Legally Wasted (23 page)

“Cause I’m the one framed for murder,
right?”

Trevor shrugged.

Larkin took the key and slipped it into the
door. With a swift turn, the deadbolt slid back. Larkin pushed,
counted to three and crossed the threshold.

“No alarm,” Trevor confirmed.

The foyer floor was a sea of slate. It
appeared to stretch to infinity as the ashen tiles disappeared in
the shadows where the moonlight flooding in from the open door
could not reach. The tiles were evenly spaced squares, a chessboard
after team black had reigned victorious and painted the white
squares to memorialize the win. A chandelier, blooming in the space
above their heads like a glass carnation, seemed to hover as the
tall ceiling was barely visible. The house smelled of leather,
hints of pipe smoke, and half a dozen other expensive things.

Trevor nudged the door to close it. Larkin
held up his hand as if to prevent him from doing so, but he did not
know why. As soon as the inner latch clicked into place, the din of
the cicadas disappeared leaving the home as quiet as a tomb. But
when Larkin stepped forward, his heel clicked against the slate
tile. The sound ping-ponged from shrouded wall to wall.

“This way,” said Larkin. The Justice’s house
echoed with their footsteps.

“This house is quiet,” said Trevor.

“And loud,” added Larkin.

Past the foyer, Larkin entered a hallway. The
passage was dark. Even looking out of the corner of his eyes,
Larkin could not spot where the hallway led. His left hand felt
upon the wall and seized the glossy painted crown molding. Inch by
inch he followed the molding through the passage. Floorboards
groaned.

Suddenly the hallway was flooded with light.
Larkin squinted and turned, his heart racing.

“No one’s here,” said Trevor as he leaned
against the wall, his fingers resting upon the light switch. Larkin
opened his mouth to object but Trevor raised his hand. “It isn’t
visible to the outside. I checked.”

Larkin nodded. Trevor caught up and they
proceeded to the Justice’s office. The floor creaked loudly as they
made their way to a closed red-stained oak door.

“It costs a lot of money to build a house
this new and make it sound so old,” said Trevor. “Reclaimed
wood.”

Larkin barely nodded. He focused on the
copper-colored doorknob inches from his fingertips. His heart beat
like a gatling gun. Salvation.

“I have certain unalienable rights,”
whispered Larkin.

“Damn right.”

“Among those are life,” his fingers clutched
the knob. It felt cool. “Liberty,” he said as his wrist turned.
“And the pursuit of happiness.” The door opened.

The room was larger and made larger by the
bare cedar plank walls. Larkin had half-expected the Justice to
have peppered the walls with enough diplomas, awards and the like
to fill a U-haul. Instead, the room was kept simple. A modestly
sized roll-top desk rested against the left wall. The blue leather
office chair had been attractive in 1982. Each crack in the
scratched hide may have been borne of a particularly difficult
judicial decision. It was a chair that demonstrated great
productivity. Larkin had a similar such chair.

Four tall windows on the opposite side of the
room looked out upon a beautifully landscaped lakeside lawn. In the
blinking green glow from an offshore channel marker, Larkin could
see a boathouse protruding into the dark still water. Nothing else
seemed remarkable except the attractive globe at the back of the
room,

“My office is nicer than this,” said
Trevor.

“It is what it is,” said Larkin, “a room to
get things done.” He approached the desk. According to Anthony,
handwritten notes implicating the Justice as more than a suspect
were inches away. Larkin rolled the tiled wooden covering back into
the recesses of the desk. The desktop work area was dominated by
two neatly stacked piles of documents. The top page on each stack
appeared to be the beginning of a judicial opinion. The rest of the
desktop was littered with a few pens, mostly red, and two or three
legal pads. Larkin reached down and tugged at the center drawer. It
did not budge.

“He’s got a brand new Chaparral,” said Trevor
as he stared at the boathouse. “Twenty footer. Maybe three hundred
horse power or more.”

Larkin slid both his right and left index
fingers into the small hinged brass hoops dangling from the face of
the drawer. He tugged. The drawer moved less than a quarter of an
inch before some internal bolt or metal clip prevented anything
further.

“Shit,” said Larkin.

“Stuck?”

Larkin nodded.

“Let me have a go.”

Larkin shook his head. He tugged again.
Fruitless. “My uncle had one of these,” he said as he lightly
smacked the face of the drawer. “It has an odd locking mechanism.
You pull the right drawer out and then the center drawer gets
unhitched.”

“Ahh,” said Trevor. He wandered to the far
end of the room. “Well if you want me to break it, I’ll be over
here.” His finger grazed the surface of the globe.

Trespass to Chattels. One who commits a
trespass to a chattel is subject to liability to the possessor of
the chattel.

“I know what this is,” said Trevor as he
fingered the Azores.

“What?” asked Larkin as he began opening and
closing various combinations of desk drawers. He turned to see
Trevor open the top half of the globe. As the world north of the
equator descended on its hinge, the lower half of the world
revealed a small elegant bar top complete with a bottle of scotch
and a single high-ball glass.

“Glen Livet,” said Trevor. “Now that’s worth
journeying to the center of the earth.” He grasped the glass and
quickly filled it to the near brim.

“I can smell that from here,” said Larkin as
he lowered himself to his knees to examine the underside of the
desk.

“I’m kissing the devil,” said Trevor. “Let me
know when you want me to break that.”

“Right,” said Larkin. His fingers probed
beneath the desk but felt only the scratch of wood in need of some
sandpaper. He cursed again.

“I can break it.”

“Give me a minute.”

Trevor raised his glass. “Take all the time,
my friend. What does he have on his desk?”

“I don’t know.” He stared at the knobs
attached to the smaller drawers. Did they turn? Perhaps one of them
rotated and unlatched an inner lock. “I think he has two judicial
opinions up there.” His fingers pressed against the brass. “Maybe
some of the research to go along with it.” None of the knobs
moved.

A drop of scotch whiskey landed on Larkin’s
shoulder as Trevor leaned in to investigate. Larkin could smell the
drink. He almost swiped the glass from Trevor’s hand. Part of him
wanted to drink it, while a separate voice cried out for him to
hurl it through the tall expensive windows.

“I’ve never seen one before,” said Trevor.
“What am I looking at?”

“Well,” started Larkin as he jiggled the
center drawer. With each jostle he could see slivers of open space
around the drawer. It was maddening. He spoke to calm his nerves.
“The top part is the caption of the case. That’ll tell you what
court you’re in and who’s suing who. Then you’ve got the case
number over to the side and below all of that you’ll find the name
of the Justice who wrote the Court’s opinion.”

“Uh huh,” said Trevor. “Both of them are by
our guy. Old Birdie Bird.”

“Gotcha,” spat Larkin. His battle had reached
a fever pitch. He knew his fingers would hurt for hours but still
he tugged at the handle. He released his grip and exhaled like a
steam engine. “Godammit,” he muttered. He looked beneath the desk
again, struck his head, and repeated the curse.

“Let me break it.”

“No.”

“Let me break it.”

“Fine.”

“Here,” said Trevor as he handed the opinions
to Larkin. “Get current on the law.” With a long seer-suckered arm,
he steered Larkin clear. He set his drink upon the desktop and
studied the target. “This is nice wood,” he said in a strange, deep
voice just before quickly grabbing the center drawer and tugging
with all his might. Larkin was quite surprised. Trevor really put
his back into it. As Larkin watched, he pictured his tool box at
home filled with a number of items that could have proved
useful.

Eventually Trevor released and he fell back
against the fat wooden planks of the floor. “I’m going to do it,”
he panted.

“Yeah,” said Larkin as he caught himself
eyeing the scotch before glancing down at one of the opinions. He
looked at the top page of the opinion in his right hand and then
briefly studied the top page of the opinion in his left. Trevor
kicked the desk. A brass knob clanked against the floor and rolled
beneath the desk.

“They have the same case number,” said
Larkin, although he knew Trevor did not care. “Same parties too,”
he mumbled. He flipped to the last page of the opinion in his left
hand. Page thirty-two. He next looked at the last page of the
second opinion. Thirteen pages. Was one of them just an earlier
draft? He flipped back to the top page and noticed a timestamp of
sorts on the upper left corner of the document. “It says, submitted
to JB, June first.” He looked at the other one. “This one was
submitted June tenth.”

His curiosity was piqued, but the sound of
splintering wood was music to his ears. The center drawer swung
low, ripped from its wooden frame. Trevor had somehow given the
desk a Glasgow smile. The contents spilled onto the floor. Larkin
rolled up the opinions and stuffed them in his jeans pocket. His
fingers lunged for the evidence in the accumulated pile beneath the
desk.

Trevor stood back and caught his breath. He
eventually retreated to the globe and watched his friend dig for a
lifeline.

“Staples, rubber bands,” said Larkin as his
hands swatted items over the floorboards. “Blank memo paper,
envelopes, pens, pens, more blank paper, boat keys - -”

“Let me see those,” Trevor blurted from
across the room. Larkin tossed them over his shoulder without a
thought. He concentrated on sifting through the mess. But as the
items were eventually spread over a wider section of the floor, his
heart sank.

“It’s not here,” he said, even before he had
finished digging. He knew his lot in life. Finding a 24k get out of
jail free card inside of a desk did not really fit the pattern. His
hands lost their ambition. He slowed his search. Trevor poured
another drink and the glug-glug sound of the brown liquid leaving
the bottle seemed to last forever.

“Nothing,” he finally said. “No letter. No
pictures. Anthony was wrong. The Justice must have anticipated a
search. He either moved them or most likely destroyed them.” His
fingers grasped a corner of the last unseen piece of paper and he
pulled. It was only an attractive invitation to an event to which
he would never be permitted to go.

“Larkin,” said Trevor, “you’re innocent,
right?”

Larkin stared at the floor. He could not even
admit it to himself. Despite his innocence, his failure only made
him feel guilty. In his mind he had already tried the facts and
determined the sentence. He would be put away for life, guilty of
unabashed idiocy.

“Larkin,” snapped Trevor. “Innocent,
right?”

Larkin nodded.

“Well that’s good,” he said. “It will make
this easier.”

“Make what easier?”

There was a pause. “Damn that’s good scotch,”
said Trevor. “I’m taking the bottle. You know, Larkin? You’re one
sharp fucker despite what you think. I trust you. So I’m going to
trust you to save my ass.”

“Save your ass”? Larkin turned. “What are you
- -”

The room had turned into a collection of
stutter-stop images from the intense flashes of blue light bursting
from the nearby police cars. The strobe effect made everything seem
to move incredibly fast yet frozen in place at the same time. With
each flash, Larkin watched still images of Trevor in action. In one
flash Trevor had tossed the leather chair aside before appearing
suddenly adjacent to the globe in the next flash. Trevor gripped
the globe by its wooden frame, swung it back like a baseball bat,
and hurled it through the window. Glass exploded outward. For a
moment Larkin was caught off guard, half-expecting that the sound
of the shattering glass would also beat with the staccato rhythm
created by the blue light. He got to his feet.

“There has to be a side door,” said Trevor,
“some other exit. Find it. I’ll buy you a minute or two to get your
ass out of here. Tobacco farms and cow fields parallel the road.
Don’t get caught.” Stepping through his portal, Larkin could see a
smile on Trevor’s face. He prayed that the cops would not shoot
first and ask questions second.

Larkin headed toward the office door when he
heard Trevor shout. “Hey! This didn’t break!” Without slowing his
momentum, Trevor scooped up the bottle of scotch. He looked one
last time at Larkin and dangled the set of keys he had acquired
only moments earlier. “Cheers, mate,” he said. “Now haul ass.”

The flashes of light grew brighter. Police
sirens and Trevor’s whooping drowned out even the cicadas. Larkin
ran.

It was nearly an out of body experience. His
legs pumped. His arms pawed at the air as if he could grab hold of
an exit and pull it closer. He tripped many times and stumbled into
a number of objects. He felt no pain and only winced as one might
while watching a pratfall on television.

Even deep in the house, Larkin heard the
throaty, gurlgly roar of the engine. Trevor had made it to the
boat. Though landlocked, Trevor was now armed with a half-bottle of
fine scotch and a three hundred horsepower ski boat. He could keep
the cops occupied for quite some time as long as he did not crash
into a pier. Larkin prayed he did not crash into a pier.