Chapter Three: The Indignity Of It All

I opened the trunk and said, “Get out.”

Gourd just looked up at me. Cold, hate-filled eyes. He didn’t even try to move. Sweat beads covered his face. He had just spent six hours cramped up in an oven that bounced around whenever I drove over a bump or hit the brakes too hard. Especially the last part of the journey, out into the baking hot desert where no road existed. Just rocks and ruts, thumping him around mercilessly.

I smiled at him. “You’d like to pound your gavel and send me to jail, right Gordo? Give me the old one way ticket.”

No response. His gut rumbled.

“Ah, the big dog’s gotta eat. Sorry. Not today.”

No response. Old guys knew how to spoil your fun.

He was pretty old, it was true. Probably seventy or more. I guess it wasn’t very nice of me to treat the aged so harshly. Too bad he deserved it. In my opinion, anyway.

“Suit yourself,” I said, shrugging.

I had parked near a small outcropping of rocks. There was nothing for miles around but scrub brush and cracked dirt. And small mean animals and bugs with names you insulted people with. Snake in the grass. Maggot face. Scorpion butt. Beetle head. Lizard breath. Gila Monster teeth.

I’d bought some beer back at the gas station and I took a bottle over to the rocks and sat down to wait.

It didn’t take long. Gourd was an evil old fart, but he wasn’t stupid. He could die in the trunk or find a way to get out. I felt like a mean little kid watching a turtle try to get off his back and land on his feet, more curious than concerned.

He wriggled around till he was on his back. Then wriggled some more and got his legs out. Next he laid back and used his shoulders to push himself forward inch by inch. Finally, he got his butt wedged up against the frame of the trunk, rocked his legs back and forth for momentum, and heaved himself upward.

It didn’t work. He flopped back down and lay there catching his breath. I could see his stomach heaving up and down. The indignity of it all.

He rolled over on his stomach. Now he was getting it. He wriggled forward in a side to side motion, using his fat rolls like oars, squooging himself forward till his feet reached the ground and he could simply stand up.

I clapped my hands. “Bravo.”

He sat on the bumper, breathing heavily and looking around at the vast emptiness surrounding him. He saw where I was and walked over to the rocks and sat down. His shoulders slumped wearily.

I reached over and ripped the duct tape off his mouth.

“Ouch!” he bawled, as the tape tore loose.

I smiled at him. “That hurt a bit?” I asked.

He licked his lips and let out a big sigh. “Now what, genius?” he asked, with as much scorn as he could muster.

I took a swig of beer and belched, knowing it would both offend him and confirm his opinion of my low class, uncouth status.

“Nothing,” I said.

“What do you mean, nothing. You dragged me out here for some reason.”

“That’s true.”

“Then get to it. And take these damn cuffs off.”

“No. I think not.”

“Do you have any idea who I am?”

“I think so. Otherwise I’ve wasted my time.”

“I’m P. William Gourd. Senior Judge of the Northern District of California in Oakland. You are in serious trouble young man.”

“I’m not young. I’m fifty.”

“You’re still in serious trouble. Kidnapping is a felony. A federal offense. You could get life in prison for this.”

“You’re scaring me, judge. I’m sweating like a pig. Wait. It’s hot out here, isn’t it. Shit. That’s why I’m sweating. Maybe you don’t scare me, after all. Let’s see. Life. When does that damn thing start? At fifty, I must have used most of it up already, wouldn’t you say? So life is really only a ten or twenty year deal. Give or take my health.”

“That’s a long time behind bars. You’ve never been in prison, obviously.”

“Let’s not worry about me right now. Okay? I’ll worry about me later. Let’s worry about you. That’s a lot more fun.”

“What in hell do you want? Money, I suppose. I’ve got money.”

I played along. “Good. I was hoping you might. I bet you’re in the upper class even. You own a yacht?”

“You can’t have my boat.”

“I might want it, though. I’m seriously thinking about that.”

“It’s mine. I earned it. You can’t have it. You can have some money, but that’s all. How much do you want?”

“How much does a yacht cost?”

“Stop fixating on a boat. It’s out of your league. You can’t have mine and you can’t buy one. Money is all you can afford.”

“You got one. Why can’t I get one?”

“I’m me. You’re you. Get a clue. You’re a stupid crook.”

“You don’t have to call me names. It’s not polite.”

“What would you know about polite. You think it’s polite to kidnap somebody and put him in a trunk for six hours? It was hard to breathe in there.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d want to come of your own volition.”

“How insightful. You’re a real deep thinker.”

I imagined a guy up in my brain digging a hole. A real deep one. Way down there where Super Thoughtsville was. The place where fleeting glimpses lived that were just out of reach all the time.

I swallowed some beer. I’d gotten drunk in a lot of places, but never in the middle of the desert. A lizard poked his head out from under a rock and nosed it around. Then he scurried over to another rock and disappeared under it. Reptile jogging. Staying in shape so a bigger reptile could have a nice meal. Probably a teenager reptile. The smart scale heads just stayed under the rock and cursed God.

Gourd was giving me the serious eyeball. I thought maybe he was bucking up to beg for a drink. No such luck.

“You look vaguely familiar,” he said. “Have we met before?”

I nodded.

“In my court room?”

I nodded.

He reached into his head and thrashed around, throwing old papers and photos helter-skelter in a frantic search through his memory drawers, searching for me. Finally, he found what he was looking for.

“Monona,” he said. “Monona vs Tweed.”

“Bingo, your royal judgeship.”

“Monona vs Tweed,” he mumbled, laying the case out on his desk for review. His forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.

“That case was trivial. Hardly worth the court’s time. I only put it on my calendar for a break between serious cases.”

“Court lite, eh? How generous of you to throw us a few of your precious minutes.”

He caught himself smiling at the memory. “That’s what this is all about?” he asked. “You and your little business.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You can’t be serious. Your beef should be with Tweed.”

“He’s on my list, too.”

“There’s a list? Over this partnership squabble case? Absurd. Who else is on the list?”

“The Receiver you appointed. Weasley.”

“Anyone else? The court reporter, perhaps?”

I ignored the sarcasm. “No. Just the three of you. For now.”

“Let me get this straight. Help me if I struggle to grasp it all. You are going to kidnap three people, risk life imprisonment, all because you’re upset with how the trial worked out. My God, you’re insane.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I might be able to understand this if someone’s life was at risk. But you and Tweed just had a two-bit worthless business hardly worth fighting over.”

“It was worth it to me. Cost me a lot of money. Sorry it bored you. I noticed you nodding off half the time.”

“I wasn’t nodding off. I was thinking.”

“You were snoring. It’s in the transcripts.”

“Nonsense. You bought the transcripts? What for?”

“Page thirty-two. Line four. Court’s response. ‘Zzzzzzzzzz’.”

“Zizz? What the hell is that?”

“Imagine a big log in the forest. A lumberjack. Sawing and sawing and sawing. Little Zs falling off the saw and floating into the air.”

“Nonsense. There’s no Zees in there.”

“There should have been. How else could you miss that traitorous, lying scumbag Tweed committing perjury twice. His wife, too.”

“I heard them. Everybody lies in civil court. Perjury only counts in criminal court.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Why are we all in there swearing to tell the truth then, if it doesn’t mean anything?”

“It’s a formality. Grow up. I rule on the evidence. The evidence doesn’t lie. You tried to prove he stole the business. You didn’t prove it.”

“Did he steal the website from me? Did he steal all the money? All the clients? All my source code?”

“There’s no such thing as stealing in a partnership. Partnerships exist solely upon the good faith each partner has in the other. Neither partner has to do anything to fulfill his role in the partnership. Unless there is a written agreement between the partners. You and Tweed had no written agreement. The only recourse is dissolution.”

“Why did you take the case then?”

“The source code. You claimed you owned it, not the partnership.”

“I wrote all of it. Tweed just did sales. He had no right to use my code in a separate business.”

“You didn’t prove you owned it.”

“The copyrights were mine. And I wrote all of it. He admitted that was true. You violated federal copyright law.”

“I make the law in my court.”

“You violated state law, too. In a partnership dissolution, one of the partners is selected to perform the winding up of all the business.”

“I gave you the ownership and the wind up responsibility.”

“The winder upper is supposed to get paid for his work. You didn’t do that. You made me do it and yet gave Tweed half the revenue. I had all the expenses, too. He had none. Nice retirement package for a liar and a thief.”

“You got ownership of the source code. You got to continue on in business. The ability to get new clients.”

“Not with half the money and all the expenses of the old business. I was the programmer. I had no sales experience. How could I get new business?”

“That’s your problem.”

“It’s yours now.”

“You’re pathetic. You people all expect the justice system to give you what you can’t get on your own.”

“You people? What people is that?”

“Losers. Look in the mirror.”

I finished my beer and fetched another. Gourd stared at the ground, his chin resting on his chest.

Neither of us spoke for awhile.

The sun was past its zenith and heading for the horizon, but it was still hot enough to see heat waves rising from the ground in the distance. And a lake way, way out there that only existed in the minds of scraggly bearded old guys crawling around dying of thirst. Physics could be cruel. Or was it chemistry. Or biology. I wasn’t any good at any of them. Science and my brain were like peas with no pod.

At last, Gourd lifted his head. He looked tired. “Let’s get this over with. How much money do you want?”

I laughed. “Your senility is showing. You should know by now I didn’t bring you out here for money. I don’t give a shit about your money.”

“I’m not senile.”

“Then I guess you’re just plain stupid.”

He didn’t say anything. I watched him get a clue that he was a dead man. I gave him all the time he wanted. It was the moment I had been waiting for. I wanted to see him wrap up his life when he should have been sitting in the nineteenth hole at the golf course. Sucking down a beer with his buddies and talking about the riff raffs of life like me.

Teresa was dead. And he played a big part in her dying. Tweed was the main killer, but Gourd and Weasley had stuck in the knife, too. If anyone of the three had not done what they did, she would still be alive.

He looked around at the sky, probably wishing I had picked a more scenic place to kill him. Maybe on his yacht, anchored somewhere in a nice tropical cove. Forested hillsides and spacious beaches. Befitting his exalted journey in life. He was a real somebody. Yes sirree. A real somebody.

A cloud passed over his face. God, was he going to miss himself.

Finally, he got around to looking at me. Like he’d never seen me before. His eyebrows did some knitting. What sense did I make in his life? A nobody. A fucking nobody. How could this possibly happen?

I really got a bang out of being the last person he would ever see. I couldn’t help smiling. I imagined all the people out there he had screwed over time. I tried to enjoy the moment for all of them, beaming little joy waves out of my head to mail across the ether to them. A guy he had sent to jail would get a license plate to make that read “FCK GORD” and have a good laugh. A skid row drunk he had ruined financially would find a twenty in a dumpster underneath a rotten gourd and have a good laugh.

It was comical. Two guys in golf togs sitting in the middle of the desert with dueling imaginations.

Finally, he gave it up.

“I don’t suppose I can dissuade you from this lunacy,” he said.

“No, I don’t suppose you can. All the plaintiffs and defendants you’ve screwed over the years. Did you enjoy it enough? Was it worth it? Would you do it all over again, knowing it would turn out this way?”

He sighed and smiled. “You’re a loser, Monona. You’ll never be anything else but a loser.”

I finished my beer and stood up. “Time to go. Any last words?” He closed his eyes and lowered his head, waiting for a bullet in the brain.

“I’m not going to shoot you, Gourd. Mother Nature will deal with you.”

His head came up, eyes wide open. All his peace gone in a heartbeat. “You’re just going to leave me here?”

“I’m afraid so. Robert Frost wrote a poem once about whether fire or ice was the most preferable form of destruction. You’ll get a chance to form a learned opinion out here. The heat of the day is matched by the cold of the night.”

“No! Please! Just shoot me!”

“So long, P. William Gourd. Your case is closed.”

To be continued . . .