The Legal Limit

by Martin Clark

  “You’re kiddin’?” Thompson began to believe there might be something to this. He unconsciously bit a nail.

  Dallas Ackerman opened a small briefcase and presented Thompson with a sealed manila envelope. “Here’s the paperwork, Mr. Thompson. The money is in the Cayman Islands. We’re an international conglomerate, and we try to keep tax consequences at a minimum. I’d probably leave the money there or take it in small cash withdrawals, under ten thousand. The IRS can be very unfair, especially if people become flashy, no matter how legitimate the transaction. If you or your accountant have any inquiries, there’s a company card enclosed with my number. It’s a switchboard, but they’ll connect you immediately or take a message.”

  “Is this like a TV show? Hidden camera or microphones in the potted plants?” Thompson scanned the mall, flinging his head every which way, his eyes keen.

  “Nope.”

  “So I just got rich?”

  “Well, rich is a relative term. You just received three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “No catch?” Thompson asked, his tone more amicable.

  “You’ll need to sign a receipt.”

  “Whoa. So…wait…how do I know the money’s where you say it is? I might be signing for somethin’ I don’t have.”

  Ackerman nodded. “I’ll leave the document with you, and when you’re satisfied, you can have it notarized and return it to me. One of our principals is anxious to make certain you’ve been compensated. He knew your father years ago.”

  “Knew my dad? How?”

  “I’m uncertain, Mr. Thompson. Perhaps he sold him the policy. I’m not in that particular loop. It’s not my concern.”

  “So it’s done?” Thompson asked.

  “Absolutely. Congratulations.”

  “This is all legal?”

  “I wouldn’t be giving you my contact information if it weren’t,” Ackerman assured him.

  “So I can go take out five thousand dollars right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “My daddy fixed this up for me?”

  “Indeed,” Ackerman smoothly answered, unaware of the irony.

  “This is amazing.” Thompson beamed. “Last month, after five years at the same job, my factory was closed and I was laid off. Jobs are scarce here. I been lookin’ for work and gettin’ turned down and we were scrapin’ bottom. I got bills to pay. You have no idea what this means to us.”

  “I’m glad we could help.”

  “I mean, damn, what did I do to deserve this?”

  Ackerman thought for a moment and allowed himself to step briefly out of character. “Nothing, Mr. Thompson. You didn’t do anything. It simply came your way. How about that? Blind luck.”

  “I’m still confused,” Ackerman said as he and Hudgens were walking to their rental car. “Who is this Thompson character to Mason Hunt? He’s certainly not an intermediary or a shield or a bagman. Definitely not the type. Why’s Mr. Dylan giving Hunt’s consultant’s fee to a welder with no connections or clout?”

  “Not for us to understand, Henry,” Hudgens replied, using his subordinate’s correct name. Hudgens, of course, understood very well the tie between Mason and the Thompsons, and though he and his boss generally kept information very much under wraps, he couldn’t resist showing off for Henry, revealing a secret. “The really amazing thing is we only contributed two hundred. Frigging Hunt kicked in the other hundred thou. I made the arrangements myself, transferred the cash from his personal account. On his instructions.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. It’s why I love my job. And why Herman Dylan’s flying on his private jet and you and I are coaching it back to the city with no legroom.”

  “Hell, maybe the welder’s working for us.”

  “Maybe,” Hudgens said, toying with Henry. “All I know is it took me forever to scrub the money clean and hide this corporately and conceal our involvement. Let me know if Thompson calls the service with any questions.”

  “So Hunt lost money on the deal. Go figure.”

  “Lot of chutes and ladders in our business,” Hudgens said gravely. “Always have to watch your step or you might wind up in a rabbit hole.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  From his office window, more than two years after Gates’s release, Judge Moore spied Mason Hunt trickling up the sidewalk, this large, athletic man wearing a pin-striped suit, and he was moving in dainty half steps, a child at his hip, a little girl, beautiful and exotic and already a spitfire, her skin tinted brown, rangy like the Hunts, set off by Allison Rand’s blond hair, a genetic long shot if there ever was one. The tiny girl stopped, tired of walking, and she stretched out her arms for her grandfather to collect her, and she must have said something, because he squatted and laughed and grabbed her with both hands, and right there on Main Street, still laughing, he leaned back and held her aloft and tossed her above his head in the fashion that has caused mothers to scold fathers since the beginning of history, and the girl loved it, her expression close to rapture. “Yeah,” the judge said softly to an empty room. “Maybe so.”

  “Life jigsaws on,” Mason had told Moore shortly after Grace gave birth, “but it’s okay because the odds are fifty-fifty the very next piece will be my deliverance, just as likely good as bad. The secret is—and here’s the sweet part—often we don’t really know which is which, especially early in the game. I’ve added that to the formula—makes it easier to be optimistic even when you’ve been knocked around a bit. My limitations keep me sane these days. Nearsightedness is my own personal lottery ticket.” He smiled the smile of a man who’d learned to offset hardship. “We did pretty well, you and me. Sandbagged the flood. It’s certainly not according to our exact design, not the domino I would’ve tripped, but where would Grace and my grandbaby be if I were in jail?”

  “A fine thought,” Moore had said, “but I guess I believe in the occasional unpolluted cruelty or dyed-in-the-wool tragedy.”

  “You can still afford to,” Mason quickly replied.

  “And reasonable people might disagree on how well we did, given all the laws we chiseled.” They’d never mentioned the judge’s help with the coram vobis decision before then, and they would never speak of it again.

  The conversation came while they were eating a late breakfast at the café, and Mary, the owner, had loaded up Mason’s meal with extra ham and a second gravy biscuit, free of charge, as she always did for him, and after he left, she allowed as to how the new baby really had changed him, how he was his old self again, the way he used to be when Allison was still with them. Through a rectangle of plate glass, above the stenciled red letters spelling COFFEE BREAK, Judge Moore caught a glimpse of Mason crossing the street to his office, mostly his top half, Atlas’s shoulders and flecks of gray hair, and in a sense Moore envied him, a man forged and tempered, all the clay and filler and alloy burned away, someone with tales to recite, advice to give, a place that fit him.

  Patrick County being Patrick County, Mary began stacking the dirty dishes from the table and wondered aloud, no malice intended, none at all, “Now is that child Spanish or black? I’ve heard both.”

  “Swedish, I think,” the judge deadpanned.

  Oddly enough, a few minutes later that same day, within a stone’s throw of the restaurant, Moore met Wayne Thompson’s elderly parents on the sidewalk, in town for errands and to pay their insurance premiums. Mrs. Thompson was carrying two new patterns from the sewing shop and several yards of cloth, her husband a cotter key for the deck of his riding mower. As was the custom, the judge lifted his hand to the bill of an imaginary hat and nodded in Mrs. Thompson’s direction, and they passed greetings and commented on how darn dry it was, agreeing a good soaking rain was very much needed. Their exchange was brief and they pushed on in different directions, but the judge soon slowed his pace and peeked over his shoulder as they stepped within inches of the door Mason had recently exited, the shards and fragments from 1984 as close to alignment as they might ever be. The j
udge tested the scene through his big ol’ eyes and registered no regrets, no guilt, no second thoughts. He stopped completely, quarter-turned toward the Thompsons and the Coffee Break and doffed the invisible hat again, this time took it all the way off and brought it to his waist, ending with a tiny bow that would’ve seemed pure lunacy to anyone watching.

  Part Three

  My office at the Patrick County courthouse has two curiosities. First, my name is spelled wrong on the fancy brass doorplate the bar association gave me when I began work. Martin Filmore Clark, Jr., it reads. My middle name is actually spelled Fillmore, with two l’s, but the lawyers’ gesture was so generous and heartfelt I’ve never complained or asked for a replacement. Better yet is the possum. I’m honestly not certain who gave it to me or when or why, but a stuffed possum sits grinning atop the bookcase in my chambers, guarding the law books and craning its neck so it’s visible from the defendant’s table all the way out in the courtroom. The creature is a novelty, a child’s toy, not a real animal skinned and preserved by a taxidermist, and it has white whiskers and a plastic nose that rattles.

  Early one fall morning in 2006, I found it lying on the floor with its polyester paws pointed toward the ceiling, its synthetic gray belly turned skyward. As I was about to pick it up and return it to its spot on the bookcase, Sandra, the newest hire from the clerk’s office, knocked on my door and asked if she could come in. Seeing what had happened, she laughed and inquired if the critter was dead.

  “Looks like he’s been poisoned,” I joshed.

  “Oh,” she replied, playing along. “Think he’ll make it?”

  “I believe so. He’s a tough old cuss. Been through a lot.”

  “Good,” she answered. “Wouldn’t want to lose him.” She glanced down at an open steno pad. “Susan wanted me to check with you about a file we can’t locate. She thinks it might be up here.” Sandra ticked off a series of numbers and letters. “It’s from 2003, kinda old. Do you have it?”

  “I do.” I wasn’t particularly surprised by the request, neither bothered nor agitated.

  “Is it okay if I carry it downstairs? The computer shows the case is concluded. We’re just trying to tie off a few loose ends. Locate some strays.”

  By now I had the possum in my hand, and for a moment I let it dangle, holding it by the tail. “Yeah,” I told her. “I’ll get it for you. It sort of wound up here and never made it back into the system. More inertia than anything else. One minute a case is as hot as a two-dollar pistol, the next it’s collecting dust.”

  “The index says it’s a ‘coram vobis,’ ” she noted, emphasizing the second syllable of each Latin word. “A new term for me. Of course, a lot of this is new for me.”

  “We don’t see very many,” I said. “They’re definitely rare, thank goodness.” I took the file from my drawer and handed it to her, then replaced the possum.

  “I sure don’t envy you your job,” she said sincerely. “I can’t believe how much you have to learn and keep up with.”

  “Can’t really argue with you there.”

  Sandra wished me well and left, carrying the blue cardboard folder with her, a single skinny file about to take its place among thousands of others. I went in the empty courtroom, to where the defendants sit with their lawyers, checking to make sure I’d returned the stuffed animal to plain view. I could see it clearly, no problem. Twelve vacant jury chairs faced in my direction, six in front, six behind, the leather worn and cracked on their arms. Plaster walls, thirty-foot ceilings and dark polished wood vouched that this was a solemn place and not to be trifled with. I considered Sandra’s visit and decided, after mulling over the law’s majestically stubborn ways and limits, that when they unscrew my misspelled name from the door’s ancient panels, I’d tell the new occupant what Judge Richardson told me the day he took me into his confidence back in 1992—I’ll offer his wisdom about not being neutered by notions and bloodless statutes, and I’ll add a little extra, throw in a mention of how life jigsaws on. Standing by myself, waiting for the attorneys and bailiff and witnesses to arrive for the nine o’clock case, my desk drawers clean and my decision on an obscure writ finally put to rest in a metal cabinet, I was content, convinced it was just fine for me to look through the window at my small town’s doings and to walk underneath the line of portraits on the wall, men who’d sat in judgment before I knew much about anything, all of us trying to romance the same haughty, impossible will-o’-the-wisp.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to: My friend and agent Joe Regal, Liz Van Hoose, the magnificent Gabrielle Brooks, S. Edward Flanagan, Charles Wright, Frank Beverly, Julia Bard, Mrs. Ann Belcher, David “Hollywood” Williams, Edd Martin, Eddie Turner, Nancy Turner, Jan McInroy, Barnie Day and Chris Corbett.

  Also, a big tip of the hat to my dad, the venerable Martin F. “Fill” Clark, who—in one way or another—is responsible for just about every page of this book.

  As always, I am hugely indebted to Gary Fisketjon, the finest editor on the planet.

  Finally, I’m grateful to my sweet wife, Deana, for her help, love, corrections and many trips through the manuscript.

  ALSO BY MARTIN CLARK

  The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living

  Plain Heathen Mischief

  This Is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf

  Copyright © 2008 by Martin Clark

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clark, Martin, 1959–

  The legal limit/Martin Clark.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-26934-8

  1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Murder—Fiction. 3. Ethics—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.L2865L44 2008

  813'.54—dc22 2007042861

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v1.0