Freedom of the press is only free for those who own the press.
The
lovely people in Austin who help lawyers keep track of their own recently reminded me that most of what I write is crap, gratuitously slathered across computer screens nationwide for the sole purpose of spiting the reader. The three that met their high expectations will be printed next month in the high brow professional rag. I am getting the jump on them, well, just because I can.
The short story is actually my working outline for a novel I wanted to write and release in conjunction with the bankruptfy reform act, but I was too busy doing the bidding of others. There are some pretty insidious provisions to the new bankruptcy code, some of which are hidden herein. If any one actually gives a damn, I will be happy to email you the Cliff notes.
This is copyright protected, and all rights domestic and international are specifically reserved to the author. I will sue for any violation thereof, because, well, I can.
Counsel for the Debtor
By Infinitegtr
Copyright 2006
The city bus lurched forward, tugging at Mayme’s drooping head and sagging shoulders. Mayme Johnston had not yet grown accustomed to the early mornings and the longer commute inherent in mass transit, but she had no choice after losing her car to the repo man. At the age of 63, Mayme had two grandchildren at home, her son’s kids. Keeping food on the table for herself had been difficult enough, especially with the cost of her medications. Now that she was working two jobs, Mayme felt as though she were grasping for a lifeline; the harder she tugged, the slacker the rope.
Mayme had mostly believed that by now she would have been able to quit working. Not retire really, not the way that other people retired to their condo’s and Cadillacs in Florida. All she really wanted was to spend her days playing grandma. Her hard-scrabble life never quite seemed to measure up to the most hard-scrabble of dreams.
Right after the birth of her second grand child, Mayme spent the last of her savings to help her son Scott cover the costs of an unexpected divorce. The night he appeared on her porch, dressed in his Army BDU’s, his face in anguish and his eyes filled with tears, she couldn’t turn him away. After he revealed that his wife continually neglected the children, and had just been arrested again for possession, Mayme was determined to protect "her babies" at any cost.
In the aftermath of the attorney’s fees from the divorce, Mayme’s car was repossessed when she fell behind on the payments. She had stopped answering the phone months ago, numbed to the endless barrage of threats, insults and curses from bill collectors. The sensory attack of an abusive phone-borne menace in one ear, and the cries of tired, hungry children in the other had become more than she could bear. Threats of lawsuit, public humiliation, homelessness and even jail time, those things were all tomorrow. The grandchildren were today, demanding and deserving her more immediate attentions.
Roused fully from her nap, as the bus driver carelessly fumbled through the gears, Mayme caught a glimpse of the newspaper carelessly tossed onto the seat across the narrow aisle. Just above the fold, peering back at her were the terminally tired eyes of a familiar stranger. The article, she suspected, was the latest in the series of public investigations, criminal indictments and civil lawsuits involving her recently retained bankruptcy lawyer.
This particular photo, and hundreds others just like it, had to be of someone else. The young man that comforted her when she cried in his office was a kind person; yet she sensed in him that same element she sensed in her own son as he prepared for his latest deployment to Iraq. That "thing" was neither anger nor hatred, perhaps a willful acquiescence to the brutal fights yet to come.
The man in the photo was her lawyer all right, but the eyes were wrong. Sad sometimes, often defiant, but not the tired eyes of the defeated man the newspapers tried to pass off. The man that she knew as Tomas Garcia had glowing embers of an eternal fire-fight in his eyes and fists doubled-up against the world, he was the man who was making sure this morning was the last time Mayme would have to take the bus to work.
The whole world heard the stories surrounding Garcia, but the scrutiny had been especially intense here in Houston. Two years after the Houston-based international oil giant GAAP had entered into its scandalous bankruptcy, Tom, a young associate with the law firm representing GAAP in bankruptcy court, emerged from a fog of controversy and secrecy, leaving behind him a broiling wake of intrigue and allegations of corruption at all levels.
On the verge of inflaming armed regional confrontations, GAAP’s bankruptcy was stayed so that Congress could convene its special committees and hold its televised and steroid-sized public hearings. Tension mounted for weeks as industry captains, lawyers, and even the bankruptcy judge were batted around by the politicians and excoriated by the press. The business men blamed the lawyers, the lawyers blamed Congress. The judge claimed to have been pressured by individual members of Congress, the administration, and even claimed that the CIA had him under surveillance.
The hearings painted a now predictable picture of accounting fraud, securities violations, looted retirement funds, and a bizarre array of duplicitous bankers and investors. None of these charges meant anything to Mayme, none brought her a better job, more insurance, or an easier time with the grandkids. Despite this, everyone was riveted to the unprecedented hearings. The public’s burning resentment of Big Oil went "nuclear" with the emerging stories of fraternity-style sex parties, a mercenary-fueled guerilla oil field war and backroom, Faustian bargains with "oil sheiks" and feckless South American dictators which had so blurred the lines between national security and corporate profit.
Corporate America and the legal community were already stunned by the time Tom was called to testify. Every flash-popping reporter and eye-squinting klieg light in the country bore down on Tomas Garcia, intent on exposing every dark secret and hidden fear tucked away in his soul. Faced with the likely prospect of losing his law license, and ignoring the death threats that poured in like a mid-summer monsoon, Tom endured withering questions on national television for a week. In confirming many of the self-implicating stories with a pleading, brutal honesty Tom had at least found the currency necessary to buy the trust and sympathy of the public.
That was when Tom told the world about the dead girl. He had loved her, GAAP had killed her and he blamed himself for her death.
Several months after the hearings had receded from the front pages of the collective conscience, Tom had returned to the Houston area to resume, at least temporarily, the practice of law. This time, though, he was not wandering the underground corridors of the air-conditioned ant farm of downtown Houston. Instead, Tom was sharing offices with Legal Aid in a newly acquired but long-ago renovated house in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Houston. The neglected structure, inescapably falling back in line with the appearance of the surrounding neighborhood, was only two houses away from the little Jefferson girl, who watched Mayme’s grandchildren on most days.
Mayme walked past the office two days in a row, pretending not to notice the new addition to the neighborhood. On the third day, Friday, she studied the small marquee on the front of the building with a feigned indifference. She spent the weekend pushing the babies in their stroller through alleys, picking through dumpsters for empty aluminum cans. The babies cried and sweated in the weltering humidity, further enraging platoons of angry neighborhood dogs barking a cacophony of warnings to the silver-haired intruder. The occasional questioning set of eyes appeared through blinds or from behind thin curtains.
A group of neighborhood thugs found Mayme before she could find her way back home, relieving her at knife point of her trash bag half full of aluminum scrap. The questioning eyes had suddenly disappeared even while the dogs collectively strained against their chains in a canine crescendo.
The following Monday, Mayme dropped the grandkids off early and marched resolutely to Garcia’s office door. By the time she reached for the door handle, her body was quivering as though racked with seizures, her tears coalescing into a stream of miserable exhaustion.
Mayme as much fell through the doorway as she walked through. The cramped, dimly lit hallway that greeted her was filled by both an ancient photocopier, and the slumped over figure glowering at the machine’s apparent refusal to work; his anger immediately dissipating at the sudden appearance of this sobbing, shaken woman.
Mayme shut the door behind her, dropped her hands to her side, and cried uncontrollably. Even in this crowded hall, her isolation was tangible and overwhelming.
"Please" she sobbed, "please help me. I just can’t do this anymore."
Tomas Garcia hesitated a moment, flashes of discomfort racing across his brow. Shaking away the doubt, he smiled warmly and stepped forward with hand extended. Mayme wrapped her arms around Tom’s neck, her muscles unknotting as the fear that had so bound her began to loosen its grip.
"Don’t cry, abuela. You’re safe now, okay?" At that moment, Mayme Johnston became the very first client of Tomas Garcia, Esq.
During their first meeting, after hearing her struggles, Tom signed and handed Mayme an embossed piece of paper, the calligraphy on top reading Certificate of Completion – Consumer Credit Counseling.
"Mrs. Johnston," a smile crawling across his dark features, "Congress could learn a thing or two from you about managing a budget."
Although she was terrified to do so, Tomas also gave Mayme a list of the bills that she could stop paying immediately. Reading her confusion, Tomas explained, "If Bill Gates were sitting where you are, I could tell him to go out today and buy a new car. I could explain to him not only why it is legal to do so, but I could counsel him as to all the reasons that it would be to his benefit. Since you are not Bill Gates, abuelita, I cannot advise you to stop paying all those bills on the list and to use that money as a down payment for a decent car."
Understanding, followed by a cautious joy, visibly crept through Mayme.
Tom slid a card across the table. "If Bill Gates followed my advice, I would send him to this car lot. The owner has a soft spot for all of the Bill Gates in the neighborhood; especially those that spend too much time on a bus away from their grand babies."
Over the next few weeks, most of the threatening calls stopped. The other thing that stopped was the monthly checks from her son Scott. At Garcia’s insistence, Scott agreed not to send any more money until after Mayme’s bankruptcy had been filed. Begging Tomas not to tell his mother, Scott confessed that he had delayed buying updated body armor and other needed gear for his unit just so he could help out with his kids.
Several weeks later, Tomas received a late night phone call.
"Mr. Garcia, this is Scott Johnston. I’m Mayme Johnston’s son."
"Of course, Scott. Are you okay?" Despite the hour, Tomas was fully alert.
"Yah… no I am fine, Mr. Garcia. I, look I don’t have much time, I just wanted to check in and make sure my mom is okay." Even thousands of miles away, a son’s love for his mother has a pervading, immediate presence.
Scott continued, "No disrespect sir, but everyone has heard the stories about you and that oil thing. Then yesterday I got a letter from mom saying that you weren’t charging her any money for your time. Some of the reservists here are law students, they said I should make sure you are legit."
"Scott, your mother paid in full the minute she said ‘Thank you’. She told me I changed her life, by helping your kids."
A distant, tense pause.
"I used to make a lot of money being a smart lawyer, but I never really understood what it meant to be a good lawyer. Those stories about me were also about the billables and bonuses that were my life. The truth behind the stories took that away from me, and left me empty. Your mom gave me back much, much more. Mayme taught me that the law can’t sacrifice good people for smart money."
Another pause, lighter now, "I guess you really can’t put that on a receipt, can you?"
The phone line hissed and popped as two voices spoke in unison, each to the other, "Thank you."
