Legally Wasted

by Tommy Strelka

  “I’ll just leave it on Charisma’s desk,” she said after easily interpreting his hesitation. She looked to the pictures on the wall. “Where is she?”

  “She passed away,” said Larkin. “It was sudden. A heart condition.”

  Madeline’s hand covered her mouth. “How long - -”

  “A year . . . no. Two years.”

  Madeline’s hand fell from her mouth and covered her chest. “Two years?” she repeated. “Two years, and still this?” She gestured to the array of family photos hung behind Charisma’s vacant desk.

  In the time that she had worked for Larkin, Charisma had done little else besides straighten the seldom used waiting room and clean the twenty-seven picture frames of her enormous extended family that hung behind her desk. After Sam Wexler’s final trip to Richmond, Charisma had asked Larkin if he would consider allowing her to personalize her workspace. He had readily obliged, not knowing that Charisma had planned on putting two dozen holes in the wall. Nearly one hundred smiling black faces greeted anyone who entered his office.

  “Didn’t you tell?” asked Madeline.

  “Tell?” asked Larkin. She always assumed that Larkin could read her mind.

  She pointed to the photos. “Didn’t you tell these people that they could come and get these pictures?”

  Larkin nodded. “I did, I made a number of calls, left messages, but no one came.”

  “No you didn’t.

  “No. I really did.”

  Madeline glared at him, her lie detector on maximum sensitivity. Her shoulders relaxed and she returned her gaze to the photographs. “That’s sad.”

  “It saves on spackle.”

  “None of these people loved her as much as she loved them.”

  “That’s a bit of a leap,” said Larkin. He could tell that his comment irritated her. “What the hell is this?” Larkin flung the manila envelope across the room. It landed neatly on the edge of the desk and slid to a stop directly in front of Madeline. He could always throw things.

  “Nice toss,” said Freddie.

  Larkin nodded. “You’re goddamned right. Now explain to me just how in the hell you think you can sue me for Rusty?”

  Madeline picked up the envelope. She withdrew the contents and straightened the stack of papers. “That’s not all I’m doing,” she said. She held up the Notice. “You’re not the only one who can learn the law, Larkin. We have a never-ending divorce case pending in Circuit Court. I talked to the clerk and the Court typically refers custody matters to the family court. I went down there, and brought it to the Clerk’s attention. Apparently Judge Loundsbury found it worthy of consideration.”

  “Son of a,” said Larkin. “This is insanity.”

  “These,” said Madeline with guttural inflection. She swung a stack of seventy-five pages or more over her head. As smooth and steady as a construction crane, she moved the stack laterally until over the middle of Charisma’s desk. Freddie and Larkin’s eyes trailed her slow and somewhat graceful movement. “Are the final divorce papers that I prepared requiring your signature.” She slammed the paperwork down upon the desk. Larkin jumped.

  “You? You prepared? Didn’t I type up the separation agreement?”

  “Which you never signed and then lost. I did the research. To be honest, I’m glad I didn’t sign that thing. Do you use that as a model? It was missing some key things.”

  Larkin raised his hands. “Don’t even - -”

  “I was going to ask you about that, Mr. Monroe,” Freddie interjected. “You see, I was flipping through some of the pages in the documents your wife prepared, and there’s a lot more in there then what you put in my divorce papers. I mean a lot more. That thing’s got some weight and I think you gave me no more than twelve or so pages. There’s Latin stuff in her work. That’s important right? The Latin stuff?”

  Larkin turned to Freddie. “You’re divorced. You owe me twelve hundred bucks. Get out.”

  “Right,” said Freddie. “I’ll wait by your car, Ms. Monroe.”

  Freddie brushed past Larkin. Larkin squinted. “Her car?” The light went off. “And you owe me another eight hundred bucks for that DUI last fall,” shouted Larkin as Freddie raced out the door. “You get your license back when I say so, pal!” The door slammed.

  Silence. Larkin could barely turn to face her. “So that’s it?” he finally asked.

  Her huge brown eyes blinked.

  “You found someone?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I want you to handle this. Put it on the front burner, Larkin.”

  “Front burner.”

  “Yes. I know you. This will sit somewhere on your desk and it will be buried by paperwork and no one will see it again for six months. I want this on the front burner, and I want to go ahead and schedule the thing where I come in with a witness and we talk about the divorce.”

  “The deposition.”

  “Right,” she nodded, “the deposition. I’ll arrange for the court reporter.”

  “You can’t - -”

  “No,” she stated firmly and quickly. “How’s next Tuesday?”

  “Next Tuesday?”

  “Say, two o’clock in the afternoon?”

  “I can’t do it,” said Larkin.

  “You haven’t looked at your schedule.”

  “I know that I can’t do it.”

  “You’re drinking too much.”

  “Oh?”

  “I almost took out the trash in your office. So many bottles, Larkin. They’re spilling over the rim of the trash can. You need to stop.”

  Larkin nodded and rocked back on his feet. The light was rather dim inside the room, and he hoped that she could not see the small new stains on his shirt. However simply thinking it, seemed to make her scrutinize him. Nothing could hide from those brown eyes.

  “What’s on your shirt?”

  “Nosebleed.”

  “Do you need Vaseline?” she asked as she went back into the bag.

  “That’s not a cure-all despite what you think.”

  “How’s Rusty doing? I miss him so much.”

  He wanted to throw a chair. To clinch every muscle and bellow to the Gods to smote her ruin. “He’s fine since he’s back in the house.”

  “I never wanted him in the garage in the first place. That was your mother’s insistence.” Her face pinched, but not at the thought of his mother. A sad and painful memory resurfaced, but she swatted it away with a swing of her big bag. “You have to be careful,” she said after turning a full circle in place. “He can gain weight really quickly.”

  “He’s not going to get fat again. And what do you care. You and Judge Loundsbury are going to steal my cat. What’s next? Do you want my refrigerator? My garden hose?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and stared at him. He found that he could no longer meet her eye to eye. “A Detective Kincaid called for you.”

  “What?” asked Larkin.

  “Detective Kincaid. He wants you to call him as soon as possible.” She ripped off a small pink slip from the secretary’s desk and extended her hand.

  “You answered my phone?”

  “It was ringing when I got in the door.” She placed the slip of paper with the detective’s phone number on the envelope. “You know me and phones.”

  “And you have absolutely no idea how unbelievably weird that is.” He crossed his arms.

  “Don’t cross your arms.”

  He uncrossed them. “What did he want?”

  “For you to call him,” she said.

  “But did he say what it was about? I don’t have any active criminal cases going on right now.”

  “He didn’t say. Just call him, though, please? He sounded like he really wanted to talk to you.” She looked back at Charisma’s old desk. “What do you have going on, Larkin?”

  His mind raced into bullshit mode. Lawyers chatted all the time about their business between hearings. Larkin had been lying for months about a personal injury case he was attempting to settle.
He began mouthing the words “truck accident” when he realized with whom he spoke. He crossed his arms again.

  “Don’t - -” began Madeline, but Larkin angrily cocked his head. “Next Tuesday at two,” she said after taking a deep breath. With a flurry of steps, she walked by him and headed for the door. He bit his lip as she passed by and chose to hold his breath rather than smell that cinnamon smell that always seemed to swirl around her. But it didn’t matter. His memory realized what his senses could not and he was worse for it.

  Larkin listened to the door shut and he walked to Charisma’s vacant desk. He stared at the envelope until two drops fell from his eyes and splattered on the yellow paper. Losing steam, he leaned forward and placed his head on the desk. His hands massaged his scalp and he suddenly felt like Mr. Powers.

  The door reopened.

  “Please come back,” he said, his voice muffled a bit by his hands.

  Twenty or thirty seconds passed.

  “You left your tie outside,” she said. “You need to dry clean this. I’ll put it . . . here.” He did not look up. He only listened to the door shut.

  “There’s the man of the hour,” said Trevor Meeks as he hopped onto the barstool next to Larkin. Larkin continued to stare at his half-empty gin and tonic. He had let all of the ice melt until the slice of lime simply bobbed in the liquid like wreckage after a storm. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Trevor’s hyper-expensive platinum watch and was a bit shocked to discover how long that he must have been staring at the drink. It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening.

  “Rough day in court?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Larkin muttered just as some business-suited gentleman appeared behind them and smacked Trevor on his back.

  “Mr. Vice Mayor!” said the suck-up.

  Trevor made some sort of shooting gesture with his hands, laughed and sent the man walking away with a grin on his face. Everyone grinned when they spoke with Trevor, the bastard was too damned charming. In fact, if Trevor was truly in a great mood, which was not infrequent, a five-minute conversation left you with the same feeling you had when you returned from vacation and look approvingly in the mirror at your new tan.

  “What was that you were saying about court?” asked Trevor. His perfectly set teeth gleamed even in the dim bar light.

  Larkin leaned back. “I said, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

  “Oh yeah? How much time did he get?”

  Mr. Powers’ tears seemed to burn on the fabric of Larkin’s shirt. “Six months,” he said, “for not paying his child support.”

  Trevor snapped at the bartender and pointed to Larkin’s drink. “Beefeater?” Larkin shook his head. “Make mine Beefeater,” he told the bartender. “You know, his first mistake was to get married in the first place. Six months is half a year. Marriage is a life sentence.”

  “The sentence came down after I threw up.”

  “You what?” asked Trevor.

  “I threw up. Passed out.” He took a sip. “It was horrible.”

  “Jesus Christ, Larkin,” said Trevor with a laugh. Larkin repeated most of his day to his friend. He left out the bit about Madeline and the separation agreement. Trevor was a serial tomcat and devout bachelor ever since his bitter divorce. Larkin did not want his friend to dwell upon his past. As the two chatted, the bar became busier. More lawyers and businessmen entered and many, like the man earlier, smacked Trevor on the back. Handsome, rich, and politically connected, Trevor nearly lived the life that many fourteen year-old boys dreamed for themselves: fast cars, a steady stream of younger women, and the incredible ability to navigate difficult situations with little more than a winning smile. Larkin had always been amazed by his friend’s uncanny ability to talk his way out of a DUI charge despite the bottles lining the floorboard or the passed out girl in the back seat. Down deep, Trevor was a devious bastard, but Big Lick just loved him for it.

  “Fuck Deveraux,” said Trevor as he withdrew a black pipe from his coat pocket. “Why is it that only you have days like this?” He struck an expensive and thick wooden match that hissed for several seconds before the flame curved to light the tobacco.

  “Born under the worst sign, I guess,” he said. He pointed to Trevor’s pipe. “If I had lit that pipe in here, they would have tossed me out before I could blow out the match.”

  Trevor laughed before sucking on the pipe for a minute. “So there’s this blonde who works for the city,” he began. Larkin swiveled in his chair and feigned attention. He had heard tales of so many conquests, he could probably recite them better than Trevor at this point.

  As his friend carried on about a tattoo on someone’s inner thigh, Larkin allowed his attention to stray to a nearby table of young attorneys. He could tell by their dress and composure that they were all associates at one of the larger law firms in Big Lick. He was at first puzzled why these legal eaglets had landed at Marty’s at a time of the day when they still should have been billing hours, but their joyous high-fiving demeanor broadcasted appropriate clues. Though Trevor nearly shouted in his left ear, Larkin heard the words “mediation” and “settlement” repeated more than once from the table. Fresh from the kill, the eaglets had gorged themselves on either the ultimate billed hour of high-dollar defense work or they had forced someone to send a bloated settlement check to their already wealthy client. Whatever the reason, they surely had spent months, perhaps years, of long hours at the firm in anticipation of a moment that had occurred hours earlier. And to their satisfaction.

  “What a feeling,” muttered Larkin. He swigged the rest of his drink and continued to watch the eaglets. Trevor carried on and on about his sexual escapade. The Vice Mayor waved his hand and a new drink was poured. The bartender placed it by Larkin’s hand. The cool wet glass slid against his fingertips and, without looking and acting purely on instinct or reflex, he began to drink.

  He hated the eaglets almost as much as he wanted to sit and be among them. University of Virginia, Washington and Lee, and maybe even Ivy League law degrees, he thought. Pedigrees. He had qualified to take the bar exam through a backdoor apprenticeship loophole that most attorneys could not believe still existed in the twenty-first century. He shook his head. They had certificates of merit framed in exotic wood upon their walls. Larkin was going to have to stop at K-Mart on the way home to pick up a replacement frame for his false, misspelled ethics award.

  He sipped again, dribbled on his shirt, and looked up to see two of the eaglets looking intently in his direction. He coughed and attempted to straighten a tie that he no longer wore. They approached quickly until one of them stood only inches away.

  “L-Larkin Monroe,” Larkin said with trepidation, his voice cracking. He extended his hand, but the eaglet ignored it and looked over Larkin’s shoulder. Trevor shoved Larkin sharply in the arm. “Ouch!”

  “Shhh!” someone in the bar hissed. More people approached Larkin.

  “What the hell?” asked Larkin.

  “Turn it up!” one of the eaglets called.

  Larkin swiveled in his chair to see the bartender scrambling to find the remote control that operated the television hanging above the bar almost directly behind him. The television was tuned to the local news. The camera focused on a bleached-blond reporter standing in front of a large dark green body of water. The caption below her read, “Local Attorney Found Drowned at Smith Mountain Lake.”

  The bartender began pulling apart the rail, looking nervously for the remote.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Trevor as he placed his drink down, hoisted his legs, and stood atop the bar. He wobbled a bit before stretching his right arm and smacking the volume button on the television.

  “Hell yeah, Meeks!” a constituent applauded. Trevor gave a little wave and rather gracefully returned to his seat.

  “Do you ever do anything wrong?” asked Larkin but those around him quickly “shhhed” him.

  “—with more questions than answers,” said
the reporter as the camera now focused only on a quiet cove of the lake. “Here is where two local fishermen found the body of Alex Jordan.”

  “Who?” asked Larkin.

  The shot cut to a Smith Mountain Lake local wearing a stained ball cap. “We was hittin’ the water this morning looking for bass when I seen something on the shoreline,” he said. “I first thought it was deer, but then I could see a hand and I knowed it was somethin’ awful.”

  The scene changed again, this time showing a still picture of a remarkably attractive young red haired woman in her mid twenties. At the sight of her, Trevor stiffened.

  “Do you know her?” asked Larkin.

  Trevor shook his head and continued to stare. She wore a conservative business suit and a bright smile. “She’s smoking hot though. Am I right?” he asked.

  “Alex Jordan, a law graduate from Berkley in California,” the reporter stated, “had until recently worked as a law clerk for Justice Lloyd Byrd of the Supreme Court of Virginia.”

  “No shit,” someone uttered.

  The picture of Alex Jordan was replaced with that of a serious looking man with salt and pepper hair wearing judicial robes. “Justice Byrd could not be reached for comment at the time of this broadcast.”

  “I wonder what happened?” asked Larkin.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time someone drowned in that lake,” said Trevor.

  The reporter continued. “The police at this time are still investigating the incident and will not comment on whether they can rule out foul play.” The camera then focused on a thin, bearded policeman in his forties. His brow cut sharply across the corners of his eyes, giving him a permanent squint. “Detective Kincaid of the Big Lick Police is coordinating an investigation with Bedford Police at the lake.”

  “I know that name,” said Larkin. He took another sip. Where had he heard that name before?

  “It’s too early to say what happened,” said Kincaid, “other than to say it’s a tragedy. We have a lot of ground to cover before we make any decisions as to how this may have happened.”

  “You know him?” asked Trevor.