The Wrong Lawyer (11 page)

The phone startled
me awake at eight o’clock on Friday morning.

It was General
Piorkowski’s assistant advising that they had booked me on a flight leaving for
Chicago at noon with a connection on to Syracuse where I would arrive at
eleven-thirty New York time.

I quickly
showered, dressed and packed my sports bag. Since time was a bit short, I checked
out of the Four Queens with no difficulty since the room had been paid for and
I hadn’t incurred any additional charges. There was a long line-up at
Magnolia’s so I grabbed breakfast at McDonald’s in The D Casino and then walked
around to the rear of the Golden Nugget where I managed to catch a shuttle to
the airport.

When my turn in
line came up at the United ticket counter, the first glitch of the day
occurred.

According to the
airline computer, my ticket had been booked several hours ago but had been
cancelled within the last hour.

To make matters
even more complicated, as soon as the attendant swiped my passport in her
machine, my name had just been added to the “DO NOT FLY” list. That unwelcome
development meant that I was again taken into custody, this time by airport
security.

A call to the
General’s assistant was all it took to straighten up the matter and get
rebooked on the flight.

I was permitted to
speak with the assistant, a woman by the name of Lieutenant Anne Burgess, and I
registered my displeasure with the whole scenario.

“Can’t you people
get Special Agent Matthews off his damn computer so that he can’t hit me with
any more of these nasty surprises? I’m sick of getting detained by every
different type of cop in America.”

“I’m so sorry, Mr.
Kennedy, but we don’t know for sure whether he’s even the one causing these
problems. We’re doing everything humanly possible to undo whatever false
messages the perpetrator is posting.”

“Am I ever going
to make it back to Canada, Lieutenant Burgess?”

“We’ll certainly
do whatever we can to get you home safely, Mr. Kennedy. I’ll give you my direct
cell number. Please call me if another glitch develops. Good luck.”

I was permitted to
go through airport security where I made my way to the departure gate.

While waiting for
the flight I couldn’t think of anything other than Matthews and his bag of
dirty tricks.

An idea for a bit
of revenge began to ferment and I went into one of the shops and purchased a
disposable cell phone with $20 of long distance included.

My first call was
to Lieutenant Burgess. Fortunately she answered her cell even though she had no
way of knowing who was calling.

“Hello,
Lieutenant; this is the gentleman to whom you were recently speaking. I won’t
say my name on this line just in case doing so would trigger that other person
to monitor the call. I’ve devised a plan to entrap the gentleman whom I believe
is annoying me. To carry out my strategy, I need you to provide me with that
other gentleman’s direct cell number but please don’t read off the numbers all
at once. State one number and then say some words, then the second number, more
words and so on. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes. Just one
moment while I look up the information you require, sir.”

Ms. Burgess
provided me with Matthews’ direct cell number in the manner I requested.

“Thank you,
Lieutenant. I’m going to call the fellow in question and taunt him that I’m far
too clever for his shallow ruses to be successful. I suspect that doing so will
rile him up and spur him on to devise more impediments to my safe return home.
I’m hoping that your agency will be able to monitor my call to him and his
subsequent calls and thereby catch him in the act of sabotaging me. Does that
sound like something you’ll be able to accomplish?”

“I’ll have to run
it by my boss so can you wait thirty minutes before you make the call. Prior to
making that call, dial my direct cell again and if I answer ‘Bonjour’, then it’s
a go. You can simply hang up without saying anything. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,”
I replied as I terminated the call.

Half an hour later
I heard Burgess answer “Bonjour” when I called her back.

I then called
Special Agent Matthews’ direct cell.

“Special Agent
Harlan D. Matthews,” he answered. “To whom am I speaking?”

“You’re speaking
to your intellectual superior, Matthews. Haven’t I already proven to you that
I’m miles more intelligent than you? There’s no way a mere Ph.D. in computer
science can compete on the same level as an experienced attorney. I bet you’re
the laughing stock around the office after letting that pretty little
prostitute bamboozle you and sneak my letter off to the press hidden in her
boobs. By the way, I hear they’re making you take immediate retirement. What a
shame! I told you that you were picking on the wrong lawyer. Now don’t try any
more of your infantile pranks on me or I’ll humiliate you even worse than I’ve
already done. Enjoy your new found leisure time, dickhead. You’ve lost to the
better man.”

I hung up before
Matthews could respond.

If my little tirade
didn’t piss him off totally, then I had no more of my own tricks up my sleeve.
My only hope was that a jerk like Matthews couldn’t resist responding to my
taunts.

My flight was just
boarding so I proceeded into the line and took my seat on the aircraft.

The flight was
totally uneventful and there were no unexpected complications boarding my
connecting flight to Syracuse.

The plane touched
down as scheduled at eleven-thirty and I carried my sports bag to my car in the
covered parking garage.

It started right
up and I encountered a minor problem at the payment machine at the exit. When I
tried to pay with my credit card, the machine wouldn’t accept it. This was the
first time I had attempted to use my VISA on the trip but it had worked fine
when I originally booked and paid through Expedia. I prefer to pay for most
things on my vacations with cash or traveler’s check.

I backed the car
away from the automatic payment line to the great irritation of the three cars
impatiently waiting behind me, and I got in line for the sole live attendant
where I paid the parking charges in cash.

I suspected that
Matthews was responsible for my useless credit card but he might have made it
invalid much earlier before Homeland Security was monitoring his every move.

It was pitch black
out and began to rain lightly before I had reached Watertown.

About an hour
later I was approaching the Canadian border at Hill Island in the Thousand
Islands.

As I waited in the
short line to enter Canada, a feeling of relief hit me.

In another couple
of minutes I would be safely back in my own normal country away from the
insanity that had infected our once invulnerable mighty neighbor to the south
because of its fixation with terrorism.

Alas, a smooth
entry into Canada was not in the cards.

As soon as the
customs agent swiped my passport, all Hell broke loose.

Sirens went off
and armed agents rushed out of the building and surrounded my vehicle.

A cacophony of
stressed voices ordered me to get out of the car with my hands held where they
could be seen.

How was that even
possible?

Did they expect me
to open the door with my penis?

Since my window
was wide open, I shouted, “Make up your damn minds. Do you want me to raise my
hands or open the fucking door?”

I was flaming
angry.

One of the agents
grasped the door handle and yanked the door open, almost tearing the rusty old
thing off its hinges.

“Undo my seat
belt,” I barked.

He was most
reluctant to do so, almost as if he expected me to decapitate him if he got any
closer.

“Do it yourself,”
he snarled back at me.

Slowly and
deliberately I brought my hand down to the release button and pushed it.

That caused the
seat belt to retract quickly and the movement spooked one of the nearby agents
whose weapon fired.

I swore that I
heard the bullet whoosh past my face before it embedded itself in the passenger
door with a loud clunk.

“You assholes are
going to pay to fix that,” I shouted as I laboriously attempted to exit my
vehicle with both my hands spread out in front of me.

As soon as my feet
were on the pavement, many hands grabbed me in unison and threw me to the
ground. My arms were painfully wrenched behind my back as handcuffs were
tightened so intensely that I cried out in pain.

I was roughly
dragged back up on my feet while a swarm of agents blanketed my car.

All four doors
were flung open and then the trunk was released.

“She’s not in here,”
the first agent to examine the trunk yelled.

“There’s no one in
the back seat either,” another agent hollered.

“What have you
done with her, you disgusting pervert?” a third agent shouted.

“I married her,” I
yelled back insolently.

That inappropriate
comment earned me a hard stab in my stomach with a night stick and I doubled
over in pain.

The strange
thought ran through my mind that these Canadian border agents were more violent
than their American counterparts.

I was dragged
unceremoniously into the main building where I was thrown into a chair inside
an office. Half a dozen border agents stuffed in after me.

Desperately
wanting to get back at these thugs, my mind wouldn’t function properly, and all
I could muster to throw them off their game was the completely irrelevant
comment, “I’ll have a Mama burger, onion rings and a vanilla shake, bozos.”

At that point a
fat woman entered the office and immediately took charge. She showed me my
passport.

“Is this you?”

“Yes; just because
the photo makes me look like a hardened criminal doesn’t mean I am one, lady.”

Canadian passport
and driver’s license pictures were notoriously demeaning. Regulations required
that the subject’s mouth be kept fully closed with no hint of a smile. As a
result the photos were practically unrecognizable.

“Are you carrying
other identification?”

“Yes, my wallet is
in my right hand pants’ pocket and there’s additional ID inside.”

“May I retrieve
your wallet?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

She carefully
extracted the wallet and began rifling through it. I watched her examine my
Ontario driver’s license, my VISA card and my CAA member card.

Then she began
sifting through the items in the other slot in my wallet. Most of the stuff in
that side was junk.

She held up a
business card on the back of which was taped a Canadian twenty dollar bill and
a key.

“What is this key
for?” the lady inquired.

“It’s a spare key
for the Chevy in case I lock myself out.”

Finally she
examined the business card and I swear that her face paled.

“Whose card is
this?”

“It’s mine. I’m a
lawyer. You cretins picked the wrong lawyer to manhandle. I want the full names
of each of the agents who dragged me out of my vehicle, especially the idiot
who fired a round past my face into the passenger door. I need to know exactly
who I’m going to sue over this fiasco.”

“When your
passport was swiped at the border kiosk, it triggered a warning that the
document was phony and that the person purporting to use it was a serial killer
who had abducted a five year old girl an hour ago in Watertown. Where were you
an hour ago?”

“Driving through
Watertown, I imagine. It’s about fifty miles south of here.”

“Where’s the
little girl?”

“If you call the
telephone number on a piece of paper in my other pocket, the lady at Homeland
Security who answers can probably satisfy you that the warning you received is
fake and that I am who I say I am. It’s highly unlikely that any young girl has
in fact been kidnapped in Watertown.”

“Why would such a
fake warning be posted?”

“It’s a state
secret. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

I said that with a
perfectly straight face.

It was possible
that the fat lady thought that I was some kind of nut job but she fished around
in my pocket and pulled out the piece of paper along with some Kleenex and a
few American coins.

She used the phone
in this office to make the call. It rang a few times before the Lieutenant
answered it.

After a
conversation which lasted several minutes, my handcuffs were removed and I was
permitted to speak with Ms. Burgess.

I filled her in on
the missed gunshot and the physical manhandling by the border agents.

“Please tell me
that you can nail the Special Agent for this final insult,” I said with an
exasperated tone of voice.

“We’ll have to do
some intensive analysis of his computers and telephones first. We’ll keep you
informed. In the meantime, you will be permitted to enter Canada shortly so
that you may continue on home. You’ve been a very good sport about this, Mr.
Kennedy. Please don’t contemplate any further actions until our investigation
is complete. At that time we can discuss the situation in greater detail. It
may take an hour or so before we can e-mail the appropriate verification to the
Canadian border authorities so that they may release you. Please be patient,
sir, and drive safely.”

In fact within
thirty minutes I was the recipient of an effusive apology from the large female
supervisor and I was allowed to enter Canada.

Half an hour later
I was on the elevator heading up to my apartment.