Young Squatters (9 page)

The kids had been smart enough not to use any of her dishes or cookware, but that hadn’t stopped them from leaving their own dirty dishes in the sink and a mess at the oven.  The smells of pancake mix and charred bacon grease had filled the air.  Nora felt like she wanted to vomit, and thought about running to the bathroom to do so, or perhaps just vomiting in the sink on top of these stupid kids’ dishware would have been the better idea, driving them away.  Instead, she took out her phone, taking pictures of it all.  Perhaps the police would take their side of the story more seriously if they saw the damage these two young, uncaring ruffians were doing to their home.

Nora hurried to grab a yogurt out of the stainless steel fridge, her own, handpicked fridge.  She made sure the contents hadn’t been tampered with, that the packaging had stayed untouched.  She had no idea what type of things those kids would try to keep hold of her home.  She grabbed her keys and drew on her jacket, tears filling her eyes as she turned away from the mess.

She hadn’t tried contacting Nick yet, especially after their fight last night, but Millie had assured her that she would do everything in her power to help.  She wasn’t entirely sure if she trusted the town gossip with such a task, but the sentiment seemed sincere, and for that Nora was grateful.

She still, perhaps foolishly, held out hope that Nick would figure everything out.

Her gut feeling—and her parents’ voices in the back of her head—told her otherwise.

***

Derek Pakiz looked over the notes he’d taken, shaking his head slowly.  “I don’t know, Nick.  They’ve got a written agreement and a key, they’re not destroying the place, they’re not hurting or threatening anybody, they’re not stealing anything.  They’ve got what we call ‘color of title.’ I don’t know what we can do except take them to court.”

Nick paced around his lawyer’s office, loosening his tie around his neck.  He was supposed to have been at a meeting, but instead he was here in his lawyer’s well-decorated office.  He knew he was going to lose the Geyer deal, now.  Months of work and six-hundred-thousand dollars all gone to waste unless his idiot Senior Editor could handle the negotiations, which wasn’t likely at all.  He had turned his phone on silent, but he had felt it buzzing against his leg most nonstop for the past hour.

All because of those damned kids.  That punk-ass drug dealer and his too-young girlfriend, who both now lived out their uselessness lives in the comfort of someone else’s home—his home.

If they lost the deal, he was considering taking out a lawsuit on the two kids.  If it hadn’t been for them he would have been sipping champagne shortly, celebrating the deal.  But instead, he was sitting here in his lawyer’s office, listening to Derek give him all the reasons he couldn’t do anything.

Nick had always put his job first and it infuriated him that he was missing the most important deal of his career, and instead had to sort out this mess.  But his relationship with Nora and his kids was important, too, and he didn’t want to let them down.

Now he turned to Derek.  “What the hell is ‘color of title’ supposed to mean?”

Derek shrugged helplessly.  “It means they
seem
to have a legitimate right to be there.  Their driver’s licenses check out, I checked with the D.M.V.  They changed their addresses legally about a week and a half ago, right after this email agreement was sent.  I haven’t been able to get hold of whoever posted the ad on Craigslist, but it was posted more than a month ago.  There’s email correspondence back and forth between the posting of the ad and the boy…”

He looked at his notes again.  “Bradford Whitney.  Junior at the university, no priors. Got busted once for holding a keg party at his father’s house when he was a senior in high school, but no charges filed. The cops let him off with a warning and remanded him to his father.  Bank records show that he submitted a payment of twelve hundred dollars to a PayPal account after closing the deal with the Craigslist poster, who identified himself to the kids as ‘James Banks.’ According to the email records, they even did a tour of your house before signing the deal.  This Banks fellow says in an email that he sent his assistant, Molly, to meet them at the house and let them in for the tour.”

“When the hell did they do that?”  The more Nick heard about all this, the more furious he became.

If Derek did not get this resolved today and tell him how they were going to get the two kids out, he would never hear the end of it from Nora.

Derek looked at the notes again.  “Uhm…Labor Day weekend?”

Nick trolled his memory.

He suddenly remembered the weekend clearly now.  Nora had been bugging him for ages to take a break from work and for them to have some family time together.  The four of them had taken a long weekend break and gone away on that Friday, returning home on Monday evening.

“Fuck.  We were up at the lake that weekend.”

“So they could have been in the house and you wouldn’t have known?  No signs of forced entry?”

Nick thought back and could not remember there being anything odd or being out of place when they had returned on Monday evening.

“No, there was nothing like that.  You really think they were in the house?  Inside
our
house?”

Derek shrugged again.  “Says they were in the emails.”  He looked at Nick with sympathy.  “Of course, they might have just said that in the email.  You know, to create an aura of legitimacy.”

“Would it help if we asked around?  Surely our neighbors would have seen them if they were inside our home?”

As Nick’s words came out of his mouth he knew it would be no good.

“I know, I know,” he said, holding up a hand to stop Derek from protesting. “Nearly everyone in the neighborhood would have been doing something on Labor day and no one would have been sitting at home, so it wouldn’t make any difference if they had come or not.  If I had the time…”  he trailed off, waving away the thought.  He hardly knew anyone in the neighborhood, anyway; Nora was more of a socialite, but even she hadn’t made any special connections with anyone as far as he knew.

Nick felt so angry, even though they were only kids they were clever to have chosen a day where everyone was out doing something.

“Sit down, Nick,” Derek said.  “You’re making me dizzy with all that pacing.  I know this is upsetting....”

Nick didn’t want to hear any of that bullshit.  Derek, with his multi-million dollar law firm, couldn’t have possibly known how Nick or his family felt.  He would have paid to see Derek in this same situation, with his wife and daughter.  He’d been to their house on multiple occasions, having worked with Derek in several instances doing business.  He didn’t think Derek or his family would take very kindly to some good-for-nothing people taking over their very nice home.

“What about Sarah’s testimony?” he asked Derek, not obeying the lawyer’s instructions as he continued to pace about the office.  “She says Bradford’s real name is Peter something.  Can’t that lead you to doing something?”

He glanced out the huge window in the office.  Derek had one of the best views of the city. Cars drove by outside, and people looked like ants.  Nick had always felt powerful from this vantage point.  Like he could simply reach out and move people and cars and buildings and rearrange them to what suited him.  At one point in his life, he had actually felt like he would be able to do that, when he got enough money, enough connections, and enough power.

He knew now that simply wasn’t the case.  Everything, including his own life, was out of his control.

Derek looked through some of the papers on his desk, thinking.  Finally, he simply shrugged.

“Sarah’s testimony won’t hold up in court, Nick.  Sure, she’s an eyewitness who could testify against him, but there is no other proof besides some pictures that she claims exists.”

“Can’t you tell the police to do anything?”

Again, Derek shrugged.  Nick felt a surge of desperation and frustration rise up inside of him.

“I don’t know,” Derek said, “I can tell them to run a background check on him again, of course.  Without a last name or any solid evidence, it’s going to take them months to get through all the paperwork we need to convince a judge that Bradford Whitney is Peter something or other, a high profile drug criminal from another state.”

“Why can’t they just make this a priority case, for God’s sake?” Nick roared, slamming his hand down on Derek’s big desk.

Derek rolled his chair back a few paces, gripping the sides of it.

“Nick, not one person is getting hurt in all of this.  You aren’t being threatened.”

“Our whole life is being threatened!” Nick said, feeling the heat in his cheeks rise.  “These kids are living in
my
home, Derek!”

“Calm down, calm down,” he said.  “I’ll see what I can do, of course.  I just know how the police department works here.  They’re backed up with real priority cases, you know...”

“This is a priority case!” Nick cried, biting into his knuckle so hard that it hurt so he wouldn’t end up exploding.

Derek said nothing, letting Nick cool down a little.  Nick looked back out the window, finding storm clouds in the distance. 

“Fuck,” Nick swore.  “So, what the hell? How do I get them arrested?”

Derek shook his head.  “That’s what I’m telling you, Nick.  They haven’t committed any obvious crimes.  You might be able to charge them with fraud, but the D.A. would need to see some evidence to even start an investigation.  Until there’s some evidence of a crime, this isn’t a criminal case.  The only thing you can do is start eviction proceedings in civil court, and hope for the best.”

Derek looked at Nick’s face and could tell from his reaction he was not going to take this lying down.

“But they’re in our fucking house, Derek!”

“I know, Nick, I understand that.  But they
seem
to have a right to be there.  You know, in the eyes of the law and all that.  You have to prove that they don’t.  And that means eviction proceedings in civil court.”

“I’ve got a damn mortgage!  I’ve got the deed to the house!”

Nick was livid, it was taking all of his strength to stop himself from completely losing it and get violent.

“That only proves that you own it.  It doesn’t prove they don’t have a right to be there.  And they’re not wrecking the place, right?”

“What the hell am I paying you for?”  Nick pounded Derek’s mahogany desk again, with such force that he thought his hand might break.  They’d been in business together a long time; Derek’s firm handled all of the publishing company’s legal matters, but Nick had never imagined him being so useless, so uncompassionate, so cold.  Derek knew Nick’s family, had known them for a long time.

Derek looked at Nick and had known this was coming.  He sat back, still unruffled, and put his hands in the air.

“Take it easy, Nick.  I’m on your side.  You pay me to tell you the law.  The law says that you have to prove they don’t belong there.  You want to bang on someone’s desk,” he hooked his thumb at the window, “you can jog down to the State Assembly and take it up with them.  I don’t write the laws.”

Nick slumped down in a chair and put his face in his hands.  This was becoming a damned nightmare.  Nora had been crawling up his back about it.  She was afraid to sleep with strangers in the house.  His own kids had already moved out, fearing for their safety.  What would it take to get the intruders out of the house?

If he didn’t resolve this soon he would be in serious trouble not only with Nora, but also with his job.  The stress of this was already taking its toll on him missing today’s meeting.  He wasn’t going to let it affect the rest of his work and let all he’d worked for slip through his fingers.

“What if I just change the locks, you know, lock them out of the house?”

Nick thought this would be the most practical solution and would resolve the problem immediately.

“You can’t, Nick, that’s illegal.”  The lawyer held up his hand and started counting off his fingers.  “You can’t physically remove or lock them out, cut off the utilities, remove outside windows or doors, or take their belongings.  You’ll be liable for damages to their belongings, or the court can fine you up to one hundred dollars
per day
until the locks are changed back or the utilities turned back on.  Not to mention whatever costs you incur for taking whatever actions you’re thinking about.”

As Nick sat there listening to Derek, he could not believe what he was hearing and was infuriated even more.

“It’s
my
damn house, Derek!  What if I just chased them out with a baseball bat?  Or a gun?  This is a ‘stand-your-ground’ state, isn’t it?  What about the Castle defense?  I heard that on the news.  A man’s home is his castle and all that.” 

Nick did own a gun, a small pistol that he kept in his desk drawer even though he thought they were dangerous, and he was seriously starting to consider using it.  The thought frightened him, and exhilarated him.  Nora wanted a Mr. Fix It—that would fix things, wouldn’t it?  It’d get those kids out of their house once and for all.

He could imagine himself taking the pistol out of his drawer, in the dark of night.  His fingers closed over the handle, then the trigger.  He walked down the familiar path to the basement.  He opened the door, and with a soft creak, he was inside.  He found Bradford first, sitting there with that smug smirk on his face, a face that had seen too much and knew too much, more than he would ever let on...