T. Bunn - The Great Divide

The hundred-mile drive took three traffic-clogged hours. Following the lawyer’s slurred directions, Marcus took a central Richmond exit and entered a wounded city. Darkness hid the worst of the scars, but what the streetlights and shadows revealed was not pleasant. Buildings had the abandoned look of old tombstones. The sidewalks were empty save for those who loitered and clustered and called to passing cars as if they were hailing death.

He turned off the main thoroughfare and entered a gloom so thick he could not see the street sign, much less house numbers. Finally he spotted a front porch with a light, and in the process of reading the number he also observed the bars where the screen door should have been. Marcus drove down another block to the correct address and parked.

Marcus climbed the steps of the attorney’s house and heard the tinny voices of a television game show. The noise marked the dark and his own creeping fear. Marcus fumbled for a bell, found none, so he banged on the door. He heard footsteps scraping the sidewalk behind him. He banged harder still.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Taub, it’s Marcus Glenwood. We spoke on the phone.” He did not wait for a reply, but banged again. “Open up.”

“Hang on.” The latch rattled, the door cracked open a notch. “I told you, you’re wasting your-”

Marcus pushed inside, almost knocking the man to the floor. “Sorry. There was somebody out there.”

Marshall Taub did not appear the least surprised. “Yeah, this is a creepy place. I never go out at night.” He waved his hand, sloshing his drink on the already-stained carpet. “You might as well sit down.”

The room’s lighting was yellow and feeble, the house dank with old smells. Dishes were piled on a cheap corner shelf. The coffee table between the battered sofa and the television bore two empty bottles and a half dozen glasses. Marcus deliberately walked over and cut off the television. “As I said on the phone, I am representing a client who wants to enter suit against New Horizons.”

Marshall Taub relocked and latched the door. “Don’t do it.”

“I have a file on your case.” Marcus had managed to scan the top pages while trapped on the interstate. “I’d just like to ask-”

“I’m telling you, don’t go after them.” Taub motioned a second time with his glass. “Wanna drink?”

“No thanks.” The Richmond attorney had the doughy appearance of someone carrying the worst kind of extra poundage. “You won your suit against New Horizons, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t win a thing. Lost it. Lost it all.”

“But the records show-”

“Siddown, why don’t you.” He took a hard slug from the glass. “Don’t believe what you read. Never believe what you read.”

Marshall Taub could have been forty, he could have been sixty-five. His graying beard only partly masked the pastiness of his features. He had the shaky hands and blank gaze of a man determined to kill himself slowly. Marcus asked, “What’s wrong with the court records, Mr. Taub?”

“Nothing. Not a thing. Except they’re a lie.” He drained his glass, reached for the bottle on the coffee table, slopped bourbon into his glass and over his hand. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”

“Mr. Taub, who is handling further action against the appeal?”

“Nobody. Not a soul.” Another hard slug from the glass. “Know how many motions they attached? Forty-seven.”

“They’re trying to bury the appeal,” Marcus interpreted.

“Burying the case, burying the lawyer.” He thought that was funny enough for a repeat. “Won the case, lost it all.”

Marshall Taub took a long sip, almost toppled over backward, caught himself, and flopped down into a chair whose exposed springs were partially covered by a ratty throw rug. “Don’t do it.”

Marcus saw the dark stains covering the sofa cushions, decided to remain on his feet. “Tell me what happened.”

“Started with threats. Pretrial motions, pretrial threats.” The whiskers parted in a bleary grin. “That didn’t work, so they went for the jugular. My other clients started heading south. My partners got worried. I got mad, wouldn’t let go, so they dumped me. I had New Horizons cold. A great case.”

“You left your firm?”

“Yep. That’s when it got bad. Real bad.” He drained his glass, let it slide to the floor. “They got pictures of me with a lady I knew. Mailed ’em to my wife.”

“They framed you?”

“Manner of speaking.” He fumbled, managed to grab the bottle, took a long hit. “My wife left me. Took the kids. Walked out the day I won the case.” Another bleary grin. “Great victory, huh.”

Marcus arrived at the Hayes mansion in the soft light of early Saturday morning. Before he cut the motor, his battered Blazer was surrounded by three barrel-chested Labs. The dogs clustered and poked him with cold noses as he climbed down. The extremely well-trained bird dogs neither barked at his familiar smell nor pressed their case. Instead they both followed and led at an amiable distance as he made for the open garage door.

Mansion was the only way to describe the eleven-thousand-square-foot yellow-brick dwelling-despite its doors and shutters and pillars and porticoes and garage all being painted a startling sky blue. The four-car garage had one oversize door that belonged on an airplane hangar, upon which was painted the emblem of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. Behind it hulked an RV larger than a Greyhound bus and painted the same blue as the house trim. As Marcus walked up the drive, the house’s owner was loading sky blue dog boxes into the back of a blue Cherokee sporting a license plate that read GO-HEELS. Marcus knew for a fact that the license plate had cost Boomer Hayes a quarter-million-dollar contribution to the UNC football fund, as the tag had formerly been the personal property of the team coach.

“Marcus!” Boomer Hayes had a voice to match his body, big and raucous and pushy. “Did I invite you?”

“No.”

“Don’t matter. You got a gun?”

“No.”

“That’s okay too. Go on downstairs and pick yourself out a couple.” Boomer swatted at the dogs, who circled excitedly. “Y’all just hold on to your tails. I’ll get to you in a minute.” To Marcus, “You remember where I keep the gun?”

“Yes.” Boomer’s gun room was a basement running the entire length of the house. At one end was an arsenal capable of equipping a fair-size insurrection. At the other loomed an entertainment center with fourteen speakers and a 118-inch Swiss-made television. The carpets, drapes, gun cabinets, leather sofas, and walls were all Carolina blue. Boomer Hayes was serious about only three things-Carolina football, his toys, and his family. The order depended upon how well the Tar Heels were doing that year. Marcus said, “I’m not going hunting.”

“Sure you are. It don’t mean a thing, me forgetting to invite you.” He opened the first cage door and the dogs started whining. They knew where they were headed. “The ’Heels don’t kick off till seven Sunday. We got plenty of time to go pack us some birds.”

A querulous voice wafted from the house’s side door, the one that led up to the separate apartment wing. “He ain’t interested in your football silliness and he ain’t going hunting!”

Boomer reached for the nearest dog and hefted him into the cage. “Shame how the old man’s gone all doddery. Guess before long we’ll have to start chaining him to the bedpost.”

A man with the fragility of the very old came tottering into view. He carried a cane, but did not use it, as though the stick were there for assurance alone. “Can somebody please tell me where my only son got this fanaticism over something as absurd as Tar Heel football?” Charlie Hayes limped over to where Marcus stood, huffed a single breath, then continued. “I went to Carolina. Twice. Undergrad before the war and law school after. I never felt like the world would end if Carolina lost a game.”