The Substitution Order, page 33
I leave for Stuart ten minutes early and stop at the Patrick County circuit court clerk’s office. I use a public terminal to locate my civil case, open the file on the screen and start scrolling through the images, beginning with Melanie Culp’s five-million-dollar complaint.
“There we go,” I say under my breath after I’ve viewed several documents and found the forged substitution order.
Later, I TracFone Minivan Dan from SUBstitution, and we chat about nothing in particular, and I tell him that I was prompted to call because a lunch customer ordered sauerkraut on roast beef, the same bizarre combination Dan always fancied when we lived together in Charlottesville. The chance of my cell being tapped due to a state-level drug charge is almost zero, but we still use the code word, and I call from one of the three burners I bought while in Richmond.
“So, okay,” he says. “Okay. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, my friend. Thanks for everything.”
I visit SunTrust, withdraw the remainder of my cash and close my account. Including the thousand I gave Dan, I’ve removed a total of $51,274.23, every cent that I have to my name.
I’ve called Ward once before to let him know I was still considering the offer. I talk to him during a lull at the restaurant and tell him I definitely want to accept the plea deal. “I’ll start the paperwork,” he says somberly. “I hate the felonies, hate that you’ll lose your law license even longer, but this is the right decision. A jury would eat you alive.”
As soon as I’m home, I send Lilly an e-mail. Most likely, I won’t see her for months—and possibly never again—and I try to fashion a note that explains my circumstances without giving away anything important. I also rewrite the goodbye twice, so that I don’t come off as melodramatic or saccharine. Truth is, I barely know her.
Next, I search the Internet for “Belarus marriage records,” the first Google inquiry on the brand-new replacement computer.
I cross off six items from my list.
I fill Nelson’s water dish for the night, then sit on the cool ground outside his pen and rest against a metal post in the chain-link fence. The sweetest creature, he squats on his haunches and perks his ears and tries to decipher me with his blue eyes, stays put until I pat my thigh and he wags his tail and darts closer and wiggles his head into my lap. I pet him and scratch the underside of his neck, and I start crying, can’t help myself, and I promise him—even though I’m hardly certain—that I’ll make our escape work and he won’t be discarded again. I wipe my eyes with my sleeve, dab at my nose. The sun is setting, almost played out, and Tesla crows from a barn rafter. He crows a second time, and I wait for the third, but he falls quiet, doesn’t Judas me, and because I’m anxious and on edge, I try to convince myself that the squawkings of a pea-brained rooster are somehow supernatural, a blessing and encouragement, Jove’s approval.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I’m granted a travel pass to visit the hospital in Winston-Salem, where Dr. Wallace has ordered another MRI and an ultrasound to see if there is new carotid narrowing or some complication with the tear. He has the test results before ten, and we meet in his office on a high floor, and he tells me that my artery is continuing to heal and the blockage is now only twenty percent. “This is perfect,” he informs me.
“So it’s healing on its own, like a cut or pulled muscle?”
“Yes,” he replies.
“Then why am I still having problems with my grip and strength and balance?” The untruth sounds believable when I voice it. “The therapy isn’t helping.”
“Following a stroke, there’s damage. Now there’s residual damage.”
“Will it get better?” I ask.
He shrugs. He raises and lowers his hands. He raises his hands again, until they’re level with his chin. He waits to speak. “Pozzably,” he says.
“Is there any medicine or procedure that’ll help me? I can’t even bend over in the shower to wash my legs. If I drop something, it’s a complete production to retrieve it. My handicaps are making life tough.” I’m very deliberate with the word handicaps.
“Maybe bazzs,” he suggests.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Maybe baths.”
His assistant peeks up from taking notes and grimaces.
I leave the doctor’s office and ride the elevator to the first floor and wander through the labyrinthine halls and passageways, get lost, retrace my steps, take a left turn and finally arrive at the food-court coffee shop, with its open Wi-Fi. Though Blaine assured me it won’t matter, I’m once again wearing a precautionary ball cap and sunglasses when I enter the business. My ankle monitor will transmit that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, nothing unusual, a stroke victim visiting a hospital and his neurologist’s office.
I sit in a corner facing the wall, remove the glasses, open my disposable laptop and access Flanagan’s e-mail. There’s a nasty glitch when I attempt to write a message from his account. I type the message—just as Blaine instructed me, same as I did on my practice run—but the keystrokes don’t appear on the screen. It’s as if my letters are being absorbed into the ether, lost. “Shit.”
I suck a breath and rub my palms together. The tension provokes a burning band under my left eye, the first discomfort I’ve suffered in several days. My mouth is dry and my front teeth hang against my lip. Thoughts blender together in my brain. I close the page, return to the home screen, stand and stretch, blink my pained eye and start over. This time, the machine cooperates. I hit send, wait, then delete the message from Flanagan’s Sent Items folder, lest he discover it and ruin my plan.
Hijacking the Aaron, Charles and McMillian site is a piece of cake. Blaine has primed and preloaded the computer, so the insertion is easy and smooth, and at 10:29 a.m., October 7, 2016, Lee Agnew joins 318 other attorneys as a member of the firm. I locate the site’s search function, type in “Lee Agnew,” and there he is, looking solemn and professional in his bio’s headshot. A full partner, he attended law school at Columbia and has been employed there since 1998. His e-mail is LAgnew@ACMlaw.com, and I use it to send my second message of the morning, this one to Anne Mullens.
I strike two more items from my list: Flanagan e-mail and Agnew bio. Call Mullens, Hide money, Confirm Bahamas lawyer, Nelson food, Double-tap computer and Live happily in tropical paradise remain. I’ll practice my spiel over the weekend and be ready to talk to Anne Mullens from a fresh TracFone on Monday morning. If I can snow her—if—I’ll leave my scheduled two-thirty drug test with Ron Weiss, walk a block and e-mail her again from the open Wi-Fi at Leon’s Diner. Then, after work, I’ll drive to the mountaintop and pack a suitcase and fill my dopp kit with toiletries. I plan to burn the list along with the hammered J’onzz computer and pulverized TracFones in the fire pit at Melvin’s, then dumpster the remains at SUBstitution. Trash collection is scheduled for next Thursday. Slick as a button so far, I tell myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“WHAT THE HELL,” I blurt, waking up in the dark, juiced by an adrenaline hit. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It’s six days later, and I’m under siege by the police, sound asleep when a cop pounds on the homeplace door in the middle of the night. Nelson’s barking and leaping against his pen so violently that I can hear the chain-link rattling as I walk down the dim hall toward the entrance. I realize immediately the police are here to arrest me—the sheriff didn’t send two cars and four officers at three in the morning to unlock my ankle hardware. They came on little cat feet, no lights or sirens, invisible until a detective beat on the door and began shouting: “Police! Open up!” Through a window, I notice a deputy crouched beside the azalea bushes at the rear of the house, waiting there in case I try to rabbit out the back.
I switch on the porch light, twist the deadbolt, open the door. Darrell Pruitt has returned, but he doesn’t speak. A beefy man with a badge hanging from his neck crowds closer to me, steps forward so he can block the door if I should try to shut it.
“Kevin Moore,” he announces, “I’m Lieutenant Rakes, from the Martinsville police, and we have felony warrants for your arrest.”
“Arrest?” I ask. “For what?”
“Two counts of forgin’ a public record. Court orders, to be specific.”
“Court orders?” I repeat. “Are you sure? There’s some mistake. Could you double-check this? It’s crazy.” I stay calm and confident.
“Sir, I’m gonna take hold of you and cuff you. I’d ’preciate your cooperation.” He pinches my shoulder with a thick hand. “Please turn around and place your arms behind you.”
I do as I’m instructed. Recalling the Gay Dolphin tragedy, I ask if he’ll allow me to put on my shoes, proper pants and a respectable shirt. “And my dog. I have to make arrangements for him. Please.”
“Mr. Moore’s never give me no trouble,” Pruitt volunteers.
“Okay, what the hell,” Rakes says. “Officer Pruitt and me’ll go with you to find some clothes ’fore I cuff you. No monkey biz, you hear? You’re in custody and tryin’ to escape’ll be another charge.”
“Thanks. I understand. I’m a lawyer.”
“Don’t know what to do ’bout the dog. We ain’t takin’ him with us.”
“If you’d give me a few seconds to call my coworker, I think he’ll stop by in the morning and take care of things for me.”
“Okay,” Rakes agrees. “But make it snappy.”
Blaine’s groggy when he answers his phone, but he’s quickly alert and says “Oh fuck” after I tell him that I’ve been arrested at my house. His “How?” and “Why?” are panicked.
“The police are here with me now,” I caution him, “but don’t worry. I haven’t done anything wrong, so this should be straightened out soon. I’d be grateful, though, if you could pick up Nelson.”
“I’ll be there in the morning. Early. I’m so sorry, Lawyer Kevin. Didn’t see this comin’. But I’ll take great care of Nelson.”
The SUBstitution maintenance shed is stocked with five bags of Pedigree, treats, a new bed and two bowls, one for food, the other for water, but this isn’t how Blaine expected his babysitting to begin. He’s stunned because our foolproof Operation J’onzz has become the Bay of Pigs and collapsed right from the get-go.
“Guess you’re the boss for a while, my friend. You’re in charge. Didn’t mean to leave you such a mess.” I hang up Melvin’s phone, disconnecting before Blaine blunders and says more than he should.
Electronic monitoring is a bond condition for the Martinsville drug charges, so Minivan Dan mailed two of the forged orders lifting the restraint to the Martinsville clerk’s office and the city jail. These new felony charges—forging public documents—were issued from there as well. Officer Rakes and another cop load me into a cruiser, and we set out from the homeplace for a trip that’ll take more than an hour. As we weave down the mountain, the cop in the passenger seat recites my Miranda warnings and Rakes asks about the bogus orders, and I insist that I don’t know anything about any forgeries, that this is a huge mistake and I’m innocent, and that I want to speak with my lawyer, Ward Armstrong. So there’s no possible mistake, I repeat the request: “I want my lawyer.”
At the Martinsville city jail, I’m searched, fingerprinted, photographed and issued a stained, threadbare jumpsuit. This is my third arrest in fewer than fifteen months, so the process is familiar. Sadly, my birthdate and Social Security number are already in the system. I shuffle into the general-population pod at 5:16 a.m.
The pod looks like a postapocalyptic movie set from the 1980s, metal and concrete and solid, painted walls, everything awash in heavy brown and yellow light. A pentagonal control center—thick plexiglass and riveted steel panels—broods in the center of the pod, and two guards lord over a fetid collection of criminals, triple the number that the space was built to hold. The ceiling is low. The air seems as if it’s a molecule away from solidifying. My “bed” is a thin blue mat, and my “cell” is a strip of concrete floor a few scant inches away from a urinal with a permanent damp spot underneath.
My floormate is a chatterbox boy—nineteen or twenty—with stringy blond hair, buck teeth and a lazy eye. “What’re you in for?” he asks, keeping his voice at a whisper because of the early hour.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Right now, I’m in for some sleep.”
“They claim I was sellin’ Oxies. Total entrapment, but my lawyer ain’t doin’ shit for me.”
“Hope that changes for you.” I roll over so my back’s to him—facing the urine slick is truly a better option.
“My name’s Bobby. But people call me Junior.”
I don’t reply.
“What people don’t realize is I got money hid for when I get out. Serious money. And women waitin’ on me. I got more pussy lined up than you can count. My girlfriend’s been writin’ me, and she’s gonna come and visit next Sunday. Then I got another lady on the side. If I could ever use the phone, I’m gonna sweet-talk her and start some action there. Only problem is my ex is takin’ me to court for child support, and the Medicaid people is claimin’ I owe for the baby bein’ born. I’m gonna demand a DNA test. Wouldn’t you?”
“No idea, Junior.”
He asks another question, and I ignore him, and he then rambles on about buying his uncle’s logging business. Later, during breakfast, he introduces me to his friend Luke, who’s “writin’ up a federal lawsuit for Constitutional stuff.” The lawsuit is guaranteed to win us aggrieved inmates millions and ensure that harsh justice is delivered to Sheriff Percy Lane for his many misdeeds.
“Here it is,” Luke says, and shows me a bundle of blue-lined notebook paper covered in pencil scrawl. “Money in the bank. I can add your name. All it takes is twenty dollars on my canteen account. To help with required legal expenses. Twenty bucks that’ll make you millions. Junior’s done paid.”
“Sorry, I don’t have twenty dollars,” I inform him. “If my circumstances change, you’ll be the first to know.”
I meet Ward in the interview room after a lunch of pinto beans, an orange, and a white-bread cheese sandwich. I’m seated, but Ward stands, hands on his hips, boiling mad.
“What the hell, Kevin?” he demands. “Have you lost your feeble mind?”
“Well, no. Only minor brain damage from the stroke—”
He steps closer and interrupts me. “I put my name and reputation on the line, save your sorry ass a second time, arrange the deal of the decade, vouch for you—along with tons of other people—and this is the thanks I get?”
“Maybe, Ward, you can calm down and explain to me what’s happening. All I know is that I was dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night because I’m supposed to be connected to some forged Martinsville court orders.”
“Yeah,” he almost shouts, growing more irritated. “Forged court orders releasing you from the ankle monitoring that just happened to appear in both the Martinsville jail and clerk’s office. Stop it. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
“Have you seen them?” I ask.
“I have fax copies.” He reaches into his inside jacket pocket, removes the copies and tosses them on the table. “Randy Clay is fit to be tied. And I don’t blame him, no I don’t. A lawyer doing this kind of wrong, trying to sabotage the system we’ve all sworn to honor, is absolutely unforgivable. I heard before I came over here that a third fake also arrived in the Patrick County clerk’s office. Big surprise, since they were handling the monitoring for Martinsville—another favor I arranged so you could remain in Meadows of Dan.”
I unfold the papers, study one order, then the other. “I didn’t send them,” I declare. “First time I’ve ever seen these,” I lie.
“Then who the hell did?”
“What does it matter if the commonwealth can’t prove I did it? Legally matter, I mean.”
“I talked to Logan Rakes, who’s in charge of the investigation. You want to tell me why you withdrew every penny in your account from the bank?”
“First, it doesn’t prove anything. Second, I was preparing to turn in to jail, and I planned to pay all my bills and invest the balance in a CD at another bank so I could at least make a little money while I was locked up. I don’t really need a money-market checking account paying infinitesimal interest for the next six months, now do I?”
“Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Makes no sense.”
“How did the orders end up here? In Martinsville?”
“How the hell do you think, Kevin?” Ward snarls. “The mail.”
“From where? The postmark?”
“Of course, the clerk’s office trashed their envelope, but the cops damn sure have theirs—an order sent directly to them rang every alarm imaginable—and it was mailed in Atlanta.”
“My monitoring log will show I haven’t been anywhere near Atlanta.”
“So you gave the orders to a friend or mailed them to someone else, who in turn dropped them in a box there in Atlanta.”
I’m wearing cuffs, and the chain hits the table as I scoot forward. Thunk. “Ask yourself, Ward, why in the world I’d do this, and do such a bad job? You’ve negotiated a sweetheart deal for me—six months, probably in the Patrick County Jail. I’d be serving my time in Mayberry with Otis and Andy and Aunt Bee. So why would I pull this kind of trouble down on myself? I damn sure know better than to send an order to a sheriff’s department. Come on, seriously.”
“You’d do it if you’re desperate and only looking for a few hours’ head start on the cops. You’d do it if you’re Kevin Moore, and you believe there’s nothing worse than losing your law license for years to come, so you plan to run. You’d do it if you’re hooked on drugs or alcohol and not thinking clearly—the cops told me your garbage can was full of vodka bottles. They found a nearly empty half-gallon in the kitchen cabinet. And, as we both understand, jail—any jail—is jail, my friend. We’ve seen defendants skip town to avoid a weekend DUI sentence.”
