Dective Lance Jackson Helps Out

Time flew by and she had the baby. It was a boy, seven pounds seven ounces. I took my six months off of work and watched the kid. We named the kid Andy after her boss because he was such a high-ranking guy with the firm. My mom and her mother came over to watch him a lot because they loved to do it. This gave me a lot of time off for golf and fishing and what \ever else I wanted to do.

When the six months were up and time for me to go to work, I talked Gail into letting me stay home with the baby and quit my job. We rolled my money I got from the company 401k into stocks and I was done with work almost. I did have one more job to do, with Andy Hewlett's law firm.

Lance and I got hold of Jerome the dried out lawyer, and sat down for a talk. I asked him how he would like to make a million dollars. He told us he would quit his job and open a small practice to keep busy and live off the money.

He advised me on what I had to do and how much I would get. He told me if a large firm handled it, the amount would be very high. If I wanted it down, dirty and fast, I would have to take less. He said this was the best case in the world.

"How much would Andy pay to settle out of court?" I asked.

"Well, don't ever call him Andy, as only three people do that. That might piss him off and he wouldn't pay you nothing. But I would say 3 mil to have this go away. Yes, I think he would offer that much."

"Well I guess it's time for me and Andy to talk then."

The baby was a year old when I decided to meet Andy for lunch. Once a month Jeff and Andy go to an out of the way place that is famous for their lobster. I had Lance place a call for Jeff, saying he was a secretary for a good client of theirs, and his boss was going to call at 1:20 and wanted to talk to him. Jeff stayed in and Andy went by himself.

I met him as he got out of his chauffeured car and started to walk in. "Hi Mr. Hewlett, may I buy you lunch?"

"No, but I will buy you a lobster dinner. How is that?"

"Good, thank you Mr. Hewlett."

We had a drink and he was asking me about the baby and how life was going in general. I could see as he was eating his meal, he was getting edgy and knew something was up. He finally said, "What brings you here to talk to me?"

I laughed and said, "Andy, you are from the school of hard knocks just like me. There is no bull shitting you. You know I came to talk to you alone."

"Well, I actually just figured it all out a few minutes ago as I had my mind set on the lobster. We should talk back at my office but I'm telling you now, Gail is just about maxed out, I don't see any more raises for her for a long time. Jeff has done good for her in the raise department."

"No Andy, no raise for her. I'm going to sue your firm, so I figured you would rather settle it out of court than get all the bad publicity you would get from it. You know there isn't a lawyer in this city that wouldn't want to take the case and make you guys look bad. Me, I don't care one way or the other how you guys look, I just want the money end of it."

"Well, just how do you think we harmed you lad?"

"Well, to start with, the baby. I'm not the father; I had a vasectomy a couple of months prior to conception. Your man Jeff is the poppa; he's been fucking his subordinate."

"Lots of guys have a vasectomy, and it's not always fool proof."

"Well Andy, then you know it's not my kid. I had them do a D.A.N. So you know who the father is already. You don't need me to tell you."

"You mean DNA Tony, that's the word for it."

"Maybe I better get one of them firms to handle my case for me."

"Don't get hasty my lad, let's just talk. Just what have you got that seems so valuable to you."

All the time I kept eating, while he had stopped a long time ago. I acted like a kid out to eat for the first time. I tried to act like I didn't know what I was talking about. Then I stopped eating for a while as I pulled some paper out of my jacket pocket. As I laid them down on the table I said, "This is the DNA of the baby, Andy. Signed by the lab technician."

"This is my DNA, signed by him," as I laid it down for him to see it.

"This is his statement saying I'm not related at all to the baby," once again I laid a paper down.

This certified letter is from my doctor saying the vasectomy worked; 6 weeks after and my sperm count is zero," as I laid that down too.

"This certified letter is one 6 months later, still zero," another paper landed on the pile.

"This picture is of her on the couch in Jeff's office getting screwed to death by the father of the child," as I put it with the others and went back eating. I said, "Boy, this lobster is the best, Andy."

He never picked up any of the pages; I had laid them all to my side, but he just looked at them. He took a piece of bread and buttered it and started to eat it but first said, "And how much is this all worth to you?"

"Well, now that you asked, I do have a figure set in my head. It's for a quiet settlement with nothing really getting out. But, of course I would like to hear your offer. Let me just warn you before you do make a offer, if I'm insulted by it, I will just walk out and give it to one of the firms we talked about and the only time you will see me is in court. As long as the offer is reasonable, I will continue doing business with you, Andy. But don't insult me. I have been shit on enough by your firm and my wife, don't you try it too. Is that fair enough for you?"

"Sounds good to me," he said as he rose and reached for the papers.

"Go ahead, those copies are for you. You want to have me tested on your nickel, it OK by me."

He continued to leave saying, "We'll keep in touch with you."

"Today is the third. If I don't hear from you by the sixteenth at noon, it goes into one of the firms hands, so take your time."

I saw his car pull away, so I left to meet Jerome and Lance. Lance had me wired, so we played the tape. Jerome said I did a good job. We laughed, and Jerome figured he would offer at least 5 mil. We had a couple drinks, and I took off.

As I got home, Gail was just going in the house with a box. When I got up there, she came running to me saying the firm let her go for no reason at all and she was out of a job. She wanted to call Jeff and see what was going on, but Jeff went out to the airport to meet a client and had left his cell at work.

The two mothers were asking her all kinds of questions on how they could do this to her after all the years she had with them. I could see Gail was getting kind of mad and upset, but I never called them off her. Finally, after we all talked for an hour, she got a call from Jeff and took it outside the house when she found out it was him. She was out there for a half-hour before she came in.

When she came in, she was crying and we all wanted to know what happened. All we could get out of her was Jeff was let go too, and neither one knew anymore about it for the time being. The two moms finally took off and she told me, "I'm going to meet Jeff to talk things over between us and see what we can come up with." She was to meet him at seven.

At six forty she was ready to leave and it was just the two of us in the kitchen. As she left she said, "Bye, I'll be back in an hour."

I turned to her and held out a tape recorder and asked her, "What?"

She looked and said, "I'm meeting Jeff, I'll be home in an hour. What is that you got, a new toy?"

"Yes it's a recorder. I'm going to tape a lot of our conversations from now on."

"Don't get weird on me with your new toys. Right now we don't have a bread winner and I'm getting stressed out, Tony."

"Why don't you take Andy with you? I'm sure Jeff would like to see how his son is doing, and how well we take care of his kid." Her face dropped and she was still holding the door.

"What the hell are you talking about? We all know it's your baby boy that you always wanted. I've got to go or I'm going to be late."

"Well, don't upset Jeff, because you guys might want some more kids in the future. I had a vasectomy while I was at training last year, and I can't have any more kids because I'm sterile. So Andy is not my kid, just so you know."

"Well they don't always work sweetheart, you know that," as she closed the door and came into the kitchen.

"Sorry, but I been tested three times and all were negative. I wanted to surprise you when I came home from the training, but you were all wrapped up into going to the party so you could be with Jeff. So I said the hell with it, it really didn't matter."

"You are telling me you think Jeff is the father?"

"Well I don't know if it's Jeff or someone else you're fucking. But I do know that's it's not me, sweetheart. I have the DNA evidence to proof it."

"Show it to me."

"You will see it all in court soon enough."

Then she sat down and cried like a baby. The kids came out about ten minutes later. They heard she lost her job, and was still crying. I told them to go to their rooms and close the door because we wanted to talk.

She finally asked, "When did you find out?"

"About two weeks before you told me you were pregnant. Jeff likes to brag about it, and some guys in a bar overheard him. They told me."

"You knew all that time, and you been taking care of him and never said anything to me about it."

"That's right sweetheart, and I found out I don't need you around anymore. I can do just fine by myself."

The telephone rang and I answered it. It was Jeff and he wanted to know if Gail was on her way. I handed her the phone.

She just said, "Yes, no, I don't know, if you think shit hit the fan at work, you should see it at our house. He knows you're the father. Yes, a DNA test told him. How the hell should I know, you want to talk to him? Goodbye."

She sat down and cried some more. "Who else knows."?

"Well, your work knows, that's why they let you go, I guess."

"Yes, I kind of figured that out about now and I guess Jeff has too. He threatened me, if I said anything to his wife, he would kill me."

"Well in that case, I better call his wife. No asshole is going to threaten my household and get away with it."

I picked up the phone; she had him on the speed dial. Alice answered it.

I started in telling her that her husband was a proud father of a one-year-old boy. She got pissed off and hung up on me after awhile, so I didn't get to say too much. I knew she would be calling back.

I told Gail to move her things and she could live in the baby's room till she found a place to live. I told her, "I want a divorce and you get the money we have, and pay me 1/3 of your earnings, I want the kids and the house. That is more than fair after what you did. It's a one-time offer and expires on the eighth of the month. So if you want it, talk to a lawyer. Any offer after this is half the money plus money for your half of the house and I get the kids and house to live in anyway."

She said, "I don't want all the money, I just want half of everything. That is more than fair. What about Andy?"

"He is part of the family; I will take care of him."

Three days later, she moved her things out and her lawyer contacted me and I had Jerome draw up the papers for the settlement and divorce and she signed it all with her lawyer approving everything. She wanted me to explain to the kids and she would get them every other weekend.

I explained to the kids as well as I could, and they took it better than I would have. There are a lot of kids are in school from single parents, so I guess that helped.

Andy called me a week after our first meeting and set up a date at his law firm for the next day. I showed up with Jerome. I told him before we went in that I was looking for 6 million out of them. He said we could get more, but I told him that would do. Jerome told me he would do all my talking for me.

We met in a big conference room and Andy had six of his lawyers on his side, while just Jerome and I sat on the other side.

Jerome asked, "What do you have as a figure?" and one lawyer said, "I guess in the neighborhood of 2 million"

Jerome said, "That's no good. We were looking for 10 million, so let's say 7 are more reasonable?"

"We'll double our offer to 4."

"Six."

"Split the difference?"

"Five it is. We can move on, if it's all right with you Mr. Hewlett." He nodded and then Jerome said, "How do you expect to pay this?"

A few of the lawyers looked at each other and Jerome spoke. "Well, start us off; we might just go for it."

"Well, most deals like this is a thirty-year plan."

"Yes, I agree with you, but that is a business format. Here we have an individual, and we are looking for a ten-year plan and nothing more. Who can say where we will be in ten years from now." I got up for a cup of coffee and while I was there, I could hear them discussing it among themselves.

They came back with twenty-year deal. Jerome opened his laptop and played the video he had keyed to a certain point. Jeff was saying,

"Let me fuck that ass, or I'll have you fired, you bitch."

"Gentlemen, we want to settle it and be out of your hair in the fastest time we can. We're not asking for the world in money, and we don't want to be in your hair for twenty years either. We don't want to be reminded of this any longer than we have to. Ten years for an individual is fair. We don't make a living at this. Look, we will step out of the room and wait in the waiting room and you can call us when you're ready."

We waited for twenty minutes when they called us back in. They accepted a ten-year deal with two million the first year and the rest in ten payments.

"Good, sounds like a plan coming together for us all. Tomorrow you draw up the papers and I will sit down with you and go over them and see what has to be changed. That shouldn't be more that two days of work, and we should be able to sign by Friday at the latest."

The next day we got together with Gail and she signed all the papers without a lawyer, because Jerome told her it was paper work to get her half of all the different bank accounts in order with her name on them alone. As she signed, she signed a paper we put in saying she would not sue the law firm and settled for ten thousand dollars. After we finished, we all went out to eat with the kids and little Andy.

We finally settled with the law firm. Jerome had a hard time agreeing with the wording, and a lot had to be changed in it. But we finally did sign, and we got the money. I took his right off the top and gave it to him.

Gail and I went out about a month after she signed all the papers to talk. It went fairly well. She did a lot of crying, trying to explain what she did. I felt sorry for her in a way, but not that sorry. She more or less admitted she was more concerned with going up the corporate ladder, and it was more important to her than her marriage was.

Her mom and my mom are still pissed at her for what she did, and it will take time for them to come around. Our divorce is final and I'm once again a free man with four kids. I hired a sitter or nanny, whatever you want to call them, to watch Andy while I do my thing. It cost me a few dollars, but I've got it, so what the hell.

Gail picks up the kids on her weekends and enjoys them very much. She's back working as a paralegal plus some volunteer work.

It's only been two years since I dumped her and she just started to date again. I've been going out with a lot of different girls, but they are all-younger than me, and like to give that pussy away. I think I will go back and chase someone more my age and see how that works out. Maybe she will have a few kids and I can take them in too. I love Andy and the girls, and treat him just like he was my son. He is a great kid and learns fast.

The end