Текст книги "Sycamore Row"
Автор книги: John Grisham
Соавторы: John Grisham
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 35 страниц)
Jake, holding the bottle, said, “We don’t keep alcohol in the house.”
“Sorry,” Portia said, embarrassed. “I’ll be happy to take it home.”
“Why don’t we just drink it?” Carla asked. A great idea. As Jake rummaged for a corkscrew, the women moved to the stove and looked at dinner. Portia said she’d rather eat than cook, though she had learned a lot about food in Europe. She had also grown fond of Italian wines, bottles of which were scarce in Ford County. “You’ll have to go to Memphis,” Jake said, still searching. Carla had thrown together a pasta sauce with spicy sausage, and as it simmered she began practicing with a few elementary sentences in German. Portia responded slowly, sometimes repeating, often correcting. Hanna heard the strange words and came from the rear of the house. She was introduced to their guest, who greeted her with “Ciao.”
“What does ‘ciao’ mean?” Hanna asked.
“Among friends it means hello and good-bye in Italian, also in Portuguese, I think,” Portia said. “It’s a lot easier than ‘guten Tag’ or ‘bonjour.’ ”
“I know some words in German,” Hanna said. “My mother taught me.”
“We’ll practice later,” Carla said.
Jake found an old corkscrew and managed to wrestle the bottle open. “We once had real wineglasses,” Carla said as she pulled out three cheap water goblets. “Like everything else, they went up in the fire.” Jake poured; they clinked glasses, said “Cheers,” and sat at the kitchen table. Hanna left them and went to her room.
“Do you talk about the fire?” Portia asked.
“Not much,” Jake said. Carla shook her head slightly and looked away. “However, if you’ve seen the paper, you know that one of the thugs is now back on the streets, or somewhere around here.”
“I saw that,” Portia said. “Twenty-seven months.”
“Yep. Granted, he didn’t light the match, but he was in on the planning.”
“Does it worry you, now that he’s out?”
“Of course it does,” Carla said. “We sleep with guns around here.”
“Dennis Yawkey doesn’t bother me that much,” Jake said. “He’s just a stupid little punk who was trying to impress some other guys. Plus, Ozzie is watching him like a hawk. One bad move, and Yawkey goes back to Parchman. I’m more concerned with the bad boys out there who’ve never been nailed. There were a lot of men, some local, some not, who were involved. Only four have been prosecuted.”
“Five if you count Blunt,” Carla said.
“He hasn’t been prosecuted. Blunt was the Klucker who tried to blow up the house a week before they burned it. He currently resides at the state mental hospital where he’s doing a good job of acting crazy.”
Carla stood and went to the stove where she stirred the sauce and turned on the burner to boil the water.
“I’m sorry,” Portia said softly. “Didn’t mean to bring up an unpleasant subject.”
“It’s okay,” Jake said. “Tell us about Italy. We’ve never been there.”
Over dinner, she talked about her travels throughout Italy, Germany, France, and the rest of Europe. As a high school student, she had made the decision to see the world, and to get as far away from Mississippi as possible. The Army gave her the chance, and she took full advantage of it. After boot camp, her top three choices were Germany, Australia, and Japan. While stationed at Ansbach, she spent her money on railway passes and student hostels, often traveling alone as she saw every country from Sweden to Greece. She was stationed on Guam for a year, but missed the history and culture, and especially the food and wines, of Europe, and managed a transfer.
Jake had been to Mexico and Carla had been to London. For their fifth anniversary, they saved and scraped together enough money for a low-budget trip to Paris, one they still talked about. Beyond those trips, they had been homebound. If they were lucky, they sprang for a week at the beach at Destin in the summer. Listening to Portia trot the globe made them envious. Hanna was mesmerized. “You’ve seen the pyramids?” she asked at one point.
Indeed she had; in fact, it seemed as though Portia had seen everything. The bottle was empty after the salads, and they needed more wine. Instead, Carla poured iced tea and they managed to finish the meal. After Hanna was in bed, they sipped decaf coffee, ate cookies, and talked about worldly matters.
Of Lettie and the will and its related issues, not one word was uttered.
20
Ancil Hubbard was no longer Ancil Hubbard. The old name and self had been discarded in a hurry years earlier when a pregnant woman found him and made allegations and demands. She wasn’t the first to cause him trouble, or a name change. There was an abandoned wife in Thailand, some jealous husbands here and there, the IRS, some type of police in at least three countries, and a cranky drug dealer in Costa Rica. And these were just the most memorable highlights of a chaotic and sloppily lived life, one he would have happily traded long ago for something more traditional. But traditional was not in the cards for Ancil Hubbard.
He was working in a bar in Juneau, Alaska, in a seedy section of town where sailors and deckhands and roustabouts gathered to drink and shoot dice and blow off steam. A couple of ferocious bouncers kept the peace, but it was always fragile. He went by Lonny, a name he’d noticed in an obituary in a newspaper in Tacoma two years earlier. Lonny Clark. Lonny knew how to game the system, and if Lonny had so chosen he could have obtained a Social Security number, a driver’s license in any state he wanted, even a passport. But Lonny was playing it safe, and there were no records of his existence in any government file or computer. He did not exist, though he had some fake papers in the event he got cornered. He worked in bars because he was paid in cash. He rented a room in a flophouse down the street and paid cash. He rode bikes and buses, and if he needed to vanish, which was always a possibility, he would pay cash for a Greyhound ticket and flash a fake driver’s license. Or hitchhike, something he’d done for a million miles.
He worked behind the bar and studied every person who came and went. Thirty years on the run and you learn how to watch, to look, to catch the prolonged glance, to spot someone who doesn’t fit. Because his misdeeds involved no bodily harm to others, nor did they, regretfully, involve huge sums of money, there was a good chance he wasn’t being chased at all. Lonny was a small-time operator whose principal weakness was an attraction to flawed women. No real crime there. There were some crimes—petty drug dealing, pettier gunrunning—but, hell, a man’s gotta make a living somehow. Perhaps a couple of his crimes were more serious. Nonetheless, after a lifetime of drifting, he had become accustomed to looking over his shoulder.
The crimes were now behind him, as were the women, for the most part. At sixty-six, Lonny was accepting the fact that a fading libido might just be a good thing after all. It kept him out of trouble, kept him focused on other things. He dreamed of buying a fishing boat, though it would be impossible to save enough from his meager earnings. Because of his nature and habits, he often thought of pulling one last drug deal, one grand slam that would net him a bundle and set him free. Prison, though, terrified him. At his age, and caught with the quantity he was dreaming about, he would die behind bars. And, he hated to admit, his previous drug deals had not gone well.
No thanks. He was happy tending bar, chatting up sailors and hookers and dispensing well-earned advice. He closed the bar each morning at 2:00 and walked, half-sober, to his cramped room where he lay on a dirty bed and recalled with great nostalgia his days on the open seas, first in the Navy and later on cruise ships, yachts, even tankers. When you have no future, you live in the past, and Lonny would be stuck there forever.
He never thought about Mississippi, or his childhood there. As soon as he left, he somehow trained his mind to instantly negate any thoughts of the place. Like the click of a camera, he changed scenery and images effortlessly, and after decades he had convinced himself that he had never lived there at all. His life began when he was sixteen; nothing happened before then.
Nothing at all.
Early on his second morning of captivity, and not long after a breakfast of cold scrambled eggs and even colder white toast, Booker Sistrunk was fetched from his cell and led, without restraints, over to the office of the high sheriff. He went inside while a deputy waited at the door. Ozzie greeted him warmly and asked if he would like fresh coffee. Indeed he did. Ozzie also offered fresh doughnuts, and Sistrunk dove right in.
“You can be out in two hours if you want to,” Ozzie said. Sistrunk listened. “All’s you gotta do is walk into court and apologize to Judge Atlee. You’ll be in Memphis long before lunch.”
“I kinda like it here,” Sistrunk said with a mouth full.
“No, Booker, what you like is this.” Ozzie slid across the Memphis paper. Front page, Metro, beneath the fold, a stock photo under a headline that read, SISTRUNK DENIED FEDERAL HABEAS RELIEF; REMAINS BEHIND BARS IN CLANTON. He read it slowly as he chomped on another doughnut. Ozzie noticed a slight grin.
“Another day, another headline, huh Booker? Is that all you’re after here?”
“I’m fighting for my client, Sheriff. Good versus evil. I’m surprised you can’t see that.”
“I see everything, Booker, and this is what’s obvious. You’re not gonna handle this case in front of Judge Atlee. Period. You’ve ripped it with him and he’s tired of you and your foolishness. Your name’s on his shit list and it’s not comin’ off.”
“No problem, Sheriff. I’m taking it to federal court.”
“Sure, you can file some bullshit civil rights crap in federal court, but it won’t stick. I’ve talked to some lawyers, some guys who do federal work, and they say you’re full of shit. Look, Booker, you can’t bully these judges down here the way you can in Memphis. We got three federal judges here in the Northern District. One’s a former Chancellor, like Atlee. One’s an ex–district attorney, and one used to be a federal prosecutor. All white. All fairly conservative. And you think you can walk into federal court down here and start slingin’ all your racist shit, and somebody’s gonna buy it. You’re a fool.”
“And you’re not a lawyer, Mr. Sheriff. But thanks for the legal advice anyway. It’ll be forgotten by the time I get back to my cell.”
Ozzie rocked back and flung his feet upon his desk, his cowboy boots impressive with a new shine. He gazed at the ceiling, frustrated, and said, “You’re makin’ it easy for the white folks to hate Lettie Lang, you know that, Booker?”
“She’s black. They hated her long before I came to town.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve been elected twice by the white folks in this county. Most of them are good people. They’ll give Lettie a fair shake, or at least they would have until you showed up. Now it’s black versus white and we don’t have the votes. You’re an idiot, you know that, Booker? I don’t know what kinda law you do up in Memphis, but it ain’t workin’ down here.”
“Thanks for the coffee and doughnuts. Can I go now?”
“Please go.”
Sistrunk stood and walked to the door, where he stopped and said, “By the way, I’m not sure your jail complies with federal law.”
“Sue me.”
“A lot of violations.”
“It might get worse.”
Portia was back before noon. She waited and chatted with Roxy while Jake finished a long phone call, then she went up the stairs. Her eyes were red, her hands shook, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. They managed some small talk about the dinner the night before. Finally, Jake asked, bluntly, “What’s going on?”
She closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead and began talking. “We were up all night, one big nasty fight. Simeon was drinking, not bad, but enough to get himself riled up. Momma and I said that Sistrunk had to go. He, of course, didn’t like that, and so we fought. A houseful of people, and we’re fighting like a bunch of idiots. He finally left and we haven’t seen him since. That’s the bad news. The good news is that my mother will sign whatever it takes to get rid of the Memphis lawyers.”
Jake walked to his desk, picked up a sheet of paper, and handed it to her. “It just says that she fires him. That’s all. If she signs it, then we’re in business.”
“What about Simeon?”
“He can hire all the lawyers he wants, but he’s not named in the will; therefore, he’s not an interested party. Judge Atlee will not recognize him, nor his lawyers. Simeon’s game is over. This is between Lettie and the Hubbard family. Will she sign it?”
Portia stood and said, “I’ll be right back.”
“Where is she?”
“Outside in the car.”
“Please ask her to come in.”
“She doesn’t want to. She’s afraid you’re upset with her.”
Jake couldn’t believe it. “Come on, Portia. I’ll make some coffee and we’ll have a chat. Go get your mother.”
Sistrunk was reading and resting comfortably on his lower bunk, a stack of motions and briefs balanced on his stomach, his cellie sitting nearby with his nose stuck in a paperback. Metal clanged, the door unlatched, Ozzie appeared from nowhere and said, “Let’s go Booker.” He handed him his suit, shirt, and tie, all on one hanger. His shoes and socks were in a paper grocery bag.
They sneaked out a rear door where Ozzie’s car was parked. A minute later they stopped behind the courthouse and hustled inside. The halls were empty and no one suspected anything. On the third floor they entered Judge Atlee’s cramped outer room. His court reporter doubled as his secretary. She pointed to another door and said, “They’re waiting.”
“What’s going on?” Sistrunk mumbled for at least the fourth time. Ozzie did not reply. He pushed open the door. Judge Atlee sat at the end of a long table, in his standard black suit, minus the robe. To his right sat Jake, Lettie, and Portia. He motioned to his left and said, “Gentlemen, please have a seat.” They did, with Ozzie sitting as far away from the action as possible.
Sistrunk glared across the table at Jake and Lettie. It was difficult for him to hold his tongue, but he managed to do so. His habit was to shoot first and ask questions later, but common sense told him to take it easy, hold his fire, and try not to anger the judge. Portia, in particular, seemed ready to pounce on him. Lettie studied her hands while Jake scratched on a legal pad.
“Please review this,” Judge Atlee said to Sistrunk as he slid over a single sheet of paper. “You’ve been fired.”
Sistrunk read the one short paragraph, then looked at Lettie and said, “Did you sign this?”
“I did.”
“Under duress?”
“Absolutely not,” Portia said boldly. “She has made the decision to terminate your services. It’s right there in black and white. Do you understand?”
“Where’s Simeon?”
“Gone,” Lettie said. “Don’t know when he’ll be back.”
“I still represent him,” Sistrunk said.
“He’s not an interested party,” Judge Atlee said. “Thus, he will not be allowed to take part, nor will you.” He picked up another sheet of paper and passed it over. “This is an order I just signed lifting the contempt citation. Since you are no longer involved in this matter, Mr. Sistrunk, you are free to go.” It was more of a command than an observation.
Sistrunk looked angrily at Lettie and said, “I’m allowed to be paid for my time and expenses, plus there is the matter of the loans. When can I expect the money?”
“In due course,” Jake said.
“I want it now.”
“Well, you’re not getting it now.”
“Then I’ll sue.”
“Fine. I’ll defend.”
“And I’ll preside,” Judge Atlee said. “I’ll give you a trial date in about four years.”
Portia could not suppress a chuckle. Ozzie said, “Judge, are we finished? If so, I need to drive Mr. Sistrunk back to Memphis. Seems he’s stranded down here. Plus, he and I have a few things to discuss.”
“You’ll hear from me again. This is not the last word,” Sistrunk growled at Lettie.
“I’m sure of that,” Jake said.
“Take him away,” Judge Atlee said. “Preferably to the state line.”
The meeting was adjourned.
21
The Law Offices of Jake Brigance had never used an intern. Other lawyers around the square occasionally allowed them in; they were usually local college kids who were considering law school and looking for something to stick on a résumé. In theory, they were good sources of either free or cheap labor, but Jake had heard more bad stories than good. He had never been tempted, until Portia Lang came along. She was bright, bored, unemployed, and talking about law school. She was also the most sensible person now residing in the old Sappington house, and her mother trusted her implicitly. And, obviously, her mother was still on track to become the richest black woman in the state, though Jake saw formidable hurdles ahead.
He hired Portia for $50 a week and gave her an office upstairs, away from the distractions of Roxy, Quince Lundy, and especially Lucien, who by Thanksgiving was showing up every day and warming up to his old habits. It was, after all, his office, and if he wanted to smoke a cigar and fog up everybody’s space, then so be it. If he wanted to walk around the reception area with a late-afternoon bourbon and harass Roxy with dirty jokes, then so be it. If he wanted to pester Quince Lundy with questions about Seth Hubbard’s assets, then who could stop him?
Jake was spending more and more time refereeing among his expanding staff. Two months earlier he and Roxy had existed quietly in a rather dull but productive manner. Now, there was tension, sometimes conflict, but also a lot of laughs and teamwork. Overall, Jake was enjoying the noise, though he was terrified Lucien was serious about returning to the practice. On the one hand, he loved Lucien and treasured his advice and insights. On the other, he knew any new arrangement wouldn’t last. Jake’s trump card was a key provision in Mississippi law that required a disbarred lawyer to take the bar exam before being reinstated. Lucien was sixty-three years old, and from around 5:00 p.m. each day, and sometimes earlier, until late in the night, he was under the influence of Jack Daniel’s. There was no way such an old drunk could study and pass the bar exam.
Portia arrived for her first day of work at five minutes before 9:00, her appointed hour. She had timidly asked Jake about the office dress code. He had quietly explained that he had no idea what interns wore, but he guessed things were casual. If they were going to court, she might want to step it up a little, but he really didn’t care. He was expecting jeans and running shoes, but instead Portia presented herself in an attractive blouse, skirt, and heels. The woman was ready for work, and within minutes Jake had the impression she was already thinking of herself as a lawyer. He showed her to her office, one of three empty ones upstairs. It had not been used in many years, not since the old Wilbanks firm was in its glory. Portia was wide-eyed as she took in the fine wooden desk and handsome but dusty furnishings. “Who was the last lawyer here?” she asked, looking at a faded portrait of an ancient Wilbanks.
“You’ll have to ask Lucien,” Jake replied. He had not spent five minutes in the room in the last ten years.
“This is awesome,” she said.
“Not bad for an intern. The phone guy is coming today to get you plugged in. After that, you’ll be in business.”
They spent half an hour going over the rules: phone use, lunch breaks, office protocol, overtime, et cetera. Her first task was to read a dozen Mississippi cases involving will contests that were tried before juries. It was important that she learn the law and the lingo, and to understand how her mother’s case would be handled. Read the cases, then read them again. Take notes. Absorb the law and become well versed in it so conversations with Lettie would be more meaningful. Lettie would be by far the most crucial witness at the trial, and it was important to begin laying the groundwork for her testimony. The truth was paramount, but as every trial lawyer knew, there were various ways of telling the truth.
As soon as Jake turned his back, Lucien barged into her office and made himself at home. They had met the day before; introductions were not necessary. He rambled on about how wise it was to ditch the Memphis lawyers and go with Jake, though in his opinion it would be a tough case to win. He remembered he’d represented one of her father’s cousins, a Lang, twenty years earlier in a criminal matter. Kept the boy out of prison. Great lawyering. That led to another story about a shooting that involved four men, none of them remotely related to Portia, as far as she could tell. By reputation, she knew Lucien, like everyone else, as the old drunk lawyer who’d been the first white person to join the local NAACP and who now lived with his maid in the big house on the hill. Part legend, part scoundrel, he was a man she never thought she would meet, and here he was chatting with her (in her office!) as if they were old friends. For a while, she listened respectfully, but after an hour began wondering how often these visits might occur.
While she listened, Jake was locked in his office with Quince Lundy, reviewing a filing that would be known as the First Inventory. After a month of digging, Lundy was convinced the First Inventory would greatly resemble the final one. There were no hidden assets. Seth Hubbard knew when and how he would die, and he made certain he left behind adequate records.
The real estate appraisals were complete. At the time of his death, Seth owned (1) his home and 200 acres around it, valued at $300,000; (2) 150 acres of timberland near Valdosta, Georgia, valued at $450,000; (3) 400 acres of timberland near Marshall, Texas, valued at $800,000; (4) a vacant bay-front lot north of Clearwater, Florida, valued at $100,000; (5) a cabin and 5 acres outside Boone, North Carolina, valued at $280,000; and (6) a fifth-floor condo on the beach at Destin, Florida, valued at $230,000.
The total appraised value of Seth’s real estate was $2,160,000. There were no mortgages.
A consulting firm from Atlanta valued the Berring Lumber Company at $400,000. Its report was attached to the inventory, along with the property appraisals.
Included also were statements listing the cash in the bank in Birmingham. Ticking along at 6 percent interest, the total was now $21,360,000 and change.
The small numbers were the most tedious. Quince Lundy listed as much of Seth’s personal property as he thought the court could stand, beginning with his late-model vehicles ($35,000), and going all the way down to his wardrobe ($1,000).
The big number, though, was still astonishing. The First Inventory valued Seth’s entire estate at $24,020,000. The cash, of course, was a hard number. Everything else would be subject to the market, and it would take months or even years to sell it all.
The inventory was an inch thick. Jake did not want anyone else in the office to see it, so he ran two copies himself. He left early for lunch, drove to the school, and had a plate of cafeteria spaghetti with his wife and daughter. He tried to visit once a week, especially on Wednesdays when Hanna preferred to buy rather than bring her lunch. She loved the spaghetti, but even more, she loved having her father there.
After she’d left for the playground, the Brigances walked back to Carla’s classroom. The bell rang and class was set to resume.
“Off to see Judge Atlee,” Jake said with a grin. “The first payday.”
“Good luck,” she said with a quick kiss. “Love you.”
“Love you.” Jake hustled away, wanting to clear the hall before the throng of little people came swarming in.
Judge Atlee was at his desk, finishing a bowl of potato soup, when Jake was escorted in by the secretary. Contrary to his doctor’s orders, the judge was still smoking his pipe—he could not quit—and he loaded one up with Sir Walter Raleigh and struck a match. After thirty years of heavy pipe smoking, the entire office was tinged with a brownish residue. A permanent fog clung to the ceiling. A slightly cracked window offered some relief. The aroma, though, was rich and pleasant. Jake had always loved the place, with its rows of thick treatises and faded portraits of dead judges and Confederate generals. Nothing had changed in the twenty years Reuben Atlee had occupied this part of the courthouse, and Jake had the sense that little had changed in the past fifty years. The judge loved history and kept his favorite books in perfect order on custom-made shelves in one corner. The desk was covered with clutter, and Jake could swear that the same battered file had been sitting on the right front corner of it for the past decade.
They had first met at the Presbyterian church ten years earlier, when Jake and Carla arrived in Clanton. The judge ran the church in the same way he ran all the other aspects of his life, and he soon embraced the young lawyer. They became friends, though always at a professional level. Reuben Atlee was from the old school. He was a judge; Jake was just a lawyer. Boundaries must always be respected. He had sternly corrected Jake in open court on two occasions, with everlasting impressions.
With the pipe stem screwed into the corner of his mouth, Judge Atlee retrieved his black suit jacket and put it on. Except when he was in court, under a robe, he wore nothing but black suits. The same black suit. No one knew if he owned twenty, or just one; they were identical. And he always wore navy-blue suspenders and white starched shirts, most with a collection of tiny cinder holes from airborne tobacco embers. He took his position at the end of the table as they talked about Lucien. When Jake finished unloading his briefcase, he handed over a copy of the inventory.
“Quince Lundy is very good,” Jake said. “I wouldn’t want him looking through my finances.”
“Probably wouldn’t take that long,” Judge Atlee observed wryly. To many he was a humorless man, but to those he liked he was occasionally a raging smart-ass.
“No. It wouldn’t.”
For a judge, he said little. Silently, and studiously, he went through the inventory, page by page as his tobacco burned out and he stopped puffing. Time was of no consequence because he controlled the clock. At the end, he removed his pipe, put it in an ashtray, and said, “Twenty-four million, huh?”
“That’s the grand total.”
“Let’s lock this up, okay, Jake? No one should see it, not now anyway. Prepare an order and I’ll seal this part of the file. God knows what would happen if the public knew this. It would be front-page news and probably attract even more lawyers. It’ll come out later, but for now let’s bury it.”
“I agree, Judge.”
“Any word from Sistrunk?”
“No sir, and I’ve got a good source now. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must tell you that I’ve hired a new intern. Portia Lang, Lettie’s oldest daughter. A bright girl who thinks she might want to be a lawyer.”
“Smart move, Jake, and I really like that girl.”
“So, no problems?”
“None. I’m not in charge of your office.”
“No conflicts of interest?”
“None that I can see.”
“Me neither. If Sistrunk shows up, or comes slinking around, we’ll know it soon enough. Simeon is still AWOL, but I suspect he’ll come home eventually. He may be trouble but he’s not stupid. She’s still his wife.”
“He’ll be back. There’s something else, Jake. The will leaves 5 percent to a brother, Ancil Hubbard. That makes him an interested party. I’ve read your report and the affidavits and I understand we’re proceeding as if Ancil is dead. But that troubles me. Since we don’t know for certain, then we should not assume he is dead.”
“We’ve searched, Judge, but there are no clues anywhere.”
“True, but you’re not a pro, Jake. Here’s my idea. Five percent of this estate is over a million dollars. It seems prudent to me to take a smaller sum, say fifty thousand or so, and hire a high-powered detective agency to find him, or find out what happened to him. What do you think?”
In situations like this, Judge Atlee did not really care what you thought. The decision was made, and he was just trying to be polite.
“A great idea,” Jake said, something all judges like to hear.
“I’ll approve it. What about the other expenses?”
“Well, Judge, delighted you asked. I need to get paid.” Jake was handing over a summary of his time on the case. Judge Atlee studied it, frowned as if Jake were robbing the estate, then said, “One hundred and eighty hours. What rate did I approve?”
He knew exactly what he had approved. “One fifty per hour,” Jake said.
“So a total of, let’s see.” He was peering down his nose through the thick reading glasses perched on the tip, still frowning mightily as if he’d been insulted. “Twenty-seven thousand dollars?” His voice rose with fake incredulity.
“At least that much.”
“Seems a bit steep?”
“On the contrary, Judge. It’s a bargain.”
“It’s also a nice start to the holiday season.”
“Oh yes, that too.” Jake knew Atlee would approve his fees if his hours had been doubled.
“Approved. Other expenses?” He reached into his coat pocket and removed a tobacco pouch.
Jake slid over more paperwork. “Yes, Judge, quite a few. Quince Lundy needs to get paid. He’s showing 110 hours, at a hundred bucks per. And we need to pay the appraisers, the accountants, and the consulting firm. I have the documentation here, along with orders for you to sign. May I suggest that we move some cash from the bank in Birmingham to the estate account here at First National?”
“How much?” he asked, striking a match and waving it over the bowl of tobacco.
“Not much, because I don’t like the idea of anybody at the bank seeing the money. It’s tucked away over in Birmingham, let’s leave it there as long as we can.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Judge Atlee said, something he often said when confronted with a good idea. He discharged a blast of thick smoke that engulfed the table.
“I’ve already prepared the order,” Jake said, shoving over even more paperwork and trying to ignore the smoke. Judge Atlee pulled the pipe from his teeth, a trail of smoke behind it. He began scribbling his name in his distinctive style, one that could never be deciphered but was recognizable nonetheless. He paused and looked at the order transferring the money. He said, “And with the stroke of my pen, I can move half a million bucks. Such power.”
