Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1)
Read Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Debra Trueman
ADVICE OF COUNSEL
By Debra Trueman
Text
Copyright © 2012 Debra Trueman
Book
Design and Illustration Copyright © 2012 Olga Burger
It wasn’t the Titanic, but it might as well have been. The
boat was taking in water like a dry sponge and there was no hope of saving
her. It was the maiden voyage and there had been problems from the start. I
watched in horror as the bow tipped down, the stern rose up, and the boat
disappeared under the surface of the still water. There was a gurgling sound
and little bubbles rose up from where the boat had been sitting seconds
earlier. I let out a blood-curdling scream and threw myself on the ground.
“We’ll get you another one,” my dad promised.
But it was too late. The experience had scarred me for life.
My father had stayed up all night that Christmas Eve putting together my remote
control boat, and in truth, it should have been him sporting the battle scars.
But it didn’t even seem to faze him.
“We’ll get you another one,” was all he said. No “
damn
”
or “
shit
” or anything like that.
Me . . . I had to get even with the world.
I became a lawyer.
It wasn’t really a conscious decision. It just sort of
happened. I was never popular as a little boy, I guess because I wasn’t very
nice. I picked on kids of all ages and sizes and as a result I got my ass
kicked on a regular basis, so I developed a thick skin early in life. Being a
lawyer allowed me to get paid handsomely for being a prick; something I had
gotten really good at by the time I graduated from law school.
I got my degree and passed the bar, and I moved back to my
hometown and started what would eventually become one of the most successful
law practices in San Antonio, Texas. A lot of people influenced me on my road
to success, but without a doubt, no one more so than the neighbors whose
territory I settled in.
After checking out different areas of town, I bought a house in
Hollywood Park, or The Park as residents call it – a municipality within San
Antonio with its own police force and fire department. It’s an older
neighborhood with large lots, plentiful oak trees, and a hefty population of
free-roaming deer.
I had moved into The Park at night, hoping to avoid the stares
of nosy neighbors trying to check out my furniture and personal belongings as
the movers carried them in from the truck. In fact, my intention was to keep
a low profile and avoid getting to know any of my fellow Parkers at all. An
occasional
hello
was okay, but I didn’t want to get stuck feeding
someone’s cats when they went on summer vacation, and I didn’t want people
showing up on my doorstep in their swimsuit with a towel draped over their arm
wanting to take a dip in my pool. So I moved in under the guise of darkness.
One evening the house was vacant, and the next morning, much to my neighbors’
surprise, there was smoke coming out the chimney.
I was horrified when my doorbell rang at 8:00 o’clock the next morning and I opened the door to find a little old lady with a basket of warm,
freshly baked muffins in her hands. Her gray hair was pinned up in a bun on
top of her head, and she had little bangs that were curled under.
“Oh! A new neighbor!” she squealed in delight. “I saw your
lights on when I went out to get my newspaper this morning and went right back
inside and baked these for you. They’re sweet potato. I’m Sara Howard. I
live right across the street.”
“Samuel Collins,” I said, crossing my arms against my chest.
“Oh! What a treat to have a nice young man for a neighbor.
Are you married?” she asked, trying to poke her nosy head into my foyer.
“No,” I told her, shifting to the right to block her view.
“Divorced?”
“No.”
“My husband died five years ago. I’ve lived in that house for 40
years. I’ll be 80 years old this year,” she said proudly. She handed me the
basket of muffins and I grudgingly thanked her for them.
“What do you do for a living?” she asked.
Was there no end to her nosiness? “I’m a lawyer. And I need
to be getting to my office now,” I told her.
“A lawyer! Oh, you must be so smart!” she exclaimed. “A
smart, good looking young man like you should be married.”
“Goodbye Mrs. Powers,” I told her, closing the door.
“It’s Howard,” she said. “Sara Howard.”
“Oh. Okay. Goodbye Mrs. Howard.”
Thoroughly irritated, I took the basket of muffins into the
kitchen and sat down at my table. They smelled heavenly. I opened up the
cloth napkin that they were nestled in and checked them out. They were those
little tiny bite-sized muffins and I popped one into my mouth. It was the best
muffin I had ever eaten in my life, although I could never admit that to Mrs.
Howard. She’d be over every day, expecting to chat and carry on over coffee.
I ate the whole basket of muffins and went back to my bedroom to dress for
work.
I was in the process of putting on my shoes when I heard a
splash from outside the French doors in my bedroom. I looked out the window
and there were little ripples in my pool. There didn’t appear to be anyone
around, but I opened the doors and walked outside just in time to see a rock
come flying over the 8-foot privacy fence I’d had installed. It landed with a
splash and sunk to the bottom of my pool, joining dozens of others that were
scattered along the bottom of the deep end.
I summoned a mean tone of voice and shouted over the fence,
“Hey! Cut it out!”
I could hear footsteps running through the next door neighbor’s
yard. A door opened and slammed and then there was silence. I had a good mind
to march right over to the house and give someone a good chewing-out, but that
would mean additional neighbor introductions, and I had already met one more
than I wanted to that morning. I let it rest, hoping that my admonition would
deter whatever little brat had been tossing the rocks into my pool, and I left
the house for work.
I had rented office space in downtown San Antonio, and it was
impossible not to
Remember the Alamo
as I wound my way up and down the
one-way streets named after the likes of Crocket, Bowie, Travis and Houston –
just a few of the patriots to whom Texans credit their independence from
Mexico. The downtown area is a mixture of old and new, with glass skyscrapers
plopped in between historic buildings, and a mall jutted up next to a century-old
church. And snaking its way around it all, the San Antonio Riverwalk. In a
city with 26 million visitors a year, with an economic impact of $11 billion
from the hospitality industry, the Riverwalk is a magnet for the old, the young
and everyone in between, with hotels, restaurants, bars, coffee houses, and
gift shops lining the banks of the river.
My office was less than a block from the Courthouse, away from
most of the tourist activity, in a building that was too old to be modern but
too new to have any historical significance. The suite consisted of two
offices, a file room, conference room, large reception area, and a kitchen.
The space itself wasn’t fancy, but I furnished it nicely and it looked like I
was running a respectable law office.
Those early months of my practice were slow and I didn’t have
enough work to keep a full-time secretary employed, so I did most of my own
typing and had a woman come in part-time to file and answer phones and get out
my billings. I made sure she was old and unattractive. The last thing I
wanted was some cute little secretary looking to snag a lawyer for a husband.
Her name was Penny Finny, and every time I said her name, I couldn’t help think
that her parents must be assholes.
I was doing a lot of wills and divorces back then. Basically
mindless work, but it paid the bills. Every once in a while a big-time divorce
would come across my desk that actually involved a sizeable estate and required
strategy and tactics, and those were the ones that would get my adrenaline
flowing. I was at my best when I was bringing my client’s former spouse to his
knees. I say
his
because I almost always represented the wife.
On the day after I moved into my house, I didn’t have a lot
going on at the office, so I took off early and went home to unpack boxes. I
pulled into my driveway and there was some kid sitting on my front steps. I
went in the back door to avoid him, but when I got inside, he had his nose
pressed up against my front window, breathing all over the glass and putting
his grimy fingerprints all over it. I closed the blinds and went into another
room and started putting things away, but I could hear him out there talking to
someone and my curiosity finally got the best of me. I went out on my front
porch to see who he was talking to, but the kid was alone.
He was a little blond boy with huge blue eyes, and he smiled
and stood up when I opened the door. I guessed he must have been about four or
five years old, and it struck me that he looked just like me when I was that
age.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“I’m playing with your cat,” he said, motioning to the shrubs
by my front door.
He spoke so clearly that I decided he was probably closer to
six and just a runt. I squatted down and looked into the bushes. There was an
enormous Siamese cat crouched down with his ears plastered back against his
head. He hissed at me and showed me a mouthful of sharp fangs.
“That’s not my cat,” I told the kid.
“But this is his house,” he said, and there was a certainty in
his voice that gave me an uneasy feeling.
“Go on home now,” I told the kid, and I went back inside and
closed the door.
I went in the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and
when I went back into my living room, the cat was sitting on my hearth, warming
himself by the fire.
“How the hell did you get inside!” I exclaimed.
He looked at me like I had some nerve disturbing him and he
pinned his ears back and hissed at me again. I snatched him up by the scruff
of the neck, carried him through my house, and tossed him out the front door.
The kid was still sitting on my front steps.
“I thought I told you to go home,” I said.
“Want to hear me count to twelve?”
The question took me off guard and I found myself momentarily
at a loss for words. The kid seized the opportunity and was already up to four
before I could tell him
no
.
“Five, six, seven, eight, ten, eleven, twelve,” he concluded
proudly.
“What happened to nine?” I asked him.
“What?”
“You left out nine. Start at five and try again.”
He gave me a blank look. “I only know how to start at one. I
don’t know how to start at five.”
“Sure you do,” I told him. “Five, six . . .” I looked at him
to continue.
“Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.” The kid gave me a
big smile.
“Good job. Now go on home. I’m sure your mom is looking for
you.”
The kid ignored me. “My name’s Liver. What’s yours?”
“Liver?” I repeated in disbelief. “What kind of a name is
that?”
“For Oliver.”
“Liver’s a terrible name. You shouldn’t let people call you
that.”
“Oh. What’s your name?”
“Samuel Collins.”
“Hi, Samuel. I’m almost four,” Oliver declared.
I was shocked. The kid had better grammar skills than some of
my clients. “Yeah? When’s your birthday?”
“March 26.”
“That’s my birthday!” I said with surprise.
The kid’s whole face lit up. “Maybe we can have our birthday
party together!” he exclaimed.
I could see the wheels spinning in his little head, and I knew
that I was creating a monster. The relationship needed to be nipped in the
bud.
“I’ve got to go now, Oliver,” I told him. “You go back to your
own house.”
“Okay,” he said happily. He got up and headed towards the
house next door. When he got to the driveway he turned around and waved
vigorously and yelled, “Bye, Samuel.”
I went back in and closed the door. The cat was back on my
hearth and within 30 seconds a rock flew over the fence and splashed into my
pool. I grabbed the cat and tossed him out the back door, giving him a boot up
the ass for good measure. He yowled and hissed.
I yelled over the fence, “Oliver! Is that you?”
“Hi, Samuel,” he yelled back happily.
“If you throw one more rock into my pool, I’m going to bring
you over here and hold you by your ankles and make you get every one of these
rocks off the bottom of my pool!”
Silence.
“Oliver?”
“Yeah?”
“Quit throwing rocks in my pool.”
“Okay.”
Things were not going the way I had planned, and I was
beginning to think that my move to The Park had been a huge mistake. My
involvement with the neighbors had already exceeded the monthly limit I hoped
for, and it hadn’t even been 24 hours.
The phone was ringing when I got back inside. The woman on the
line identified herself as being with the Hollywood Park Welcoming Committee
and she said she wanted to stop by and drop off my welcome basket. Tomorrow’s
headline flashed before my eyes:
Local attorney overdoses on neighborhood
hospitality.
I told the lady a welcome basket wasn’t necessary, but she
wouldn’t take
no
for an answer. Her insistence prevailed, so I waited
outside for her in case she was under the mistaken assumption that I would
invite her in. To make use of the time, I was picking up some limbs and sticks
from under a massive oak tree and when I turned back around there was a man
standing in my yard. He stuck out his hand and introduced himself.
“I’m Andy Johns. My wife and I live in the house next door,”
he said, pointing to the house to the left. He must have been in his 60s, but
he was in good shape. He looked like he was probably retired military. His
hair was buzzed and he carried himself with an air of authority.
