Payment in Kind

"I need a divorce, today," she answered.

"Today?" I asked, amused.

"Yes sir, today if I can get it," Dell followed.

I had already heard enough. I turned to the credenza behind me to gather the notes of references that I kept there. I had given up divorce work years ago. Having one high school classmate blow another's brains out in front of their children just because she'd had the temerity to end a brutal 15-year marriage via divorce was, believe it or not, a life-changing event for me.

"Well, you can't get a divorce in one day, not unless you're carrying a written signed agreement with a property division in that very nice purse of yours. And I can't help you. I don't do divorce anymore. Not after the Rudners." I replied, spying Penny shaking her head "no" out of the corner of my eye. I stared Penny down. It was my practice and I'd decide which case to take and which to punt. But Dell had seen Penny pitch in on the side of her plea and took heart.

Everyone in the County knew of the Rudner case. Everyone knew Steve Rudner had a crazy streak three miles long and twice as wide. Everyone but me. In my post-Dorothy alcoholic fog, I had not gotten Millie the most basic protection necessary in a divorce involving continued domestic violence. I hadn't obtained a restraining order on Steve. For the rest of their lives the entire clan, even Steve, would bear the consequences of my self-indulgent stupor.

"I heard about that" Dell said, "It wasn't your fault. I know it wasn't." Dell didn't mention how she concluded my innocence with such certainty, but it wouldn't have mattered. I was in no mood to hear it, and in no mood to forgive myself. And I was damn certain in no mood to take on another divorce case. Which was a pity because divorce was about a quarter of any small-town attorneys' normal practice.

"I'm going to give you a list of lawyers you should talk to" I heard myself saying. One of them can help you." Dell took the list in her hand, looked it over, and began to sob.

"I've talked to them all" she said eyeing the list. "They can't help me. They all do work for the Dediers. They're all afraid of what they'll do." Oh, I see. You came to me as the absolute last resort after striking out with every other lawyer in town. Well, that's the vote of confidence I needed to jump right into the middle of your shitty marriage, sure!

"Let me be really blunt Ms. Dedier," I said, heated by her comment. You need an exorcist, not a lawyer. We have one district judge who rides the bench in Sandstone County and the two adjacent counties. You know who that is. Atone Volse was your husband's lawyer, and his father's lawyer before him for years before going on the bench. They grew up together. They serve on the hospital board together and they run the Lion's club. Volse is Godfather to at least two of Allie's cousins I know of. He's been asked to recuse himself in Dedier cases before, and he's always refused, and the opposition always gets hosed. Not anything big or notable to the court of appeals, they just lose every single decision the judge has any discretion on whatsoever. You will get your divorce--the law guarantees you that. But you'll most likely be stripped of any property for which you don't have strict proof of gift and you'll be effectively run out of town, whether you continue to live here or not. The chances that you will get sole custody, with no visitation rights for Marsh, are zero point zero. In fact, it is more likely that your husband will get custody. I think it is important to be realistic here, Ms. Marsh" I said.

Dell exploded into tears again.

"I have to try," she said. "You don't understand. He wants her. Marsh wants Allie...that way," she said nervously, peering briefly at Penny. "I can see it in the way he looks at Allie when she's not lookin' at him. He looks right at her, all hungry, the way he used to look at me. She's just 15 Mr. Betts. She doesn't know what's comin' after her. I do. I'll take her and skip town if I have to."

Abuse of this kind was a whole different kettle of fish. No judge in his right mind gives the time of day to a fully established child abuser, and it was normal for their custody rights to be completely suspended in such cases. But the proof. That was the problem. Judge Volse wasn't heartless, but he also wasn't about to take down a Dedier, particularly the heir apparent to the throne, on the random suspicions by the mother about the way the father looked at their daughter. He would be especially suspect of the story of a spouse looking for a divorce and a property settlement.

"You have to help me. They said you were good once. Very good. That you understood how to get things done, to make people do things. I need that. Allie needs that" she said. Once was the only word from her sentence I heard. Once--formerly, previously, some time ago. Long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

I must have let my eyes fall to Dell's breasts, but she misinterpreted my eye movement. All I was really doing was stalling for time and thinking about how to end the session gracefully.

"I can't give you these" she said, lifting the pearls that lay across her front. "I know you don't work for free, but these are a family heirloom and Lenora would know it in an instant if I didn't come home with them. She keeps them on a mannequin in her closet."

"Can you give us a moment please?" Dell asked, turning to Penny. Penny, who had teared up stood as if to leave.

"Stay where you are," I ordered Penny firmly. "Anything you have to say Ms. Dedier, you can say in front of my assistant. She understands the need for absolute confidentiality."

Dell leaned across the table towards me and whispered, as if to stave-off hearing by Penny, who was a scant four feet from her "I only have one thing I can pay you with," Dell said quietly, her eyes shifting nervously to Penny.

Again, I had misinterpreted Dell's fitful embarrassment. She wasn't talking about offering me some family heirloom tucked away in a safety deposit box, she was talking about her body. She was talking about giving herself to me physically in exchange for legal services. A simple, if corrupt trade, a mother's ultimate sacrifice for her daughter's good.

"If you will handle my case, I'll give you eight private sessions with me," she continued staunchly" her voice gaining strength with each passing word. "You can do anything you want to me, with me. I've done it all for him, I'll do it for you, gladly. It's...the only thing I have to offer...maybe the only thing I ever had, I guess. My daddy sure thought so," she continued, looking up from the table into my eyes. Penny was now openly weeping.

The offer had to be rejected out of hand. Not just because it was morally repugnant, but because the state Bar of Texas had outlawed sex between lawyers and clients and made it crystal clear in several subsequent disbarment actions that there were no exceptions to, and no excuses for, violating the rule.

But the offer told me several things about the woman I was speaking with. It told me that regardless of my suspicions, this woman believed with crystalline certainty that her daughter was in imminent danger of sexual abuse, that the only solution to it was removal of her husband from the scene, and that she would sacrifice anything to secure her daughter's safety.

"No mam. We will not talk of such things," I replied.

Dell burst into tears once again. I had brought two women to tears in one day and it was barely noon.

After a long pause to permit Dell and Penny to share a tissue and stop weeping, I continued. "I don't even know if I can help you. I won't consider taking the case unless I can. I'll need to get your full statement, though we can't do it here. I'll look around to see what we can do, if anything, to help. We're not even going to worry about payment unless I decide to take the case. I must warn you, though, that the odds are about 20 to 1 that I won't be able to help you at all. But I'll give it a good look and let you know what I find." I regretted the words almost immediately after uttering them, but Penny was now beaming at me, and Dell was again crying.

What was I doing? I was about to take on the most powerful family in the County, and do it solely because this woman was suspicious. It was ridiculous. The most likely outcome was that I'd be drummed out of my own hometown, never to return, or perhaps disbarred. And for what? $275 an hour? The realization hammered me as I sat there that Dell's looks had more than a little to do with it. It was one thing to help a damsel in distress, another to help a Raquel Welch look-alike in distress.

"Thank you! Thank you, thank you Mr. Betts," Dell intoned.

"Don't thank me. I haven't done anything yet and the odds are that I won't be able to do anything, and at that point you will just hate me for raising your hope." I nodded to Penny in a gesture that said, "get her out of here" and Penny stood to escort Dell out.

"You have to hurry," Dell said anxiously as she stood. My anger flared before I could get a grip on it.

"You've been married to this bastard for 17 years Ms. Dedier. He's been a total prick his whole life including all 17 years of your marriage, and now this is my emergency? I don't think so. I'll do what I can to see if I can help, but I offer no assurances, either on time, or the ability to do anything."

"I didn't mean to...well...I'm just...worried" Dell said.

"I understand," I said, softening, "but you're about to take on the most powerful man in Sandstone County, maybe in all of Southeast Texas. You're going to do that in a forum that he owns, in front of a judge that is his good lifetime friend, one who owes the thanks for most of his wealth and appointment to the bench to your opponent. You don't go off on a mission like that half-cocked. If you do, you get rubbed out. You must prepare, and you have to own a Goddamned nuke in your pocket and set it off at just the right time. Those don't come along every day."

Dell nodded, we shook hands, and I gave her our standard fetch list--any emails with Marsh, all her texts, every bank record she had access to, their tax returns if she could get them, a full list of anyone or any place that might have useful information on her background. She and Penny set a system under which she could contact Dell for me, and set an appointment to meet with her, well out of town, when she could get free without suspicion. In a town our size tongues wagged. There was a good chance someone had already informed Max that his beloved and doting wife was visiting lawyers. In fact, it was not beyond the pale that one of those lawyers, seeking a bigger cut of Dedier business, let it slip, inadvertently, that Dell had dropped in. Marsh was probably already forewarned and forearmed.

"I'm proud of you," Penny said when she returned. "Most guys would have taken her up on her offer. She's beautiful and she's desperate, that's a dangerous combination. You are gonna take it aren't you?" Penny asked after a pause. "It just may be the most important case in the County in the last ten years. Those don't come along every day."

"Thanks, I wasn't aware," I replied sullenly.

"Don't get snarly at me, I didn't make the damned rules" Penny replied.

"No, you didn't," I replied apologetically. "I just don't like living by them sometimes. And don't be proud of me until I do something worth being proud of," I added.

"I am proud of you anyway," Penny repeated, "just for saying no to the offer. And I'm proud of her for making it."

"Get me Terry Clavell, would you?"

Penny smiled and inclining her head in my direction and smiling said, "right away...Sir."

Chapter III.

The Detective

Terry Clavell was a former Texas Ranger who looked a lot like the old professional wrestler Rick Flair. He went about 6'4", maybe 225 to 230, was broad-shouldered, narrow wasted, blonde, ruggedly handsome, and the most effective private detective I had ever seen. I had worked on a host of business cases with Terry over the years after an attorney I knew in Tyler recommended him to me. He was ungodly expensive and, when you could afford him, worth every penny.

In our initial meeting Clavell told me how he'd come to be a private detective. He had been thrown out of the Rangers notwithstanding a fantastic service record over 18 years because he had engaged in "behavior unbecoming to a Ranger." This consisted of a drunken tryst with the Houston station chief's wife. Terry had the equally stoned Ms. Parings bent over the balcony railing of the Warwick Hotel in the middle of a hot May afternoon, a hand full of her long blonde hair, giving her exactly what she wanted, when their crime was called in. He later bragged that he "finished the job" before the police arrived, and that both the Parings woman, who somehow managed to remain married to the chief, and the chief himself, continued to call him for years: him to seek advice, her to seek more of what she'd gotten on the balcony.

Terry's strength was that he could get anyone to talk about anything, at any time. His secret wasn't his looks, which were exemplary. It wasn't his sexuality, which was mythic. It was his ability to cause people to relax, open up, and talk. I listened to one of his taped conversations once to see how he managed it. He talked just enough to prompt someone else into talking, figured out lightning fast what was motivating the speaker, primed their pump, then listened so raptly that the speaker felt like talking until they were talked out. His common approach, which played to his strengths, was to get "next to" a spurned lover or abused secretary on a pretext. Once there, he would innocently suggest a meeting for lunch, or a drink. In a short while the subject would spill the secrets the opposition could not afford to have revealed. It was testimony to his charms that the women for whom he postured (one of the great euphemisms of all time), continued to open up even after he revealed that he was an investigator for an opponent.

"I need your help," I told him moments after Dell had left my office.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A bad one," I said.

"You don't give me any other kind," he responded.

"Sure, I do, most of what I give you is a damned cake-walk," I responded.

"Bullshit! Okay what is it?" he asked.

"I can't tell you over the phone," I responded.

"That bad?" he asked.

"Worse," I responded.

"I'm going up to Henderson on a medical partnership breakup case next Tuesday. I'll stop by on my way. You're not fucking with me, are you? I'll kill your ass if you're fucking with me," he concluded.

"Terry, you know better. This is a real thing," I responded.

"Okay, Tuesday," he said and tapped out before I could say goodbye.

The following Tuesday he came into my office unannounced, having charmed the socks off Penny as usual. Made me glad we'd never been a target because Penny would've given it up in a heartbeat.

"You need to quit doing that you fucker," I said. "One of these days you're going to pop back here unannounced and find me yanking my dong."

"And won't that be so fine?" he asked sarcastically. "Don't you have a fucking bedroom in that house of yours?" he asked pointedly. I stared him down.

"Well fuck it," Terry said. "Let's get down to it, what is it? and why all the mystery?"

"The target is Marsh Dedier. I may be representing the wife in a divorce. She thinks he's a pedophile and that he intends to bugger his own daughter. She doesn't have shit to go on and you know the county, unless we've got him by the balls from the get-go, we'll get buggered just before the daughter does. Oh, and we don't have much time."

"Shiiittt," he breathed. Terry stood up and walked around his chair, then sat, then stood up and did it all over again.

"I won't do it," he said finally. "You know Tom and I go way back. If he finds out that I've been working a project in his County against his leading citizen without giving him so much as the time of day, he'll kill me." Tom Skidmoor was our County Sheriff and, like Clavell, a former Texas Ranger.

"What the fuck?" I asked. "I knew a guy named Terry Clavell once who had two balls. Where'd you stash his ass? And no deal on tipping to Skidmoor," I said. "This has to be completely black. Not a word to anyone. You'll have to work as an alias. The Dediers gave huge money to Houston Lutheran Hospital. They're holding a gala on Saturday in their honor. I've already gotten you a ticket near their table. I need you to get next to Eunice Hawthorne. She's a spinster and she's worked for them for at least 30 years. Late 40s or young 50's, under-appreciated, unloved, but not bad looking. Just your type."

"And what do you propose to pay me for this cluster fuck?" Terry asked.

"Well, that's the great part. We haven't been retained yet and the wife doesn't have access to any of the family money, so I can't pay you. The downside is that if you or any of your impossible missions' task force is caught or killed, the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your existence. The good part is that if you get the goods, you can name your price and it won't be dependent on the time spent," I smiled.

"Shhiiiiiit," Terry repeated, stood up, and walked around his chair again before sitting back down.

"Do one good thing in your life, would you?" I asked. "You've been taking cases for ABC Corp against DEF Business for the last fifteen years. Do something that Goddamned matters! I've got the feeling that the mom is right on this one. She's not just relying on instinct. The guy has been dirty in everything his whole life. The whole damned family has. Why wouldn't he be dirty this way, Terry? Do one...good...thing...okay?"

"This 'firm belief' of yours wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the mom looks like fucking Gina Lollobrigida, would it?" Terry asked. "Yeah, we get the internet in Houston too and those two are all over the society pages. Ok you dumb fuck. I'll look into it, but I'm not promising anything. Shoot me any leads you get. Jesus you're fucking hopeless."

"The situation is hopeless Terry, that's why I called you. I can't settle for second best, not on this one." Terry looked away, but I could tell my comment had affected him. "Besides, she looks like Raquel Welch, not Gina Lollabrigida." He turned back to me, nodded curtly, and left, the steady thump of his cowboy boots trailing back down the hall.

Penny gave him a large packet that she and I had prepared containing all the names, addresses, bank account and other information we could muster from the public record. I walked to the front door to see him leave. I don't know why, but it gave me enormous comfort to know that Clavell would work on it. He flipped me the bird before he ducked into his ancient, gigantic Continental.

I had Penny text Dell with their predetermined signal. We didn't know what kind of security the family ran, and the odds were about 100% that Dell's phone was on their system. To hide our connection as well as we could, Penny texted "We still on for our trip to Beaumont tomorrow?!!? I got $500 of Rick's money burning a hole in my pocket." Dell texted "Yep, pick you up at 8;30," which was the code for my meeting with her the next morning.

Meeting confirmed, I returned to my office, closed the door, and reached for the fifth of Jack Black I kept under the loose papers in the bottom drawer of my credenza. What the fuck am I doing? I pulled a hefty tug from the brown bottle, the fire spreading through me. I put it aside and began preparing for an all-out assault on the Castle Dedier, one almost certain to result in my complete obliteration.