The Holders of Helmut Street by Orrin Onken

Author:Orrin Onken [Onken, Orrin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salish Ponds Press LLC
Published: 2020-02-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

I had lied to Ben. In the world I knew, once a professional fiduciary got his or her bony hands on you, she was there until they planted you in the ground. The judges only appointed a professional when the family was too screwed up to take care of its own, and from years of experience, they believed that screwed up families never get better. The screwed up family that consisted of Portland judges, lawyers, court visitors and professional fiduciaries was arguably not a whole lot healthier than the families they preyed upon, and never got much better either, but that family kept its blemishes secret. For Ben, this meant that Rossie was never coming back. He would live the rest of his life under the sterile care of Rosemary Best and her horde of low paid but neatly dressed caregivers.

I advise my clients, old and new, to identify an achievable legal goal and stick to that. That means not taking up crusades, not trying to reform anything or anybody, and not trying to find justice in the statute books or the marble halls of the courthouse. I follow my own advice by steadfastly refusing to go big picture. I represent one client at a time on one case at a time. I'd represented Ben and lost. It wasn't the first case I'd lost and wouldn't be the last.

Despite my willingness to accept lost cases and reject lost causes, it was hard for me to forget Ben and Rossie and the odd collection of characters watching life from their front windows on Helmut Street. I wrote up my fee request. Now that Rosemary was in charge of Ben's money, she would be the one writing the check for my fee. She wouldn't do that until Judge Berne had reviewed the bill and determined that the services had all been a necessary part of representing Ben. I wasn't worried about it. Berne had never denied one of my fee requests and making sure I got paid promptly was one of the tactics Rosemary used to encourage lawyers not to work too hard on behalf of her wards. I gave a copy of the fee request to Peggi and asked her to deliver it to Ben. He wouldn't read it, and I could have mailed it to him, but I wanted her to do a little spying and report back to me. Being that Ben was in love with her, she was amenable to the task.

The next morning I was late to the office. When I arrived, Peggi was fuming. She plopped her freckled butt into my client chair and declared, “Rosemary Best threw me out of Ben's house.”

“Personally?” I asked.

“The blond bitch herself. I took the papers over last night after work thinking I would visit Ben for a while. I knocked and this woman answers the door. I don't know who she is, so I tell her that I am your legal assistant and I am here to see Ben.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.