Writ of Execution

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “I’m busy right now.”

  “You seem to have a problem using my name,” Riesner said. “It’s Jeff.” When she said nothing he said, “Can’t we just get along? Why do you hate me?”

  Because you’re a phony, Nina thought. Because you are loathsome and deceitful. Because you will do anything in pursuit of fame and money. Because you’ve got the morals of primordial ooze.

  She was not in a good mood.

  She let him lead her to the back of the courtroom. The bailiff was filling out forms at his desk and she was ten minutes early, so she had time to talk and he knew it. “All right,” she said. “What do you wish to subject me to this morning?”

  “So she didn’t give them to you yet. Maybe I ought to let you read them first. But no, that would be too courteous.” He had the exhilarated look of a man about to land a solid punch. “It’s your new client, Mrs. Leung.”

  Jessie? What did Riesner have to do with Jessie? She didn’t react. She didn’t want him to see her surprised or ruffled or angry, not ever. Any sign of emotion was like the smell of steak to a man like him, an invitation to feast hearty. “Court’s starting. What is it?”

  “My client has a money judgment from Hawaii against your client. We filed the judgment with the clerk yesterday and the clerk entered the judgment.”

  “Go on.”

  “Mrs. Potter was served yesterday with the Notice of Entry of the Judgment. So was your bank. Oh, by the way. I’m serving you too.” He handed her a number of documents, which looked like replicas of Jessie’s documents, and which she took because she didn’t think there was anything else she could do. “After all, it’s your trust account,” he said. “Just following the rules.”

  She held the papers at her side. She wasn’t about to look at them.

  “Naturally, my client was concerned that with your record an attempt might be made to withdraw the money before the writ could issue,” Riesner went on. “We couldn’t allow that. We have obtained an ex parte order placing a lien upon the funds until the writ can issue. So don’t even think about it. The funds are frozen.”

  “The writ?” Nina said. “What writ?”

  “A Writ of Execution. Against your client. To seize the funds to satisfy my client’s judgment. Unfortunately, we have to wait thirty days for that.”

  He gave her only a second to register all this. After a plaintiff obtained a judgment in a civil case, the plaintiff could seize the defendant’s nonexempt assets up to the amount of the judgment. The legal pleading which authorized seizure of the assets was called a Writ of Execution.

  “I’m listening,” Nina said. “You’re requesting a Writ of Execution based on a money judgment your client has obtained against her?”

  “Right. In Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. Honolulu.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “Really? You should start talking to your clients. As I said, she was served yesterday.”

  “Who is your client?”

  “His name is Atchison Potter. She tell you about him?”

  Nina bit her nail, noticed what she was doing, and put her hand firmly into her pocket. The ugly surprises had begun, and they were excruciatingly, almost brilliantly, ugly. She thought, Here we go.

  “He sued her? For what?”

  Riesner said, “Wrongful death.”

  “Whose death?” But she knew what was coming.

  “Her husband’s. Mr. Potter’s son. Danforth Potter. The police wouldn’t act. He had to do something. So he sued her in civil court.”

  “She had a lawyer? She defended herself?”

  “She didn’t wait around. She split.”

  “She was served with the complaint in the case?”

  “She left Hawaii just in front of the process server. They had to serve her by publication. The notice was published four times, as the law demands.”

  “Ah. In the Hawaii newspapers,” Nina said. “After she left. Naturally.”

  “That was her legal domicile. He made diligent efforts to find her. She didn’t choose to make herself amenable to process.”

  “She didn’t know she was sued, she therefore didn’t have a lawyer. And your client picked up a default judgment, do I have this straight? My client never appeared in the action?”

  “Mr. Potter presented his evidence at the default hearing, and a circuit court judge granted the judgment. It’s all quite impeccable.”

  “It’s all quite easy to vacate,” Nina said. “We’ll file a Motion to Vacate the Judgment. You’ll have the papers in the next day or two.”

  “Alas. It’s been more than six months. It’s as final as a lethal injection.”

  “Not quite. She just heard about it for the first time yesterday,” Nina said. “There’s an exception to the final judgment rule. The whole case can be reviewed when you try to enforce it in another state.”

  “Naturally the State of California will give full faith and credit to the Hawaii judgment.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  Riesner chuckled. “You haven’t even read the paperwork yet.”

  “It comes from you, doesn’t it?”

  He barely winced. He readied another punch.

  “Oh. I almost forgot. The court has also granted an ex parte Order for Examination of Judgment Debtor. That’s in the paperwork too. We don’t have to wait thirty days on that. So less than ten days from today I plan to sit down with Mrs. Potter and have a nice chat with her about her assets and debts. And other pertinent information.”

  “That’s premature,” Nina said. “Before it is even determined whether a writ will issue? There’s no need for that.”

  “Wouldn’t want her running around wasting her assets.”

  Nina thought about asking him to do the right thing— to put off the examination until after the hearing she was going to request. But what was the point of asking? All she had to do was look at him to see how much pleasure he was taking in stomping on her toes and sticking bamboo slivers under her fingernails. The cattle prod to the genitalia he hadn’t managed yet, though.

  She said, “It’s too soon. I’m sure she’ll want to contest the motion for a writ. You won’t be sitting her down to quiz her about her assets for a—”

  “On the contrary,” Riesner said. “You don’t have a ground in the world for protest. I don’t have to wait for the writ. I’m going to sit her down, without you present, as is my client’s right and privilege, and I’m going to take her through every shoddy financial event in her life. She’s not going to get lost again.”

  “Your client is a harasser,” Nina said. “What he really wants is to know her address and any other personal details he can glean that will allow him to harass her further. This isn’t about money at all. He hates her. He’s wrong to blame her for his son’s death. She was never charged with . . .”

  “Thank goodness, the civil courts of Hawaii stood ready to redress the failings of law enforcement,” Riesner said in that officious slimy tone that always made her want to scream and lower her head and butt him in the stomach, which was about as high as her head would reach on him.

  She squared her shoulders. Enough of being pushed around. “Don’t interrupt me again, Riesner,” she said. “Or your head will be even further up your ass than it is now.”

  “You’re so cute when you try to play with the big boys. Listen, he’s got the judgment. There’s nothing you can do. That’s the beauty of it,” Riesner said, chuckling, enjoying himself.

  The court clerk and the stenographer had come in and sat down, signs that Judge Amagosian was ready.

  “All rise,” said the bailiff.

  Simeon Amagosian appeared on the bench up front, his white hair and shaven cheeks looking as fresh as sheets of fabric softener, and said, “Well, what have we got today?” Riesner was still standing next to Nina in back, and he was waiting for the question she did not want to ask but had to ask. So she gritted her teeth and whispered it.

  “How much?�
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  Riesner came in close, dousing her in the sickly sweet odor of his aftershave. “The judgment? It’s for eight million dollars,” he whispered back. “Everything she won, plus he can garnish her pay for the rest of her life. I thought you’d never ask.”

  Back to the office on Lake Tahoe Boulevard she went, finally set free from Riesner’s presence. The mountain god had ordained a perfect mountain morning. No wind, no haze, no cloud, a filmy blue sky. Transparent wavelets brushed innocently against the shore. A man with calves like small hairy tree trunks jogged in the bike lane, pushing a stroller with big wheels.

  She wondered what a vacation felt like.

  Leisurely breakfasters jammed the parking lot at the Red Waffle Hut. The town was filled up for the summer season. A kid rocketing by on his skateboard had the stunned, joyful look of Wen Ho Lee the day the Feds gave up.

  Nina pushed open the office door with her free hand, the briefcase weighing down her shoulder in the other. Notwithstanding her discussion with Paul about shoes, she was wearing three-inch heels today and could feel exactly where the bunions would erupt in a few years.

  “Good morning, everyone,” she said. Her will client, Alex, and his mother had the chairs near the door, and Jessie was already there too, reading one of the Sherman Alexie books Sandy kept at the side table. The gentle samba of Carlos Botelho played in the background, hopefully soothing any savage breast that might wander in. Up against the far wall, behind her desk, Sandy was on the phone. Giving Nina a significant look, she inclined her head very slightly toward Nina’s office. Translation: don’t talk to anybody until I get in there.

  “Be right with you,” Nina said, and passed through the door into the relative privacy of her office. The pink slips she had disposed of the afternoon before had reappeared and proliferated on her desk.

  Pushing them aside, she pulled the faxed sheets from Jessie from the briefcase and began comparing them to the pleadings Riesner had just laid on her. Riesner had spoken truly. Somehow Atchison Potter had managed to convince a judge for the First Circuit Court of Hawaii to give him an astonishingly large judgment against Jessie. Or maybe that was the going rate for a man’s life.

  The legal papers gave a thumbnail sketch of the story.

  The Complaint for Wrongful Death and several other causes of action alleged that on or about June first, 1999, Jessie Jo Kiyan, born on September 11, 1979, and Danforth Atchison Potter, born June 27, 1979, had become husband and wife.

  The complaint told how the couple established their joint domicile at Kaneohe, Island of Oahu, State of Hawaii, and how Jessie immediately and on numerous occasions thereafter showed great and unusual interest in a trust account established by Plaintiff Atchison Potter in the name of and for the benefit of Plaintiff’s son.

  You can allege anything, Nina thought, but she didn’t like hearing this.

  Then came the kicker, in the unemotional language of the law: a few paragraphs down, the complaint alleged that on or about February 7, 2000, Jessie had caused her husband to drown in a negligent and/or deliberate manner hereinafter to be shown.

  No details, except the bald statement that Dan Potter was in excellent health at the time of his death. There must have been evidence taken at the hearing. The marriage had lasted barely eight months. Dan Potter had been not quite twenty-one years old when he died. It was a tragedy no matter how it had occurred.

  As Riesner had said, the summons had been published four times in the newspaper. The Hawaiian Petition To Serve By Publication alleged that Jessie had thereupon left Oahu on or about April 3, 2000, and that diligent attempts to locate her thereafter, which were set forth in detail in the accompanying Declarations, had failed to find her.

  Nina looked at the “due diligence” Potter had used to find Jessie. No forwarding address. Military records confidential. Attempts to find local family members. His lawyer had made it look like Potter had moved heaven and earth to find her.

  When he hadn’t, the court had allowed him to have the hearing without her. Under the law, she had been “constructively” served.

  An eight-million-dollar default judgment against a Marine! They could only have been thinking that the money amount just didn’t matter, since Jessie couldn’t pay any amount.

  Talk about luck! Potter must have danced a jig when he finally found Jessie. It must have been the photos. The Honolulu papers might even have reported Jessie’s amazing jackpot. Or could he have somehow learned about Jessie’s Social Security number on the IRS forms?

  Or could he have known Jessie was living near Tahoe, found her the night of the jackpot, watched her enter Prize’s, watched her try to hide in the aisle of Greed Machines, watched the win, as she had feared? There would have been just enough time to hire Riesner and get the papers on file.

  The date-stamp on the complaint indicated that it had been filed on July 10, 2000, just three months after Jessie’s disappearance and five months after Danforth Potter’s death. Atchison Potter had wasted no time suing her.

  Nina went on to the Judgment after Default. The Hawaii lawyer seemed to have done all she should have for Potter. After a hearing on the evidence, the court had, on November 12, 2000, issued its judgment against Defendant In Pro Per Jessie Kiyan Potter in the amount of Eight Million Dollars, plus costs of suit, with interest to run from the date of issuance of the judgment.

  That was the value Atchison Potter had persuaded the judge to place on his son’s lost life. The closeness of the judgment amount to the jackpot was a stunning coincidence.

  Nina thought it was no more than that. No one could have predicted the amount of the jackpot. Fate itself had decided to play a game with them.

  She looked at the July desk calendar. The judgment had certainly been issued and entered more than six months before.

  If Jessie had stayed in Hawaii that judgment would have clamped on to her life and never let go. No one would have expected her to pay it. But for ten years, renewable for another ten, the judgment debtor could be hounded, questioned repeatedly, lose a large portion of her wages, lose any inheritance. Jessie would become an indentured servant to her father-in-law.

  All the judgment debtor could do was run far away, get lost, and stay lost. Jessie had done that for other reasons, and because of it, now that she was in California, the Hawaii judgment could be reexamined on a limited basis by the California court before a Writ of Execution could issue.

  Nina set the papers down. She had wondered where the trouble would come from. She hadn’t imagined the trouble would be this big.

  Sandy filled the door. Today she wore a full blue cotton skirt, new leather sandals, and a purple blouse with fringe along the pockets. Her functional but carefully selected clothes struck Nina the same way a strand of lights on a Christmas tree struck her, as a superfluous enhancement to one of nature’s grand creations.

  “News,” Sandy said, taking a step in and closing the door behind her. “From Paul.”

  “Paul? What’s he up to so early in the morning?”

  “You’re gonna want to be lying down with a wet washrag on your forehead after I tell you this.”

  A blood pressure jump. “You’re making it worse, Sandy. This withholding thing you do—you have to stop doing it. Just tell me.”

  “I guess I’ll just lay it out.”

  “Please!”

  “He said to tell you that gun is nowhere. And Kemp seems to have disappeared. Paul wants you to ask her again, does she have the gun.”

  Nina groaned. “How does she seem this morning?”

  “She’s toughened up some. She got knocked for a loop but she’s going to handle it.”

  “I guess I better get her in here.”

  “First, you have to see Alex. He’s not doing so well.” Sandy handed her Alex’s blue-backed will.

  “Keep Jessie out there, Sandy. You already knew her, didn’t you? That’s why she called you.”

  “You took good care of her. I knew I could count on you.”

>   “Is Jessie—is she a relation?”

  “She’s Joseph’s grandniece on her mother’s side.” Joseph was Sandy’s husband.

  “Why didn’t you tell me right away? That she was a relation?”

  “I thought it was up to her. She wasn’t even sure she was going to tell you she was Washoe. She wasn’t sure about you. You better get to work. I’m gonna make some coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  She didn’t leave. “And you gotta have foamed milk?”

  “It makes better coffee, you know.”

  “One hundred strokes. Up down on the pusher thing.” She set a finger next to her mouth, waiting for further useful information.

  “I need foamed milk, and by God, I deserve foamed milk. I’ll make it myself, Sandy. Don’t bother.”

  “I’ll do it,” Sandy said, holding up a hand, showing her generous nature would expand to include even this zany proclivity.

  Nina, aware that a point was being made at her expense, appreciated the gesture anyway. Sandy’s problem with the foamed milk was that it was such a WASP-y cultural artifact. Requiring foamed milk was putting on airs. She had never made it for Nina before.

  “One more thing, Sandy.”

  “Yeah? I got to get out there, you can’t leave clients on their own.”

  “I’ll give you details later, but these papers—Jessie’s got another legal problem.”

  “Jessie told me a few things.”

  “So you know about the opposing counsel. . . .”

  “Rosemary’s baby, all grown up into Satan in a suit.”

  “Yeah. Riesner.”

  “This time, let’s get him good.”

  “Sandy? What happened between you and Riesner?”