Flea Market Find

Chapter 1

"Ms. Shawcross will see you now," said the willowy blonde secretary, motioning them to follow her. Charles Emerson noticed that she had a pronounced seesaw to her hips as she undulated down the corridor to the conference room they had requested.

"You know this is not going to be pleasant," warned Don Carcharo, Emerson's lawyer.

"I don't expect it to be. You've been a family law lawyer for thirty-some years, Don, and much of that handling divorces. How many breakups have you handled that were amicable?"

"Not many." Miss Swivelhips held the door open for them. In the conference room, Alexis Shawcross, one of his wife's named partners in Shawcross, Scandian & Shorr, did not stand up to greet them. Neither did the black-haired man with perpetual five o'clock shadow seated next to her. Chuck knew him, and had reason to disapprove of his presence. Before any of the lawyers could say anything, Chuck spoke up.

"Rolland, your presence offends me. Ms. Shawcross, be so kind as to order him out of here and if you think you can't handle this case without a second chair, call in someone else. But either he leaves, or we do."

Jean Rolland, who looked like a 1920s gangster sent over from Central Casting, surged to his feet with a snarl.

"You can't order me around, Emerson! Sam asked me to look out for her interests at this meeting when she had to fly to Chicago!"

"But I can, Jean. I will watch out for Samantha's interests in this matter. I'll fill you in after the meeting. That will be all." The skeletally thin, fluffy white-haired named partner watched Rolland stalk out of the room like an angry bull. She shifted her gaze to Carcharo with a frown.

"You don't usually allow your clients to give orders, Don. Why in this case?"

"If you'll be so kind as to play this on the big screen over there, Alix, I think you'll understand why." He handed her a thumb drive. She passed it to a first year associate seated on her side of the table, who scurried to set it up. He nodded that it was ready; Shawcross selected the thumb drive and pressed the Play button.

A black screen with the logo of a local private investigation firm and a date and time appeared onscreen, like the title card of a silent movie. It dissolved into a frame of a naked Samantha Scandian wearing two leather wrist cuffs with D-rings on them clipped to a pair of chains that forced her to stand on tiptoe with her legs spread apart. Behind her, Jean Rolland wearing only a pair of leather pants held a leather flogger of what looked like a hundred soft leather tails.

"You've been a mouthy slut," he growled. "Now you pay for your insolence!"

"Yes, sir," she whispered, the nipples on her store-bought breasts hard with anticipation.

Whack! The scourge smacked into her surgically tightened backside, some of the tails wrapping around to hit the top of her pelvis. They left pale red stripes behind them. Whack! Another stroke. Whack! Another. Whack! A fourth, and Samantha moaned with a mixture of pleasure and pain.

This went on for a couple of minutes, steady, timed strokes to her buttocks, lower back, and the back of Sam's thighs. Rolland stepped around to her right, his back to the camera, showing the heavy black pelt covering most of his body that with his almost Neanderthal looks contributed to his nickname around the courthouse: "the Gorilla." There was a camera cut and the point of view changed from Samantha's front to her left side. Rolland swung the flogger again, this time hitting her left breast.

"AAAAAHH!" The stripes from the soft leather strips stood out on her pale tit, the nipple even harder than before. The next stroke came in, to her right boob this time. She screamed again. Paying no heed to her cries, Rolland continued to flog her melons with firm blows about five seconds apart until they glowed red and she begged him, "Please ... please ... please ... let me cum for you ... let me cum ..."

His expression did not change as he stood at the foot of the bed where she was suspended. He drew back his arm, and this time swung the flogger against her shaved mound, the smack of the leather against her tender flesh audible on the soundtrack.

"AIEEEEEHHHH!" Samantha's tummy-tucked belly shuddered with her release as she squirted pussy juice onto the bed. Her climax was so powerful that she just hung there in her chains, tremors rippling across her stomach and her thighs. Rolland stepped behind her, his erection tenting the trousers he wore, and unclipped her wrists from the chains. She fell limp across the foot of the bed, her torso lying on it, her pelvis at the level of Rolland's. He tossed the flogger aside and stepped out of the trousers, revealing a cock that looked like a pepperoni sausage, hard, red, and stiff.

There was another camera cut, back to the front view as he entered her. Rolland entered his paramour with no preliminaries, forcing his way into the pussy between her spread legs. Samantha screamed as he took her, another orgasm making her shudder as he drove in and pulled out, ignoring her cries of pain. After the third or fourth stroke, her moans quickly changed to gasps of pleasure as the Gorilla used her.

"Oh, sir! Oh, sir! Yes! Like that! Use me! Fuck me! Make me your whore! Fuck my pussy! I want it! I want you inside me! I want you to cum inside me! Let me please you! Fuck me! Fuck me hard! FUCK ME!"

He responded to her pleading by grabbing a handful of her blonde hair and yanking her up, bowing her back and pulling her against his crotch as the camera caught her engorged nipples, hard pebbles that jutted out well beyond the areolas. Her body shook as she came again from his long, hard penis smashing its way from her vagina to her cervix.

"Swing that ass, bitch," he snarled, slapping her buttocks hard enough to imprint his hand in red upon them. "I'm gonna fill you up with so much sperm that it will drip down your thighs and puddle between your feet! You like that idea, bitch?"

"Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Fuck me hard and cum in me! Treat me like the horny bitch I am! Give me your spunk and make me your cumslut, with your cum dripping out of me to show you I'm yours! Give it to me! Fill me up and make me cum on your huge fuckstick! Fuck me hard! Fuck me like a wild animal! Fuck me!"

The camera angle changed to the left side again as Rolland continued to drive in and out and Sam twerked her buttocks wildly, milking his prick, trying to make him cum. Suddenly he let go of her hair and grabbed her by the hips, taking control of her body and ramming in and out of her, what little subtlety he had shown completely gone now, until he made one last, massive shove into her pussy.

"ARRGGGH!"

"AIEEEEHH! Oh, Y-E-S-S-S!"

This time they shuddered together in simultaneous climax. Samantha dropped onto the bed, limbs slack, limp as she dropped into the afterglow. Rolland did not allow her to enjoy it, however. He picked her up and turned her around, her legs still parted, and the viewers realized that she had a steel spreader bar clamped to her ankles. Forcing her to her knees, he pulled her head back and stuck his still hard cock into her face. Looking up at him, she opened her mouth, willingly sucking and licking their juices off the schwanz that abused her twat. This went on for a minute before another title card came up. Shawcross hit the Pause button.

"There are more than a dozen episodes of similar nature on that drive," Carcharo observed clinically. "Not all the same, of course. There are some of comparatively vanilla sex, where he's dressed as a burglar and 'rapes' her in her own bed. There is one in the living room where Scandian is dressed as a Hindu nautch dancer, where she gradually strips down until she is naked save for her jewelry and a head veil and Rolland takes her on her back on the Persian carpet. There is another one where she is dressed like a Las Vegas hooker and he rips her clothes off, shoves in a butt plug, and then screws her on the dining room table until he pulls out and shoots all over her -- "

"Enough!" snapped Shawcross, the brittleness in her voice indicating that she had had all the discussion of this subject she was prepared to tolerate. "How do we know that those -- episodes -- are real? I noticed there are cuts in the footage."

"Argus Investigations has been in business for more than fifty years. They have long specialized in providing electronic surveillance and photographic evidence for employers, attorneys, and even on occasion the government. The head of the company suggested that adding title cards and using multiple cameras would make the report a little more ... artistic, easier to watch. Don't worry -- Argus provided us with the raw footage and we will make it available to you for comparison by your experts, at your expense of course."

Alexis Shawcross eyed what she knew was a highly skilled courtroom opponent across the table. He was holding the high cards, and she knew it. She didn't have a great deal of respect for his client; she had told Samantha more than once she thought Sam had married beneath her. But Emerson was no dope, and the proof was he had her backed into a corner. There was nothing to prevent him from posting the footage of Sam and Jean on the Internet. If he put it out there, Shawcross, Scandian & Shorr would become a laughingstock in the legal community at best, and implode at worst. The only way to protect the firm was to fold.

"All right, Charles. You have reason to file for divorce and to make Sam the villain of the piece. What do you want?"

Before Emerson or Carcharo could reply, Samantha's secretary burst into the conference room. A peaches and cream-complexioned redhead, she was so pale that the freckles no one normally noticed on her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief. Without a word, she picked up the remote for the flatscreen, switched it to cable service, and changed to a 24-hour news channel. It showed what was left of an airliner furiously burning on the ground. The audio, which always lagged behind the video when the channel was changed, caught up with the picture.

" -- And there appear to be no survivors. Repeating: Transair Flight 7908 was shot down by what appears to have been surface to air missiles fired from Algonquin Woods on its final approach to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. The right wing was blown off the airplane and it crashed just inside the airport boundary, barely missing the Allstate Arena. Police are cordoning off the area and traffic has been halted on Interstates I-90, I-190, and I-294 in both directions in an attempt to capture the perpetrators of this atrocity. The Mayor is enroute to the crash site and although there has been no official announcement yet, the police on the scene are saying that this bears all the signs of a terrorist act -- "

"Ms. Shawcross, Ms. Scandian was on that flight! She's representing the firm in the Tomasini matter. She sent three texts from the plane, one asking me to have one of the associates confirm a point of federal case law and email her an extract of it, and another for me to reschedule a meeting she has tomorrow, and a third asking about the extract again. She was on that plane all right ..."

"Thank you for telling me, Grace. That will be all." The secretary left and Shawcross killed the flatscreen. She and Don locked eyes across the table.

"What my client wants out of this divorce just became a moot point, Alexis. He's now a widower, or he will be as soon as the death certificate is issued. That means the terms of her will in the Emerson -- Scandian Family Trust are operative, and we will be proceeding on that basis. Come on, Chuck, let's get out of here." They stood up, Chuck looking rather blank. Shawcross stood as well.

"Not so fast, Don. Samantha wrote a new will when your client filed for divorce. It's sitting on my desk."

"Is it signed and witnessed?"

"No, but it shows her intention to -- "

"Nice try, Alexis, but if she did not sign the new will, it's not valid and you know it. The will she signed when we set up the family trust is still operative, and we will be proceeding on that basis. We'll be in touch to wind up her affairs with your firm in a week or two. Good day." The two men walked out and took the elevator to the parking garage where Carcharo's company car was waiting.

Chapter 2

The next few days were a blur for Chuck, with few details registering. He vaguely remembered calling Brandon and Monica, his two children, to deliver the news. They said that they would come as soon as they were able. Brandon said that he had a meeting with a possible backer he had worked for six months to arrange that could not be put off; Monica said that there was a meeting of the party's Election Committee that she must not miss concerning that year's primaries.

He approved the arrangements made by Don, who was a friend as well as his lawyer, to have Samantha's remains cremated and the ashes returned home. Neither he nor Samantha being religious, there was no funeral. In the absence of the children, Chuck simply drove to the cemetery with the urn, went to the columbarium, placed it in the niche he had purchased, and watched with expressionless face as the workers respectfully sealed the niche closed. The bronze plaque with Samantha's vital statistics would be attached after it was made.

Alexis Shawcross organized a memorial to her late partner, which was held at a function hall connected to a famous restaurant that catered the collation afterwards. Don saw to it the three Emersons made it to the memorial, but the only thing Chuck remembered of the eulogizing was the conspicuous absence of Jean Rolland. Snatches of overheard conversations indicated that despite his being a partner in the firm and an excellent litigator, the partnership was furious with Rolland. The betting among the associates and the senior office staff was that Triple S would buy back his shares in the firm and he'd be gone before the end of the fiscal year -- for a law firm partner, the equivalent of being fired.

Chuck was standing at the bar, a whiskey untouched before him, when he felt a hand on his arm. Alexis Shawcross stood there, her posture putting him in mind of a praying mantis.

"I'm sure this isn't the best time to bring this up, Charles, but we need to discuss closing out Samantha's partnership. Are you free tomorrow morning, say at 10:00 AM?"

"Don and I will be there."

"Surely we don't need him along."

"Alexis, one thing I've learned buying and selling cars all these years is that any time someone tells me I don't need someone along to make a deal, that's the time I need him the most. Right now there is just one lawyer I trust, and you aren't him. We'll be there at ten." He turned away, ending the conversation. Shawcross was shocked at his rudeness.

Chuck wandered through the hall, accepting the condolences of the partners who knew him, and the sympathies of the associates and staff who worked with his wife. Eventually he located his daughter, a pixie-cut blonde who looked like her mother at the same age, closeted in a corner with some of the juniors of the firm, talking politics.

"We simply have to get out and whip up the base if we are going to turn the tables on the current administration! If we don't stop them, they're going to run our nation right into the ground and turn it into a police state!"

"Time to go, Monica," he said firmly, taking her by the arm and pulling her away from the worshipful adoration of the Millennials and Post-Millennials around her.

They found Brandon standing by the doorway to the hall, a drink in one hand and his arm blocking the exit of Mr. Venthal, the balding, dusty Chief Financial Officer of Triple S who among other things handled the investing of the money earned by the firm's legal activities. It was clear to Chuck that the sweating CFO wished he was anywhere else than being buttonholed by a partner's son he thought of as a ne'er-do-well to hear a pitch for investing in a dubious startup.

"Let's go, Bran," Chuck said, interposing himself between Venthal and his son, allowing the moneyman to beat a hasty retreat.

"But, Dad -- "

"Now," he stressed, pushing him out the door. Brandon left with ill grace, Monica fuming behind them at having had her political soapbox yanked out from under her.

The next morning, Don and Chuck walked into Shawcross's office exactly on time. She was conferring with a couple of people. Chuck recognized the CFO and pegged the striking, dignified black woman standing next to him as a senior manager, human resources type.

"Good morning, gentlemen. I've asked Mr. Venthal and Ms. Paclan to sit in on our meeting, to explain how we propose to close out your late wife's partnership in the firm," said Alexis.

"There's nothing to discuss," Chuck said firmly, as Carcharo had coached him to do. "My wife was a named partner in Shawcross, Scandian & Shorr. She owned ten percent and a fraction of the shares in this firm. According to your last tax filing, Triple S has a net worth of $112.5 million. When Samantha died, under the terms of the will she has on file with The Carcharo Group -- "

"Which was submitted to the probate court this morning," interjected Don.

"-- her shares come to her estate, which means to me. I have no interest in becoming part owner of a law firm. Therefore, I'd like Triple S to buy me out immediately. Today. In full."

"What?" said Venthal, the top-ranked bean-counter, blanching to the roots of his receding hairline. "You expect the firm to come up with $12 million dollars just like that?" He snapped his fingers. "That's a substantial sum of money. Triple S doesn't have that kind of cash readily available; no law firm does. We can pay you, of course, but not immediately, and we'd prefer to do so in several installments. We'll have to wait for --"

"I'm sure that Mr. Emerson is not interested in the details," Shawcross interrupted smoothly. "Mr. Venthal does have a point, however. Would you give us a few days to rearrange our assets to free up the funds needed to buy back those shares?"

Chuck looked at Don, who nodded fractionally. "Agreed. Until the end of the week; no longer." Venthal visibly relaxed. Shawcross looked at Ms. Paclan and she took over, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she looked at the papers in her hand.

"Ms. Scandian has -- had -- a personal investment account with the mutual fund that handles the firm's investments. This is separate from and in addition to her 401K. All of that will of course come to you, along with the insurance policy she took out when she began to travel on the firm's business. That money makes up no part of the value of her partnership shares.

"I've already spoken to the insurance company on your behalf. They will be delivering a check to you. The policy was in the amount of $2.5 million, but there is a double indemnity clause in the event of accidental death while on company business, so the insurance payout will be $5 million."

Chuck was struck dumb. He made an excellent salary as the Executive Vice President for Sales and Marketing of the Faro Auto Group, plus dividends from his stock in the company, plus commissions on sales that he made to faithful customers who wouldn't buy a car from anyone else going back to his days as a salesman on the floor, when he and Miguel Faro had taken over a divested Ford dealership. Over two decades, the two of them had built an automobile empire with franchises from every major manufacturer and a few small specialty companies as well. His own mutual fund account was well into seven figures, according to the last quarterly statement. He owned a hunting lodge and a house he called the cottage on the coast where he kept his ocean sportfishing boat, both long since paid for. They had paid off The Big House (as he thought of it) three years ago.