Motion To Intervene

MOTION TO INTERVENE

by

Larry W. Zeigler

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © by Larry W. Zeigler

Original Copyright © 1995

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Kay Ottem and Dee Dee Noble, without whose encouragement this book would have ended at Chapter 1 and in the wastebasket.

DISCLAIMER

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. It is the author’s unfortunate opinion that the types of characters who appear in this work may be found in every city, county and courthouse in the country.

Motion to Intervene:

A pre-trial procedural device wherein an outside party is allowed to intervene in a legal matter already pending between other parties.

Chapter 1, Sunday Night

Jesus! How in hell did it ever end up like this? Me, Jack Devers, small-town middle-aged lawyer and would-be master criminal, slowly crawling across the carpet of my office. The dysfunctional air conditioner was still silent, and I was matted in sweat before I’d made it halfway across the room. My clothes were dirty and, God how I smelled. For a guy who often showered twice a day, given my multiple workouts, I was more than a little out of character. And the pistol in my hand certainly didn’t fit the legal image very well, either.

The lights from the street came through the blinds in a lattice shaped pattern that only added to my irritation. I knew the people I’d invited to this meeting were somewhere outside. There was no way they would turn down my invitation; they couldn’t afford to. I also knew their plans for this meeting didn’t match mine, but what I really found unsettling was the thought that if their version won, I’d never walk out of this office again or anyplace else for that matter.

I’d made the building available by arranging this meeting for late Sunday evening. This allowed me to get into the office early Sunday morning when no one else was working yet, not even the usual batch of wanna’ be partners who spent most of their Saturdays padding the time sheets in their desperate quest for recognition. Of course, I had spent my time as a wanna’ be years before. I’d enjoyed the luxury of starting out in the business at a time when an associate who was willing to work and learn had a fairly decent prospect of becoming a partner. I’d worked hard and learned a lot, not just about law as a profession, but about law as a business. I’d seen the advent of the billable hours system, the legal profession’s answer to the smoldering resentment occasioned by the medical profession’s apparent ease in amassing ever larger amounts of capital via unnecessary medical services. I’d learned all about judges, the processes of law, and legal politics. In the end, I became a partner and ended up here, crouched between my desk and the window facing a parking lot two floors below. The last and most important deal of my legal career was about to unfold.

I pulled the Taurus 9mm automatic from my belt, set it on the floor, and checked the three extra 18 round magazines. I was thirsty, but there was no way I was going to crawl all the way to the vending machine in the back hallway. Friday’s stale water in the carafe on my desk would have to suffice.

I slowly raised myself to a point where, without making myself a target, I was able to look down on the parking lot. I scanned the dimly illuminated area for anything out of the ordinary. There—the van—just barely tucked behind the corner of the building across the way, hadn’t been there before. I wiped more sweat from my forehead and tried to slow down my breathing. This was worse than when I’d taken the money. I hadn’t really thought anyone would get hurt then. But I’d been wrong on that. They damned well had gotten hurt, fatally so, and I was determined I wouldn’t end up that way tonight. I looked out the window and saw the dome light come on in the van. They were coming. Shit! How in hell did it ever end up like this?

Chapter 2

Thursday Morning—Five Weeks Earlier

Good morning Jack, Sylvie said. The best damned legal secretary God ever bestowed upon the legal profession, Sylvie could throw together pleadings like Judge Learned Hand on a deadline, and coolly lie to any Judge foolish enough to call and demand to know why Mr. Devers wasn’t in his or her courtroom as docketed. She was so good at the fine art of secretarial deceit, any judge or minion dumb enough to waste his time in hopes of nailing Mr. Devers, Esq., would invariably end up feeling just a trifle guilty at ever having suspicioned Jack Devers, Attorney at Law.

Morning, Sylvie, I replied. Only the multivitamins and assorted pharmacopeia I had the good sense to take just before hitting the sack, precluded the usual catatonic stupor that accompanied one of my binges. Another one of Sylvie’s cherished talents was the ability to instantly recognize the glazed countenance that usually followed one of my sojourns with a well deserved jug.

Saying nothing else, I went straight into my office, thankful for the Venetian blinds that cut some of the glare that gained in strength in direct proportion to the amount of booze consumed the night before. Sylvie came in right behind me with a cup of coffee and a stack of files.

Let’s hear it, I said, with about as much enthusiasm as a gerbil for a San Francisco bathhouse.

Well, this morning, you have the Gibbons dissolution matter.

Ah, Jesus, Sylvie. Just because the guy turns out unwilling or unable to service Mrs. Gibbons on demand, she wants 75% of everything the poor son of a bitch earned in a 35 year business career. And then, the one or two times he cuts the mustard, a Mr. Gibbons look alike is the result. So now, the great State of Washington and a bunch of over zealous heterophobes who will never give birth or nurture much more than a security business or family oriented counseling firm, are going to dictate to Mr. Gibbons how much of his life’s earnings is going to disappear down the drain.

She just stared at me, saying nothing. She’d heard it all before. I seldom missed an opportunity to rant and rave over the inherent injustice of Washington State and its Child Support Guidelines. Several years before, the Legislature, in its infinite wisdom and intrinsic cowardice, had turned the issue of child support over to a Commission. This was due to a drumbeat of protest that rolled into the hallowed halls of Olympia over the fact that child support wasn’t uniform throughout the state. According to the protestors, this was undoubtedly the work of unqualified and biased judges, who simply lacked the necessary credentials to rule properly in the area of child support.

The Commission, made up in part of women who preferred children conceived without the use of a penis, set out to make sure that child support wasn’t only uniform, but equitably exorbitant. I often thought, that had he been chairman of the Commission, Al Capone might’ve called a halt to the more larcenous elements of the support schedules on the basis of nothing more than good taste. Of course, the Commission managed all of this in the context of arguing that by using uniform guidelines, required form packages, and set mathematical formulas, the cost to the public of acquiring a divorce would proportionately subside. Instead, the cost of a divorce had basically tripled, proving once again that attempting to curtail legal fees is about as remunerative as peddling Menorahs in Baghdad.

Thursdays were always like this. In the morning, I was on the dissolution docket, where the bar systematically looted and sundered various nuptial nests. God help the hapless medical professional who found himself in the confines of the dissolution docket, for it was here that the legal profession extracted a grisly bounty from the errant doctor or dentist. Indeed, more than one croaker had been heard to wax eloquent over the advantages of a malpractice claim, as opposed to paying the ex spouse and her attorney for the privilege of going his separate way.It wasn’t uncommon to see two lawyers (at $100+ an hour) arguing over items of considerably less value. I once observed two enthusiastic barristers representing a former husband and wife, both of whom were on minimal Social Security! The argument centered on a requested monthly increase of $5.00 in spousal support. To his credit, the judge threw the attorneys out into the hall with a less than judicious admonition to get the matter settled without his assistance.

Can’t Sid handle Gibbons? I begged Sylvie.

You know he can’t, she said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

Sid Blumenthal was a young associate the firm had put on the payroll about three years before. He was a fine young man, and I’d already knocked heads with a couple of my partners over what we were paying him. I’m not the nicest lawyer to hit the pike, but I’ve got certain standards that my old man used to beat into me. One of them was that the lowest form of thief is the guy who steals another person’s labor. The firm wasn’t exactly stealing Sid’s labor, just renting it at slum lord rates.

You know Mr. Gibbons demands that you handle his case personally.

Robert Gibbons wasn’t a bad sort. When he lost his wife of 31 years to cancer, he spent the next six months vegetating in his two million dollar log cabin. He’d made a fortune in land development and custom residential construction. His primary advertising pitch was the less than candid assertion that he had not only been born in a log cabin, but still lived in one built by himself, of course. It was corny as hell, but over the years it had made Bob Gibbons a millionaire several times over.

Anyhow, he took his wife’s death real hard, but after six months of mourning and struggling with hormones he’d thought dormant, he went back out on the social circuit. Well, the inevitable happened. The first looker who reintroduced him to the blow job ended up as the second Mrs. Gibbons and the only log cabin this bitch was even remotely acquainted with (or interested in) was the kind that went on waffles. Within six months, Mrs. Gibbons, who’d had four previous husbands, decided that screwing Bob Gibbons was infinitely preferable to blowing him and she hired Trish Vandeman, the Grand Inquisitor of the local divorce bar. Vandeman was an expert at dallying around a case at $150 an hour. When Trish was on the other side, opposing counsel could damned well bet that Alaska’s McKinley Glacier was going to make better progress than he or she would at getting the thing settled.

All right, Sylvie, where are we on the thing?

You’re set for a settlement conference at 10:00. Trish called and said she wants to discuss a few things with you before you go into chambers. Says she thinks it can be settled.

Yeah, right. We’ve only had one hearing. When’s the last time you saw Ms. Vandeman settle anything that didn’t generate at least five thousand dollars in fees?

Without a word, Sylvie handed me the file. It was only a couple of inches thick, which meant that Trish hadn’t as yet served up the usual intimidating stack of form interrogatories. I got up, put on my coat, and headed for the door.

As I worked my way down the hall, I noticed Sid standing by the copy machine. Sid was twenty nine years old with a wife and three month old son. I liked him right from the first interview three years earlier. I told the other partners we should hire him on the spot, but they insisted that we adhere to the new hiring procedure and do a follow up with his wife. The next step was to let him spend some time looking around and talking to the staff. They felt we should hire the way the big firms hired and make the process as pretentious as possible. We put Sid and another kid I didn’t like on the payroll. The partners liked the other guy, because he’d gone to the right schools, had a flawless nasal twang and just that slight touch of haughtiness that seems to mark law school grads who’ve done nothing with their lives other than go to school on Daddy’s money. Sid had worked at construction and truck driving and came from the same middle class background as myself. Sid was still with us, while the other hire stayed around about eight months before moving up to one of the blue chip firms. What really pissed me off was that my partners, who had already decided Sid wasn’t going to be a partner, kept dangling the bait in front of him. Even though Sid knew and accepted the truth about his situation, it still riled me. At the last partner’s meeting I’d made it clear that the next son of a bitch I heard use the word partner around the kid would have me to reckon with.

Mornin’, Sid.

Mornin’, Jack. Pursuant to instructions, he addressed the other partners as Mr. Whatever, but pursuant to my orders, I was just Jack. It really grated on their sensitivities to hear the first name salutation between the two of us. I, on the other hand, loved it!

Off to Court?

Yeah, phase one of the Gibbons castration. Jesus kid, you ought to know I tried to con Sylvie into sending you up against Vandeman. Either I’m too hung over, or I’ve just lost my gamblin’ guts, but the thought of looking and listening to Trish this morning is just too much.

Sid was filling out the tally sheet for the number of copies he’d just made. Once on the billable hours system, everything made money for a firm. Sid was pure gold. We paid him a minimal salary but billed his work out at $90 an hour. Squeeze 65 hours a week out of him, and his superiors and the cash flow got a real boost. The copy machine was another money tree. We billed clients two to three times the actual cost of each page. Then, too, each of the pages— usually consisting of a pre existing form in the computer was billed out at a minimum charge per page, regardless of the actual time it took to fill in the blanks. Christ, at least Capone had used guns.

Well Jack, I’d have been more than willing, but Mr. Jacobson’s got me doing double duty on the Richardson probate.

Old man Richardson, one of our local society notables, had recently died in the arms of his paramour, an aging hooker he’d been keeping house with since before his grieving and greedy offspring first removed their silver spoons for polishing. My partner reported that he expected the probate to generate just over ten thousand dollars in fees. You can bet your ass that if the case fell short of the expected revenue figure my partner, Oscar Jacobson, Esq., wouldn’t be above filing a motion asking the family to exhume the old bastard and produce his gold fillings. No, that was going too far. Oscar would just pad the time slips until he got to the projected figure. It was a hell of a lot cleaner than digging.

No sweat, Sid.

Later, Jack.

I headed out the door to the parking lot where my car occupied its usual spot. The car was almost as old as me, a 1948 Plymouth two door coupe. It was in mint condition and worth a substantial sum of money. It also drove my partners nuts. They thought lawyers should only be seen in Yuppie imports like Volvo’s or BMW’s. I got in and headed for court.

I don’t know why that morning seemed so different, but something was really starting to irritate me. I followed the exact same route I always did, but the closer I got to Court the more agitated I seemed to become.

Maybe it was the town, Tri Cities, Washington, which consisted of Pasco, Kennewick and Richland. It had a combined population of just over 100,000 people, which was enough to support most of the accouterment of modern culture. There was a Coliseum, where during hockey season you could watch the law and order crowd scream for ever-higher levels of violence from the minors who made up the Western Hockey League. Politically, a substantial part of the populace, including the local media, howled like a Paris mob when it came to balancing the Federal budget and maintaining the flow of Federal dollars into the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. There was gang warfare, agri-business and minor league baseball. Hell, there was even a Starbuck’s Coffee Shop which drew Yuppies by the imported carload.

I couldn’t really say exactly what it was that was bothering me, but by the time I got to the Justice Center it was nearly volcanic.

As I approached the front doors of the courthouse, I noticed a few of the local TV people all set up for some kind of promo. The new female attorney general was there under full canvas, as well as one of the local state representatives, a politician who’d early on learned