The Ferryman

by John E. Siers

  Bureaucrats and appointed officials were another story. For the most part, they were fair game, but LEI Corporate preferred not to hit them just because some rich bastard was pissed off about a parking ticket. For that reason, LEI agents were required to get an all clear from corporate before taking a contract.

  “If he beats us, he’ll have ammunition to use against you,” Mark replied. “I don’t think he’s got a snowball’s chance in hell, but I don’t want to spend five years in court proving it. Besides, he’s willing to try harassment when legal action doesn’t work—be damned if I’m going to put up with that.”

  “Oh, hell no,” Morgan declared. “Imagine if he started blockading our offices—stopping and checking potential clients. It might put a dent in your business, but it would shut us down completely. Our clients don’t want anybody knowing they’re doing business with us.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to actually snuff him,” Mark mused. “Maybe he just needs a little attitude adjustment…”

  “He needs a big attitude adjustment, but…yeah…maybe we can do that.” Morgan’s grin took on an evil look. “Here’s a thought—suppose you invite him over to serve his papers in person—him alone, nobody else, no flunkies from his office. Tell him that’s the only way you’ll accept the subpoena.

  “He knows you can’t whack him unless he gives you permission, but I could send somebody over from our legal department—you know, to represent our interests at the meeting.”

  “You’re legal department? You mean…?”

  “I was thinking Ramirez.” Morgan’s grin became almost satanic.

  “Of course you were.” Mark’s look of evil enthusiasm mirrored Morgan’s. “How’s it going with the two of you, by the way?”

  “She’s madly in love with me…just doesn’t know it yet.”

  Mark chuckled. Morgan had been pursuing Nydia Ramirez for almost two years, without success—despite which, he had to agree that Morgan’s suggestion was the perfect solution.

  “OK—I’m in,” he said. “Ask her to get with me for scheduling, and I’ll set up the meeting.”

  “Will do. And I’ll clear it with corporate so that if the attitude adjustment doesn’t work, she can proceed with Plan B at her discretion.”

  “You’ve been served, Mr. Marshall.” Wilder dropped the envelope on the conference room table. “If you hand over the documents immediately, it will go easier on you at the hearing.”

  The assistant district attorney was young for his position, Mark thought, probably in his late twenties. He looked like a well-dressed beach boy with his surfer’s tan and styled blond hair. He wore a distinctive class ring that marked him as a graduate of Pepperdine University’s law school.

  That figures—Malibu campus, Mark thought. Pepperdine produced a lot of high-priced lawyers for the entertainment industry. Must have been bottom of his class to end up in public service—or else just politically connected.

  Wilder obviously thought he was handsome and kept throwing seductive glances at Lisa and Ramirez. He was seated at one end of the long table, with Mark at the other. The two women sat midway down the table, Lisa to Mark’s left, Ramirez to his right.

  “You’re assuming there will be a hearing,” Mark said, “and that I’ll be there.”

  “It’s already scheduled,” Wilder replied. “There’s a subpoena for that in the envelope as well. If you don’t show up, we’ll get a default judgment.”

  Mark made no move to pick up the envelope.

  “Before I accept this,” he said, “I think you should hear what Ms. Ramirez has to say. She’s not one of our people. She represents another party that has an interest in the proceedings. Nydia?”

  “I don’t have time for discussions with another party…” Wilder interrupted.

  “Shut up and listen, asshole.” Ramirez drew her Sig P229 from under her jacket and laid it on the table with the muzzle pointing directly at Wilder.

  The cold authority in her voice cut him off in mid-sentence. Now the color drained out of his face, his tan turning a pasty gray, while his blue eyes went very wide. He stared at the pistol and swallowed hard.

  “Mr. Wilder,” she told him, “I represent LifeEnders, Inc.”

  His eyes got even wider. Ramirez was a petite, olive-skinned beauty with long black hair framing a face that was home to a pair of lovely brown eyes. Now she was smiling at him, but the smile was predatory, devoid of warmth.

  “We are concerned that the actions you are taking against Charon’s Ferry—actions that exceed your legal authority—might be taken against LifeEnders as well. No…” she held up a hand to forestall his protest, “don’t bother to reassure me. Right now I wouldn’t believe you if you told me the sky was blue.

  “Let me offer you an option.” Her quiet voice sounded perfectly reasonable. “You can serve your papers, and Mr. Marshall tells me he will accept them. At that point, I will escort you out to the parking lot, where I will blow your brains out. I’d do it sooner, but professional courtesy prevents me from carrying out an execution inside the Ferry’s premises.

  “You will have served your papers, carried out the duties of your office. If you’re lucky, they might even mention that in your obituary.”

  She let him stew for a moment, noting with interest that he was sweating profusely despite the building’s airconditioned comfort.

  “Lisa?” Ramirez nodded across the table.

  “Or…I can offer you a different option,” Lisa said, also with a smile that was cold as ice.

  “Did you know that your office can legally issue a Wait Waiver? Oh…you don’t know what that is, do you? A Wait Waiver gives us permission to carry out a termination without waiting the required three days between contract and execution.”

  “So what I have here,” she slid two documents down the table toward him, “is a standard Ferry contract—simple termination, no frills—with your name on it and, of course, a Wait Waiver. Again, you can serve your papers, and we will accept them as soon as you imprint these two documents.

  “Then…” she drew her own favorite pistol—a Glock 27—and placed it on the table, also pointing at Wilder, “I’ll shoot you immediately, right there where you sit. Unlike Ms. Ramirez, I have no problem carrying out executions in this building. I do them all the time.

  “You probably won’t get an obituary, since nobody ever knows what happens to our clients, but you’ll be getting a free Ferry Ride. We usually charge a lot of money for that.”

  Like Ramirez, she gave him a few seconds to contemplate his fate, then nodded to Mark.

  “But today is your lucky day, Mr. Wilder,” Mark said, picking up the cue. “I’m prepared to offer you a third option. You can pick up those papers—I won’t tell you where to put them, but you might consider some place where the sun doesn’t shine—and you can walk out of here, get in your car, and go back where you came from.

  “You can send me an official notice that—after due consideration—your office has decided not to pursue further action against Charon’s Ferry or any of its principals in the matter of the Estate of Maurice LeChance. That notice should mention that any fees we may have collected from Mr. LeChance were in payment of business obligations and not part of his estate.

  “If I get that notice in a timely manner—say, by closing time this afternoon—you won’t need to worry about any chance encounters with Ms. Ramirez or one of her business associates. Otherwise…well, shit happens.”

  Mark watched Wilder leave—keeping him waiting in his car for an extra thirty seconds before opening the gate, just to make him sweat.

  He looked up to find Lisa and Ramirez studying something on Lisa’s pad.

  “See? Told you!” Ramirez was triumphant.

  “Yeah…a little bit, not a full dump.”

  “Enough to show on those tan Dockers. Pay up.”

  “OK…you win.” Lisa grinned and handed her a crisp $100 bill.

  “May I ask…?” Mark gave them a quizzical look.


  “Just reviewing the security footage from the meeting,” Lisa told him. “When he first came in, Nydia sent me a message—bet me he would piss himself when he saw the guns.”

  “Can’t say it was a gun that did it,” Ramirez shrugged, “but he definitely wet his pants—I saw it when he got up to leave. Somehow, I don’t think the little shit is going to be a problem anymore.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Retroactive Abortion

  Ramirez had been right. The notice of dismissal arrived from Wilder’s office less than two hours after he left the Ferry—including the quitclaim statement regarding the fees Maurice had paid.

  Maurice had been right as well. Stories about his “untimely death” were full of praise for him as a children’s TV star and sadness at his passing. A tiny footnote on the news indicated that the L.A. County prosecutor was investigating his death as a possible suicide, but no one paid much attention. The show’s producers lamented the loss and described him as “irreplaceable.”

  It was nearly a week later when Warren Simpson’s name popped up in the news headlines—as the guy everybody was looking for in connection with the collapse of what amounted to a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Some very high-profile investors had been all but wiped out, and Wall Street’s watchdogs at SEC had tagged Simpson as the perpetrator.

  Another week passed before anybody bothered to check California DHS to find out that Simpson was dead, and shortly after that, Katie Kim did a short piece in which she noted that an extremely expensive Lamborghini previously owned by Simpson was now registered to Charon’s Ferry, LLC.

  Mark had been surprised when Kim called him—before the piece appeared—to ask him whether the proposed story would “damage her future relationship” with the Ferry. Mark assured her that it would not.

  “I can never fault you for a simple presentation of verifiable facts, Ms. Kim,” he told her. “I won’t even mind if you call it ‘strong evidence’ that Mr. Simpson may have taken a Ferry Ride—evidence, not proof, of course.”

  He was not surprised when the piece appeared and she said exactly that—strong evidence, no proof—with a secret smile that told the audience she knew more than she was telling. That’s how the game is played, he thought. She might make it into the big time of TV journalism after all.

  As for the Lamborghini, they decided to sell it. Lisa had enjoyed driving it—had in fact racked up two speeding tickets in two weeks. For the second one, she’d been pulled over at the entrance to a local mall, and the car had drawn some curious onlookers. Then one of them had recognized her—from Kim’s earlier piece—and she’d found herself surrounded by fans who actually wanted autographs and to take selfies with her. Only in California would people want to be photographed with a known serial killer, she thought.

  “The Lamborghini was great to drive,” she told Mark, “probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But it’s like some five-star chef’s signature dish—great to try, but not something you want to eat every day. I’ll stick with my Audi. For me, it’s the automotive equivalent of comfort food.”

  “Besides,” she added, “that damned Lambo attracts too much attention. Can’t drive by a police car without setting off the blue lights, and I get nervous when people treat me like a celebrity. We kill celebrities…”

  In spite of a favorable resolution to all his recent contracts, Mark found himself in court less than a month later, over a contract he’d refused to take.

  Technically, he didn’t need to be present. The case involved fine points of law, and he trusted his lawyers to do their best to get it resolved in the Ferry’s favor. He hadn’t been called to testify, but he wanted to be there all the same. The case was important to the Ferry, but for him and Lisa, it was also a personal issue.

  “We’ve got to win this one, Aaron,” he told his lead counselor. “I do not, under any circumstances, want to be in the business of killing children. It’s bad enough with the younger teenagers, but at least they’re making their own choice.”

  “Honestly, Mark,” Aaron Lebowicz told him, “those teenagers are part of the problem right now. When the Supreme Court ruled on that one, LifeEnders just said, ‘nobody under 18—period.’ You said ‘we’ll go with the court’s ruling.’ I’m sure that made sense from a business standpoint. I don’t know how much of your business comes from the under-18 crowd, but…”

  “Close to 20 percent,” Mark admitted.

  “Well, that’s what’s got us hanging by a thread right now—that and the absolutely stupid way the legislators wrote the law in the first place.”

  At issue was the Parental Right of Determination Act (PRDA), a California statute that had gone into effect almost two years earlier. The law simply stated that the parent or legal guardian of a child under the age of 12 was allowed to make any and all decisions required to terminate the life of the child by any means not prohibited by law.

  The law had been spawned by a case in which a hospital had refused the parents’ request to remove life support from a severely and permanently injured 5-year-old boy. California courts had sided with the parents, but the hospital’s appeal had gone all the way to the Supreme Court. In a split decision, the Justices had ruled that “in the absence of any law to the contrary,” the hospital stood in loco parentis for such decisions and could act as they saw fit.

  So naturally—not wanting the Supreme Court to tell them how to behave—the California Legislature had promptly passed a law to the contrary.

  “The dumb bastards never mentioned removal of life support,” Lebowicz grumbled, “They just said ‘terminate life.’ And they never set any limits on when, why, or how parents could choose to do it. Still, we would have been OK with the ‘not prohibited by law’ clause, if not for the Wilbanks case.”

  In Wilbanks vs. Los Angeles County, a mother had deliberately smothered her 6-year-old daughter with Down’s Syndrome. Charged with murder, she based her defense on the PRDA, claiming that she was making the decision on behalf of the child. Legally, her attorneys argued, the mother had not committed murder. The child had committed suicide.

  They’d won that case, and she was acquitted of murder, but Los Angeles County had immediately charged her under the anti-suicide law. That one had gone to the federal level, where the Ninth Circuit had ruled against her—allowing the county to seize all her family’s assets as if she’d committed suicide herself.

  That was where Mark’s trouble started. He’d immediately issued a statement to the effect that Charon’s Ferry would not terminate children on the basis of what people were already calling the “Retroactive Abortion Act.”

  He’d thought that was the end of it, and in fact there had been only one application since then where parents asked him to terminate a child under 12. He’d refused that one, and the parents had sued—on the basis of age discrimination!

  “LifeEnders can say ‘adults only’ and get away with it.” Lebowicz shrugged. “Everybody draws lines based on age 18 these days, whether it’s for drinking, smoking, or murdering somebody. But once you said, ‘we’re OK with 14’ you opened yourself up for this.”

  It was depressing, but Mark had to admit that the attorney’s gloomy prediction might come true. Aaron was the senior partner of Daimler, Wurtz, and Lebowicz, the law firm that had handled all of the Ferry’s business since day one. They’d been highly recommended by LifeEnders, who also made extensive use of their services.

  The case should have been moot. Mark had gotten the lower court to buck it up to the Ninth Circuit which, despite a reputation for wacky, left-leaning rulings, was usually a friendly venue for Charon’s Ferry. Meanwhile, the child in question had died in an “accidental drowning” (Mark was almost certain it hadn’t been an accident) but the parents had chosen to press on, seeking damages from the Ferry for mental anguish and so forth.

  So now the court was about to render a judgment. Mark didn’t care about the money issue—the amount involved was only six figures, small change for the company. He was
more concerned with the basic issue on which the monetary damages depended in the first place—whether the Ferry was required by law to accept contracts to kill children under 12 years of age at the request of their parents.

  “All rise…” the bailiff declared.

  “Here it comes,” Lebowicz muttered. He and Mark got to their feet as the judges filed back into the courtroom.

  Lisa had stayed in the office to hold the fort while Mark was in court. The session had started at 9AM, but it was mid-afternoon when he finally returned, parking his F-Type Jaguar in its usual spot in the underground garage. She’d watched him on the cameras as he came up in the elevator, and she could tell by the look on his face that the news wasn’t good.

  “Conference room or cafeteria?” she’d asked when she met him in the lobby.

  “Conference,” he told her. “I need a strong drink.” Unlike the sidebar in the conference room, the cafeteria had nothing stronger than beer or wine.

  Lisa went straight to the bar and poured him a Dewar’s on the rocks. She put it in front of him, then poured a Yukon Jack over ice for herself. She sat down across the table and waited for him to say something.

  “We lost.” His voice was flat, without emotion. She waited for details.

  “Actually…” he said after a moment, “we won the part that doesn’t matter. The court decided their monetary claim had no merit, that they hadn’t proved any damages. So we won the battle, but lost the war.”

  Again she waited, but this time she reached across the table to take his hands in hers.

  “It’s fucked up,” he said at last. “It’s crazy. They say yes, we can use our own discretion as to which clients we take and which we don’t…as long as age of the person to be terminated is not a factor.