Sleeping Beauty (15 page)

 

Tryon Creek State Park abutted the campus of Lewis and Clark College's Northwestern School of Law in Southwest Portland. Hiking trails crisscrossed the wooded acres. During the daylight hours the park was a popular spot for lovers to stroll and joggers to run. At ten, the park was dark, and the lot was empty except for a beat-up pickup truck that was parked in a space near the entrance to one of the nature trails.

Norm parked a few spaces down from the truck and walked over to take a look. The night was warm, and he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. He bent down and peered through the cab window just long enough to satisfy himself that the truck was empty.

“Spencer,” a voice called from the trailhead. When Norm turned, he saw a man standing in the shadows several feet in on the trail. He walked forward, and the man faded into the darkness. Norm grew wary, but his need to find out what had happened with Casey overrode
his common sense. He headed down the trail but the man had disappeared. He stopped and looked around. The voice called out again from farther down the trail.

Norm peered into the night. “I'm getting tired of playing hide-and-seek. If you've got something to say, come out and say it.”

There was no answer. Norm was angry. He knew that he should get in his car and drive away, but he did not want his tormentor to know that he was scared, so he rushed up the trail hoping to catch the man off guard. A baseball bat slammed into his shin, taking him off his feet. The pain was excruciating. He came down hard on his head and lay in the dirt, dazed. The second blow crashed across his shoulders.

Norm tried to stand but more blows drove him down. He could see his attackers through a red-tinted haze. There were three of them, and two of them hefted bats. The third reared back and delivered a brutal kick to Norm's ribs. He heard something crack. An electric jolt of pain seared him, and he passed out for a second. When the world came back in focus, Miles Van Meter was squatting next to him, holding a handful of Norm's hair. He used the hair to lift Norm's head off of the ground. Rage distorted Miles's features.

“You knocked up my sister, you fuck, but you will never see her or your little bastard. If you ever try to contact her again you'll think this beating is the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Miles smashed his fist into Norm's nose, crushing it. Then he stood up and nodded. The other two men beat Norm until he passed out.

Norm forced himself to drive to the nearest hospital where he was told that he had two cracked ribs, a fractured shin, and a concussion. When he was ready to be released, Norm's parents took him home. His nose was broken, his leg was in a cast, his ribs were wrapped tight, his face was purple and yellow, and he had a splitting headache.

During the next week, Norm was confined to bed and had a lot of time to think. He felt terrible about Casey's pregnancy. They had taken precautions most of the time, but there had been an occasion or two when they'd done without in the heat of the moment. Now she would
have to pay for their mistake with her youth. His initial impulse was to do the right thing and marry Casey. He soon realized that marriage was not an option. How could he propose when she wouldn't even speak to him? Norm wanted to believe that her family was keeping them apart, but it was more likely that he'd only been a summer fling for Casey. She'd never really shown any signs of affection. Now that he thought about it, they didn't really have much in common other than screwing. He'd tried to tell her he loved her a few times, but she'd laughed him off. And she had never said she loved him.

Norm was reading
The Oregonian
the first time he thought about the baby as anything more than an abstraction. He was looking for the comics when the name “Casey Van Meter” brought him up short. An item in the society column mentioned that she was going to spend her fall semester in Europe. Norm's first thought was that she was going to have an abortion. He felt cold and sad. It suddenly occurred to him that their baby would look a little like him. Norm was young and never one for long-range thinking, but the concept of immortality came to mind. A child was your immortality. Your child carried your genes after you were dead. If Casey aborted, part of Norm would die.

After further consideration, Norm decided that Henry Van Meter, a strict Catholic, would never countenance an abortion. On the other hand, he had a hard time picturing Casey giving up her dreams and desires to raise a child, knowing what he did about her. The most likely possibility was that Casey would give birth in Europe so no one would know she was having a baby. Then the baby would be put up for adoption. That did not seem right to Norm. He did not want his child to be raised by strangers. He wanted a say in what happened to his child.

 

If you went by appearances, Ken Philips was the last lawyer you would hire. Nothing about the short, balding man with the potbelly, mangy, gray-specked beard, and mismatched clothes hinted at his brilliance or his success. Philips's office was small and furnished with the secondhand furniture he had purchased when he opened for business fourteen years before. There were no clippings on the wall advertising his courtroom victories. Instead of his diplomas he had framed his children's
first kindergarten art and a set of his wife's photographs of the Oregon coast.

Unpopular causes were Philips's passion. As soon as he was awarded his law degree, he had gone to the Deep South in the darkest days of the civil rights movement to represent blacks in violence-plagued voter registration drives. During the Vietnam War, he was the war protesters' first line of legal defense. When he wasn't involved in politics, Ken Philips earned a good living as a personal-injury lawyer.

“How does the other guy look?” Philips asked as soon as his secretary left them alone.

“Much better than me.”

When Philips laughed, his body jiggled like Santa Claus.

“So, do you want me to sue the bastards?”

“I just want to ask you some questions, if that's okay. But I don't have much money.”

“We can talk about the money later. Let me hear the questions.”

Norm looked down at his shoes. He had not thought about what he would say if he gained an audience with Ken Philips. It had taken all of his courage to go to the lawyer's office.

“Are you in some trouble with the law?” Ken prodded.

“No. I don't think so. It's more like a personal thing with a girl.” He took a deep breath. “Mr. Philips, let's say a girl gets pregnant and she wants to give the baby away. What about the guy, the father?”

“I don't follow you.”

“There's this girl. We slept together. Had sex. I think she wants to give our baby away. I don't think it's an abortion. Her dad is Catholic. He sent her to Europe to have the baby and I want to know my rights.”

“How long have you known this girl?”

“Just for the summer. I work at a gas station and my uncle sent me out to tow her car. We got to talking and I asked her out.”

“You work at the gas station full-time?”

“In the summer. I'm at Oregon. I'll be a junior.”

“How old is the girl?”

“Nineteen. She goes to Stanford.”

Philips leaned back and tented his fingers on his ample stomach. “So we've got a summer romance here that got out of control?”

Norm colored. “We really tried to be careful. But a couple of times….” He swallowed.

“How do you know she's pregnant?”

Norm pointed to his face. “Her brother and some of his friends did this after he found out. And she stopped seeing me. She won't take my calls. I went over to her house but she wouldn't see me. She said she'd call the cops if I tried to talk to her.”

“Did you tell the cops about the beating? That the brother did it?”

Norm shook his head. “It didn't seem right. If it was my sister and some guy did that….” He looked down. “I guess I felt I had it coming.”

Philips nodded to show that he understood. “Why have you come to see me?”

“Like I said, Casey's folks sent her to Europe. If it's an abortion I guess I'm too late. But if she's having the baby and is going to give it away I don't want that.”

“Do you want to marry the girl?”

“If she wanted me to I would, but I don't think she wants to marry me. Her dad probably wouldn't let her, anyway.”

“Why is that?”

“She's really rich. Besides, I don't think she loves me.”

“Do you love her?”

“I like her. We get along but…I don't know.”

“If you don't want to marry her and she doesn't want to marry you and the child is probably going to be put up for adoption, I don't understand what you want from me.”

Norman looked across the desk at Ken Philips. His hands twisted around each other and he hunched forward.

“Mr. Philips, can a man raise a baby? Do I have any rights to my kid?”

“You want to raise the child?”

“I've thought about this. It's my kid, too, isn't it? I don't want a stranger taking care of my baby. It doesn't seem right.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen. I'll be twenty in a few months.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to raise a child? It's a full-time job. How would you go to college? How could you support the baby and take care of it?”

“I can work. I'd get a job and go nights to finish school. I can go to Portland State.”

“Who would watch the baby while you were working and going to school?”

Norm hadn't thought about that. “My father is on disability. He's home all day.”

“And he's willing to take care of an infant? Have you talked to him, or your mother, about this?”

“No, but they've always stood by me,” Norm answered stubbornly.

“How do you know that this girl won't want the baby?”

“I don't for sure. Like I said, she won't talk to me, so I can't ask her anything. But I know Casey. She's not the type to keep a baby. She likes to party, she's ambitious.”

“You could be wrong about her. Maybe she does want the baby.”

“Then why is she in Europe? And, even if she does want it, wouldn't I still have rights? I'm the father.”

Philips was quiet for a few minutes while he thought about the case. He liked this earnest young man. There weren't many teenage boys who would be willing to give up everything to raise a child.

“Who is Casey's father? Maybe I could talk to them on your behalf.”

“Henry Van Meter.”

Ken Philips blinked. “The Van Meters of Van Meter Industries?”

Norm nodded. “Does that make a difference?”

Philips laughed. “Of course it does. Henry Van Meter is one of the most powerful men in this state and a totally ruthless bastard. If Henry doesn't want you to have custody, there will be a no-holds-barred battle and you will be on his shit list forever.”

Norm's face dropped. He looked pathetic. “So you won't do it?”

Philips shook his head slowly. “I didn't say that.”

He leaned back and rested his chin on his hands. Norm waited,
shifting nervously in his chair. Finally, Philips sat up. He had an idea but he didn't want to discuss it with his young client just yet.

“I need to meet with your parents,” Philips said. “I'm not going any further until I've talked with them.”

Norm had been afraid of this, but he guessed there was no way to avoid it.

“What about the money? Can you tell me what this will cost?”

“Don't worry about my fee right now. You're a minor, and we're not going to do a thing if your folks won't support you.”

“I guess you have to talk to them.”

“You guess right. And there's something else I have to do. Sit tight while I get my camera.”

Anton Brucher clothed his lean, storklike frame in hand-tailored silk suits. His sunken cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes were a testament to the hours he put in on behalf of his clients. Brucher was a hard and humorless advisor with a finely honed intellect and no perceptible morals. He viewed lawyers like Ken Philips, who worked for Communists, Negroes, and the like, with distaste, but he did not underestimate Philips's intelligence.

Henry Van Meter studied Ken Philips with disdain from the end of the conference room. Van Meter's jet-black hair was swept back from his high forehead. His violent eyes and craggy nose warned of a rock-hard temperament and a philosophy that had no room in it for mercy. Henry had fumed at the idea of meeting with Philips, and consented only when Brucher warned him that the lawyer had ruined the lives of several powerful men who had chosen to ignore him.

Brucher, Platt and Heinecken occupied the top two floors in an office building in the heart of Portland. They were meeting in a small conference room located on the second of these floors, in the rear, to lessen the risk of Henry being seen with Philips. When Brucher introduced Norman's lawyer, Van Meter did not extend his hand.

“What is it you want?” Henry asked without preamble.

“A peaceful solution to a difficult problem.”

“I know of no problem that involves me and your client. I'm only here because Anton insisted that I listen to you.”

Philips smiled. “I'm glad there isn't any problem between you and Norman Spencer. He's a fine young man who's only interested in doing what is right. If we can agree to resolve this matter amicably, Norman and your family will benefit.”

“You're being obtuse, Mr. Philips. Please come to the point.”

Philips's head bobbed. “You're right, Mr. Van Meter. Forgive me. I'll be blunt. Norman and your daughter, Casey, had a summer romance. Your daughter became pregnant. Now she's somewhere in Europe, supposedly for a semester abroad, but I'm guessing it has something to do with her pregnancy.