The Legal Limit

by Martin Clark

  “Tin is s-n, if I’m not mistaken,” Mason said good-naturedly. “Strange what kind of junk sticks in your mind. Maybe that’ll help break the stalemate.” They shook hands. It was late in the summer of 1993, Mason’s first day at his new job.

  Custis was the assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Patrick County, a position he’d held for twelve years, and Mason had twice talked to him on the phone, wanting to make sure he wasn’t stepping on toes or leapfrogging Tony Black’s legitimate successor. “I have no desire to be the man,” Custis had assured him. “I catch enough grief as it is. You can handle the complaints, midnight calls and tongue-lashings from the guy who says he controls a hundred votes and is guaranteeing your defeat next term ’cause you won’t fix his wife’s reckless driving ticket. And yes, they did ask me about movin’ up. Judge Richardson checked with me before they began looking elsewhere.”

  Forty-one the day he met Mason, a graduate of Tulane and William and Mary’s law school, Custis had landed in Stuart after an unsatisfying stint in northern Virginia, where he’d loopholed policyholders out of their insurance proceeds and spent twelve-hour days defending his firm’s most important client, a pharmaceutical company, against a class-action suit brought by a gazillion plaintiffs with kidney damage. Wanting to do his bit and actually take some genuine wrongdoers to task, he’d responded to an advertisement Tony Black had posted in Lawyers Weekly and decided to give Stuart a whirl. At the very least, he figured the bush-league credentials would serve as a solid stepping-stone to a larger city and better work, his apprentice’s dues fully paid. In the meantime, how bad could it be?

  On his second evening in town, he’d sat for twenty minutes at the Kountry Kitchen Diner without so much as a glass of water or a menu, and when he located the owner, Luther Beasley, a spindly, red-nosed man wearing a cook’s apron, the skinny hick took a drag from an unfiltered cig and—not fazed by Custis’s size—told him, calm as you please, his tone dry and weary, his demeanor creeping up on exasperation, like a parent reminding a child about a winter coat or a hot stove, “We don’t serve niggers here. Everybody knows that. Sorry.”

  But despite all the predictions and speculation that followed Custis’s dismal treatment, the new black lawyer didn’t file suit against the peckerwood owner of the Kountry Kitchen or invite the NAACP to investigate or raise a ruckus in the media. Custis simply avoided the bigot and his deep-fried business and kept the wrong to himself. As luck would have it, the Kountry Kitchen was robbed eighteen months later, and it fell to Custis to prosecute the case, which he did professionally and successfully, accepting Luther Beasley’s mumbled, embarrassed “’preciate it” and shaking his tentative hand outside the courthouse, thinking to himself how pitiful and dog-dumb the scrawny man was, a creature cast by the tools of a retarded deity, a brute who’d dropped his tail and learned to clothe himself like a human.

  Surprisingly, though, Custis gradually discovered that most people in the area—Luther Beasley and his ilk notwithstanding—didn’t care one whit about his race so long as he let them alone and told the truth and met his obligations. Seven years after arriving, Custis was elected to the town council (against a leash law, for a stoplight at the intersection of Routes 8 and 58), his 126 votes the second-highest total among eleven candidates, and every year the daffy old matrons from the DAR Society invited him to speak on Dr. King’s birthday, where he told them about discrimination and they innocently used the term “colored,” as they had since they were children. There were no bruised feelings—any correction seemed pointless to Custis, and the ladies knew they weren’t prejudiced, most of them having supported Custis in his campaigns—and the hostesses and their guest sipped Russian tea and enjoyed finger sandwiches and from-scratch cake, good humor the order of the day.

  Asked at a black lawyers’ conference in Detroit how he could stomach Stuart, Custis chuckled, clasped his hands and gave a practiced reply: “Archie Bunker lived in Queens, Andy and Barney in Mayberry. Take your pick. I prefer the odd hillbilly in a sheet and cornpone slurs to white lip service and worrying whether or not I’ve strayed past Checkpoint Zulu into a neighborhood where I don’t need to be.” So instead of leaving, he bought a house on Chestnut Avenue, tilled and planted his own vegetable garden, kept company with a pretty widow by the name of Inez Rucker and took to the place and its people, frequently traveling to Richmond and Washington for long weekends but rarely missing Ted Martin’s Wednesday-night poker game and always showing up to stir apple butter at the Woolwine Fall Festival. He even joined the local theater troupe, where the other members agreed he did the best Sky Masterson ever.

  He and Mason became fast friends, and their size put a goodly fear in defendants on those days they entered the courtroom together, “a whole lotta justice rollin’ at you,” as Custis liked to say. “The Yin-Yang Towers” was Judge Greenwalt’s admiring tag upon initially seeing them in district court. When their paychecks arrived from the state, Mason, without any fanfare, directed Sheila Shough, their secretary, to put them both in the office account and split them equally, despite his being much larger than his assistant’s. “Only fair,” he told Custis. “As soon as I get up to speed and can pull my weight, we’ll see about changing things.” They never did, even though it took Mason only six months to become acclimated; he began racking up convictions and commanding the courtroom, always articulate and prepared, his many hours in the Richmond trenches paying off. Still, he wasn’t a tyrant or a prick, and the defense lawyers and the community knew you could count on him and Custis to offer a break or compromise if it was warranted.

  Mason first became indebted to Custis during the Brett “Shug” Cassidy drug trial. Fourteen months into Mason’s tenure as commonwealth’s attorney, he indicted Shug for ten counts of cocaine distribution and a variety of other crimes. Wild, erratic and unpredictable, Shug Cassidy was rumored to have shot and killed a client from West Virginia who was slow to pay his coke debt, and he lived in a compound of trailers surrounded by mongrel dogs, chain-link fence and jackleg surveillance cameras. Lived at the end of a dirt road that led into Whitlow Hollow, scores of store-bought orange-and-black NO TRESPASSING signs tacked to the trees. In case the signs didn’t make the point, he’d located a piece of warped, propped-up plywood at the foot of the driveway and covered it with hand-painted threats and “bewares” vowing violence to anyone who came snooping around the Cassidy property.

  Soon after the indictment, Mason began receiving notes composed of pasted magazine letters that warned him to steer clear of “Mister Cassidy” and drop the charges or bad things would certainly happen. One afternoon, Allison called Mason and reported a car kept easing down the road to their house, slow and deliberate, halting in front of the porch, then crawling away, the driver and passenger cloaked in hats and sunglasses, the license plate obscured. Of course, the cops couldn’t prove anything or locate anyone when they hurried out with Mason to check on her, and it certainly wasn’t a crime to meander down to someone’s house a time or two. A week later, a quick strike came at three in the morning, a roaring engine and yelling and cursing and spinning tires and a gun discharged into the air, a doll with a severed head and fake blood and another anonymous note tossed onto the doorstep, poor Grace scared to death by the noise and disruption, and Mason—who was, after all, Curt Hunt’s son—had seen enough.

  The next day at work, still fuming, he informed Custis what had happened and told him he planned a thoroughly personal visit to Shug Cassidy’s.

  “Let’s go drop by the sonofabitch’s right now,” Custis declared, standing up as he spoke. “No reason I can see to wait.”

  “I didn’t tell you so you’d go with me.”

  “I know.” Custis opened his desk drawer, removed a nickel-plated .38 and dropped it into his coat pocket. “I’ll drive.”

  It was early fall, cool and crisp, the leaves perishing in color, the summer’s humidity gone so the air wasn’t noticeable unless a wind kicked up or a field of orchard grass shimmered and
yielded to weather arriving late in the afternoon. The season and the gun caused Mason a flash of uneasiness and put him in mind of his brother. Still, as they were making plans to confront an armed drug dealer, it seemed wise to anticipate the worst.

  Custis’s El Dorado bottomed out twice as they approached Shug’s fortified home, and they were escorted in by a pack of barking, frothing, snarling dogs of all colors, builds and sizes, fifteen or twenty of them, Mason estimated, the more aggressive ones leaping against the side of the car, their muzzles and teeth and pumping claws right beside his face, slobber and dirt fouling the window glass.

  “Shit, Mace, I do hate them damn dogs.” Custis looked directly at Mason.

  “Can’t swim either, can you?” he said, laughing.

  “Nope.”

  “Hand me the gun,” Mason said.

  “Oh, so you’re gonna tell me those Cujo-lookin’ hounds don’t cause the hair on your neck to raise up, too? Don’t act like you’re not fazed by this, Mr. Racial Stereotype. Mr. Bull Connor. You know they fired Jimmy the Greek for that kinda attitude. ‘Can’t swim either,’” he mimicked. “Hey, here’s a thought—why don’t you just dive in and use your aquatic skills on ’em?” He handed Mason the .38. “Bullet comes out the small end,” he said, screwing on a smile. “Maybe I can kill a couple with the car. They’ve already managed to destroy my paint.”

  Shug and another man were standing outside a cinder-block garage, staring at the Cadillac, doing nothing about the dogs, sneers on their faces, a holstered pistol strapped to Shug’s hip. Mason forced open the door, and a dog that was predominantly German shepherd lunged toward him, grabbing his pants at the thigh, the animal’s top and bottom teeth sinking into his flesh. He shot the dog, then another. Then a third one even though they’d all turned tail. He popped a final cur as it was scampering off but didn’t kill it; it yelped and squeaked and dragged its wounded, bleeding hindquarters underneath a ratty trailer skirt and started whimpering and manically licking at its injury. Mason trained the gun on Shug. Custis was out of the car, in the mix, beside his friend, step for step.

  “Ain’t got no right to do what you jest done,” Shug announced. “Nosir. I’ll have your job for sure, Mason Hunt. You and your pal Kunta Kinte both. Got it on tape.” He pointed at a camera dangling from a power pole. “My Uncle Jacob’s rightchere as a witness, too.” He appeared only marginally disturbed by the death of his dogs, and he and his uncle seemed smug, pleased to have goaded the commonwealth’s attorney into a sticky situation. “Don’t know why you got such a hard-on for me, Mason. First them unfair charges, now this. I recken this proves what I been sayin’ all along.” His mouth was creased into an obnoxious, taunting smile.

  Mason stopped in front of Shug, very close to him. “Take the gun out and give it to me.”

  Shug complied, then took a step away and raised his hands to shoulder height, palms showing. “This is gonna look awful bad on your part,” he said, the words spoken slowly and laced with spite. A confident grin revealed yellowish teeth, one chipped. A tatty beard framed his mouth.

  Mason gave both Shug’s gun and his own to Custis. “You and I know you’re guilty, Mr. Cassidy, guilty as can be. You sold a bunch of dope to an undercover cop and, speaking of video, we have a fine little film of you, starring as Shug Cassidy, dumb-ass drug dealer.”

  Shug lowered his hands. “Maybe you’re confusin’ me with your brother. Your family’s got right smart sperience in the area of sellin’ shit on tape, right?”

  The uncle cackled at his nephew’s reference to Gates, and Custis popped him with a meaningful stare and asked what the hell was so funny. “Nothing, I guess” was the reply.

  “Excellent answer,” Custis told him.

  “Here’s the point of my visit, Mr. Cassidy,” Mason said, crowding in closer. “Don’t you ever even think about bothering my family again. Don’t send me any more notes, don’t have your punk-ass henchmen drive by my house, don’t so much as look at our property or come near any of us. Clear?”

  Shug didn’t give any ground. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” Squinting, he pointed his chin up at Mason. “Sure don’t. But I figure a man like you controls that kinda thing hisself, dependin’ on who he treats fair and who he treats not fair.”

  “I will make your life a living hell, Mr. Cassidy. You have my promise.”

  “Like I say,” Shug answered, “I ain’t never been involved with none of whatever it is that’s eatin’ at you. But a man like you, for his own sake, concernin’ not me but other peoples, a man with a pretty wife and a fine daughter—Grace, right? Goes to Patrick Springs Elementary?—a man like that oughta be darn careful to always do what’s best and fair.” He finished with another hateful smile.

  Mason jerked him up by the collar, pushed him away to arm’s reach, then lit into him, and when Shug’s potbellied uncle brought out a section of pipe he’d hidden underneath his shirt, Custis just about wrenched his arm off and rammed his bald head into the cinder-block wall of the garage three times for good measure before hauling him to the ground and planting a foot in his spine. As he was busting up Shug, any number of thoughts tumbled through Mason’s mind, his rage unchecked, the sensation of knuckle finding bone and the surge of adrenaline and his choppy breaths all familiar and queerly agreeable, like the wicked taste of nicotine after a long absence. Custis had to yell at Mason to make him stop the beating, but he had to shout only once, and he didn’t have to lay hands on Mason or pull him off. At the end of the fight, two buttons were missing from the front of Mason’s shirt, and there was blood on the cuffs and sleeves, as well as his coat and pants, all of it from Shug Cassidy, who was drawn up on the ground, a red, battered lump, finally quiet.

  Mason looked at the camera above them and traced its black cord into the side of a double-wide. He walked past Custis and entered the trailer. A window-unit air conditioner was lying on the den floor, an expensive TV was wedged into a corner, a matchbook collection was cased and displayed on the wall. Mason located a VCR in a rear bedroom where the line entered from outside, removed a cassette tape and returned to Custis, who still had Shug’s uncle subdued, a pistol in each hand.

  “Give me the gun again,” Mason said.

  Custis didn’t waver. He offered the .38, butt first. Mason walked toward Shug, who’d sat up from the dirt and was patting his face with both shirtsleeves, his legs splayed in front of him.

  “You ain’t got the balls,” he dared Mason, his voice ruptured, the words full of phlegm and saliva.

  “Careful, Hoss,” Custis said.

  Mason made a show of squaring himself to the man on the ground. Mason’s hair was pushed to one side, his navel visible through the gap in his shirt, his suit coat jacked too high on his neck, his trousers dog-bitten, his tie cockeyed. He raised the gun. Extended his arm to its full length. Custis was mutely committed, trusting Mason, crossing the line with him. Mason set the trigger. Closed an eye. Sighted. Shot. Twice. Shug Cassidy fell forward, his fingers digging into the dirt and sparse grass, his mouth rounded, his eyes bugged. Behind him at the edge of the trailer, the wounded dog whined, then collapsed onto its side, dead, shot through the head and neck. “Put the bitch out of her misery for you,” Mason said as he was pivoting to leave and Shug lay belly-flat in his yard, scared and manhandled and speechless, at least for the short term.

  “Quite a predicament I’ve gotten us into,” Mason remarked as they were bumping over Shug’s driveway, several of the dogs baying and barking behind them but keeping their distance, not chasing after the car. “Sorry.” His tone was collected, and he was watching the rutted road, staring out the windshield. “There’s no way I’m going to mention your involvement in this, Custis. It was completely my problem, completely my doing. As far as I’m concerned, you weren’t here.” He sighed, looked at the guns beside him on the seat. “Shit.”

  Custis smiled so broadly that Mason could see an arc of gold dentistry at the rear of his teeth. “Kind of you to offer, M
ason, but impossible to pull off. I’m in this up to my ass. And I’m a grown man, you know? I came with you full well aware we weren’t making a Welcome Wagon visit.” They reached the state road and the tires took traction against the pavement.

  “This could cost us our law licenses,” Mason said. “Not to mention a criminal charge or two.”

  “No doubt.” Custis hadn’t accelerated yet; the Cadillac was coasting along, barely doing twenty. He looked across at Mason. “Which is why we take the offensive on this shit, Mace. I’ve already started formulating our plan.” He slowed even more and a car raced past them.

  “Really?”

  “Does Pastor Odell from the Samaritan Apostolic Holy Temple of the Rugged Cross drive a brand-new Lincoln?” A habit of Custis’s, answering with rhetorical questions, some of which were child’s play, some of which were arcane and puzzling.

  “I assume he does, given the context.”

  “We need to come out swinging.”

  “I have to admit the thought crossed my mind, but I hate to pull you into my mess.”

  “I’m already in your mess,” Custis replied. “I signed on for your mess. We’re past that debate.” He drove the car off the highway into the lot of a vacant convenience store. The gas pumps had been removed, leaving a cement island occupied by a few weed sprigs and crimped pipe ends, and the windows were patched with silver duct tape and weathered cardboard. “No need for us to take the fall for a piece of shit like Shug Cassidy. Being noble isn’t the same as doing right.”