A House Divided

by Robert Whitlow

  Corbin dropped his feet to the floor. “Somebody probably showed up pro se and needs a lawyer,” he said. “Print out a blank contingency fee contract and medical release form. Oh, and do a contract for an hourly case too. I’ll be right out.”

  “Are you going to talk to Lori?”

  “Yeah, I was getting ahead of myself.”

  “She’s coming through.”

  Corbin waited until the red light on his phone blinked, then he pressed the receive button. “This is Corbin Gage.”

  “Did Janelle tell you why I called?”

  “Yes, do you know what kind of case it is?”

  “No, I’m not sure what the judge has in mind. He’s on the bench and sent one of the bailiffs back to tell me to contact you.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Corbin hung up then hovered by Janelle’s desk while she slowly tapped the keys on her computer. “Did you find the right forms?” he asked.

  “You know I can’t get anything done when you’re standing there leaning over my shoulder like a hungry vulture.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Corbin went to the bathroom and inspected himself in the mirror. His face was clean shaven today, but his eyes had a perpetually runny look that he couldn’t do anything about, and the skin on his face sagged from his broad cheekbones. He pushed his hair away from his forehead and straightened his tie. At least he had a full head of hair, and his voice remained strong and vibrant.

  He returned to Janelle’s desk. “Ready?”

  “Right there.” She pointed. “Do you have any business cards in your wallet?”

  Corbin patted his hip pocket, then picked up the papers. “These are dated last year,” he said.

  “Oh, I need to redo the form.” Janelle held out her hand. “It won’t take but a second.”

  “No,” Corbin replied. “I can cross it out and change the year if I need to. But fix it by the time I get back.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Ignoring the tone of Janelle’s answer, Corbin opened the front door of the office and stepped onto the sidewalk. Normally there wasn’t enough traffic in downtown Alto to create any pollution. Only when the wind blew strongly from the south did odors from the chicken processing plant and Colfax cast a pall over the center of town.

  The light at the corner was red for pedestrians, but Corbin didn’t see any cars coming and jaywalked across the street. Turning left he walked up the sidewalk to the courthouse and up the broad steps, worn down by the shuffling of countless feet over many decades. As he reached the top of the steps, he felt his shirt pocket for a pen that wasn’t there. He’d have to borrow one from someone inside.

  The main courtroom was on the first floor and occupied the left half of the building. Also on the first floor were the clerk’s office and the deed room. On the second floor were the district attorney’s office, the probate judge’s chambers, and the office suite used by the sitting superior court judge. Two judges served the circuit: James Ellington, who was three years older than Corbin, and Dexter Perry, age forty-one, and formerly a partner at Simpkin, Brown, and Stamper. Judge Perry never referred a potential client to Corbin.

  Corbin walked into the rear of the courtroom, a large, square space with a slightly sloping floor intended to improve visibility for people sitting in the gallery. This morning there were ten or twelve people scattered across the pew-like seating. The floor creaked beneath Corbin’s feet.

  Judge Ellington was on the bench. His black robe contrasted with his wavy white hair. It was a criminal call calendar, and standing in front of him was Ray, and next to him Nate Stamper, an ambitious young partner at the Simpkin firm. Seated at the defendant’s table was Guy Hathaway, the local plant manager for Colfax. Hathaway was a tall man in his fifties with a sharp nose, thinning brown hair, and the demeanor of a sphinx.

  The judge saw Corbin and motioned for him to come forward and have a seat in the front row. Ray glanced over his shoulder, and Corbin caught his son’s eye, then made the motion of clicking an imaginary pen with his thumb. Ray gave him a puzzled look, then nodded, took a pen from his pocket, and handed it to him.

  “Mr. Stamper,” the judge said. “I’ll hear from you first.”

  Nate Stamper, wearing an expertly tailored blue suit and red tie, stood and spoke in a respectful tone of voice.

  “Your Honor, the imposition of a criminal fine in this case is neither supported by the law nor warranted by the evidence. The cease and desist order you issued last week is an ample remedy, and my client is in the process of complying with the order as we speak. The cleanup and abatement operations should be finished within a reasonable time period.”

  “I would expect nothing less, if Mr. Hathaway wants to avoid the possibility of being held in contempt of court,” the judge replied sternly. “What is the State’s position on the fine?”

  Ray shifted his shoulders before he spoke. “The State is satisfied with Colfax’s response to the order you issued last week at the conclusion of the bench trial. It would be redundant to impose a criminal sanction for the release of pollutants without a showing of criminal intent on the part of authorized representatives of a corporate entity. For this reason—”

  “Redundant?” the judge interrupted. “What’s redundant about requiring a corporate defendant to pay a statutory fine intended to deter misconduct in the future? The legislature made provision for a fine of $2,500 per day that a prohibited discharge of a pollutant substance takes place. You gentlemen will recall that in my findings of fact I determined that the respondent’s violation of the statute continued for at least ninety days, which, if each day is considered a separate act, would warrant imposition of a fine in the amount of—”

  The judge paused, waiting for Ray to provide the number.

  Corbin realized his son hadn’t calculated the amount of the potential fine. The drowning of millions of brain cells in alcohol hadn’t deprived Corbin of a lifelong ability to perform basic math calculations in his head.

  “Two hundred twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said in a courtroom whisper that carried all the way past the lawyers to the judge.

  Stamper turned and glared at Corbin. Ray looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Thank you, Mr. Gage,” the judge replied.

  Stamper stepped forward and spoke in a more forceful tone of voice. “Your Honor, if the assistant DA isn’t seeking the imposition of a fine, my client requests that none be assessed. Mr. Gage is here to represent the interests of the citizens of Alto and Rusk County.”

  “It’s true that Mr. Gage is an assistant DA,” the judge answered drily. “But it’s also true that I’m the judge. And I’m going to treat this as a single occurrence and impose a fine of $2,500, payable to the clerk of court within thirty days of today’s date.”

  Stamper pressed his lips together tightly and glanced at Mr. Hathaway. Corbin couldn’t see Hathaway’s reaction.

  “Do you want me to prepare the order?” Ray asked.

  “Yes, with findings of fact that conform to my ruling from the bench last week.”

  “Send it over to me for review,” Stamper said to Ray, who nodded. The defense lawyer packed up his briefcase and left the courtroom without looking in Corbin’s direction.

  “Do you want me to call the next matter?” Ray asked the judge. “It’s a bond forfeiture motion.”

  “I want to talk to the other Mr. Gage first,” the judge replied.

  Ray returned to the prosecution table, and Corbin approached the bench. The judge put his hand over the microphone in front of him.

  “I expressed my condolences to Ray before the calendar call,” the judge said in a low voice. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it to the funeral. My wife and I had a prior commitment out of town.”

  “I understand,” Corbin said, shifting his shoulders just as Ray had done moments before. “And I appreciate the sentiment. Lori said you wanted to see me?”

  “Yes, there’s
a man and woman sitting on the third row who’ve received an eviction notice from their landlord.”

  Corbin turned and saw an older man in overalls sitting next to a short woman with her hair pulled back in a bun.

  “They came to my office asking for an appointed lawyer. I would have sent them to the legal aid office, but the man mentioned he’d hurt his back when he fell because the landlord wouldn’t fix a rotten step.”

  “I’ll be glad to talk to him,” Corbin said. “Is the jury room available?”

  Still stinging from Judge Ellington’s rebuke about his lack of zeal in seeking imposition of a large fine against Colfax, Ray watched his father go into the jury room and close the door.

  The decision to drag Rusk County’s biggest employer into court hadn’t originated at the DA’s office in the first place—it was the result of an investigation and report issued by a state environmental official in Atlanta. A lawyer with the attorney general’s office reviewed the report, contacted Steve Nelson, the local DA, and gave him the option of pursuing the case or cooperating with a government lawyer who would drive in from Atlanta to head up the prosecution.

  If the attorney general’s office hadn’t been involved, the matter could have been handled with a phone call. But with the state official looking over their shoulders, a behind-the-scenes resolution wasn’t an option. No one in Rusk County wanted a hotshot lawyer from Atlanta cruising into town with an agenda to generate a bunch of negative publicity by busting the county’s largest employer, even if it was an industrial polluter. Steve assigned the potentially controversial case to Ray, whose first call had been to Simpkin, Brown, and Stamper.

  It was quickly apparent that Colfax couldn’t challenge the findings, so Nate Stamper and Ray had agreed to a bench trial at which most of the facts were stipulated and a cease and desist order drafted in advance. The attorney general’s office was satisfied because the excessive discharge of harmful by-products from the fertilizer plant would stop. And Colfax was glad it could keep a low profile and avoid negative publicity. The only hiccup turned out to be the imposition of a small criminal fine. Ray knew it would be hard to keep that tidbit out of the local paper. At least he’d been able to do his job without jeopardizing his future employment possibilities.

  He finished the last matter on the calendar, and Judge Ellington left the bench. Ray was packing up his catalog case when the jury room door opened and his father emerged, reaching his right hand into different pockets of his trousers and suit.

  “Here it is,” he announced triumphantly as he pulled a business card from an inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Last one. I’ll send you a copy of the letter I’m going to serve on your landlord. He’ll probably hire a lawyer, and we’ll go from there.”

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Gage,” the woman said. “I was worried we’d be on the street.”

  “This may take several months to work itself out, which should give you time to find another place if your landlord refuses to make this one habitable.”

  The couple slowly walked up the aisle. Corbin stayed behind with Ray.

  “Who owns the property?” Ray asked.

  “Harold Dickens.”

  “I’m not surprised. Is it one of the row houses on Baxter Street? They ought to bulldoze all of them and start over.”

  “True, but this one is going to be brought up to code if he wants to rent it, and Dickens will have to notify his premises liability about a personal injury claim. By the time I’m finished, Mr. and Mrs. Bowater should be back on their feet.”

  “Contingency fee?”

  “The poor man’s key to the courthouse.”

  “Is that one of Colonel Parker’s sayings?”

  “He quoted it, but it wasn’t original with him.” Corbin handed the borrowed pen back to Ray. “Do you want to grab a bite for lunch?”

  Ray hesitated. He had deadlines crowding his calendar in several cases and had planned on grabbing a pack of crackers from the vending machine in the break room. He pulled up the retractable handle for the case containing his files.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I have a backlog of work and have to prepare orders in the cases Judge Ellington heard this morning.”

  “Especially the one in which you were afraid to stand up to Nate Stamper and Colfax?”

  Ray’s jaw tightened. He didn’t need to be lectured by his father about the administration of justice. “Yeah, that will be the first one.”

  “I guess I’ll head over to Red’s,” Corbin replied. “I’ve been craving some of his beans.”

  Corbin turned and walked up the aisle toward the rear of the courtroom. As Ray watched him go, he offered up a quick prayer that his father wouldn’t order anything except beans and cornbread.

  He doubted that his silent request went higher than the courthouse ceiling.

  SIX

  It was almost ten when Roxy pulled into the parking lot of Frank and Donaldson. Her office was one of twenty crammed together in an L shape on the rim of the twenty-first floor of a thirty-story office tower in north Atlanta surrounded by a cluster of similar thirty-story office towers. Seven spacious partner offices and conference rooms A through F took up the rest of the space along the walls, with the support staff corralled in the middle. Frank and Donaldson was an international law firm with over three hundred partners, fifteen hundred associates, and thousands of nonlawyer employees spread across the globe. The twenty-seven attorney Atlanta branch was one of the firm’s smallest. Lawrence Frank and Fitzhugh Donaldson, the two men who founded the firm in Philadelphia in 1880, would never have imagined their names on brass nameplates from New York to New Delhi.

  Each associate attorney’s office had a narrow window, a sleek glass-topped desk, a chair for the lawyer, and a chrome side chair in case someone needed to sit down for a brief chat. Roxy had added a potted palm to the corner of her personal space. The view out the window provided a distant hint of green in spring. A stainless steel sign on her door read Roxanne P. Gage—Attorney-at-Law.

  She savored the last morsel of a caramel as she shared the elevator with a young man who worked for the firm but whose name she couldn’t recall. She thought he was in accounting and billing but didn’t want to embarrass herself by asking. They stood in silence until the elevator door opened.

  “Have a good day, Roxanne,” the young man said as he held the door open for her to exit.

  “You too,” Roxy replied, knowing her failure to use his name was a dead giveaway.

  “I’m Vince Pearson,” the man said, following her out of the elevator. “We talked about kayaking during the firm holiday party at the Keystone.”

  “Of course,” Roxy said. “You told us about the trip you took last summer on the Kenai River in Alaska. You work in billing.”

  “Yes, and you don’t hear from me because the details you provide for your time are among the best in the firm.”

  “Thanks,” Roxy said, feeling even worse that she hadn’t remembered Vince’s name. “Do you have any trips planned this year?”

  “Montana. We’re going to kayak all over, but I’m especially looking forward to the action on the Swan River.”

  They turned to go separate directions.

  “See you later,” Vince said.

  Roxy watched him walk away for a few seconds and silently repeated his name to herself while imagining him in a lime green kayak. She reached her office and turned on her computer. The first photograph that popped up in her rotating series was a candid shot of her mother looking up from the flower beds in front of the house in Alto.

  “Roxy!” A male voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Mr. Caldweller stood in her doorway. Tall and studious with rimless glasses, the lawyer looked like a tenured English professor but acted like a football coach in the middle of a losing season.

  “I’ve delayed a meeting all morning until you got back,” he said in a New England accent refined at Yale Law School. “The alpha team in the Boren Pharmaceutical case will be in
conference room F in two minutes. Bring your analysis of the defendant’s chemist with you. I’m flying to Chicago tomorrow to consult with our shadow expert and want to make it count.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roxy’s fingers flew across the keyboard to access the file. There was no time to reread what she’d written after poring over the technical data for two days the previous week; she hoped she had better recall of the insights she recorded than she did about kayak-loving Vince from accounting.

  According to Colonel Parker it was a good day when a lawyer either settled a case or took on a new client. With the signed contract from Mr. and Mrs. Bowater in his coat pocket, Corbin had turned a bad day into a good one.

  There were several locally owned restaurants within a three-block radius of the courthouse, among them a diner that featured hamburgers cooked on a grill top and a Greek restaurant that served gyros, shawarmas, and three kinds of hummus. Corbin could make a meal of red pepper hummus and several pieces of pita bread. But Red’s Restaurant was across the street from the Greek place.

  Corbin opened the door and was greeted by the blast of arctic air that made the place a haven in the heat of summer but too cool in the winter. The owner, Mike “Red” Britton, was in his usual place, guarding the cash register by the front door.

  “Booth or counter?” asked the potbellied man with a fringe of stubborn red hair still clinging to an otherwise bald scalp.

  “Booth.”

  Red looked down the row of booths on the right side of the restaurant. “Number five just came open. Grab it.”

  The booths were upholstered in red plastic. Red-themed artwork hung from the walls. Above Corbin’s head was a reproduction of the famous Audubon painting of a northern cardinal. A neighboring booth displayed a photograph of a red barn with a black roof and the words See Rock City painted in white.

  Sally, a wiry middle-aged woman with tired wrinkles lining her face, came up to him with a notepad in her hand. “What’ll it be?”