Runaway Heart (12 page)

     
"Herman, I want a straight answer.
Who
and
what
is
the Danaus Plexippus Foundation? And I don't need a snow job. Your motion to
amend calls them a research group. Yes or no?"

     
"Danaus plexippus is
Latin for 'butterfly,' Your Honor."

     
"Literae scriptae manet
is Latin for 'never put b.s. in
writing.' " She held up his motion as proof.

     
"Your Honor . . ."

     
"Yesssss, Herrrrmannn?" drawing it out dangerously.

     
Herman couldn't finish. His mind was a blank. Suddenly he felt
another arrhythmia coming on—the same sluggishness and lightheadedness.

     
"Are you on the board of this thing, Herman? Is this a sham
foundation?"

     
Herman stood before her, head down, face reddening, heart racing.

     
"I can go to the Corporations Commissioner in Michigan and
get the filing with a list of its officers. Don't put me through that."

     
"Your Honor, I have the right, as a U.S. citizen with access
to the federal court system, to file a suit on behalf of a corporation I happen
to control," he protested.

     
"That's a fact. But you don't have the right to file a false
affidavit in my court and lie to me about it. I'm holding you in contempt and
I'm throwing this whole mess out. I won't hear a case where one of the
principal attorneys before me is filing bogus paper. Furthermore, Herman, I
think you and I have come to the end of the road. I can't tell you
how angry your
courtroom behavior makes me. I have been wracking my brain, trying to think of
a way to demonstrate my displeasure to you."

     
"Your Honor. . ."

     
"Shut up!" she ordered, and now he feared the worst.

     
"I'm going to apply Rule Eleven of the U.S. Code of Civil
Procedure." Rule Eleven gave a sitting judge the right to discipline
lawyers for filing frivolous, groundless, or harassing lawsuits.

     
"Your Honor, this isn't a Rule Eleven situation. This lawsuit
has legal merit. I would like to meet with you in chambers to discuss
this," Herman said.

     
"I'm sure you would, but that isn't going to happen, Herman,
at least not today. So you'll get the point, the fine I'm going to attach to
this incident is in the amount of one million dollars."

Herman heard a sharp intake of breath
from Susan and even from a few of the defense attorneys seated behind him.

     
"What?"
Now Herman's heart was beating so fast
it was tickling the inside of his throat. He could feel his arteries expanding
and contracting with each rapid heartbeat.

     
"A million dollars, Your Honor? I've never heard of a Rule
Eleven penalty exceeding ten or twelve thousand dollars. You can't be . .
."

     
"You're damn right I'm serious!" she interrupted.

     
He glanced back at Susan, who had a defeated look on her face. She
found his eyes, but shook her head sadly. They didn't have anything
close
to
a million dollars.

     
"I'm going to arrange for a meeting in my chambers tomorrow
with an order to show cause why such a sanction should not be imposed. My clerk
will get in touch to set the time. Do not be late, Mr. Strockmire." It was
the first time she had used his surname. Then she cleared her throat and
started to rise, but hesitated. "One more thing," she said, looking
down at him like Moses from the mountaintop. "I've been made aware of your
spat with the California Bar. I'm going to write them a letter detailing this
incident, to be included in that file. Case dismissed. Witness is
excused."

     
Melissa King banged her gavel, got up, and waddled off the
platform. All eyes followed her as she made her way through the back door to
her chambers, slamming it shut as she exited.

     
Herman was left in the center of the courtroom, his tired body
sagging. He began to feel woozy. The opposing attorneys had stopped slapping
each other on the back and were now packing up their briefcases. The old men
and women in Vulture's Row shook their heads and muttered. They'd been cheated
out of the full day's entertainment. "What a gyp," one of them said.

 
    
Herman felt Susan's hand on his arm.
"Come on, Dad," she said. "Let's go."

     
He moved with her, feeling shame and anger at himself. He picked
up the glass box containing the three monarchs and carried it out of the
courtroom. Susan and Dr. DeVere followed in his wake. They watched him from the
steps of the courthouse as he took the glass terrarium across the street into
the park and set the three monarchs free.

     
"What happened?" Dr. DeVere asked Susan.

     
"Dad took a chance and he lost."

  
   
"You mean we can't get this back
into court?"

     
"Probably not. She was gonna kill us anyway, but Dad never
sees that. Never thinks it will happen. All he sees is what he's trying to
do."

     
Herman flushed the last orange and black monarch out of the
terrarium. The three beautiful butterflies fluttered around his head for a
moment as he watched, then two of them flew away. But the third one landed on
Herman's shoulder. It posed there, delicate wings pulsing just inches from his
nose, almost as if it were saying, "Thanks, anyway, we know you
tried." Then it, too, flew away, leaving Herman standing by himself in the
park.

     
A squat little man with a runaway heart.

H
erman was back in the cardio unit hooked
up to flashing, beeping monitors. He had once again been electronically
converted, while Susan endured another stern lecture from Dr. Shiller, who
scolded her that Herman could easily have a heart attack next time, or even a
stroke, and that they couldn't continue to cheat the odds.

   
  
"I'll talk to him about it, I
promise," she said, as Shiller was being called into an emergency. He
walked off at a brisk gait to fix the heart of a more reasonable patient.

     
Susan went back into the C.C.U. and sat with her father. He seemed
crushed by the events of the day, his chin down on his furry chest. The
hospital gown, printed with strange little red balloon drawings, looked comical
and inappropriate, but at least the balloons matched Herman's bloodshot eyes.

     
"Dad, you need to get the operation," she said creeping
up on the subject carefully.

     
"And miss out on all this heart-unit fun?" he said,
trying to elicit a smile but getting nothing from her. "Dad, they say if
you don't, you're gonna die."

     
"At least that'll cheat Melissa King out of her damn
million-dollar fine," he said.

     
"Daddy, I can't lose you." She put her head on his chest
and hugged him. "You're all I've ever had. You're the person I most want
to be like. I need you with me. I need you to teach me."

     
"Don't bullshit your daddy," he said, smiling down at
the top of her head.

     
She looked up at him as he stroked her long blond hair, running
his fat, sausage-like fingers through it. "Daddy, promise me you'll get
this operation."

     
"Okay," he said softly. "If the food in here was
better, I probably wouldn't. But, I don't think I can eat another cardboard
sandwich."

     
She hugged him with gratitude.

     
"But I can't do it till I get this thing squared away with
Melissa on the fine." He added, "I gotta get that cut down somehow.
She misapplied Rule Eleven. The suit wasn't groundless. I'll work something out
with her tomorrow, but we'll probably have to sell some stuff in D.C.—the
antique cabinets, or some computers, maybe my car. I'll probably have to set up
another university speaking tour to get some cash. Once I make those
arrangements I'll do the radio ablation thing."

     
"Thank you, God," she said softly.

     
"I admit there's a strong resemblance, but I'm just his
mouthpiece," he teased her.

     
There was a knock at the door. The Korean floor nurse appeared
with two men wearing Sears and Roebuck suits, brown shoes, and athletic socks.
Everything about them screamed "Cop."

     
"Yes?" Herman said.

     
"These gentlemen were asking to see you," the nurse
said.

     
The men entered the room clawing at their back pockets like bubbas
about to pay for the last round of beers, but coming out instead with faded
brown badge carriers, flopping them open, flashing gold shields.

     
"I'm Sergeant Lester Cole and this is Detective Investigator
Dusty Halverchek," the heavier and shorter of the two said. Sergeant Cole
was about Herman Strockmire's height, but with a muscular, weightlifter's body
and eyes so tired they seemed to hold disgust for everything they saw. Dusty
Halverchek was younger. Blond, in a tan suit. He was average in all respects:
height, weight, and coloring. Beige. Nondescript. Dusty.

     
"We're with the San Francisco PD."

     
Oh, shit,
Herman thought.
Roland got himself busted.

     
"I wouldn't normally bother you under these circumstances,
but this can't wait," Sergeant Cole said, his eyes flickering across the
beeping, flashing table full of monitors.

     
Halverchek was checking out Susan, staring at her, undressing her
with his eyes as if he'd never seen a pretty woman before.

     
"This is my daughter, Susan," Herman said, trying to
interrupt Halverchek's ten-second fantasy.

     
The beige cop shook her hand eagerly. "We're with
Homicide," trying to impress.

     
Herman's spirits plunged. Roland.
Homicide?

     
"Did you have someone named Roland Minton working for
you?" Cole pulled Roland's California driver's license out of his pocket
and showed it to Herman. The d-1 picture of Roland was thin, geeky, with punk
hair.

     
"Yes," Herman nodded. "Please don't tell me he's
dead." The sentence wheezed out of him, like air through a broken pipe.

     
"Dead barely covers what happened to him," Halverchek
said with an easy, almost friendly calm. "He was ripped apart. Pieces of
him spread all over his damn hotel room."

     
Susan put her hands up to her mouth and started sobbing.

     
"Jesus," Sergeant Cole said, looking at his young
partner. "Why don't ya just lob a grenade at 'em?" He turned back to
Herman. "I'm sorry. He's only been on this detail a month."

     
"How? You say he was . . ." Herman took a breath.
"He was. . ."

     
"Mutilated." Cole finished the sentence. "We're
still trying to get a handle on exactly what happened. It's a little strange.
We're not exactly sure how the room was accessed. There were video cameras on
every hotel floor, but according to the hallway security tape, nobody went in
or out of his room at that time in the morning. There is no way down from the
roof, no balconies—real whodunit."

  
   
"Roland is dead?" Herman tried
to make it stick in his
spinning brain, thinking this was easily the worst day of his
life. He felt responsible. He had sent Roland up there.

     
"Sir, I'm sorry to have to do this while you're in here with
heart problems, but in a homicide investigation time is everything and we have
to move quickly. I need to know in what capacity Mr. Minton was working for
you."

     
"He was an electronic forensic investigator," Herman
said evasively. "Sometimes, when we're in a trial and aren't able to get
data from a defendant that we've subpoenaed information from, I would employ
Roland to help me locate it."

     
"You mean steal it, don't you? You hack it off someone's
computer," Sergeant Cole said.

     
"No," Herman fudged. "He would access Web pages,
read corporate reports, try and make an informed guess as to which computer or
company might have the stuff we're looking for. Then I would file a new
discovery motion and try to get my hands on the electronic data."