Foreclosure: A Novel (7 page)

Frank held the joint now. “So tell me, Captain Cool Guy, why should I hire you?”

David took a breath and prepared to answer.

“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Why don’t you take a hit before you answer?” He stuck the burning joint in David’s face. David took the sticky paper between his fingers and slowly raised it to his lips.

“That’s it,” Frank said. “Don’t fake it. I hate fakers, Robbie. I hate them.”

David inhaled through his nose, trying to make it seem like he was pulling a big hit.

“You smoke like a woman,” Frank said.

No turning back now. David closed his lips tight and inhaled as much of the smoke as his lungs would hold.

“Hold it, baby,” Frank said. “Hold it as long as you can.”

David did. And it hit him hard. He felt like he was riding a spinner at the fair. After a few seconds, he reached for the wall to hold himself up.

“Getting dizzy?” Frank asked. “Bet you never smoked anything like this.” Frank tapped the patch over his eye. “It’s the only thing that relieves the pressure. You lawyers don’t know anything about pressure.” He laughed. At least it sounded like he was laughing. The most sinister laugh David had ever heard.

David realized that he’d missed the wall; he was on the floor now. And he felt like he weighed a thousand pounds. He knew that even trying to stand right now would be futile: the cool floor was holding him down, like a mother gripping her baby during a storm.

“Robbie, did I tell you this is some good weed?” Frank croaked.

David didn’t hear whether Robbie answered. He just heard mumbling and the rattling of the ceiling fan. Then he realized the fan wasn’t moving anymore. Instead, the entire lanai was spinning, and its axis was the ceiling fan. David tried to grab the concrete ground, afraid he’d fall off.

Frank looked down at David. “You okay down there?” Frank removed his eye patch to get a better look down at David. All David could see was a black hole underneath the eye patch. He told himself he was hallucinating.

“You’re not hallucinating,” Frank said.

“I was talking to myself,” David whispered.

“I heard you too,” Robbie said.

“We have ESP, David. It’s an effect of the smoke.” Frank began chortling hysterically. “Just messing with you, okay?”

David let go of everything and lay flat and relaxed on the cool pavement.
Don’t fight it
, he told himself.
Just go with it.

“So, back to the question,” Frank continued. “Why should I hire you?”

“Because I’m a fighter. And a winner.” David’s mouth was drying up like a forgotten stream in the Old West.

“Wow, I’m impressed. Aren’t you impressed, Robbie? He sounds tough.”

“He does sound tough, Frank.” Robbie coughed again.

“So what have you won?” Frank asked, his left eye still off kilter.

“I just won a jury trial, a residential foreclosure on a million-dollar home.” David’s mouth was too dry to speak complete sentences. He smacked his lips and tried to moisten his mouth.

“I sure hope you don’t get cotton mouth like that in court,” Frank said. “Why don’t you give him something to drink, Robbie. Say, why don’t you piss in his mouth? He’d never know what hit him.”

David jerked forward and covered his mouth, struggling to balance himself upright.

Frank wailed with laughter. “We’re not going to piss on you, tough guy.” He pulled a cigarette and lit it. “But in all seriousness, I don’t need no two-bit foreclosure attorney. You guys are a dime a dozen.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Frank.”

“Is that so? You’re telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about?”

David managed to push himself forward enough to stay facing Frank. “You obviously have a need for a new lawyer, or you wouldn’t have sent Robbie to pick me up.”

“Maybe I was just desperate for some entertainment, which you’ve sure as hell been good for.”

Frank started to laugh, but David cut it off. “No, I think you’re desperate. And you know after your last attorneys dropped you like that, you’ll have a hard time finding competent counsel to step in and do what you need done. That’s why you picked me up, Frank. You know I’m the one.”

“And what the hell makes you think you’re the one, asshole?”

“’Cause I know you, Frank. I know what you need.”

“What the fuck you think you know about me, you little piece of shit?” Frank grabbed David’s shoulders, hoisted him from the ground, and dropped him against the floor. “You ever make something with your hands?” Frank looked down at his calloused paws. “I’d still be building if making money wasn’t so damn easy.” He glared at David. “You ever built something with your hands, I said?” He grabbed David’s hands and studied them. “Shit, Katherine has tougher hands than you.” He smacked David playfully on the cheek.

“I’m tough, Frank. My hands are soft, but I’m tough.”

“Then prove it,” Frank said. He waved Robbie over. “What do you say, Mr. Tough-Guy Lawyer?”

“Say to what?” David asked.

“You wanna throw blows with my Robbie?”

“Are you serious?”

Frank picked David up off the patio. He leaned him against the sliding door and got in his face. “I’m always serious. And here’s the rules: you two trade punches as long as you can stand it. And you have to entertain me. That simple.”

Robbie stepped in front of David. “You go first.”

David shook his head.

“Then I will.” Robbie flung a jab at David’s chest, not hard enough to hurt, but with just enough force to let him know this was for real.

David pushed himself off the door and responded with a similar lob on Robbie’s chest.

Then Robbie hit him harder.

David absorbed the blow and found himself grinning madly. He felt a rush of adrenaline as a flicker of fear flashed in Robbie’s eyes. He figured the Swede mistook him for some softy who spent his weekends growing up chasing Mom and Dad on the golf course. The adrenaline surged as he recalled the pain and anger he felt the last time he got his ass beat on the cold, hard streets of Newark. Then a painful memory followed: after that last ass beating, one of the last things his dad taught him before he died was how to defend himself. He channeled those feelings as he stepped into a right jab that connected to Robbie’s chest and forced him to regain his footing.

“Nice,” Frank said. “You’re warmed up now. Next round.”

Robbie stepped into the next blow to David’s chest, and it was David’s turn to sway a few feet.

David took a moment to regroup and find his footing. Enough horsing around—it was time to go for the money shot. So he took a few quick steps, faked a left jab and followed it with a right hook that caught Robbie right in the ear. His head vibrated like a rung bell, but the Swede quickly brushed it off and raised his fists. Whatever fear David had seen in the Swede’s eyes had vanished, and now those eyes burned with anger and hungered for revenge.

That was all it took to open the door for a little fear to creep in. A sense of panic overtook him as he realized that he truly was higher than he’d ever been. Then his feet locked, and what came next seemed to happen in slow motion: Robbie pulling his fist of stone back behind his right ear, and then taking two deliberate steps toward David and landing a vicious right square on David’s chin. David made no attempt to block the blow. Before he realized where he was hit, he fell to the ground with a nice thud.

“Damn!” Frank yelled. “You must have some bad karma, mister. You believe in karma?” Frank pulled David off the ground a few inches and steadied him.

David was ready to vomit.

“I’ll give you the last punch,” Frank said.

But David was too dizzy to throw a punch.

“Hit him, Robbie,” Frank said.

Robbie leaned into David with another fierce right. David blocked it and lofted an uppercut that missed Robbie, but then caught him with a left jab, right on the temple. Robbie winced with pain, but returned a left jab that stung David’s chin.

Next thing he knew, David found himself lying flat on the floor again. And everything was spinning again. Right around the ceiling fan.

At least Robbie was down too, struggling to get his own footing.

“And I thought you were a fighter,” Frank said. “Don’t lie about your qualifications.”

David focused on Frank, but saw three of him. Everything seemed to multiply and blur. Overhead, Robbie was standing now, squaring up for another round of boxing and taking a few practice swings.

Robbie blurred and faded away, but then Alton appeared where Robbie was standing, his flexed guns ready to spar with David. Then Ed Savage got in line, too.

They were all lining up to fight him. He closed his eyes.

He wanted to vomit.

He wanted to sleep.

Frank muttered something about how desperate he was; how if someone was so desperate, they were the right man for the job. The right man for the job.

He was floating now.

Floating right off the lanai.

David awoke to find himself prostrate under the buzz of the ceiling fan spinning overhead. He pulled himself up and looked around. There was no sign of Frank or Robbie. Even the lawn chair was gone. He wondered how long ago they’d left him.

He tried opening the sliding glass door, but it was locked. He knocked on the door. Inside, nothing but darkness. Then he walked around the perimeter of the house, turned the front corner, and was relieved to find Robbie’s truck still parked in the driveway. Robbie appeared and threw a few bankers’ boxes of documents into the bed of the truck. David waited, peering around the corner.

“Burn them,” Frank said. A moment later, his Lexus streaked out of the garage in a flash and, without coming to a complete stop, spun around in the street and disappeared.

Robbie saw David standing by the garage. “I will drive you to your car.”

On the drive back to the Hilton, Robbie still kept the air on 66. David didn’t mind it this time. Nor did he mind the silence.

When they reached David’s car, he was ready to hop out of the truck and write Frank O’Reilly off the balance sheet of his memory.

But Robbie stopped him and handed him a yellow envelope.

“What’s this?” David asked.

“Read it.”

David opened the envelope and found a purchase contract, receipt records, and a few photos. “Who is Dr. Michael Herington?”

“He signed a contract for a condo in the Towers. Now he wants his hundred grand back.”

“Frank’s hiring me?”

Robbie nodded reluctantly. “Consider this a trial run. Frank’s meeting with this guy and his lawyer Friday at one. You can show him what you got.”

David took a closer look at the photographs. “And who is she?” He nodded toward a photo of the doctor dining with a black woman half his age.

“We dug up a little dirt on the doctor. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

David stepped out of the truck. No sooner had he touched the pavement than the truck disappeared. He fell into the Saab and felt he could sleep there all night. He had no idea what to tell Terry about what had happened tonight, or the upcoming audition against Dr. Herington. He picked up his BlackBerry, hoping the right words might type themselves into an email.

Before he could start typing, though, the subject of an email in his inbox diverted his attention:
RE: Meridian Bank Pitch
. It was an email from Mackenzie. Every ounce of nausea he’d felt tonight came rushing back at once. He opened the email and noticed that Alton was copied on it.

David,

Reminder: we’re meeting with the folks from Meridian Bank tomorrow for lunch in Miami in their conference room. Please be on time. Alton and I will be driving separately to attend to other business in Miami. Be prepared to tell them about yourself and your practice. We need this work, and you obviously need it more than we do.

Best,

Mackenzie

“Shit,” he muttered as he remembered the meeting Alton and Mackenzie had scheduled with Justin’s bank. At least David could make the drive to Miami alone.

David stared at his distorted reflection in the gleaming brass elevator door. He didn’t mind that the elevator seemed to stop on every other floor during its ascent. The delay gave him more time to remind himself that regardless of what happened today—even if Justin Baxter had made arrangements for the Miami-Dade sheriff’s office to serve that arrest warrant—Terry still loved him, and Frank O’Reilly still needed a lawyer.

The elevator doors opened to a spacious office lobby that looked like it had been remodeled in the early 1990s. David checked in with the receptionist, who likely had been in grade school when the remodeling was finished. But she was a real pro, redirecting all incoming calls to “
Ms. Hernandez-Gutierrez
,” “
Mr. Cardon
,” and “
Mr. Alfaiataria
,” with perfect annunciation, or at least what sounded perfect to David. Her restrained smile was perfect, too.

“I’m David Friedman.”

“Good morning, Mr. Friedman. They are expecting you in the
Esperanza
conference room. Just around the corner.”

David passed that corner and regretted that he hadn’t pissed before entering the lobby. With no time to do so now, he peeked through the glass door to the
Esperanza
conference room. Mackenzie and Alton were both typing away on their BlackBerrys. David imagined the dirty messages they were typing to each other. He’d rather be late than be alone in a room with them, so he started backtracking for the restroom. But then Alton made eye contact and waved him in.

“Here’s Mr. Punctuality,” Mackenzie said.

“I’m right on time.”

Alton smiled like he was actually happy to see David. But quickly David realized he was really smiling at the bankers, who were making a grand entrance to the conference room. David took cover behind Alton.

The first banker sported metallic silver hair and square ivory teeth. David figured he was Kirk Starwood, Meridian Bank’s general counsel. The next one introduced herself to Mackenzie as Alice Higginbotham. She had frumpy brown hair that clashed with her sleek designer suit.

David didn’t have time to get a look at Justin before Kirk was in David’s face. “You must be David,” Kirk said as he took David’s hand. David found himself staring at the thickest head of hair he’d ever seen. He resisted the urge to touch it. “Justin spoke very highly of you.”