Читать книгу Death in the Polka Dot Shoes: A Novel - Marlin Fitzwater - Страница 11
ОглавлениеOpening my law practice beside a Calico Cat linen store in what passes for the only shopping center in Parkers was not part of my long-term plan. It was actually Effie Humbolt’s Calico Cat store, with a subtitle: linen and things. More things than linen, and mostly bolts of cloth that appeared to be Laura Ashley knockoffs, priced for the local sewing circles. I noticed a predominance of rose designs, in colors ranging from pink to green, familiar to every family who uses wallpaper. I hadn’t seen much wallpaper since leaving Parkers because the style in Washington had moved to plain walls and ceiling molding, or an occasional stripe. In any case, it gave the Calico a homey feeling that I appreciated, even though my new law office would be spartan modern with plain walls, a wooden desk with Queen Anne legs that I picked up at Rick’s Antiques shop out on Route l, three walnut chairs of mixed origins for the vast clientele expected soon, and a Persian rug of mixed ancestry that gave me the illusion, at least, of some class. All the furnishings totaled less than three hundred dollars and strengthened my sense of frugality.
Every endeavor in life has its fears. The workboat certainly raised physical fears, but the law practice raised economic fears. Clients might never come. Our profession has historically had this high minded idea that lawyers can’t advertise for clients. Too unseemly. But it’s perfectly fine, even recommended, that we join every low life civic club in North America and grovel before the most corrupt politicians available in the hopes of winning a fee. In my case, two hundred dollars an hour.
I made much more than that at Simpson, Feldstein and James, and I had other amenities I didn’t deserve, like a walnut paneled office with leather chairs and pictures of horses jumping over fences in the nearby Virginia hunt country. I had never actually met a horse, but I knew them to be great symbols of wealth and pedigree, often associated with white fences and acreage. In defiance of this legal tradition and with a tip of the hat to local pride, I hung a picture of an oyster boat with two old guys raising hand tongs from the misty waters of the Bay. I liked the freshness of starting my own office.
I didn’t have a library, but it seemed unlikely I would need a lot of precedents anyway. I did have a piece of computer software titled: Practical Law Applications. It could have been called a floppy disc for the mellow minded, but it included a sample will with blank spaces to fill in; sample real estate agreements; and instructions for filing civil lawsuits on behalf of any aggrieved party. I figured if I used two out of three I could survive.
I was straightening the furniture when Mansfield Burlington grasped the outside door handle, leaned back on his heels to read the stenciled gold letters, Ned Shannon, Attorney at Law, and entered.
“Hello Burl,” I almost shouted.
“What,” he said, “no waiting room. No big busted secretary. No cases of empty law books.”
“You mean empty cases with no law books.”
“You heard me,” he said.
“No capital, huh,” he said. “I’m here to help. Your first client. I need a new will.”
“Come right in, Burl. You’re in great luck, because I’m having a first time special on wills, one thousand dollars for the whole process or two hundred dollars an hour.”
“How long will it take?”
“About five hours,” I replied, “but it could go longer.” I saw Burl doing the math in his head and realizing the thousand dollars was a floor in this process, no matter what happened.
“You would be good in the used car business,” Burl joked.
I had spent so many years as part of a legal team, advising corporate clients on regulatory laws related to safety and environment, that it made me nervous to define a simple legal service and state my fee. At Simpson, Feldstein and James, all that was done for me. Furthermore, I was getting nearly three hundred dollars an hour there and the firm had devised so many ways to hide the fees that I never had to actually say to anyone, “My fee is….” Rather, it was part of a proposal, presented on paper and explained to the client by one of our administrative partners, who painted our merits with such gusto that people actually couldn’t wait to pay us the big money. Indeed, they usually breathed a sigh of relief just knowing that our firm would keep them out of jail, or avoid a fine of even greater dimensions than our fee. Corporations would always rather pay the fee than a fine. It puts them on a much higher road for their public relations team. And over the years we had even made it an honor to pay our fee, a distinction like winning the Purple Heart for being shot in the rear.
“I hear you saved the Blenny Man,” Burl said unexpectedly. “Not many people will thank you for that one.”
“Who’s the Blenny Man?” I asked.
“Word is you and Vinnie plucked that little mouse out of the water, and then towed his boat home like a lost dog.”
“We did pick up a guy, but I thought his name was Ray,” which was what I thought Vinnie told me.
I remembered that the guy did look like a little mouse, wet and wrapped in a blanket, with black hair draped in every direction. He hadn’t said much, except thanks for the coffee. Vinnie gave him a mug on the way back to Parkers Marina. I did remember that when he raised the cup to his lips, his teeth were shaking, and his hands were unsteady when they grasped the handle. On his left hand was a diamond ring that looked out of place, and when he saw me notice it, he pulled his hand back under the blanket, still holding the mug with his right. No doubt new wealth. Even so, I hadn’t paid much attention to Ray as we nursed his boat into an empty slip at the end of the pier. Vinnie climbed onto the pier, tied the bow line to one piling and the stern line to another. I helped Ray out of the Martha and took back the blanket, all without him saying a word. He looked like a stray animal standing on the dock. We left Ray and his cruiser at the Marina and maneuvered the Martha Claire out into the creek channel for the few hundred yard trip to the Bayfront. At least that’s the way I remembered it.
“Who is he?” I asked Burl.
Mansfield looked across the office, raised his long frame from the chair and picked up the dictionary, one of three books that I simply couldn’t start a business without. The other two were from my first year in law school. Mansfield always looked elegant, even in tan pants and a blue shirt. Sometimes, like today, he wore an ascot, which was so out of place in Parkers that it looked natural. At the Willard Hotel, I would have placed an ascot as among the most pompous of apparel, belonging either to a dandy or a nutcase. But Mansfield pulled it off, the way a fur coat looks all right in church if the lady is elegant in every stitch. Burl was that way, with leather docksider shoes that were richly brown, not scuffed or polished. His brown leather belt was wide, and catalog proper for the ensemble. I made a mental note to dress that way myself, although it seemed unlikely to happen. I just can’t seem to shake the inevitability of wrinkles.
Mansfield Burlington picked the dictionary from my desk, flipped through the early pages, and ran his finger to the correct word. He stood erect and read from the dictionary: “Blenny. Any of several small, spiny-finned fishes of the family Blenniidae, having a long, tapering body. Blennius, a kind of fish. Blennos slime, mucus: so called from its slimy coating.”
He looked up. “Now tell me that isn’t the man you so ceremoniously pulled from the depths of the Bay.”
“That’s him,” I replied. “But is that his reputation? Slimy?”
“I rather like the term, ‘spiny-finned,’” Burl said. “Reminds me of a skinny little man I met in Paris. I commissioned a painting he never painted, but he took my money, tried to take my girlfriend, and denied it all till the day he went to jail for forgery.”
“Before you launch into another historical tirade on the French, tell me about the Blenny Man,” I said.
“Insurance,” Burl said. “I think he sells it because he looks so much like death that it frightens people into buying. Also, he has no shame and will push himself into any gathering.”
“Burl, I’ve never heard you so expansive in your disgust for someone,” I said. “What did this guy do to you?”
Burl was really warming to the task. “You know when you look through the security hole in your door, and there’s a distorted face with fat cheeks looking back at you – that’s Ray Herbst. I’ve known him for years. Everything about him is distorted.”
“Well, he doesn’t know much about the water,” I ventured.
“More than you think,” Burl responded. “He probably was taking a leak when he fell off the boat. That could happen to anybody. Blenny has had a hundred boats in his life; he prowls around the marshes of this place and turns up on remote islands for every crab festival there is.”
“Why are you so down on him?” I asked.
“The resort,” Burl said, looking at the floor. “He’s fighting it.”
“But so are you.”
“That makes it worse. He’s on my side,” Burl said. “But I don’t believe him. I’m telling you, Neddie, if the Blenny Man darts in here to say thanks for saving his dark heart, grab your belt cause he’s trying to steal your pants.”
Mansfield was becoming a bit of a grump in his old age. But I could see why he was one of the most respected men in the county. He helped everyone who asked for it, and he helped in ways that mattered. He doesn’t give money to charities, probably because he doesn’t have a lot, but he gives himself. He attends all the church dinners, Elks Club bingo nights, and oyster feasts, usually wearing his own apron that’s dark blue with red letters on the front that says Field and Bay. He’s very proud of his career and his magazine. It’s his identity. Along with his ascot, or his bow tie.
“Once we get this “will” business settled, I want to talk about the Hijenks,” Burl said. “We’ve got to stop it.”
“Now hold on a minute,” I said. “I may have a conflict here and I’m not ready to discuss it.”
“What conflict?” he asked.
“I’m a lawyer, among other things,” I said. “And I might have a client in this fight.”
“Don’t you desert me boy,” Burl said with a smile. I knew he wasn’t really upset. Burl is a democratic soul, and understands everyone has a right to their views. Just the same, I’d rather not antagonize him, not with my first one thousand dollar fee hanging in the balance.
“Burl, here’s a simple agreement to sign that says I’ll do the will and you’ll pay for it. And I’ve attached a form that will get you started thinking about your will. It will help you make lists of things. Account for your money and property. List your relatives and friends you want to leave things to, then come back and we’ll talk it through.”
“Damn, if you’re going to make a major production out of this, I sure don’t want to be paying the hourly rate.”
“Burl, for one thousand dollars, you get everything I know for as long as it takes,” I said.
“Neddie, my boy, welcome to Parkers. Again, I’m sorry about your brother.”
“Thanks Mansfield,” I said, using the formal name. I stood to see him out and he moved toward the door. He took the handle and started to turn it, then looked back at me to add, “You know, your brother was working for the CRI.”
“I know Burl, thanks for coming in, and I’ll get right on the paperwork for your will.”
This was turning out to be a busy day.
Diane Sexton wasn’t due in Parkers until two o’clock, well after I would finish lunch with the Calico Cat, Effie Humbolt. By lunch I mean a piece of Dominos pizza, catered by Effie from the pizza shop located in the far end of our building. To call our offices a professional building may have been a stretch. We had an insurance agent, who was independent, meaning he represented a lot of companies when he was sober. Fortunately, there are a lot of insurance companies out there so you can go through quite a few in a lifetime of overindulgence. We also have a second hand clothing store, which does quite well because we have so many available customers. And we have a real estate firm that deals almost exclusively in local property. Its owner is Pippy Plotkin, who is called “Pigskin” because it is alliterative and because Pippy paints his car in maroon and gold colors with Washington Redskin logos on the doors and an Indian in full headdress on the hood. Pippy makes a lot of money churning beach houses and fishing cottages, then he spends it all attending out of town football games. I’ve only met him once, but Effie says he’s a pip.
Effie is about forty-five and married to a local appeals court Judge. The courthouse is in Annapolis so I seldom see him, which is fine because then I can dream that Effie loves me. She is a peach, knows everyone who ever lived in Parkers, and comes from one of those “crossover” families who were poor about three generations ago, but through farming and a good Maryland law school, found themselves at the top of the heap with a new house on Jenkins Creek and respectability as well. Everyone tells me she is the most valuable friend I can make in Parkers and I hope it’s true. She’s dark complexioned, with defined legs and thin ankles, and shoulders that imply either weightlifting or good ground strokes. In any case, I like talking with her, and immediately accepted the offer of a pizza lunch as soon as Burl was out the door.
“Now listen, Mr. Ned,” she said, “we have to get you a bigger office, with a secretary, and a waiting room. You can’t have clients just walk in on your meetings.”
“Sure I can. First of all, I have this handy dandy answering system that takes all phone calls and records messages. Second, I don’t schedule overlapping meetings. And third, I can’t afford a secretary, and probably don’t need one if I’m going to be on the water all morning.”
Effie sat in the client chair in front of me, pushed her can of Coke across the desk, and crossed her legs. There was condensation on the can and it left a streak of water across the top. I snatched the can before it could leave any more tracks, and she wiped the water with a Kleenex.
“Are you settled in, Ned?” she asked. “How’s this gonna work? Will you have a schedule?”
“Don’t know Effie. Depends on the crabs.”
“Well, I expect we’ll get a lot of people looking for you who end up in the Calico Cat,” she said. “And that’s all right. Maybe I can sell them a little yarn while they wait.”
“I hope so, Effie. You have been so kind,” I offered. “And this pizza is pretty good too. Not the Willard, but pretty good.”
“Are you a Willard fan?” she asked.
“It’s my secret love. If you ever need me on a Saturday night, call the Willard.”
“Why you little scoundrel,” she mocked. “You’ve got two lives here and a third one in Washington. I hope you’re not dangerous.”
“No Miss Effie. Now you’ve got to go because I have another client coming.”
“Two in one day,” she commented. “Let the good times roll. Bye Ned.” Then she flashed those great legs and left, never looking back.
I always wanted my own office. For a blue collar kid with white collar ambitions, it’s like driving a Saab. It’s a symbol of freedom and success that doesn’t really cost much, but you don’t need it or even want it until you’ve reached that station in life where material luxury dreams are possible. It all comes in stages. I remember in Parkers Elementary School, about the fifth grade I would guess, there were no white collar jobs in our career day. There was a policeman, but we all knew him, or at least his car. And most of us feared him or hated him for arresting our fathers and brothers. To think of him as a role model was preposterous.
There was a fireman. Old Jim was the only name we knew. He sat in front of the station all day in a metal folding chair, leaned back against the building, and slept during those times he wasn’t washing the trucks. His ambition was well hidden and it was never clear to me that I should follow in his footsteps. I understood that he put out fires, and possibly saved lives, and his trucks were fascinating to climb on, but still there was something missing. We also had a waterman who brought oysters to career day and showed us how to crack them open and eat them, although many of my classmates had trouble with the sight of fresh oysters sliding out of the shell like egg yokes. My dad caught these things for a living, so I had oysters more often than hamburgers.
We never had a professional man at career day, not even “Pigskin” Pippy Plotkin. We had carpenters and plumbers and clam diggers and one very exciting fellow who dove for oysters. He strapped air tanks on his back and ran an air hose out the window of the school to his rusted pickup truck parked on the grass. His brother, who was only a year or two ahead of me, ran the air pump in the truck and we all got to breathe some of the air from the compressor tank. It was neat. But I did have concerns about the younger brother. Once I had seen him smoking behind school and giving some guy the finger. Not exactly a lifesaving character in my mind.
All of these people worked with their hands, in highly commendable occupations, but they didn’t teach me anything about being a professional worker, or how money worked, or about the world of people who spent everyday in tall buildings. What were those people doing? I saw them on television. I saw their new cars and some of the houses being built on Jenkins Creek that implied wealth, but my school didn’t offer a clue. It wasn’t until high school that I began to sense a larger universe of occupations.
I suspected that Diane Sexton came to this issue from the opposite direction. She grew up in Long Island, New York, someplace I had never visited, and went to college at Vanderbilt in Nashville. Her folks thought a little southern gentility might hone the sharp edges of her life in New York. And it did. She was a perfectly charming blend of smooth manner and raging ambition, like one of those swans with a long elegant neck that will seduce your eyes, then take a chunk out of your leg.
As she finished circling my office, her only response was, “This is it?”
“Diane,” I said, “this isn’t Simpson, Feldstein and James. It’s Ned Shannon. And it’s all mine. All me. I do it all, from the phones to the research to the briefs.”
“Oh brother, I’ve seen it all now,” she said. “Well, the boys at Simpson send their regards. They think you’re crazy.”
“I may be Diane, but it feels good, and I’m glad to see you.”
“Ned, here’s the good news. Chesapeake Resorts International wants to hire you, on retainer for a thousand a month.”
“What do they want?” I asked. “Take on the eco-freaks, challenge the Democratic party of Maryland, and clear the land for the building.”
“No, they want you to cooperate with the environmentalists. They haven’t gotten to the fighting stage yet. That will come. But CRI needs an inside guy. Someone to help them with the permits, to smooth the way with the locals.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?” I asked. “The permitting process alone will take years, with meetings and fights like you can’t believe.”
“All the better,” she smirked. “That monthly retainer just keeps coming in. And besides, what about those seventy-five acres you own. This experience will show you how to do it. How to develop.”
I let the matter stand. She paced and remarked, “You are the luckiest guy I ever met.”
“You’ve been given several million dollars in land,” Diane said. “Plan now to do something with it. Help Jimmy’s wife Martha develop her land. She probably needs the money now.”
“You’re right about that,” I replied. “I should be helping Martha. She’s the one who grabbed my brother by the collar and said, ‘let’s make something of ourselves.’ And she did it the only way it’s real, by hard work and good dreams and never losing sight of the goal. She prodded Jimmy to clean that boat up. She put everything on a computer so he knew how many crab pots he had, and where. She figured out how to get three hundred dollars a day for a three hour fishing trip, and sell those city slicker fishermen a crab cake sandwich for another ten dollars and call it a Chesapeake Deli. And then he died. Gave away the boat and half the land and left her with a baby girl besides. For crying out loud, Diane, you’re right again.”
“Thank you. Now go make some money.”
But money just wasn’t my motivating factor. Diane was a student of capitalism, and she wasn’t motivated by sentimentality. In fact, Diane was laminated with invincibility. There were no soft spots for vulnerability, or sentimentality. In spite of my affection for her, and my respect for her judgment, she had an air of superficiality manufactured by money and pretension. I once had a girlfriend who would call Diane a “fancy” lady. After we quit dating, this girl always asked if I had taken up with a “fancy” lady. She meant any woman with enough money to buy all the parts of an ensemble, understand how they fit together, and wear them. Diane was that woman. I even thought that someday I might lust for her, but I knew she would crawl into bed with earrings, bracelets and sharp elbows. So we had better stick to law.
I gave Diane a quick tour of Parkers that took in the auto body shop, the Post Office, three crab houses that passed for restaurants, and Flossie’s grocery store. Flossie’s had been a fixture for forty years. It wasn’t large by modern standards. The aisles were narrow and never as long as you expected. The store had been enlarged several times over the years, with wings extended in every direction like spokes on a wheel. Sometimes while wheeling your cart, you would hit aisle four, I think, and it would extend the full length of two wings, including all the breakfast cereal, all the canned goods, and a few crackers. The next aisle over might be only a third as long and it would seem like another building. Sometimes Flossie would rearrange the stock and you could walk for miles in search of peanut butter, and no two aisles would be the same length.
We were passing Flossie’s when Diane pointed to the side of the road and exclaimed, “My God, look at that.”
“Ned,” she said, “that woman is smoking a corn cob pipe. And those two scraggy dogs. What is that?”
“That’s the pipe lady,” I said. “I don’t know her name. I used to ask, but no one ever knew. Just “The Pipe Lady.” You say that, and everyone in town knows who you’re talking about.”
The pipe lady pushed a grocery cart along the side of the road every day between Flossie’s and her home on Strawberry Point, or so they said. I never actually knew where she lived. Once I decided to follow her home. A little sleuthing. But she moved so slow that I gave up after about a mile. It just wasn’t worth it.
The pipe lady had two dogs that followed her, in single file. The black Labrador retriever -- or it could have been some mongrel combination of a lab and several other breeds -- was always right on her heels. Behind the lab was a small shaggy animal with hair that protruded in every direction, covering scars and raw spots where raccoons, possums and muskrats had tried to pick off the little guy at the end of the caravan. Or the little dog had tried to pick them off on some dark night. Rumor around town was that the little dog was a killer, at least of animals its own size, and fearless in defense of the lab and the pipe lady. With those two dogs, the pipe lady was protected on every flank.
Not that she needed it, of course. I never saw anybody with the pipe lady, or even talking to the pipe lady, although she did talk to herself a lot. She wore black trousers, always, and a white starched blouse, always, sometimes under a summer-weight jacket or a threadbare tweed coat in winter. In winter, she wore a black stocking cap and allowed her gray hair to fall out on all sides of the cap. It seemed to me that life might have been easier if she had cut her hair short. Less effort in the morning, at least. Washing it was another matter, although the pipe lady wasn’t dirty, that I could tell, unless she had been walking beside the highway for some distance. Then the dust kicked up by cars tended to collect on her white blouse. That was the most remarkable aspect of her ensemble, that starched blouse. It seemed like her one great effort at conformity in the world, an anchor perhaps against totally slipping into the abyss of her reclusive life. Although she wasn’t a recluse, in the sense of hiding or staying home. Indeed, she often waved energetically at passing motorists, to the point you wondered if she knew you, or recognized your car, or perhaps needed help. I stopped once, but she kept on walking, and the dogs never even looked my way. There was something otherworldly about all three of them, detached from our life by their own self sufficiency. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t have personal names, just the pipe lady, the lab and the mutt.
“Ned, this is all quite fascinating,” Diane said, “but I can’t handle any more mammy yokums today. I better head home. I’ll draw up a simple retainer contract and get it to you tomorrow. Also, there’s a public meeting on the new resort next week. You better plan to go.”
“Diane,” I said, “you’re a peach. If I get too far into this place, I’m counting on you to pull me out. Drag me back to the Willard and pour scotch down me until I come to my senses.”
“Mr. Neddrick Shannon, Esquire, I will do that,” and she kissed me on the cheek.
