Leo Durant was quite the fireplug. He was on the short side, with curly red hair and a nose that looked as if it had been broken at least once. He was all smiles today, his flushed cheeks shining as he shook my hand, but something told me it would take nothing at all to make him hit the stratosphere.
“Are we all here? Then let’s go,” he said to Perry. “I’ll sit in the back with Naomi.” His friendly grin was more like a leer.
“No can do, Leo,” Perry said with a hearty laugh. “She’s our navigator. She has to sit up front with me.”
“Too bad,” said Leo.
Not so much, Leo. I’d endure a lot for Looks Far and Joseph, but I draw the line at being groped by you in the backseat of Perry’s Lincoln Navigator.
Wait. When did I come to the conclusion that I would endure anything at all for Looks Far and Joseph?
Bemused, I followed the men out the door.
In the end, I drove my own car and let Perry follow me in his urban assault vehicle. I realized partway down the stairs that there were ethical ramifications for me if I showed up in the same car with Durant. It was bad enough that I worked for the same law firm as Durant Development’s counsel, not to mention being engaged to a member of its litigation team. But I could get around that – I was trained to be objective, right? Furthermore, I reasoned as I drove up U.S. 36, I had a personal relationship with Looks Far, too, which ought to balance out. (Although I wasn’t sure how I would describe my connection with the old man to Perry, if the time came. “We were tapped by the same goddess to save the world” seemed a little too out there.)
Part of me knew I was treading a fine ethical line with this visit, and that I really should recommend that the parties find a different mediator. I could think of two or three off the top of my head who were well-regarded in town. Any one of them would be an excellent alternative. But I had promised myself to do what I could for Looks Far; because of that, I couldn’t not tag along today.
I made myself another promise: as soon as the conflict of interest became egregious, I would recuse myself and help them find someone else.
Looks Far’s battered pickup was gone when I arrived at the sweat lodge site. It looked the same as it had on Friday – which is to say that each of the structures looked like a pile of junk. The wickiup was nothing but poles and withered tree branches; the sweat lodge looked like an igloo made of blue tarps from the hardware store; and the tent surrounding the changing room looked as if it would fly away at the first puff of wind.
An owl hooted from a nearby tree. I looked for it, half expecting to be dive-bombed again, but I couldn’t see it.
The men arrived a few moments after I did. They swung confidently out of the Navigator and, I could tell, surveyed the scene with city eyes. “I told you,” I heard Durant say, “you couldn’t find a better case for condemnation if you looked for a million years. All we have to do is get the county out here to see this, and eminent domain is ours, baby.” He pointed at the wickiup. “No way this guy could argue that his use of the land is of more benefit to the public than our casino would be. No county official in his right mind would pass up the potential tax revenue from a casino operation, compared to whatever this guy’s paying on this unimproved property.”
“You’re talking about kicking a paying taxpayer off his land, Leo,” Perry growled. “Public sentiment will be against you.”
“Public sentiment can go to hell,” Leo responded, turning bright red. “Who’s paying your salary, anyway? You’re supposed to be on my side!”
“I am, I am,” Perry said amiably. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”
“Well, don’t. It makes me crazy. Just listen to me: this guy doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning against us.”
I glanced at Brock, whose eyebrows had shot up around his hairline. I pretty much agreed.
Before Durant could make any other inflammatory statements, Looks Far’s pickup appeared out of the trees and pulled up next to the wickiup. The old man got out of his truck. Today he wore jeans, a cowboy hat, and a baseball-style jacket; his hair was plaited down his back, the end tied with a leather thong. He nodded briefly to me, and then came to a halt a few paces away from the group of men.
The silence grew. Perry broke it by introducing himself, hand outstretched in greeting.
The old man ignored it. “I know who you are,” he said. “I have seen this man” – he indicated Durant – “before. Why have you come here today?”
“I want to show them where everything will be, once the site is built out,” Durant said. “We need to bring this place into the twenty-first century. I want to make it a high-class place, to attract a high-class clientele. This Indian schtick you’ve got going here, there’s no money in it.”
Perry cut him a quelling glance, which seemed to bounce harmlessly off his client. Then he turned to Looks Far. “I apologize for Mr. Durant’s comments, sir. We’re sensitive, of course, to your situation. We were hoping to propose a way for us all to reach a mutually satisfactory solution.”
Usually, I enjoyed watching Perry attempt to be obsequious, but the fun had kind of gone out of it for me today. I decided to rescue him and Brock before their client stepped in it further. “Mr. Guzmán, I’m Naomi Witherspoon. We met yesterday.” The old man nodded. Good, I thought, he’s going to play along. I fished out one of my business cards and handed it to him. “I’m a certified mediator, and I think it might be worth exploring a mediated settlement to this matter. I would sit down with Mr. Durant and his counsel, and you and your counsel, with the express purpose of finding a solution that would be acceptable to both parties.”
“You would need me there?” the old man asked.
I blinked. “Well, as the property owner….”
“I don’t own this property,” he said. “I’m a tenant.”
“Did you say his name was Guzmán?” Brock asked me. “Leo told me the owner’s last name was Frank.”
“That’s right, Charlie Frank,” Looks Far confirmed. “Lives on the Western Slope. He owns a lot of this land up here. I rent this acreage from him. You’d have to talk to him about your mediation idea.”
“Well,” I said, “in that case, we won’t trouble you any further. Thanks for talking to us, and please pass my card along to Mr. Frank.” I turned to go.
But Durant wasn’t ready to go just yet. He stepped up to within a few inches of Looks Far and craned his neck. His face was livid with rage. “You think you can put one over on me, Frank? Well, you’ve got another think coming.” And he pulled his right arm back, his hand in a fist.
Brock and Perry dove for that fist, succeeding in pinioning their client. “Now, now, Leo,” Perry soothed. “If you do that, you’ll be up on assault charges. Negotiating from the jailhouse is never a good strategy.”
Durant allowed himself to be led to the Navigator, but he shouted over his shoulder, “You haven’t heard the last of this, Frank,” as Brock stuffed him into the back seat. “I’ll see you in court!” Durant yelled as Brock shut the door.
Perry gave me a significant look and said, “We’ll talk tomorrow, Naomi.” He clambered into his vehicle and was gone in a matter of seconds.
“A very troubled man,” Looks Far said, his gaze on the mouth of the driveway.
“Looks Far,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me you didn’t own this place? Why didn’t Joseph tell me?”
He gazed at me mildly. “You didn’t ask.”
I fought an almost overwhelming impulse to roll my eyes. “Okay, then, let me ask you a few questions now. Your landlord, Mr. Frank – you’ve rented from him for a long time?”
“Since we moved here from Denver, yes.”
“You have a lease?”
“No, it’s a gentleman’s agreement. I keep an eye on things for him. Mostly, my presence keeps kids from coming up here and trashing our sacred land with their empty beer cans and used condoms. In return, I pay him five dollars a year.”
I stared at
him. “Five dollars?”
He nodded. “A dollar an acre. I get full use and enjoyment of the land, and he gets peace of mind. We’ve always thought it a fair trade.”
I shook my head in wonder. “Five dollars a year. For prime wilderness real estate with a killer view.”
“You think that’s too much?”
What could I say in reply without frothing at the mouth?
Then, solemnly, he winked.
I rolled my eyes. “Please have Joseph call me,” I said, getting into my car. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Take care of yourself, Naomi,” he said. “I don’t have a good feeling about any of the men you brought here today. All of them have troubled spirits.”
“You’re absolutely right about that,” I said. “And I will do my best to keep them from making trouble for you.”
I had just barely pulled out onto 36 when my phone chirped. I debated letting it go to voicemail, then sighed and picked it up. Caller ID said it was Joseph.
“What a coincidence,” I said by way of greeting, pulling onto the shoulder. “I just left your grandfather’s.”
“I know. I saw the whole thing.”
“What? How?”
A pause, then his voice, rich with suppressed mirth. “Let’s just say I had a bird’s eye view.”
I sighed. “First your grandfather and his ‘I’m only renting’ routine, and now this. I’m about done with you guys today.”
“He was telling you the truth, Naomi.” Joseph’s voice was all seriousness now. “Listen, we should get together and talk about some things.”
That sounded, to me, as if he wanted to influence the mediation. My stomach lurched, and as soon as it did, I realized I had to get out of the middle. “Look, Joseph,” I said, “I need to be candid with you. I really shouldn’t be conducting a mediation between your grandfather and any client of my firm. I’ve got a huge conflict of interest on both sides – I take a paycheck from the firm, and I’m personally involved with you and your grandfather.” I took a deep breath, waiting for him to respond, but the phone was silent. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” he replied. “I’m listening.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “I thought I’d dropped the call. Anyway, I would feel more comfortable with all of this if I stepped away from conducting the mediation. I can give you the names of several reputable mediators who I’m sure would be more than happy to work with you.”
“Okay,” he said.
Now it was my turn to be silent for a moment. “‘Okay?’” I spluttered. “That’s it, just ‘okay’?”
“What else am I supposed to say? You’re right. We’ve put you in a terrible position professionally. Don’t worry about us – Grandfather and I have been handling this in our own way up to now, and we’ll continue to handle it.”
Now I felt like a jerk. “It’s not that easy.” Durant, I knew, was an asshole – but if he could afford our firm, he was an asshole with some serious cash. He could cause a lot of trouble for Looks Far before he ran out of money. A lot of trouble. Part of me was howling at the injustice of it, that greedy bastards like Durant could get away with hassling my friends. But another part of me – the part that wanted to keep living in my loft and eating regularly – said it was ethically more prudent to recuse myself.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” I said. “I do want to help. I’m just not in a position to get involved.” Now I sounded whiny. This wasn’t going well at all.
And then Joseph said, “Naomi, I have faith in you. If there’s a way for you to get involved, you’ll find it.” He put so much warmth and caring into his tone that I didn’t know what to say. “I saw you out there this afternoon,” he continued. “I could see bad medicine surrounding the men who came with you – very bad medicine. But surrounding you, there was nothing but good. If there is a way for you to help us, you will find it. Grandfather believes that, and so do I.”
“Well,” I said, feeling unworthy of such simple faith, but knowing better than to say so. “Thank you.”
“Naomi?” he said. “There’s one more thing. The handsome young man who was there this afternoon – he’s your fiancé, right?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “That was Brock. How did you see all this?”
“I told you already,” Joseph replied, a little testily. “But that’s not important. I need to tell you what I saw.”
I wanted more details about what he’d supposedly told me, but I put that aside for another time. “Okay. What did you see?”
“What I said about bad medicine surrounding those men? I know it sounds like some kind of crazy New Age thing – like reading somebody’s aura, only for Indians. But it’s real, and I can see it best when I’m…the way I was this afternoon.
“Anyway, what I saw was that the older lawyer’s medicine was pretty bad. The short man’s was really bad. But your fiancé’s was even worse.” He went on in a rush. “I’m afraid for you. I don’t want you near him.”
I blinked. Where had that come from? Sure, Brock could be a jerk. Shannon certainly thought so, and I’d seen it myself multiple times over the course of our relationship. Even now, I was certain he was lying to me about something, and it was only a matter of time before I found out what it was. So I could have easily understood it if Joseph had said to stay away from Brock on that basis. But to be afraid of him? It just didn’t compute.
“That’s very sweet, Joseph, but I kind of have to be near him. We’re engaged.”
“I know, but….” His voice trailed off. “Just be careful around him. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
He really sounded worried. Now I was getting uncomfortable. “I will,” I said, suddenly feeling not at all confident. “Look, I need to go, before some cop pulls up behind me and asks me what’s going on.”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll talk to Grandfather again. We’ll be in touch. And you have my number if you need me.”
I hung up and pulled back onto the road. My mind was in turmoil. So I did what I always do when I’m in turmoil: I called Shannon.
“Sure, come on over,” she said. “I’m doing laundry. Having you here to keep me company will keep me from trying to kill myself from the boredom.”
“Be there in half an hour,” I told her.
She installed me at one end of her kitchen table with a mug of tea and a batch of cinnamon-currant scones she had baked from scratch that morning. “It’s like you knew I’d be by,” I said, gobbling one while I sipped at a mug of tea.
“It’s that famous enhanced empathy of mine at work,” she grinned, beginning to make neat stacks of folded laundry at the other end of the table. “So what happened?”
I filled her in. Then I began to catalog the rearranged furniture in my head for her. “I hardly know Joseph and his grandfather, yet all of a sudden I’m willing to compromise my professional ethics to help them,” I said. “And another thing. In law school, it’s drummed into you that everybody deserves legal counsel, no matter how squicky they are. And I believe that. I do. It goes to the heart of why I decided to be a lawyer in the first place. But I’m not sure I’m comfortable with my firm’s choice to do business with Durant Development.”
“It’s one thing to represent a poverty-stricken man who’s up on a murder rap,” Shannon said, “and another thing to represent a soulless corporation that wants to build a fake Indian village on a real Indian sacred site.”
“That’s it exactly. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I want to be associated with a firm that would have Leo Durant as a client.” I squirmed.
“But…?” Shannon prompted.
“But I like eating regularly,” I said miserably. “Corporate work pays a lot better than nonprofit work does. I feel like such a heel.”
“You’re not a heel,” she said. “If you were a heel, none of this would even occur to you. I bet Brock never even thinks twice about it.”
“And that’s another thing,” I sa
id. “Joseph’s going all big brother on me, worrying about my being around Brock, that Brock might hurt me. Where did that come from?” I looked up from my plate – somehow, a second scone had disappeared while I talked. “Is Joseph crazy, or what? Any clues from your vaunted empathy?”
Shannon paused in folding a towel and considered the question for a moment. “Brock’s definitely icky, I’ll give Joseph that much. I’d have to see him again, now that the new software’s installed” – a corner of her mouth quirked – “to know whether there’s anything more to it.
“But what about this: what if Joseph’s interest in you is more than brotherly?”
“Wow. That never occurred to me.” I sipped my tea and considered the possibility. “He’s never come on to me, unless you count that wink through the mail slot when he was sixteen and I was twelve.” I remembered that day again: the front porch where Mom stood in the cold and protected me, as I looked through the mail slot at an exotic boy with blue, blue eyes….
He certainly wasn’t classically handsome in the same way Brock was, and he didn’t have Brock’s natural charisma. He did have that exotic air, though, thanks to his Ute ancestry. A sense of mystery surrounded him, as if he had secrets he didn’t choose to share with just anyone; that made him intriguing, if not outright attractive. And there was that strong mischievous streak of his – a “bird’s eye view,” indeed.
“Uh-huh,” Shannon said, breaking into my reverie. “And how do you feel about him?”
I put down the mug. “I like him, certainly. But more than that?” I shrugged. “It’s too soon to know.”
“Good,” she said. “The last thing you need is to dump Brock and go haring off after some laconic Ute.”
“No kidding,” I laughed. “That ‘mystery man’ thing of his is intriguing, but it’s also off-putting. I’m not totally sure I can trust him. And to be perfectly honest,” I said, squirming again, “I’d have trouble seeing myself with Joseph because our education levels are so different. I have a J.D.; he has a G.E.D.”
“You’re a snob!” she crowed.
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