Payment in Kind

Raleigh laughed long and hard. "Look Harp, I love you and I owe you. You were the only guy in this town who didn't piss down my leg when I showed up out of law school. You set me straight, gave me words to live by, so I really do owe you. But you're way out of touch with reality on this. The Dediers don't even have that kind of money and if they did, they damned sure wouldn't give it to someone who was leaving the family the first time the crap hits the fan. I understand the timing, I mean, kick the guy while he's down, only chance she's got to do it, really. You might be able to wheedle seven figures out of them if you played it right and didn't piss Lenora off, but that's it. She never much liked Dell anyway and I imagine she'd be happy to get rid of her. I'm just shooting straight with you buddy," he finished.

"Do you remember what I told you about the facts Raleigh?"

"Sure, never think you're big enough to change them. You can spin 'em, or package 'em, but they don't change" he responded.

"Precisely Raleigh. Read the fucking facts when you get the complaint. Read the documents Raleigh. Fifty Million. Not a penny less and have Lenora at my office tomorrow at 4;00 to get the papers to sign" I said and hung up.

Lenora Dedier looked the part of a Texas matron. She was tall with silver-gray hair blued in the style of the older ladies at the church. She wore the kind of dress that didn't look expensive but was. She was adorned with probably $150K in jewelry. Her expression, particularly when she cleared the door and saw Dell sitting at the table, was chipped from ice. She sat at the head of the table and refused look Dell in the eye or acknowledge her existence.

"Let's get this over with" Lenora began "I have to be at the church hall by 6;00 and I don't want to be late. I've come out of respect to your wife Harper, of whom I was quite fond. She taught Allie and her cousins and was a personal favorite."

"Thank you, I know she'd appreciate hearing that" I responded.

"Don't interrupt me" Lenora barked.

"Do not interpret my deference to your dear wife as any signal that I plan on giving that bitch a penny of our family's money" she said, nodding towards Dell. "We don't have nearly as much as people believe we do, and we aren't apt to spend it on a worthless slut who abandons her family at the first sign of distress. Raleigh informs me that we have an ironclad marital property agreement which deprives her of any part of the Dedier estate, so perhaps you'd enlighten me as to why we're here and what we're going to talk about?"

"I take it that you weren't persuaded by the x-rays of my client's broken ribs, or the fracture to her left orbital bone just two days before her signature appeared on the marital property agreement? Or the three referrals to protective services that were made by hospital officials on her behalf during the same quarter?" I responded.

"I'm quite sure she got precisely what she deserved," Lenora said a little too smoothly.

"How about the X-rays? On four occasions? From three different hospitals? Those too? She deserve those too?" I responded.

But Lenora had responded easily. Too easily. That Marsh was an abusive sick piece of shit was now old news. He was already a pedophile, so his reputation could sink no lower. Every single organization in town had dumped him in a matter of days. Dumping on Marsh in a lawsuit, as the divorce petition did for 42 exquisitely detailed pages, would certainly make the first page of the Sandstone Register, and probably make it to the Beaumont and Houston papers too, but it was little incremental leverage against Lenora or the Dediers, who were already dealing with a much bigger firestorm and could afford to just hunker down and let all of it pass.

"I thought you might say that" I responded. Lenora looked momentarily shocked, clearly expecting me to flail about wondering why the detailed history of abuse weren't enough.

"So, I think I will appeal to you on the one metric you and your family have always known--money" I remarked. Lenora said nothing. She would have done well in the world series of poker.

"You see, records have come into my possession that, during their marriage, properties owned by Marsh, directly or in the name of others, have generated over one hundred and sixty-eight million dollars, all of which are community funds."

Lenora gave no visible reaction.

"Records have also come into my possession that, for at least the last eighteen years, your family has regularly underreported the production of oil and gas produced from your lands by around 25% by filing false P-1 forms, the last 38 of which following the death of your dearly departed husband bear your name as trustee. I know that the purchaser of the excess oil and gas production is Ark-Tex out of Magnolia Arkansas and that the proceeds of these sales have been consistently placed in foreign bank accounts in both Switzerland and the Grand Caymans, never to be revealed to the state of Texas or the United States Internal Revenue Service" I said. I pushed a thick three ring binder of well-organized records in Lenora's direction.

"You may not give a shit about your son. I certainly don't and it would surprise me if my client does. But I expect you to care about yourself. You've committed Texas felonies by failing to properly report production. Go look up the name Clinton Manges and you'll see where that ends up. You've committed federal felony offenses by underpaying taxes. The last guy who did that got 5 years in prison, at age 84, and he hadn't been doing it for the last eighteen years. I cannot threaten you with criminal prosecution, and do not do so today. But I can assure you that if Ms. Rucker is required to trace the existence and status of her community property, it will inevitably cause you to be forced to produce, and me to make public at trial, this vast and continuous criminal theft from our government."

Lenora, who had been pouring over the papers with intense panicky eyes, turned white.

"I don't know what they serve in Texarkana FCI Ms. Rainer, but I doubt it is anywhere near as tasty as what you get out on your place. The deadline to make the wire transfer, and to have Marsh sign the papers divorcing Dell, giving up all custody rights of himself and his family, and assigning these funds to Dell, is tomorrow at 4;00 p.m., so you have work to do."

"We just don't have that kind of money!" Lenora screamed in a dead panic.

"To the contrary, Ms. Dedier" I said as I pulled the notebook to me and dog-eared tab #47, "at last count the Dedier Trust, over which you have full and complete authority to act as trustee, held One Billion, Six Hundred Forty-Two Million, One Hundred Eighteen thousand dollars and twelve cents."

Lenora became physically sick when the correct balance sheet on the family fortune was recited to the penny. That was okay. I confess that I enjoyed her discomfort, and the mess cleaned up just fine from the hardwood floors.

At 3;59 p.m. the following day, $84 Million appeared in the trust account of the Law Offices of Harper Betts, P.C. We were cloistered in the conference room waiting for the news from the Bank.

"They did it!" Dell screamed. "They agreed to everything?"

"Everything" I answered.

"So, I can go?" she asked.

"Go" I responded?

"Go. Go anywhere I want? Move? Get out of here, get away from them, forever?" Dell asked.

"Of course, I said, my heart falling. Only then did I realize that I'd become far too attached to this woman and was filled with dread that she might leave Sandstone.

My face must have looked it, because Dell said "Oh, I don't know what I'm going to do. This is all new." Penny, who I might have mentioned does not miss a beat, picked up on my disappointment immediately.

"I expect so" I responded. "Well, as soon as you get it set up, we're ready to wire transfer your part of the funds to you. Here is a statement of your account, and here are the names of three financial advisors whom we've worked with in the past. We recommend any of the three and intentionally chose individuals living outside of Sandstone to preserve your privacy and avoid potential conflicts of interest involving the Dediers."

"Thank you. Thank you so much for everything" Dell said as she hugged Penny first, then me. "I can't believe it. I still can't believe it. You've both, you changed my life. You've given me a life, the first one I've really had." She scribbled her name on the distribution sheet and skipped out the front door. I was the first lawyer in recorded history to be heartbroken to receive a $16.8 Million contingent fee, because it meant that my case, and my time with Delta Rucker, was now at an end.

Chapter Six

Installment No. 1

The surprising thing I learned about big money, of which I'd never had much, is that it changes you way less than you think it will. You worry less about meeting the next mortgage payment, but in a few days, you realize you're still about twenty pounds overweight and searching for inspiration to lose it.

I bought Penny the most souped-up Ford F-250 in history, maxed out her 401k, then transferred another $500K to her bank account for good measure. Then I went home. Home was a cabin on Timmons' Lake about four miles south of town. Looking at it with the fresh eyes that the time and money from Dell's case gave me, I realized I had let it go to seed. So, instead of returning to my office and looking for the next big thing (like there would ever be another case like Dell's again), I stayed home and worked, and worked, and worked some more until by body ached like one giant bruise. But gradually, the outside of the house started to look like something you'd want to live in. Rudy and Julie, my two labs, got more outside work that next couple of weeks than they'd had in years. They bitched and moaned pitifully at first but came around like troopers after a few days.

Dealing with the inside of the house was harder. Though I returned inside each evening exhausted, I still had trouble sleeping. Everything about the home and everything in the home reminded me of Dorothy and the life we'd built together. I hadn't touched a thing since her death, as if keeping a snapshot of my life via its contents would help me hold on to the happiness that resided there when Dorothy was alive.

It felt disloyal to remove any of the pictures, the chalkboard she'd put on the side of the fridge, even her damned macrame supplies. The kids had commented on it when they visited, quietly suggesting that the place could use some "sprucing up" and even suggesting I might consider moving to Houston to be closer to them. They were, after all, about to start having kids and I'd want to be close.

I'd accumulated books on grief and how to deal with it, but never read them. Now I did. I put all our family photos into a single room--my study. It became the Betts family shrine. While Dorothy was in most of the pictures, she was never alone in them, she was always in the company of family, always providing me a reminder of what I had to live for along with what I'd lost.

Penny called a week into the sabbatical.

"She wants to see you" Penny said excitedly.

"She?" I asked.

"Dell, dumbass! Who the hell else have you made millions for recently?" she asked.

"Okay, why?" I asked, "When?"

"Tonight!" she bubbled.

"Tonight?" I asked, puzzled.

"Be here at 7;30 and clean up for God's sake. Last time you came by you smelled like a damned horse."

"Ok" I said, "leave the AC on I guess."

"You think?" Penny laughed into the phone.

"What is all this about?" I asked, but Penny just kept laughing and hung up the phone. Shit, you'd think a nice F-250 and a half-mill would buy a little Goddamned respect, wouldn't you? I thought.

I cleaned up as instructed, put on khakis and a nice business shirt and my best blazer, wondering all the while why Dell needed to see me, and why she'd chosen such an odd hour to do it. On the way out I dashed some cologne across my neck only to wonder what the fuck am I doing that for? I drove to my office, cranked on the lights, then went to the back, and waited. 7;30 turned into 7;45 before I heard the door open, then close, and the inside lock being twisted to close it. Why did she do that? I wondered. I heard the lights in the front entry and in the hallway being clicked off as Dell walked my way.

Click, click, click, clack, the unmistakable sound of high-heeled shoes cascaded down the hallway. A walking wet dream appeared at my door. Dell stood there in a low cut, tight as skin, little black dress. Her legs were stockinged in black hose and four-inch stilettos adorned her fee.

"He...llo," I stuttered.

"You like?" she asked as she twirled. The back had a long plunging dip, nearly to the top of her bottom. I could see the slightest dimple between her butt cheeks. The front also dipped, revealing a good portion of her generous curves.

"Yes," I replied, dumbfounded.

"I've come to pay the first installment of my debt to you Harper," Dell announced.

"But...you...don't owe me anything Dell. You took care of everything" I said, genuinely perplexed.

"Come sit on the couch next to me, and I'll explain it to you," Dell said patting the cushion next to her. The word came out "splain"--I'll "splain" it to you--like Ricky Ricardo used to say to Lucille Ball. My interviews with Dell taught me that her speech reverted to its most southern roots when she was nervous.

I sat on the couch next to her.

"I've paid my fee. I know that. But I haven't paid my debt. You helped me when nobody else would. You believed in me when nobody else did. You helped me in a way nobody else could" she said evenly. You treated me with respect, even when I told you I didn't respect myself. And you never made me feel like a tramp, even though Marsh made me one. Then an imp seemed to emerge from her: "plus, our deal was clear, wasn't it? Eight sessions of whatever you want from me in exchange for your services?" she asked mockingly. "That's what I recall anyway. Was it eight, or ten? Or was it fifteen?" she asked as a huge grin crossed her face.

"Dell, you know I never considered that. I never would do that," I responded.

"I know, that's why I'm here, and I won't take 'no' for an answer," she replied.

"I've been thinking about this a lot, Harp. Ever since I walked out of your office. I had to drive all the way over to Beaumont just to talk to the bankers and make sure it was real. I still can't get my head around it. I don't need a rich man Harp; you've seen to that. I don't need a powerful man, I never wanted one. I need a good man, a man who knows me, who knows what I've done, the choices I've made, and thinks I'm okay anyway. I need a man who is strong in the mind, and who is kind. You're the first man in my whole life who's ever listened to me, ever really given a damn about me, ever believed me or believed in me or stood up for me. I'm not about to let that go by, and if you think I would, you're not nearly as smart as you think you are," she replied.

Then, without asking she leaned over and kissed me. I backed away from sheer shock and she giggled in reply. We joined again then and I warmed to the task. Her lips were soft and tentative at first, exploring my upper lip, then traveling to my lower before gathering it entirely in her mouth and giving it a gentle pull. I moaned, my cock rising like a NASA booster, and I pulled her face to mine as our tongues began to dance in and around one another.

"Now," she said, sitting up and running the nails of her right hand on my thigh, whisper in Ms. Dell's ear every naughty thing you thought about doing to me when I told you all about me. It's really very unfair, I think. I told you everything, and you haven't told me a thing about yourself. That doesn't seem fair to you does it, Mr. Betts?"

I knew that what Dell proposed to do was wrong, from every single possible angle it was wrong. It could get me disbarred. It could result in the loss of the fee I had just earned, a life-changing fee. I would arguably be taking advantage of the very vulnerability that our privileged communications had revealed. But when she gave me a slow, radiant, smile that must have travelled from the bottom of her feet to the top of her head, I knew that none of those fears would ever come to pass. I had been offered a gift of unimaginable depth--one I would not refuse.

But how to answer Dell's lusty question? Honestly, I thought. I leaned into Dell's left ear and whispered "everything. I thought about every naughty thing in the world, and I've kept on thinking about it ever since." Dell's eyes lidded shut for a moment as she processed that reply. I could feel the hard nipples of her breast as she leaned against me and contemplated her next move.

I kissed her again, a slow probing kiss, the kind a 7^th grader gives the girl of his dreams for a first kiss. Dell responded hungrily and I cupped her face in my hand again. The accumulated sexual tension of months working together exploded into a raucous, grinding, unbridled exchange of tongues and breath, during which Dell threw her leg over the top of my lap and straddled me. She dove into my mouth with her tongue, so deeply that I could feel it in the back of my throat. I thrust up against her hard and gripped her nearly nude bottom. We parted breathlessly and then both promptly burst into laughter as we relaxed for a moment.

"Whoa, I definitely did not see this coming" I admitted.

"Me either. When the divorce went final, I started thinking that I didn't want to see hide nor hair of a man forever, then I kept comin' round to you. I kept thinking about things you said, about what you stood for. Penny helped me get up the nerve" Dell cooed.

"Crap," I said "another thing to deal with."

"Shush!" Dell replied. "She loves you, the good way, and she's worried about you."

"So, I was outnumbered from the beginning?" I asked.

"Oh yah," Dell said, "I learned a thing or two about preparation for important events here in the last few weeks."

I might have enjoyed these little bits of conversation even more than the kiss and the incipient promise of sex, but my hard cock was issuing its own demands and Dell could feel it press between her legs. She arched her back, forcing her pussy down onto my lap. She moved her hips back and forth over me, the friction between her tiny thong and my pants lighting the fire between us not at all. Soon we were humping one another madly, our lips locked together to complete the connection. Suddenly her movements became intensely passionate, a ferocious grinding of crotch on cock until she went off... AGGGHHH, AAGGHHH, AHHH, AAHHH, AAHHH, ohhhh, ohhhhh, ohhhh yes, yesss, she cooed as she came down from her high and collapsed against me, my face nestled against her neck. She pulled away from me and her eyes were dewy.

"I can't seem to keep from making you cry" I said, rubbing my thumb over the corner of her eyes to clear them of the salty tears.

Dell laughed lightly "Good tears. Very good tears, the best kind" as she lay her forehead against my chest.

I cupped the side of her face and stared into her dark brown eyes. I am given to too much reflection, generally a man of thought rather than action. But that evening I refused to give in to my ordinary instincts. I knew what I wanted. I didn't know exactly what I'd done to deserve it, but I had gotten it. Working with Dell, listening to her, believing her, defending her, they had all rekindled in me something like my former self. I would never be precisely the man with her that I was with Dorothy. We had decades of shared history and Dell and I just a few weeks. Dell would never have to be the woman she had been with Marsh, but maybe, just maybe, we could be enough for one another, whether just for a time or for forever, time would tell.