“Let’s go back to the office, file the paperwork, and look at the Icebox. Have you figured out how much we’ve made? Tuition’s due at the end of August, we’ve only got a week left,” Sean said.
“Yeah, I’ve checked. We’re short. We’ll need to take everything we can get. Night jobs, the weekend. If we don’t make it, we can see if they’ll put us on the monthly plan, that’ll give us some more time to come up with the balance.”
“You know, for white male oppressors, we’re not having a lot of fun running this country.”
“Our turn will come. Until then, we go home, grab a bite to eat, and go to the gym. The state bench-press meet is Thanksgiving. If we’re going to have any chance, we can’t let our training slack.”
“What if we get a call at the gym?”
“We go. And we bitch the whole way. That’s why we’re Short Fuse, remember?”
They sat in Mickey’s office and filled out affidavits of service and billing sheets for the day. Each one rummaged through the Icebox as the other recorded his work. Mickey double-checked the forms and countersigned them. “Find anything?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Yeah. One,” Sean said.
“Who is it? Let me see.”
Sean handed him the papers.
“I remember this guy. A deadbeat dad. You guys’ll love tagging him. Good hunting. Remember, call the attorney first, make sure it’s still valid and what they’ll pay. Get it in writing and see if they’ll pick up your expenses. Remember when you had to eat that all-day parking bill? See you tomorrow.”
Sean took the papers back, nodded to Mickey, and the brothers left his office. In the car, Sean pointed to the case citation.
“See that. Chelsea Lyn Dougan v. Burle Hitchens.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I saw that name today. On a sign. It was the house next to Lorelei Petty. The contractor’s sign. He was remodeling the house. It said ‘Burle Hitchens’; it even had a phone number.”
“That’s crazy. If this guy was doing business openly in this county, Mickey would have found him. DBA’s, corporation lists. That’s the first thing he does.”
“Maybe he wasn’t working back then. Time passed, he got more confident, used his name, no one came after him.”
“Or it isn’t the right guy. Same name, wrong guy. We already tagged the wrong man once today. That’s plenty.”
“Two Burle Hitchens? Maybe. We’ll check it out tomorrow at the courthouse.”
“What do you think we can get for this?”
“The original fee was two hundred. All for us. It may be worth more now.”
“That would be sweet.”
They pulled into their apartment complex, hurried by the pool they rarely had time to visit, and bounded up the stairs of their building. The apartment was empty when they entered. Their mother had left a note on the refrigerator: “I’m working the late shift. It’s a favor for Marge. I owe her one. Don’t worry about me. It’ll be fine. Love, Mom.”
“Look at this, Matt,” Sean said, handing his brother the note.
“Don’t worry, my ass. When will she get off?”
“Eleven.”
“We’re going over.”
“Matt, they have escorts now.”
“I don’t care.”
“Hey, okay. I’m not arguing with you.”
Their mother’s parking-lot rape four years earlier at the hospital was never far from either of their minds. Nor the fact that her attacker was never caught.
“Let’s change and go to the gym. We can come back and eat later,” Matt said.
“What’s the rush?”
“Might be some chicks we can impress. I mean, we almost got shot, right?” he joked.
They impressed no one that evening. Matt put up 315 at a body weight of 162. His brother, with his longer arms, did 245 at the same weight. The only women in the gym were a couple of Spandex-encased Barbies being fondled between reps by their Kens, and a bodybuilder who outweighed them by fifty pounds. At eleven they were in the hospital parking lot where they could watch their mother leave the emergency-room staff exit and walk all the way to her car. She’d never have let them come to pick her up, saying they couldn’t run over to protect her all the time; she had to be able to go to work; that’s why they have the escort service. And they’d never rely on anyone else. So she wrote them notes and admonitions that they silently ignored. If she ever saw them in the shadows, she never said.
Matt was profoundly agitated at these times, a small part of himself wanting someone to try and accost her, to give him the reason to release four years of fury. He imagined that there’d he nothing but melted steel around a crater where he and the attacker had both vaporized.
They recognized her escort as Lucius Weems and watched them go to her car. Matt waited for her to back out and head for the exit as Sean swung by in the Subaru. He jumped in, and they left by another exit and were home, watching Wild Things, nodding in solemn agreement that Denise Richards was the hottest woman they’d ever seen, when they heard her key in the door.
The next morning, they were on the phone at nine to the law office of Joe Anthony, who told them that the Motion for Judgment was still valid. They had served papers for other cases Anthony had handled.
“Do you know where this guy is?” he asked.
Matt said, “No. We’re just cleaning house for Mickey. Toss out the ones that aren’t servable, get updates on whatever we haven’t served yet. We’re still looking; we want to be the ones to get this guy.”
“Well, you better get on it. The statute of limitations is running out on this one.”
“When does that happen?”
“End of the month. If you don’t find him, he walks away scot-free on this.”
“What does that mean?”
“He hasn’t paid child support in ten years. With interest, he owes his ex-wife over a hundred thousand dollars. This is an out-of-state case. The judgment was in Louisiana. They’ve got a statute of limitations of ten years. Even with the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, Virginia can’t enforce an out-of-state judgment after ten years. So he gets to give his wife, his kids, and the state of Louisiana the finger. That’s what it means. The paper you have is a Motion for Judgment. It has its own clock, a year. Once we filed that, it stopped the clock on the statute of limitations, but if we don’t serve him in a year, then the wife’s suit is dismissed and his clock starts up again. Our year is up in a week. I could nonsuit the case and refile it in six months, but his ten years is up in two weeks, so there’d be no point. It’s now or never.”
“What if he gets served and runs again?”
“That’s the biggest problem. You find him, we have to keep an eye on him until we get into court. He has twenty-one days to file a reply. In that time he can liquidate his assets and flee. We go into court, we win the legal battle. But it means nothing. She doesn’t get a cent. What I’d love to do is have you serve him, then go get an ABJ on him. I could file that on any motions day.”
“What’s an ABJ?” Matt asked.
“Attachment before Judgment. If I could go in and show he was a flight risk, I could get the court to attach all his assets immediately, so even if he goes, all his money stays here. It might not cover all he owes, but it’s a start.”
“What do you need for that?”
“Evidence that he would not honor the notice of suit. See, this guy hasn’t been served yet, you haven’t been able to find him, so I can’t argue that. That’s why we’d need to keep him under surveillance. So we’d know where he went if he ran, and he will. If you boys did the surveillance, what would it cost?”
“Uh, we’re twenty-five dollars an hour each, plus expenses. If we did it in shifts, that’d be six hundred dollars a day for three weeks, uh, twelve thousand, six hundred dollars.” Matt was woozy just saying the number. He wrote it on a pad for Sean to see.