Quid Pro Quo

quid
pro
quo

quid
pro
quo

Vicki Grant

O
RCA
B
OOK
P
UBLISHERS

Copyright © 2005 Vicki Grant

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Grant, Vicki
Quid pro quo / Vicki Grant.

ISBN 1-55143-394-X (bound).--ISBN 1-55143-370-2 (pbk.)

I. Title.

PS8613.R367Q52 2005         jC813'.6         C2005-900093-7

First published in the United States 2005
Library of Congress Control Number:
2004118007

Summary:
When Cyril MacIntyre's mother disappears, Cyril must use every skill at his disposal to find and rescue her.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage's Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Cover design and typesetting by Lynn O'Rourke
Cover image: Susan Reilly

In Canada:
Orca Book Publishers
Box 5626, Stn. B
Victoria, BC Canada
V8R 6S4
In the United States:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer,
WA USA
98240-0468

08 07 06 05 • 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in Canada

For my father—Robert B. Grant, DFC—
because he would have got a kick out of this.

And for my children—Augustus, Teddy and Roo—
because he would have got a kick out of them too.

Amor vincit omnia.
—V.G.

table of
contents

One
Disclosure

Two
“Fillius nullius”

Three
LLB

Four
“Non compos mentis”

Five
Cruelty

Six
“Accusare nemo se debet”

Seven
Malpractice

Eight
Tampering with the mail

Nine
“Alias”

Ten
Intimidation

Eleven
Harassment

Twelve
Interception

Thirteen
Truancy

Fourteen
“In camera”

Fifteen
Fraud

Sixteen
Dismissal

Seventeen
Abandonment

Eighteen
Client-solicitor privilege

Nineteen
Real evidence

Twenty
Statutory rape

Twenty-One
Arson

Twenty-Two
Conspiracy

Twenty-Three
Hearsay

Twenty-Four
Restitution

Twenty-Five
Title

Twenty-Six
Misrepresentation

Twenty-Seven
Suspect

Twenty-Eight
Zoning by-laws

Twenty-Nine
Trespass

Thirty
“Mens rea”

Thirty-One
Sue

Thirty-Two
Harboring a Fugitive

Thirty-Three
Menaces

Thirty-Four
Ward of court

Thirty-Five
“Vi et armis”

Thirty-Six
Trespass II

Thirty-Seven
Kidnapping

Thirty-Eight
False imprisonment

Thirty-Nine
Confession

Forty
Confession II

Forty-One
Confession III

Forty-Two
Confession IV

Forty-Three
Bribery and corruption

Forty-Four
Arraignment

“Quid pro quo”
(kwid pro kwo)
(Latin)
“What for what”

A legal term meaning an even
exchange between two people

Something that is given
in exchange for something else

chapter
one
Disclosure

The act of fully revealing the facts of a case

I
started going to law school when I was ten years old.

I love saying that. I love how people look at me like, this guy must be some kind of genius.

It's true, too.

Well, like, sort of true anyway.

I did start going when I was ten. But that's only because we didn't have any money for babysitters, so I got dragged to all my mother's late classes.

I hated it. You think math class is bad. Law school was unbelievably boring. I wasn't allowed to move or MAKE ONE SINGLE SOUND, SO HELP ME GOD, CYRIL. I had to just sit there while the professors yakked on and on about torts and fiduciary rights and the “Crumbling Skull Doctrine,” which sounds good but is just as boring as all the other legal garbage.

The only thing worse than class was helping my mother study for exams. She'd get so stressed out I'd have to read her the study questions over and over again. She actually made me pull a couple of all-nighters with her just to make sure she was prepared.

And then there were the term papers. She treated me like I was her own personal little library slave. I had to run around, getting her the ten-pound books she needed or photocopying six thousand pages of statutes, while she two-finger-typed her essay or—get this—went outside for a smoke.

If I ever complained, she'd completely flip out. She'd start screaming how I was so ungrateful! How she was doing this for me! So I could have a better life—not her!

BLAH. BLAH. BLAH.

I used to argue with her. If you ask me, a better life for a kid is playing Zombie Komando or hanging with his friends, not sitting in a smoky kitchen until three in the morning, helping his mother study for her civil procedures exam. (Hadn't she ever heard what secondhand smoke does to children's delicate lungs?)

I wouldn't argue with her now, though. I hated law school, but if I hadn't spent three years of my life there, I wouldn't have known anything about fraud, blackmail or the principle of equity.

In other words, I wouldn't have known what I needed to know to save my mother's life.

chapter
two
“Fillius nullius”
(Latin)

“Son of nobody”

An illegitimate child

Y
ou need some background info.

My name is Cyril Floyd MacIntyre. I'm fourteen.

My mother's legal name is Andrea Ruth MacIntyre, but everyone calls her Andy. She's twenty-nine.

You do the math.

Pretty nasty, eh?

She ran away from home and was living on the streets when she had me. That was enough to horrify her parents. Most teenagers would have been happy to leave it at that. But Andy really wanted to humiliate them, so she named her little fatherless love child “Cyril,” then threw in “Floyd,” just to make them crazy. Those are poor-people names. Names for people who didn't go to school long enough to know that Thomas or Adam or Douglas would be more appropriate. Not names for a “good family” like the MacIntyres.

That's all I know about my grandparents. Maybe they were horrible. I don't know. But I think they had a point about the name.

I'm five foot one and, after a major feed, ninety-two pounds. If you can't picture what that looks like, here's a hint: pathetic.

Boney Maroney.

Mr. Puniverse.

Stick Man.

I've heard them all. I'm hopeful puberty will improve my stats, but I can't count on it. Andy seems to be about a normal height for a woman, so that's not giving me any clues, and she either won't tell me or doesn't know who my father is. He might be some scrawny guy that she just felt sorry for one night, and this is as tall as I'm going to get. Or he could be some six foot three hunk that she fell for, and there's hope. I guess I'll know one way or the other in a couple of years.

I only know three things about my father. That he was white. That he was male. (Hey, I'm no fool. I aced sex ed.) And that he probably had blue eyes. I'm just guessing on the last one. Andy's got brown eyes and I have blue. When we did genetics in science, the teacher said two brown-eyed people couldn't have a blue-eyed kid. She didn't say anything about hair. It wouldn't have helped anyway. I have this kind of fuzzy memory of Andy's hair being purple and spiked, but now it's, I don't know, brown, I guess. Reddy brown. Like mine. We have the same dimples, the same freckles and, apparently, the same hands. As far as I can figure out, I didn't get much from my father.

Not any money, that's for sure. Andy got us this far all by herself.

Okay, not one hundred percent all by herself. Community Services kept us off the street, but she turned herself around.

You got to give her credit for that. She doesn't do drugs anymore. She doesn't drink, unless you call a beer now and then drinking. And she hasn't shoplifted since the time she ran out of diapers a week before the next social assistance check was due. (That wasn't Andy's fault though—at least according to her. It was mine. Any other kid would have been toilet trained by then, and she never would have had to resort to stealing. Only two and a half, but already I was accessory to a crime.)

Andy does smoke like a chimney, swear like a sailor and eat a lot of crap. Nobody can believe that anyone who lives on burgers and extra-sauce donairs could stay that skinny. I figure she burns up a lot of calories being so pissed off all the time. As far as she's concerned, most people are imbeciles. (That's not the exact word she uses, of course. She usually goes for something a little more— ah, let's just say “colorful.”) She's always shooting her mouth off at somebody—and I'm always the one apologizing for it.

That's her bad side, and she knows it. She's trying “to deal with her anger” and has been as long as I can remember. She's not a bad person, though. She's actually a pretty good person, once you get past all the irritating stuff. She's generous, kind and forgiving—way more than most people who do the big generous, kind and forgiving thing. She'll call a person an “imbecile” one minute and give them the last of her French fries the next.

I love her.

I guess all kids love their mothers. Most kids just don't have as many reasons not to.

chapter
three
LLB

The abbreviation of the Latin term
for the bachelor of law degree

L
aw school was a drag, so I was really happy when Andy finally graduated.

I was sitting there watching that big fancy graduation ceremony, waiting for the “M” people to be called, and my heart was pounding like I was the one who was going to have to get up on stage.

I mean, I was so happy.

Not because there wouldn't be any more stupid exams. Not because there wouldn't be any more stupid tuition payments. Just because she did it. A high school dropout with a big mouth and a kid to look after made it through law school. There were guys from rich families and private schools that couldn't hack it—but Andy did. You've got to admit, that's something.

She was smiling her face off when her name got called, and (I'm not kidding) I thought I was going to cry when the dean of the law school handed her the diploma and gave her a hug. That was amazing. She'd driven him nuts for three years, always ranting on about something or other.

“There are too many white, male professors!”

“The cafeteria is anti-dog-owner!”

“The soap in the women's washroom is environmentally unfriendly … and the wrong color pink … and not soft enough on my delicate hands!”

Whatever.

Andy was always standing up for what's “right.” Can you imagine anything more irritating? I'd just sink down in my chair and pretend it wasn't happening. I don't think the dean could do that. He had to read her petitions, meet with her protest groups— you know, act like he cared. So it was really nice that he hugged her at the graduation ceremony. It showed he knew that her heart was in the right place at least.

It was kind of sad at the party afterward, though. Craig Benvie, this really straight guy in her legal ethics class, had the hots for Andy, so he hung around as usual. Jeannie Richardson was talking to her again, but not like she used to. Most of the older students, who had families too, were still nice to her, but everyone else had had enough of Andy by then. They shook her hand and said “good luck,” but you knew they were really thinking “good riddance.”