John Grisham - The Activist

The report went back and forth with the pros and cons, and it was obvious that hard feelings were developing and tensions were high. As he read, Theo noticed a knot forming in his stomach. Why was he getting involved in such a nasty fight? He was just a kid and this was a real war being fought by some hard-nosed politicians. Then he thought of Hardie and the Quinn family farm. He thought of Judge and the thugs who beat him.

He read on as the sausage began to sizzle in a skillet. His mother hummed in her bathrobe as she cooked away. His father was lost in the business section of the New York Times . Judge was whimpering at the back door, no doubt excited over the fresh aroma from the kitchen. Theo let him in.

The public hearing on the bypass would be held before the County Commission in just over two weeks, and from all indications it would be a regular brawl. Mr. Stak boasted that 75 percent of the people in the county were in favor of the bypass and his supporters would flood the public hearing with a massive show of strength. Hogwash, said Sebastian Ryan of the Stratten Environmental Council, the bypass is favored by a slim minority and most of those are business people who want to make a buck. The opponents would turn out in record numbers.

For the first time, Theo actually thought about going to the public hearing. It might be a cool thing to watch! Hundreds of angry citizens, all squaring off in front of the five county commissioners. It promised to be a controlled mob scene, probably with deputies scattered around the room to keep the peace. Theo doubted his parents would allow him to go, but he liked the idea. He decided to think about it and maybe ask them later.

Over pancakes and sausage, Mrs. Boone said, “Let’s go to the early worship service.”

Mr. Boone nodded and said, “Sure.”

“I like it,” Theo said. He really didn’t have a vote in matters involving church attendance, but that rarely stopped him from offering his thoughts on the matter. The early service was more enjoyable. It ran from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and was not as stuffy as the main worship hour at 11:00 a.m. The dress was more casual and the sanctuary was not as crowded.

“Then you guys had better hurry up,” his mother said. Theo and his father exchanged looks of polite frustration. It was just after 7:30. They had well over an hour to get ready. Mr. Boone could shower, shave, and get dressed in about twenty minutes. Theo, not yet shaving, could do it in fifteen. Both knew it would take Mrs. Boone at least an hour to get ready, yet she was telling them to hurry. But both remained quiet. Some things were not worth discussing.

After lunch, and long after church, Theo reluctantly went to his room to begin work on a book report. It was to be a three-page analysis of the main characters in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , one of Theo’s favorite books. He liked the book but he didn’t like the idea of spending a good chunk of Sunday afternoon writing about it. Nevertheless, he trudged up the stairs and closed his door. But he couldn’t find the book. He looked everywhere, then went downstairs to the den and searched some more.

“Maybe you left it at the office,” his mother said. Bingo! That’s exactly where the book was.

“Be back in a minute,” Theo said. He took off on his bike and ten minutes later slid to a stop at the rear door of Boone & Boone. He unlocked it and stepped into the little room he called his office. He found the book where he’d left it, on a shelf next to his Minnesota Twins poster schedule.

Theo could not remember the last time he was all alone in the family’s law office. The place was always busy with lawyers on the phone, clients coming and going, printers rattling away, Elsa up front running the show and directing traffic, and Judge sneaking around looking for either another nap or something to eat. Now, though, on a Sunday afternoon, there was not a sound. It was eerily dark and quiet as Theo eased through the hallway and walked to the front window by Elsa’s desk. The conference room, with its dark leather chairs and book-laden shelves, was somber and still. Theo decided he preferred the place when there were people around.

The old wooden floors creaked as he headed back to his office. It had once been an old storage closet. To get there he always walked through two larger storage areas, filled with countless white cardboard boxes stacked neatly together. Things were changing, though. The digital age was dragging older lawyers like the Boones into the world of paperless files and storage, and not a minute too soon, in Theo’s opinion. Why destroy so many trees to produce so much paper that becomes useless almost as fast as it is filed away? He’d had these discussions with his parents. At the age of thirteen, Theo was already a tree hugger.

There was a table where Dorothy and Vince placed files before they were officially boxed away for permanent storage. As Theo walked by it, something caught his attention. It was the name JOE FORD in bold letters on the side of a large expandable file. Evidently, Mr. Boone, having been fired by Joe Ford, was cleaning out his files and putting them away. This was somewhat unusual because Mr. Boone was notorious for leaving stacks of old files around his office for years after they were no longer needed. His brother Ike had the same habit.

Theo took a step closer and looked at the tabs in the Ford file. There was one labeled Sweeney Road. He knew better than to pry, but then Theo had a habit of being too curious, especially around the office. He opened the Sweeney Road file, flipped through a half inch of papers, and found what he thought he might find. The document was called an option —a rather simple title, and it gave the buyer the option, or the right, to buy two hundred acres of land from the seller, a Mr. Walt Beeson. Who was the real buyer? On paper it was an outfit called Parkin Land Trust (PLT), a corporation that had just been created and done so in a way to conceal the faces of the people behind it. Since the option he was holding came from one of Joe Ford’s files, it was pretty obvious to Theo that Fast Ford had set up another company to hide behind.

Most documents regarding land and land transactions were required to be filed for public record in the county courthouse. Options, though, were not recorded, and Theo knew this. As he read on, it became clear the rumors were correct. Mr. Beeson would sell his two hundred acres near Sweeney Road to PLT if, and only if, the county commissioners voted to approve the bypass. At that time, PLT would pay Mr. Beeson the sum of $10,000 an acre, or a total of $2,000,000. If the county commissioners rejected the bypass, then PLT would owe Mr. Beeson the cost of the option, $50,000, and walk away.

There was a paragraph requiring both parties to keep the option as quiet as possible. Secrecy and confidentiality were crucial to the deal, which appeared on the surface to be a straightforward option. Nothing illegal. Developers like Joe Ford did their business by picking the next hot real estate spots and building on them. If they guessed right, they made a lot of money. If they guessed wrong, they lost a lot of money.

Theo wondered how Ike had learned of this deal, but he really wasn’t surprised. Ike had a knack for hearing things around town. Theo kept flipping pages. The option was signed by Mr. Walt Beeson, as seller, and by a Mr. Frederick Coyle, a vice president of Parkin Land Trust. No sign of Joe Ford, yet. Under another tab, Theo noticed the words Parkin Land Trust, Inc., and he pulled it out. It contained the documents of the newly created PLT Corporation, a company Mr. Boone had put together only a month earlier. Theo scanned the documents, the office notes, even the handwritten scribble of his father, something he easily recognized. The new company had four owners, or stockholders: Joe Ford owned 50 percent; Frederick Coyle owned 20 percent; Stu Malzone owned 20 percent; and Peter Kyzer owned 10 percent. Theo had never heard of Coyle, Malzone, or Kyzer, and he quickly scribbled down their names. He placed the file in exactly the same position he’d found it, and hustled back to his office. If he needed to see it again, he knew where to find it.