I could get out, Tommy was shining his light on me, and then asked, “Shit, John, is that you?”
We stood out in the cold on the shoulder of the road for half an hour, catching up on old times, me talking too much out of relief that I wasn’t going to spend the night in jail. He stuck his head in the window to say hello to Kathleen, but she stayed in the running car for warmth. He had joined the sheriff’s department three years earlier and thought it was a great job. He was impressed that I was a lawyer. We promised to stay in touch, but of course didn’t.
A couple of years later, just before Kathleen left me, Tommy called me at the office one day. The area of the county in which his parents had farmed had developed like everywhere else. They had both died within the last few years. Tommy, as sole heir, was receiving offers from developers who wanted to build subdivisions. Tommy had received one offer from a man who didn’t want to buy the land, but wanted to go in with Tommy as partners to develop it themselves. He promised that Tommy would make at least twice as much money this way.
Tommy told me that he had checked the guy out through the sheriff’s department and couldn’t find anything of a criminal nature against him. But he wanted me to see what I could find out about him.
I asked the head of our real estate section what he knew about the developer. He had me pull the door of his office shut, said not to quote him, and told me the developer would be indicted before the end of the year on a variety of federal charges.
When I called Tommy back and told him not to do the deal, he said he had already decided that it was the way to make the most money. He had all the documents and was just about to sign them. He appreciated my advice, but thought he would go ahead and deed over the property to a limited liability company that the developer had formed. I told him I couldn’t say why, but it would be a big mistake. A lot of cops, like a lot of lawyers, think that their ability to judge character is infallible. Tommy had decided the developer was honest, and he didn’t want to believe he might have been wrong. He pressed me for more information, but I told him that was all I could say. Tommy hung up the phone still undecided on what he was going to do.
A week later, the headline on the business page of The Commercial Appeal announced that the developer had been indicted on sixty counts of bank and mail fraud. Tommy called me that afternoon and thanked me for my advice. After I told him he was welcome, and he told me to send him a bill, he asked, “John, what happens if a person has signed a deed, but it was never recorded. It’s no good, right?”
“If you mean is it legally binding between the parties, sure it is,” I said. “It just wouldn’t be effective against another purchaser who didn’t know about it.”
“Well, what if the seller found out that the buyer was a lying, thieving sonofabitch and changed his mind before the deed was recorded, and just took the deed back. Then there wouldn’t be any proof that he had made the transfer, would there?”
“Under the statute of frauds, there has to be some writing to prove a transfer of real estate, but the buyer could testify that there had been one and that the seller had taken it back. Besides, all deeds are notarized, so the notary could testify that there had been a deed.”
“Let’s just say that the notary is a real good friend of the seller and not worry about what she’ll say.”
“Tommy, what are we talking about here, man?” I asked. “If you went ahead and did the deal with this guy, we can file a petition to set aside the deed for fraud. The other things you’re talking about are illegal. You’re a cop, you know that.”
“John, I’m just talking hypothetically here, you know,” Tommy said. “Don’t get all excited.”
“Tommy, I can’t give you advice on how to break the law,” I said.
“John, let me just ask you one more hypothetical question. Okay? For old time’s sake?”
“Okay, Tommy.”
“If this fellow who had been ripped off filed a petition, like you said, but this other fellow, the crooked one, was in a whole lot of other shit, probably going to file bankruptcy, maybe go to jail, how long would it be before he got his property back?”
“I won’t lie to you, Tommy, it could be a long time. The bankruptcy trustee would probably try to keep all of the assets intact to pay off all the other creditors, so he would fight tooth and nail to keep the property.”
“Hey, John, I appreciate your advice. Like I said, send me a bill.”
I never heard anything about the developer claiming that he owned Tommy’s property. Maybe he decided that it would just get him into more of the same kind of trouble he was already in, or maybe Tommy persuaded him that it was not in his best interest to swindle a cop.
In any event, Tommy decided that I was a great lawyer, even though all I had done was give him some inside information. He sold his property a few months later for over two million dollars, and our firm handled the closing for him. He promptly quit the sheriff’s department and went into business for himself, but he was always vague about what that business was. He only told me that he had figured out some ways to make money if you had money while he was working for the sheriff. My firm didn’t do any legal work on his new ventures.
By now, Tommy and Mary had finished off the platter of battered meat and vegetables, and Tommy was starting in on the hushpuppies. Through a mouth of cornmeal, he gestured at me and said to Mary, “Did you know that this fellow here you’re with tonight used to be one of the best lawyers in Memphis?”
Mary only smiled, first at him and then at me.
“It’s the truth,” Tommy said. “And now he’s one of the best private investigators around. Why, hell, just last month he got the goods on some rich faggot, nobody knows how.”
“Hey, come on, Tommy,” I winced, “that’s supposed to be confidential. How did you know about that? And don’t say faggot.”
“Confidential?” he asked loudly. “Hell, son, something that good ain’t gonna stay confidential for long. And don’t go correcting my grammar. I just called him a name, you’re the one who took the movies of him engaged in unnatural acts.”
“You may have a point, Tommy,” I said.
“Course I have a point,” he said. “The man was a faggot, so I call him a faggot. Besides, you don’t try to get me to quit saying nigger anymore.”
“I gave up on that one after about the hundredth try,” I said.
Mary reached out and put her hand on Tommy’s arm. “Tommy,” she said, “I don’t like those words either. You are too nice a man to use them.”
Tommy looked at her for a minute, and then said, “Mary, if you don’t like them words, I won’t use them in front of you, and I’ll try not to use them at all.” Tommy turned to me and said “See, John, you just need to learn how to ask.”
“I don’t think I could ever ask like that,” I said.
Jessie brought my catfish surrounded by hushpuppies, French fries and slaw. While I ate, I told Tommy about Thomas Tuggle. Tommy hadn’t heard of Tuggle by his real name or his street name. He had been out of the sheriff’s department for several years, and figured Thomas’s troubles had probably been with the MPD. Mary listened to my story intently, her eyes darting back and forth
