Chapter 4 Lawyer Sarcasm
Dignity sat down at the long table opposite from Lawyer Sarcasm, a woman in her thirties who, he understood, had been assigned by the City to represent the Founders Grove Corporation. He remembered with dismay that she had once been the court appointed defense attorney for young Gentleness Orchard, when the boy had been framed by the City on a charge of arson. According to Gentleness, her conduct of the defense had been a farce.
She had her phone to her ear and was murmuring approval to something. “Yes, in less than an hour,” she said warmly to whoever. She added in a low voice, “I’ll be wearing something special for you. OK. Um-hmh. Bye now.” She put away her phone and looked at him without interest. “Just a client,” she said. “Who else could it be?”
Dignity did not care that it had been no client. He gestured to the empty chairs down the table. “Where’s the rest of the committee?”
“They’ll no doubt be here soon,” said Sarcasm. But she took out a document from a folder she had brought with her and, consulting it, began to make comments to him as if she did not expect the others at all. “Let’s see. You’re the new Marshal of Founder’s Grove. We’ve got a few problems there.”
“I’ll say,” Dignity responded. “I drove by it not long ago, and an awful lot of the fence around it is broken or missing. Are you who I should talk to about that?”
“It’s uninsured,” she said emotionlessly.
“But—but it has to be kept up by the City. Surely the Mayor can do something.”
“I’m sure he will, Mr. Dignity,” she yawned. “Now what we actually have here is that the Grove Corporation was set up long ago to take care of the Grove, using funds provided by the City. However, the City is financially embarrassed, as I’m sure you know if you keep up with the news. Are you going to the Land Opportunity Picnic, by the way? No? Well, anyway, the City has dropped out as far as Grove financing is concerned, leaving it to the Corporation to keep things tidy in paradise. So the Corporation now owes money in every direction and has no funds. You, as the Marshal, will have to take some steps.”
“Wait a minute,” Dignity said, his cheeks warming. “Is this why the other committee members didn’t come? Mr. Tradition and Mrs. Society and the rest?”
Sarcasm leaned casually on an elbow. “You’re not suggesting rats deserting? No, I’m sure they just had emergencies—all eight of them—simultaneously. Happens all the time.”
“And I’m left holding the bag?”
“Hey, I’ll do whatever is needed to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
While Sarcasm read her document again and did not answer, Dignity had a chance to feel the old, familiar panic that had assailed him whenever he had tried to cooperate with the City. It was always maddening, frightening, Kafka-esque.
“Look,” he said, forcing on himself a smile and a level tone, “I’m not liable for anything having to do with the Grove, am I?”
“I dunno. Didn’t bring that kind of paperwork. I’ll ask my assistant to look it up.”
She called her assistant and got through immediately. “Yeah, I’ve got something here.” She glanced at Dignity as she said this with a look that said that the something she had was a client who was making a needless fuss. “Check on who is liable for any lawsuits against Founder’s Grove. Is it the Marshal? Be a dear, huh, and call back right away? Thanks.”
While they waited, she told Dignity that she was glad to be rid of Guiles as Marshal, for he had come only to the first committee meeting after his appointment and after that had been just a teeny bit careless with public property.
“Yet he seemed so plausible at first,” she said with faint regret. Her phone rang. “Oh, here’s our answer.” She picked up the phone. “Yes? OK, yes, that’s what I thought. Thank you.”
“What did she say?”
“That the Marshal is liable. It’s in the papers of incorporation.”
“But the City would still cover anything, right?”
Sarcasm grunted a small laugh. “Sure, I’d count on it. Don’t you imagine a bankrupt government would cover any judgments that they’re not legally bound to pay for? They’re just a bunch of sweethearts.”
“Well, what about the rest of the committee?”
“Not liable. Of course, I can ask them, if you like, to sign something that puts their bank accounts and homes in jeopardy. Actually, the only two people liable are you and Guiles Leasing, him because he was Marshal until recently. But Guiles has no money. He’s already been a loser in several lawsuits about other matters and has never paid a penny. That’s what you call ‘judgment proof.’ As for the Corporation, it has no money,” she added with jarring force and quite unnecessarily, for the point had already been made.
While Dignity’s mind reeled and he tried to take deep breaths, she outlined to him what she thought was his best course. If he wanted to lower his odds of being sued, he might arrange to keep the lawns mowed at the Grove, repair the fences, and see to the trimming of dead limbs, perhaps a hundred thousand of them, in the woods. A limb could fall on a citizen at any time, precipitating a lawsuit. He should do all this immediately and at his own expense.
“I don’t want to be Marshal now,” he said.
“Too late for that,” she said without explanation. “I don’t want to be counsel for this corporation, if you want to know, but I’m in to stay. The judge told me I’d better not try to back out if I care about the good of the City.”
Dignity guessed to himself that this meant Sarcasm hoped to polish her reputation with the judge while keeping the City from any expense or liability. Any help she might give him would therefore conflict with her real goals.
She gathered up her things. “Shame the others couldn’t come. Any questions, Mr. Dignity?”
“Are you sure, are you absolutely sure, that I’m liable?” he said wretchedly.
“Yep.”
“And you’re saying I can’t get out of it? So—it’s like a curse.”
She thought it over. “Yeah, I think that’s a good comparison.”
“But—but your assistant who called back. She might be mistaken?”
“I hardly think so.”
“Well, I just thought she called back too quick.”
“Miss Confusion is quick,” Sarcasm said as she stood.
“Confusion! Your assistant is Miss Confusion?”
“Yes, why?”
Dignity’s voice firmed. “I know her, and I don’t trust anything she says. She won’t even have looked it up.”
“Fine, let’s go to my office and I’ll look it up.”
In just minutes they had crossed the street to the offices of Derision, Sarcasm, and Scoffing. Willowy Miss Confusion welcomed Dignity with her accustomed cheer and vacuity and led them both to a filing cabinet. She proceeded to demonstrate that she could not find the Founder’s Grove file under G for Grove or P for park. Miss Sarcasm, however, after moving her aside, found it under F and soon was showing Dignity the pertinent paragraph. To his despair, he saw that Confusion, who was never right about anything, had guessed right this time. The Marshal was liable. So that was that.
Sarcasm also took from the file an envelope containing a set of keys to the sheds in the park, noting that Guiles had yet to return the keys she had given him. She promised Dignity that he would find in one of the sheds a riding lawnmower and a chain saw, both in top condition and ready for use; but she winked at him while she was saying it. Then she looked at the wall clock and told him she had to run off to a meeting with her other client, the one, he remembered, for whom she would wear something special.
When she had left the file storage room ahead of him, he heard her speaking quickly and apologetically to someone in the reception room before rushing out of the office. He turned and looked at Confusion, who was glowing with good humor and perfectly unembarrassed about her incompetence.
“She’s a great
boss,” she said. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“To do something else,” he said bitterly, “you would have to do something to begin with.”
“Oh, would I?”
Still smiling, she wandered into the reception room. When Dignity followed her, he was surprised to find that the person Sarcasm had been apologizing to was Mammonette. He exchanged awkward greetings with her and then stood by while Confusion, having sat down at her desk, arranged a rescheduled appointment time for the rich woman, twice attempting to make it on a holiday.
When Mammonette had gone, he spoke sharply to Confusion.
“Is Mammonette following me, maybe checking up on me? She probably knows about this Founders Grove situation, and she may be …” He hesitated to guess what she might be doing. He only knew that Mammonette, as one of the City’s power elite, had in the past been involved in efforts to harm him and to draw him away from Heaven’s King. “Anyway, is she checking up on me?”
“Heavens, no, Mr. Dignity. We would never allow anyone to ‘check up’ on you. She’s just looking for an attorney to represent her.”
“No, she isn’t. She’s City, you know that. She would always be represented by the heavyweights, by the firm of Trial, Snare, Pitfall, and Temptation.”
“Not at all, Mr. Dignity. Why, Mr. Pitfall referred her to us. Their firm isn’t representing her anymore because, um—I think Miss Sarcasm said it would be a conflict of interest.”
“What sort of conflict of interest?” Dignity was fully aware that Confusion ought not to be telling him any of this, but he hoped that, in her dopiness, she would forget that.
Confusion’s pretty brow creased as she pulled a folder out of a nearby stack. She peered at its typed-on tab with the air of a spaniel trying to decipher a page of an encyclopedia. Looking over her shoulder, he saw that the tab read ‘Mammon Enterprises vs. Mammonette.’
“She’s being sued by her own company?” he said.
Confusion relaxed again, giving up her effort, and looked up with relief. “Yes, that’s it. Something about who has power of attorney for her husband? Something like that.”
This was bizarre, but Mammonette’s behavior toward him in her own office had alerted Dignity that something unusual might be happening. Was she in danger of losing power of attorney for her own husband? But he had to consider that Miss Confusion was habitually rather less accurate than a tabloid newspaper.
Knowing that he was unlikely to learn more, he said idly, “Confusion, I know you were a nanny at Leasing House not that long ago. I guess I heard you had moved on though, but I don’t know when. How long have you been a legal assistant?”
“In my mind and intentions, for years,” she drawled. “It’s what I’ve always dreamed of. It’s my fantasy career.”
“Yes, fantasy,” he said, knowing that she had been through, just to his own knowledge, about fifteen careers in the years he had known her, all of them fantasy.
“I started on Monday,” she added. “Anyway, can I help you in any way?”
“No, I guess I’ll go now. It’s just strange to think of Mammonette coming here for counsel. Though I suppose it’s kind of a feather in Sarcasm’s cap.”
“Oh, no, she’s turning her down, the same as all the other attorneys have.” Dignity felt he should not go so far as to ask why, but Confusion continued without being asked. “She’s guilty, you see.”
“Uh, guilty of what?”
“Oh, of whatever! I’m sure I don’t know. Just something; and Miss Sarcasm wants to keep herself clear of it. Tomorrow she’ll have me call Mammonette and cancel the appointment. Thank you for coming by. Good day.”
This news about Mammonette had been both interesting and entertaining, but Dignity found, as he walked back to his car, that the dead weight of his responsibility for Founders Grove had not left him for a moment. It still was a pain in his chest and an ache in his head. What had he gotten himself into? And when would it ever end?