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Table of contents | Previous chapter Playing with Fire A novel by Scott Lazenby
Chapter Nine  ill Samuels, the parks and recreation director, stopped the van at a gate. I got out and fished around in my coat pocket for the key. The steel hinges were rusty, but the gate swung easily. The van eased by, and I watched the cartoon faces of the children painted on the side, followed by the Trillium Parks Department logo. I closed the gate and looped the chain through it, then got back in the van. Drizzle had collected on the windshield. We followed the dirt track until it reached a graveled parking area. Will pulled up beside an old John Deere tractor. I held the door open as Diane McTavish and Seth Rosenberg got out. “So this is it?” McTavish asked.“This is it,” Will said. “There’s almost two hundred acres, so you can’t see it all from here. But you can get a pretty good sense of it. If it wasn’t so cloudy, you could see Mount Hood somewhere over there.” “You can even see some of downtown Trillium,” McTavish said. “Such as it is,” Seth said. “Well, so it isn’t Portland. But I like it anyway,” she said. “The clubhouse would be about where we’re standing,” Will said. “I think from the second floor you could see both Trillium and Portland. They’re talking about a driving range somewhere over there, and the first hole would be just to the left of that. The rest of the holes would be between here and the power lines over that hill.” The land was gently rolling, and colored with every shade of green. Fir and cedars were left in the steeper portions; the flatter areas were carpeted in pasture grass that had greened up with the fall rains. A small walnut orchard bordered the property on the west edge, and the leaves hadn’t begun to turn. The parts of the landscape seemed to be assembled randomly, but they fit together more perfectly than anything an architect could have designed. A hawk circled over a ridge top, never moving its wings. “It would be nice, but I kind of like it this way,” McTavish said. “True,” Seth said, “but a golf course would look better than a subdivision or strip mall. Will, do you think they could keep many of the trees?” “That’s what they’re saying. They would have to clear some space for some of the fairways, but there’s enough open pasture land to build most of the course without cutting a lot of trees.” “Aren’t they pretty tough on the environment?” McTavish asked. “Don’t they use a lot of fertilizer to keep the greens green?” “That depends,” Will said. “Here, check this out.” He plodded down the hill in his heavy rubber boots. The rest of us picked our way more carefully. We stopped about fifty feet from the bottom. A creek fed a small man-made pond that had a bright cover of algae. Cattle used the pond for drinking water, and the banks of the pond and creek were a trampled soup of mud and moss. “This feeds into Banjo Creek,” Will said, “and apparently they’re getting pretty high readings of ... what’s it called?” “Fecal coliform,” I said. “Right. And the farmers have been using their share of herbicides to keep the weeds down, and some kind of spray on the walnut trees. So it’s hard to say a golf course will be much worse, especially if we use some sense in how we maintain it.” “So does this pond become a water trap?” Seth asked. Will shook some rain off his forehead. “You got it. Even though it’s man-made, it qualifies as a wetland now, and the state wouldn’t let us drain it. The way I golf, this is where most of my balls will end up.” We made our way back up the hill. A row of starlings watched us from a fence. “How’s this deal going to work?” McTavish asked. “Well, it’s a little complicated,” I said. “Great. Everything you’ve gotten us into lately has been a little complicated.” Seth said it with a smile. “How about if we get back into the van?” Will said. “At least we’ll be a little drier.” Seth took a last look at the panorama. The mist made his beard look grayer. He joined me in the middle seat of the van. McTavish sat sideways in front. “Okay, shoot,” she said. “Where to begin?” I said. “First, this is a long way from being a done deal. The person trying to put it together is a guy named Tuck Williams. He’s had a fair amount of experience in the golf business, but not in land development. He’s got some investors, apparently, who are willing to put up the money, and are at least asking the right questions. Their first hurdle is the land. Matterson is willing to sell this piece — it’s about eighty acres, but the other hundred plus acres is in three separate ownerships. Williams hasn’t even contacted them yet. He doesn’t want to drive the price up, but he needs their land. Two of them live in old farmhouses on the property — part of the deal he can offer is not only paying for the land, but giving them a new house right on the golf course.” “But don’t they depend on the land for their living?” McTavish asked. “They may have at one time, but the pieces have gotten divided too small to support a family. They keep some horses, and do get some income off farming, but it’s more of a hobby than a profession now.” The moisture and heat from our bodies had fogged the inside of the van’s windows. Will started the engine and found the switch for the defroster. “You know,” he said, “I don’t miss Louisiana, but I’m still not used to all this rain. One of these days I’m going to lose my tan.” We laughed. Will was still as black as the day he arrived in Oregon, around five years before. “The second hurdle is a little easier,” I said. “We’re outside the urban growth boundary here, but inside the urban reserve. Normally the state wouldn’t let us expand the boundary without a compelling reason. But there just isn’t this much acreage in one place inside the UGB, and the state has come to the realization that it’s a good thing for golf courses to be inside cities.” “Why is that?” Seth asked. “They’re mostly grass — you would reckon they would fit fine in a rural or agricultural area.” “The golf course does,” McTavish said before I could answer, “but the housing around the course doesn’t.” “Right,” I said. “For a lot of reasons, you don’t see isolated golf courses anymore. You also get houses, condos, a clubhouse, you name it. For an extreme example, think of Sun River outside of Bend. That’s grown to be bigger than most Oregon cities.” “Besides,” Will said, “It doesn’t hurt to have some open space inside a city. I like it that way, truth to tell.” “Okay,” Seth said. “You know, I hate to cut this short, but I’ve got to get back to work. We’re getting ready for a visit from a buyer from Singapore.” “You and your international deals,” McTavish said. “I never thought cutting wood was so exotic.” “Right. Me and the other business tycoons, we have to keep up with things.” Will turned the van around and maneuvered it down the dirt lane. “So anyhow,” I said, “we have to extend the urban growth boundary and then annex the property. But like I said, I don’t think that will get much opposition — at least from the state or county — but it’ll take some time. As big as the project is, most of the land use stuff is still pretty straightforward, since our comp plan talks about something like this out here. It’s the financing that gets interesting.” McTavish rolled her eyes. “Okay ...” “So here’s the deal. Tuck Williams and his investors buy all the land. They keep the land for the housing, and give the rest to the city for the golf course. We help finance their water, sewer, and streets with a local improvement district — ” “But they have to make the payments?” McTavish said. “Sure. But they can take advantage of our lower interest rates. And we secure the bonds through a first position on their land. That part of it is really pretty common. Then we use revenue bonds, paid back through green fees and other golf course revenue, to build the course. Hold on....” I jumped out and locked the gate after the van passed through. The sun had broken through and steam was rising from the wet grass. “Just out of curiosity, how did you get that key?” McTavish asked when I climbed back in. “I got Williams to make me a copy. When I told him I wanted to take you dignitaries out here, he was more than happy to oblige. In fact, he wanted to come and roll out the red carpet.” “So why didn’t he?” McTavish asked. “You didn’t want us to have to disclose the ex parte contact in the hearing, right?” Seth said. “Exactly. The less direct contact you have with the developers, the better. Everything we’re looking at is aboveboard, but you know how folks twist things around.” McTavish was silent. A couple of years ago, she had been closely involved in an affordable-housing project, targeted at former migrant farm workers who had transitioned into full-time jobs. Her intentions were honorable, but she ran into a buzz saw of controversy from neighbors and rednecks. Channel Eight smelled blood and sent a reporter out to tape an interview. The reporter didn’t know anything about Oregon land use laws or city government in general, but he had picked up on the rhetoric from the opposition groups. They had seized on an obscure statement buried in the comprehensive plan document that talked about goals for a mix of housing types. The reporter had hammered the mayor on that point, and she had simply said she wasn’t familiar with every sentence of the document — it was, after all, over two hundred pages thick. The reporter had replied, “Well, as mayor, don’t you think you should be?” and left the question hanging. The broadcast framed the mayor as an uninformed politician who had been suckered in by the developers. McTavish was furious, and several of her friends wrote, without result, to the station manager. Since that day she had avoided, wherever possible, interviews with television reporters. “Anyhow,” I said, “we use revenue bonds to pay for the golf course. Then we turn around and enter into a concessionaire agreement with Tuck Williams to operate the golf course. The first part of the green fees goes to pay back the revenue bonds, we take a cut, and Williams gets the rest, plus profits from the pro shop. It makes it worth Williams’ effort in doing all the legwork for the project — ” “And we get a source of funds to help support the rest of the recreation program,” Will said, raising his voice to be heard over the engine noise. “That’s the whole point of the exercise, as far as I’m concerned.” “You don’t think we could use a golf course?” McTavish asked. “Oh sure, it would be a good addition to Trillium,” Will said. “I wouldn’t mind the convenience myself — it’s hard enough finding the time to play nine or eighteen holes without having to drive a ways to do it. But it could just as well be a privately owned course. The only advantage to having it be a municipal course is that we get some extra fees out of it — Portland gets a good share of its support for their rec program that way.” “You have some control over the fees too,” Seth said. “Some of these courses claim they’re open to the public, but their fees are so high it’s hard for most of us to play.” “What about a clubhouse?” McTavish asked. “Good question,” I said. “We haven’t figured that one out. It may be a good idea to own the building and lease it to a restaurant operator on a concession basis. But we don’t have much of a track record in the restaurant business — if you don’t count the senior center’s hot meals program — so we may just be better off to let the clubhouse be privately owned and operated, on the housing developer’s land. What do you think?” “Not sure. My instinct says we should own it, but I’d have to think about it.” “It may be a moot point anyway,” Seth said. “From what Ben says, this Williams guy still has a lot of land to assemble. I’d say the chances are good this will all fizzle out before it gets very far.” “Always the optimist ...” McTavish said. Seth laughed. “No, just a realist. Here’s how I see it. As long as the land is outside the urban growth boundary, all it can be used for is farming, so what’s it worth? Maybe ten thousand dollars an acre or so? Forty thousand tops? And ordinarily, it would be years before the boundary would get pushed out there — twenty years at least. But once they catch wind that somebody wants it for a golf course, all bets are off. Suddenly they’re talking a hundred thousand or so an acre, since they know that would let them put houses instead of horses on it. But if the land costs that much, I suspect it will kill the deal.” “Yeah, but if that happens, they’re stuck, since there aren’t many ways to get land inside the UGB,” McTavish said. “The golf course is their ticket to getting in. It’s a catch-22 for them — if they ask too much, their land is only worth ten thousand dollars an acre again, ’cause all it will be good for is growing hay.” “Well, greed has a way of working that way.” “They may just be patient, too,” I said. “They may be willing to wait twenty or forty years for the UGB to come to them, and in the meantime enjoy their rural living.” “I wouldn’t blame them,” McTavish said. “And if that’s the way it turns out, it’s just fine with me. We’ve got enough on our plate now anyway.” The break in the clouds had closed again, and Will had to turn the wipers on. McTavish turned in her seat to watch the homes pass by. On this end of town, most were fairly new — built in the last twenty years or so — and they were generally well maintained. We stopped for a traffic light in front of a white house, built in a copy of the Portland craftsman-style homes of the streetcar-suburb era. A row of elms was planted between the curb and sidewalk, not yet tall enough to form a canopy. A four-foot bank, planted with dark blue lobelia and natural basalt and granite rocks, was bisected with a set of concrete stairs leading up to the yard. Marigolds, still in full bloom, lined the path to the front porch. “Isn’t this house beautiful?” McTavish asked. “I have to admire it every time I pass by.” “It’s owned by the Fredricksons,” I said. “Ned Fredrickson works for Muller Nurseries, so I guess that does give him an advantage in the green thumb department.” “So Ben, do you know everyone in Trillium, or what?” McTavish asked. “Sure, it’s my job,” I said, chuckling. “Okay, who lives next to them in the yellow house?” “Beats me,” I said. “Good.” • • • Ken Longstreet headed up our union contract negotiating team. As much as he complained about it, the challenge of negotiations was probably the real reason he had been our finance director so long. He approached each contract renewal like a chess game, planning his strategy several moves in advance, and studying the strengths and weaknesses of the negotiators on the other side of the table. Newcomers to the process usually misjudged him. They saw a quiet, almost meek accountant with thinning hair and a few extra pounds, and thought they saw softness. His razor-sharp intelligence and ruthlessness came as a shock.I stayed out of the direct negotiations, so I could act as an added buffer between the city council and the negotiators. Ken had called me to come down to his office. They were reaching the final stage of the process with the police union. To our relief, the union local had brought in a professional negotiator who handled a lot of the contracts in the Portland area. They had fairly quickly cleared aside most of the small, diversionary issues — uniform allowances, training time, shift differentials, fitness incentives — and had concentrated on pay. I had hoped that the fire union’s unilateral offer of a wage freeze would have taken the wind out of their sails, but the police union had demanded a nine percent increase — twice the inflation rate — and a one-year contract renewal term. Ken had pushed for a three-year contract tied to the Consumer Price Index. The two sides had reached an impasse. Police officers — like firefighters — were barred by state law from striking, and disputes were ultimately settled through binding arbitration. We were at the step just before that, and a state-appointed mediator was shuttling between the two camps, searching for a resolution. They were sitting around a small table. Ken had his tie loosened and his shirt sleeves rolled up. Simon Garrett, the police chief, was slumped in his chair, with a coffee mug in his hand. Betty Sue Castle smiled when I came in. “Beware. Those who enter may never leave.” “Still dragging along, huh?” I said. “Sure. Part of the strategy is to see who gets worn out first,” Ken said. Simon rubbed his eyes. “It’s working.” “But we may have a way out, and I wanted to run it by you,” Ken said. “Okay.” “I was fiddling around with the model, and something occurred to me.” Ken, with Betty Sue’s help, had programmed his laptop computer with a full simulation model for the police department pay and benefits package. He could — almost instantly — reduce any combination of contract terms into a single number representing the cumulative cost to the city. “What’s that?” “Well, we could offer a $1,000 signing bonus, paid immediately to every member of the union, if they approve a three-year contract tied to the CPI.” “You’re kidding,” I said. “We would pay them to accept something that they’re lucky to get anyway, with our tax situation the way it is?” “Yes. We really don’t want to go into binding arbitration. It seems the arbitrators never take into account the financial resources of the organization. Instead, they’d probably pick up on the wage comparisons that the union has been pushing.” “But they compared us with the county and Portland. Those aren’t comparable organizations at all.” “Yeah, but they’re in the same labor market. In any case, we really don’t want to roll the dice with an arbitrator — they can be too arbitrary. Watch this. Suppose binding arbitration leaves us with a seven percent increase, about halfway between our two positions....” Ken typed some numbers into his computer. “Even if we hold them to CPI for the two years after that, the total annual cost by the third year — with benefits — is this.” He entered a few more numbers and turned the laptop around so I could read the screen. “About two point eight million,” I said. “So its a big number.” “Right, but look at this. If you assume CPI for all three years, this is what you get.” He typed for a few seconds, then spun the computer around. “Okay, it’s about a hundred thousand less.” “Exactly. The signing bonus is around $50,000, but that’s a one-time cost. This hundred thousand difference is something we would be paying each year. So look at it like an investment. It’s the premium we pay for buying some certainty — and reasonableness — in the pay and benefit package.” “Sort of like a futures market, huh? I wonder if we could develop a secondary market, and let someone else do all this negotiating. We could put out bids for future union contracts, and only buy when it seemed worth the risk.” “Yes, but it would only work if the commodity was portable, like pork bellies.” “What the hell are you guys talking about?” Simon asked. “I was wondering, myself,” Betty Sue said. Ken laughed. “Well, anyway, what do you think?” “What’s this going to do to the fire contract? Will they back down on their wage freeze?” “Well, we can make a good argument that they’re already paid closer to the market rate than the cops. But I can guarantee you that the wage freeze was just a PR ploy — they know dozens of ways to get increases in benefits that have the same effect as a pay increase. So I don’t think it’ll have much effect on them.” I thought for a moment. “I guess it seems all right. Go ahead and give it a try.” Betty Sue looked at Ken, who began to doodle on a pad of paper. “We sort of already have,” she said. “Oh? How’s that?” “Well, we sent Cabot down there with that proposal,” Betty Sue said. Cabot Corning was the state-appointed mediator. “But don’t worry. Cabot said he would let it seem like they came up with the idea, and then bring it back up here to try to talk us into it. That would still give us an out if you didn’t think it would fly with the council.” “Hmm.” Why did we keep having to go through this song and dance? City employees had, for the most part, reached parity with their private-sector counterparts years ago. Whenever we opened up hiring for a new police officer, we got hundreds of applicants. But we were all trapped in this process, since it was the only one we knew. And it was self-perpetuating. The union environment enforced an us-versus-them mentality that made it difficult for any other alternatives to be explored. So we were locked in the dance forever. “You’re upset with us.” “Huh? No, I was just thinking. I need you guys to take the initiative on this stuff — you know my philosophy on that.” “Which one? The one that goes, ’It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission’?” Betty Sue asked. “That’s it. So how long has Cabot been down there?” “About an hour and a half.” We talked about the process if the negotiations were successful, how much time it would take to get it ratified by the union members and approved by the city council, and whether we would be setting a precedent for a signing bonus with the firefighters and public works unions, which were still in negotiations. A few minutes later Cabot Corning knocked on the door. I had taken his seat, so he pulled a chair in from the reception area. “How did it go?” Ken asked. “It worked. They’re willing to recommend it to the members, and they asked me to talk you into it.” “Bingo.” Ken leaned back in his seat and took off his glasses. “One down and two to go.” “Speaking of which,” I asked, “have the firefighters asked to put the medical response team on the bargaining table?” “Nope,” Ken said. “They’ve got everything else there. I’ve never seen so much trivia in a list of issues. How many pairs of boots they’re issued and the right to wear their boots when they’re hunting. The maximum slope for parking their apparatus so the doors don’t close on them. The number of satellite channels on the cable TV in the fire stations. What magazines the city will subscribe to for them. A limit on the number of business inspections they have to do. An increased budget for exercise equipment, and city-paid memberships to private health clubs. You name it, it’s there, but they refuse to talk about the firefighting/paramedic issue — it’s like they’re assuming it’ll never happen.” “Well, they could be right. They won’t bargain over it if they think its dead on arrival.” Unlike the police, the firefighters were negotiating the contract themselves. Gallagher had enough experience at it, but the fact was that he didn’t have anything else to do, and could take as much time at it as he wanted. He would drag out the discussions on the small stuff until the last minute, and avoid the big pay and benefit issues until the state mediator got pulled in. Cabot Corning asked us about new restaurants in town, and shared a few fly-fishing stories. He wore a plaid shirt and green work pants. His hands were callused and he looked like he’d be comfortable in a hard hat, like a good shop foreman — exactly the image he wanted to convey to both the labor and management sides. When it came to union issues, the cops liked to act like coal miners or dock workers, which was odd, since the tools they used consisted mostly of pens, radios and radar guns, and they avoided walking beats like the plague. Instead of working like laborers, the best of them had more in common with trained psychologists and scientists, and they got fulfillment from their jobs when they were using their minds, not their hands. After a while I excused myself, thanking the negotiating team and Cabot for their work. Betty Sue joined me. “Cabot takes his time about things, doesn’t he?” she said as we climbed the stairs. “Yeah, you were wondering why he didn’t hustle back down to wrap up the agreement, right?” “It crossed my mind.” “The cops thought the signing bonus was their idea. If it looked like we agreed too quickly, they’d think they didn’t push hard enough. Cabot had to make it seem like we were wringing our hands over the decision. You know, let them think we were in heated debate over accepting their proposal, not sitting back telling fishing stories. They would get suspicious if they won victory too easily.” Betty Sue paused in front of her office door. “But if you knew what Cabot was up to, wouldn’t they guess that too?” “Maybe their hired gun would. But he wants to get this over with as much as we do. As long as we follow the script, he’ll have a hard-won agreement to take back to the members for a vote.” “So he plays along? Geez, this gets complicated. You know what it reminds me of? One of those complicated mating rituals in a nature show about birds or insects. I start to think, quit the theatrics and just get it over with.” I laughed. “Well, that’s not a bad analogy. It’s probably closest to mating with a black widow spider. We can complete the agreement, but even when it’s done, we have to be wary, since the conflict over the contract poisons our whole relationship.” Betty Sue shook her head. “Speaking of tangled webs, do you have a second? I need to update you on the OAS deal.” We used the meeting table in my office. Betty Sue looked out the door to make sure no one was in hearing distance. “You were talking about making things look too easy. Well, the folks at Oregon Ambulance seem to be going out of their way to be accommodating. I added a bunch of new things to the draft contract, and they said ‘Fine’ without batting an eye.” “Like what?” “Oh, response time guarantees, backup crews during peak periods, extra coverage when one of the units needs to transport a patient ... and a pledge to hold the hourly rate flat for three years. I feel like I’m at a car dealer and keep offering a lower price, and the salesman keeps saying, okay. Makes me wonder if I’m buying a lemon.” I thought about it. “Could be they see this as a way to get their foot in the door with this kind of service. Trillium is one thing, but what if they could do the same thing in Beaverton or Gresham, or Vancouver?” “Maybe. Or it could be that they’re worried that we’ll start negotiating with someone else. They seem to have a monopoly on the private ambulance business around here, but what’s to stop someone like Tualatin Valley Fire from offering the same service?” “Yeah, except for the fact that we don’t want to open that can of worms now. Maybe they just want to get the agreement signed before we change our mind.” “Well, they don’t want to actually sign it.” “Huh? But it doesn’t bind either of us to doing anything, right? It just sets out the conditions if we do decide to offer them the work, and if they decide to accept it.” “I emphasized that — ” “You said ‘I,’ not ‘we.’ Wasn’t Max with you?” “Uh, no.” “I asked you to keep him involved.” “I know.” She ran both hands through her hair. “But I still don’t trust him. I didn’t want to give him another way to derail this whole thing. All he would have to do is let it slip to Brian Gallagher that we were talking to OAS, and all hell would break loose. This is just a backup anyway, and with any luck it will be a moot point.” “Look, Betty Sue, if Max wants to derail this, he will anyway. It’s not going to fly without him. What if we do end up having to contract out? He isn’t going to be comfortable with terms that he didn’t have a hand in writing — you wouldn’t be either, if you were in his shoes.” “I guess you’re right. But this will make such a difference in being able to balance next year’s budget, I don’t want to do anything to mess it up.” “Yes, I appreciate that. But don’t cut Max out.” Betty Sue was silent. There was more to her reluctance in working with Max than she was saying. I didn’t blame her. “Here’s what you can do,” I said. “Give Max a copy of the draft, and fill him in. Make sure he understands that you, me, and the OAS guy are the only ones that know about it. That way he’ll know that if there’s a leak, we can track it to him. But I really think he’s got more integrity than that.” She shrugged. “So what were you saying before?” I asked. “Something about Oregon Ambulance liking the agreement but not wanting to sign it?” “That’s about it. They say we can’t keep it confidential — it becomes an official agreement of the city, even if you sign it and it doesn’t go to the city council. So the Freedom of Information Act would let anyone get access to it.” “Hmm. You know, they may have a point. Chances are, no one would know the agreement exists, but I wouldn’t put it past Gallagher to start nosing around for one.” “But the odd thing is, the issue of secrecy is more important for us than them. They’re not the ones dealing with the political and union issues. Still, they refuse to sign it on the basis that it isn’t in our best interest. I don’t normally see businesses going out of their way to protect us. Seems like there’s something else going on.” “This is such a hot potato, maybe we’re all over-reacting.” I rubbed my eyes and thought about rafting down the Poudre River with Kate and her family. We steered when we could, but most of the time we were at the mercy of the current. When the rapids were long, we could only guess where the rocks might be, and we paddled to stay in the main channel so the river would naturally carry us around them. I knew Betty Sue liked to feel in control of situations, but here we didn’t have that luxury. As much as we mortals liked the concept of free will, most of the events that swept us along were outside our control. We could only do so much, and had to trust fate or God to carry us along. Perversely, on the river, the only way we could maintain headway for steering was to paddle toward the rapids. “Well, just keep plugging away at it,” I said. “At least you have the framework in place. That’s something, even if we never have to use it.” • • • For security reasons, the grand marble entrance to the Multnomah County Courthouse was locked to the public. We stood in line in the rain at a side entrance, waiting to get through the metal detector that had been squeezed into the hallway. Our justice system had achieved true equality: it treated everyone like criminals. Hank Arnold had a tiny Swiss army knife hooked to his key ring. The security guards wouldn’t let him through with it, so he had to put it in my car. I pictured him stomping back to where my car was parked, probably muttering comments about the threat to society he posed with his one-inch letter opener.We stood in the second floor hallway, outside Judge Moose’s courtroom. Pete Koenig was already there, and Diane McTavish, council member Maggie Henderson, and I joined him. A few feet away, Todd Pritchard and Neal Orso were huddled with their attorney, Terry Judd. After a few moments, Maggie ambled over to join them. Strange. A court fight was just that: a fight. What was Maggie doing going into their corner? Hank Arnold came up the stairs, damp and slightly out of breath. He stood with us, squinting around and trying to figure out who else was there. I watched Maggie out of the corner of my eye. Judd suddenly asked her a question, and she took a step back. Pritchard’s eyes narrowed. Judd marched over and interrupted Pete in mid-sentence. “Why didn’t you tell us about the videotape?” “What videotape?” “The tape of the meeting of July 12. Why did you withhold that from us?” A group of people waiting for another court session turned to watch. “You didn’t ask for it.” “Yes, we asked for everything in your possession that was pertinent to this case. I certainly think a videotape of the meeting is pertinent.” “We gave you the minutes. That’s the official record of the meeting — the videotape is only used for replaying on the cable TV channel. If the minutes weren’t good enough for you, you should have said something earlier.” “But you let other people watch the tape,” Judd said. Maggie was standing a few feet away, looking sheepish. “Look,” Pete said, “if you want to make an issue of this, let’s just let the judge decide, okay?” “Yes, I do want to make an issue of it. You intentionally withheld evidence.” Judd was like a kid stirring a wasp nest with a stick. Pete kept his cool, but I had known him long enough to realize that he was making a quiet internal resolution to skewer Terry Judd whenever the opportunity presented itself. “Okay, Terry, you’ve made your point. Leave it for the judge.” Judd backed off. Pete shook his head. A minute later, the courtroom door opened and a group of people filed out, looking tired. Pete found the court clerk and talked to her for a moment. He signaled to Judd, and they disappeared out a side door. I sat with the council members at the back of the courtroom. There were only three rows of seats — most trials didn’t get many spectators. “I got called for jury duty once,” Mayor McTavish said. “It was for a federal court. I ended up being an alternate for a jury on a bank robbery case.” Hank said, “So, did you hang ’em?” McTavish chuckled. “Well, it restored my faith in the intelligence of the common crook. The prosecuting attorney was young — looked like she had just got out of law school. She had the video from the bank’s surveillance camera, and it showed the guy with something hidden under a sweatshirt he had over his arm. She brought in the teller as a witness. The teller read the note the guy passed, but she was a little embarrassed to do it. The note said ‘I have a gun give me the money,’ but it had a few expletives thrown in for good measure. The defense attorney was young too — probably doing the work as a public service — and he made a brave attempt to get the guy off. Said that since the teller never actually saw a gun, the guy didn’t technically threaten her. I knew we were supposed to be impartial, but it was hard for us to keep a straight face.” “An open-and-shut case, huh?” I said. “Seemed like it to me, but none of the jurors got sick or anything, so I got dismissed just before they went into deliberation. But here’s the best part. When the teller got the note, she pushed the alarm button. Turns out the FBI office was only two blocks away. It was lunchtime or something and there weren’t many agents around, so the office chief himself decides to go check it out. As he’s walking toward the bank, the crook rounds a corner and literally bumps into him. He dropped the bag of cash, but the FBI guy just grabbed him and made the arrest. Can you believe it?” Seth and Maggie shook their heads. The court clerk organized some papers at her desk, then left the room through a back door. “You know, though, that kind of thing happens more often than we think,” I said. “Simon told me about a bank robbery in Eugene. It was at the Central Bank, a big glass building in the middle of town. The guy passes the teller a note. But she’s cool. She stares at the note for a while and says to him, ‘Hey, I can’t read this. I don’t know what it says. Go re-write it.’ Just like Woody Allen in that movie where he writes, ‘I have a gub.’ So anyway, the putz gets out of line and goes over to the counter where the deposit slips are and starts writing — ” “You’re kidding.” Seth said. “No, this is a true story. So you know what the teller does — she hits the alarm button. A couple of Eugene plainclothes cops come in and the teller motions to the doofus who’s still writing away. Finally he gets back in line and the cops file in behind him. He gets to the window and passes the note and the cops grab him.” They laughed. Pritchard’s group looked over at us. Probably thought we were talking about them. Seth said, “When I was on a ride-along with one of our police officers, he told me about a man who robbed a bank — full mask, machine gun, the whole nine yards — and then disappeared. An hour later he’s sitting in his kitchen counting the money when a whole army of cops converges on him. They march in and nab him. He says, ‘Okay, you got me — but how did you find me so fast?’ The cops said, ‘It was easy. You wrote your note on the back of your water bill — it had your name and address right on it.’ Go figure!” McTavish wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “Simon calls that job security. There’s an endless supply of incompetent crooks.” Finally the attorneys came through the side door. Pete motioned to me, and I sat next to him in front of the judge’s seat. Pritchard and Judd sat at the desk to our left. “So?” I whispered. “The judge wasn’t interested in the tape,” Pete said, “and the deposition isn’t admissible. Moose agreed with me that the writ of review just deals with the procedural issues under the state bid laws, and has to be based on the record of the council’s decision. Judd pushed it, but I think all he did was piss off the judge.” The court clerk swept in and barked, “All rise.” She was followed by Judge John Moose. The judge sat down, opened a file and put on a pair of reading glasses. After a few moments he took off his glasses and looked up. “This is a writ of review of the Trillium city council’s decision pertaining to the state contract law. I have read your briefs, so keep your comments short. Mr. Judd, why don’t you go ahead.” Judd began a dramatic speech on how he was going to prove his case. Moose interrupted him. “We don’t have a jury here. Just make your point.” Judd flipped a few pages in his notes. Predictably, he dragged out the issue of cost, and the fact that Nova was reimbursing the city for the work. He also went into a long discourse on the provision in the bid law that stated that the bid process couldn’t be exempted if doing so would limit competition. It had always seemed an odd provision to me, since it appeared to invalidate any exemption. Judge Moose watched Judd for a while, then put on his reading glasses and began sifting through the file. Judd spoke faster. Pete scribbled a few notes on his pad in his private code. When I first met him, I was impressed by the fact that he had learned shorthand, and that he knew how to type. Most attorneys I had come across felt that manual labor was beneath them, and used secretaries and paralegals to get their work done. But while Pete liked his old Remington typewriter, he wouldn’t touch a computer, and what I took for shorthand was simply unreadable handwriting. Finally Judd wrapped up his comments. Moose kept his head buried in his file for a long moment, then looked up, almost in surprise. He peered over his reading glasses. “Uh, thank you, Mr. Judd,” he said. “What do you have for us today, Mr. Koenig?” Pete was deferential, in the quiet style of a southern country lawyer. He summarily dismissed most of Judd’s arguments as being irrelevant to the case, and touched on recent Oregon case law to plug any of the remaining gaps. He concluded by quoting from the majority opinion in an Oregon Supreme Court case, which stated that the court’s job wasn’t to rule on the merits of the decision made by the contract board — the city council, in our case — but instead to decide if the process spelled out in the law had been followed. The judge took off his glasses and scratched his head. “Well, I’ve heard a few of these cases in the last few years. I appreciate your comments and arguments, but the issue seems pretty simple. The court must defer to the decision made by the local governing body, unless there is some overwhelming evidence that the law has been violated. I can’t comment on the wisdom of the Trillium city council in this issue; the council is ultimately accountable to its constituents, which have the power to make that judgment at the ballot box. But it does appear that the procedures prescribed by the bid law have, in fact, been followed, and I must find that the council acted in accordance with the law.” We all stood up. Both lawyers thanked the judge. We filed out, and McTavish worked hard to suppress a grin. “Good work, Pete,” she said. Next chapter: infatuation on the mountain Copyright © 2001, Scott D. Lazenby. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the author is prohibited. Illustration: Paul Salmon |
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