Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 38
Long Goodbyes
Coquille, Oregon, November 1996 continued…
The Office staff who had finally come to love me were sad that I was leaving, but amongst the younger local attorneys the race to take my job was on! The Public Defender’s Office had a few folks who were looking for a better gig, plus a couple local private attorneys with slack business, and there were about a half dozen or more fresh bar licensees from out of town who had stumbled across the Bar Bulletin advertisement Peter had put out. Call it a baker’s dozen of applicants for my slot. I wouldn’t call it my position because the new hire would be starting out as low man on the Totem Pole with all the shittiest work and lowest pay. It would, however, be an adult District Court position under Chloe and Gwen.
Guess who just happened to be in need of a real lawyer job – one that gave the most experience imaginable in a short amount of time in one of the “cleanest” (i.e., uncorrupted) prosecutor’s office I could imagine? My friend Lance, of course. Gwen’s boyfriend/fiancé/live-in partner. That fact alone created resistance to the idea of hiring him from Peter, especially given the Office drama that developed between Chuck and Sandy (“Don’t fuck the help,” remember). By this point in time, I had spent plenty of time hanging out with Lance and crashing on their couch after partying with Gwen and him. Whatever concerns I had about them were completely dissipated – they were a solid couple. I started lobbying for Lance right after he applied.
Peter and I remained on friendly terms because of how I handled the situation. I did my job without slacking off in the slightest. In fact, I did it even better in the sense that I didn’t want to leave any messes behind for the Office to mop up after I left. I did everything I could to charge down my stack of cases and plead out all the cases on which I could get reasonable plea deals. My goal was to leave that place better than I found it. I worked hard to accomplish that.
I decided to use my county health insurance while I still had it by making an eye appointment and an appointment for the first full physical I had had since boot camp. My vision was a little worse, so new contacts and glasses were in order. The County had just provided hearing tests for everybody in anticipation of the new construction project to expand the next-door County jail (insurance requirements for later possible claims). My last visit was the physical.
My doctor was an attractive younger woman between ten and fifteen years older than me. We hit it off great, almost flirty. When we got through all the basics and were chatting about general health questions, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask her about Selena’s certain smiley scar. It caught the doc off guard, but after I explained a little more about the background of why I was asking, she was blunt in her reply.
“There is no place on Earth, no country I mean, that I’m aware of that would ever perform an abortion like that,” the doctor said with certainty. “Or any kind of ovarian surgery. Nope, I’m afraid that’s a regular old C-section scar.”
No fucking shit, I thought. Why wouldn’t Selena just tell me the truth?
“Thanks doc,” I replied. “I appreciate the clarity.” If I wasn’t about to leave town, I would have asked her for her phone number. Selena was on very thin ice with me.
As November was coming to an end, I started asking a few of the local defense attorneys who I respected out for a drink to pick their brains about starting my own practice. Since I was going to the Portland area, I wouldn’t be competition, so why not? Each one was receptive…and then some! They got a chance to learn a few things about the D.A.’s Office in return.
I went out the first time with who I considered the second-best defense attorney in the County, but he was young. He wanted to pick my brain about the D.A.’s Office as he had applied for my job, I came to find out. It was cordial but not particularly revealing on either side.
The person I was truly interested in talking to was the best defense attorney in the County, my old adversary Frank Ford. As the best, he was also very successful. We met at the Coney Island Station, of course, because I didn’t know any other bars in Coos Bay. I found out that his minimum flat fee for first-time DUII defense was $3,500, plus any investigator or expert witness costs. For second or more offenses, he charged between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on the circumstances.
“The real money in criminal defense are the sex cases,” Ford told me on our second beer. “Yeah, sure, murder cases are a big deal, but there aren’t many murder defendants who can pay my fee.”
“What does one of those go for?” I asked.
“I start at 60, but if it’s complex at all, I’m at 100 or more,” Ford replied with a grin. “But the sex cases are more dependable to get paid. A guy will mortgage his fucking house, cash out retirement funds, whatever it takes to keep from getting thrown in prison as a sex offender. Especially the child offenders, because they know they just might not make it out of prison alive.”
I understood exactly what he meant. My father was a prison guard for the last eight years of his life. He told me all about how rapists, and child molesters in particular, were targeted in prison by the hardened criminals who committed real crimes, like robbery, murder, grand theft, that sort of thing. These reputable criminals mostly had daughters, wives or girlfriends, and their children on the outside, and they were frequently known to do society a favor by eliminating the lowlifes amongst them, the real creeps – the baby rapers. See Jeffrey Dahmer as Exhibit A of the prison filth elimination program. As another lesser-known example, a hit was placed on Charles Manson in the California penal system because, well, he was a well-known freak worthy of extermination. Whoever killed him would be famous, a prison celebrity. So, one night, old Charly got doused with lighter fluid and lit up! They burned his genitals off, but it didn’t kill him (you never heard about that in the news, eh?).