The Street Lawyer (17 page)

I was in no position to protest. One smart-ass remark, and they would never find me. “Why do you need it?” I asked.

“Put it on the table,” he said.

On the table it went. “RiverOaks slash TAG, Inc.,” he said, still writing. “File number TBC-96-3381.” My trail widened even more.

“Do you own this?” he asked, pointing, with no small amount of suspicion.

“Yes.”

“Okay. You can go now.”

I thanked him, and got no response. I wanted to jog across the lot, but walking was enough of a challenge. He locked the gates behind me.

Mordecai and Peeler both turned around and looked
at the file once I was inside. Neither had a clue. I had told Mordecai only that the file was very important. I needed to retrieve it before it was destroyed.

All that effort for one plain manila file?

I was tempted to flip through it as we drove back to the clinic. But I didn’t.

I thanked Peeler, said good-bye to Mordecai, and drove, cautiously, to my new loft.

THE SOURCE of the money was the federal government, no surprise in D.C. The Postal Service planned to construct a twenty-million-dollar bulk-mail facility in the city, and RiverOaks was one of several aggressive real estate companies hoping to build, lease, and manage it. Several sites had been considered, all in rough and decaying sections of the city. A short list of three had been announced the previous December. RiverOaks had begun snapping up all the cheap real estate it might need.

TAG was a duly registered corporation whose sole stockholder was Tillman Gantry, described in a file memo as a former pimp, small-time hustler, and twice-convicted felon. One of many such characters in the city. After crime, Gantry had discovered used cars and real estate. He purchased abandoned buildings, sometimes doing quickie renovations and reselling, sometimes offering space for rent. Fourteen TAG properties were listed in a file summary. Gantry’s path crossed
that of RiverOaks’ when the U.S. Postal Service needed more space.

On January 6, the Postal Service informed RiverOaks by registered mail that the company had been chosen to be the contractor/owner/landlord of the new bulk facility. A memorandum of agreement provided for annual rental payments of $1.5 million, for a guaranteed period of twenty years. The letter also said, with nongovernmental-like haste, that a final agreement between RiverOaks and the Postal Service would have to be signed no later than March 1, or the deal was off. After seven years of contemplating and planning, the Feds wanted it built overnight.

RiverOaks, and its lawyers and Realtors, went to work. In January, the company purchased four properties on Florida near the warehouse where the eviction took place. The file had two maps of the area, with shaded colors indicating lots purchased and lots under negotiation.

March 1 was only seven days away. Small wonder Chance missed the file so quickly. He was working with it every day.

The warehouse on Florida Avenue had been purchased by TAG the previous July for a sum not revealed in the file. RiverOaks bought it for two hundred thousand dollars on January 31, four days before the eviction that sent DeVon Hardy and the Burton family into the streets.

On the bare wooden floor of what would become my living room, I carefully removed each sheet of paper
from the file, examined it, then described it in detail on a legal pad so that I could put it back together in perfect order. There was the usual collection of papers I assumed to be in every real estate file: tax records for prior years, a chain of title, previous deeds, an agreement for the purchase and sale of the property, correspondence with the Realtor, closing papers. It was a cash deal, so no bank was involved.

On the left inside flap of the file was the journal, a preprinted form used to log each entry by date and brief description. You could judge the organizational capacity of a Drake & Sweeney secretary by the level of detail in a file’s journal. Every piece of paper, map, photo, or chart—anything and everything that was punched into a file was supposed to be recorded in the journal. This had been drilled into our heads during boot camp. Most of us had learned the hard way—there was nothing more frustrating than flipping through a thick file in search of something that had not been logged in with sufficient detail. If you can’t find it in thirty seconds, the axiom said, it’s useless.

Chance’s file was meticulous; his secretary was a woman of details. But there had been tampering.

On January 22, Hector Palma went to the warehouse, alone, for a routine, prepurchase inspection. As he was entering a designated door, he was mugged by two street punks who hit him over the head with a stick of some sort, and took his wallet and cash at knifepoint. He stayed at home on January 23, and prepared a memo to the file describing the assault. The last sentence
read: “Will return on Monday, January 27, with guard, to inspect.” The memo was properly logged into the file.

But there was no memo from his second visit. A January 27 entry into the journal said: HP memo—site visit, inspection of premises.

Hector went to the warehouse on the twenty-seventh, with a guard, inspected the place, no doubt found that serious squatting was under way, and prepared a memo, which, judging by his other paperwork, was probably quite thorough.

The memo had been removed from the file. Certainly no crime, and I had taken things from files all the time without making a note in the journal. But I damned sure put them back. If an item was logged in, it was supposed to be in the file.

The closing took place on January 31, a Friday. The following Tuesday, Hector returned to the warehouse to remove the squatters. He was assisted by a guard from a private security firm, a District cop, and four roughnecks from an eviction company. It took three hours, according to his memo, which ran for two pages. Though he tried to mask his emotions, Hector didn’t have the stomach for evictions.

My heart stopped when I read the following: “The mother had four children, one an infant. She lived in a two-room apartment with no plumbing. They slept on two mattresses on the floor. She fought with the policeman while her children watched. She was eventually removed.”

So Ontario watched while his mother fought.

There was a list of those evicted, seventeen in all, with children excluded, the same list someone had placed on my desk Monday morning with a copy of the
Post
story.

In the back of the file, lying loose without the benefit of a journal entry, were eviction notices for the seventeen. They had not been used. Squatters have no rights, including the right to be notified. The notices had been prepared as an afterthought, an effort to cover the trail. They had probably been stuck in after the Mister episode by Chance himself, just in case he might need them.

The tampering was obvious, and foolish. But then Chance was a partner. It was virtually unheard of for a partner to surrender a file.

It hadn’t been surrendered; it had been stolen. An act of larceny, a crime for which evidence was now being gathered. The thief was an idiot.

As part of my preemployment ritual seven years earlier, I had been fingerprinted by private investigators. It would be a simple matter to match those prints with the ones lifted from Chance’s file cabinet. It would take only minutes. I was certain it had already been done. Could there be a warrant for my arrest? It was inevitable.

Most of the floor was covered when I finished, three hours after I started. I carefully reassembled the file, then drove to the clinic and copied it.

SHE WAS shopping, her note said. We had nice luggage, an item we failed to mention when we split the assets. She would be traveling more than I in the near future, so I took the cheap stuff—duffel and gym bags. I didn’t want to get caught, so I threw the basics into a pile on the bed—socks, underwear, T-shirts, toiletries, shoes, but only the ones I had worn in the past year. She could discard the others. I hurriedly cleaned out my drawers and my side of the medicine cabinet. Wounded and aching, physically and otherwise, I hauled the bags down two flights of stairs to my rental car, then went back up for a load of suits and dress clothes. I found my old sleeping bag, unused for at least the last five years, and carried it down, along with a quilt and a pillow. I was entitled to my alarm clock, radio, portable CD player with a few CDs, thirteen-inch color TV on the kitchen counter, one coffeepot, hair dryer, and the set of blue towels.

When the car was full, I left a note telling her I was gone. I placed it next to the one she’d left, and refused to stare at it. My emotions were mixed and just under the skin, and I was not equipped to deal with them. I’d never moved out before; I wasn’t sure how it was done.

I locked the door and walked down the stairs. I knew I would be back in a couple of days to get the rest of my things, but the trip down felt like the last time.

She would read the note, check the drawers and closets to see what I had taken, and when she realized I
had indeed moved out, she would sit in the den for a quick tear. Maybe a good cry. But it would be over before long. She would easily move to the next phase.

As I drove away, there was no feeling of liberation. It wasn’t a thrill to be single again. Claire and I had both lost.

Seventeen

I
LOCKED myself inside the office. The clinic was colder Sunday than it had been on Saturday. I wore a heavy sweater, corduroy pants, thermal socks, and I read the paper at my desk with two steaming cups of coffee in front of me. The building had a heating system, but I wasn’t about to meddle with it.

I missed my chair, my leather executive swivel that rocked and reclined and rolled at my command. My new one was a small step above a folding job you’d rent for a wedding. It promised to be uncomfortable on good days; in my pummeled condition at that moment, it was a torture device.

The desk was a battered hand-me-down, probably from an abandoned school; square and boxlike, with three drawers down each side, all of which actually opened, but not without a struggle. The two clients’ chairs on the other side were indeed folding types—one black, the other a greenish color I’d never seen before.

The walls were plaster, painted decades ago and allowed to fade into a shade of pale lemon. The plaster was cracked; the spiders had taken over the corners at the ceiling. The only decoration was a framed placard advertising a March for Justice on the Mall in July of 1988.

The floor was ancient oak, the planks rounded at the edges, evidence of heavy use in prior years. It had been swept recently, the broom still standing in a corner with a dustpan, a gentle cue that if I wanted the dirt cleared again, then it was up to me.

Oh how the mighty had fallen! If my dear brother Warner could’ve seen me sitting there on Sunday, shivering at my sad little desk, staring at the cracks in the plaster, locked in so that my potential clients couldn’t mug me, he would’ve hurled insults so rich and colorful that I would’ve been compelled to write them down.

I couldn’t comprehend my parents’ reaction. I would be forced to call them soon, and deliver the double shock of my changes of address.

A loud bang at the door scared the hell out of me. I bolted upright, unsure of what to do. Were the street
punks coming after me? Another knock as I moved toward the front, and I could see a figure trying to look through the bars and thick glass of the front door.

It was Barry Nuzzo, shivering and anxious to get to safety. I got things unlocked, and let him in.

“What a slumhole!” he began pleasantly, looking around the front room as I relocked the door.

“Quaint, isn’t it?” I said, reeling from his presence and trying to figure out what it meant.

“What a dump!” He was amused by the place. He walked around Sofia’s desk, slowly taking off his gloves, afraid to touch anything for fear of starting an avalanche of files.

“We keep the overhead low, so we can take all the money home,” I said. It was an old joke around Drake & Sweeney. The partners were constantly bitching about the overhead, while at the same time most were concerned about redecorating their offices.

“So you’re here for the money?” he asked, still amused.

“Of course.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“I’ve found a calling.”

“Yeah, you’re hearing voices.”

“Is that why you’re here? To tell me I’m crazy?”

“I called Claire.”

“And what did she say?”

“Said you had moved out.”

“That’s true. We’re getting a divorce.”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

“Air bag.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. I heard it was just a fender bender.”

“It was. The fenders got bent.”

He draped his coat over a chair, then hurriedly put it back on. “Does low overhead mean you don’t pay your heating bill?”

“Now and then we skip a month.”

He walked around some more, peeking into the small offices to the side. “Who pays for this operation?” he asked.

“A trust.”

“A declining trust?”

“Yes, a rapidly declining trust.”

“How’d you find it?”

“Mister hung out here. These were his lawyers.”

“Good old Mister,” he said. He stopped his examination for a moment, and stared at a wall. “Do you think he would’ve killed us?”

“No. Nobody was listening to him. He was just another homeless guy. He wanted to be heard.”

“Did you ever consider jumping him?”

“No, but I thought about grabbing his gun and shooting Rafter.”

“I wish you had.”

“Maybe next time.”

“Got any coffee?”

“Sure. Have a seat.”

I didn’t want Barry to follow me into the kitchen, because it left much to be desired. I found a cup,
washed it quickly, and filled it with coffee. I invited him into my office.

“Nice,” he said, looking around.

“This is where all the long balls are hit,” I said proudly. We took positions across the desk, both chairs squeaking and on the verge of collapse.

“Is this what you dreamed about in law school?” he asked.

“I don’t remember law school. I’ve billed too many hours since then.”