Ford County_ Stories Part 10

"Watch your language, Mack," her father-in-law said.

"See what I mean." Lisa leaned in low. "He's cracking up." Most of them nodded gravely. Helen, their younger daughter, began crying softly.

"You love to say that, don't you?" Mack yelled from his end. "You said the same thing to the marriage counselor. You've said it to everyone. Mack b.u.mped his head, and now he's losing his s.h.i.+t."

"Mack, I don't tolerate such language," her father said sternly. "Please leave the table."

"Sorry. I'll be happy to leave." He rose and kicked back his chair. "And you'll be delighted to know that I'll never be back. That'll give you all a thrill, won't it?"

The silence was thick as he left the table. The last thing he heard was Lisa saying, "I'm so sorry."

Monday, he walked around the square to the large and busy office of Harry Rex Vonner, a friend who was undoubtedly the nastiest divorce lawyer in Ford County. Harry Rex was a loud, burly brawler who chewed black cigars, growled at his secretaries, growled at the court clerks, controlled the dockets, intimidated the judges, and terrified every divorcing party on the other side. His office was a landfill, with boxes of files in the foyer, overflowing wastebaskets, stacks of old magazines in the racks, a thick layer of blue cigarette smoke just below the ceiling, another thick layer of dust on the furniture and bookshelves, and, always, a motley collection of clients waiting forlornly near the front door. The place was a zoo. Nothing ran on time. Someone was always yelling in the back. The phones rang constantly. The copier was always jammed. And so on. Mack had been there many times before on business and loved the chaos of the place.

"Heard you're crackin' up, boy," Harry Rex began as they met at his office door. The room was large, windowless, and situated at the back of the building, far away from the waiting clients. It was filled with bookshelves, storage boxes, trial exhibits, enlarged photos, and stacks of thick depositions, and the walls were covered with cheap matted photos, primarily of Harry Rex holding rifles and grinning over slain animals. Mack could not remember his last visit, but he was certain nothing had changed.

They sat down, Harry Rex behind a ma.s.sive desk with sheets of paper falling off the sides, and Mack in a worn canvas chair that tottered back and forth.

"I just busted my head, that's all," Mack said.

"You look like h.e.l.l."

"Thanks."

"Has she filed yet?"

"No. I just checked. She said she'll use some gal from Tupelo, can't trust anyone around here. I'm not fighting, Harry Rex. She can have everything-the girls, the house, and everything in it. I'm filing for bankruptcy, closing up shop, and moving away."

Harry Rex slowly cut the end off another black cigar, then shoved it into the corner of his mouth. "You are crackin' up, boy." Harry Rex was about fifty but seemed much older and wiser. To anyone younger, he habitually added the word "boy" as a term of affection.

"Let's call it a midlife crisis. I'm forty-two years old, and I'm fed up with being a lawyer. The marriage ain't working. Neither is the career. It's time for a change, some new scenery."

"Look, boy, I've had three marriages. Gettin' rid of a woman ain't no reason to tuck tail and run."

"I'm not here for career advice, Harry Rex. I'm hiring you to handle my divorce and my bankruptcy. I've already prepared the paperwork. Just get one of your flunkies to file everything and make sure I'm protected."

"Where you going?"

"Somewhere far away. I'm not sure right now, but I'll let you know when I get there. I'll come back when I'm needed. I'm still a father, you know?"

Harry Rex slumped in his chair. He exhaled and looked around at the piles of files stacked haphazardly on the floor around his desk. He looked at his phone with five red lights blinking. "Can I go with you?" he asked.

"Sorry. You gotta stay here and be my lawyer. I have eleven active divorce files, almost all uncontested, plus eight bankruptcies, one adoption, two estates, one car wreck, one workers' comp case, and two small business disputes. Total fees of about $25,000 over the next six months. I'd like you to take 'em off my hands."

"It's a pile of c.r.a.p."

"Yes, the same stuff I've been shoveling for seventeen years. Dump it on one of your little a.s.sociates back there and give him a bonus. Believe me, there's nothing complicated about it."

"How much child support can you stand?"

"Max is three thousand a month, which is a h.e.l.luva lot more than I contribute now. Start at two thousand and see how it goes. Irreconcilable differences, she can file, I'll join in. She gets full custody, but I get to see the girls whenever I'm in town. She gets the house, her car, bank accounts, everything. She's not involved in the bankruptcy. The joint a.s.sets are not included."

"What are you bankrupting?"

"The Law Offices of Jacob McKinley Stafford, LLC. May it rest in peace."

Harry Rex chewed the cigar and looked at the pet.i.tion for bankruptcy. There was nothing remarkable about it, the usual run-up on credit cards, the ever-present unsecured line of credit, the burdensome mortgage. "You don't have to do this," he said. "This stuff is manageable."

"The pet.i.tion has already been prepared, Harry Rex. The decision has been made, along with several others. I'm bolting, okay? Outta here. Gone."

"Pretty gutsy."

"No. Most folks would say that running away is the act of a coward."

"How do you see it?"

"I could not care less. If I don't leave now, then I'll be here forever. This is my only chance."

"Attaboy."

At precisely 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, one glorious week after the first phone call, Mack made the second. As he punched the numbers, he smiled and congratulated himself on the amazing accomplishments of the past seven days. The plan was working perfectly, not a single hitch so far, except perhaps the head wound, but even that had been skillfully woven into the escape. Mack was hurt, hospitalized with a blow to the head. No wonder he's acting weird.

"Mr. Marty Rosenberg," he said pleasantly, then waited until the great man was notified. He answered quickly, and they exchanged preliminaries. Marty seemed unhurried, willing to go with the flow of meaningless chatter, and Mack was suddenly worried that this lack of efficiency would lead to a change in plans, some bad news. He decided to get to the point.

"Say, Marty, I've met with all four of my clients, and as you might guess, they're all anxious to accept your offer. We'll put this baby to sleep for half a million bucks."

"Yes, well, was it half a million, Mack?" He seemed uncertain.

Mack's heart froze and he gasped. "Of course, Marty," he said, then added a fake chuckle as if ol' Marty here was up to another prank. "You offered a hundred grand for each of the four, plus a hundred for the cost of defense."

Mack could hear papers being yanked around up in New York. "Hmmm, let's see, Mack. We're talking about the Tinzo cases, right?"

"That's right, Marty," Mack said with no small amount of fear and frustration. And desperation. The man with the checkbook wasn't even sure what they were talking about. One week earlier he'd been perfectly efficient. Now he was floundering. Then the most horrifying statement of all: "I'm afraid I've got these cases confused with some others."

"You gotta be kidding!" Mack barked, much too sharply. Be cool, he told himself.

"We really offered that much for these cases?" Marty said, obviously scanning notes while he talked.

"d.a.m.ned right you did, and I, in good faith, conveyed the offers to my clients. We gotta deal, Marty. You made reasonable offers, we accepted. You can't back out now."

"Just seems a little high, that's all. I'm working on so many of these product liability cases these days."

Well, congratulations, Mack almost said. You have tons of work to do for clients who can pay you tons of money. Mack wiped sweat from his forehead and saw it all slipping away. Don't panic, he said to himself. "It's not high at all, Marty. You should see Odell Grove with only one eye, and Jerrol Baker minus his left hand, and Doug Jumper with his mangled and useless right hand, and Travis Johnson with little nubs where his fingers used to be. You should talk to these men, Marty, and see how miserable their lives are, how much they've been damaged by Tinzo chain-saws, and I think you'd agree that your offer of half a million is not only reasonable but perhaps a bit on the low side." Mack exhaled and almost smiled to himself when he finished. Not a bad closing argument. Maybe he should have spent more time in the courtroom.

"I don't have time to hash out these details or argue liability, Mark, I-"

"It's Mack. Mack Stafford, attorney-at-law, Clanton, Mississippi."

"Right, sorry." More papers shuffled in New York. Muted voices in the background as Mr. Rosenberg directed other people. Then he was back, his voice refocused. "You realize, Mack, that Tinzo has gone to trial four times with this chain-saw and won every trial. Slam dunk, no liability."

Of course Mack did not know this, because he'd forgotten about his little cla.s.s action. But in desperation he said, "Yes, and I've studied those trials. But I thought you were not going to argue liability, Marty."

"Okay, you're right. I'll fax down the settlement doc.u.ments."

Mack breathed deeply.

"How long before you can get them back to me?" Marty asked.

"Couple of days."

They haggled over the wording of the doc.u.ments. They went back and forth about how to distribute the money. They stayed on the phone for another twenty minutes doing what lawyers are expected to do.

When Mack finally hung up, he closed his eyes, propped his feet on his desk, and kicked back in his swivel rocker. He was drained, exhausted, still frightened, but quickly getting over it. He smiled, and was soon humming a Jimmy Buffett tune.

His phone kept ringing.

The truth was, he had not been able to locate either Travis Johnson or Doug Jumper. Travis was rumored to be out west driving a truck, something he evidently could do with only seven full-length fingers. Travis had an ex-wife with a house full of kids and a ledger full of unpaid child support. She worked a night s.h.i.+ft in a convenience store in Clanton, and had few words for Mack. She remembered his promises to collect some money when Travis lost part of three fingers. According to some sketchy friends, Travis had fled a year earlier and had no plans to return to Ford County.

Doug Jumper was rumored to be dead. He had gone to prison in Tennessee on a.s.sault charges and had not been seen in three years. He'd never had a father. His mother had moved away. There were some relatives scattered around the county, but as a whole they showed little interest in talking about Doug and even less interest in talking to a lawyer, even one wearing hunter's camouflage, or faded jeans and hiking boots, or any of the other ensembles Mack used to blend in with the natives. His well-practiced routine of dangling the carrot of some vague check payable to Doug Jumper did not work. Nothing worked, and after two weeks of searching, Mack finally gave up when he heard for the third or fourth time the rumor "That boy's probably dead."

He obtained the legitimate signatures of Odell Grove and Jerrol Baker-Jerrol's being little more than a pathetic wiggle across the page with his right hand-and then committed his first crime. Notarizations on the settlement-and-release forms were required by Mr. Marty Rosenberg up in New York, but this was standard practice in every case. Mack had fired his notary, though, and procuring the services of another was far too complicated.

At his desk, with the doors locked, Mack carefully forged Freda's name as a notary public, then applied the notary seal with an expired stamp he'd kept in a locked file cabinet. He notarized Odell's signature, then Jerrol's, then stopped to admire his handiwork. He had been planning this deed for days now, and he was convinced he would never be caught. The forgeries were beautiful, the altered notary stamp was scarcely noticeable, and no one up in New York would take the time to a.n.a.lyze them. Mr. Rosenberg and his crack staff were so anxious to close their files that they would glance at Mack's paperwork, confirm a few details, then send the check.

His crimes grew more complicated when he forged the signatures of Travis Johnson and Doug Jumper. This, of course, was justified since he had made good-faith efforts to find them, and if they ever surfaced, he would be willing to offer them the same $25,000 he was paying to Odell and Jerrol. a.s.suming, of course, that he was around when they surfaced.

But Mack had no plans to be around.

The next morning, he used the U.S. Postal Service-another possible violation of the law, federal, but, again, nothing that troubled him-and sent the package by express to New York.

Then Mack filed for bankruptcy, and in the process broke another law by failing to disclose the fees that were on the way from his chain-saw masterpiece. It could be argued, and perhaps it would be argued if he got caught, that the fees had not yet been collected, and so forth, but Mack could not even win this debate with himself. Not that he really tried. The fees would never be seen by anyone in Clanton, or Mississippi, for that matter.

He hadn't shaved in two weeks, and in his opinion the salt-and-pepper beard was rather becoming. He stopped eating and stopped wearing coats and ties. The bruises and st.i.tches were gone from his head. When he was seen around town, which was not that often, folks hesitated and whispered because word was hot on the streets that poor Mack was losing it all. News of his bankruptcy raced through the courthouse, and when coupled with the news that Lisa had filed for divorce, the lawyers and clerks and secretaries talked of little else. His office was locked during business hours, and after. His phones went unanswered.

The chain-saw money was wired to a new bank account in Memphis, and from there it was quietly dispersed. Mack took $50,000 in cash, paid off Odell Grove and Jerrol Baker, and felt good about it. Sure they were ent.i.tled to more, at least under the terms of the long-forgotten contracts Mack had shoved under their noses when they'd hired him. But, at least for Mack, the occasion called for a more flexible interpretation of said contracts, and there were several reasons. First, his clients were very happy. Second, his clients would certainly squander anything above $25,000, so in the interest of preserving the money, Mack argued that he should simply keep the bulk of it. Third, $25,000 was a fair settlement in light of their injuries, and especially in light of the fact that the two would have received nothing if Mack had not been shrewd enough to dream up the chain-saw litigation scheme in the first place.

Reasons four, five, and six followed the same line of thinking. Mack was already tired of rationalizing his actions. He was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his clients and he knew it.

He was now a crook. Forging doc.u.ments, hiding a.s.sets, swindling clients. And if he had allowed himself to brood on these actions, he would have been miserable. The reality was that Mack was so thrilled with his escape that he caught himself laughing at odd times. When the crimes were done, there was no turning back, and this pleased him too.

He handed Harry Rex a check for $50,000 to cover the initial fallout from the divorce, and he executed the necessary papers to allow his lawyer to act on his behalf in tidying up his affairs. The rest of the money was wired to a bank in Central America.

The last act in his well-planned and brilliantly executed farewell was a meeting with his daughters. After several testy phone conversations, Lisa had finally relented and agreed to allow Mack to enter the house for one hour, on a Thursday night. She would leave, but return in exactly sixty minutes.

Somewhere in the unwritten rules of human behavior a wise person once decided that such meetings are mandatory. Mack certainly could have skipped it, but then he was not only a crook but also a coward. No rule was safe. He supposed it was important for the girls to have the chance to vent, to cry, to ask why. He need not have worried. Lisa had so thoroughly prepped them that they could barely manage a hug. He promised to see them as often as possible, even though he was leaving town. They accepted this with more skepticism than he thought possible. After thirty long and awkward minutes, Mack squeezed their stiff bodies one more time and hurried to his car. As he drove away, he was convinced the three women were planning a happy new life without him.

And if he had allowed himself to dwell on his failures and shortcomings, he could have become melancholy. He fought the urge to remember the girls when they were smaller and life was happier. Or had he ever been truly happy? He really couldn't say.

He returned to his office, entered, as always now, through the rear door, and gave the place one final walk-through. All active files had been delivered to Harry Rex. The old ones had been burned. The law books, office equipment, furniture, and cheap art on the wall had been either sold or given away. He loaded up one medium-size suitcase, the contents of which had been carefully selected. No suits, ties, dress s.h.i.+rts, jackets, dress shoes-all that garb had been given to charity. Mack was leaving with the lighter stuff.

He took a bus to Memphis, flew from there to Miami, then on to Na.s.sau, where he stayed one night before catching a flight to Belize City, Belize. He waited an hour in the sweltering airport there, sipping a beer from the tiny bar, listening to some rowdy Canadians talk excitedly about bonefis.h.i.+ng, and dreaming of what was ahead. He wasn't really sure what was ahead, but it was certainly far more attractive than the wreckage behind.

The money was in Belize, a country with a U.S. extradition treaty that was more formal than practical. If his trail got hot, and he was supremely confident it would not, then Mack would quietly ease on down to Panama. His odds of getting caught were less than slim, in his opinion, and if someone began poking around Clanton, Harry Rex would know it soon enough.

The plane to Ambergris Cay was an aging Cessna Caravan, a twenty-seater that was stuffed with well-fed North Americans too wide for the narrow seats. But Mack didn't mind. He gazed out the window, down to the brilliant aquamarine water three thousand feet below, warm salty water in which he would soon be swimming. On the island, and north of the main town of San Pedro, he found a room at a quaint little waterfront place called Rico's Reef Resort. All rooms were thatched-roof cabins, each with a small front porch. Each porch had a long hammock, leaving little doubt as to the priorities at Rico's. He paid cash for a week, no credit cards ever again, and quickly changed into his new work clothes-T-s.h.i.+rt, old denim shorts, baseball cap, no shoes. He soon found the watering hole, ordered a rum drink, and met a man named Coz. Coz anch.o.r.ed one end of the teakwood bar and gave the impression that he had been attached to it for quite some time. His long gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail. His skin was burned bronze and leathery. His accent was faded New England, and before long Coz, chain-smoking and drinking dark rum, let it slip that at one time he'd been involved with a vaguely undefined firm in Boston. He poked and prodded into Mack's background, but Mack was too nervous to divulge anything.

"How long you staying?" Coz asked.

"Long enough to get a tan," Mack answered.

"Might take a while. Watch the sun. It's brutal."

Coz had advice for lots of things in Belize. When he realized he was getting little from his drinking buddy, he said, "You're smart. Don't talk too much around here. You got a lot of Yanks running from something."

Later, in the hammock, Mack rocked with the breeze, gazed at the ocean, listened to the surf, sipped a rum and soda, and asked himself if he was really running. There were no warrants, court orders, or creditors chasing him. At least none that he knew of. Nor did he expect any. He could go home tomorrow if he chose, but that thought was distasteful. Home was gone. Home was something he had just escaped. The shock of leaving weighed heavy, but the rum certainly helped.

Mack spent the first week either in the hammock or by the pool, carefully soaking up the sun before hustling back to the porch for a reprieve. When he wasn't napping, tanning, or loitering at the bar, he took long walks by the water. A companion would be nice, he said to himself. He chatted with the tourists at the small hotels and fis.h.i.+ng lodges, and he finally got lucky with a pleasant young lady from Detroit. At times he was bored, but being bored in Belize was far better than being bored in Clanton.

On March 25, Mack awoke from a bad dream. For some awful reason he remembered the date because a new term of chancery court began on that day in Clanton, and under usual circ.u.mstances Mack would be at the docket call in the main courtroom. There, along with twenty other lawyers, he would answer when his name was called and inform the judge that Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So were present and ready to get their divorce. He had at least three on the docket for that day. Sadly, he could still remember their names. It was nothing but an a.s.sembly line, and Mack was a low-paid and very replaceable worker.

Lying naked under thin sheets, he closed his eyes. He inhaled and sniffed the musty oak and leather smell of the old courtroom. He heard the voices of the other lawyers as they bickered importantly over the last-minute details. He saw the judge in his faded black robe sitting low in a ma.s.sive chair waiting impatiently for papers to sign to dissolve yet another marriage made in heaven.

Then he opened his eyes, and as he watched the slow silent spin of the ceiling fan, and listened to the early-morning sounds of the ocean, Mack Stafford was suddenly and thoroughly consumed with the joys of freedom. He quickly pulled on some gym shorts and ran down the beach to a pier that jutted two hundred feet into the water. Sprinting, he raced along the pier and never slowed as it came to an end. Mack was laughing as he launched himself through the air and landed in a mighty splash. The sauna-like water pushed him to the top, and he started swimming.

Casino

Clanton's most ambitious hustler was a tractor dealer named Bobby Carl Leach. From a large gravel sales lot on the highway north of town, Bobby Carl built an empire that, at one time or another, included a backhoe and dozer service, a fleet of pulpwood trucks, two all-you-can-eat catfish cabins, a motel, some raw timberland upon which the sheriff found marijuana in cultivation, and a collection of real estate that primarily comprised empty buildings scattered around Clanton. Most of them eventually burned. Arson followed Bobby Carl, as did litigation. He was no stranger to lawsuits; indeed, he loved to brag about all the lawyers he kept busy. With a colorful history of shady deals, divorces, IRS audits, fraudulent insurance claims, and near indictments, Bobby Carl was a small industry unto himself, at least to the local bar a.s.sociation. And though he was always in the vicinity of trouble, he had never been seriously prosecuted. Over time, his ability to elude the law added to his reputation, and most of Clanton enjoyed repeating and embellis.h.i.+ng stories about Bobby Carl's dealings.

His car of choice was a Cadillac DeVille, always maroon and new and spotless. He traded every twelve months for the latest model. No one else dared drive the same car. He once bought a Rolls-Royce, the only one within two hundred miles, but kept it less than a year. When he realized such an exotic vehicle had little impact on the locals, he got rid of it. They had no idea where it was made and how much it cost. None of the mechanics in town would touch it; not that it mattered because they couldn't find parts for it anyway.

He wore cowboy boots with dangerously pointed toes, starched white s.h.i.+rts, and dark three-piece suits, the pockets of which were always stuffed with cash. And every outfit was adorned with an astonis.h.i.+ng collection of gold-thick watches, bulky neck chains, bracelets, belt buckles, collar pins, tie bars. Bobby Carl gathered gold the way some women h.o.a.rd shoes. There was gold trim in his cars, office, briefcases, knives, portrait frames, even his plumbing fixtures. He liked diamonds too. The IRS could not keep track of such portable wealth, and the black market was a natural shopping place for Bobby Carl.

Gaudy as he was in public, he was fanatical about his private life. He lived quietly in a weird contemporary home deep in the hills east of Clanton, and the fact that so few people had ever seen his place fueled rumors that it was used for all sorts of illegal and immoral activities. There was some truth to these rumors. A man of his status quite naturally attracted women of the looser variety, and Bobby Carl loved the ladies. He married several of them, always to his regret. He enjoyed booze, but never to excess. There were wild friends and rowdy parties, but Bobby Carl Leach never missed an hour of work because of a hangover. Money was much too important.

At 5:00 every morning, including Sundays, his maroon DeVille made a quick loop around the Ford County Courthouse in downtown Clanton. The stores and offices were always empty and dark, and this pleased him greatly. Let 'em sleep. The bankers and lawyers and real estate agents and merchants who told stories about him while they envied his money were never at work at 5:00 in the morning. He relished the darkness and tranquillity, the absence of compet.i.tion at that hour. After his daily victory lap, he sped away to his office, which was on the site of his tractor sales lot and was, without question, the largest in the county. It covered the second floor of an old redbrick building built before Pearl Harbor, and from behind its darkly tinted windows Bobby Carl could keep an eye on his tractors while also watching the highway traffic.

Alone and content at that early hour, he began each day with a pot of strong coffee, which he drained as he read his newspapers. He subscribed to every daily he could get-Memphis, Jackson, Tupelo-and the weeklies from the surrounding counties. Reading and gulping coffee with a vengeance, he combed the papers not for the news but for the opportunities. Buildings for sale, farmland, foreclosures, factories coming and going, auctions, bankruptcies, liquidations, requests for bids, bank mergers, upcoming public works. The walls of his office were covered with plats of land and aerial photos of towns and counties. The local land rolls were in his computer. He knew who was behind on their property taxes, and for how long and how much, and he gathered and stored this information in the predawn hours while everyone else was asleep.