I’ll see you in hell, Friedman.”
David unlocked his car and pushed the garage door opener. “I don’t know about hell, Ed, but I’ll see you in court.” As he watched Ed back out and speed away, David thought about what Ed said about hell, and he wondered: what if there was a hell? It would surely be filled with lawyers. There had to be a lawyer joke there somewhere, but he was in too much pain to figure it out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
David ascended the steps to the Sixth District Court of Appeals, a monolithic brick building built in the early 1970s. With dozens of square eyes seemingly peering at passersby, the Brutalist courthouse reminded him of an angry alien that sought retribution. The steps leading to the entrance were oddly sized, too short to take them one at a time, but too tall to skip comfortably. He had attended a ceremony here in 2000 when he was sworn in as a lawyer. He hadn’t returned before today.
“Wait up,” a voice called out.
Blake Hubert was lunging up the stairs, skipping a step with each stride.
“You know you don’t have to come to this,” David said.
“I’ve never seen an appellate argument.”
“I’m surprised they even granted argument.”
“Does that concern you?” Blake asked.
It sure did, but David just shook his head. “We have nothing to worry about. It’s very hard to disturb a jury’s findings.”
Blake took a step closer to David. “What about the email? Any chance that can come up?”
“It’s too late for that.” David shut up when he saw Ed and Wanda Savage making their way up the steps. Wanda led Ed by the
hand, her husband clearly pale and fatigued. They both were taking one awkward step at a time. David was surprised when he noticed that Joe McLaren was trailing them.
Ed and Wanda passed without acknowledging David, but Joe stopped by him, apparently to catch his breath.
“You couldn’t pass up the chance to argue an appeal?” David asked.
Joe grinned as a courtesy. “What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment.”
“Your client’s money would be better spent paying the bank.”
“I’m doing this pro bono. Holding out hope justice might finally be done.”
Still wheezing, Joe resumed his climb.
“So much for settling on the courthouse steps,” Blake said with a chuckle, as though he’d wanted to say that for a long time.
The inside of the courthouse was just as David remembered, more hideous than the exterior. The walls were lined with a molded paneling the color of breakfast syrup; the floors were covered with checkered green tiles in some areas and sandy turf-like carpet in others. David and Blake cleared security and moved with the light traffic of litigators and clients finding the courtroom and restroom and a place to talk in quiet.
Up ahead, Joe was talking with the Savages outside a set of double doors.
David passed them and checked the argument schedule posted outside the courtroom. He nodded to Blake to confirm they had the right room, and they entered a courtroom with three sections of rows lined like church pews facing a chancel. In this case, though, the chancel was a bench with three leather chairs waiting for the three appellate judges who would soon decide whether Ed and Wanda Savage should get another day in court. This is where the common law is made, David thought, trying to muster some nostalgia for the law as he’d understood it before it became his career and identity. For ninety-nine percent of the civil cases tried in Gaspar County or anywhere else in this appellate district, this court was the final round of the game David played for a living. This court would have to certify something of great importance, or issue a decision that conflicted with another Florida appellate court, for Ed Savage or any other litigant to have a shot at going before the Florida Supreme Court. And David knew that wasn’t going to happen in this case.
