Bone Valley (2 page)

The judge was
rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn before I finished my first sentence in the Parrot versus the Bikini Top case. Okay, it was late afternoon, it was warm inside the courtroom, but come on, pay attention, I thought.

As I concluded my introduction and mentally geared up for my argument, the newest judge on the bench, a man at least five years my junior, gave into his yawn, and then said, “Counselor Cleary, why don’t you refresh me on the facts?” Translation: The good judge had never read my impeccably organized and excessively detailed memorandum of law in support of my motion for a summary judgment that Bonita had personally hand-delivered to the judge. A motion based upon the notion that when a well-endowed woman takes her bikini top off on a busy street because a parrot is pecking in it, the chaos and injury that naturally follow are all within the confines of the act of God doctrine. That is, it wasn’t my client’s fault there was a car wreck, and he doesn’t have to pay anybody any money.

“Yes, Your Honor. My client, Jimmie Rodgers—”

“Good afternoon, Your Honor,” Jimmie said, rising slightly from his chair.

Rather than chastise me or my client for that slight breach of etiquette—clients weren’t supposed to talk at hearings, that’s why they hire lawyers—the judge nodded toward him.

“Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Rodgers was driving his automobile down Siesta Drive on a Sunday afternoon,” I said, in an overly animated voice, hoping to wake the judge up. “Being a cautious driver, he observed a young woman wearing a bikini and riding a bike along the side of the road. A large green parrot was sitting on her shoulder. Naturally Mr. Rodgers slowed down and took notice of her so that he would not endanger her in any way with his large automobile.”

“Um, objection, Your Honor, I…she’s not, um, supposed to…editorialize,” my opposing counsel said with a squeak in his voice. I hadn’t bothered to remember his name, though he had said it only five minutes before. Though he was a big guy, he looked about eighteen, a novice who didn’t even know lawyers don’t object over stuff like that in a hearing.

“Young man, this is a hearing on a motion. Not a jury trial. I assure you I can tell a fact from an editorial without your help,” the judge said.

Pretty arrogant, I thought, for a man who hadn’t been a judge more than a month and who hadn’t even been practicing law when the governor appointed him to the bench. But the fact that he’d taken a break from lawyering to work on a Ph.D. in history hadn’t interfered with his rise to the judiciary because both his brother and his father were Big Republicans duly elected to Important Offices and his aunt owned about a fifth of the southwestern part of the state of Florida and made large and regular campaign donations to the right people. After all, this was Sarasota, hometown of the woman heiress who selected our president for us back in the year 2000 and then not surprisingly rose from secretary of state to go on to greater political glory.

Putting aside my momentary resentment of the easy success of the well-connected, I said, “Thank you, Your Honor. As I was explaining, while Mr. Rodgers was driving down Siesta, the young woman pulled her bikini top off and shook—”

The judge looked over his glasses at me. Okay, got his attention. “Shook…what? The bikini top or—”

“Both. You should’ve—” Jimmie said, jumping up out of his chair as I tried to pinch his leg inconspicuously to signal him that he should shut up.

“Sit, Mr. Rodgers,” the judge said, cutting him off. “Continue, please, Counselor Cleary.”

“The young woman shook her bikini top out, Your Honor. As she explained later, the parrot had flown off for a moment and captured a lizard, then it dropped the lizard down her bikini top. That was bad enough, but when the parrot went pecking in her top after the lizard, well, naturally, she needed to shake her top out before the parrot bit her while chasing its…lunch. Mr. Rodgers was so surprised by her taking off her top and shaking it out, he naturally failed to notice that the car in front of him had slammed on its brakes.”

“My client, Your Honor, sir, did not, er, ‘slam on his brakes,’ he just slowed down. Her client was the one who did the slamming, right into the back of my client, knocking him from behind, when my client, er, was doing exactly what he was supposed to do, and…like, he got hurt,” said my earnest opposing counsel in triple-speed speak, complete with squeak.

“Young man, please stop interrupting Counselor Cleary.”

“My name is Jason Quartermire, sir, not ‘young man,’ Your Honor, sir.”

“Young man, stop interrupting.”

“Yes, sir.”

I paused a moment to make sure it was still my turn, then I said, “The plaintiff, who was driving in front of Mr. Rodgers on Siesta Drive, testified in his deposition that he too noted the young woman disrobing on her bike, and he braked. Page twelve of his depo, Your Honor.” And that same plaintiff was now suing poor Jimmie Rodgers with litigation-lottery fantasies of the big bucks, upon spurious allegations that the minor rear-ender had caused him to suffer a double spinal subluxation that was so painful only daily chiropractic treatments, and, oh, say, a quarter of a million bucks, could ease his suffering.

“What happened to the parrot?” the judge asked.

“It lost the lizard, sir, but recovered its position on the young woman’s shoulder,” I said.

“So what was the act of God?” the good judge asked.

“The parrot, Your Honor. The proximate cause of this whole accident was the parrot dropping the lizard into the young woman’s bikini top and then going after it. That, sir, was an act of God. And it is a well-settled principle of law that where the proximate cause of damages is an act of God, and not an act of negligence on the defendant’s part, that there is no cause of action. Accordingly, as the proximate cause of the plaintiff ’s
alleged
damages was a natural act of God and not Mr. Rodgers’s negligence, he is entitled to a summary judgment and there is no need to tie up judicial time and expense in a jury trial.”

“I don’t think so, Counselor Cleary,” the judge said.

“If you’d seen that girl’s titties, you’d’ve known it were an act of God for sure,” Jimmie said, rising from his chair again.

I slapped my memorandum of law against Jimmie’s stomach and said, “Sit down, Mr. Rodgers.”

“Counselor Cleary, I do not condone lawyers battering their clients in my courtroom.”

“It’s awright, Judge, sir. It didn’t hurt me none and she did fuss at me not to say titties.”

“Then stop saying it,” his honor said. Then he turned and looked directly at me. “Nice try, Counselor Cleary. Motion denied.”

“You mean we lost?” Jimmie asked.

“Don’t you want to hear my argument?” the big kid with a new law degree asked.

“You won, young man. Relax. Notch your gun. And, no, I do not want to hear your argument.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “I’ll prepare the order for your signature.” Then we all stood and the judge left the courtroom.

While I tried to hustle Jimmie and my memo of law out of the courtroom in a hurry, young Mr. Quartermire waylaid me.

“This was my first hearing. I was really nervous.”

“I would never have known,” I said, mistakenly thinking my sarcasm was obvious.

“Really? That’s so nice of you to say,” Baby Lawyer said. “I mean, I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re kind of…you know, like a legend around here.”

Flattery wasn’t going to console me, so I barely nodded and started walking. I didn’t need any more child-lawyer devotees. Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, my law firm, had a library full of law clerks who filled that bill. What I wanted very much to do was get back to my office, send Jimmie on his way, and rehash with Bonita my strange interrogation by Investigator Farmer regarding the gypsum-stack death of M. David. Oh, yeah, and document my time for the hearing and go home before dark.

Not reading my body language, Mr. Quartermire tagged along beside me. “In fact, I was really surprised that a lawyer of your…er, stature, would take this case.”

Yeah, well, me too.

As a partner with a healthy number of years of experience, I had moved well beyond stupid car-crash cases. Normally I would have spent about thirty seconds passing this file down to a first-year associate. Ultimately, a Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley associate as young and untrained as young Mr. Quartermire would have practiced budding lawyer skills in a series of meaningless legal thrusts and parries with the opposing side until Jimmie’s insurance company decided on a proper settlement amount.

But just my luck, Jimmie Rodgers was not only the man who had done all the odd jobs around my house, but he reminded me of my grandfather, who also drank more than was sociably acceptable. Given our relationship, I wasn’t about to turn Jimmie down when he asked me to defend him in his stupid car lawsuit, even though the case was far beneath my standing in the hierarchy of Sarasota lawyers. Friends don’t leave friends at the mercy of the vagaries of the Florida tort system.

So, there I was—stuck handling the kind of case that dumb kids like the nervous Jason Quartermire cut their teeth on.

What with a parrot-induced fender bender and a defamed-orange case to live down if word got out, I knew I needed a page-one lawsuit. But the legislature had made it so difficult to sue doctors in Florida that those million-dollar med-mal suits I was locally famous for successfully defending were drying up. At a point in my career where most lawyers looked forward to coasting on their laurels and having their associates do the hard stuff, I was looking at developing a new legal specialty.

Seeing no need to explain any of this to Quartermire, I simply said, “Good day,” in a voice that signaled the end of our conversation, and turned and jogged off with Jimmie huffing to keep up as we left the courthouse.

As Jimmie prattled beside me on the short, but hot and trafficky walk back to my office, in the humidity my hair felt like a thick, dark blanket on my head and shoulders. Stifling a pant, I scooped it up into a temporary ponytail, anchored by my hand, and let a hint of the Gulf breeze cool my neck. Then I wondered how many people got sued in Florida for defaming fruit. Was there a trend there I might capitalize on? I mean, how hard could it be to defend a lawsuit against an orange?

Jimmie grabbed my hand as we ran across Ringling Boulevard, dodging the cars that never stop, and we landed safely on the other side. But before I convinced him to go home, I saw Angus John milling around outside the front of the Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley law office. Off slightly to one side stood a tall, thin man with long, wavy black hair and just about the most beautiful face I’d ever seen on a man. It looked like he was preaching to Angus, with his arms raised and his hands open.

I stopped walking and inhaled so deeply that Jimmie took my hand again and said, “Lady, are you all right?”

All right? My fingertips tingled. My lips began to part. The rub of my panty hose on my thighs was electrocuting me. Suddenly I could smell my own pheromones.

All that from one look at a black-haired stranger ten feet away from me.

And I was, more or less, or at least in the eyes of Philip Cohen, my ardently persistent lover, an engaged woman.

“Oh, my lord,” Jimmie said, turning to follow my stare. “Don’t he look like a Mexican Jesus fixing to feed the poor ones.”

I licked my lips and tried to breathe.

Olivia was crouched
over Bonita’s desk, where they appeared to be hatching some plot, and they both looked up at me with practiced expressions of neutrality when I pranced into Bonita’s cubbyhole on the way to my own office.

“Lilly,” Olivia said, “my goodness, Bonita was just telling me about M. David. Why does that deputy sheriff think you had something to do with killing him?”

“I’m not a suspect,” I said.

“Are you sure? I mean, everybody knows you hated the man. I can’t say I cared much for M. David myself, his politics being what they were, though he danced divinely with me every year at the United Way ball, but what a terrible way to go. How did…” Olivia paused when she noticed the parade of men I had been leading, the short Angus, the slightly smelly Jimmie, and the most-beautiful-man-alive. “Oh, good,” she said, standing up and pushing an oddly cut clump of hair behind her ear, and smiling. “I see you and Miguel have met.” She offered her hand to Miguel, who took it, held it, and sighed.

“Olivia, Olivia, my sweet Olivia,” he said.

I imagined for a moment what “Lilly, oh Lilly” would sound like coming from his lips, especially if his mouth was on his head on a pillow in my bed. Then I stood back to study the scenario. Olivia was actually blushing. I didn’t think I had ever seen that before. She pushed that clump of hair back again with her free hand, and then shoved her glasses up her nose. Okay, she was flustered. So was I. Miguel had that effect. Then he leaned into Olivia and whispered something into her pink ear, and let go of her hand.

A strange little kick of jealousy hit me in my gut. Olivia was married, okay, married well, in fact, and she was a good deal older than Miguel, and she had some grooming issues. On the other hand, she was smart and strong and hardworking. Back home in Bugfest, we’d have called her a handsome woman, which is small-town south for a plain woman you like a lot.

But all in all, not the kind of woman Miguel should be flirting with.

No, I was the kind of woman Miguel should be flirting with.

I stepped up to the plate so he’d notice that too. “Yes,” I said, and put my hand on Miguel’s arm, “Angus introduced us in the parking lot.”

“You will be able to help them, Lilly, won’t you? Angus and Miguel? From that stupid orange lawsuit. It’s nothing more than a SLAPP suit,” Olivia said, regaining her usual den-mother composure.

“What’s a SLAPP suit?” Jimmie asked, angling through the pack to get closer to Bonita.

“Harassment, but legal,” I said, and softly slid my hand off Miguel’s arm, making sure my fingers traced his skin before I let go. “Stands for ‘strategic litigation against public participation.’ Say an environmentalist goes after a polluter using standard practices like getting petitions signed, letters to the editor, speaking at public hearings, instigating others to write letters to regulatory agencies. Then the targeted polluter, who almost always has big corporate bucks and an army of attorneys, sues the environmentalist, usually for bogus claims, but the idea is that the lawsuit will break the activist either through the financial costs of the defense, or the lost time. Defending against a lawsuit, even a stupid one, is expensive, very expensive, and very unpleasant.” I stopped when I realized I was using my lecture voice and no one was listening to me.

“Huh,” Jimmie said, and then turned his attentions to Bonita. “Hey, sweet lady, got anything needing fixing, cutting, or cleaning at your place? I’d do it for free. Sure like to see them five little children of yours again.”

Just like a man, I thought, to ignore the serious stuff when a good-looking woman was nearby.

Jimmie leaned even closer to Bonita, who surely got a whiff of him, but she had the good grace not to jerk back.

Grooming school, I thought. If this lawyer thing doesn’t work out, I was going to open a good-grooming academy. Jimmie, take a bath; Olivia, get a decent haircut and a pair of pants made in this decade; Angus, come on, cowboy boots in Florida in late spring? And Miguel—perfect.

Well, he could, now that I looked at them, use a pair of pants made in this decade too.

Then everybody started talking at once, interrupting my daydream of alternative career number 412, Lilly’s Grooming Academy.

“Listen,” I said, feeling the press of too many bodies in one small space, “Miguel and Angus and I are going in my office to discuss the terms of my representing them. If you will excuse us. Jimmie, sorry about the hearing, but we’ll get your case settled quickly now, you’ll see. I’ll be in touch.”

With that I backed into my office, hoping Miguel would follow and Angus would stay behind, but both dutifully followed me.

“Sit,” I said, and waved my arms in a general sweep of my office. “Let’s get acquainted first. Please, tell me about yourself.”

I looked right at Miguel, but Angus started talking.

“I wash sailboats for a living, but mostly I fight phosphate. I was born in Mulberry, near Bartow, and I’ve seen what those phosphate mines do to a community, to the land, the water.”

“You wash sailboats for a living?” I said, roughly translating that into the fact that he’d never be able to pay my hourly rate.

“Not much money in it, but the work’s steady, and nobody asks my politics.”

Yeah, okay, you can’t pay me and I don’t want to date you. “So,” I said, and turned my face and whole body toward Miguel, beaming my best smile at him. “And you?”

“My mother is Cuban, my father is a Seminole Indian, and I’ve lived all my life in Florida. We lived in the Everglades until the sugar people drove us out. Now my folks live in Chokoloskee and I move around, setting up shop where I’m needed.”

“Uh-huh.” It’s hard to be articulate when you’re resisting the urge to pounce on somebody.

“Tell her what you do for a living,” Angus the ignored said.

“Yes, oh, yes,” I said and hoped it would be something that didn’t involve a lot of women but did actually earn money.

“I’m a certified Rolfer.”

“A what?”

“He’s like a fancy masseuse.”

“It’s a bit more complex than that, but I’d be glad to explain it to you. In detail. But another time.” Miguel smiled at me and my heart leaped up.

“Date,” I said. “I mean, deal.”

“Let’s talk about this lawsuit,” Angus the not to be ignored said. “The media wouldn’t give us the time of day. I mean, they were dumping enough toxic gyp waste on those groves to turn it into a Superfund site, and then thinking it was all right for folks to eat those oranges. And you think the newspapers would run a story? Hell no.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“And another thing, all this was a year and a half, almost two years ago. So far as we could tell, they weren’t dumping the gyp out there this year.”

Nodding, I scribbled a note to check the statute of limitations for fruit-libel lawsuits. “We’ll need to schedule an appointment to discuss the merits of your case next week. This is just our introductory meeting, to make sure we want to formally enter an attorney-client relationship.”

“So, okay, why would we want to hire you?” Angus asked.

Thus queried, I went through my standard introduction to litigation and what a lawyer does and why I was a great lawyer and why they should hire me to defend them. I figured the fact that neither could pay my standard hourly fee pretty much balanced out the fact that I didn’t know jack about defending First Amendment, fruit-defamation cases, and so I didn’t mention my lack of expertise on the subject matter of their particular lawsuit. When I was done with my spiel, they both nodded.

“Olivia recommended you, and that’s good enough for me,” Miguel said.

Angus grunted.

“Fine, I’ll have Bonita draft a retainer agreement, and I’ll file a notice of appearance for both of you first thing Monday, and we’ll spend some time going over the facts early next week, then I’ll file an answer on your behalf.”

“So, you are officially our attorney now, right?” Miguel asked.

“Yes. You can tell me all your secrets now and I’m ethically bound to keep them.” I held my breath so I wouldn’t pant.

“Cool,” Angus said.

“We’ll be in touch,” Miguel said, and stood up.

The word
touch
hung in the air until I saw little flames around it, and I nodded, and watched them walk out of my office, concentrating on the way Miguel’s butt muscles moved in his worn jeans.

Oh, boy, I thought.

But before I could work myself up too much further, Bonita and Olivia bounded into my office.

“You will take their case, right,” Olivia said, and I registered the fact that she hadn’t said it as a question. Besides being my friend, Olivia’s status as the wife of Fred O’Leary, as in Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, pretty much guaranteed I’d take on anyone she wanted me to defend. A barely mid-tier partner like me knows to jump when a Smith or an O’Leary says to, and wives counted the same as the actual partner. Stanley, as in Ashton Stanley the maniac, partner number three, was still in California, where I’d last heard from him when he called from a hot tub he was sharing with a starlet, and the power vacuum created by his extended leave had pretty much been filled by Smith and O’Leary themselves.

“So, yes, of course,” I said.

Olivia gave me a little hug, and said to come and visit anytime, and she left.

Bonita gave me that what-have-you-done-now look, and I beamed. “Olivia the rainmaker,” I said, though I generally prefer clients with large trust funds or liability policies that will pay my standard fees. “You know the drill. Let’s do the notices of appearances for Monday filing.”

“He’s not your type,” Bonita said. She has a tendency to mother me, this, no doubt, is an overflow of her maternal instincts not fully exhausted by her five kids.

“Part Cuban, part Seminole, and totally gorgeous,” I said. “Why is he not my type?”

Bonita sighed, and went back to her computer.

Okay, okay, as it turned out, she was totally right about that, but a man like Miguel makes one look past common sense.