Legally Wasted (8 page)

“Front burner.”

“Yes. I know you. This will sit somewhere on
your desk and it will be buried by paperwork and no one will see it
again for six months. I want this on the front burner, and I want
to go ahead and schedule the thing where I come in with a witness
and we talk about the divorce.”

“The deposition.”

“Right,” she nodded, “the deposition. I’ll
arrange for the court reporter.”

“You can’t - -”

“No,” she stated firmly and quickly. “How’s
next Tuesday?”

“Next Tuesday?”

“Say, two o’clock in the afternoon?”

“I can’t do it,” said Larkin.

“You haven’t looked at your schedule.”

“I know that I can’t do it.”

“You’re drinking too much.”

“Oh?”

“I almost took out the trash in your office.
So many bottles, Larkin. They’re spilling over the rim of the trash
can. You need to stop.”

Larkin nodded and rocked back on his feet.
The light was rather dim inside the room, and he hoped that she
could not see the small new stains on his shirt. However simply
thinking it, seemed to make her scrutinize him. Nothing could hide
from those brown eyes.

“What’s on your shirt?”

“Nosebleed.”

“Do you need Vaseline?” she asked as she went
back into the bag.

“That’s not a cure-all despite what you
think.”

“How’s Rusty doing? I miss him so much.”

He wanted to throw a chair. To clinch every
muscle and bellow to the Gods to smote her ruin. “He’s fine since
he’s back in the house.”

“I never wanted him in the garage in the
first place. That was your mother’s insistence.” Her face pinched,
but not at the thought of his mother. A sad and painful memory
resurfaced, but she swatted it away with a swing of her big bag.
“You have to be careful,” she said after turning a full circle in
place. “He can gain weight really quickly.”

“He’s not going to get fat again. And what do
you care. You and Judge Loundsbury are going to steal my cat.
What’s next? Do you want my refrigerator? My garden hose?”

She shrugged her shoulders and stared at him.
He found that he could no longer meet her eye to eye. “A Detective
Kincaid called for you.”

“What?” asked Larkin.

“Detective Kincaid. He wants you to call him
as soon as possible.” She ripped off a small pink slip from the
secretary’s desk and extended her hand.

“You answered my phone?”

“It was ringing when I got in the door.” She
placed the slip of paper with the detective’s phone number on the
envelope. “You know me and phones.”

“And you have absolutely no idea how
unbelievably weird that is.” He crossed his arms.

“Don’t cross your arms.”

He uncrossed them. “What did he want?”

“For you to call him,” she said.

“But did he say what it was about? I don’t
have any active criminal cases going on right now.”

“He didn’t say. Just call him, though,
please? He sounded like he really wanted to talk to you.” She
looked back at Charisma’s old desk. “What do you have going on,
Larkin?”

His mind raced into bullshit mode. Lawyers
chatted all the time about their business between hearings. Larkin
had been lying for months about a personal injury case he was
attempting to settle. He began mouthing the words “truck accident”
when he realized with whom he spoke. He crossed his arms again.

“Don’t - -” began Madeline, but Larkin
angrily cocked his head. “Next Tuesday at two,” she said after
taking a deep breath. With a flurry of steps, she walked by him and
headed for the door. He bit his lip as she passed by and chose to
hold his breath rather than smell that cinnamon smell that always
seemed to swirl around her. But it didn’t matter. His memory
realized what his senses could not and he was worse for it.

Larkin listened to the door shut and he
walked to Charisma’s vacant desk. He stared at the envelope until
two drops fell from his eyes and splattered on the yellow paper.
Losing steam, he leaned forward and placed his head on the desk.
His hands massaged his scalp and he suddenly felt like Mr.
Powers.

The door reopened.

“Please come back,” he said, his voice
muffled a bit by his hands.

Twenty or thirty seconds passed.

“You left your tie outside,” she said. “You
need to dry clean this. I’ll put it . . . here.” He did not look
up. He only listened to the door shut.

“There’s the man of the hour,” said Trevor
Meeks as he hopped onto the barstool next to Larkin. Larkin
continued to stare at his half-empty gin and tonic. He had let all
of the ice melt until the slice of lime simply bobbed in the liquid
like wreckage after a storm. Out of the corner of his eye, he
noticed Trevor’s hyper-expensive platinum watch and was a bit
shocked to discover how long that he must have been staring at the
drink. It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening.

“Rough day in court?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,”
Larkin muttered just as some business-suited gentleman appeared
behind them and smacked Trevor on his back.

“Mr. Vice Mayor!” said the suck-up.

Trevor made some sort of shooting gesture
with his hands, laughed and sent the man walking away with a grin
on his face. Everyone grinned when they spoke with Trevor, the
bastard was too damned charming. In fact, if Trevor was truly in a
great mood, which was not infrequent, a five-minute conversation
left you with the same feeling you had when you returned from
vacation and look approvingly in the mirror at your new tan.

“What was that you were saying about court?”
asked Trevor. His perfectly set teeth gleamed even in the dim bar
light.

Larkin leaned back. “I said, you wouldn’t
believe it if I told you.”

“Oh yeah? How much time did he get?”

Mr. Powers’ tears seemed to burn on the
fabric of Larkin’s shirt. “Six months,” he said, “for not paying
his child support.”

Trevor snapped at the bartender and pointed
to Larkin’s drink. “Beefeater?” Larkin shook his head. “Make mine
Beefeater,” he told the bartender. “You know, his first mistake was
to get married in the first place. Six months is half a year.
Marriage is a life sentence.”

“The sentence came down after I threw
up.”

“You what?” asked Trevor.

“I threw up. Passed out.” He took a sip. “It
was horrible.”

“Jesus Christ, Larkin,” said Trevor with a
laugh. Larkin repeated most of his day to his friend. He left out
the bit about Madeline and the separation agreement. Trevor was a
serial tomcat and devout bachelor ever since his bitter divorce.
Larkin did not want his friend to dwell upon his past. As the two
chatted, the bar became busier. More lawyers and businessmen
entered and many, like the man earlier, smacked Trevor on the back.
Handsome, rich, and politically connected, Trevor nearly lived the
life that many fourteen year-old boys dreamed for themselves: fast
cars, a steady stream of younger women, and the incredible ability
to navigate difficult situations with little more than a winning
smile. Larkin had always been amazed by his friend’s uncanny
ability to talk his way out of a DUI charge despite the bottles
lining the floorboard or the passed out girl in the back seat. Down
deep, Trevor was a devious bastard, but Big Lick just loved him for
it.

“Fuck Deveraux,” said Trevor as he withdrew a
black pipe from his coat pocket. “Why is it that only you have days
like this?” He struck an expensive and thick wooden match that
hissed for several seconds before the flame curved to light the
tobacco.

“Born under the worst sign, I guess,” he
said. He pointed to Trevor’s pipe. “If I had lit that pipe in here,
they would have tossed me out before I could blow out the
match.”

Trevor laughed before sucking on the pipe for
a minute. “So there’s this blonde who works for the city,” he
began. Larkin swiveled in his chair and feigned attention. He had
heard tales of so many conquests, he could probably recite them
better than Trevor at this point.

As his friend carried on about a tattoo on
someone’s inner thigh, Larkin allowed his attention to stray to a
nearby table of young attorneys. He could tell by their dress and
composure that they were all associates at one of the larger law
firms in Big Lick. He was at first puzzled why these legal eaglets
had landed at Marty’s at a time of the day when they still should
have been billing hours, but their joyous high-fiving demeanor
broadcasted appropriate clues. Though Trevor nearly shouted in his
left ear, Larkin heard the words “mediation” and “settlement”
repeated more than once from the table. Fresh from the kill, the
eaglets had gorged themselves on either the ultimate billed hour of
high-dollar defense work or they had forced someone to send a
bloated settlement check to their already wealthy client. Whatever
the reason, they surely had spent months, perhaps years, of long
hours at the firm in anticipation of a moment that had occurred
hours earlier. And to their satisfaction.

“What a feeling,” muttered Larkin. He swigged
the rest of his drink and continued to watch the eaglets. Trevor
carried on and on about his sexual escapade. The Vice Mayor waved
his hand and a new drink was poured. The bartender placed it by
Larkin’s hand. The cool wet glass slid against his fingertips and,
without looking and acting purely on instinct or reflex, he began
to drink.

He hated the eaglets almost as much as he
wanted to sit and be among them. University of Virginia, Washington
and Lee, and maybe even Ivy League law degrees, he thought.
Pedigrees. He had qualified to take the bar exam through a backdoor
apprenticeship loophole that most attorneys could not believe still
existed in the twenty-first century. He shook his head. They had
certificates of merit framed in exotic wood upon their walls.
Larkin was going to have to stop at K-Mart on the way home to pick
up a replacement frame for his false, misspelled ethics award.

He sipped again, dribbled on his shirt, and
looked up to see two of the eaglets looking intently in his
direction. He coughed and attempted to straighten a tie that he no
longer wore. They approached quickly until one of them stood only
inches away.

“L-Larkin Monroe,” Larkin said with
trepidation, his voice cracking. He extended his hand, but the
eaglet ignored it and looked over Larkin’s shoulder. Trevor shoved
Larkin sharply in the arm. “Ouch!”

“Shhh!” someone in the bar hissed. More
people approached Larkin.

“What the hell?” asked Larkin.

“Turn it up!” one of the eaglets called.

Larkin swiveled in his chair to see the
bartender scrambling to find the remote control that operated the
television hanging above the bar almost directly behind him. The
television was tuned to the local news. The camera focused on a
bleached-blond reporter standing in front of a large dark green
body of water. The caption below her read, “Local Attorney Found
Drowned at Smith Mountain Lake.”

The bartender began pulling apart the rail,
looking nervously for the remote.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Trevor as he
placed his drink down, hoisted his legs, and stood atop the bar. He
wobbled a bit before stretching his right arm and smacking the
volume button on the television.

“Hell yeah, Meeks!” a constituent applauded.
Trevor gave a little wave and rather gracefully returned to his
seat.

“Do you ever do anything wrong?” asked Larkin
but those around him quickly “shhhed” him.

“—with more questions than answers,” said the
reporter as the camera now focused only on a quiet cove of the
lake. “Here is where two local fishermen found the body of Alex
Jordan.”

“Who?” asked Larkin.

The shot cut to a Smith Mountain Lake local
wearing a stained ball cap. “We was hittin’ the water this morning
looking for bass when I seen something on the shoreline,” he said.
“I first thought it was deer, but then I could see a hand and I
knowed it was somethin’ awful.”

The scene changed again, this time showing a
still picture of a remarkably attractive young red haired woman in
her mid twenties. At the sight of her, Trevor stiffened.

“Do you know her?” asked Larkin.

Trevor shook his head and continued to stare.
She wore a conservative business suit and a bright smile. “She’s
smoking hot though. Am I right?” he asked.

“Alex Jordan, a law graduate from Berkley in
California,” the reporter stated, “had until recently worked as a
law clerk for Justice Lloyd Byrd of the Supreme Court of
Virginia.”

“No shit,” someone uttered.

The picture of Alex Jordan was replaced with
that of a serious looking man with salt and pepper hair wearing
judicial robes. “Justice Byrd could not be reached for comment at
the time of this broadcast.”

“I wonder what happened?” asked Larkin.

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone drowned
in that lake,” said Trevor.

The reporter continued. “The police at this
time are still investigating the incident and will not comment on
whether they can rule out foul play.” The camera then focused on a
thin, bearded policeman in his forties. His brow cut sharply across
the corners of his eyes, giving him a permanent squint. “Detective
Kincaid of the Big Lick Police is coordinating an investigation
with Bedford Police at the lake.”

“I know that name,” said Larkin. He took
another sip. Where had he heard that name before?

“It’s too early to say what happened,” said
Kincaid, “other than to say it’s a tragedy. We have a lot of ground
to cover before we make any decisions as to how this may have
happened.”

“You know him?” asked Trevor.

Larkin set his glass down. An image of his
soon to be ex-wife slamming a telephone book of expertly crafted
pro-se
work product upon a desk flashed through his mind and
his stomach turned. “Yes,” he groaned. “Dear God,” he muttered, “am
I going to get sick again?”