Chapter 47

I finished my ‘Lexi got pissed’ day at Dark Wolf’s home. Crying Wolf and Desert Flower were looking at some sheets of paper. It seemed they were looking at some real estate offerings.

“Wolf,” I said, tapping him on the knee to get his attention, “I need to talk to my lawyer.”

He looked up, I could see the question on his face. He put the pile of offers on the bottom of the pile that Flower was looking at. She smiled at him. “I’m going to be the one who decides anyway ... Go. Go.” She waved her fingers, dismissively.

We went into the Spirit of the Hunter office area of the home. “I want to sue a big law firm in Washington, DC. Are you up for it?”

“I think I better hear the whole story.”

So I told him the whole Dick Cheney story. Well, the part that’s actually happened so far. I didn’t mention any possible future events. I wanted to make an undercover payment to Cheney’s Congressional campaign, because he was probably going to be our congressman. His money man didn’t want to take a sub rosa contribution from an unknown person, so he said he was going to check my background. His law firm, Goldberg Eisenstat Partners, investigated me. They also paid a $10,000 bribe to a guy at Chuck Schwab to reveal all my confidential info. I threatened both Schwab’s lawyer and Cheney’s money man with a release of the bribery story to the Washington Post.

He went silent for several minutes. Nothing out of the ordinary there. “I only have one question. How did you get Schwab to take your account? And how much money is in there?”

I laughed. “That’s two questions ... I flat out lied to Schwab. Told them I was eighteen. As for the money, it’s over two million ... Before you ask: I was taking tips from Red.”

His turn to chuckle. “Of COURSE, you took stock tips from the Great Spirit. What the hell, you took a betting suggestion from him.” He went silent again.

“First of all, we don’t want to sue or upset Schwab, or even let this story get out. The SEC and Schwab will be all over you for lying when you opened the account. I don’t know if that’s a federal crime or not, and we don’t want to find out.

“Second, you’ve got Goldberg Eisenstat by the balls. They’ll settle it out of court. They’ll settle before anything gets filed in court. How hard do you want to squeeze them?”

“Well,” I said, “I want to hit them hard enough so they won’t even think about messing with me again. And I want to have Cheney’s campaign to take me seriously. I was thinking a million.”

“Your account is over two million, right?” I nodded. “Then we’ll start by asking for four million.” He smiled a really big smile. “And we’ll say we’re going to file in our home jurisdiction. We’ll file with the Shoshone courts. That’ll set their hair on fire.”

“Four million? That’s way over what I thought. But if you say so...”

“And when they balk, our next demand will be FIVE million. ‘You boys want to try for six?’” He actually laughed. “You know what happens to lawyers who are found guilty of bribery? They get disbarred. You’ve got their balls in a vice, with a hand on the tightening handle. We didn’t ask them to invade your account, they did it all themselves.

“How’d you find out about the bribery?”

“I hired a private investigator. Here’s the report.” Gulp. This was an outright lie, to my adoptive father. I didn’t like it.

“The name is blacked out.”

“Yeah. I sorta promised them I wouldn’t use their name. They did it for me pro bono.”

He was reading the report while talking to me. How could he do that? “Oh. I really like the part where they got the copy of the actual fax that this Grover guy sent. How the hell did he get that?”

“I dunno.”

He went to Marylou’s computer. “Oh good. There’s a text editor.” He fired up the text editor on the TRS80 and started typing. Who knew that Crying Wolf, Shoshone Medicine Man, could use a computer?

“Hot Stuff!” he shouted. “Can I borrow you for a minute? Please?”

In a little while, Flower appeared in the doorway. “You bellowed, O Lord and Master?”

Wolf said, “Yup. We’ve got a four million dollar case that we’re going to win. I need you to get down to the Fort Washakie library, or maybe the Shoshone Arapaho College library. We need all the information on Goldfarb Eisen ... What’s the name, Lexi?”

“Goldberg Eisenstat Partners. They are a Washington, DC, law firm.”

“Right,” he said. “You know what we need. Also find out what we need to do to file in the Shoshone Tribal courts.”

“Oh,” said the lovely Desert Flower, “that’ll put some frost on their pumpkins. This’ll be fun. I’ve never gone against a big firm in court.”

She was a paralegal? Maybe a partner?

[Lexi, she is a graduate of the University of Texas Law School. She graduated in the top ten percent of her class. She’s the lawyer of record on a class action suit against the city of White Settlement, Texas, to force them to change their name. She lost. Lots of other cases, but that one stood out to me, because of the name of the defendant.]

“Hot Stuff,” said Wolf, “they can’t even allow us to file. It’s an easy win ... Oh, before I forget. White Owl, give me a dollar.”

I dug into my jeans and came up with a buck. “I was wondering when you were going to hit me up for a retainer.” I smiled.

He just laughed, and went back to his text editor. In about ten minutes he printed out a receipt. “Here, put this with your other papers.”

“I have papers?”

He snatched it back. “You do now.” He reached for the phone. “Hello, Swallow. It’s your favorite Medicine Man. We need a professional office space. Three offices, reception area, that kind of thing ... Oh. We’d like to have it yesterday. In the Ethete area ... Yeah, at my Dad’s phone number. The answering machine may say ‘Spirit of the Hunter,’ don’t worry about that.” He dialed another number. “Hello. This is Crying Wolf and I want to leave a message for Marylou Deer Horn. Tell her that I may be getting some messages at the office phone. That’s all.”

I went out of the office to see Hunter sitting on his accustomed fence post. ‘We’re in for it now. Getting some big, powerful enemies,’ I thought to him. He blinked back without saying a word. I swear, the Wolf family silences were rubbing off on him. Or maybe he had rubbed off on the Wolfs for years.

Rock and Bear interrupted my soliloquy with the Hunter with a loud roar of a Ford. That machine needed exhaust pipe work. “Oh, good,” I told them. “I need to talk to both of you.”