Shake the Trees (4 page)

CHAPTER 4

A crescent of orange finally appeared above the Atlantic swells, though thousands were still asleep in the towers behind him.  The wet sand was firm under yet another pair of New Balance running shoes. Marc Mason’s father had just completed his daily three-mile run.  The sunrise was beautiful, but not the object of his admiration.  This morning the unimaginable beauty of nature had been overshadowed by a 48 foot Bimini Cruiser that sat gleaming in the new morning light less than one hundred yards off the beach. 

James Marcus Mason, III, took one last longing glance at the yacht before angling off to the condo apartment he had rented a few weeks before.  These early morning runs had given him a chance to think through all of the changes that were happening.  He also preferred the solitude for another reason.  He wasn’t in the mood to talk, much less explain.  And he was distinctive - his tall stature and the full head and chest of pure white hair that sprang from his perpetually tanned body made him instantly recognizable.  He knew he was often compared to that actor whose name he could never remember.  During a round of bed banter, Elizabeth told him the lawyers had nicknamed him “Toasty.”

As James entered the apartment he could hear the shower.  He sat down on the edge of the bed and peeled off his shoes and low-top padded running socks.  His hips ached and ankles hurt.  After his last physical, the doctor told him to stay out of the sun and find a less punishing form of exercise.  The shower was still running as he slowly stood up.

Transfixed by the rivulets of steaming water winding their way down her body, he stood statue-like admiring the twenty-something body.  His wife Lorna had looked like that once, though her hair was a deep red.  It may have been seconds or minutes, but finally Elizabeth Hayes pushed the water from her face and turned.  She peered through the fog-covered and water-splattered glass door with vividly blue eyes and smiled.

“How was your run, baby?”

“Fantastic.  Beautiful sunrise this morning.”

“Are we late?”

“Yeah.  But the ship can’t sail until the captain’s on board.”

He climbed the steps more slowly than he had 28 years earlier when he was first sworn in as a magistrate of the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida.  Although he was still graceful in his movements, the granite steps to the Miami courthouse seemed steeper after all the years.  James Marcus Mason, III, was only 32 years old when he first climbed those stairs as a federal magistrate.  The federal trial bar justifiably assumed that James Mason would receive a lifetime appointment as a federal district court judge before he turned 40.  It never happened.

Magistrate Judge Mason, or Judge Mason as he preferred to be called, was tired.  In the federal court system, the magistrate judges conducted the routine hearings and waded through the vast filings of paperwork that flooded in.  Quite often, the decisions of a magistrate were critical to the resolution of a case. This was especially true of a magistrate who had been on the bench longer than all of the federal judges for whom he labored.  The most clever and successful trial attorneys appearing before the federal bench understood this, and had carefully cultivated the friendship and loyalty of Judge Mason.  The rest and vast majority of the Bar considered his position to vaguely lie somewhere between a clerk and a “real” judge.

For years Judge Mason had worked tirelessly on behalf of several charities and, particularly, as an advocate for the elderly.  This effort sprang from both real concern and a desire to reveal the qualities that would help him ascend to the position he so desperately coveted.  But James Mason was politically tone deaf, and receiving a Presidential appointment to the federal bench was all about politics.  The winds of change were always blowing.  Despite switching parties, at the critical moments Magistrate Judge Mason always found himself on the wrong side of the political fence.

Several neatly stacked piles of paper covered the huge oak desk that his father had sat behind for decades.  The Masons were one of a few “almost” founding families that had arrived in Miami relatively early in its history.  James Mason, II, had been a state court judge for 41 years and had ruled with an iron fist.  The Judge, as he was known to nearly everyone, had bequeathed his only son a desk and a heritage, but little else.

James Mason ran his fingers through his full mane of white hair and sighed.  His clerk Elizabeth laid his telephone messages on a pile of paperwork and brushed the top of his hand with her fingertips as she breezed out of the room.  The top message was from Stanley Rosen, his divorce attorney.

James Mason and his wife, Lorna, had been happily married for two years; the other thirty-four varied between quiet desperation and pure misery.  Lorna had always wanted more.  More money and more prestige.  Her focus in life had generally been three-fold: the Junior League, the Floridian Garden Club, and The Miami Lakes Country Club.  Against all odds, their two daughters had turned out well, and lived out of state.  Their only son, James Marcus Mason, IV, known throughout his childhood as “Jimmy”, was a different story. 

As he looked down at the telephone message, James ruefully recalled an episode that had taken place more than two decades earlier.  Lorna had taken Jimmy to the country club for swimming lessons.  Unfortunately, Jimmy ignored his mother’s admonition that children should be seen and not heard.  One of the other ladies had asked Lorna how “the Judge” was doing.  Everyone knew Lorna took a great deal of pride in being married to a judge.  Unfortunately, little Jimmy felt it necessary to correct the apparent misconception.

“My dad’s not a real judge.  He’s just a magistrate.  He does all the shit work.”

Lorna was horrified.  She marched her son out to the car and called him a little ass.  She told him that she wanted nothing to do with him; he was his father’s responsibility now.  Jimmy cried himself to sleep that night.  James tried to console him, but Jimmy locked his door and refused to talk.  Lorna didn’t return to the club for weeks. Somehow the whole thing ended up being James’ fault.  She had refused to enter the doors of Miami Lakes Country Club with Jimmy again.  Jimmy learned to swim at the YMCA. 

As sole male heir to the Mason family legacy of achievement, Jimmy went on to commit an unpardonable sin - the sin of mediocrity.  God and genetics had given Jimmy neither the physical athleticism of his father nor the mental horsepower to meet his expectations.  Throughout his childhood, little Jimmy strived to be like his father.  The inevitable failures eventually caused him to resent the man he admired most and had repeatedly tried to imitate. 

College was a struggle, with Jimmy essentially majoring in his fraternity at a small but exclusive private institution.  James spoke at the graduation ceremony; Jimmy was drunk.  He did eventually graduate from an unaccredited law school in South Carolina, but failed the Florida Bar Exam on his first three attempts.  Lorna swore everyone to secrecy, but Jimmy didn’t take his oath seriously and the word got out.  As usual, Lorna was horrified.

Jimmy passed the exam on his fourth attempt, and was hired and let go by several small and medium sized Miami firms with a federal trial practice.  All were trying to curry favor with his father, and all decided the potential damage to their reputation outweighed any possible benefit.  Then he became assistant general counsel to a small insurance company writing term life policies. 

The company was headquartered in Tampa, but primarily serviced the rural areas of the Southeast.  Jimmy seemed to come into his own and began calling himself “Marc”.  He eventually became general counsel, and had recently been named President and Chief Executive Officer.  He immediately took the enterprise in an entirely new direction, and renamed the company American Senior Security.

James broke off his mental stroll down memory lane, and decided to get the most distasteful task of the day out of the way.  He had Elizabeth place the call.

“Hello Stanley.  I only have a few minutes.  What do you have for me?”

“I received the settlement proposal from Jason Sloan.  The guy is a shark.  Order the clowns, because this mediation is going to be circus.  I think…”

“What does she want, Stanley?”

“The house. The condo in the Keys.  Half your federal pension.  More than half.  Half of the stocks, bonds, and money in the bank.  Oh, and the best part.  Five thousand a month in alimony until you reach age 70.  You get to keep the boat and your Caddy.”

“I’m retiring in less than two years, Stanley.  I’m retiring come hell or high water.  There can’t be any alimony.  Nothing else matters, but there can’t be any alimony.”

Several seconds of silence passed.  Stanley Rosen didn’t have a reply.  Magistrate Mason wouldn’t be making the decisions in this case.

“Set the case for mediation, Stanley.”

“Whatever you say, Your Honor.”

“Oh, and Stanley.”

“Yeah, Judge.”

“Do you still have a couple of discreet friends in the press?”

“Of course.”

“Have them give Lorna a call and ask for a comment about the settlement proposal.”

Stanley snickered.  “You want this thing in the papers?”

“No.  And neither does Lorna.”

Elizabeth saw the red light blink off on James’ private line, and slipped back into his office and closed the door.

When Elizabeth Hayes came to work for him two years earlier, James never imagined how things would develop.  He was a star athlete in his college days, and with regular exercise had remained fit and trim.  But Elizabeth was younger than his oldest daughter, and their trysts felt incestuous at first. 

When James learned that her father had committed suicide when she was still a teenager, he’d become more than a little concerned about the psychological implications of their spring/winter relationship.  It didn’t take Dr. Freud to put that one together, and James had an undergraduate degree in psychology, so he understood the potential pitfalls in their relationship better than most.  Yet time had proven Elizabeth to be strong, and he’d come to rely upon her.

“Is everything okay, baby?”

“Oh, it’s just Lorna.  She wants to chain me to this desk until I’m dead.  She wants everyone to be as miserable as she is.”

“Do you think she knows?”

“No.  No.  She doesn’t have a clue.  Believe me, we’d know it if she did.  She can have it all as long as we walk away from this place with no strings attached.”

“Don’t let her screw you over, James.  Everything will be all right.  We just have to tough this thing out.”

James leaned his head back and ran the fingers of both hands through his thick, white hair.  “I know.  I know.”  He paused.  “I should probably have you check on Jimmy. I mean Marc.”

“I did, James.  Everything is fine.”

“You sure.”

“Everything sounds like it’s on track.  The investment by your friends apparently got Marc past the cash flow crunch, and now the real estate sales are taking off.  Everything sounds good.”

“I was happy to make the calls, but he can’t know I was involved, Elizabeth.  Its okay if he thinks those guys were trying to curry favor with me by investing, but he can’t know I was involved.  He won’t accept any help from me.”

“I know, James.  We’ve talked about this.  You need to relax.”

“It’s my good name on the line, Elizabeth.  I need to know what’s going on.  I need to know what’s happening.”

“I know, James.  I know.”

CHAPTER 5

Sam awoke curled in the fetal position, trying to conserve warmth.  October was cold in the early morning at nearly 10,000 feet above sea level.  He slowly moved his toes across the bed seeking out a warm leg, but there was no warm body to be found.  Sunlight slashed through the glass double doors on the other side of the loft bedroom.  He opened his eyes tentatively and found the heavy robe he had thrown across the end of the bed.  As he stood his thighs protested.  He soon became aware of several other aches and pains from the long mountain hike of the previous afternoon.

As he peered out the double doors, Sam noticed a figure in the distance.  He found the binoculars he kept on top of the dresser and stepped onto a small wooden balcony.  The figure was now moving across the small mountain stream that ran next to the cabin and then wound its way to the San Luis River below.  The binoculars revealed Ellen effortlessly making her way from one rounded grey stone to another, seemingly oblivious to the bone-chilling water gurgling all around her.  Her breath was steaming - the result of a strenuous run and the chilly morning air.  Sam focused on her skimpy running shorts and shook his head.  As he turned, there was only one thing on his mind.  Coffee.

The aroma alone was worth living for.  Freshly ground beans and plenty of them.  Sam took his first sip from the steaming hot mug.  Jeans and a heavy sweatshirt replaced the robe, but fluffy slippers remained.  He shuffled over to the wood stove in the middle of the big open room that served as both an eating area and living room, and began to build a fire.  Crumpled newspaper, pine kindling, and two chunks of split oak.  The pine was beginning to take when Sam heard gravel crunching and then footsteps on the back porch.

Ellen entered and took off the hooded sweatshirt that normally hung on a hook by the backdoor.  Then threw it across the back of a chair.

“You might want to wash that.  I sweat like a boy.”

Sam laughed. “Coffee?”

“The blacker the better.”

“You’re my kinda girl.”

Ellen turned toward Sam and smiled.  “Think so?”

Sam once again felt like an awkward teenager, and was momentarily at a loss for words as he handed Ellen a steaming cup.

Ellen smiled again.  “I’m starving.  How about a big breakfast and a hike upstream?”

Sam shook his head vigorously.  “Road trip.”

“Road trip?”

“Road trip.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Ellen ran up the stairs, pulled off her top, and tossed it to Sam.  “I guess we better get showered.”

In a few moments, Ellen‘s head reappeared at top of the stairs.  ”You coming?”

Sam noticed Ellen’s gaze fall to his feet.  He looked down and realized he was still wearing the lime green slippers Sandi had given him the prior Christmas as a gag gift.  Despite sore thighs and hairy slippers, Sam ran up the stairs after her.

  Sam muscled the ancient faded blue Toyota Land Cruiser off the highway and brought the bouncing vehicle to a stop.  The old shack had a long porch overhang and underneath it hung dried red chilies strung into all shapes and sizes of ristras and wreaths.  And dozens of wind chimes constructed out of a myriad of different materials.  The sound of a huge blowtorch rose above the notes of the chimes.

Ellen stood at the open door of the truck.  “What is that wonderful aroma?  And what’s the deal with the noise.”

Sam smiled.  “Follow me.”

Around the side of the building a wire-grated tube stood on four metal legs.  It was nearly ten feet long and four feet in diameter and filled with fresh green chilies.  A small electric motor on one end rotated the huge wire bin.  A propane burner ran underneath the wire cage for its full length and was spitting out two-foot long flames that nearly touched the center of the rotating cylinder.  An old Hispanic man sat on a ladder-backed wooden chair a few feet away from the heat of the device.  He smiled at the couple and then spit the shell from a pinion nut onto the ground.

Ellen yelled above the roar of the burners.  “God, I love that smell.  What is this thing?”

Sam put his mouth close to her ear.  “Chile roaster.”

They switched positions.  “I’m hungry.”

Sam smiled and motioned for Ellen to follow.

“I’m starving.  I want it all, but I’ll have whatever he’s having.  And coffee.”

The elderly and pleasantly overweight Hispanic waitress smiled and began to walk away.  “I know what he’s having.”

Ellen shook her finger at Sam.  “I’m gonna shake up your world, Sam.  What are we having?”

“Huevos rancheros.  Scrambled with chorizo.  Christmas.”

“Christmas?”

“Red and green chile.  I like variety.  You know - mix it up.”

Ellen laughed and seemed to appreciate Sam’s attempt at humor and irony.  “What are our plans for today?”

“Durango.  Ever been?”

Ellen shook her head.

“Old western town about two hours from here.  We can ride the train if you want.  An 1880’s narrow gauge railroad.  Vintage steam locomotive and the whole bit.  The mountains are beautiful up there right now.  The aspen and mountain maples have all turned.”

“Wine and cheese.”

“Huh?”

“We need to take some wine and cheese.  A snack before dinner tonight.”

Sam shook his head and smiled at Ellen.  He thought her appetite for food and drink rivaled her appetite for sex and exercise.

“On the way back, we can stop in Pagosa Springs.  Believe it or not, there is a great little French restaurant there.  And then we’ll soak in the hot springs.”

“Hot springs?”

“Seven natural rock pools all overlooking the San Juan River.  The temperatures vary between 98 and 106 degrees.  Oh damn!  I forgot swimming suits.”

Ellen grinned lustfully.  “Sure you did, Sam.”

“No, really.  The pools are open to the public.”

“Do they sell swimming suits in Durango?”

“Right.  Good idea.  We’ll buy suits in Durango.  They’ll probably be on sale this time of the year.”

Ellen smiled at Sam’s frugality, and then became serious.  “And champagne, Sam.”

“Champagne?”

“Sam, I have something to discuss with you.  I don’t want it to interfere with our fun today.  It can wait until tonight.  But I’m hoping we’ll have reason to celebrate.”

Ellen selected a 102-degree pool near the cliff with an awe-inspiring view of the San Juan River and the valley below.  Its primary advantage was not its view, but the fact that it had not been chosen by any of the other bathers.  The small galvanized bucket that Sam had purchased at a hardware store in Durango now contained ice and an unopened bottle of champagne.  Ellen was already enjoying the penetrating heat while Sam entered the steaming water tentatively, allowing his body temperature to slowly adjust.  As soon as he leaned back and his muscles began to relax, Ellen grasped him with an uncomfortably tight grip and began to stroke forcefully.

“Jesus Christ, Ellen!”

Ellen smiled devilishly.

“I don’t think this is exactly sanitary,” Sam said in a low voice.

“Just tell me to stop, Sam.”

He furtively glanced around at several of the other bathers, and smiled weakly at one or two.  Then gripped the edge of the pool and allowed the tension to seep from his body.

“Sam, it’s time I was totally honest with you.  I’m not interested in real estate.”

“Uh-huh.”  Sam was, after all, a salesman and had picked up on that fact the first day they met.

“I’m a headhunter, Sam.”

Sam looked confused, and was slightly worried he’d been having sex with a self-admitted serial killer.

“I recruit business executives.  Highly-placed highly-compensated business executives.”

Sam had entered a warm and groggy sexually satisfied full-bellied male nirvana.  “Uh-huh.”

“I came here to recruit you.”

Sam shook himself out of his fully relaxed state and sat up.  “What do you mean?”

“I want you to interview for a highly paid executive position with a private corporation headquartered in Tampa.  I think the job is yours if you want it.”

Now Sam was fully awake, and both hurt and angry.  “Well, let me ask you this, Ellen.  Do you usually screw your clients?”

Now Ellen’s eyes were angry.  “First of all, you’re not my client, the potential employer is.  Secondly, I . . ..”  Ellen’s voice began to break and quiver.  Two large tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Sam, I never expected this to happen.  I’m . . . I’m sorry, Sam.  I think we’d better go.”  Ellen began to climb out of the pool as more tears spilled off her face.

Sam reached for her arm.  “Wait a minute.  What are you saying exactly?”

“I just want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that I have feelings for you, Sam.  Strong feelings.”

Sam felt like an ass. 

“Ellen, you don’t even know me.  You don’t know anything about me.  Why in the world would you come here to recruit me for a . . . for a highly paid executive position?  It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sam, your background is awesome.  Wharton grad and your sales experience in San Diego.  It’s impressive, Sam.  Really impressive.”

“You know about San Diego?”

“You’ve never googled yourself, have you?”

“I guess I never thought about it.  It’s all there, isn’t it?”

“Sam, the market ate a lot of people in those days.  It ate you too.  So what?  The important thing is your performance before the crash.  You were incredible.”

“Ellen, I have a life here.  I like it here.  People depend on me here.”

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime, Sam.  The starting salary is $300,000.  That doesn’t include bonuses, stock options, and benefits.  For your own sake, just consider going to the interview.  All expenses paid.  And not that this matters, and I do travel a lot, but . . . well, never mind.”

“What?  What is it, Ellen?”

“Well, I was just going to say that Miami is only a forty-five minute flight away.”

“But people depend on me here.”

“What do you pay her, Sam?  Twenty-five grand a year?”

“You mean Sandi?”

“Of course, I mean Sandi.  What do you pay her, Sam?”

“Seventeen-thousand dollars a year.”

“Jesus, Sam.  You cheap bastard.”

“That’s good money around here,” Sam said defensively.

Ellen giggled.  “Calm down, Sam.  I’m just busting your balls.  All I‘m saying is that you can give Sandi a nice raise, and temporarily refer your listings to another real estate agent. Sandi can mind the store, and with her free time she can attend community college and get her own license.  At your expense, of course.  At the end of the day, you’ll still be a couple of hundred thousand ahead of the game.  No matter what happens.”

“I don’t know.”

“Sam, all I’m asking is that you think about it.  Please?” 

“Okay.  I’ll think about it.”

Ellen kissed Sam and ran her fingertips along the side of his face.  “Now how about that champagne?”

She’d been gone for three days.  Sam was in a fog.  The whole thing with Ellen didn’t make sense.  His gut and his instincts were telling him to back away.  The office was dead, so he’d left Sandi in charge and gone home.  Although the long mountain shadows of late afternoon had already begun to settle on his small cabin, Sam left the lights off as he rambled about.  As he walked by his computer, he noticed his list of favorites and the Google icon.  Sam sat down and typed his name.

Dozens of articles, mostly from the San Diego Union, appeared on the screen.  The articles from the 1990s touted his success.  The later articles brought back all of the old memories he’d been trying to forget.  Sam was going to that place he thought he’d escaped from.  Then the telephone rang.

“Sam, its Sandi.  Sorry to bother you at home, but my Mom called.  I wanted to ask you before the drug store closed.  The doctor said Dustin has strep and prescribed some antibiotics.  But they’re not generic.  And . . .”

“Sandi.  It’s okay.  Put it on my card.”

“Sam, I really appreciate it.  You know I’ll pay you back on Friday.”

“It’s okay.  Really okay.  You better get moving.  I’ll call later to check on Dustin.”

“Bye.  Talk to you tonight.”

Sam hit the end button and sat quietly for several minutes before finally reaching into his pocket to retrieve a slip of paper.  He unfolded it and dialed the number Ellen had written there.