When The Butterflies Come

by Rosemary Ness Bitner

  “Side deals give us all a bad name. This flies in the face of assimilation. Think about the consequences.” Ben sounded the trumpet of reason. “This is where anti-Semitism gets its credibility. This is shame.” His eyes were heavy with sadness that this choice was being forced upon him. “I’m making a last-ditch appeal to your loyalty to the community, to the tribe.”

  “Fuck shame. I don’t give a shit about shame.” David remembered all the angst he’d suffered as a child because his mother never loved him. “Where was Mother’s shame for the way she shunned me? Where was Dad’s shame when I didn’t see him for months at a time? He never spent time with me. Where’s the shame in that? I feel no guilt. I owe no shame to anyone,” David said matter-of-factly. His emotions were back under control.

  “You need help. Your mind is off, thinking this way. Everybody needs somebody. A moment ago you were pleading for me to help you out of your mistake. Now you say you don’t care about Israel. Which is it? Who am I talking to?” Ben tried to pry a crowbar into David’s inconsistency.

  “Cut the crap. You’re a fucking lunatic.” David was a big donor to many Jewish causes and no lawyer was going to threaten his standing in the community. “You hear me now!” he shouted in Ben’s face. “This is only business and money we’re talking about. If you go forward, I’ll let the American Israeli Political Action Committee, all the synagogues, and all the other Jewish charities and their contacts know you’re the one who’s fucking Israel over. I’ll take out full-page ads in the Jerusalem Post. I’ll piss all over you. Every rabbi within a hundred miles of here will get a letter from me. You’ll never get one more fucking dime of business. You’ll never see another client in Plaintown. You’ll be hurt so badly you’ll wish you’d had a post driver pounding sand up your ass instead of what I’ll do to you. You’ll find out what happens when you turn your back on your own. You’ll be known all over the country as the lawyer who gave Israel a bad rap. That goy may have what I’m offering and not one more dime for him. You may have a fabulous extra compensation for yourself as my collection agent for my injuries from legal malpractice, or you can run lifetime blackmails on those cocksuckers. It’s your choice.”

  “Your malpractice money. Do you mean the malpractice that you directed and paid for, that malpractice?” Ben wasn’t about to let David’s slight of tongue slip by him just because it was blended with threats and insults.

  “Don’t get your back up. They were goy firms. They were stupid. They deserve the fucking you’ll give them. You can have all of the malpractice money. I wash my hands of it. It comes to more than you’d likely win for your share of a contingency at trial, which you’d never collect from me anyway. I’ll show you our proof against our other lawyers, our billing records, my agreement with them to bribe the judge, the payments to the judge’s wife’s charity, the canceled checks from the witness bribes, all of it, everything we have. They’ll be easy takedowns for you. I’ll draw a memo of understanding between us, and you can have all the collection money, all of it. They are easy proofs and the goy firm will want to settle with you. I’m giving you easy money right now! Bob can make it up later. He’s younger than we are. This way, we both keep our good standing with the tribe, and you don’t screw Israel. That’s my final offer, Ben.”

  Ben just stared at David. He felt like throwing up his lunch. Finally he spoke. “It’s not enough money.”

  Mal spoke up after Ben’s remark threatened to collapse the negotiations. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s not lose our focus here. We’re getting close. I’ve listened to you both. I can seal a deal between you, find a way out for everybody.

  “David, you want to have and enjoy the companies. You don’t want to lose your standing in the community. You don’t want to bring shame to Israel. We all agree to that. Ben, you need money. Bob needs money. Israel needs to stay unblemished from this shameful fiasco. We all agree to those principles. Here’s the solution. David and Ben draw up an agreement giving Bob his costs back plus something for his borrowings to stay alive while he fought this battle. Not much money, just enough to walk it past a judge who holds his nose so he can’t smell how unfair this deal is to Bob.

  “Ben, you force the pittance settlement on him. Shove it down his throat. Threaten to quit, threaten to put a lien on the case files, tell him you’ll sue him for nonpayment of fees. Do whatever you need to do to get rid of this goy.

  “David, you pay the settlement you offered Bob. Give Ben the dirt on the firms and fuck them, but you also make a new will. In your new will, you leave the companies and all your personal wealth, except enough to provide for your wife, to Ben. After you die, Ben inherits your assets. The assets stay with the tribe.

  “You give a copy of this new will to Ben so no one needs to go through this litigation again after you die. Ben, you now have a huge incentive to get yourself healthy and stop smoking those stinking cigars so you can outlive David who is twenty years older than you. I’ll put a borrow provision in the will. You can borrow money on a will instrument like that. Ben, you can stop living on a starvation diet. Then you join a gym and take off seventy pounds so you can fuck your wife again.

  “Bob continues to starve with his Indian lover, but like you said, Ben, he still has half a life. So you stop feeling sorry for him. This will be our secret Khazarian side deal, a beautiful deal to end all side deals, and it will be our only real deal. Secular law can just go fuck itself. We abide by our covenant deal here. There’s Abraham, there’s God, and there’s us. That’s it! Goyim secular law is cut out—fuck all of them! No one knows about our side deal outside of us three.

  “Ben, you pledge to David that, upon your death, these companies go to Israel. You cannot sell them nor will them to any other person or entity. After David dies you can take profit distributions from them. This way, David’s pledge to Marvin is kept whole. David can be buried in Mount of Olives when he dies. Israel gets everything Marvin Sustack promised her, only she gets it a little later. Israel lives on.”

  “So the only one who gets screwed is the guy who built up the business. That is shame.” Ben had to poke Mal and David with one last insult.

  “Shut up, Ben. That is our deal.” Mal placed his hands in front of his face, and then he cut his hands away as if he were Abraham cutting animals in half in his covenant with God, or like Moses parting the Red Sea. Mal stared at Ben with a matter-of-fact look that said he knew there was no other way and understood everyone else also realized there was no other way. Then Mal gave the same stare to David. He meant his words to be the final say on this matter.

  Ben thought for a long moment. I am selling my soul and my honor, but I have my mother and sister to care for and I am very sick myself. It’s getting hard to hide that fact. The old saying that a bird in hand is worth more than two in a bush is finding resonance in my mind. David does have a valid point. I do need ongoing business from the Jewish community. How far has this profession come from the English solicitors who were not allowed to sue clients who would not pay? The legal community was about service to the people and civic harmony back then. Oh God, why do I feel so dirty? Some things will never change. The tribe of Israel will last into perpetuity. The sun will rise and set. The oceans will rise and fall with the pulls of the moon, and life will go on. And everyone involved in this sordid mess will carry their deeds with them into the Book of Life. May God hold his nose when he reads about our deeds.

  “Have your counsel draw a memorandum of agreement. Also give me copies of all your evidence of malpractice. I may decide to pursue those lawyers separately, after all this is settled. I can threaten them with exposure for payment. After all, they were goy firms, so who gives a shit about them. I’ll sign for your evidence under confidence to you, of course.” Ben felt he’d done all he could.

  “Of course,” said David, smiling like the happy frog that just swallowed a fly as he extended his hand to Ben, thinking at the same time that nothing solved a sticky problem better and faster than a bribe to a l
awyer willing to commit malpractice.

  Ben took David’s hand, thinking at the same time he was sealing a deal with the scum of the earth, but a very profitable deal. Mal placed his hands above and below their clasped hands.

  David and Ben both spoke the tribe’s covenantal promise words. “Mazul um Bruchah.” Their word was their bond. Mal was their witness. Their side deal, the real deal, was now sealed.

  Ben, now David’s partner, would go on to force a shabby settlement down Bob’s throat. He lied to Bob, telling him this was only a necessary step toward getting a larger settlement from David’s earlier law firm, a much bigger settlement for bribery of a listed witness, libel, ex-parte communications with a judge, and bribery of a judge. He also promised Bob that there would come a reopening of the case they were about to settle once the wrongdoing was exposed after David died. None of this was true, of course, but Ben reasoned that, with time, witnesses would die or move away from Plaintown, the barrier of latches would bar a reopening of this historic case based upon legal malpractice; and quite possibly he himself would also be dead and the companies would be safely in the hands of Israel.

  Ben threatened to resign as Bob’s attorney unless he settled, to place a lien on the case for all his and Sol’s hours of work, and said he would refuse to release Bob’s case files to another attorney. Bob’s funds to put experts on the stand again were another consideration for his case, and Ben shut that down by stating he’d not allow third-party involvement in the case files. He’d not allow Bob to get help from Barbara, Bob’s new partner in business. He’d go to the judge and request to withdraw from representation, stating that Bob refused to cooperate. Ben told Bob he was not allowed to make any inquiries to sell off a portion of the case or to seek financing for another round of expert testimony before a jury. By these unethical tactics and a false promise of future litigation once Ben uncovered the wrongdoings of David’s previous lawyers, which he had no intention of pursuing, Ben forced Bob to settle.

  Ben concealed the true terms of the settlement from the court. He omitted the side deal he’d made with David and then submitted the false settlement terms to the court. The judge ordered the case closed and Ben became a wealthy man at the expense of betraying his client. David had a point. Mitzvahs matter. Countries and their laws and legal systems will come and go, but the tribe will endure as it always has. Secular law doesn’t really matter, even though I make my living practicing it. It’s all just a game anyway. Let the goyim believe in it. Let them believe in Lady Justice and her stupid blindfold. It’s all just bullshit to preserve social order and to make a good living representing the fools who are stupid enough to sue each other. And maybe I was wrong about the Reformed Jews. Maybe they really aren’t much different than gentiles.

  That last thought was too philosophical, too theological for Ben to contemplate. He didn’t dwell on it. Anyway, having a lot of money in my own pocket is a good thing. Yes, having money in this narcissistic world is a very good thing.

  It was perhaps too much to expect a man to go beyond his moral limitations, especially if that man was a lawyer. For years after the case settled, Ben would visit Bob, pretending to be a trusted friend, and misleading him to believe that, upon David’s death, there would be evidence brought forward that would open a fresh case against David’s previous law firms, when in fact Ben himself had long since personally collected on that opportunity. Ben mentally calculated that his malpractice potentially exposed him to sixty to a hundred and twenty million dollars of liability, but he figured the millions he got up front were worth taking the risk.

  Being the deceitful scumbag that he’d become, Ben made sure that any wrongdoing he committed, any breach of professional ethics, would likely not survive a latches defense, thus Bob could be time barred if he figured out what happened and tried to bring a case. People did die, witnesses did move away, the truth did get shoved under the rug, Israel prospered, and the pathetic human goy beast continued their toiling blindfolded to the ways of the world, unjustly enriching the more powerful and corrupt among the populace. And life went on. The only risk to Israel and the community was that somehow word would get out about what happened and public sympathy for Israel would suffer, but the sympathetic media, the rabbis, and the political machinery would easily bury this sordid episode. Anyway, it would be someone else’s worry, not Ben’s.

  Besides, Ben rationalized, the case in chief was so voluminous, so complex and intertwined, that even a determined ethical lawyer would blanch at the idea of taking on a malpractice case against him. Especially if the lawyer was from Plaintown where every lawyer knew every other, and gentlemen of the bar didn’t normally sue each other out of professional courtesy. Ben stayed friendly with his client long after he’d screwed him.

  Ben hoped no evidence would ever turn up to trip him up, and the statute of limitations on malpractice would run out before Bob became the wiser. Ben reasoned it was unlikely there would ever be charges brought against him or David’s earlier lawyers for suborning perjury, malpractice, the ongoing bribes paid to conceal perjury, or the circumvention of justice, whatever that was. Ben stopped smoking cigars and got himself healthy.

  Ben and Bob saw each other every quarter for twenty years under Ben’s guise that, when David died, they’d come into possession of bribery evidence that would allow a reopening of the case. Ben promised Bob the case would be worth sixty to one hundred million dollars with the libel component.

  At long last, after David’s death, Bob asked when they’d have the evidence to proceed against David’s former attorneys. It was the moment of truth. Ben confessed that he’d worked for David years before, collecting a handsome sum of millions on a side deal concealed from Bob and that he’d “cleaned up some loose ends for David.”

  “Forget about suing his old lawyers,” Ben said. “People have died and moved away. Too much time has gone by. Forget about suing me too. All the money I got from David I lost in the stock market. I am without much means.”

  Bob asked but one question of his shadow friend and betrayer. “When you had the settlement discussions with David and Mal, why wasn’t I included?”

  “You are a Reformed Jew. David and Mal and I are Conservative Jews, closer to the ways of the Orthodox traditions. David and Mal would not allow your attendance. It was two against one.”

  “You mean three against one, so you could work your side deal to screw me, don’t you?” Bob’s question was met by Ben’s stare into the floor. He could not hold Bob’s eyes. “Get away from me. Shame on you. You are without ethics or morals. You are a disgusting scumbag. Never call me again.”

  As Ben left the table, Bob was alone with his thoughts.

  Those who rail most against anti-Semitic sentiment are Semites who refuse to assimilate into a secular society, try as they might or pretend to believe they can. When all cards are laid bare on the table, it is the law of the tribe that prevails. Until there is no theology, or until secular notions of inclusive society are abandoned, those who believe in universal honorable conduct amongst fellow humans were delusional fools. It was a noble goal but an unobtainable one. The Torah asks whether God should spare a sinful city to save the life of one righteous person. The converse might be should an entire tribe be blamed for the misdeeds of a few unethical dirtbags?

  Bob contemplated over a second iced tea before he left the table. If goodwill amongst people is nurtured by thousands of good deeds, then this fragile tower of goodwill must be cherished for there is great goodness in it, despite my individual pain. It is a cut into the soul of goodness, yes, but it is not a fatal cut. I must learn from this and move on with life. I must not succumb to clichés such as ‘do not trust a person from such or such a tribe or profession or that.’ Accept that wrong often goes unaddressed, like Aaron needed to accept that his sons were killed by a holy flame and God never allowed him to know why. Let those who choose to live like scum live that way. Continue to love God and move on. Be thankful for your blessings and be a
good partner for Barbara. She needs you.

  COMPLAINING TO ANDY

  After his side deal with Ben, David felt the need to share his learned lessons with his protégé. After he locked up the barn and went into the main house, he went to his secret green room to spend time with Andy. He had a problem in the arena with the tarantula. In the battle with the scorpion, the giant spider lost three of its legs. It was useless as a combatant for future fights and it needed to be disposed of. David took Andy down from his shelf and positioned the fetus so its head was turned toward the arena case. He flipped a switch on the wall behind him and a low-frequency humming sound filled the room.

  Once situated, Andy and David watched the disposal crew do their work. David opened some glass dividers that linked connecting corridors of red army ants to the gladiator case. It didn’t take long for the hungry ants to get the scent of the injured spider. Soon a few advance scouts entered the case and attacked immediately, biting the tarantula’s remaining legs. As the ants bit the hairy spider legs, the humming sound intensified in volume. David’s sound system was uniquely adapted to receive frequency vibrations from the spider and the various insects that were engaged in mortal combat in the gladiator chamber.

  As the ants carried a prize leg back to the ant colony, they were passed by swarms of their pheromone-sensing comrades headed to the feast. Soon the doomed spider was covered with ants. It writhed in agony, and the pitch of the humming sound increased noticeably. David quietly watched the animal began its death throes while sipping whiskey on ice. Andy sat there ready for his mentoring lesson. By now David’s UGGA firm was in shambles. The stresses of his litigation had aged him terribly and his reasoning powers were failing him. He was approaching the borderline of dementia and his abnormal sociopathy spiraled further downward into full blown psychopathy. He was now reduced to being the coach and mentor to a fetus floating in a formaldehyde filled jar.