Bone Valley (10 page)

Competing law clerks
Jack Russell and Whitney Houston were perched in Bonita’s cubbyhole, waiting to pounce on me with tales of constitutional woes in the wayward world of fruit libel.

Barely awake, I was not ready for dialogue, constitutional or otherwise. What with the pointless trip to the Tampa airport that returned me home at two in the morning and Rasputin the Jay’s insistent and piercing early-morning call for breakfast, sleep wasn’t something I had enjoyed.

Then, during my breakfast, I had listened to the morning news and heard a quick report about an incident at the Atlanta airport involving an apparent religious zealot who had refused to take his shoes off and physically resisted the security police’s suggestion of a further body search. The reporter quoted unnamed sources as saying the man had exclaimed loudly that he expected to stand naked before his maker on Judgment Day, but damned if he was doing it in the Atlanta airport for some glorified SS sorts, and then he had run, triggering a manhunt, a bomb scare, and a security-alert shutdown. All flights were delayed for hours. The man escaped and information regarding his identify was pending, the reporter said, before moving on to other topics.

Well, I guessed that Frank Straight driver’s license was useless now.

Finally fully dressed, hair-fluffed and made up, off to work I had gone, raucous jay and all. I mean, okay, Lenora had been clear on the feeding schedule. I couldn’t just leave it at home to starve all day.

Thus, my initial not-happy mood upon waking up from the sleep I hadn’t had enough of had substantially deteriorated by the time I got to the law office and Jack and Whitney pointed at me with their bright, young faces.

Bonita immediately rose, as if to formalize her statement. “I am very sorry about Angus John.”

“Thank you. We can talk about it later,” I said, not wanting to discuss it in front of the two law clerks. Bonita sat back down, and before I could say anything else, Terrier Clerk leaped.

“We’ve worked all weekend, and we’ve got lots of law to tell you about,” he said. At first I thought he was literally jumping up and down, but when I looked at his feet, they stayed on the ground.

“Yes, I’ve got some significant law to discuss with you,” Whitney said, still looking too elegant for normal society.

“Well, good morning, er—” While I struggled with the name-remembering part of my brain, Rasputin squawked dementedly and we all turned to stare at the jay.

“New pet?” Bonita asked.

“Long story,” I said. I held the birdcage up and looked at the three of them, mentally gauging which one would be the easiest to badger into feeding Rasputin on an hourly schedule.

“Jack, you look like a bird lover. How would you like to take over caring for Rasputin?”

“Er, er…hum, George, I’m George. Eh, no, thank you. On the bird. See, I’m…allergic.”

Allergic? To birds? Come on, I thought, he was going to need to master the quick excuse better than that to succeed in the world of tort litigation. Then I leaned back a moment and waited, wondering how long it would take before he fully comprehended that I was a partner and he was a law clerk, and that if he ever wanted to be anything more at Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley than a lowly law clerk, he had to do whatever I, the partner, asked him to do.

Rachel caught on pretty darn quick. Before George spoke again, she reached out and took the cage from me. “I like birds,” she said, though her face didn’t beam with glee. “I’m not allergic to anything. I’ll take care of him.”

George finished processing his full situation and reached for the cage. “No, I…I’ll do it. I can wear…gloves…or something.”

For a moment, the two of them jerked the birdcage back and forth between them, in a brewing tug-of-war. Then Bonita, as the mother of five headstrong children and therefore, no doubt, well versed in settling sibling rivalries, stood up and reached for the cage. “Let me, please.” She sounded so sweet. “My daughter, Carmen, loves birds, and she needs a science project. This would be perfect.”

George and Rachel both let go of the cage.

Crisis solved. Lord, I loved Bonita.

After some instructions on the care and feeding of Rasputin, I slipped into my office, with the eager George and the elegant Rachel in tow, all ready to educate me, no doubt, on the veggie-libel statute and how I could save my clients—though one was dead and the other missing—from the dreaded orange-defamation suit filed against them.

“So, shoot,” I said. “What’d you find?”

“You know, at least twelve other states besides Florida have such veggie libel laws. They came about after the alar apple scare and where, when CBS exposed the dangers of alar, the apple industry lost a great deal of money, so they sued CBS for telling people about the dangers of pesticides on the apples, but lost the suit,” George said.

Well, if I were writing a term paper, that might be helpful.

“Thank you. Put all that in your memo. Rachel?”

“The constitutional issues involved in these veggie libel statutes are complex,” Rachel said. “First, no court has actually ruled upon whether these veggie libel laws are an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s rights to freedom of speech. But a good many law professors have written articles which argue that these statutes are unconstitutional.”

Yeah, okay, that and three bucks would buy me a cup of Starbucks, I thought.

“Most of these so-called veggie libel statutes punish clearly protected First Amendment expression—that is, speech on a matter of public interest, in this case the safety of our food. And the statutes make it far easier for the plaintiff to win against a food-safety advocate.”

“Uh-huh,” I added to show I was still listening.

“Certainly such laws lend themselves to abusive litigation practices,” Rachel said.

Oh, yeah, like lawyers need help on that score.

“So, what happens, basically, is that these veggie libel laws create a whole new tort, hand-designed to help big agribusiness win. It’s almost ludicrous. These laws endanger our safe food supply by shutting up people who would tell us about pesticides, bovine growth hormones, Frankenstein foods, and unsafe levels of who-knows-what.”

When Rachel stopped to inhale, I sensed a kindred spirit. “Good,” I said, and nodded in what I hoped was a judicious manner.

Simultaneous with a light knock on my door, Bonita stepped into my office.

“Don’t forget you’ve got to talk with Ms. McDemis, the insurance adjuster in Jimmie Rogers’s case,” Bonita said.

Ah, yes, Jimmie’s case, the parrot-drops-a-lizard-in-a-bikini-top car-wreck case, the stupidest lawsuit of my career thus far. Ah, yes, the glorious life of a busy lawyer, I thought, and nodded at Bonita.

“Okay, write it all up in a memo for me,” I said, after turning back to Rachel. “And let me call this insurance adjuster on another case.”

After they shut the door behind them, I cradled my phone for a moment, then mentally summoned up dear Ms. McDemis’s phone number, dialed it, waded through the usual phone-recorded crap nonsense stuff before actually getting the woman, who was inappropriately nicknamed Sunny. Hello and hello, and all that.

“That stupid cracker has only the minimum auto insurance required by Florida law,” Sunny said, setting a negative tone.

“Pretty good for an unemployed man driving a clunker,” I said, thinking the fact that Jimmie bothered with any car insurance was a point in his favor.

“If you think this insurance company is going to waste its resources defending him in that stupid lawsuit, you need to go back to law school.”

Blah blah blah, the usual just-because-we-took-your-premiums-doesn’t-mean-we’re-going-to-pay-anything insurance company guff.

After Sunny shut up, I asked her to hire a private detective for video surveillance on the plaintiff, as I was sure he was faking injuries from the minor rear-ender.

Reluctantly, I called the green attorney, Jason Quartermire, the young man representing the man, the plaintiff, the stupid faker, who was suing Jimmie. Without the usual lawyer protestations and affectations, Jason agreed to see me that morning. Amazed that he didn’t yet know the game of playing hard to get to show how busy he was, I gathered my mental resources so that I might convince him to take the $5,000 on behalf of his client, the faker plaintiff, and go home. Then I could return in earnest to worrying about when, or if, Miguel, my client on the lam, and my errant brother, Delvon the religious terrorist who had shut down the Atlanta airport, would show up.

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.”