Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 82: Agreements
Friday, January 17, 1986
My date with Darla was important, but my ‘date’ with Chief Palko was more important, so that got my focus. Cammie and I both dressed in what I would call ‘business casual’ clothes, then headed out in time to meet Ken Albright fifteen minutes before one. We quickly went over our wants, which hadn’t changed from the last meeting: CSPD to back off and stay backed off, no more graffiti, a bit of wheel-greasing for the house and Camel (within the limits of the law, of course), no arrest records or anything else detrimental, an apology from the city, retention of the right to sue if they stabbed us in the back, and so forth. Money wasn’t on the list, except as a sign of their being serious. Nor were other apologies — an apology from the guilty parties would mean little. Them not bothering us again would speak far more than words.
We headed in. This time, we were directed to a mid-sized conference room. It probably made sense to put us across from the city officials, and it felt more equal than some people being behind a desk or the like.
When we got there, everyone else was waiting for us. Chief Palko, Buzz Wilkins, and Harry Penders were all easy to identify. We also had Kimberly Bishop from Code Enforcement and two City Councilmen, Tom Stewart and Patrick Byers. There were five, so I’m not sure if Tom and Patrick drew the short straw, had something invested in this, or whatever, but it felt like a pretty solid group for two college kids.
Buzz took the lead, giving us a warm welcome and apologizing on behalf of the city. Bob Palko went next, apologizing on behalf of the police department. Either he had the sense to know an apology from the miscreants wouldn’t help or Ken had clued him in, so we moved on to Tom and Patrick, both of whom didn’t have much to say except that they were happy we were property-owners and invested in the community. I figured word had to get out at least a little. If we could keep the number of people who knew as low as possible for now, I would be happy.
Kimberly had even less to say. She just said she was looking forward to working with Cammie if there was ever a need to. She might have been saying she would try to make sure there wasn’t. I could give her points for doing it subtly, if she had.
Harry wound up taking it from there. He said, “We’ve put together an offer for you. Part of why we have everyone here is that Tom and Patrick, along with Mayor Wilkins, are authorized to make changes up to a certain level without the rest of the council. Saves a lot of hassle, and the other three have day jobs that make it more difficult for them to be here.”
We all nodded at that.
“I’ll go over it, and then let you and Ken look it over. Basically, we start out by apologizing for all of the inconvenience and promise it will stop. No one is assigning any blame. Clearly, this slipped through the cracks, but we don’t feel the need to scapegoat anyone.”
“We agree,” Cammie said. “While I agree in principle that this is a failure of management, what level of management was supposed to catch a few tickets? We might be looking at a different reaction without Al Cooper and some quick thinking on Steve’s part to grab his recorder, but that’s conjecture. Maybe someone would have noted a disconnect between two people who were supposed to be disorderly and maybe high and clean toxicology screens.”
“That ... honestly ... probably wouldn’t have happened,” Bob said. “The reason is because it’s almost a dead certainty that you would have been released the next morning, with the case dropped. The records would say the officer issued a warning, and that would be that. The arrest records would maybe be there, but we have a lot of dormant arrest records with no outcome. We’re not taking every drunk and disorderly to court. Not even a tenth of them. It’s a college town! That’s all we’d do! If they sober up, they’re out. If someone comes in for their tenth time, we’ll talk.”
Everyone nodded. That really was just common sense, but it also created an obvious way to mess with anyone an officer wanted to harass.
“We’ll look at reviewing that,” Bob continued. “I just ... honestly, I don’t know how. The budget to look at every arrest and decide if it was questionable...”
“We get it,” Cammie said. “I totally sympathize.”
“So,” I said, “If we had sued...”
“Qualified immunity for the officer, sovereign immunity for the city,” Harry said. “The settlement offer waives that conditionally on any of you being arrested. If you’re arrested, it’s valid, and you sue anyway, we’ll let the judge slap you for it. It also waives immunity if any occupant of the house gets more than two tickets or there’s more than one code violation at any property owned by any of you. Again, if it’s valid, the judge will slap you.”
We exchanged looks with Ken, who nodded and looked pleased.
“Seems fair to me,” I said.
“And me, too,” Cammie said.
“Moving on,” Harry said. “Arrest records completely expunged, of course. Ditto every ticket connected to anyone residing with you up until today. Nothing in the files except the settlement agreement, and that’s confidential until and unless a lawsuit happens.”
“We can tell family, lawyers...” Cammie said.
“Oh, that’s fine. It’s just that you can’t run to the press or the like. Nor can they.”
“Works for us,” Cammie said, with me nodding agreement.
“There’s also a financial settlement. We’re offering $10,000 to each of you, plus fees to your lawyers paid to them separately.”
We again exchanged looks. Ken was a bit between smiling and shrugging. I think he found it fair but didn’t know what we would think.
“Might we step out a minute to discuss it?” Cammie said. “There are fewer of us than there are of you.”
Buzz chuckled at that, while Harry nodded.
“Please. There’s a smaller room next door that’s reserved for you.”
We headed over there. A quick conversation with Ken came up with nothing we overlooked except to add the toxicology screens and any other record that wasn’t technically an ‘arrest record’ to what was expunged. On top of that, we asked for notarized copies of every record before they were expunged, with the stipulation that none could be released unless we wound up in any court proceeding where they would be relevant. If any of our guests claimed we were drunk and filed a liability claim for that night, we had proof we weren’t. The odds of that were infinitesimally low, but why throw away exculpatory evidence?
We headed back over, negotiated our changes (which they quickly agreed to), and approved the whole thing. It only took about five minutes for an amended copy to be produced. Ken read through it, gave it his stamp of approval, and everyone signed and dated the documents.
After that, Cammie threw the curve ball we had always been planning to throw.
“I’m not sure whose budget that money comes out of, and I don’t actually care, either,” she said, smiling. “Steve and I already discussed it. We are offering to donate it to the College Station Police Department earmarked for training on ... well, whatever Chief Palko thinks would be the best way to prevent this from happening to anyone else, or even make sure students without vindictive parents who have police ties don’t get crosswise with the police. We are completely in support of your officers doing their jobs, Chief Palko, as long as they’re done professionally and respectfully. This was a glitch, but maybe there are other glitches, and we feel like the best use of this windfall is to try to make sure there are fewer glitches in the future.”
From the start, both Chief Palko’s and Buzz Wilkin’s eyes had gotten wide. Everyone looked stunned within a few sentences, and Cammie had them shaking their heads by the end.
“Personally, I’m touched,” Chief Palko said softly. “That is... highly generous. I can tell you that every person in the department will be grateful. Oh, they don’t necessarily like training, but they actually need a certain number of hours, and this is the kind we like: how to get along better with the folks we’re here to serve.”
“I strongly second that!” Buzz said. “Thank you very much! We’ll be very happy to send you a certificate acknowledging your generosity. Ordinarily, I would propose a public ceremony, but this ... it would be awkward.”
It would, too. Oh, I could (and would) tell the parents the whole crazy tale, and thus explain the donation. But it would probably get in the papers, and we might be struggling to explain to friends why we had donated a large sum to the police and how we had the money to do so. It wasn’t an obvious move right now, that’s for sure!
“Thank you, Mayor Wilkins,” Cammie said. “We would appreciate that.”
“Just to let you know,” I said, “We’re having a small party this weekend. Nothing crazy, and I promise this new agreement won’t have us turning it into a blow-out just because we think we can.”
Everyone laughed at that and nodded.
Chief Palko grinned a bit and said, “I’m going to tell the desk to wake me if anyone so much as makes a noise complaint, parking complaint, or anything else. If an officer goes into that house, I’ll be on my way there. If I’m not already there when it happens!”
“Thank you, Chief,” Cammie said, chuckling. “We really want nothing more than to be good neighbors, whether that’s for our block or for the city.”
“And we want nothing more than to be good hosts and business partners,” Buzz said.
We all shook hands and said goodbyes, then headed out.
Once we were out in the parking lot, Ken chuckled and shook his head.
“You guys don’t do anything by half measures, do you?”
“It felt right,” Cammie said. “Obviously, if we own one house and have three more mortgaged, we’re not hurting. That’s serious money, but we’re invested in the community. Code enforcement — deal or no deal — could chew that up in a couple of months if they wanted, and in a way where we would have no case to sue.”
“Not that we’re saying they would,” I said, “But this flips it around. If everyone was leaning on them before, it’s doubled now.”
“And we want safety violations flagged, obviously,” Cammie said. “It’s some nitpicky complaint about a sewer line being done wrong twenty years ago that sometimes keeps me up at night.”
Ken shook his head again.
“Add that to the list of things I doubt more than a handful of undergrads have ever even thought!”
“We are unusual,” I said, chuckling.
“So,” Cammie said, “We actually hope to never need your services again.”
Ken nodded and chuckled.
“I get enough of real estate lawyers,” Cammie added. “But, we do want to keep in touch, and we’ll happily refer any friend who needs a local lawyer to you.”
“I very much appreciate it!” Ken said. “Thank you both. This turned out to be much better for me than where we were starting, and I barely had to do anything!”
We shook hands, after which Ken headed to his car and we headed to mine.
“Well, that’s a relief!” Cammie said.
“Tell me about it!”
“One day,” she said. “One day! Not soon. But, at some point, I am telling my father how utterly disappointed I am in him. And my mother, probably, but I don’t really blame her except for not stopping him. The cards? That’s him. The police? I really think it’s him. He could have been halfway mature instead of spending all this time lashing out at me.”
“To be fair...” I said.
Cammie snorted, but nodded.
“He might have sent the police after you well before the agreement. After that, every bit of it might have been out of his hands.”
“I think he could have stopped them. And the card and all, that’s him.”
“It is,” I said.
She suddenly banged her fists against the dashboard enough to make a good thudding sound. “It just ... it really pisses me off! I have this ... this amazing life! And I have Mel, and all of you, and the Rileys, and Aunt Penelope and Uncle David, and ... on and on ... to share it with. But ... I was terrified of them finding out, for years, but I also loved them. And I still ... part of me always will, no matter how furious I am. And I can’t share all of my life now. I can’t have my mother hug me and tell me how proud she is. Or my father even shake my hand and say, ‘I always knew you could do it!’ Because ... they did. Right up until it blew up, they were always there, supporting me, cheering me on. Therapy helps so much, and thank you for pushing me to do it, but I’m just ... I’m pissed at the whole damn thing!”
“I know, and you have every right to be.”
“It’s not good for me,” she said. “The therapy is really helping. If I didn’t have that, I’d have told Paige to go burn their house down. Like ... a dozen times over! It really isn’t good for me. I’m working on it.”
She sighed, then added, “How do you do it? With your ex-wife? Because I know you get at least some of it.”
“I just ... manage,” I said. “The thing is, I have it easy. She’s essentially dead to me. The one in this universe — if she even exists — is completely innocent. The one I know exists thirty-five years in the future and doesn’t have a clue that I’m not long dead. It costs me nothing to let go and wish her well. I can’t go scream at her. I can’t apologize, either, even if I had something I wanted to apologize for. She’s fully and completely gone, except in my memories, and my memories only hurt me if I let them. I don’t want to forget — they’re part of who I am — but I don’t want to have imaginary arguments with her in my head. I did that for ... heck, at least a year in this life. Imagining how she would feel about me dating again. Dating a fourteen-year-old, for God’s sake! Isn’t that the most ridiculously stereotypical thing you can imagine? Fifty-five-year-old guy gets divorced and goes off to have an affair with a fourteen-year-old.”
Cammie clapped her hand over her face, giggling almost to the point of tears.
“That’s ... seriously, that’s ... just ... so preposterous! And yet true! Oh ... oh, my!”
It took her a minute to recover, but then she said, “It ... thanks for the laugh! I think I needed it!”
“My pleasure!” I said.
“It doesn’t help, really, but you knew that.”
“I knew,” I said, nodding. “My ex-wife is gone. You could be at your parents’ door in two hours. It’s not the same and it can’t be the same.”
“But it can still be ... I can set it aside. Maybe ... one day... after I cuss him out with words he would be appalled that I know ... I can also tell him the good things. Her, first, maybe. I don’t know. Right now, it’s ... I can’t invite my own parents to my fucking wedding! They would be breaking the law if they attended! It’s ... just insane, it really is.”
“It really is,” I said.
She sighed.
“Therapy! It helps! But, a year and a half, and it’s still ... parts are still raw when you poke at them the wrong way.”
“You’ll get there,” I said. “And ... you kinda hit the nail on the head in there.”
“I did?” she said.
“Love. It’s ... yes, you have all of us. We love you, you love us, and that’s wonderful. But no amount of love makes up for the hole left when someone you care about is gone from your life. My wife left that hole, and I didn’t even like her a lot of the time. It’s still there — I just miss her less. My kids have their holes. Even if they exist in this universe, though — and they don’t, not for well over a decade, if then — but even if they eventually exist, they won’t be the same people. I wouldn’t be the same father, and Jas wouldn’t even vaguely be the same mother. We won’t have the same means, we won’t have the same friends ... it’s pointless. I’d be trying to fill a hole with a new person who looks a lot like the old one.”
She sighed and nodded.
“You get it, at least. Not the same, but ... yeah. I’m sure you have days when you want to tell your kids about the amazing things in your life and ... you can’t. You never can.”
“No going home again,” I said, nodding. “But, on the other hand, I love my life and, in nearly every way, it’s better than anything I imagined.”
“Me, too,” Cammie said. “Very much so!”
“And there you go. It hurts sometimes, but we’re in the best place for us.”
“And that’s what matters.”
“Absolutely.”
I changed into dating attire for Darla. It was nearly the same as last night, but I’d traded the shirt for a burgundy one. No hat this time, though I strongly considered it. The odds were very high we would wind up in bed, but perhaps not. The odds were even higher that nothing new was going to happen.
The old stuff was very hot, though, and we needed plenty of practice.
I was at her door right on time. She came out, wearing a dark green dress that did great things for her. It showed more leg and more cleavage than she would have six months ago, too, and her heels were about an inch higher.
She was very sexy. And her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, with the holder I’d given her for Christmas keeping it in place. That was a message, right there.
I hugged Darla, said a quick hello to Louise, and then we were on our way to the car, holding hands.
“How was your vacation, Sir?” she said, grinning.
“It was wonderful, Milady,” I said.
She giggled.
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