Legally Wasted

by Tommy Strelka

  “Glen Livet,” said Trevor. “Now that’s worth journeying to the center of the earth.” He grasped the glass and quickly filled it to the near brim.

  “I can smell that from here,” said Larkin as he lowered himself to his knees to examine the underside of the desk.

  “I’m kissing the devil,” said Trevor. “Let me know when you want me to break that.”

  “Right,” said Larkin. His fingers probed beneath the desk but felt only the scratch of wood in need of some sandpaper. He cursed again.

  “I can break it.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  Trevor raised his glass. “Take all the time, my friend. What does he have on his desk?”

  “I don’t know.” He stared at the knobs attached to the smaller drawers. Did they turn? Perhaps one of them rotated and unlatched an inner lock. “I think he has two judicial opinions up there.” His fingers pressed against the brass. “Maybe some of the research to go along with it.” None of the knobs moved.

  A drop of scotch whiskey landed on Larkin’s shoulder as Trevor leaned in to investigate. Larkin could smell the drink. He almost swiped the glass from Trevor’s hand. Part of him wanted to drink it, while a separate voice cried out for him to hurl it through the tall expensive windows.

  “I’ve never seen one before,” said Trevor. “What am I looking at?”

  “Well,” started Larkin as he jiggled the center drawer. With each jostle he could see slivers of open space around the drawer. It was maddening. He spoke to calm his nerves. “The top part is the caption of the case. That’ll tell you what court you’re in and who’s suing who. Then you’ve got the case number over to the side and below all of that you’ll find the name of the Justice who wrote the Court’s opinion.”

  “Uh huh,” said Trevor. “Both of them are by our guy. Old Birdie Bird.”

  “Gotcha,” spat Larkin. His battle had reached a fever pitch. He knew his fingers would hurt for hours but still he tugged at the handle. He released his grip and exhaled like a steam engine. “Godammit,” he muttered. He looked beneath the desk again, struck his head, and repeated the curse.

  “Let me break it.”

  “No.”

  “Let me break it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Here,” said Trevor as he handed the opinions to Larkin. “Get current on the law.” With a long seer-suckered arm, he steered Larkin clear. He set his drink upon the desktop and studied the target. “This is nice wood,” he said in a strange, deep voice just before quickly grabbing the center drawer and tugging with all his might. Larkin was quite surprised. Trevor really put his back into it. As Larkin watched, he pictured his tool box at home filled with a number of items that could have proved useful.

  Eventually Trevor released and he fell back against the fat wooden planks of the floor. “I’m going to do it,” he panted.

  “Yeah,” said Larkin as he caught himself eyeing the scotch before glancing down at one of the opinions. He looked at the top page of the opinion in his right hand and then briefly studied the top page of the opinion in his left. Trevor kicked the desk. A brass knob clanked against the floor and rolled beneath the desk.

  “They have the same case number,” said Larkin, although he knew Trevor did not care. “Same parties too,” he mumbled. He flipped to the last page of the opinion in his left hand. Page thirty-two. He next looked at the last page of the second opinion. Thirteen pages. Was one of them just an earlier draft? He flipped back to the top page and noticed a timestamp of sorts on the upper left corner of the document. “It says, submitted to JB, June first.” He looked at the other one. “This one was submitted June tenth.”

  His curiosity was piqued, but the sound of splintering wood was music to his ears. The center drawer swung low, ripped from its wooden frame. Trevor had somehow given the desk a Glasgow smile. The contents spilled onto the floor. Larkin rolled up the opinions and stuffed them in his jeans pocket. His fingers lunged for the evidence in the accumulated pile beneath the desk.

  Trevor stood back and caught his breath. He eventually retreated to the globe and watched his friend dig for a lifeline.

  “Staples, rubber bands,” said Larkin as his hands swatted items over the floorboards. “Blank memo paper, envelopes, pens, pens, more blank paper, boat keys - -”

  “Let me see those,” Trevor blurted from across the room. Larkin tossed them over his shoulder without a thought. He concentrated on sifting through the mess. But as the items were eventually spread over a wider section of the floor, his heart sank.

  “It’s not here,” he said, even before he had finished digging. He knew his lot in life. Finding a 24k get out of jail free card inside of a desk did not really fit the pattern. His hands lost their ambition. He slowed his search. Trevor poured another drink and the glug-glug sound of the brown liquid leaving the bottle seemed to last forever.

  “Nothing,” he finally said. “No letter. No pictures. Anthony was wrong. The Justice must have anticipated a search. He either moved them or most likely destroyed them.” His fingers grasped a corner of the last unseen piece of paper and he pulled. It was only an attractive invitation to an event to which he would never be permitted to go.

  “Larkin,” said Trevor, “you’re innocent, right?”

  Larkin stared at the floor. He could not even admit it to himself. Despite his innocence, his failure only made him feel guilty. In his mind he had already tried the facts and determined the sentence. He would be put away for life, guilty of unabashed idiocy.

  “Larkin,” snapped Trevor. “Innocent, right?”

  Larkin nodded.

  “Well that’s good,” he said. “It will make this easier.”

  “Make what easier?”

  There was a pause. “Damn that’s good scotch,” said Trevor. “I’m taking the bottle. You know, Larkin? You’re one sharp fucker despite what you think. I trust you. So I’m going to trust you to save my ass.”

  “Save your ass”? Larkin turned. “What are you - -”

  The room had turned into a collection of stutter-stop images from the intense flashes of blue light bursting from the nearby police cars. The strobe effect made everything seem to move incredibly fast yet frozen in place at the same time. With each flash, Larkin watched still images of Trevor in action. In one flash Trevor had tossed the leather chair aside before appearing suddenly adjacent to the globe in the next flash. Trevor gripped the globe by its wooden frame, swung it back like a baseball bat, and hurled it through the window. Glass exploded outward. For a moment Larkin was caught off guard, half-expecting that the sound of the shattering glass would also beat with the staccato rhythm created by the blue light. He got to his feet.

  “There has to be a side door,” said Trevor, “some other exit. Find it. I’ll buy you a minute or two to get your ass out of here. Tobacco farms and cow fields parallel the road. Don’t get caught.” Stepping through his portal, Larkin could see a smile on Trevor’s face. He prayed that the cops would not shoot first and ask questions second.

  Larkin headed toward the office door when he heard Trevor shout. “Hey! This didn’t break!” Without slowing his momentum, Trevor scooped up the bottle of scotch. He looked one last time at Larkin and dangled the set of keys he had acquired only moments earlier. “Cheers, mate,” he said. “Now haul ass.”

  The flashes of light grew brighter. Police sirens and Trevor’s whooping drowned out even the cicadas. Larkin ran.

  120 Proof

  It was nearly an out of body experience. His legs pumped. His arms pawed at the air as if he could grab hold of an exit and pull it closer. He tripped many times and stumbled into a number of objects. He felt no pain and only winced as one might while watching a pratfall on television.

  Even deep in the house, Larkin heard the throaty, gurlgly roar of the engine. Trevor had made it to the boat. Though landlocked, Trevor was now armed with a half-bottle of fine scotch and a three hundred horsepower ski boat. He could keep the cops occupied for quite some t
ime as long as he did not crash into a pier. Larkin prayed he did not crash into a pier.

  Presuming he could somehow escape, Larkin did not know where to run or whom to seek. All that mattered at the present was fleeing the house. He flung open a door and bolted into the night. The glimmer of hope brightened as he cleared the expansive yard and reached the thick stand of pine trees. He risked a look behind him half-expecting a SWAT team with dogs. He saw only the looming silhouette of the Justice’s house outlined by flashes of blue light. The growl of Trevor’s boat diminished as his friend shot out of the cove on his midnight ride.

  Larkin worked his way through the woods. Though free for the moment, he knew his chances of proving his innocence had just plunged. Without Trevor and with the law on his tail, his flight was most likely pointless. Still, he raced through the trees as quickly as he dared in the darkness. He had no true thought or plan of action. It was pure survival mode. Legs run. Heart pound. Breathe.

  He may have run for just a few minutes or ten times that when he exited the woods and began striding across a wide open field. Federal tobacco and corn subsidy programs had turned what would have been excellent nighttime cover into a fugitive dartboard with Larkin at the bull’s eye. Years earlier, he would have been shielded by shoulder high plants with leaves nearly the size of palm fronds. Now with a large moon and only calf-high perennial grasses batting against his jeans, he was the most visible thing for miles. He could run far in any direction, but he could not shake the feeling that he was trapped.

  He ran as fast as the moonlight would allow. Stones, cow pies, divots, and the occasional stick - - some of which looked just like rattlesnakes in the dim light - - littered his path. He slowed a bit so as to not stumble and break an ankle. His legs went into cruise control and his mind finally began to wander. Was he simply destined to be the fall guy? Had all of his plans only been the thrashes of an animal fighting to stay alive when it was too dumb to know it was at death’s door?

  As he reached the top of a small hill he imagined how comical his silhouette must have been. It was a sad loping affair: the Wolfman by way of Quasimodo. Soon his lungs began hacking up all of the spores, dander and whatever else might have been floating in the night air. He slowed his pace further and coughed and spat onto the ground. Eventually, he had to grab both of his knees and just breathe. His stamina was gone. He strained to hear sirens in the distance or even the sound of passing cars from a nearby road, but the cicadas sung their songs loudly and dominated the evening.

  Larkin wondered just how far off the beaten path he may have strayed. The question was a swiftly falling domino. How had Anthony been wrong? Would the world come to hate him for sending Trevor to prison? Had they triggered some silent alarm? Perhaps the house was under surveillance due to a perceived threat against the Justice. Hell, a neighbor walking his dog could have seen the lit office light or even Larkin’s car before phoning the cops. It could have been any of those things or none. Ultimately it would matter little. Trevor the Gallant had acted bravely, but he had not saved Larkin. Trevor had only prolonged the worry and suffering before imminent doom.

  Alone and dry heaving over an anthill, Larkin could do little to save his skin. Within the next thirty minutes his house back in Big Lick would be raided. Within the hour, every cop west of Charlottesville would be looking for the pissant attorney that had, at one time or another, heckled each of them on the witness stand. It would be blue collar badge payback.

  Larkin opened his eyes and tried to discern his spittle against the dirt and the ant mound beneath him. “I need help,” he whispered.

  Madeline was a thought. But getting to her would be nigh impossible. His phone would be tapped and at least one unmarked police car would be idling not twenty yards from her front door. Impossible.

  Larkin’s breaths slowed as his body finally regained some pep. The adrenaline that had sent him rocketing from the Justice’s house had apparently worn off. His limbs ached. Being a fugitive was exhausting.

  He stood and looked around him. Perhaps he was ignoring the obvious, some ally in the immediate area. His brain raced as he thought of everyone he might know in or around the Bedford area. A name eventually surfaced, but he chose to proceed through his mental rolodex a second time. Again, he ended with one name and a heaping scoop of trepidation. Using the dark ridges of the mountains as a guide, he headed for a notch in-between two of the taller slopes.

  The road leading to Terry Woolwine’s driveway was certainly less than a typical road. Despite the condition of the path, it gave Larkin great hope to be near someone. He stumbled and bumbled his way up the mountain. Occasionally, he wandered from the path, but he was eventually able to discern where other passersby had worn down the land by both boot and truck tire traffic. Grabbing a narrow dogwood trunk for stability, he suddenly considered Terry’s deceased grandfather and whether or not the old man would have performed barrel rolls in his pine box upon seeing the current condition of his property. In the heydays of Appalachian moonshine, Pappy Woolwine was rumored to have never entered his land from the same point twice. Though his large family lived upon his mountain, Pappy Woolwine worked damn hard to hide that fact from anyone who might be curious. No paths marked the mountain in his day. The revenuers were ever vigilant in their hunt for shiners. High speed car chases leading into the mountains were not unheard of. More than one shiner had told Larkin the tale of Pappy Woolwine, pursued by T-men, taking a hidden turn and literally disappearing in the Blue Ridge. Terry had spent half of his adult life trying to locate a cave that supposedly concealed Pappy’s souped up old Ford.

  Now, with booze nearly as legal as a cup of coffee, the shiners had lost all of their business to state run liquor stores. Later, methamphetamine stole from the shiner those customers who wanted something stronger than store bought booze.

  Despite the seeming lack of any identifiable market for the stuff, shiners still littered the hills. It was cultural. Like a bee keeper taking great pride in his honey, so too did the contemporary shiner put pride in his product. Moonshine had transcended the shelf life of a mere marketable business unit to become something that represented a people and a way of life. Families trained younger generations in the practices of good stilling. Though revenuers no longer pursued them into the mountains, the federal laws against shining remained draconian. Mountain men like Terry Woolwine might have been torchbearers to an obsolete and nearly harmless craft, but the risk of federal intrusion was still very real. Knowing Larkin’s luck, he’d reach Terry three minutes before the first liquor raid in twenty years.

  The path steepened. He fell more than once. As he fumbled in the dark he remembered an article he had read some years before about booby traps laid by marijuana growers. Burmese tiger pits. Poisonous and starving snakes chained to stakes buried beneath the ground. Spring guns. Surely Terry was not so paranoid.

  “No snake traps,” Larkin mumbled. He soon began repeating the statement as he fought against loose dirt, gravity, and a hundred aches and pains. “No snake traps.”

  He gritted his teeth as he again fell. A sharp rock sliced open the left leg of his jeans just below the knee. The sensation of warm liquid seeping down his calf let him know just how clumsy he had been. “Please, no snake traps,” he whispered as he reached his feet. Pain shot through his leg and soon he was back on the ground. Reaching forward with both hands, he continued for a moment on all fours before realizing he would never reach the top of the mountain. He growled in anger as he made his way to his feet.

  Suddenly, movement in the corner of his left eye caught his attention. What could only be described as a ghost chicken ambled through the nearby underbrush. Pale white under the moon, the animal glowed with an eeriness that, before that night, had rarely been seen in poultry. Larkin stared. It almost appeared as if the bird was completely devoid of feathers, a revenant of a thousand chicken dinners, and as awkward and as off-putting as a hamburger patty with fur.

  The bird paused as it eyed him. No
t a single feather marked its skin.

  “Very creepy,” said Larkin.

  The heart-stopping sound of a pump-action shotgun preparing to fire nearly pulled Larkin right out from his skin. He froze, but allowed his eyes to dart. He saw nothing but thin saplings dotting the steep hillside and the ethereal bird rooting about his feet. The unmistakable sound of the gun could have come from anywhere.

  “Please don’t shoot,” said Larkin.

  Twigs snapped and leaves rustled behind him as the person with the gun drew closer.

  “I don’t have a gun,” Larkin said. He tried to raise his hands in the air, but was forced to remain gripping a tree limb due to the steepness of the terrain.

  “Who are you? What’s your business?” asked a voice so rough, he or she may have had a piece of birch bark in place of a tongue.

  “Larkin Monroe. I’m a lawyer. I’m – -”

  “Now what in the sam hell is a lawyer doing crawling up my property?” Though the voice was guttural, Larkin could now discern that a woman stood behind him.

  “I’m Terry’s attorney. I need to see him.”

  The woman with the gun did not reply. Larkin risked a swivel of the head to see that the double barrel of the gun was pointed straight at the ground. The woman’s face remained shrouded in shadow, but the silhouette of her body was clearly defined. She was all shoulders, as stooped and seemingly as strong as the mountains themselves. She would take no gruff from a smart-mouthed ambulance chaser from the Star City.

  “So you’re a lawyer,” the woman repeated. “Terry’s lawyer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And anything you see up here, you can’t tell no one right? Privileges or something, right?”

  “Not a word. Client-attorney privilege,”

  “Would they put you in jail?”

  Larkin stared at the gun. “Worse.”