Single Jeopardy (3 page)

As a result of his sterling personality, his law practice spiraled downward to the level of doing collection work and serving papers on deadbeats. He hired lawyers to appear on his behalf, because no judge in the district liked Melvin’s obnoxious personality.

And now almost twenty years later, I find myself once again about to go into Melvin’s debt. The word among the alumni is that Melvin finally snagged a steady client, one for which he could utilize the attributes of his personality: he’s doing all of the tenant eviction and collection work for our large local Marina. They wouldn’t pay him the exorbitant amount he thought he was worth, but they do allow him to live rent-free on one of the square box houseboats that the Marina owns and rents out… sort of a floating trailer. It wouldn’t look so bad if it wasn’t parked in a slip that faces directly into the fifty-foot slips, where right in front of Melvin’s box-boat is an almost new fifty-foot fiberglass Grand Banks trawler-yacht – one of the most beautiful luxurious cruisers in the world, and the exact same model I’ve always dreamed of having, complete with the four-person Asian crew that’s always cleaning it and touching up the varnished teak rails.

Melvin hands me a drink as we sit on the front deck (porch) of his houseboat, which is a strange thing to see: Mel is a mess – fat as ever, sloppily dressed and half drunk, but his boat is immaculate. None of the people walking by on the dock dare to acknowledge his presence – much like convicts in a prison won’t nod to the hangman; he might be called upon to evict any one of his neighbors at any time and they know he won’t hesitate.

After the usual complaining about women that men usually do while going through a divorce, I tell him about my cabin cruiser and he immediately jumps on what he sees as an opportunity to advance his own agenda. He knows about my suspension and isn’t bothered by it. He even goes so far as to offer me employment in drawing up some pleadings, doing investigative work, legal research and serving papers on people. I tell him that everything depends on me being close to his location, and he realizes what I’m hinting at… I need a slip. He says he’ll look into it and let me know what can be done. I also spot an opportunity, and to make my services more desirable to him, I offer to cut him in on what could be a huge case… Stuart’s. Melvin sounds interested. He’s heard about asbestosis litigation and wouldn’t mind getting involved in it – but the only way he’ll take it is if I agree to do the trial work, which will probably be enough years away for my suspension to have expired.

The meeting goes better for me than anything else has for the past few months. Not only will I probably be getting a slip for my boat, but I also succeeded in dumping Stuart’s case. As I’m driving out of the Marina I see a most amazing sight... one of those rounded off four-seat electric vehicles with no side doors is being driven down the street by a huge St. Bernard dog. By the time I have a chance to turn around to get a better look, it disappears down a small access road leading to the boats, and I lose sight of it. I make a mental note to look for that thing again, if it really existed, but in the meantime I won’t be mentioning it to anyone. Enough people already have their doubts about my sanity.

An old saying suggests that ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’ Looking around, I realize the wisdom of that adage: my lemons were the suspension, divorce and eviction, and the lemonade I’ll be making is the possibility of a new life without client responsibilities, and living on my boat in the Marina, surrounded by millionaire yacht owners – and some peasants on houseboats. Life is good.

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Melvin knows absolutely nothing about boats, but because he’s slightly connected to the Marina’s management, he’s been able to get my name moved up on the empty slip waiting list. When my wife’s lawyer informed me that if the boat isn’t moved in five days it’ll be used as firewood, I’m lucky to have had good old Melvin come through for me. My boat doesn’t have engines yet, but I’m not planning on going anywhere, so it doesn’t matter. For now, I’m just happy it floats

When moving day arrives, they put slings under its bottom and the old Chris Craft gets lifted up and put onto a large truck by a huge, two hundred dollar-an-hour crane. After being gently loaded onto a specially built truck, it’s now being driven down the San Diego Freeway to the Marina Freeway and will be off-loaded at the boat yard. After the bottom gets a fresh coat of anti-fouling paint, it’ll get lowered into the water and Vessel Assist boat-towing service will pull it over to its empty slip, which fortunately is the at least nine spaces out from the seawall, and behind Melvin’s big boxy houseboat. This is good, because the Dockmaster lives in an apartment overlooking the boat slips and now she may not be able to notice that I’m illegally living aboard.

There are twenty-one boat slips on our dock: ten forty-five footers on our side, face-to-face with fifty-footers on the other side of the walkway. There’s also one long end tie that must be more than a hundred feet long, and docked on that end tie is the biggest mega-yacht I’ve ever seen close up. It not only covers the entire end tie dock, but overhangs at least another five feet on each side, making it about a hundred and twenty feet long, and worth mucho million dollars. Melvin tells me that George Clooney owns it, and the dock neighbors say he’s a pretty nice guy. I figure it’s just a matter of time before we bump into each other and become friends, giving me a great reason to send out e-mails to everyone I know, bragging about my new social status.

So far everything is going smooth. I have a place to stay, my wife and her prosecutor friends are very far out of hearing distance, her beady-eyed attorney won’t be ogling my boat, I don’t need any malpractice insurance or secretary, and because Melvin is picking up the slip rent as my monthly minimum retainer, no rent or payments to worry about. The work from Mr. Braunstein should keep me fed and clothed nicely. The only downside is the proximity to my boss Melvin’s boat… and the remote possibility that Stuart and his boat-owning uncle Label might discover my location and decide to drop in without calling.

After getting settled in I walk over to the local market to get some victuals for the boat and see that sight once again… the driving dog! This time I’m able to get a closer look, and to my surprise and relief discover that the dog isn’t driving. Instead, the most adorable little Asian girl I’ve ever seen is behind the wheel, wearing a floppy little sunhat and seriously steering. The large dog is sitting up on the seat next to her.

I watch for a minute or so until they drive down the small driveway near the boats. She pulls into a parking space, speaks a command to the dog in some Asian-sounding language, and the two of them march down the gangway towards the boats. Suddenly the dog stops, turns around, and whines back towards the electric car, where a small cat is sleeping on the back seat. Hearing the dog’s call, it jumps up and runs down the gangway towards the boat. The trio then walks down the dock, turns, and steps aboard Melvin’s houseboat.

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The next couple of weeks are spent getting used to my new environment and waiting for neighbor George Clooney or one of his celebrity friends to walk by. Being on the boat isn’t anything new, but sleeping on it in the water is definitely a new experience. There’s nothing like being awakened by a noise that you’re positive is someone walking on the deck right over your head - and then discovering it’s only a person who boarded a boat nearby, causing a slight wave that rocks your boat. Footsteps are conducted through the water like sound from one Dixie cup to the other through a piece of string. There are also the halyards, ropes and other lines that flop in the wind against sailboat masts – to say nothing of the gnawing noises heard from below the water that some people believe are small undersea creatures eating at the bottoms of the boats.

The next morning I comment to a dock neighbor about the flopping halyards I heard the night before and ask him if the noise bothers him. “What noise?” he asks. It seems that after a while living aboard, the noises disappear into the environment and you don’t even hear them anymore. When I was a kid in Chicago my parents used to take me along in the car to a family vacation spot. On the way, we passed through Gary, Indiana and nearby there was an area that had quite a few oil refinery plants. I’ll never forget trying to hold my breath as long as I could while we passed through that area. When I asked my parents how the people who live there stand the smell, their answer was almost the same as the one my dock neighbor gave me - “after a while you don’t notice it.” The flopping halyards I’ll probably get used to in a while. The stinking refineries were something else.

Underwater creatures are only part of the environment. Above-the-water creatures that inhabit our dock are much more interesting. Aside from Melvin, who manages to keep himself drunk enough to stay out of sight most of the time, there are two females – one being the cute little Asian girl with the giant dog, and the other a burned-out woman I heard someone address as “Laverne,” who lives on another one of the Marina’s boxy houseboats several slips down from me. Laverne looks like she’s some mid-forties low maintenance broad with plenty of miles on her speedometer. After three weeks, I only know one thing about her: she gets picked up at seven thirty each morning by a husky guy who also brings her back each evening at five forty-five. I couldn’t help notice that the garbage bag she dumps each morning by the gangway gate trash can usually includes at least one empty booze container. I’ve only spoken to her once, and that was to excuse myself for bumping into her, at which time she smiled, welcomed me to the dock and looked at me like I was something on the menu.

The local Chamber of Commerce boasts that our Marina is home to more than seven thousand boats – and from what I’ve seen, it looks like ninety nine percent of them do as much traveling as my engine-less tub. Nevertheless, Sundays are busy here at the Marina. Every fat boat-owning industrialist brings his family and business associates to the boat, turns on the expensive sixty-mile radar unit to make sure he doesn’t run into any nearby apartment buildings, revs the boat’s engines, and then waits for his wife to finish broiling the swordfish they just had delivered from the nearby Gelson’s market.

On the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day, the three biggest boating days of the year, some of those floating luxury condos will actually leave the slip for a brief harbor cruise and then return, never actually venturing out past the breakwater into the open Pacific Ocean. They don’t need the open ocean for adventure because they have a daring trial of nerve and courage waiting for them when they finish their harbor-cruise - getting the boat back into the slip. It usually starts out with a slow approach, but as the wind and current affect the boat’s progress, it starts to slide sideways toward other boats. The inexperienced owner will then usually make a desperate attempt to over-correct the course by goosing the engine, causing more harm than good. The boat will lunge towards the slip, banging into the sides of the dock and bouncing around, while the husband-driver yells obscenities at his family-crew, blaming them for his own mistakes and inability to handle the twin-engine vessel properly in those close quarters. It’s a good possibility that in Southern California, poor boat handling causes more divorces than infidelity.

I wanted to avoid making a fool out of myself, so I went online to a well known website called Boatingdvds.com and bought a program on how to properly handle a large twin-engine cabin cruiser. I’ve never actually driven a boat, but after watching that DVD about fifty times over the past year, I’m sure that I’ll do okay if and when I ever get the chance.

Melvin suggested that I have the phone company install two additional telephone lines to my boat for fax and e-mail capabilities. Because he’ll be too busy to personally assign work to me, one of his office staff will be either faxing documents or e-mailing me assignments to work on. This arrangement works out quite well. The faxes are mostly papers to be served on non-paying tenants, and the e-mails are research assignments that are easily completed down the street in the law library of Alfred Nieman, a local attorney who I’ve known in the past and do a little extra assignment for now and then. Melvin’s e-mails are signed off by a “Suzi B,” obviously the ‘staff’ member he alluded to.

I follow through on my assignments, leave my Proof of Service Affidavits and research results in the mailbox attached to his houseboat, and always find a paycheck from his office tucked under the doormat in front of my boat’s main cabin door shortly thereafter. The other thing that seems to be a constant is the lascivious smile on Laverne’s face as she waves to me each time I pass by her boat in the evening. One time she held up a wine glass, beckoning me to join her... I politely nodded and pointed to my wristwatch, trying to signal her that I didn’t have the time at that moment. I’m sure she interpreted it as my asking for a rain check.

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After a month or two of steady work from his office, one e-mail in particular from Melvin’s staff is curiously encouraging: it suggests that I petition the State Bar for a review of my allegedly unfair suspension sentence, and ask for early reinstatement to active status so that my new employer (Marcel.’ Bradley & Associates) can utilize my services more efficiently – and supervise my conduct in accordance with the Bar’s high standards. The message even offers the free assistance of L. Martin Unger, one of Melvin’s staff attorneys, to prepare all the paperwork. I e-mail back that I’ll think about it, now that Mr. Unger had generously offered to prepare the briefs, points and authorities and other crap that the Bar requires before allowing you to come in and be humiliated by their refusals.