A Champion for Tinker Creek, page 22
“Charmed, I’m sure,” she said in a direct manner that seemed to flow straight from her gaze to her voice. She extended her hand.
I extricated myself from Lyle’s embrace to take it. “Encantado, señora,” I said, surprising myself. Until today, my mother alone could have involuntarily dragged Spanish out of me. She gave a delighted chuckle and a surprisingly firm handshake.
“Now it’s my turn to be enchanted. Thank you, my dear. You couldn’t have known my other language was French, but I received and accept your Spanish sentiment.”
“I’ve been filling Eva in on what you and I have been working on lately,” Lyle said, “and she’s agreed to help us watch the house on Breaker a bit to see if we can’t learn some more.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I think you could help us a great deal.”
“Well, never let it be said that I wouldn’t help the little guy,” she said, “not that Lyle is at all a little guy.” She smirked so hard I found myself blushing to the roots of my hair.
“Eva, be good!” Lyle said. “You’ve gone and embarrassed him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling at me. “But Lyle and I have known each other a long time, and we began speaking frankly a while back.”
“It’s quite all right,” I said, determined to give as good as I got. “I can agree with every inch of that statement, from personal experience.”
Lyle groaned. “See, Eva? Spreading bad habits.”
“Nonsense. I knew he could take it if he’s going to survive with you.”
“Shall we go sit down until lunch arrives?”
“What are we having?” I asked. “I don’t mind saying I haven’t eaten since Tommy’s oatmeal this morning, and I could eat a horse without salt about now.”
“Lucinda’s barbecue,” Lyle said. “Pulled chicken and brisket with baked beans, potato salad, and collard greens.”
“Yum.”
“My God, a feast,” Eva said.
Lyle’s mobile phone rang. “Pardon me.” He walked to the other side of the living room and came back after a minute. “One of those phone calls was from Lucinda’s,” he said. “I believe our food is on the way up. Would you please meet me in the kitchen?”
The rising elevator did contain our meal, which we shared family style. Most of the conversation centered less on their adventures together and more on her own escapades as a conflict photographer and occasional intelligence asset under contract.
“My family actually comes from a long line of lawyers and Christians,” she said. “But by the time I was born in 1984, the entire country had endured almost a decade of civil war, so it was almost inevitable that whatever career I chose would have something to do with conflict.”
We ended the meal by agreeing Lyle and I would meet her at the Empire Cinema the following evening.
“This job is going to be a nice change of pace,” she said.
Chapter Nineteen
We Hire a Lawyer
After Eva left for home, Amos Whitlin called. Lyle motioned me in and switched the phone to speaker.
“Hey, Amos, can you hear me? This is Lyle, and I have Jose from the South Georgia Record here with me.”
“Hello, gentlemen. Ms. Hewitt is here too, but she has a bit of laryngitis today, so I’m going to be doing most of the talking.”
“Hay fever,” Ms. Hewitt rasped out.
“We wanted to let you know we have had great success with our teams of property visitors. After we get off the phone, I’ll be sending over a report about the status of all the properties we’ve reached so far.”
“How many have you gotten?”
“As of this morning, one hundred and fifty-six.”
“That’s excellent!”
“And wait until you hear this. Our percentage of homeowners willing to join the suit so far is almost one hundred. The only holdouts are a couple of situations where the property ownership is in dispute, so it’s unclear who could sign.”
“Have the properties been mostly clean, or not?”
“Clean?”
“Free of issues that might need repair, back taxes, and the like.”
“That picture is not quite as rosy, but not so bad. Twenty-two of the properties are in need of some sort of repair or restoration that impacts directly on their suitability as living spaces. Most of those can be addressed for under ten thousand dollars, and those folks will get a contact from the credit union to see what can be done about financing that repair. Only a couple are going to take more than that, and the foundation is going to help out with a grant as well as the credit union loan.”
“How about the back taxes?”
“Six properties so far, but none of the tax bills is over five thousand dollars. The foundation is going to help out with those as well.”
“It sounds like you all have it almost sewed up,” I said. “When do you anticipate finishing?”
“Another couple of days, and that was part of why we called you. We think it’s probably time for you guys to choose a law firm to carry the complaint into court.”
“Okay, but I don’t know much about how to do that.”
“Not to worry. We have a candidate we think might be perfect, but of course you would need to make the final decision.”
“Who is that?”
“Her name is Carolyn Mondial, and she’s the in-house counsel for Romero House, a nonprofit organization that helps undocumented people in South Georgia.”
“I think I know them. Don’t they run a soup kitchen here?”
“Yes, down on Liberty Avenue, across from MLK Park.”
“Why her?”
“Ms. Mondial has an interest in immigrant issues and worked as a real estate attorney before moving to Romero House. In addition, we have a good working relationship with the organization, so she’ll be able to do the work pro bono.”
“Well, you can’t beat free.”
“Oh yes, you can,” Ms. Hewitt said. “Remember, there’s all kinds of ways of paying for thing. Something can be free monetarily but cost a lot in some other way. That’s why you need to meet with her.”
“Text me her number, and I’ll call her as soon as we hang up,” I said. “What about our friends in the green car?”
“Still there. Still suspicious. But they haven’t tried anything to keep our teams from visiting property owners, and they don’t seem to have had an impact on the numbers signing on,” Amos said.
I glanced up at Manny, and he nodded back to me.
“We have some news about those two and the car,” I said.
“What?”
“I’ll let Jose tell you since most of it was his work.”
So Manny described how his aunt reported having served meals to a man who we believed was Alex Deutsch and how he linked him to a house on Breaker Street, and that we had found both the men and the green car.
“That’s wonderful,” Ms. Hewitt said. “I didn’t know Sammy Fabrizio is your aunt! She is a dear friend and her food, ooh la la.” She trailed off in a bout of coughing.
“Hold on,” Amos said, and we heard different sounds in the background before he returned. “I had to get her some water. All of that is good news, but since we aren’t going to do anything about them, I’m not sure it will mean a lot.”
“Well, it will do us good to at least learn more about them,” I said, deciding to refrain from letting them know about Eva and the surveillance.
Amos rang off afterward and texted me the number for Romero House. I dialed it right away and got a young, Hispanic-sounding man who transferred me to Carolyn Mondial’s office where she answered her phone with a brisk, energetic voice.
“Ms. Mondial, my name is Lyle James. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance, Ms. Hewitt, who suggested I call you for an appointment.”
“Yes. Mr. James. Thank you for your punctuality. She told me you would probably call. I have an opening tomorrow morning at nine. How would that do?”
“That would be fine.”
“Until tomorrow then,” she said, and we hung up.
“Did you want to come with me tomorrow?” I asked Manny.
“Yes, but I can’t. There are other stories on my beat, and I have to get those covered as well.”
“I get it. Thank God for Parker. Without him, I could never afford to have been away from Bonne Chance as much as I have been.”
“What about tonight? I’d like to come over after work. Maybe grill some steaks?”
“Tonight probably won’t work,” I said. “We have the first of the city cars coming in, and I want to be on hand to help make sure those go as close to perfect as possible. Besides, I realized I’ve been monopolizing your time these last couple of weeks.”
“Oh yeah. About the cars, of course it makes perfect sense,” Manny said. “It’ll be good to get some work in tonight too.”
“Great, so it’s settled,” I said.
He retreated to another part of the flat to make some phone calls, and I settled in to review the spreadsheet Amos had sent me detailing each of the property owners they had contacted.
Next morning, I arrived at Romero House, a solid, two-story brick structure set back from Liberty Avenue a few doors past the intersection with Jefferson Street. It still looked like the St. Michael’s Harbor Elementary School that it had been until the city built a newer, more up-to-date school in the late 1990s.
I got there a few minutes before nine, by coincidence at the same time a young-looking woman in a business skirt, blazer, and low-rise heels arrived. Since I got to the door first, and she carried a briefcase, I held it open for her.
“Thank you,” she said in a familiar voice.
“You’re welcome, Ms. Mondial.”
She laughed. “I thought it might be you,” she said. “It is Mr. James, correct?”
“I was when I woke up. But how could you tell? I didn’t wear my coveralls, and I’m pretty sure all the grease is off my hands.”
“My father is in the same line of work, so I recognized the white shirt and that brand of khaki trousers. And we don’t get many Anglo men coming here. Plus, Ms. Hewitt said you were fit. Shall we go to my office?” she said, and I nodded.
After a brief tour along the way, we arrived at her office door. She unlocked her room, and we stepped into a nicely decorated salon with two windows.
“Very nice. Neither of my two offices has two windows.”
“I lucked out,” she said. “My office used to be the teachers’ lounge.” She crossed behind her desk and invited me to sit across from her. “Ms. Hewitt gave me an outline of what this is about, but do you mind if I ask you some questions to make sure I understand it correctly?”
“Not at all.”
“You received a notice from the city of St. Michael’s Harbor informing you that the municipality was preparing to condemn your property, is that correct?”
“No. I received a notice from Georgia’s Superior Court for the First Circuit that a condemnation action was being brought against my business, and I had ninety days before I would have to show cause why the condemnation should not happen.”
“All right,” she said. “And you later discovered the other property owners in a defined area received the same or similar notices.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll need a copy of that notice, and the notices of any of the other properties that are part of this action.”
“Okay.”
“Did the notice say anywhere on it who was bringing the action or why it was being brought?”
“No.”
“I see.” She took more notes.
“Do you think we have a winnable case?”
“I wouldn’t want to say without doing more research,” she said, “but I’m interested enough to start doing the work.”
“What would we have to do?”
“Overall, there are two approaches to fighting eminent domain actions. We can attack them outright, and we can attack them on process.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Attacking the motion outright means we assert that whoever brought this motion lacks the authority to bring it. Usually, that’s a more difficult path, but Georgia passed a law in the mid-2000s that stated explicitly that the ‘public use’ definition for eminent domain cannot include simply growing the municipality’s tax base.”
“But doesn’t that prevent what they’re trying to do?”
“You might think so,” she said. “But based on what their consultant told the South Georgia Record, I wonder if they might argue they seek the funds to make the Carmichael Commission’s recommended improvements. That might be their attempt to get around that restriction.”
“What’s the process approach?”
“The process approach means we say they have not followed the right steps in this kind of action, so it should be stopped. For example, I already suspect they made a misstep by not first notifying you they were thinking of filing this in court before they did so. But first we need to convince the court to certify these cases as a class,” she said. “And that may be hard to do. I expect the other side will try very hard to prevent it.”
“Why?”
“Because far more property owners lose eminent domain cases than governments win them. The cases tend to be expensive, and many property owners lack the resources to fight them, particularly when the government is going to offer them some sort of compensation for their property. Even if they don’t think it’s enough, they give up and settle. But by grouping together as a class, these property owners will have reduced the cost to a manageable level, which is why I think the other side will try very hard to keep them from doing that.”
“What will you need from us?”
“I’m going to need your signature on a form that says you hire me. Your name is going to be on the title case. Then we’ll need the signatures of as many of the one hundred and eighty property owners as are going to join us on similar forms, saying they join their case to ours. Then I’m going to need documents as well as a list of property owners who are willing to be deposed for this case.”
“Deposed?”
“Essentially act as witnesses,” she said. “We will want to do whatever we can to personalize the case and illustrate that real people, neighbors, and friends are at risk of losing their homes because of this.”
“I get it.”
She got up from her desk and left the room as I heard a printer begin printing nearby. She returned with a two-page document.
“This is the agreement that will make me your lawyer,” she said. “Just initial the bottom of the first page and sign and date the second page. Please use the name that appears on your driver’s license or other identification.”
The agreement was a contract that bound Romero House generally and her specifically to act in my interest before the court and made me promise not to take legal action going forward in this case without consulting with her first. It set a flat rate of one thousand dollars for her services.
“Will all the other property owners face the same fee?” I asked, thinking that would be steep for some of the people on the list.
“No. Since you’re the first and title case, the entire fee is there. The other participants don’t face any direct fee at all, but I suggest you split the one thousand dollars among the total number of participating property owners so everyone feels they have played a role in helping the case,” she said.
“So if we get one hundred and eighty participants…” I started doing the math in my head.
“Each participant would pay a nominal amount,” she said. “Roughly five dollars and fifty cents.”
“When would the money be due?”
“I think we would be fine collecting our fee after the case settled.”
I initialed the bottom of the first page, then signed and dated the second with a small flourish. She stood up and extended her hand.
“Congratulations, Mr. James. You just hired yourself a lawyer.”
I shook her hand. “I hope this is the start of a fruitful relationship,” I replied.
* * *
I felt a mix of emotions as I took the elevator down from Lyle’s apartment, disappointment mixed with resolution.
On the one hand I had been spoiled lately. But I had to admit it had been nice to be pampered. Spending nights in Lyle’s bed, regularly enjoying the dreamless sleep of the sexually satiated had been a revelation. Never before had I dated anyone as consistently exciting, frustrating, and demanding. As the elevator lurched to a stop at the street level and I stepped out into the drizzling afternoon, I felt the loss of not being upstairs.
But I felt a positive sense of resolution as well. I did have work to do. Now wasn’t the best time in my life for a strong relationship. I had let hanging out with Lyle monopolize my schedule, and I couldn’t blame him for that. I should have felt good that I put a stop to it. But then I remembered how he looked at me the last time I watched him peel off his shirt before he removed mine, and I almost stepped back in the elevator.
But I did have work to do. Abner Smalls, the Record’s police and crime reporter, had taken his first vacation in almost a decade, and the newsroom divided up covering his beat while he was away. Today and tomorrow were my turns.
An item from the police blotter caught my eye—an attempted armed robbery at Coastal Jewels and Watches, a small downtown jewelry store. No one had been hurt, but the brief write-up said the responding officer had been attacked with a knife and deployed his Taser. I dropped by the store first to verify the account.
Marie Trang, the shop’s middle-aged owner, welcomed me into her establishment and locked the door behind me so we would not be disturbed. Two of her display cases were still smashed, and she had been sweeping up the last of the broken glass.
