by John Grisham
“I'd been drinking,” Mack said proudly. “Came home late, slipped on some ice, hit my head.”
Spines stiffened in unison around the table from the fiercely teetotaling family.
Mack pressed on: “Don't tell me you guys haven't heard all the details. Lisa was an eyewitness. She's told everyone.”
“Mack, please,” Lisa said as she dropped her fork. All forks were suddenly still, except for Mack's. He plunged his into a pile of rubber chicken and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Please what?” he said, mouth full, chicken visible. “You've made sure that every person at this table knows your version of what happened.” He was chewing, talking, and pointing his fork at his wife, who was at the other end of the table close to her father. “And you've probably told them all about our visit to the marriage counselor, right?”
“Oh my God,” Lisa gasped.
“And Fm sleeping at the office, don't we all know that?” he said. “Can't go home anymore, because, well, hell, I might slip and fall again. Or whatever. I might get drunk and beat my kids. Who knows? Right, Lisa?”
“That's enough, Mack,” her father said, the voice of authority.
"Yes, sir. Sorry. This chicken is practically raw. Who
cooked it?"
His mother-in-law bristled. Her spine stiffened even more. Her eyebrows arched. “Well, I did, Mack. Any more complaints about the food?”
“Oh, tons of complaints, but what the hell.”
“Watch your language, Mack,” her father-in-law said.
“See what I mean.” Lisa leaned in low. “He's cracking up.” Most of them nodded gravely. Helen, their younger daughter, began crying softly.
“You love to say that, don't you?” Mack yelled from his end. "You said the same thing to the marriage counselor. You've said it to everyone. Mack bumped his head, and now he's losing
his shit."
“Mack, I don't tolerate such language,” her father said sternly. “Please leave the table.”
“Sorry. I'll be happy to leave.” He rose and kicked back his chair. “And you'll be delighted to know that I'll never be back. That'll give you all a thrill, won't it?”
The silence was thick as he left the table. The last thing he heard was Lisa saying, “I'm so sorry.”
Monday, he walked around the square to the large and busy office of Harry Rex Vonner, a friend who was undoubtedly the nastiest divorce lawyer in Ford County. Harry Rex was a loud, burly brawler who chewed black cigars, growled at his secretaries, growled at the court clerks, controlled the dockets, intimidated the judges, and terrified every divorcing party on the other side. His office was a landfill, with boxes of files in the foyer, overflowing wastebaskets, stacks of old magazines in the racks, a thick layer of blue cigarette smoke just below the ceiling, another thick layer of dust on the furniture and bookshelves, and, always, a motley collection of clients waiting forlornly near the front door. The place was a zoo. Nothing ran on time. Someone was always yelling in the back. The phones rang constantly. The copier was always jammed. And so on. Mack had been there many times before on business and loved the chaos of the place.
“Heard you're crackin' up, boy,” Harry Rex began as they met at his office door. The room was large, windowless, and situated at the back of the building, far away from the waiting clients. It was filled with bookshelves, storage boxes, trial exhibits, enlarged photos, and stacks of thick depositions, and the walls were covered with cheap matted photos, primarily of Harry Rex holding rifles and grinning over slain animals. Mack could not remember his last visit, but he was certain nothing had changed.
They sat down, Harry Rex behind a massive desk with sheets of paper falling off the sides, and Mack in a worn canvas chair that tottered back and forth.
“I just busted my head, that's all,” Mack said.
“You look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
“Has she filed yet?”
“No. I just checked. She said she'll use some gal from Tupelo, can't trust anyone around here. I'm not fighting, Harry Rex. She can have everything—the girls, the house, and everything in it. I'm filing for bankruptcy, closing up shop, and moving away.”
Harry Rex slowly cut the end off another black cigar, then shoved it into the corner of his mouth. “You are crackin' up, boy.” Harry Rex was about fifty but seemed much older and wiser. To anyone younger, he habitually added the word “boy” as a term of affection.
“Let's call it a midlife crisis. I'm forty-two years old, and I'm fed up with being a lawyer. The marriage ain't working. Neither is the career. It's time for a change, some new scenery.”
“Look, boy, I've had three marriages. Gettin' rid of a woman ain't no reason to tuck tail and run.”
“I'm not here for career advice, Harry Rex. I'm hiring you to handle my divorce and my bankruptcy. I've already prepared the paperwork. Just get one of your flunkies to file everything and make sure I'm protected.”
“Where you going?”
“Somewhere far away. I'm not sure right now, but I'll let you know when I get there. I'll come back when I'm needed. I'm still a father, you know?”
Harry Rex slumped in his chair. He exhaled and looked around at the piles of files stacked haphazardly on the floor around his desk. He looked at his phone with five red lights blinking.
“Can I go with you?” he asked.
“Sorry. You gotta stay here and be my lawyer. I have eleven active divorce files, almost all uncontested, plus eight bankruptcies, one adoption, two estates, one car wreck, one workers' comp case, and two small business disputes. Total fees of about $25,000 over the next six months. I'd like you to take 'em off my hands.”
“It's a pile of crap.”
“Yes, the same stuff I've been shoveling for seventeen years. Dump it on one of your little associates back there and give him a bonus. Believe me, there's nothing complicated about it.”
“How much child support can you stand?”
“Max is three thousand a month, which is a helluva lot more than I contribute now. Start at two thousand and see how it goes. Irreconcilable differences, she can file, I'll join in. She gets full custody, but I get to see the girls whenever I'm in town. She gets the house, her car, bank accounts, everything. She's not involved in the bankruptcy. The joint assets are not included.”
“What are you bankrupting?”
“The Law Offices of Jacob McKinley Stafford, LLC. May it rest in peace.”
Harry Rex chewed the cigar and looked at the petition for bankruptcy. There was nothing remarkable about it, the usual run'up on credit cards, the ever-present unsecured line of credit, the burdensome mortgage. “You don't have to do this,” he said. “This stuff is manageable.”
“The petition has already been prepared, Harry Rex. The decision has been made, along with several others. I'm bolting, okay? Outta here. Gone.”
“Pretty gutsy.”
"No. Most folks would say that running away is the act of a
coward."
“How do you see it?”
“I could not care less. If I don't leave now, then I'll be here forever. This is my only chance.”
“Attaboy.”
At precisely 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, one glorious week after the first phone call, Mack made the second. As he punched the numbers, he smiled and congratulated himself on the amazing accomplishments of the past seven days. The plan was working perfectly, not a single hitch so far, except perhaps the head wound, but even that had been skillfully woven into the escape. Mac was hurt, hospitalized with a blow to the head. No wonder he's acting weird.
“Mr. Marty Rosenberg,” he said pleasantly, then waited until the great man was notified. He answered quickly, and they exchanged preliminaries. Marty seemed unhurried, willing to go with the flow of meaningless chatter, and Mack was suddenly worried that this lack of efficiency would lead to a change in plans, some bad news. He decided to get to the point.
“Say, Marty, I've met with all four of my clients, a
nd as you might guess, they're all anxious to accept your offer. We'll put this baby to sleep for half a million bucks.”
“Yes, well, was it half a million, Mack?” He seemed uncertain.
Mack's heart froze and he gasped. “Of course, Marty,” he said, then added a fake chuckle as if ol' Marty here was up to another prank. “You offered a hundred grand for each of the four, plus a hundred for the cost of defense.”
Mack could hear papers being yanked around up in New York. “Hmmm, let's see, Mack. We're talking about the Tinzo cases, right?”
“That's right, Marty,” Mack said with no small amount of fear and frustration. And desperation. The man with the checkbook wasn't even sure what they were talking about. One week earlier he'd been perfectly efficient. Now he was floundering. Then the most horrifying statement of all: “I'm afraid I've got these cases confused with some others.”
“You gotta be kidding!” Mack barked, much too sharply. Be cool, he told himself.
“We really offered that much for these cases?” Marty said, obviously scanning notes while he talked.
“Damned right you did, and I, in good faith, conveyed the offers to my clients. We gotta deal, Marty. You made reasonable offers, we accepted. You can't back out now.”
“Just seems a little high, that's all. Fm working on so many of these product liability cases these days.”
Well, congratulations, Mack almost said. You have tons of work to do for clients who can pay you tons of money. Mack wiped sweat from his forehead and saw it all slipping away. Don't panic, he said to himself. “It's not high at all, Marty. You should see Odell Grove with only one eye, and Jerrol Baker minus his left hand, and Doug Jumper with his mangled and useless right hand, and Travis Johnson with little nubs where his fingers used to be. You should talk to these men, Marty, and see how miserable their lives are, how much they've been damaged by Tinzo chain saws, and I think you'd agree that your offer of half a million is not only reasonable but perhaps a bit on the low side.” Mack exhaled and almost smiled to himself when he finished. Not a bad closing argument. Maybe he should have spent more time in the courtroom. "I don't have time to hash out these details or argue liability,
Mark, I—"
“It's Mack. Mack Stafford, attorney-at-law, Clanton, Mississippi.”
“Right, sorry.” More papers shuffled in New York. Muted voices in the background as Mr. Rosenberg directed other people. Then he was back, his voice refocused. “You realize, Mack, that Tinzo has gone to trial four times with this chain saw and won every trial. Slam dunk, no liability.”
Of course Mack did not know this, because he'd forgotten about his little class action. But in desperation he said, “Yes, and I've studied those trials. But I thought you were not going to argue liability, Marty.”
“Okay, you're right. I'll fax down the settlement documents.”
Mack breathed deeply.
“How long before you can get them back to me?” Marty asked.
“Couple of days.”
They haggled over the wording of the documents. They went back and forth about how to distribute the money. They stayed on the phone for another twenty minutes doing what lawyers are expected to do.
When Mack finally hung up, he closed his eyes, propped his feet on his desk, and kicked back in his swivel rocker. He was drained, exhausted, still frightened, but quickly getting over it. He smiled, and was soon humming a Jimmy Buffett tune.
His phone kept ringing.
*
The truth was, he had not been able to locate either Travis Johnson or Doug Jumper. Travis was rumored to be out west driving a truck, something he evidently could do with only seven full-length fingers. Travis had an ex-wife with a house full of kids and a ledger full of unpaid child support. She worked a night shift in a convenience store in Clanton, and had few words for Mack. She remembered his promises to collect some money when Travis lost part of three fingers. According to some sketchy friends, Travis had fled a year earlier and had no plans to return to Ford County.
Doug Jumper was rumored to be dead. He had gone to prison in Tennessee on assault charges and had not been seen in three years. He'd never had a father. His mother had moved away. There were some relatives scattered around the county, but as a whole they showed little interest in talking about Doug and even less interest in talking to a lawyer, even one wearing hunter's camouflage, or faded jeans and hiking boots, or any of the other ensembles Mack used to blend in with the natives. His well' practiced routine of dangling the carrot of some vague check payable to Doug Jumper did not work. Nothing worked, and after two weeks of searching, Mack finally gave up when he heard for the third or fourth time the rumor “That boy's probably dead.”
He obtained the legitimate signatures of Odell Grove and Jerrol Baker—Jerrol's being little more than a pathetic wiggle across the page with his right hand—and then committed his first crime. Notarizations on the settlement'and'release forms were required by Mr. Marty Rosenberg up in New York, but this was standard practice in every case. Mack had fired his notary, though, and procuring the services of another was far too complicated.
At his desk, with the doors locked, Mack carefully forged Freda's name as a notary public, then applied the notary seal with an expired stamp he'd kept in a locked file cabinet. He notarized Odell's signature, then Jerrol's, then stopped to admire his handiwork. He had been planning this deed for days now, and he was convinced he would never be caught. The forgeries were beautiful, the altered notary stamp was scarcely noticeable, and no one up in New York would take the time to analyze them. Mr. Rosenberg and his crack staff were so anxious to close their files that they would glance at Mack's paperwork, confirm a few details, then send the check.
His crimes grew more complicated when he forged the signatures of Travis Johnson and Doug Jumper. This, of course, was justified since he had made good-faith efforts to find them, and if they ever surfaced, he would be willing to offer them the same $25,000 he was paying to Odell and Jerrol. Assuming, of course, that he was around when they surfaced.
But Mack had no plans to be around.
The next morning, he used the U.S. Postal Service—another possible violation of the law, federal, but, again, nothing that troubled him—and sent the package by express to New York.
Then Mack filed for bankruptcy, and in the process broke another law by failing to disclose the fees that were on the way from his chain-saw masterpiece. It could be argued, and perhaps it would be argued if he got caught, that the fees had not yet been collected, and so forth, but Mack could not even win this debate with himself. Not that he really tried. The fees would never be seen by anyone in Clanton, or Mississippi, for that matter.
He hadn't shaved in two weeks, and in his opinion the salt-and-pepper beard was rather becoming. He stopped eating and stopped wearing coats and ties. The bruises and stitches were gone from his head. When he was seen around town, which was not that often, folks hesitated and whispered because word was hot on the streets that poor Mack was losing it all. News of his bankruptcy raced through the courthouse, and when coupled with the news that Lisa had filed for divorce, the lawyers and clerks and secretaries talked of little else. His office was locked during business hours, and after. His phones went unanswered. The chain-saw money was wired to a new bank account in Memphis, and from there it was quietly dispersed. Mack took $50,000 in cash, paid off Odell Grove and Jerrol Baker, and felt good about it. Sure they were entitled to more, at least under the terms of the long-forgotten contracts Mack had shoved under their noses when they'd hired him. But, at least for Mack, the occasion called for a more flexible interpretation of said contracts, and there were several reasons. First, his clients were very happy. Second, his clients would certainly squander anything above $25,000, so in the interest of preserving the money, Mack argued that he should simply keep the bulk of it. Third, $25,000 was a fair settlement in light of their injuries, and especially in light of the fact that the two would have received nothing if Mack had not
been shrewd enough to dream up the chain-saw litigation scheme in the first place.
Reasons four, five, and six followed the same line of thinking. Mack was already tired of rationalizing his actions. He was screwing his clients and he knew it.
He was now a crook. Forging documents, hiding assets, swindling clients. And if he had allowed himself to brood on these actions, he would have been miserable. The reality was that Mack was so thrilled with his escape that he caught himself laughing at odd times. When the crimes were done, there was no turning back, and this pleased him too.
He handed Harry Rex a check for $50,000 to cover the initial fallout from the divorce, and he executed the necessary papers to allow his lawyer to act on his behalf in tidying up his affairs. The rest of the money was wired to a bank in Central America.
The last act in his well-planned and brilliantly executed farewell was a meeting with his daughters. After several testy phone conversations, Lisa had finally relented and agreed to allow Mack to enter the house for one hour, on a Thursday night. She would leave, but return in exactly sixty minutes. Somewhere in the unwritten rules of human behavior a wise person once decided that such meetings are mandatory. Mack certainly could have skipped it, but then he was not only a crook but also a coward. No rule "was safe. He supposed it was important for the girls to have the chance to vent, to cry, to ask •why. He need not have worried. Lisa had so thoroughly prepped them that they could barely manage a hug. He promised to see them as often as possible, even though he was leaving town. They accepted this with more skepticism than he thought possible. After thirty long and awkward minutes, Mack squeezed their stiff bodies one more time and hurried to his car. As he drove away, he was convinced the three women were planning a happy new life without him.
And if he had allowed himself to dwell on his failures and shortcomings, he could have become melancholy. He fought the urge to remember the girls when they were smaller and life was happier. Or had he ever been truly happy? He really couldn't say.
He returned to his office, entered, as always now, through the rear door, and gave the place one final walk-through. All active files had been delivered to Harry Rex. The old ones had been burned. The law books, office equipment, furniture, and cheap art on the wall had been either sold or given away. He loaded up one medium-size suitcase, the contents of which had been care' fully selected. No suits, ties, dress shirts, jackets, dress shoes—all that garb had been given to charity. Mack was leaving with the lighter stuff.