Runaway Heart (32 page)

     
Because no other species on the planet enjoyed legal standing,
they had to seek injunctive or compensatory relief through an organization that
would sue for redress on behalf of the animal. It was this very fact that had
compelled Herman to create the Danaus Plexippus Foundation.

     
The legal history on standing was fascinating and taught to every
first-year law student.

     
At one time even slaves could not avail themselves of the benefits
of the United States Constitution. In 1857, a slave named Dred Scott attempted
to go into court to sue for his freedom. The Supremes ruled that he was
property and, as such, had no rights under the law.

     
Later the Dred Scott ruling was reversed.

     
Using that as the historical reference to show the fallibility of
the Supreme Court on the issue of standing, animal-rights activists like his
friend Sandy Toshiabi had been trying unsuccessfully for years to obtain legal standing
for primates. But the courts were constantly shifting the boundaries that
defined humanity. At one point the federal courts said that humanity was simply
the ability to walk upright. But then when chimps were taught to do that, they
said that
speech
was the threshold. With Lucy, the "talking"
gorilla who used American Sign Language to communicate, a new threshold was
found. A species had to be capable of believing in God to claim standing. Sandy
Toshiabi fought that one and had managed to prevail. "What is God?"
she had argued. "When your dog looks up at you, does he see God?"
Currently there was no standard. . . but for one: beings must be classified as
Homo
sapiens
to have legal standing. But what, Herman wondered, constituted
Homo
sapiens?

     
He had one other thorny problem to overcome. He had no
attorney-client relationship with the chimera. His lawsuit could be voided on
that fact alone. In order to represent these chimeras, one of them had to ask
him to represent it. He needed a creative loophole.

     
The boat was at a yacht anchorage on the eastern tip of Lido
Island, in Newport Beach. There were several hundred slips just across a
parking lot from a high-end trailer park. It was 7:00
p.m.
when they found Ted's fifty-five-foot Bertram Sportfisher
stern-tied to the dock. When they parked behind it they saw the name printed in
foot-high, gold-leaf letters:
The Other Woman.

     
Jack walked down the ramp to the dock, listening to the halyards
on the surrounding sailboats rattling against their metal masts in the sharp
evening breeze. He went aboard and found the keys hidden where Louise said they
would be. After Susan turned off the alarm, Jack opened the rear doors and they
entered, flipping on lights.

     
The main salon was beautiful: dark mahogany cabinets filled with
cut-crystal glasses backed a mahogany bar, beige carpets, an antique table with
chairs, and a beautiful, off-white silk sofa completed the decor. It seemed
more like a stylish New York condo than a fishing boat.

Susan went below and forward where she
found the master suite. A brass plaque on the door read:
Ink
—an homage
to the show Ted and Mary had co-starred in. The suite had a queen-size bed and
a large bathroom featuring a shower complete with steam heads. There were two
guest staterooms aft.

     
They went back outside to help Herman onto the boat, then settled
him in the master suite, where he flopped back on the quilted bedspread, still
exhausted from the surgery.

     
"I'm starved," Susan complained, looking at them. "How
about you, Dad?"

     
"There's nothing in the fridge," Jack said. "I
already looked. We could go out and get something."

     
"Why don't you two get dinner?" Herman suggested.
"Get me something to go. Bring it back after you've eaten. I saw a fish restaurant
on the way in just a block from here. You could walk it." He wanted to get
them out of there so he could work.

     
"What do you want?" she asked.

     
"Surprise me, honey," he answered, then closed his eyes,
put his hands across his chest, and feigned sleep.

     
Susan stood there for a long moment, then hesitantly turned to go.
"Okay, if you think it's all right."

     
"I'll be fine," he said. "Just turn off the
light."

     
As soon as he heard them leave the boat, Herm pulled himself
upright, turned on the bedside lamp, opened his PalmPilot, and began scrolling
for Sandy Toshiabi's number.

"
I
think I owe you
an apology," Susan began as the
drinks arrived, "an apology and some money." She
took out her checkbook and a fountain pen, then wrote him a check for
thirty-one hundred and eighty-one dollars. She blew on her signature to dry the
ink, then handed it to Jack. "For three days' work, your airline tickets,
lunch, and an hour of parking."

     
"I'm getting a nice little collection of these," he said
suspiciously.

     
It was 6:00
p.m.
and
they were seated on the patio of a Newport Beach fish restaurant named The
Cannery. Small boats were tied to the wharf below the sprawling deck.
"That one will clear."

     
Jack studied the check skeptically. "How? I thought Herm said
you guys were out of money."

     
"We're liquidating some things." Earlier he had noticed
that her rings and the gold graduation watch were gone. "You sold your
watch?"

     
"We've sold a lot of stuff," she said. "None of it
important."

     
"I can't take your graduation watch."

     
"Listen, Jack, this money didn't come from my watch, okay? If
it's easier for you, pretend it's from Dad's old clunker station wagon that we
also sold. Besides, what does it matter? We've got bills, obligations, and
we're meeting them.

     
"If it hadn't been for you, Dad and I would probably be
dead. In the
face of that, I think your thousand-dollar-a-day fee is a remarkable
bargain."

     
"Viewed in that context, you're right. Maybe I'm not charging
enough," he smiled down at the check in his hand. "I'll use you as a
reference."

     
"Any time."

     
The waitress returned and Susan ordered swordfish and a shrimp
cocktail. Jack had a steak and mixed green salad. They ordered two more drinks.

     
Jack's cell phone rang. He looked at it, hesitating. "I'm
beginning to hate this thing. It feels more like a locator device than a
phone."

     
"It might be Dad. What if he needs us?"

     
"Yeah." So he opened it. "Hello."

    
 
"Jack,
where the hell you been? I've been trying to reach you for three or four
hours." It was his ex-partner, Shane Scully. "You were right. Paul
Nichols doesn't own that spread in Beverly Hills."

     
"Not surprising. Who does?"

     
"The house is owned by an Indian tribe."

     
"You're kidding. Which one?"

     
"They're called Ten-Eycks."

     
"Thank God they're just Indians," Jack said softly.

     
"They have a reservation out by Palm Springs. I punched 'em
out on the Internet. They've got a Web page: Ten-Eyck-dot-com. You'd love this
site . . . got an Indian sitting on a blanket smoking a peace pipe, Indian
prayers, medicine-man poetry. All that's missing is the price sheet for peyote.
It's a small tribe. Only thirty people in the entire Ten-Eyck nation. The
administrator's a guy named Scott Nichols."

     
"Not Paul?"

     
"It's Scott. He was voted in as Tribal Administrator a few
years back. He took over for the chief, some guy named Russell Ibanazi. There's
a picture of Chief Ibanazi on the site. He's about thirty and looks like a
Calvin Klein model. Since they own that one house on North Canon Drive, I ran
the tribe through the Real Estate Tax Board
and found out they own a few other houses in Beverly Hills.
Got a pencil?"

     
Jack pulled one out of his pocket and grabbed a paper cocktail
coaster. "Gimme the other address."

     
"Aside from the one you gave me at 2352 North Canon, there's
another one at 2443 and a house at 160 Charing Cross Road. Then, there's a big,
three-acre spread at 264 Chalon Road. Altogether, this tribe owns over thirty
million worth of prime dirt."

     
"Those Palm Springs reservations got valuable," Jack
said. "The property out there's probably worth a fortune."

     
"Only, the Ten-Eycks got boned on that score. I checked
around, and their reservation is located way out in the desert, past Indio,
near the Mexican border. The property out there isn't worth much, unless you're
breeding jackrabbits. So, your question is, how do they get to own all of this
expensive housing in West L.A.?"

     
"Thanks, Shane, I owe you, man." He said good-bye and
closed the phone.

     
"What is it?" Susan asked. Jack told her what he'd just
learned. After he finished she sat quietly thinking, then asked, "You
think they're using Indian DNA for the gene splicing, using it for the chimp
upgrades?"

     
"I don't know, but that's as good a guess as any."
"Ten-Eyck chimeras. It fits."

     
The food came and they ate in silence. After he finished the main
course, to get his mind off genetic nightmares, Jack decided to find out more
about the beautiful woman sitting opposite him. "Tell me more about the
Institute."

     
"It's dedicated to fighting for justice. Everywhere you look
you see abuse of power or the ecology. This country fosters the triumph of the
almighty dollar over common sense. Dad has dedicated himself to fixing that—to
leveling the odds."

     
Jack already knew that Herman was more than just a conspiracy nut.
He was an advocate for lost causes, and, although some of those causes seemed
foolish and other-worldly, the longer Jack stayed on the case the more he felt
Herman might actually be right this time.

     
Susan sighed, but then a smile followed and lit the edges of her
mouth. "You know, Jack, when I'm not frustrated out of my gourd with Dad's
tactics, I'm so proud to be part of it, I could dance on the table. I feel like
there are actually times when Dad, and to a much lesser degree, yours truly,
are really making a difference." She whispered this thought like a treasured
secret, then leaned forward and added: "The game is rigged. We've faced
more government audits than Martha Stewart. But Dad says cowardice can't be the
reason to give up. You can't let people win by default when they put selfish
interests above the greater good. So we just do the best we can. Dad gets up
very early every morning, straps on his armor, and grabs his weapon of
choice." She smiled. "Not thongs or nipple clips, but the federal
criminal and civil statutes of justice. Then he goes out hunting polluters,
constitutional violators, and moral criminals. And, you know what's amazing?
Every so often we win."

     
She reached over and took his hand. "I just want you to know
how much I appreciate what you've done, not quitting when my check bounced—not
just turning around and leaving us."

     
His reasons hadn't been that noble. He started blushing.

     
"You're not very good at accepting compliments, are
you?"

     
"Probably because I don't get that many."

     
All of her life Susan had devoted herself to details, had followed
her father around, tying up loose ends, trying to make everything come out
right. She had learned during her fifteen years as a soldier in Herman
Strockmire's underfinanced Army Against Injustice that, although he was
brilliant, dedicated, and heroic, he wasn't very organized or specific.

He was always about a hundred yards out
in front of himself—leaving mistakes, unanswered questions, and knotty legal
problems in his wake; often going into court
unprepared, because there was always too much to do and
never enough time. This had produced a string of angry judges and a spate of
malpractice suits filed against the Institute by disgruntled former clients who
had initially hired Herman because of his passion, but then sued him because of
his sloppy tactics. The malpractice suits always followed the same inevitable
course: First, clients became frustrated over missed opportunities; then they
become angry over courtroom blunders; and, finally, they got enraged as Herman
lost and was disciplined by angry jurists. Although they occasionally
won—striking important blows against their enemies—Herman and Susan often fell
short. When this happened, Susan was left to pick up the pieces and placate
angry clients, .trying to head off the malpractice suits with all the beauty
and charm she could muster.