Rubin - Cashed Out

CASHED OUT

By

Michael H. Rubin

Dedication

To Ayan, whose love, creativity, and support make this book (and everything else) possible.

Acknowledgement

Professor Michael Adams read early versions of the manuscript, and his comments and encouragement were invaluable. Attorney Phelan Chuck Hurewitz and agent Linda Langton have shepherded this project along. But above all else, I cannot acknowledge enough the contributions of my wife, Ayan. We developed and refined the many characters and plot lines together, and she revised and edited each draft of the manuscript. This book is as much the result of her efforts as my own.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Failed lawyer? Damn right Im a failed lawyer. Got a failed marriage, three maxed-out credit cards, and a broken-down office with a mortgage thats underwater.

Until three weeks ago, I had no clients and no money.

Well, no clients except for G.G. Guidry, and hes just been murdered.

And no money, except for the $4,452,737 in cash that G.G. had left with me for safekeeping.

G.G. Guidry hired me on a Sunday morning. Less than a hundred hours later he was dead. His body was found on the industrial plant site of toxic waste processor Camellia Industries, floating in one of the holding ponds in a scummy mixture of petroleum waste, drilling fluid, arsenic, lead, barium, chromium, manganese, mercury, and who knows what-all.

The police initially thought that G.G. had been overcome by fumes and had fallen in. But when they pulled his body out, the cause of death was clear. G.G. had been shot three times. Once in the stomach. Once in the chest. And once in the forehead.

He was dead before someone dumped him in all that muck.

Chapter 2

THE FIRST SUNDAY IN JUNE

The knock on my office door startled me. I hadnt had a client or a visitor in weeks. And no one ever came by on a Sunday.

There he was, looking just like he appeared on all the TV newscasts. Big cigar. Florid face. Mound of swept-back gray hair. Houndstooth sports coat stretched over a patterned black-and-white silk shirt. The utter confidence of a huckster stuffed in a rotund casing.

Lawyer Schexnaydre, glad to meet you. G.G. Guidry. Son, this is your lucky day. Youre just the man I want to hire, and when you hear what I want, youre gonna thank me.

He pumped my hand and barged right in.

I was more than a little embarrassed that the notoriously successful G.G. Guidry saw how I operated. My office is in my house. An old, run-down house. My conference room used to be a living room. Several windowpanes are cracked. The fireplace hasnt functioned in years. The wallpaper is peeling away at the corners. My conference table is actually two old cypress doors, scratched and faded, set on saw horses and surrounded by six mismatched chairs with torn seats.

Guidry took it all in with a withering glance.

I pulled out my battered faux-leather folio containing an iPad and Bluetooth keyboard and said, in my best professional voice, So?

Yeah, that was a little abrupt, I know. I should have engaged in all the perfunctory pleasantries that normally begin a business meeting, but I had dispensed with all that long ago.

Catch Adkinson, my former boss at the biggest law firm in town, had noted as much in my final annual review: Still has the intellectual ability, but now seems to be lacking the requisite people skills. Damn right, after what had happened to me there.

Hell, said G.G. Guidry. Ive got a shit-load of a real estate deal and a bunch of corporate work, and I need you to paper it up.

Real estate and corporate. Got it, I said, trying not to salivate.

The news had been full of stories about the temporary restraining order that had shut down Camellia Industries. G.G. had been making vast profits there, what with Camellias reprocessing of anything and everything, from asbestos-tainted materials to petrochemical plant waste, oil-sheened swamp sludge still being scraped up years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, used drilling mud from oil wells, and spent fracking fluids. G.G. had been a constant presence in the press, excoriating his opponents and promising to get the plant back up, running, and even expanded.

How G.G. had gotten to me, I didnt know and didnt care. Id show all the other attorneys in town that I was still a lawyer to be reckoned with, not the failure they thought I had become.

What youve got to understand is this: I own some property out on Bayou Grosse Noir, and I need to assemble some tracts next to it. Its a full quarter section of land, and its in five parcels, each owned by a different group. One is held by old man Chevallier and the second by the Caitelleau family. You know them?

No. He hadnt come to me because of my connections. Id never been part of the country-club-golf-and-tennis-playing-socially-connected-society-set. My ex-wife wife had a former cheerleader who turned heads whenever she sashayed by but Id been too busy building my law practice, going out of town for weeks at a time to argue cases for Catch Adkinson. And when I finally had time, after I was fired by Catchs law firm, no one wanted me around.

Well, dont matter. Guidry took the cigar out of his mouth and rolled it between his fingers, looking with obvious disgust at the dusty window blinds in this room and the adjacent kitchens dirty linoleum floor. Just do me up the corporate documents. Thats the first step.

I didnt care how he felt about my house. I dont like it all that much myself. I had pretty much ceased caring about almost everything, other than trying to figure out a way to stay one step ahead of a bankruptcy filing.

I was already making a mental checklist of items to cover and fees to charge, so I asked, Do you have purchase agreements on any of these?

Hell no, son. Guidry yanked the cigar out of his mouth and leaned forward across the table, its edge making an indentation in his gut. If I had purchase agreements, would I need corporate work done? He pointed his cigar at me like a dagger. Youre gonna form me five corporations. Youre gonna be the agent for all of them. I got a good right-of-way man whos out there right now arranging to buy up those tracts.

Five corporations, I said, confirming the scope of the project. But, I added, if the owners are all going to sell, do you really need five? My questioning whether he needed fewer corporations than he had asked for was my way of trying to look like I wasnt as desperate as I really was.

Goddammit, son. Here I am bringing you the best work that youve probably had in a long while, and youre trying to tell me my business? Look, they sure as hell aint gonna sell these properties to me . So, let them sell to entities they think are gonna stop me. You see, son, youre gonna form me corporations that are, lets say, environmental sounding. Understand? Got to have the right label if youre going to have a marketable product.

No problem, I said. These will be subsidiaries of Camellia Industries, right?

Hell no! Where the fuck did you get that stupid idea?

Now I was completely puzzled. If he wasnt here about Camellia Industries, why was he here at all? And, come to think about it, if it had been about Camellia Industries, why would he have come to me?

No time to ponder that right now. I really needed the money, whatever the job was. I just thought, I said, trying to sound disinterested, with the news about Camellia Industries, this was somehow related.

I aint hiring you to speculate! This has got nothing to do with Camellia! Nothing! The damn temporary restraining order that those shitty little environmental bastards got aint gonna amount to a gnats ass. At the hearing next week, itll be taken care of. I got the State on my side, after all.

Guidry took a couple more puffs on his cigar. Just dont you worry none about Camellia Industries. This dont involve that company. At least, as far as youre concerned. Look, therell be just one shareholder of each corporation... you just gonna sit there listening? Write it down, dammit! I got a lot of ground to cover.