Cashed Out

by Michael Rubin

Keep dead bodies out? I figured Trey wasn’t counting the thousands of carcasses that had graced the plant during ‘processing.’

  Trey drained a second can of beer, tossed it into the wastebasket, reached out to punch the button on the sideboard, waited for the refrigerator to appear, and leaned back and retrieved another beer, all without getting out of his chair. “So, I gather from what the Sheriff told me – I supported Isaiah in his last two campaigns and give to the Church

  Youth League he heads up – that you’re doing something involving Camellia Industries.” I avoided the question and instead presented Trey with one of the light red invoices that I had taken from the boxes Spider had delivered. “This is yours, right?

  Trey looked at it perfunctorily. “Yeah.”

  “Been doing business a long time with Camellia Industries?”

  “Hell yes. Since the beginning. Ten years or so. Uncle Carter got the start-up costs arranged for me. Got me a building loan. Greased all the right wheels. Got me hooked up with Camellia Industries. Couldn’t have done it without Uncle Carter.”

  That would be Trey’s uncle Carter H. Herrington, IV, Secretary of the Department of Environmental Health.

  “Used to be a bitch getting rid of that stuff,” said Trey, “especially all those tanning solutions, and then G.G. came along. It was great. That fat old man sure could fix things. That’s what Uncle Carter used to say. And that gal G.G. Guidry lived with, Taylor – great bazooms and a tight ass. But, you were married to her, so . . .” he smirked, “you know all about those bazooms.”

  He was right about that. Of course, it was only later that I found out that Taylor had what my high school friends in Des Allemands called a sein chaleureux, a welcoming breast. Her breasts had welcomed more hands than it takes to unload an ocean going vessel. Welcomed other male appendages as well.

  In any event, no wonder the State Department of Environmental Health was pushing all-out to defeat the injunction. Uncle Carter was helping Trey, and Trey was disposing of all his used processing chemicals, undoubtedly toxic, through Camellia Industries’ licensed facility. At least a facility that was licensed until last week’s injunction. And if Trey couldn’t dispose of his chemicals, he couldn’t continue to operate. Trey needed G.G., and Uncle Carter was helping Trey stay in business. One big happy family.

  “Tell you what,” said Trey. “Why don’t you come to the event tonight?

  “You mean that thing with EarthResponsible that you and Weegie were talking about? I wasn’t invited.”

  “‘Course you weren’t invited. You don’t have enough money. You don’t travel in the right circles, Schex. But don’t worry. Come on, you can be my guest. It’s the least I can do for an old pal. Gonna be fun. We’re having a big cochon de lait at the Club Champs D’Èlysèes. Roasted pig served by waiters in tuxes, along with champagne in those tall, fancy glasses. Gonna be great. A band. Dancin’. Black tie. Old ladies in pearls. Young gals in those low cut, sparkly cocktail dresses – they bend over and you get a view. It is gonna be the place to see and be seen.”

  I acted as if I was reluctant. No harm being seen with the power clique. With the $2.8 million I’d figured out to get free and clear, I’d soon be one of them. “Well, if you insist.”

  Trey raised himself out of his chair and led me out. “Then I’ll see you tonight. Come around seven. The Sheriff ought to be finished about now, and production is behind.”

  He looked at his watch. “Damn. Not gonna get to go fishing today. Whole

  beautiful day shot to hell.”

  Chapter 37

  As soon as I left Wholesale Flesh and Fur, I headed back to Baton Rouge to meet with Taylor and Lolly Marston.

  Lolly’s office, which was several blocks down from mine, bore no resemblance to mine. Lolly’s success was reflected in the immaculately restored details of her antebellum cottage and her meticulously kept lawn with flowering plants blossoming from every corner. Skylights streamed sunshine into the high-ceilinged rooms and bathed her antique consoles and cabinets in a warm glow.

  When I arrived, Taylor was already there. A young guy sat in a chair on the side holding a tablet computer. After the usual round of greetings and some pleasantries, including introducing us to her associate – Cecil “Beau” Faessen, Jr. – Lolly launched into the business at hand. “This is a joint meeting of counsel. I want everyone to understand that.”

  “You don’t have to be so formal, Lolly; after all, we are all among friends,” Taylor said sweetly.

  “Taylor, I’ll defend you. Spare me the southern belle routine. Beau, take notes.” Beau nodded his head. He was ready.

  “Now, we’re going to do this by the book. No waivers of any privilege. Schex and I talked about this when he first contacted me, Taylor, and it’s going to be tough to keep the privilege intact with two separate counsel, one for criminal work and one for civil. Although there is a joint defense privilege, we’re not going to give the D.A. a shot at busting it with some theory that it doesn’t apply across civil and criminal lines.

  Understand?”

  “I’m being given a lesson in the law?” asked Taylor, still all sweetness. “Do I have to take a test, Lolly?”

  “You have to listen and understand, Taylor,” said Lolly sharply. “Judge

  Rochbauve . . .”

  “Francine?” interrupted Taylor.

  “From where you sit right now, Taylor, it’s Judge Rochbauve. Remember that. She did you and Schex a favor on the bail. I don’t want you to indicate to anyone outside of this room, even inadvertently, whom you may know or how you know them. So let’s start right here, right now.”

  “Judge Rochbauve. I got it.”

  “The judge gives legal education seminars on criminal procedure and privileges. No way are we going to take any chances. On those things we have to do together, we will, but on everything else we’re going to meet separately. Schex and I are going to keep separate files. We’re going to lock this down as tightly as possible. Is that understood?” “Understood,” echoed Taylor, with honeyed tones.

  “And one more thing.” Lolly obviously was not happy with Taylor’s simulated attitude of confectionery cooperation. “As a favor to you, and as a favor to Schex – after all, I’ve known you both a long time – we’re having this initial meeting before I’ve received my retainer. But, this initial meeting is as much as you get for old times’ sake. Before we go further, before I do any more work, you will have to pay me my retainer. In full. Is that clearly understood?”

  Taylor’s false smile remained fixed. “Pay you? Of course. That’s the rule. I pay you. You work for me. I understand everything just fine.”

  “You’ll be just fine and justly convicted if you don’t follow my instructions,”

  Lolly snapped. “Now that we’ve all postured, let’s get started.”

  Lolly looked over at Beau. He was typing quickly, wearing a look of bemusement.

  Lolly turned back to Taylor. “Now . . .” She waited for Taylor to speak.

  Instead of responding to Lolly, Taylor turned to me and said, in her most saccharine tone, “Where would you, who also work for me, like me to begin?”

  I wasn’t going to let her play me. “OK, Taylor. Begin with the truth. Why did you give all those boxes of corporate documents to Spider? And don’t give me any more shit about being worried about their safety. Who, besides you and me, would even care about those books?”

  I addressed my next comments to Lolly. “I have the corporate binder at my office. The bylaws give Taylor a right to purchase G.G.’s shares in the event of his death. At

  book value. And that’s a hell of a lot less than market value.” “A motive for murder,” Beau murmured.

  Taylor snarled at him. “Well, smart-ass, I may have had a motive to murder fucking G.G., but I didn’t.” Turning to Lolly and me, Taylor composed herself. “I’ve told you both I didn’t, and that’s the truth.”

  “Assuming that statement is correct,” I said, “you still haven
’t answered my question. Who would care about the corporate books, besides you and me?

  “Why, ‘The Snake’s’ son, of course. Spider knew about that, which is why he called me after you and I left Poirrier’s last night.”

  “He called you?”

  “Sure. I met him later in the parking lot of Wholesale Flesh and Fur.”

  Chapter 38

  As soon as I explained that Spider was dead, found in the alligator freezer of Wholesale Flesh and Fur, Taylor gasped. Was she visibly upset, or was this another one of her ploys? Beau was so astonished his tablet computer slipped off his lap and hit the floor. Lolly said, “This is going to require an increase in my retainer.”

  ‘The Snake’ had to be Carmine ‘The Snake’ Micelli, the don of ‘the family’ in New Orleans. He ran the unions that serviced the wharfs and the restaurants, and supplied busboys and waiters and truckers. He controlled the drugs that flowed into and through New Orleans, as relentlessly and with as much volume as the Mississippi River flowed through the Crescent City. He controlled the prostitution rings. It was said he controlled a number of politicians throughout the state.

  I started in on Taylor. “Why would ‘The Snake’s’ son want the books? How would Spider know about that? Why did you meet with Spider after we left Poirrier’s?

  Why, Taylor, why?”

  “It sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?” Taylor’s voice had a slight quiver in it.

  “It sounds,” said Lolly, “like you’re going to make the prosecution’s case easy and mine difficult as hell,” said Lolly.

  Taylor buried her face in her hands. “Help me. Both of you. Please! I didn’t hurt Spider. I couldn’t hurt him. He was like this big teddy bear.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue, and blew her nose.

  I wasn’t buying the sobbing routine. Neither was Lolly. Seeing that it was getting her nowhere with us, Taylor’s eyes became dry and her voice cold.

  “You all want the truth? Well here it is, Schex. According to Spider, no matter what G.G. said to your face, he didn’t trust you. Spider said he had talked to people about you and that you’d only mess up once you found out G.G. and I were involved. He said you were incompetent to do anything beyond putting together some simple corporations. Spider called me on my cell phone, after you informed him you weren’t going to be my criminal lawyer. He was actually relieved. Spider told me that he had a way of getting me to a real lawyer, a quality lawyer who could really help. He said he had already made a phone call about that.”

  Beau had abandoned his cracked tablet and was bent over a legal pad taking copious notes.

  Taylor seemed to be piling lies upon lies. “He told you he had made another call? To whom? If it was on either of your cell phones, the cops will track it all down. And you didn’t tell me any of that before? Come on, Taylor, Lolly here is trying to help you, and all you do is talk in riddles. How was Spider going to hire a ‘quality attorney’? Did he have any money?”

  “I have no earthly idea who he called! Come on, I’m trying to tell you what I do know, not what I don’t know. Besides, he sure didn’t have any real money. Why do you think he worked for G.G.?”

  “So how was he going to hire you an attorney?”

  “He said he had ways.”

  “And why meet at Wholesale Flesh and Fur? Why not at Poirrier’s, or, better yet, back in Baton Rouge?”

  “Because he lived down in St. Bonaventure, and because he said he used to meet

  G.G. at Trey’s plant from time to time.” Lolly was confused. “Trey? Which Trey?”

  Trey is a common name in south Louisiana. Many sons carried their father’s and grandfather’s names. Grandpa would be “Senior,” father would be “Junior,” and son would be “Trey.” I explained to Lolly that Taylor was referring to Trey Sanders, owner of Wholesale Flesh and Fur and nephew of Carter Herrington, the head of the Department of Environmental Health.

  Lolly continued pressing Taylor. “And what happened when the two of you met?”

  “Nothing. Honestly. Really. He just wanted to re-assure me that he was going to take care of me. That was all. It was a two-minute meeting in the parking lot. And then I left.”

  “Taylor,” said Lolly, leaning forward in her chair, “you and I are going to have a conversation, and depending on what you tell me, I’ll decide whether I’m going to help you after today. Maybe . . . just maybe we can stay one step ahead of the D.A., at least for a day or so.”

  “And the Sheriff too?” asked Taylor.

  “No,” Lolly explained, “you don’t get it, do you? The black Sheriff and the white D.A. down in St. Bonaventure Parish are political enemies. They work together because they have to, not because they like each other.” Taylor was baffled.

  “Why,” asked Lolly, “do you think you were arrested by the Sheriff before the D.A. could act? Before the D.A. could charge you and call a press conference announcing the charges? It was because the Sheriff was trying to paint the D.A. into a corner. They didn’t really have anything on you at the time except your foolish statements about wanting G.G. dead, so the Sheriff had nothing to lose. If the D.A. didn’t charge you, the Sheriff could claim to his constituents that it was because the D.A. was trying to protect white people. And if the D.A. did charge you, as he did, then it was only because the Sheriff had acted first. Either way, the Sheriff gets a political plus. So, the D.A. is going to want to counter that. If they find out that you were at Flesh and Fur with Spider last night, the D.A. is going to move to revoke your bail and do everything in his power to use you to grab the limelight for himself.”

  Taylor looked up hopefully at her. “So, what can we do?”

  “We are not going to do anything. You’re not part of the ‘we.’ First, I get my retainer, and then the only two things you’re going to be occupied with are telling Beau and me the complete truth and then doing as I instruct. Precisely as I instruct.”

  “Well, don’t look to me for the retainer,” Taylor shot back. “Talk to Schex. He knows where the money is. All $1.6 million of the money G.G. took from Camellia Industries’ accounts.”

  Chapter 39

  “Lolly,” I said, “you and I need to talk. Privately.”

  “Beau,” said Lolly, “you stay here with Taylor. I want you to go through with her – at least twice, understand? – everything she did yesterday, from sunup to sundown and back again. I want to know when she woke up, when she had breakfast, what she had to eat, when she took a pee. Everything. Take lots of notes. Don’t miss a thing.”

  Lolly and I went two rooms down the hall into Beau’s small office and closed the door.

  “Lolly, you’re right. We have one day, maybe two if we’re lucky, before this thing is connected back to Taylor. Defending her is in your bailiwick. I have the corporate books, and I’ll arrange for you to get your retainer in a couple of days.”

  “Schex,” Lolly said, “you don’t understand the time frame here. I need the retainer. Today. Things are really serious, now. I agreed to this meeting with the two of you because we’ve known each other a long time. And I’ll let Beau debrief Taylor for a couple of hours. But, friendship only goes so far, and from what I’ve heard already, I’m going to be earning my fee. I’ve learned from experience; get that retainer up front or you don’t get it at all. And, by the way, in light of what Taylor just revealed about meeting Spider, the retainer is now an even million dollars, not $775,000. I guarantee you, I’ll be earning every penny of it if I am to keep her out of prison.

  I was willing to act fast. “I understand. I can have the retainer for you in cash in half an hour.”

  “No! No cash. Are you crazy? Do you know what I’d have to go through at the bank, filling out those cash reports for amounts over ten thousand dollars? The feds would be all over me, what with all the talk today about money laundering being related to terrorism. If I got that much cash, it would only throw suspicion on me. Look, I spent three years fighting a RICO forfeiture claim where the feds were trying
to get my fee, claiming that the monies were the proceeds of my client’s ‘criminal enterprise.’ I’m not going to give them a toe-hold to come after me again. The most I’ll take in cash is $8,500. Run the rest of the money through your trust account and get it to me. I’ll take a check for the balance. But, I warn you, I always call first to make sure that it will clear.

  Don’t make me withdraw from the case tomorrow morning if the money’s not there.”

  “But, it’s already after noon,” I pointed out. “I’ll just give you the cash and let you hold it, and then we’ll take care of the paperwork later.”

  “I do it by the book, Schex. I don’t touch cash in excess of ten K. That’s the federal limit on reporting. I don’t touch cash at all – that’s what you do. I never deposit ten thousand or more in cash into my bank; I deposit checks. I don’t care how you do it, and I don’t want to know. I just want my check. Today.”

  Chapter 40

  Once you get to the edge of the ledge and start to slip off, knowing that there’s no way back, you might as well jump.

  Well, I had been slipping every moment since I first opened the suitcase. This wasn’t part of my initial plan, but what the hell, I knew from my days at Old Parish Mortgage exactly how to deal with it, even if it meant having to cross over the line a bit. So, I didn’t merely jump over the line and off the ledge, I vaulted into potential disaster.

  I knew what I had to do. Get the money out of the crawl space. Organize the crumpled bills into packages ranging from $7,010 to $9,880 – strange amounts to throw off suspicion. Avoid using the money in the counting machine wrappers, which would only spark questions. Travel to as many local banks and savings and loans in one afternoon as I could and open several accounts at each one under a variety of titles – all trust accounts for my office. A large flow of cash into an attorney’s trust accounts – although not within an exception to the federal banking statute, with its $10,000 cash trigger on forms that had to be filled out – usually wouldn’t arouse concern.