“Mr. Taub, who is handling further action against the appeal?”
“Nobody. Not a soul.” Another hard slug from the glass. “Know how many motions they attached? Forty-seven.”
“They’re trying to bury the appeal,” Marcus interpreted.
“Burying the case, burying the lawyer.” He thought that was funny enough for a repeat. “Won the case, lost it all.”
Marshall Taub took a long sip, almost toppled over backward, caught himself, and flopped down into a chair whose exposed springs were partially covered by a ratty throw rug. “Don’t do it.”
Marcus saw the dark stains covering the sofa cushions, decided to remain on his feet. “Tell me what happened.”
“Started with threats. Pretrial motions, pretrial threats.” The whiskers parted in a bleary grin. “That didn’t work, so they went for the jugular. My other clients started heading south. My partners got worried. I got mad, wouldn’t let go, so they dumped me. I had New Horizons cold. A great case.”
“You left your firm?”
“Yep. That’s when it got bad. Real bad.” He drained his glass, let it slide to the floor. “They got pictures of me with a lady I knew. Mailed ’em to my wife.”
“They framed you?”
“Manner of speaking.” He fumbled, managed to grab the bottle, took a long hit. “My wife left me. Took the kids. Walked out the day I won the case.” Another bleary grin. “Great victory, huh.”
SIX
Marcus arrived at the Hayes mansion in the soft light of early Saturday morning. Before he cut the motor, his battered Blazer was surrounded by three barrel-chested Labs. The dogs clustered and poked him with cold noses as he climbed down. The extremely well-trained bird dogs neither barked at his familiar smell nor pressed their case. Instead they both followed and led at an amiable distance as he made for the open garage door.
Mansion was the only way to describe the eleven-thousand-square-foot yellow-brick dwelling-despite its doors and shutters and pillars and porticoes and garage all being painted a startling sky blue. The four-car garage had one oversize door that belonged on an airplane hangar, upon which was painted the emblem of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. Behind it hulked an RV larger than a Greyhound bus and painted the same blue as the house trim. As Marcus walked up the drive, the house’s owner was loading sky blue dog boxes into the back of a blue Cherokee sporting a license plate that read GO-HEELS. Marcus knew for a fact that the license plate had cost Boomer Hayes a quarter-million-dollar contribution to the UNC football fund, as the tag had formerly been the personal property of the team coach.
“Marcus!” Boomer Hayes had a voice to match his body, big and raucous and pushy. “Did I invite you?”
“No.”
“Don’t matter. You got a gun?”
“No.”
“That’s okay too. Go on downstairs and pick yourself out a couple.” Boomer swatted at the dogs, who circled excitedly. “Y’all just hold on to your tails. I’ll get to you in a minute.” To Marcus, “You remember where I keep the gun?”
“Yes.” Boomer’s gun room was a basement running the entire length of the house. At one end was an arsenal capable of equipping a fair-size insurrection. At the other loomed an entertainment center with fourteen speakers and a 118-inch Swiss-made television. The carpets, drapes, gun cabinets, leather sofas, and walls were all Carolina blue. Boomer Hayes was serious about only three things-Carolina football, his toys, and his family. The order depended upon how well the Tar Heels were doing that year. Marcus said, “I’m not going hunting.”
“Sure you are. It don’t mean a thing, me forgetting to invite you.” He opened the first cage door and the dogs started whining. They knew where they were headed. “The ’Heels don’t kick off till seven Sunday. We got plenty of time to go pack us some birds.”
A querulous voice wafted from the house’s side door, the one that led up to the separate apartment wing. “He ain’t interested in your football silliness and he ain’t going hunting!”
Boomer reached for the nearest dog and hefted him into the cage. “Shame how the old man’s gone all doddery. Guess before long we’ll have to start chaining him to the bedpost.”
A man with the fragility of the very old came tottering into view. He carried a cane, but did not use it, as though the stick were there for assurance alone. “Can somebody please tell me where my only son got this fanaticism over something as absurd as Tar Heel football?” Charlie Hayes limped over to where Marcus stood, huffed a single breath, then continued. “I went to Carolina. Twice. Undergrad before the war and law school after. I never felt like the world would end if Carolina lost a game.”
Boomer gave the old man a stricken look. “Don’t talk nasty like that, Daddy.”
“Humph.” Charlie peered at Marcus through bifocals so thick his eyes changed shape and shade with each shift of his chin. “First time Marcus comes by in over a year, you don’t even offer your old friend so much as a how-do.”
“Now that’s not true.” Boomer closed the gate on the third dog pen, and began stacking leather-cased rifles like cordwood. From behind their wire-meshed doors the dogs watched with lolling tongues. “I asked him to come hunting. Didn’t I ask you, Marcus?”
“You did indeed.”
“See there? You can’t get any nicer than that, now, can you.”
Marcus said to the old man, “You’re looking good, Charlie.”
“I’m not either. I look like I sleep with death as a bedfellow. You’re just trying to suck up to me on account of not stopping by for so long.” Charlie Hayes brandished his cane in Marcus’ face. “Well, it won’t do you a bit of good. I’ve written you off and that’s final.”
Boomer slammed the tailgate shut. “That’s my pop. All sweetness and light.”
“Now that’s a shame,” Marcus said. “I came back from a trip last night to find I’d been invited to go fishing this morning. I just stopped by to see if you wanted to come along.”
“Then I might have to recollect on what I said,” Charlie replied instantly. “I’d pay cold hard cash to get off on some body of water and hold a pole in my hands again.”
Boomer murmured something that sounded vaguely like old folks’ home.
“I heard that. You ship me off to some perfumed death house and I’ll come back to haunt you.”
“He would, you know.” Boomer’s eye was caught by the Blazer’s mangled side panel. He marched down the drive, then shouted back up, “Dang, Marcus! Who did the number on your wheels?”
“Two redneck goons over at New Horizons.”
Boomer continued to circle the Blazer. “Looks like they put you through the grinder.”
Charlie moved down beside his son. “They come at you from both sides?”
“Yes.” He walked back to join them. The right and rear windows were quilts of plastic and duct tape. Marcus had used the tire iron to peel off what remained of the left rear fender. “Both sides.”
Charlie Hayes poked his cane at where the rear bumper was tied in place with a coat hanger. “What’d you do to rile them?”
“I said I was a lawyer representing union organizers.”
Boomer laughed, and in doing so he lived up to his name. “Shoot, you might as well have doused yourself with gasoline and asked them for a light!”
Marcus asked, “What do you know about them?”
“I know they’re a Carolina textile company. None of their lot takes kindly to unions. Even a transplanted Yankee like you ought to know that.”
Charlie corrected, “Marcus’ momma’s family is just as Carolina as they come.”
“Half-Yankee, then. To say lawyer and union in the same breath is like waving red shorts in front of an angry bull.” Boomer surveyed the damage. “You’re lucky they didn’t come after you with pick handles.”
“They did.” Then to Charlie, “You’ll have to slide over from my side, the passenger door won’t open.”