Legally Wasted (9 page)

“You better not,” said Trevor. “I’m meeting
someone later on.”

“Of course,” said Larkin as he wiggled his
wrist and swirled his drink. He stared at the small whirlpool of
gin he had created while concentrating on his breathing.

“Do you own an ugly home?” Madeline
asked.

Larkin looked up. Madeline stared at him from
the television screen. Her brown hair fell upon her shoulders in
broad attractive curls. A charcoal business suit and a strand of
pearls did very well to diminish her look of vulnerability. She
looked like a million bucks. The screen blinked and showed a home
with a sagging roof. A cartoon frowny face bounced across the
screen.

“No matter the home,” said Madeline as the
advertisement showed a series of dilapidated homes, “no matter the
condition, Simmons and Associates can make the dreams of a sale,
become a reality.” The screen blinked again before showing Madeline
hanging a “SOLD” sign in someone’s front yard.

“Thanks,” said Larkin to Trevor after the
commercial had ended.

“Your welcome,” said Trevor. It had been
agreed upon that Trevor would no longer comment on how hot Madeline
looked in her commercial.

Larkin slid off of his bar stool and headed
for the bathroom. He pushed against the door and raced for the
small sink. With his lips locked tight to prevent anything from
coming up, he repeatedly splashed cool water against his face.
After a minute, he turned off the flow and stared at himself in the
mirror. Water droplets slid down his tired face.

Suddenly, a loud snarling noise forced him to
jump. He spun, but no one else had entered the bathroom. As he
grabbed a paper towel to dab at his face, he heard the noise again,
but this time, it was unmistakable. Someone was snoring.

Larkin crept slowly to the only closed
bathroom stall and peaked through the crack between the scuffed
door and the frame. A man sat fully clothed on the toilet seat with
the back of his head pressed against wall.

“Fucking, Deveraux,” said Larkin. He watched
him for a moment. Every three or four seconds, Deveraux’s whole
head shook until an immense snore erupted from both his nose and
mouth. A tipped over whiskey sour lay at his feet. The maraschino
cherry waded in a pool that could have been equal part booze, bile
and urine. When Larkin had entered Marty’s earlier that evening,
Deveraux must have already been in the bathroom. At least now he
knew that he had probably taken the shots.

As Larkin watched the slumbering man, his
temper gradually calmed. While he certainly had experienced one
shitty afternoon, at least Larkin was not unconscious on a toilet.
He wondered if he had some sort of obligation to help Deveraux.
Part of him wanted Deveraux to wake in the filthy bathroom with a
splitting headache while his conscience debated a rescue attempt.
He continued to stare, his face pressed against the crack when the
main door opened behind him.

“What are you doing?”

Larkin turned. One of the legal eaglets stood
in the doorway. “I, uh . . .” he started. The eaglet then decided
that his desire to piss outweighed his interest in what appeared to
be a bathroom peeping Tom. He walked quietly by and headed to the
urinal.

“I know the guy,” said Larkin in his defense.
He then realized that he had not really explained a thing. The
eaglet stood with his back to Larkin and silently began to use the
bathroom. “You don’t understand,” said Larkin, “he’s a guy that I
practice with. Not that we work together, but I see him from time
to time.” The eaglet’s silence pissed him off. “I’m not peeping,”
he barked, just as his cell phone began to ring.

He reached into his pocket to withdraw it,
but his fingertips were still wet from the water. As he pulled on
the phone, it leaped out of his hands. His hands frantically
swatted at the phone, but Larkin only succeeded in smacking it like
a volleyball and sending it flying across the bathroom. It landed
with a clatter on the tile floor and slid across the restroom
floor. It stopped not two inches from the eaglet’s mahogany brown
leather left shoe.

“Shit,” said Larkin. The eaglet looked
quizzically at the phone and then back at Larkin.

“Is that a camera phone?” asked the
eaglet.

“What?” said Larkin.

Rather than retrieve it, the eaglet turned
and kicked the phone with his toe with just a little bit too much
force. The phone skidded across the tiles toward Larkin. Both men
stood still.

“You could have just . . . ” started Larkin,
but he lost the will to continue.

“Hello?” the cell phone asked. The eaglet or
the fall must have hit the button to activate the speaker phone.
“Larkin?” asked a gruff man’s voice.

Larkin lunged for the phone. As he fumbled
with the button, the other attorney glided swiftly past him and out
the door.

“Larkin?” asked Ron, the phone still on
speaker mode.

“I’m here, Ron,” said Larkin as he finally
discovered how to disable the function. He pressed the phone to his
ear, but immediately recoiled as he remembered that it had just
rested on the bathroom floor at Marty’s.

“I’ve got one for you,” said Ron. His voice
was hushed. Larkin heard others talking in the background. “He’s on
the third floor. They’re going to operate on him tomorrow morning.
You may want to stop by as soon as you can.”

“Hmmmmm,” said Larkin.

“It’s good, Larkin. By the way, did you talk
to my wife’s attorney about the dresser with the comic book?”

“I left some messages,” he lied after wiping
the phone on his sleeve. “I’m going, Ron.”

“Hey, man. Are you going to come by?”

“Yeah . . . maybe,” said Larkin as he closed
his phone. He straightened himself and retreated to the bar. All of
the eaglets turned when he exited the bathroom. He wanted to shoot
the bird, but his shame prevented it. As he made his way to his
barstool he caught glimpses of himself in the dusty mirror hanging
behind the top-shelf liquor. Deveraux might have it better off
after all, he thought.

Trevor had abandoned his post at the bar. The
man was constantly on the move. Like the true gentlemen that he
envisioned himself to be, Trevor had left a tall fizzy glass near
Larkin’s stool along with a five-spot.

“Nice,” said Larkin as he ignored the stares
from the eaglet’s nest and made his way to the bar. His phone rang
as soon as he sat. “What?” Larkin shouted into the receiver. “I’m
coming over at some point, dammit.”

The individual on the other end of the call
cleared his throat. “Mr. Monroe?” asked a man’s voice.

“Uh,” said Larkin.

“This is Detective Kincaid, Big Lick City
Police Department.”

“Yes,” said Larkin. He pushed his drink away
as if his Baptist grandmother had just walked into the bar.

“I need to meet with you to discuss a matter.
I know that you’re busy, but I need to meet with you as soon as
possible.”

Larkin again attempted to straighten a tie
that was not there. The cop’s voice was not outright alarming, but
his voice’s deep tone demanded attention. “What’s this about? Is
this an old case that you’re looking into?” The hairs on the back
of his neck stood on end. Again, he remembered his ethics award.
Three of the most significant criminal cases that he had worked on
in the past year flashed through his mind, but all three were
drunken driving charges.

“No, sir. This is a criminal investigation.
We’re investigating the death of Alex Jordan.”

“The law clerk.”

“Did you know Ms. Jordan?”

“No,” said Larkin, “but I just saw the news.
Terrible incident,” he said with little emotion. What in the world
tied him to the dead girl?

“You never met her?”

Larkin bit his lip. “No. Why are you calling
me? What makes you think I did?”

“Can you come into the station tomorrow
morning?”

He wanted to say, you didn’t answer my
question. Instead, he lied. “I think I have court.”

I see,” said Kincaid as he held out the last
word. “I want you to stop by my downtown office as soon as court is
over tomorrow.”

“I already told you I don’t know her.”

“I understand, Mr. Monroe, but I still need
to meet with you.”

Larkin ended the call but held the phone in
his hand for a full minute. He dropped it onto the bar wondering if
the alcohol in the wood could sufficiently sterilize it. A yawn
crept through him. He needed a night off. Too much had happened all
at once and he was about half a liter deep in Beefeater gin.

Ron’s call demanded attention, but his mind
wandered to his worn leather sofa that fit his outstretched body
like a mit to a baseball.

“A worn baseball,” he said as he swirled his
drink with the swizzlestick. He could kick off his shoes, while
Rusty found a comfortable spot near his toes.

“Shark week,” he said as he imagined picking
up his remote. That’s what he’d watch: gnawing, ripping sea
monsters.

Loud laughter erupted from the eaglets’
table. Larkin turned. All but one of the eaglets bobbed up and down
in their seats, laughing louder and louder. The man that Larkin had
encountered in the bathroom stared directly at him. They met eye to
eye, neither blinking for a long time. Larkin balled his fists.

With an audible grunt, Larkin leaped off of
his stool and bounded for the eaglets. They gasped as he stopped at
the edge of their table and cowered as they beheld the perspiring
weirdo from the bathroom in all his glory.

“Rawwwwr!” yelled Larkin in his best
imitation of a roaring tiger shark. Someone screamed and he bolted
out the door. With a smile on his face, he double-timed it back to
his car. He cruised to the hospital with the windows down and his
first smile of the day. The breeze tousled his hair, but he did not
care. His second wind, perhaps his fifth or sixth of the day was
hurricane strength. Several minutes later he parked at the hospital
and again straightened his missing tie.

Bright light from the emergency room entrance
cut through the dark parking lot. Newly installed energy efficient
exterior lighting had flickered on a moment ago, but the green glow
could not compete with the halogens over the ER. Men and women
wrapped in a rainbow of scrubs swirled around stretchers while a
small man in a yellow vest tried to coordinate traffic in the busy
drop-off area.

Larkin hung back behind a row of pines that
concealed a dumpster and a coffee can filled halfway with cigarette
butts. A secret nurse hideout. He flipped open his phone, but the
brightness of the backlit screen surprised him and he retreated
further into the trees.

“Christ,” he spat as he cycled through his
contact list to call Ron. Shortly after he hit send, the theme song
from Law and Order began playing not twenty feet away. Larkin
turned. The orange ember of a lit Winston Light bobbed up and down
as a stocky man in a baseball hat approached. He spotted Larkin
behind the trees and waved.

“The theme from Law and Order is your goddamn
ring tone for my calls?” asked Larkin.

Ron silenced his phone. “The theme song from
Law and Order is my goddamn ringtone for everyone’s calls. I love
that show. Why are you always back here? It smells like old
cigarettes and trash.”

“And Christmas,” said Larkin as he moved away
from the tree, but remained in its shadow. “I don’t want to be
seen.”

“Hell, man,” said Ron as he turned to look at
the ER, “a marching band could head through there and no one would
ask a question.”

“You have only one volume setting, Ron.”

“Allison says the same thing. Hey, man, are
we ever going to get this thing with the comic book resolved?”

Larkin had represented Ron in a brutal
divorce that had lasted over two years. Unfortunately, Larkin saw
no sign that it would end anytime soon. With Larkin by his side,
Ron had fought bitterly over almost every issue a couple could
seize upon. They had been on the losing end of things for some
time. The court had ruled against them in the last four hearings
and Ron had not paid Larkin in nine months. The latest fight
regarded the alleged existence of a rare comic book, the first ever
appearance of . . . someone. Daredevil? Aquaman? Larkin could not
remember. Regardless, the comic was supposedly accidently left in a
sock drawer which now sat in a dresser in Allison’s new home,
surrounded by a tall fence, two Dobermans, and one hell of a
restraining order.

“You know if we get that comic, I can get you
some money,” said Ron.

“What have you got for me tonight?”

“He’s on the third floor. I’ll show you.”
Then returning his attention to the comic book, “Don’t you want the
money, Larkin? I mean this whole barter thing doesn’t seem to have
really worked out for you.”

Larkin laughed. Did Ron really believe that
he had a chance to get that comic book back? “A paramedic loaded
with a lawyer’s business cards. How could it lose?”

Ron shrugged. “I need a few more.”

“Was it an auto accident?”

“No, no. Come on I’ll show you.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.” Larkin
followed Ron out from behind the trees and headed toward the small
carnival that was the ER. The notion of bartering lackluster legal
representation for direct access to personal injury clients seemed
like a good idea when he had first considered the deal months
earlier. However, as he made his way across the dim parking lot he
felt as if he had crossed a line. The high contrast between the
dark lot and the bright hospital entrance did not help the
situation. As his mind wandered back to his fake ethics award and
Madeline, his left foot smacked against a curb and he stumbled.

“Christ!” he yelled as his arms flailed to
catch himself.

“Watch your step,” shouted Ron.

“What the hell is with the lights?”