The Substitution Order, page 19
“So you live in Richmond?” I asked Amber.
“No, over in Red Hill, about fifteen minutes from here,” she said. “Tracey has a place in Richmond, and I work mostly weekends and crash with her when I’m down there.”
“Guess what their stage names are,” Wizard interjected.
I shrug. “Aphrodite and Diamond?”
Tracey giggled. “I’m Lolita. Amber’s Merlot.”
“Thoughtful choices,” I said. I tilted my glass so the ice avalanched against my front teeth, drained the balance of the liquor and set the glass on the table, done. “Well, ladies, treat Wizard well. He’s a champ. Enjoy the evening, nice meeting you both, but I need to go home and see my wife.”
“You’re married?” Amber asked.
“Hence the wedding ring,” I said.
“How long?” Tracey asked.
“Eighteen excellent years,” I said. “Why don’t you walk me out, Wizard?”
“Don’t leave now,” Amber told me. “You’re being a stick in the mud.” She looked at Wizard. “Make him stay. Just for a little while. It’s not even dark. And I have a delicious buzz—a shame to waste all the money and party effort and have to sober up.”
Wizard received the message loud and clear. “Come on, Kevin. The night’s young. We can’t disappoint our guests. Don’t be rude.”
Over the next two hours, Stanley wheedled and begged and plied me with free coke, and I decided at around seven-thirty that this was my curtain call, my last drug binge, my farewell banquet, and I even told Wizard I’d pay him for the half-ounce but he could just keep it and sell it elsewhere. I called Ava to let her know that I was safe but wouldn’t be home for a few hours, and she was simultaneously concerned and mad, and she kept saying, “Your speech is slurred,” and implored me to tell her where I was so she could come and take care of me.
“I love you, Ava,” I promised her. “I’m checking in to rehab tomorrow. Please, don’t worry.”
At eight o’clock, a small band, three scruffy kids, began moving in speakers and instruments, and this prompted a boastful, discursive Wizard filibuster about how he “went backstage at the Richmond Coliseum and hung out with Donald Fagen…you know, Steely Dan.”
“Who?” Amber mouthed to me. She shrugged.
“I have the picture to prove it,” Wizard proclaimed. He began scrolling through his phone for the photo, found it, held it at arm’s length and toured it from person to person.
A few minutes before the band started, I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked up and saw Simon Roberts and his wife, Sandra, and I’d essentially been on a coke-and-alcohol tear for over three months, so I blurted, “Simon, what the fuck are you doing here?”
Simon’s an accomplished attorney, and his wife’s a sweetheart. In 2014, we’d worked together as cocounsel and settled a products-liability case, but sitting there wired and incomplete, it seemed like a decade ago. He grinned and didn’t flinch at my coarse, startled greeting. “Grandkid,” he replied, gesturing toward the tiny stage. “The tall one’s ours.”
“He’s a very talented musician,” Sandra added.
If I’d been sober and this had been an innocent beer with an old friend, I would’ve said, “This is my pal Stanley, from high school. We went to Northside together. These are his Richmond friends, Amber and Tracey. Look forward to hearing your grandson play.” Instead, I moronically announced: “Merlot and Lolita, meet Roanoke’s best lawyer and his awesome wife. And this is Wizard.”
Sandra didn’t bat an eye. “Well,” she said, “please sprinkle some magic and good spells on the band, Wizard.”
“Feel free to join us,” Wizard offered.
Simon’s in his late sixties. He was wearing his signature gold watch fob and a tailored suit. “Appreciate it, but we’re planning to order dinner, so we’ll find our own table.”
“Those are such amazing earrings,” Amber said as soon as they were out of earshot. “Ten thousand, easy. How do you know them? He a lawyer too?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Unfortunately,” I mumbled so she couldn’t hear.
“Before I forget,” Amber said, “let me give you my cell number. You have a pen?”
“You can just tell me,” I answered. “I have a remarkable memory.”
“Really? Okay, it’s 540-340-6687. Amber Archer.”
“Thanks.”
“So did you really listen?” she asked. “What’s my number?”
Even under the influence of liquor and a Schedule II drug, I recited the number.
“Wow, amazing. Maybe we might see each other after tonight, if you ever wanted to call me.”
“I’d never cheat on my wife,” I declared, and meant it.
“If she was included, it wouldn’t be cheating. The three of us together might be super-sexy.”
I told Ava that my recollection of my last couple hours at the bar was spotty and unreliable, full of gaps. I explained that the aperture in my mind became smaller and smaller, narrowed until I was peering through a puckered dot, aware only of whatever was immediately in front of me and not much else. I made a wrong turn on a trip to the toilet, got lost and wound up in the kitchen. I remember paying the band twenty bucks to cover Billy Joe Shaver’s “Live Forever,” and I recall sending bourbon shots to Simon and Sandra. I discovered the next day that I’d entrusted my truck keys to the bartender.
I also remember agreeing to have a nightcap and more coke at Amber’s trailer, and we decided that she’d drive since I could beat the DUI in court if she were stopped by the police, plus she drove fucked-up all the time, so she could handle it. The band was still playing when we left, but I have no idea what time it was.
Her trailer had a clattering air-conditioning unit drooping from a window, and the black trash bag in the kitchen wasn’t inside any kind of can or container, was half full and just squatting on the floor. Her bedroom smelled of cigarettes and plug-in Febreze baby-powder air freshener.
I sat on the edge of her bed, and she stripped for me. The music was Nirvana, she said, and it was druggy and loud and fast but not too fast, Bluetoothed from her phone to a wireless speaker. By the end of the song, she was naked except for low-cut panties, and she rubbed a butterfly tattoo that was partially hidden by the underwear across my cheek. “We can’t do this at the club,” she said, and stepped out of the panties. “This is for you. Private.” Eventually, she pulled a condom from her purse. “Sorry,” she said. “But you don’t have to wear it if you think we’ll be okay.”
I confessed all this to my wife, thought she was entitled to know the truth if we remained married—informed consent, we call it in the legal field—and I explained that I’d sinned against her because I wasn’t aware I was married at that strange, impaired, addled point. I was taking in the world through a peephole, processing the here and now, my past and my conscience and my history eradicated, as if I were subhuman, a lizard strictly focused on an insect within tongue’s reach. There was no periphery, no sense of self, no soul’s storehouse, no angel’s nudge or devil’s exhortation.
“Believe me,” I said to Ava more than once, “I realize how awful this sounds. How mad I’d be at you if the shoe were on the other foot. But you know, as much as I love you, and as much as I love our marriage, I’d never, ever, make the conscious choice to cheat on you.”
“How the hell do you forget you’re married?” she fumed. “How do you not account for eighteen years, Kevin? That’s even worse—you forgot me? Glad our marriage means so much.”
“How? Well, you allow cocaine and liquor to strangle your personality and decency. It’s my fault. No excuses. None. There’s no possible way I can justify or explain away adultery. No way to put a gloss on my being a cad and a failure. I can only hope you’ll forgive me. The drugs erased most of me. I wasn’t normal. It’s the same as when they gave you fentanyl and Versed at the hospital; you have no recollection of inviting every nurse and doc to our nonexistent beach house. It’s called dope for a reason.”
“Well, apparently your dick was normal.”
According to the police report, they raided Amber’s mobile home at 2:04 a.m. The cops weren’t there for me or Amber or Tracey or, in a certain sense, Wizard. They were there because Wizard’s supplier, Calvin Jurgens, a biker from Pennsylvania, was under surveillance, and he’d made arrangements to meet Wizard in Roanoke at the Coffee Pot, do a $10,000 exchange, spend the night and keep driving south. Evidently, there were the usual drug-deal hiccups and delays, so Jurgens and his burly enforcer eventually ended up at the Red Hill trailer with a shitload of dope, guns, scales and cash at around one-thirty.
I fell asleep naked in Amber’s bed, on top of the sheets, and I woke to shouting and commotion in the den, but I was high, groggy, so I processed it simply as noise and didn’t understand what was being said, didn’t realize it was a police raid until two hotshots with guns pointed at me burst into the room, shouting, “State police. Don’t fucking move. Show us your hands.” I was alone, no sign of Amber, and still loopy and disconnected, and according to the report, I said, “Why’re you here?” I also asked, “Where’s my truck?”
It took a few moments, but the details started to click, and I understood the police were in the mobile home and this was dire. I could hear cursing from the den, and Tracey was screaming. Lawyering is ingrained in me, automatic, and I looked around the room for dope and paraphernalia. Evidence of a crime. There was residue on a mirror beside the bed, along with the classic rolled-up twenty-dollar bill, but I could wiggle away from those facts in court if need be: not my trailer, not my bedroom, it was dark when I went to sleep, and I had no idea the dope was there beside me. Good luck locating a fingerprint on the twenty-straw, and even if the lab ID’d my print on U.S. currency, what exactly does that prove?
But oh fuck, damn, damn, damn, fuck me, my pants were tossed on the floor within arm’s reach, and there was a gram of coke in the front pocket, the last powder I’d taken from Wizard for my final narcotics binge, and my wallet was in the hip pocket, and the I-grabbed-my-cousin’s-pants-to-go-to-the-store defense never works, especially when the trousers fit me perfectly and the Coffee Pot credit-card receipt with my name on it was also in the pocket.
A third cop, wearing a bulletproof vest with POLICE stenciled in yellow across the chest, strolled into the room and smartass said: “Let’s go, lover boy. Get dressed.”
“Where’s my shirt?” I mumbled.
“We’re not your butlers,” the cop replied. “You probably want to take that rubber off before you go to jail. Might give some of the inmates the wrong idea.” The other two policemen snickered.
Okay, I thought, so maybe I’ll know one of these guys, maybe they’re local and I can catch a pass, a backdoor exit and a lips-sealed ride home. Like many attorneys, I’d always done free or discounted legal work for the police as a professional courtesy, advised them on driveway-easement disputes, represented them in custody and divorce cases or prepared their basic wills and medical directives. I’d been aggressive and thorough and a fierce advocate for my criminal defendants, but I’d never lied or cut corners, never sucker-punched an officer, and any anger or bruised feelings because a guilty, asshole defendant escaped punishment usually—with one or two exceptions—yielded to a quiet, wait-till-next-time respect. Ava occasionally remarked that the cops and I were like Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, going at it tooth and nail until we clocked off and ended the shift.
I didn’t recognize any of the cops. They were all state police, sent from Richmond, not deputies from Roanoke or Salem or nearby, and when I zoned in on the silver nameplate closest to me and saw A. Hunsicker, I knew I wouldn’t be receiving any special treatment, not from a stranger with a high-and-tight haircut, black combat boots and a name as bellicose and spring-loaded as they come. In fact, Officer Andrew Hunsicker tightened the cuffs a click past where they needed to be, so my wrists were red-ringed by the time I arrived at the police station.
The arrest was embarrassing. Humiliating. The worst of it, though, was my booking shot. Not only did I look like a guy who’d been wallowing in a long-term drug orgy, but I was still discombobulated when I dressed to leave with the cops. I didn’t dare claim my incriminating trousers, and I couldn’t find my shirt. So I was photographed wearing socks, strange sweatpants and a T-shirt, an XL neon-yellow V-neck from a Myrtle Beach gift shop, evidently Amber’s makeshift nightgown. I GOT LOST AT THE GAY DOLPHIN was written across the shirt’s front in block letters.
In 2014, I’d represented a man named Harold Lambert in a custody case, and he’d deservedly received custody of his young daughter. It wasn’t a difficult or close call for the judge. The mother was a maternal disaster named Shelly Burton. Shelly’s sister worked at the 911 center, heard about my arrest, and my photo, which was public record and fair game, ended up on Shelly’s Facebook page with the caption: “This is the man who cost me my kid and said I was a bad mom.” The picture was cropped so that only I GOT LOST was visible on the yellow shirt, though a later Facebook post showed the entire Gay Dolphin message, which was probably even more humbling, a respected attorney reduced to wearing an ill-fitting, tacky tourist shirt from a trinket emporium. At least I’m now at the point where I can chuckle about it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I RELEASE NELSON FROM HIS PEN as soon as I arrive home from my Roanoke meetings with Ava and Margo Jordan, and we begin working on our pet tricks. I have him sit, stay, then fetch a tennis ball from ten feet away. This is familiar stuff—he knows it well, learned it as a pup at the restaurant. Next, we substitute my car keys for the ball, and after a few balks and false starts, he understands it’s the same routine with a new, different object and grasps the lanyard on my keys and brings them to me. I reward him with a dog biscuit. Finally, I drop my wallet on the ground, and he learns to fetch it as well. “Smart boy,” I praise him. Soon, I’ll put all three down together, and I’ll teach him to select the ball or the keys or the wallet according to my command.
There’s a message from Ava’s insurance company on the answering machine, and I call the 800 number, navigate the phone-tree labyrinth and punch in the extension for Louis Dillon, a “senior claims administrator.”
Dillon is somewhere between surly and indifferent when he answers and asks for my full name, the last four digits of my Social Security number, the policy and group numbers and the claim date or dates.
“Okay,” he says. “Yeah, I see you’ve been calling for a while, and so now your claim has reached my final level of review, and it looks like, after a careful and full inspection of your file, you aren’t covered under your wife’s policy past the June thirtieth cancellation date. We can’t pay for any claims that come after the policy has ended.”
“Louis,” I say, and stop.
“Yes.”
“Louis,” I repeat.
“Yes,” he says in the same bored, arrogant voice.
“Let’s start like this.”
“Like how?” he asks.
“Are you near a computer?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“So,” I say, “here’s what I want you to do. I want you to Google my name, ‘Kevin Moore,’ and the words ‘courtroom’ and ‘Clooney.’ As in George. Can you do that for me, Louis?”
“Why?”
“Because, Louis, I want you to understand who you’re dealing with. I’ll wait. Read the article.”
“I can’t,” he says. “I’d have to exit this screen and leave your file, and the facts are the facts. I could Google ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ and it could be you, but you wouldn’t be insured after the thirtieth. Sorry about that.”
“When you find the piece and read it—which you’ll do, sooner or later—you’ll discover that I’m a lawyer—”
“Yeah, I already know. Your file history shows you’ve told every claims rep ‘I’m a lawyer’ every time you called. So we’ve been aware of your profession for nearly two months.”
“Excellent. Then you’ll understand I’m not blowing smoke when I tell you this: The policy was never legally canceled.”
“Policy clearly states that it’s canceled on the day we receive the notice. We received your wife’s letter on June thirtieth. Open and shut, sir.”
“My wife’s paid bimonthly, the first and the sixteenth. In June, she told you to cancel on the sixteenth of July, and her paycheck was debited on July first for payment in advance through the sixteenth. You accepted that premium and still have the money. The law, Louis, Section 38.2-3503 of the Code, states that the cancellation’s effective when you get the letter or on the date stated in the letter. We chose the or option.”
“I’m sure her refund is being processed.”
“Also, by law, you have to give me written notice of the termination and her employer has to offer me the chance to extend coverage through COBRA. Never happened. None of that. You swindlers are so lazy and corrupt that you still haven’t bothered to send a proper cancellation notice or my extension options. There’s no effective cancellation. So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to sue for the money I’m owed, and for bad faith and punitive damages. And I’ll win.”
“I can’t help who you sue. Anyway, it’s not my money.”
“Well, Louis, your money is your money, correct?”
“I don’t understand.” His tone shifts from the indifferent monotone.
“You have my records there, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you told me that you’ve reviewed them?”
“Part of my job,” he replies.
“You know what happened to me?”
“You had a stroke. Very sorry it happened.” He’s polite only because he’s aware our conversation is being recorded.
