Rattlesnake & Son

RATTLESNAKE

&

SON

ISBN: 978-1-932926-69-9

LCCN: 2018951839

Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan Miller

Cover Design: Angella Cormier

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission of the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Artemesia Publishing

9 Mockingbird Hill Rd

Tijeras, New Mexico 87059

www.apbooks.net

info@artemesiapublishing.com

Names: Miller, Jonathan C.

Title: Rattlesnake & Son : [a novel] / by Jonathan Miller.

Other Titles: Rattlesnake and Son

Description: Tijeras, New Mexico : Artemesia Publishing, [2019] | Series:

Rattlesnake Lawyer | Subtitle from cover.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781932926668 (softcover) | ISBN 9781932926699 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Fathers and sons--New Mexico--Fiction. | Lawyers--

New Mexico--Fiction. | Problem youth--New Mexico--Fiction. |

Psychic ability--Fiction. | LCGFT: Legal fiction (Literature) | Thrill

ers (Fiction) | BISAC: FICTION / Thrillers / Legal. | FICTION / Le

gal. | FICTION / Thrillers / Supernatural.

Classification: LCC PS3613.I5386 R38 2019 (print) | LCC PS3613.I5386

(ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

RATTLESNAKE

&

SON

by

Jonathan Miller

Artemesia Publishing

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted: persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

~ Mark Twain.

To Marie.

Table of Contents

PART I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

PART II

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

PART III

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Author’s Note

PART I

TRUTH

Chapter 1

Cruiser

I can’t understand you. Please stop!" I said aloud to whoever or whatever was causing the sharp pinging in my head. The pinging had become a regular occurrence over the last few months, but this was the loudest ping by far. If this was psychic e-mail, I didn’t have enough bars in my brain to receive it.

Perhaps I was in a psychic dead spot and all the electronic noise of urban Albuquerque was interfering with the ectoplasm. After checking the mail at the main post office, I headed east on Interstate 40. I soon found myself in gridlock, inching toward the Big I interchange with Interstate 25, Exit 226. In the heart of Albuquerque, I could go three different directions––north toward my home in the nice desert suburb of Sandia Heights, east to see my real estate agent in the glass towers of uptown, or south, and go straight to Hell. Well, south actually took me through the ugly industrial outskirts of the city. I went all over New Mexico, but rarely went south.

Was the pinging telling me which direction to head?

Then again, maybe this wasn’t a psychic message after all. I could have a blood clot or some unknown form of migraine. The pinging was just the gridlock in my arteries, blocking the flow of blood through the left hemisphere of my brain. There had to be a logical, medical explanation, right?

Nothing was supernatural about this lunchtime traffic jam on Interstate 40, it was neither super nor natural. Albuquerque on an ordinary Friday was impersonating LA on a getaway afternoon. I had stopped dead and wasn’t living life in any fast lane.

The pinging stopped as my phone rang aloud, as if on cue. I caught the phone on the second ring. This is Dan Shepard. I pressed a button and spoke into the air, courtesy of my phone’s Bluetooth connection to the car radio. I wanted to add The Rattlesnake Lawyer, but my rattle was worse than my bite these days. I made my living on something called the breakdown docket. I took over the cases from lawyers who had breakdowns, disposing of their cases as expeditiously as possible for a substantial fee from the courts. Eventually, I’ll have my own breakdown, and someone would take over the cases from me.

Still, I’d managed to avoid that inevitable breakdown for over twenty years.

A female voice emerged from my radio. Mr. Shepard, we need you to come down to Truth or Consequences for a juvenile case this afternoon at two. There’s an order requiring your presence, signed by Judge Brady. The juvenile’s name is Cruiser Arnold.

An order requiring my presence signed by a judge? I loved the law, but never liked orders. I had lived in New Mexico for years but still smiled when hearing the name of the town of Truth or Consequences, nicknamed T or C.

T or C sounded A-ok. In this high-tech world, I still received my case assignments by either mail or phone call. If I returned to my office now, I could review my cases in alphabetical order in an endless loop. I could check Ybarra, then Zamora, calendar the month’s hearings, and draft an e-mail or two to opposing counsel. Perhaps I’d even fill in a stock motion to suppress evidence. I often joked that it was Frivolous Motion Friday. I'd then begin the alphabet all over again with the A files.

Arnold would fit right in before my four cases for various Bacas.

Cruiser Arnold’s juvenile case sounded like a cruise down easy money street and an escape from the everyday; or at least an escape from meeting with my real estate agent. I hoped to sell my home after I finished ridding the bathroom of mold. There was a term of art for fixing mold— remediation. Neil Young once sang that rust never slept, but mold didn’t sleep either. How can you defend someone you know is guilty? You think about paying for the mold remediation of your master bathroom.

I was already in my blue chalk pinstriped Daniel Hechter suit, white monogrammed shirt from some British mail-order house (buy one get one free). An ancient purple Jerry Garcia tie was lying on the passenger seat. I’m on my way.

Sierra County Courthouse, Division One.

Got it.

I patted my dashboard’s phone icon and hung up. I drove a used Lincoln MKZ sedan, the cheapest luxury car available with my credit score. I couldn’t resist the salesman’s pitch that I be a Lincoln Lawyer. I doubt that he had seen the film of the same name to realize that the term was not necessarily a compliment.

The traffic magically cleared. It took an awkward shift over three lanes before I could take the southbound exit onto I-25. Once I passed Exit 223 for the eight stories of Presbyterian Hospital, construction blocked any exit, blocked any escape.

If you lived in New Jersey, people asked What exit? In New Mexico, the exits defined how far I was from home. Usually the further the better, as I could bill for mileage and per diem.

It would be a two-hour straight shot to Exit 79, the Sierra County courthouse, Division One, assuming I drove seventy-nine mph. That way I wouldn’t get points on my license if I got ticketed.

Once the southern warehouses and refineries of Albuquerque receded and I crossed the Rio Grande near the Isleta Casino, I was back in rattlesnake country. Even though the Rio Grande became the border between the US and Mexico hundreds of miles away from here, this crossing took me out of my Albuquerque bubble. My pulse beat a little bit faster.

Still driving seventy-nine, I tried to find the Cruiser Arnold case online on New Mexico Courts using my smart phone. Cruiser Arnold. Was that even a real name? Then I remembered that juveniles didn’t appear on court websites, so I couldn’t research him. I had represented a few juveniles with the first name of Cruz, usually Hispanic kids from Albuquerque’s tough South Valley. They often went by the nickname Cruiser, much like Ignacios were called Nachos and Jesus somehow became Chuy. At least Cruiser wasn’t a Chuy, which always sounded weird coming from my Anglo lips.

I recited a line from the classic comedy, Stripes. They call me the cruiser, said one military recruit, because I like fast cars and fast women.

They should call you the dork, replied the late John Candy.

I sure didn’t want to call the dork, excuse me, the kid, Cruiser, but I didn’t really want to call him by his first name if it was Cruz, either. Hearing that name reminded me I’d been married to a Luna Cruz, but she’d been out of my life for more than a decade. As far as I knew, she was still in Bangalore, India running international affairs for the Dragon Moon Corporation. I hadn’t seen our son, Marley, since she and he moved there more than a decade ago.

Luna had gone overseas for our son’s next round of experimental treatments after some type of bone marrow transplant. While she was there, she met the head of a company called Shiva Petrochemicals. She and Mr. Shiva––I never got his real name––did a corporate merger.

Soon after, I received a phone call from Mr. Shiva’s corporate solicitor, a Ms. Sharma, that Luna Cruz Shepard no longer wished to be in my life, and most certainly no longer wanted to be a Shepard. That went double for Marley. Even worse, international law, English law, and/or Indian law, now applied. Ms. Sharma of Shiva Petrochemical implied there would be a permanent international restraining order filed against me if I protested. Plus court costs, which could be in the thousands. I signed a few forms waiving my rights, and never heard from them again.

I did the occasional Google search for my son, but he didn’t seem to exist.

Damn, I had missed Luna and Marley. She loved our son more than life itself. If she honestly thought Marley would be better off without me, it was probably true. Luna the overachiever had become the head of a global corporation. She could give Marley the world. All I could give him was the breakdown docket.

I didn’t want to mess with the solicitor or her Oxford accent. Ms. Sharma of Shiva Petrochemical had become Shiva the god of death and destroyer of families.

When did I become such a wimp? Perhaps the moment I turned fifty-five and just wanted to survive the rest of my career without making waves, being sued, or suffering a disciplinary complaint. I had envisioned a great future when I passed the bar all those years ago. Lately I had lowered the bar, and lowered the boom, on my expectations.

My headache grew worse with every mile southbound. The pinging didn’t seem natural. Even though the traffic was thinning on this side of the Rio, I should concentrate on the road as I approached Los Lunas. Lunas plural, and it was named after a family not the moons, and certainly not the singular name of my lost love.

Still, the only Luna I could think of was the Luna. I never learned if she had remarried, or had a new last name. Was it Luna Shiva? No, that was the corporation. Luna Sharma? No, that was the solicitor. I just knew that she wasn’t Luna Cruz Shepard.

As I passed Belen, the hub of enchantment, I tried to Google Luna Cruz. Nothing came up in the last few years. It was as if she didn’t exist anymore in America. At the exit for Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge and its dry marshes, I checked out the name Arnold in relation to Truth or Consequences. A headline read arnold arrives at spaceport, but I couldn’t connect to the link. There was indeed a spaceport down by T or C, but it was outbound only. There was the occasional launch of an unmanned rocket which barely reached the upper atmosphere. There was no midnight flight coming in from anywhere, at least not yet. Other than the occasional explosion of a few other rockets, the place got very little publicity. I wasn’t surprised that their website was down.

I felt another distinct pinging in my head, silence and then another series of pings. It sounded clearer, closer. I recognized the pattern as the Morse code for SOS from seeing snippets of Titanic a few hundred times. SOS, SOS, SOS. Could the SOS be coming from this Cruiser Arnold?

Did the young Cruiser Arnold have a connection to this Arnold person arriving at the spaceport? Why would some fortunate son like that need to SOS a court appointed breakdown docket attorney like me?

Another forty miles of pinging down the interstate, I passed a rest stop with a sign warning everyone to beware of rattlesnakes. This wasn’t the infamous Rattlesnake Rest Stop where I dubbed myself the Rattlesnake Lawyer. Still, these crumbling rest stops with their hungry rattlesnakes were all the same. I’d keep an eye out, just in case.

The SOS became unbearable, so I stopped for gas just north of Socorro at Exit 156 in the hamlet of Lemitar, New Mexico, a census designated place with a population of around three hundred souls. The SOS stopped. My head was blissfully silent for a moment.

While pumping gas, I looked north at some mobile homes that might have been flattened by a tornado, and an abandoned gray wooden building with busted out windows. It could have been a barn; it could have been a courthouse. A few people in hoods scurried in and out of this structure carrying packages like the three dusty kings bearing gifts to an infant. Flying over this Old Testament landscape was a white rectangular sign the size of a basketball backboard proclaiming this God forsaken part of the earth was THE PROMISED LAND in blue letters.

I had no idea why Lemitar was the promised land, or who had promised it to whom. I hurried into the bathroom, took care of business, but the pinging started again as if to say, you’ve had your break, now hurry up and save our ship.

As I walked back out to the car and took a final look at the Promised Land billboard, I knew that somehow, someday, the pinging would have a link to this very spot.

I tied my purple tie before heading south again.

After Lemitar and then the small town of Socorro, the next gas, food and no lodging stood thirty-five miles south at an exit for the Santa Fe Diner. This dead spot in the heart of the outback had no Santa and no Fe.

The pinging grew faster and faster, as the interstate eventually crossed a treeless plateau past the diner. I liked plateaus. Hell, my life was in one right now. Just ten more years of practice and I could quit and retire somewhere west. Tucson sounded nice in the December of my life.

The plateau ended a few minutes later as I roller-coasted through some steep arroyos. gusty winds may exist. They sure did, and they gusted at this very moment. I had to grip the wheel tightly to avoid swerving off the road. When I was a rookie lawyer late for court, I had once changed into a suit while coasting down one of these canyons. My car was buffeted by these gusty winds. Those were the days.

The SOS repeated with seemingly greater urgency. I sped up to 84 mph, and risked only five points on my record if I got a ticket. I don’t remember crossing the next few miles of desert, because there wasn’t much to remember—no grass, no trees, no cars. Squinting, I could see the blue waters of Elephant Butte Lake State Park to the southeast. Hemingway had written a story called Hills Like White Elephants. He could have been talking about the hills around Elephant Butte, although they were more tan than white. There was an exit for the road to the lake at milepost 83.

I almost took Exit 83, which would be the long scenic route to Truth or Consequences. I’d have the view of the lake at least. I checked my watch, no time for scenic routes. The pattern of pings changed for a moment, a steady drone, as if to tell me not to detour. Moments later, I took the first T or C exit, 79. The main drag through town was Date Street. Perfect. I had a date with destiny.

A gigantic Walmart with covered parking stood guard at the entrance to town. If it wasn’t a supercenter, it at least was a better than average one. It was hilly throughout the town, but these were bare and rocky hills. Hills like baby white elephants then.

Even though Sierra County was allegedly booming from the spaceport, most of the money had gone south to Las Cruces, or perhaps up into orbit. There certainly wasn’t a Nordstrom here, or a Nordstrom Rack, much less a Target.

Despite a handful of art galleries and a few trendy restaurants downtown, the town had barely changed since the spaceport came a few years ago. Hell, the town had barely changed since 1950, when it changed its name from Hot Springs to Truth or Consequences to win a television contest from that once famous show.

The pinging was loud and steady now—you’re almost here. As I drove slowly down Date Street, I felt for the young Cruiser. Only one boulevard to cruise (but with a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut and a Sonic) to find a date. This was the last town in America without a Starbucks.

When I arrived at the small, white stucco courthouse a mile later, the pinging in my head increased in intensity. I parked and hurried into the building, which looked like a medical clinic in a middling Florida suburb. The northernmost palm tree in New Mexico guarded the door. The palms were not thriving up here, but court staff had valiantly fought to keep them alive.

The SOS pings were now in sync with my heartbeat. This must be the place.

A hand-written sign on the door warned of upcoming court closures statewide due to computer upgrades. I did not pass through a metal detector inside the courthouse entrance, but an elderly bailiff hurried over to me. Like a greeter at a Walmart, he stared at me, scanning for any contraband hidden on my black suit. Can I help you, sir?

Can I see Cruz Arnold? I asked. I wasn’t going to call the boy Cruiser. Too familiar. He has court in Division One.

There’s only one division. The bailiff looked at me blankly. And you can’t meet anyone in custody prior to court. No room.

I flashed my bar card. But I’m his attorney!

Are you sure? That was the question lawyers asked when they couldn’t think of anything else to say. It sounded strange coming from the bailiff.

I don’t know.

The loudest SOS of them all rocked my brain. I had to rescue poor Cruiser. "The judge ordered me to be here." I flashed my bar card in his face as if it was a receipt for allegedly stolen merchandise. I was an intimidating lawyer in a good suit that hid my ancient tie, so the bailiff retreated. He ushered me to an interview room and gestured to the deputies.

The pinging slowed and softened. Moments later, a Sierra County deputy brought in young Cruiser and sat him down the other side of the glass partition. When he looked at me, he must have recognized me, smiled, and the pinging stopped for good.

I pointed at my head and smiled at him.

Young Cruiser Arnold was about fourteen, small, and young for his age. He hadn’t hit puberty yet. I had weighed eighty-eight pounds when I was his age and he was about the same size. His orange jump suit was three sizes too big.

The kid looked vaguely familiar, but he had a black eye and a busted nose under a shaved head, so I couldn’t be sure. The buttons on his jumpsuit were out of alignment, even his horned-rimmed glasses were crooked.

I knew him from somewhere, but I needed more context. Had I represented him before? Or one of his parents? Was he an alleged victim in one of my cases that I had viciously cross-examined?

I pointed to the ancient dial-up phone on the wall to his right. He picked up the phone and attempted to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear anything other than a dial tone. He had difficulty dialing with his handcuffs. Next, I heard a mechanical recording announcing that all calls were monitored, but the line still didn’t connect. The phones must have come from another century. They should be updated as well.

The phone on my side finally rang. I picked it up.

Too late! Before Cruiser Arnold could say his first word into the phone, a burly guard lifted all eighty-eight pounds of Arnold into the air and carried him through the back door. Simultaneously, I heard a knock on the door behind me. Visiting moments were over. We would have to go into court cold—without a file—without any knowledge of this defendant at all.

I shrugged. Why should this day be different from any other day in my career? I had seen it all in my rattles around New Mexico, I could win jury trials without a file. Yet something was different. Cruiser was different. Where did I know him from?

The bailiff stood by the door, blocking my entrance to the courtroom. Wait your turn.

Frustrated, I stood in the small lobby of the courthouse. Through the big picture window, I saw a young woman with long, jet-black hair emerge from the driver side of a shiny turquoise Subaru. The woman’s black outfit nearly floated off the ground as she walked, like she was Darth Vader’s intern on some desert planet. She sported an overlarge white cow skull on a necklace that looked like she stole it out of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. The only splash of color was a pink streak on her black hair.

The devil’s intern went to the back and opened the car door. A woman with spiked platinum blond hair exited. If Ms. Cow Skull was a hench-woman, this was her Dark Lady.

The blond looked totally out of place for court in the boonies. Perhaps she’d gone to a cocktail party on the dark side of the moon with her gravity-defying heels that could have come right off a live barracuda that had stalked the lake. Her only concessions to rural New Mexico were turquoise earrings and accents on her jet-black dress.

The assistant handed her lady a matching barracuda briefcase. Then the lady took a deep breath as her assistant brushed the lint off her clothes. She had to be the all-powerful Ms. Arnold, of the spaceport, descending from earth orbit for her son. Who else could she be?

Before I could get a better look at the barracuda, the bailiff called me into the courtroom. They’re ready for you now, he said. The judge banged the gavel and another boy in orange was dragged back into detention. Cruiser Arnold’s case was called, and I headed to the podium. It was a tight squeeze in such a cramped space in front of the courtroom. Poor Cruiser nearly tripped over himself when he was ushered in through a back door by the guards. Obviously, he had never walked in leg shackles before.

Judge Brady was already on the bench of Sierra County Courthouse, Division One and looked exactly like New England Patriots legend, Tom Brady. I had heard of this judge; he had been one of the first judges to come out in this remote and Republican part of the state. Several of my gay friends had told me that while he was straight-laced here in town, he often headed to Santa Fe or even San Francisco for the weekend to play with lawyers and criminals alike.

The prosecutor, Jane Dark, entered her appearance for the great State of New Mexico by speaking directly into the microphone. She was from another district down in Cruces, and they must have run out of prosecutors up here. God, she had done a mock trial competition with her Native American teammates against my former step-daughter, Dew, when Dew was in high school. And now Jane Dark was a bad-ass-prosecutor in a red power suit, even her braided Navajo hairstyle, the tsai, was a power tsai.

Poor Cruiser kept fidgeting around as if his body was fighting his medication. I didn’t feel the pinging now, it was like he was clamping it down in front of company.

Another person joined us at the podium. He wore a blue polyester blazer and red clip-on tie. If the bailiff was a greeter at Walmart, this kid was an assistant manager of the electronics department. He introduced himself as Joe Smith. He could have been me when I was a public defender just starting out. Joe seemed nervous, as if this simple detention hearing was a big deal.

In a county with no private lawyers, public defenders routinely stood in for arraignments as a matter of course. Joe clearly hadn’t read the indictment or whatever they called the charging document here in juvenile court. While I could improvise my tail off as the rattlesnake lawyer, this young lawyer was a garden snake at best.

"I’m ordered to be the boy’s lawyer, here, I said, asserting my territory. Check your file."

Joe opened the file and mumbled that, yes indeed, he was the attorney for the juvenile named Cruiser Arnold. That was odd. If the boy had a lawyer, why was I here? He mumbled the boy’s first name. I didn’t understand what he said.

Still, it took me a moment to put it together when the barracuda blond came up to the podium. There was absolute silence, as if her black-hole dress had sucked up all the oxygen and all the gravity in the courtroom. God, she was beautiful. How long had it been since I had been with a woman? Any woman? None since my ex-wife.

I hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself by becoming visibly attracted to this goddess.

And you are . . . the judge asked the barracuda.

She was as tongue-tied when she saw me as I was when I saw her. Why would such a powerful woman grow nervous around the lowly rattlesnake?

My name is Luna Cruz Arnold, I mean Luna Cruz Shepard, I mean just plain Luna Cruz. I’m the mother of Marley Cruz, aka Cruiser Arnold.

The judge now looked at me. So that makes you the infamous Mr. Shepard, the rattlesnake lawyer. We’ve made you a party to the petition, which means you are part of this case from here on in. Can you state your name and your relationship to the parties?

I’m Dan Shepard, I said, nearly fainting. That makes me this boy’s father.

Chapter 2

Luna Landing

The hearing in Sierra County Courthouse, Division One itself was a five-minute detention hearing that turned into a six-minute plea and seven-minute sentencing. Even a rookie like Joe Smith could handle it without effort. Apparently, his client, the Cruiser, had taken some cheap plastic Star Wars action figures from the local Walmart. Smith easily handled the case—no-contest plea, credit for one-day time served and seventeen dollars of restitution.

I even told my usual joke, that the young man would be happy to write a letter of apology to the late Sam Walton and the rest of the Walton family.

As usual, no one laughed.

Cruiser would be released in a few hours. The guard took him into a back room to get him processed.

I looked at Luna Cruz Whatever after the judge banged his gavel and left the bench. We were now alone in the courtroom. The spiked blond hair just didn’t look right against her tan skin. She was Eva Peron in her prime, or maybe Madonna on a sold-out comeback tour.

I recognized her five-dollar turquoise earrings from our trip to Taos Pueblo in another lifetime.

Nice earrings, I said.

Thanks, she said. When I wear them, I think of our trip to Taos when you thought they cost five hundred bucks. When you found out it was only five dollars, you scraped through the car to find the change to buy them, bought them for me with the change from the car. That was pretty romantic.

I’m flattered you still remember.

Why haven’t you called us?

Called you? You took an international restraining order against me, like ten years ago. That’s what the lawyer, excuse me, the solicitor, told me.

Not even, she said. Oh, my God. I am so sorry. I had no idea.

I’m confused. You married the lawyer?

No. I married Nathaniel Arnold of Shiva Corporation. His solicitor’s name was Sharma, not Shiva. The solicitor and my ex-husband must have threatened to file something against you. I had nothing to do with it. They didn’t tell me about it. They probably thought you could make a claim on the company shares back when we were married.

So you don’t hate me?

I never hated you. She said. Not even.

I loved the way she said those words with the last remnants of a New Mexico lilt. She then talked rapidly, reflecting her last years on the East Coast. "In fact, I need you now more than ever as our only son