Van the Tree Man
Tony Covatta
When Tom Blake was a young insurance agent in downtown Cincinnati, he worked for his Uncle Walt at the Walt Blake Agency, a well-known but decrepit local fixture. Walt and his long-dead partner, Fred Prendergast, offered general liability insurance to all comers, but their mainstay dominated the surety bond business for bail, appeals, and judicial orders. Their second-story office was at Ninth and Main, above the B/G Restaurant, a local greasy spoon catering to the courthouse breakfast- and lunch-time crowd. Fred’s great uncle, Pat Prendergast, had been Clerk of Courts before a clean government campaign flushed him out. There was no one in the courthouse with a dirty little secret or bad habit that Pat had not passed on to Fred and Walt. If a bond could be had, or a release contrived, Fred and Walt knew how to get it.
After a couple of years learning the business, Tom saw a long dark future ahead, a rocky, if lucrative, road of peddling insurance policies to the fearful and cautious. He’d be writing bonds for those brushing up against the court system—criminals, and others, who couldn’t handle their problems and needed a lawyer or the courts to do it for them. He saw money dotting the trail but wondered about the psychic cost. Perhaps the law would be as lucrative as insurance but allow him to do both good and well. And so, he was considering taking the LSAT and going to law school. His good-natured wife, Laura, who sported an Ivy League law degree, was taking a break raising their two children. As she struggled to acclimate to Midwestern life, she encouraged Tom to achieve the goals she had willingly given up for the family.
Tom was reluctant to say that Fred and Walt had misused their knowledge of the dark ways of the courthouse. It was all grist for the philosophical mill they ran at The Brothers Three, a disreputable neon sewer up Court Street that they had frequented together most afternoons after work. When Fred died too young of a heart attack, Walt, a confirmed bachelor, silently but resolutely dropped Fred’s name from the masthead. He increased his hours at the “Three,” as its habitués called it, and changed no other habits.
After Fred fled the scene, Walt became a solitary drinker, so Tom was puzzled when Walt asked him to join him at the Three one Friday afternoon in mid-December.
“You’ve been working too hard, Tom,” said Walt. “There’s someone you ought to meet. A good lawyer. You need to see what practicing law with a good lawyer is really like. We might even sell him a bond.”
When Tom arrived that Friday at the Three, Walt was already deep in drink and conversation with the interesting specimen/prospect. The bar fronted on the rear wall, with the usual array of quarts of brown bourbons and Scotch, greenish gin, blue vodka, and other spirits spigotted and ready to pour. On the bar itself sat jars of inedibles—pickled eggs, pigs’ feet, and garlic pickles of grayish hue. In the middle of the room were a few forlorn Formica-topped tables, and on the sides darkly-upholstered booths, the leather seats leaking poisonous fibers from incipient crevasses. In a corner booth sat Walt in his threadbare but serviceable Harris-tweed sport coat and horn-rimmed specs. On the table lay a scattered assortment of Walt’s Manhattan glasses, peanut shells, and the visitor’s beer steins. Across from Walt, sat a handsome, slightly paunchy lawyer, glistening black hair brushed straight back from a high forehead, a red and blue repp necktie accenting his sharp pinstripe navy blue three-piece suit, much in need of dry cleaning, and scuffed, dirty Bass Weejuns. He ushered Tom a space next to him on the banquette.
This was Paul Martino, a barrister of some repute with a catch-as-catch-can practice. Tom had noticed that Paul occasionally made the inside pages of the local papers. He had a penchant for the notorious. Tom recalled that Paul had used his legal acumen to get a local lady-of-the-night off a prostitution charge. When the undercover cop posing as a john solicited the girl’s services and arrested her for prostitution, she retained the services of the Law Offices of Paul Martino, as had many of her sisters before. When the case came to trial, the cop forthrightly and truthfully testified that the enterprising miss had asked him if he wanted a “three-way.” A local jury was sure to know that Cincinnati chili is served five ways—plain, with spaghetti, with spaghetti and cheese, with all that and beans, and finally, all topped with chopped onions. Paul created reasonable doubt by getting the cop to admit that she might well have been inviting him to share a late-night snack at a nearby Cincinnati chili parlor. The jury bought the theory and the girl walked.
Tom was not surprised to see that Martino was down at heel and handling some rough-and-tumble civil litigation, as such celebrated matters as the Cincinnati Chili case are not only not especially profitable, but also rare. This time Paul was moving for a temporary restraining order in a civil suit and so would need a bond to secure any order he obtained. As Paul told his story, Tom sensed that the stars were not in perfect alignment. Paul’s client was a working man, an enterprising fellow who labored for a major tree-trimming service. The client had his own black-market tree-trimming business, shunting what business he could from his national employer to his own local concern, run under the euphonious name, Van the Tree Man.
Van’s plans for the spring cutting season centered on upgrading his rolling stock. Needing cash to make the down payment on a truck more reliable than the 1950s Dodge he was driving, Van had sold the Dodge to George Childress, a small-time contractor who remodeled kitchens, bathrooms, and anything else he could put a claw hammer and crowbar to in the poorer suburbs. Childress was an African American who would later make his fortune fronting for larger concerns on minority set-aside projects. Childress died a gentleman farmer years later on a sprawling, hilly spread south of Georgetown, Ohio. There he raised prize show cattle—fat, glossy, curried-and-combed Black Angus and Scottish Belted Galloways. At the time of our story, however, the playing field was all too level, and Childress would pick up anything that was, as Shakespeare said, neither too hot nor too heavy to carry away. Like many small contractors, he was perpetually short of cash, using funds from one job to pay off overdue obligations on jobs two or three back.
As Paul explained in detail, Van was a bluff country boy from the Eastern Kentucky hills, not nearly so sophisticated as City Boy George. Van the Tree Man had foolishly exchanged a perfectly good title to his truck for a perfectly bad check from Childress Construction. George had the truck, and title to it. Van had neither truck nor any money to show for his pains. With motor vehicles in our state, title is everything. Van wanted no further part of business with Childress. He just wanted his truck back.
~
Laura and Tom liked to talk at the dinner table, linger there if the kids were quiet, or come back if the kids were fractious and needed bedding down. It was a chance for Laura to instruct Tom in the finer points of the law. That night Van the Tree Man was the subject matter. As Laura explained to Tom, unwinding the truck “sale” would be a major undertaking, involving suit, for George was not about to simply surrender the title. Lawsuits can take a long time. Van could not afford to be off the black-market tree-trimming business for two or more years.
Problems. Yet another: George was unreachable. His office had neither answering machine nor occupant. Correspondence elicited no response. It looked to be a bleak Christmas indeed for Van the Tree Man. But as Tom related to Laura, Paul had a plan to short-circuit the system. As MacArthur had promised that the boys would be home from Korea by Christmas 1950, Paul stated flatly that the truck would be back under Van the Tree Man’s Christmas tree, figuratively speaking. Paul would seek a temporary restraining order to force Childress to give the truck back immediately.
Laura noticed a sizable flaw in Paul’s plan. As she explained to Tom, a TRO is a time-honored procedure, designed to maintain the status quo by order of court on an emergency basis, without taking testimony or receiving other evidence. Even Tom understood “status quo”: George Childress had the truck. Without a trial or full-fledged hearing, no reasonable judge would enter an order unscrambling the sales contract into which Van the Tree Man had freely, if not brightly, entered.
Laura also wondered how The Walt Blake Agency would find Martino the bond needed to secure the TRO. Getting the bond would not be easy. Van would not have a strong balance sheet. However, as Laura reminded him, Tom had been working at the Agency long enough to know that things there did not always go by the book. He knew that Martino and Uncle Walt had ways into the Courthouse other than the front door. Genial Uncle Walt had promised that the bond would be forthcoming.
A few days later, Tom saw Martino hustling out of Walt’s musty office, a sheaf of creased and rumpled papers under his arm. Vaulting down the stairs, Paul headed for the courthouse. Tom stuck his head into Walt’s office, files piled on every flat surface. That day, like all days, the aroma of cooking bacon and stale grease from the deep fryer wafted up through the porous floor from the B/G below.
Walt told him the chase was on. Paul was off to file for his TRO against Childress Construction and George Childress personally. By a stroke of good fortune, the strait-laced, not overly receptive jurist who was that month’s equity judge was off to Florida for the holidays. Coming off the bench on to the bench was veteran Judge Eugene “Clean Gene” Weskamper, a brawny former footballer who had played pulling guard on the star-laden high school teams on which Walt himself had been a plucky, quick, if undersized, halfback. Had it not been for beefy Weskamper, Walt Blake might well have spent his adult life in a wheelchair.
“I would love to see how Weskamper got this assignment,” Laura said sarcastically to Tom that night. “Does Walt have an open line to Clean Gene’s office?” She had long sensed that Uncle Walt’s perfunctory attendance at church on Easter and some Christmases was not enough to earn the divine intervention by which so many of Walt’s clients drew Weskamper as their judge.
Business was slow. There was snow and more snow and then a hard freeze the week before Christmas. Tom accompanied Walt to The Three for a slight libation that Monday. The day of days was the following Sunday. As the two Blakes silently sipped their drinks, downcast counselor Martino entered, somberly kicking slush and snow off his sodden Weejuns. Things were not going well. Van the Tree Man was turning ugly. While Van’s meager retainer had long since been exhausted, this didn’t keep Van from querulously demanding results.
When Paul had ticked off all he was doing to run Childress to ground, Van had testily told him, “Paul, you just forgot one thing.”
“What?”
“He’s got my truck.”
Van could be marginally good humored, but Paul could barely stomach the irate phone calls he was getting at odd hours from Van’s hard-bitten, humorless, more than a little bit country wife. Paul had not reckoned on one other crucial item: He still couldn’t find Childress. This was a shame, for, to Tom’s surprise, Clean Gene Weskamper had granted Paul’s TRO prohibiting further transfer of the truck.
Laura was not so surprised. In those days many TROs were granted ex parte, that is, with only one side, the party asking for the order, appearing before the court. The lawyer’s custom then was to either neglect to inform the other party at all of this application or have his secretary call opposing counsel fifteen minutes after he had hot-footed out the door, relating that the boss was on his way to the courthouse. Of course, such quasi-unethical customs no longer obtain in our perfect world,
Like many judges then and now, Weskamper had come up through the system, first serving as a prosecutor and then moving on to the bench when there was an opening. These judges were adept at criminal practice, but as former prosecutors, they found civil practice like this foreign, and paid little attention to it, or did it badly. Martino knew that while he could not get even the pliant Weskamper to order return of the truck on the facts before him, he could easily convince the old prosecutor, who knew a criminal even before he saw him, that sneaky Childress could well sell the truck and abscond with the proceeds. And so, he would need an interim order banning sale of the truck by Childress. And this, on the basis of no testimony, other evidence whatsoever, and preferably without hearing from Childress or his counsel. As Laura remarked, “If Weskamper believes that, he probably believes in Santa Claus too.”
But who did know where the truck might be? How could Martino get George Childress’s attention? Paul had one last arrow in his quiver. He knew that Weskamper loved to have impromptu hearings, and Paul intended to schedule one, ordering Childress to appear with the title of the truck the following morning to demonstrate that the status was still quo. If he didn’t show, and he wouldn’t, gullible Weskamper would almost certainly find Childress in contempt and issue a bench warrant for his arrest. If Paul could find him, he could start to turn the screws by serving the bench warrant, providing for his immediate arrest.
Laura had heard enough. “Tom, these guys are playing with a marked deck. No judge anywhere would find a litigant in contempt on such a trumped-up charge. Who are these people?”
Wednesday about eleven, Martino appeared in the agency office. Could he use the phone? The pipes had burst at his place overnight, and his office was subzero. He had just been to see the initially-miffed Duke Carver, Childress’s attorney, who wouldn’t help him find George, but somehow knew about the suit papers. Duke did let it slip that George might be temporarily holed up at the shop of a suburban electrician with whom he sometimes worked—Junior Miracle. When Tom registered disbelief in the existence of such a person, Paul observed laconically that you couldn’t make up names like that. At any rate, Paul was serving papers, he hoped, on Childress and Miracle.
Childress had not shown up at court, and Weskamper was now more than ready to jail Childress for contempt, and his henchman Miracle for good measure. Paul was trying to reach the sheriff’s deputy who had the papers and tip him off about Miracle Electronics. He asked Tom to call Miracle’s shop and ask for George Childress. Paul was delicate about it, because he didn’t want to have to be a witness himself. Against his better judgment, Tom called.
“Hello? Miracle ’Lectric, Junior speakin’.”
“May I speak to George Childress?”
“Fuck you.” Click.
“Paul, he’s there.”
With that, Paul phoned the sheriff. After the deputy’s initial lament over the Christmas carolers lilting in the background that they couldn’t find Childress and Miracle anywhere and Paul’s explaining very patiently just where Miracle Electronics was and who was there, he heard a final slurp of coffee, and the enlightened deputy was on the case. That afternoon at the Three, Uncle Walt gave Tom a progress report. Childress was in jail, with a hearing scheduled for Friday morning, December 23, before Weskamper. What about the not so aptly named Junior Miracle? The sheriff’s department was only willing to do so much, the deadpanned deputy had explained. Black Childress could spend a couple of nights in jail, but white Junior was properly released on his own recognizance.
Why wait until Friday? Tom wanted to know. Walt explained. On Thursday, Paul would let Duke Carver know that if Childress didn’t produce the truck keys and title at the Friday morning hearing, he would spend Christmas weekend in the County Jail, and maybe even New Year’s Eve and Day. Childress liked the good life. He would see no merit in spending his holidays with the sheriff.
“So,” said Laura that night after dinner. “We’ve got a racist sheriff’s department and a judge willing to extort the truck title from Childress in exchange for letting him out of jail on a very questionable contempt charge. Uncle Walt and his pals are playing fast and loose.”
Tom agreed that this was rough justice. Wanting to see it played out, he determined to attend the hearing in Weskamper’s room Friday at eleven. Late as always, he got there about quarter past, running down the echoing marble hallways of the empty courthouse. This close to the holiday the wheels of justice had ground to a halt, except in Clean Gene’s room.
The cavernous room with twenty-five-foot ceilings contained only the Tree Man v. Childress players. He could see Weskamper through the open door of his office, judiciously reading the sports pages, spit-polished brogans up on his desk. His bailiff was slowly searching the drawers of his desk, one after the other, looking for some untold but assuredly essential article, not finding it and periodically slamming the offending drawer shut. The constable was quietly doing her nails, resolutely ignoring the citizens present. Childress’s counsel, Carver, was planted at one attorney desk, Martino at the other. Carver had just delivered the punch line of a private joke that had Martino guffawing like a hysterical hyena.
Perched nervously in the back row was the only civilian spectator besides Tom. She was a magnificent physical specimen, apparently in her early twenties, her pert bottom on the edge of one of the hideously uncomfortable pews that served as seating for taxpayers unfortunate enough to need the justice system. Below a gracefully oval face with bright brown eyes and full lips, her ample breasts blossomed like Christmas roses straining against the sheer crimson blouse covering but not hiding them. Her miniskirt was sure to give her pneumonia in such weather, despite a very tight three-quarter-length leather jacket, flared open at the top, that did nothing to hide long slender legs below. What was a looker like this doing here instead of at the bar at the local casino?
Tom realized, as the girl nervously twirled a set of keys around her lacquered purple and gold nails that she was delivering the keys to Childress for turnover. A few minutes passed. A pudgy Sheriff’s deputy emerged from a door in the back wall. Hobbling after him in shackles was Childress. To Tom’s surprise, Childress was a wizened little man with sparse receding hair, graying at the temples, probably in his mid-sixties. With a cry of pain, the girl jumped up and clattered on her spike heels to console him. It being Christmas week, the Deputy did little to cool the tropical reunion.
The tawdry drama played out. After Weskamper took the bench and called the case, the keys, like a relay race baton, passed from the girl to Childress, to Duke, to the court’s bailiff, to Paul. With that, Weskamper sonorously told Mr. Childress that he was purged of contempt. Eyeing the girl, he wished him a very Merry Christmas. The charming young lady—what did you say her name was, Duke?—could wait for Mr. Childress in the lobby of the Courthouse. It wouldn’t take more than an hour or so for Mr. Childress’s release papers to be processed.
Tom walked out with Martino and Carver, who were off to the Three to discuss finer points of practice over holiday lunch. Carver gave Paul the truck title, told Paul where the truck was located and promised that Van would be greeted with no more than small arms fire when he went to retrieve it—during daylight hours, of course. As Tom peeled off to get back to the Agency, he heard the two barristers chuckling about Childress’s ability to attract good-looking women. Duke opined that he had never seen him with other than a prime specimen on his arm. The lawyers agreed that this was an admirable aspect of Childress’s character.
That afternoon, Tom and Uncle Walt held a postmortem on the year at The Three before Tom went home to Laura and the kids and Walt repaired to his solitary apartment at a downtown high-rise condominium.
Tom: “I never thought it would work out this way. How—”
Walt: “Creative lawyering, Tommy. Martino knows his way around the block. It didn’t surprise me a bit.”
Tom had a more proprietary question: ”How did Van the Tree Man come up with financials strong enough for us to approve the bond?”
Uncle Walt shook his head, looked incredibly apologetic, and with a hint of a sly smile, confessed, “Tom, can you believe it, I promised Gene that I would look over the financials and walk over to the courthouse to sign the bond book if everything was in shape. I was so busy with Christmas preparations that I never got around to it. Gene must have figured everything had worked out …”
~
Tom knows that Walt expected more approval of his memory lapse and Paul’s grand strategy than Tom gave him. Local-college grad Walt took great pride in being sharper than most of us, Ivy League lawyers like Laura included. Tom admits that this is when he decided law school was not for him and began to develop the disenchantment that led him to abandon both the insurance business and Cincinnati, the home of his forefathers. Then too, when Tom reported Walt’s memory lapse to Laura, she declared with unwonted vehemence that she was spending her last Christmas in Cincinnati and would not speak to Walt at family Christmas dinner. It was and she didn’t.
Laura and Tom are happy out west. Santa Fe. Tom is house-husbanding and Laura is back practicing law. Somewhere it says that we are a nation of laws and not of men. Laura says that this just isn’t true.
Tony Covatta taught English at Skidmore College and was the chairman of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center and president of the Cincinnati Literary Club. He holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and a JD from Cincinnati College of Law. His work has been published in several journals, including The New Republic, Renaissance Quarterly, and Cincinnati Magazine. He currently leads literary discussion groups at Cincinnati’s Mercantile Library.