“Agreed. Anyway, if I did it what kind of motto would we have? Whatever it takes or best offer?”
Sean walked back to the house and knocked on the front door. Hitchens yelled, “Come on in. Have a seat. I’m on the phone. Just be a couple of minutes.”
Sean sat with the papers rolled up, batting them against his open palm. Five hundred bucks wasn’t bad. Two grand was a whole lot better. But Matt was right. He’d known it before he opened his mouth but sometimes, just talking things out, they’d come up with better plans than either one of them had on his own. They’d served a lot of papers that way. The perfect solution was keeping the money and serving the guy, but that wasn’t an option. He wondered how much they still needed for tuition. Their campus jobs in the cafeteria covered meals, and loans took care of room. That left tuition and books; oh well.
“All right, kid, come on in.”
Sean walked into Hitchens’s office. He was a big man, now well over two hundred pounds, Sean guessed, with long mutton-chop sideburns and a droopy left eye.
“What’ll it be? If I was you, I’d take the money. If you serve me, I’ll just get a friend to say I was at their job site when you claimed to serve me. Some place nice and isolated, no witnesses, just me and a friend. Your service’ll be dismissed, my ten years’ll run out. That bitch isn’t getting one penny of my money. No way. Paying you off is just the cost of doing business. I accept that. It’s easier, cleaner that way. No publicity, no court appearances, no hassles. Do the right thing, kid. Easiest two grand you’ll ever make. It’s a win-win situation. What do you say?”
Sean was adrift in this new sea of words. If the service was dismissed as bad, would they lose the five hundred? Could this turn out to be a complete loss, no service, no money? This guy had beaten the system for ten years. He sure sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Sean had to make a decision. The wrong one would carry a lifetime of consequences. Wasn’t this why they got the big bucks?
“Okay, this is what I’m going to do...” Sean spoke slowly, laying down a path of words like bread crumbs; maybe someone would find him before he committed an irreversible act.
“What we’re going to do is take the money. That’s what we agreed to, Sean, right?”
He looked back at the doorway. Matt strode in and reached out his hand to shake Burle Hitchens’s. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Hitchens. This is a win-win situation.”
“What the hell?” Sean said, relieved, confused, and angry all at the same time. He stared incredulously at his brother like the RCA dog, his head cocked to the side.
“Sean, what’s our motto? Whatever it takes, right? Well, this is what it takes. Trust me.”
A mechanical chirp interrupted them. Matt pulled a phone out of his pocket and pushed a button to answer the call.
“No, not now. I can’t talk. Look, I’ll call you back in, say, fifteen minutes, okay? Fine. Goodbye.” He disconnected the line.
“Sorry, another case. Look, Sean, serving papers can’t be all that we’re about. There’s more to life. That’s the way I see it. We can do better here. Mr. Hitchens has offered us a way to do that. I think we ought to take him up on it. You understand what I’m saying?” He pointed the phone at him for emphasis.
“Yeah, I guess.” Sean had the faint feeling that he was having two conversations, in two languages, ones that he knew just well enough to misunderstand with confidence. He decided not to speak but just listen carefully.
Matt turned toward Hitchens. “I’m his brother. He told you that we found you together. Let me make sure I understand the deal. You’ll give us a thousand dollars each. Cash money, that’s right?”
Hitchens nodded, “Yeah.”
“In exchange we just take this Notice of Judgment and refile it as unserved, that’s it, even though it is for you?”
“That’s right.”
“No false affidavits, and you don’t want us to destroy the paper, just refile it.”
“Yeah, that’s the beauty of it for you guys. No crime’s been committed. You walk away with the money, no risk of having it confiscated, no risk of jail, painless.”
“Okay. You have the money here?”
“No. I can get it easy enough. Meet you back here in, say, an hour, how’s that?”
“Tell you what, Mr. Hitchens. As a good-faith gesture, how about you give us whatever cash you’ve got in the office. That way we know you’re serious about this, and when we take it, you know we’re serious about our part. We’re in this together.”
“Good point. Let me see what I’ve got.” He reached into the bottom left drawer of the desk and pulled out a metal box. He spun the combination lock, opened the lid, and took out a wad of bills.
He began to thumb the edges back, counting out loud, stopping at four hundred and eighty-three. “That good enough for you boys?”
“That’s fine,” Matt said. He stuffed the phone back in his pocket, took the money, and counted out half for his brother. “We’ll see you in an hour.”
“Nice doing business with you boys.”
“Pleasure’s all ours, Mr. Hitchens.”
Matt led the way out the front door towards the car. Sean hurried to catch up. “What the hell was that all about, Matt? We’re in the shit now. We took the money.”
“Keep walking, Sean, and don’t say anything else. We’ll talk in the car.”
Matt opened the car door and walked around to let himself in. In the car, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Did you get all that?”
“Every word. A warrant’s been issued and a car should be there in ten minutes. You need to come straight down to the station and fill out a statement. He’ll be booked and jailed.”
“Great. We’ll stay here until the car arrives, then we’ll be straight over.”
Matt pushed the Off button.
“What did we just do?”
“We did ‘better,’ is what we did. Remember what Joe Anthony told us about serving him and still not getting a penny. I was sitting in the car and I said to myself, why am I letting a criminal tell me what is and what is not a crime? I called the police. His offering us money to not do our duty is a crime. It’s corruption of an agent. Even if we aren’t officers of the court, even if we don’t commit a fraud. The officer said he could get a warrant and a car out here right away if a crime was committed in his presence. So I said, what if you hear it? He said, that’s enough.
“I told him to call me on both fines. First one, then the other. When I answered the first call in the office, all I did was switch to the other line to disconnect him. That line was open and they heard everything. That’s why I was waving the phone around. It was a microphone. Hitchens couldn’t know that we have a two- line phone — when I said goodbye and pushed a button he assumed I’d turned the phone off. I just moved my hand up to cover the lights.”
Matt dialed Joe Anthony’s office as the police cruiser pulled up next to them. “Mr. Anthony. This is Matt Ellis of Short Fuse Process Service. I have good news for you and your client. Not only did we find Mr. Hitchens, but we served him, and he’s also being arrested, as we speak, for corruption of an agent. He offered us a thousand dollars each not to serve him. He’ll be going straight to jail and I’d think that should be enough with our affidavits for you to get that ABJ you wanted.”
“Christmas in August. Great work, guys. Come by as soon as you can. I’d like you to give my client the news directly. You just changed her life and her kids’.”
The police were walking Hitchens out to the cruiser. Sean got out of the car and approached as they were getting ready to tuck him inside.
“Burle Hitchens, this is a Notice of Judgment against you served in the county of Fairfax on behalf of Chelsea Lyn Dougan.” As Hitchens’s hands were cuffed behind him, Sean tucked the papers in his front shirt pocket, arranging them as neatly as a foulard. The officer opened the door and guided Hitchens into the backseat.