Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) (7 page)

“He was going to, but Felicia threatened him.”

“Threatened him with what?”

“She told him that if he didn’t let us go, she’d call some
Federal Judge named  Hawthorne Graves and get him to shut the place down.  Did
you know Fee was friends with a Federal judge?”

I groaned.  The dull headache I’d had for the last three hours
suddenly became a non-stop pounding between my eyes. I rested my face in my
hands and rubbed my temples.  “So he let you go?”

“He let us go.”

I sat back on the couch and considered what Maddie had just
told me.  All in all, I was impressed with my wife’s ingenuity.  Not a lot of
people would have had the guts to try something like that and not get thrown in
jail in the process.  As for the Hawthorne Graves ploy, I’d definitely be
calling Felicia on that one.

I moved closer to Maddie on the couch.  “I’m glad you didn’t
get arrested,” I told her, and I leaned over and kissed her.

“So you’re not mad at me?” she said.

“Not real mad.” 

“Do you think something’s going on there?”

“Maddie, I don’t know.  I mean, it sounds weird.  But the place
could be perfectly legitimate.  I don’t know.”

“It feels wrong, Samuel.  The whole thing just feels wrong.”

“Well, we’ll know soon enough.  I’m already working on getting
an order.”

It took me two weeks to get a court order and it took calling
in a favor from a judge to get it.  In the meantime, I needed to respond to discovery
requests from the defendants in Earl’s discrimination case.  Russ set up an
appointment for late in the afternoon for Earl to come down to go over the
interrogatories.  The defendants were very specific in their questions, which
made me wonder if Earl was hiding something from me.  In general, the broader
the questions, the more likely the defendants were on a fishing expedition,
hoping to snag some information they could use against us.  These defendants
weren’t using nets.  They had their hook in the water and were zeroed in on a
specific catch.

Once again, Earl arrived at my office to the minute of his
scheduled appointment.  I wondered if he waited outside the door watching the
second hand tick off so that he could time his appearance so precisely.  Russ
announced Earl’s presence in typical military fashion.  As unconventional as
his manner had seemed when he’d first started working with me, I was finding
more and more that I liked his soldierly ways.  Earl, on the other hand, did
not yet share the sentiment.

“Wussup with that dude, man?”  

“Who?” I asked, as if my office was overflowing with men he
could be referring to.

He maneuvered his massive body into one of the relatively
slight chairs in front of my desk.  That must have been how Goldilocks looked
in Baby Bear’s chair just before she reduced it to splinters. 

“Your secatary.  He a military man?”

I nodded and looked down at some papers, trying not to smile. 

“I ain’t got nothin’ against  military people, but a secatary
supposed to be a woman.  Tha’sall there is to it,” he proclaimed.

“Give him a chance.  He kind of grows on you.”

“Ain’t right.  Tha’sall I’m sayin’.”

I steered the conversation to the work at hand.  “I want us to
go over these interrogatories together.  These are questions that the defendant,
that DIFCO, is asking us;  like the ones that we sent them.  We’ll answer them
together.”

“Okay.”

I flipped to a page that I’d tagged and read off the
interrogatory.  “
Please describe any incident(s) in which you were
reprimanded verbally or in writing regarding your use of profanity, vulgarity,
or offensive remarks to co-workers or supervisors
.”  I looked up at him
waiting for a response, but his face was blank.  I shrugged my shoulders.  He
shrugged his.

“Let’s go for an answer here,” I prodded.

“Oh.  You want me to answer it now?”

“Please.”

“I think it was twice,” he said.

“In what context?”

He looked confused.  “Wasn’t no contest.”

I couldn’t help smile.  The guy was too damn likable. 
“Context,” I repeated.  “Tell me about the times when you used profanity or
vulgar language.”

“Okay.”  He tried to shift in his chair but there was no wiggle
room.  I was pretty sure I heard the wood creak.

“Before you answer, let’s move into the conference room.  We
can spread this stuff out on the table in there.”

I gathered the files and Earl followed me out of my office and
into the reception area.  To my surprise, Maddie and the kids were just walking
in.  Oliver and Max came running over and wrapped themselves around my legs and
I bent down and hugged them.  “Hey, what brings you guys down here?” I asked. 
I looked up at Maddie with that ridiculous smile that always plagues me when
I’m around her.  “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.”

We  gave each other a quick kiss and I pecked Morgan on the
forehead, then I turned to my client.

“Earl, I’d like you to meet my family.  This is my wife,
Maddie, my boys, Oliver and Max, and my daughter, Morgan.  This is Earl
Jefferson.”

He nodded slightly and shook Maddie’s hand, then each boy’s in
turn.  “Nice to meet you ma’am.” 

“The pleasure’s mine, Earl,” Maddie said in her sweet voice. 

Oliver’s head was cocked all the way back trying to see Earl’s
head.  I knew what was coming.  Ever since I’d known the kid, he’d been
fascinated with David Robinson,  the former San Antonio Spurs’ 7’1” center.
Anything having to do in any way with size – be it a house, a car, a
skyscraper, the pile of dinosaur shit on Jurassic Park – it was all compared to
David Robinson, and it always elicited the same question.

“Are you as tall as David Robinson?” Oliver asked.

“I sure am,” Earl said proudly.  He knelt down and still
towered over my kids.

Oliver’s elation was palpable. Up until then, no person had
ever measured up.  He reached out and touched Earl’s arm like he was a god, and
I wondered if this might actually break whatever spell David Robinson had over
my son, now that he’d gotten a
yes
to that elusive David Robinson-size question.  He looked up at me with a grin so big I could see his molars. 

“He’s as big as David Robinson!”

“You wanna see what the world is like up there?” Earl asked,
and Oliver nodded.  Earl scooped up my son and stood up. 

“I see the top of your head,” he told me, and he reached over
and rumpled my hair exactly like I always did his. 

“What’s it like up there?” I asked.

Oliver looked around.  “There’s dust on that cabinet.  And a
rubber band.”

Earl walked Oliver around the office, holding him up now and
then to touch the ceiling.  Just what I needed.  Grimy fingerprints on the
acoustical tile.  My landlord would love it. 

Apparently Maddie was venturing over to the Children’s Museum
with the kids, which explained her presence downtown.

“You’re going with all three of them?” I asked in disbelief. 
“Are you sure you can manage?”

Her response was somewhere between a laugh and a
duh
, so
I didn’t pursue it.  I was certain it would have been more than I could handle,
but then I never would have attempted it in the first place.  I knew my
limits.  Maddie was braver than I would ever be where the kids were concerned. 

They stayed long enough for Penny to mollycoddle over my wife
and daughter.  Morgan had grabbed the glasses off of Penny’s nose and her eyes
looked disproportionately large, like an owl’s.  She seemed perfectly content
to let my baby maul the spectacles, as if the experience alone was worth a new
pair.  I stepped in and carefully peeled Morgan’s tiny fingers off the lenses
and handed them back to Penny.  I needed to get on with my meeting.

Maddie must have sensed my anxiousness because she clapped her
hands.  “Let’s go troops!”

“Thanks for stopping by,” I told her, and I kissed her goodbye.

“I’ll see you at home.”  She turned to Earl.  “Nice to meet
you, Earl,” she said, and they shook hands a second time. 

“You have a real nice family,” Earl said, when they had gone.

“Thank you.  I’m very lucky.”

We’d spread out our documents on the conference table and Russ
brought in a pot of fresh Starbuck’s coffee.  Earl’s mug looked like a
miniature version of the real thing in his huge hand, but he handled it almost
daintily, like he’d had etiquette lessons.

“Let’s get started,” I said.  I flipped back to where we’d left
off.  “Reprimands for vulgar language or profanity.  You said there were two
incidents?”

“Thasright.  There was once I called my supervisor a sorry
white-ass son of a bitch.  And the other time was havin’ to do with a pitcher
someone left in my work area.”

“A pitcher of what?” I asked.  I’m thinking beer, margaritas.

“A pitcher of a naked guy.”

“Oh, a
picture
. Got it.”  I scratched out the word on my
legal pad and corrected it. 

“Thaswhat I said.  A pitcher,” he said, with a definite
duh
.

I wasn’t inclined to give the guy a grammar lesson, so I let it
slide.  “Tell me about both of these incidents.  What about the white-ass
comment?”

“Ain’t nothin’ to it.  The line supervisor called me a
black-ass son of a bitch, so I called him a white-ass son of a bitch.  Then he
done wrote me up for it.  Said I was insubordinate.”

“Who counseled you?”

“That’d be Mr. Lyden.  He’s the operations manager.”

“I assume you told Mr. Lyden that your supervisor had called
you a black-ass son of a bitch?”

Earl shook his head.  “Didn’t have to.  He heard it hisself.  Guy
was there when it happened.”

“Was your supervisor counseled for his comment?”

“Nope.”

I was trying to keep my excitement in check because I don’t
like to get my client’s hopes up, but I could feel a smile creeping across my
face.  Stupid supervisors make my job so easy.  I wondered if Earl looked into
my eyes right then, would he see dollar signs. 

“Tell me about the
picture
,” I said, making it a point
to enunciate the
c
.

He cast his eyes down for a second like he was embarrassed, but
he looked directly at me before he answered, as he had with every other
response he’d given me.  He had honest gray eyes.  Too bad about the teeth.

“Was a cartoon of a naked black man with a huge Johnson.  I
took the cartoon and made the Johnson real small like, and I crossed out my
name and wrote my supervisor’s name on it and I put it on his locker ‘cause
he’s the one who put it on my locker.  And I got wrote up for doin that.”

“Did your supervisor get written up?”

He shook his head.  “Said they couldn’t prove it was him.”

“What made you think he was the one who put it on your locker?”

“’Cause I knows the way he writes.  Ain’t no one else writes like
that.”

As I jotted down notes, I was forming our answers to the
interrogatories in my head.  Sometimes it served us best to be vague in our
answers, but not in this case.  I’d note every gory detail included in the racist
cartoons and memos and paraphernalia to let them know just how slimy DIFCO’s
management team was.  I wouldn’t need the element of surprise to win this case,
and I wanted my opposing counsel to know exactly what kind of ammunition I had
and how much of it. 

“Have other employees been subjected to cartoons and drawings
like this?”

“Don’t see no one else getting things like that,” Earl said.

“How many people have been involved in this type of behavior
toward you?”

“Mostly three.  There was a lady in the office that used to
mess with me, but she don’t work there no more.  So’s now it’s mostly two.”

“Okay.  I know the line supervisor is one; who is the other
one?”

“The operations manager.”

“Do you know if either of them can hire and fire employees?”

“Both of ’em.” Earl confirmed.

The smile was creeping back.  Both were in positions of
management so their actions could be imputed to the company.

Sometimes getting information out of a client is like slow
torture from hell.  It’s not that  they purposely withhold information, they
just don’t realize what’s relevant.  Earl was turning out to be like that.  If
I didn’t ask it, he didn’t volunteer it, and this became painfully apparent as
our session continued. 

“You said there are no other black employees working at DIFCO?”

“Thasright.  ‘Cept Angus.  He done quit three or four months
after I started workin’ there. Couldn’t take it no more.”

“Couldn’t take what no more – any more?”  His atrocious English
was rubbing off on me.

“The harassment.  Same thing as this here stuff,” he said,
picking up one of the documents from the box.

“You’re telling me that another black employee was subjected to
the same treatment?  Earl, you need to tell me shit like that.  Things like
that are important to your case.” I didn’t even try to hide my irritation. “What
else is there that you haven’t told me?”

“I don’t know?  Ask me sumpthin’ else.”

I dropped my pen and looked up at the ceiling. I rescheduled my
next meeting, and Earl and I worked together until I was satisfied with our final
product.  We had walked out of the conference room and were headed to the
reception area when Penny came out of her area with pursed lips and a furrowed
brow.  It was apparent that something or someone had ruffled her feathers.

“Our computer is doing
that
thing
again,” she
announced.

Penny had never been good with computers, and I wasn’t much
better.  I could do all the basics as far as working with documents or email,
but when it came to problems with software or hardware, I was as clueless as
she was.  She’d had a tech come in twice during the past week, but whatever
glitch it was –
that thing
– it had not been corrected.

“Wussa problem, ma’am?” Earl asked.

Penny couldn’t look over her glasses at him because he was so
tall.  She seemed flustered that Earl had asserted himself into the conversation,
but out of an over-developed sense of politeness, she explained the problem
with the computer.  The next thing I knew, the two had walked off together to
her office.  When they came out 10 minutes later, Penny was beaming.  She liked
to take credit for discovering people’s aptitude at a particular skill, and
apparently she’d found a new prodigy. 

“I declare!  He fixed it!” she exclaimed.

“Wudn’t nothin’ big,” Earl said modestly.  “Just had to delete
a file that was messin’ it up.”

I’m sure that stranger things have happened, but never in a
million years would I have guessed that Earl Jefferson was a computer wiz.