The Attorney (11 page)

The guy disappears behind the bar and a second later he's on the phone, talking to somebody. I can see his lips moving. It's a quick conversation and he hangs up.

"He got busy with some chores. Forgot the time. He'll be over in a minute. Go ahead and sit down. Can I get you a drink?" It's a little early, so I order a Virgin Mary. "Easy on the Tabasco," I tell him.

I sit and study the decor. It's rustic contemporary, lots of wood on the interior, tables set with sturdy wooden chairs in the lounge.

The restaurant is to the rear, where a large wall of windows and a sliding glass door frame a deck for outdoor dining. This merges with the dock and the slips beyond. Outside umbrellaed tables are full of people extending the lunch hour, enjoying the bobbing masts and cool breezes off the harbor.

A waitress returns with my drink. Just then I see a figure moving like a comet leaving a tail, dropping socks and then a shoe as he hops between tables out on the deck. He still has one shoe in his hand when he reaches the sliding door.

He is short and stubby, more than a little overweight, in Bermuda shorts that reach halfway to his ankles so that he has the look of a comic pirate. He wears a wrinkled polo shirt that does little to disguise his bulging Buddha belly. From the look of his tousled dark hair, I judge he has only moments before pulled it over his head.

As he comes through the sliding door he leans against the frame. Still fighting with the one wayward shoe, he surveys the people inside. It takes him only a second to figure I'm the one he's looking for. By the time he makes it to my table, the only thing amiss is the shoelaces dragging in his wake.

"Mr. Madriani." His smile struggles to be disarming, and instead he comes off looking like an elf who slept with Santa's wife on Christmas Eve. His teeth are a little uneven, flashing white set against a deep tan and an even darker five-o'clock shadow. "Sorry," he says. "I got tied up."

"So I gathered. Name's Paul." I offer my hand and he shakes it, a firm grip.

"Joaquin Murphy," he says. "You can call me Murph.

Everybody else does."

"Murph it is. Have a seat." He's a bucket of sweat.

"I thought we'd go to my place. Out back," he says. "Little more privacy there."

"Whatever. Can I get you something to drink?" The waitress has now joined us.

"Corona," he says. "And Rosie, make it to go." He has one foot on the chair next to mine trying to tie his shoelace. There are smudges of grease and oil on his forearms, and his fingernails look as if he has been using them to plow the back forty.

"Been waiting long?"

"No." He notices me looking at his arms.

"You own a boat, you get like this," he says. "I was workin' on a bilge pump. Time got away from me. If it isn't one thing, it's another.

Ever owned one? A boat?"

"I've missed that pleasure," I tell him.

"Unless you're handy, into maintenance, you don't want one.

Either do it yourself, or pay through the nose. When it's floating, maintenance isn't something you can let go. Not like a house.

Spring a leak in your plumbing at home, you get a little dry rot. Do it on a boat, and you find yourself at the bottom of the slip." He's now wiping grease off the back of one of his hands with one of the linen napkins from the table.

The \ waitress arrives. He takes the chilled bottle of beer from the girl. We order sandwiches. "They'll deliver," he says. I peel off some bills from my money clip and we walk.

I follow Murphy, drinks in hand, out the back through the sliding door, across the deck and down the dock. He is three slips down, in the direction of the boatyard, which I can now see jutting out into the marina, some sparks flying from an are welder in the shadows.

He grabs a line to balance himself as he walks cleanly under the bowsprit of a large sailboat, twin masted. If I had to guess, I'd say at least forty feet.

I have to duck to join him.

The Money Pit is larger than I'd imagined, a wood hull, shiplap, a vintage vessel. In the stern I can see a large teak wheel in the cockpit under a green canvas bimini. The boat is painted Kelly green with dark trim and a teak deck. It is meticulously outfitted, brass fittings and neatly coiled white sheets, lines to work the sails. The brightwork gleams so that I can nearly see my image in the marine varnish.

"My office," says Murph.

"Investigations must pay well."

"That, some investments, and a rich uncle," he says. "This is mostly the uncle." He takes a sip from the bottle as we stand on the dock and admire.

"She was built in the early thirties for some bootlegger. When I found her, she was in bad shape. Fortunately, there wasn't enough metal to justify the salvage yard. The only reason she survived," he says.

"Labor of love," I tell him. "It's beautiful."

"She is gorgeous, even if I say so myself." He talks as if the boat were alive, then leads me up the gangway onto the deck and along the side of the house that juts up in the center of the boat like a miniature cottage with a pitched roof. This has six round portholes running the length to provide light down into what I imagine is the salon and cabins below.

Murphy turns the corner and sidles through the sliding hatch door, then skips down a ladder. For a short, fat man, still dragging a loose shoestring, he possesses a degree of agility that is deceptive.

I follow him into the spacious interior.

The salon is paneled in dark mahogany, the floor polished teak, and above it all is a low curving ceiling, a grid work of varnished beams beneath the open canopy of the house where shafts of light stream in through the portholes overhead.

"Sit down. Get comfortable." He nods toward one of the benches that line the inside of the hull as he searches and finds a small notebook and pencil at a built-in desk.

I sit and put my drink in a cup holder.

Murphy takes the desk and places the bottle of beer on top of an unfurled chart where the chilled glass deposits a round watermark.

"Like I told you on the phone," he says. "I don't do much domestic stuff. Wouldn't have taken the case except Fred Hawkins referred you. I do a lot: of personal injury for Fred."

"I would think divorces would be a Pi's lifeblood."

"Not this one. It's a good way to get shot. Angry husbands kill more people than the mob."

"I'll put your mind at ease. There's no husband involved in this one. I don't do family law work myself."

"So what got you involved?"

"A friend with a problem."

"Not the money?"

"A rich friend." This news has a leavening effect on Murphy. It generates some interest in note taking. He sweeps papers off his desk and sharpens his pencil, jamming it into the little hole in the electric device until I can barely see the eraser.

"Tell me about your client." I had sent Murphy a check for a thousand dollars, drawn against my client trust account, a retainer from Jonah.

Murphy is working at two hundred dollars an hour plus expenses, mileage and meals if he has to travel, hotels if he is overnight.

"As far as you're concerned, I'm your client."

"Fine by me," he says. "I'll work against the retainer. Bill you after that." This gives me the argument that whatever Murphy does is sheltered, privileged as attorney work-product, and not subject to discovery if I have to get into a courtroom with Suade.

I had decided long before this moment to share information about Jonah only on a need-to-know basis. When you have the prospect of eighty million dollars sitting in timed accounts, friends and benefactors tend to crop up like mold on rancid cheese.

"Have you had a chance to check into the woman I told you about on the phone?"

"Some," he says. "Made a few inquiries. Very discreet regarding this Zolanda Suade. Pulled what I could from Lexis--Nexis, the internet.

Whether what she does is legal or not I'll leave to the lawyers. One thing's certain: She doesn't shrink from talking about it in the press."

"You found a lot of news stories?"

"Enough newsprint to take out the Black Forest."

"Anything of interest? Let's start with background."

"According to my information, she's been in the area about twelve years.

Out of Ohio originally, result of a bad marriage and a pissed-off husband who threatened to kill her--after he gets out of prison."

"He may have to get in line," I tell Murphy.

"Yeah, people tend to get angry when you steal their kids," he says.

"Anyway, the husband's doing twelve to twenty for rape and child molestation. Apparently that all happened after she divorced him. She was not the rapee, though she claims he used force to have his way with her during the marriage on more than a few occasions."

"Any children?" He thumbs through his notes. "Not that turned up in any of the reports." So far he's batting 900. I can only assume that the death of the son is a sore point and the one thing that Suade does not talk about to the press.

"According to Suade, she filed complaints with the cops about his beating on her. They did nothing. This appears to have built up more than a little resentment toward the authorities on Suade's part." He looks at me as if to see whether this is the kind of stuff I am looking for.

"I'd heard that she has little use for the courts and the custom processes of the law. Which brings me to another subject. Has she ever done jail time?" Something I am thinking that might not be on Lexisnexis.

"No record of convictions, if that's what you mean. Closest she came, she did a few nights for contempt, before her lawyer sprang her. She wouldn't have done that except the kid she snatched belonged to a judge."

"Davidson?"

"You knew about that?" His expression sags like a child with a secret that everybody knows. "You could be wasting your money hiring me."

"The devil's in the details," I tell him with a smile.

Brad Davidson is the presiding judge of the San Diego Superior Court.

Two years ago he was on the bench hearing criminal cases when his estranged wife disappeared with his son and a pile of cash that was waiting to be divided up in a divorce proceeding. He hasn't seen the kid, his wife, or the money since.

"I had heard he held Suade in contempt."

"He did more than that," says Murphy. "He issued a bench warrant.

Had her arrested and summarily hauled off the street into his courtroom where he did everything but wire her nipples to electrodes.

All in front of his bailiff, who had a gun strapped on his hip.

"When Suade didn't blink, he had her put in the bucket and played hide the pea for about three days, moving her from one facility to another so her lawyers couldn't find her. Each move was a new experience in cavity searches. Even put her in the federal metro lockup for twenty-four hours before her lawyer figured it out and sprung her on a writ. The county is still trying to deal with the fallout."

"What fallout?"

"A twenty-million-dollar lawsuit for false imprisonment.

Davidson had no jurisdiction for anything. The warrant was based on a lot of surmise, no witnesses who saw Suade take the kid. It's like your kid disappears and, knowing Suades reputation, you check her house first."

"I understand the judge's attitude. What happened to Davidson?"

"According to the reports, he came close to losing his judicial wings.

The commission that reviews such things considered his long service on the bench and the fact that his son had been kidnapped.

They let him off with a formal reprimand and a few hundred hours of community service. Word is he's still doing penance at some women's shelter in South Bay two nights a week.

"As for Suade, she still has her claws into the county with a team of lawyers working on contingency to push local government into bankruptcy.

According to the reports, she has the rapt attention of the county council."

"They're worried about the suit?"

"You could say that. They're self-insured. May have to take a loan from the state if she nails 'em. The board of supervisors has been doing belly dances up in the capitol to keep the lines of credit open.

"Funny thing is, Suade doesn't seem to be motivated by money.

I checked her credit rating. There are people living in cardboard boxes using racing forms for wallpaper I'd sooner make a loan to."

"She's broke?"

"She's got a dozen judgments outstanding. None of 'em satisfied, all of them by pissed-off husbands and their lawyers. Infliction of emotional distress. Conversion of personal property. You name it.

Most of them taken by default. She doesn't show up in court. Not to defend anyway. Everything she owns is in her husband's name."

"She's married?" Murph's batting average is back to a thousand.

Something Susan omitted to tell me.

"You sound surprised." From everything I'd heard, I just assumed she hated men."

"Apparently not this one. New addition to her life. Three years ago."

Murphy looks at his notes. "His name is Harold Morgan. She kept her maiden name, at least for publicity purposes. He's a mortgage banker.

Conservative. Christian right. Good at business. His credit report shows some considerable net worth. Heavily into real estate development.

According to the reports--of course this is Suade telling the reporters," he says, "new hubby saved her from a life of bitterness after her first marriage failed."

"Apparently he's not a total success," I tell him.

"Can't win 'em all," says Murphy.

"What does he think of his wife's activities?"

"Oh, he supports her. Thinks she's doing God's work. Saving neglected children and their abused mothers from a corrupt court system. But his support, according to the stories, is limited to the moral variety, having his picture taken with his arm around her. So far, none of the lawyers chasing his wife has been able to tag any of his assets to satisfy the judgments against her. They can't show any involvement on his part in her business. And the business is always veiled behind a corporate shield. She operates three of these at present, all in the red. She's had as many as eight going at one time.