Page 85 of Maddy's Justice

All the while Brandon Stafford had calmly puffed away on his cigar. He crushed it out in the remnants of his lunch on an expensive china plate.

“We’re not going to fire him,” Stafford said. “We’d have to start over either by doing it ourselves or hiring someone else. Now we know bringing him on board would be a bad idea.

“And you,” he continued pointing a finger at Troy, “he’s right. You’re not tough enough to get where he is the way he did it.”

Marc knocked on Melanie’s door. When she responded, he took a deep breath and went in.

“I can smell that damn cigar on you from here,” she said when he came in.

“Great, now I’m gonna stink up your office. Sorry.”

“Did they make an offer to you?”

“Nope,” Marc said sitting in one of the client chairs. “In fact, by the time I left, I’ll be surprised if they don’t fire me.”

“Why, what happened?”

Cutting out some of it, Marc explained what happened and what he said.

“Slapped them around a bit,” Melanie said when he finished. “Good for you. You know, I graduated seventh at Michigan.”

“I know. I don’t hold it against anyone. Life is what it is. You do what you must. Some are more privileged than others. So what?”

“You’re right though, I’m not sure I could’ve worked my way through college and law school,” Melanie admitted.

“Sure you could. Mostly, it just takes longer.”

Getting down to business, Marc told her what Maddy had found out. By the time he was finished, Melanie was furiously pacing behind her desk.

With her back to Marc, staring west toward the stadium, the river and St. Paul, she said nothing for a couple of minutes.

“Goddamnit!” she finally said while slamming both hands on her credenza.

Melanie turned around, looked down at Marc and asked, “Why not simply call me? Why do this in person?”

“I wanted your reaction, Melanie,” he continued. “You have a big problem with the Boys Club that these guys are running behind your back. Every time we look under a new rock, more problems slither out.

“I also wanted to talk to you about your nephew, Dylan, and his progress, or lack of it.”

“Shit. Now what?”

“He flunked a urine test. THC was found. Marijuana. I managed to save his ass from being thrown out of the Drug Court program. He had to agree to more frequent meetings with his probation officer and more frequent breath and urine tests.

“The good news is he didn’t try to bullshit his way out of it. He admitted to smoking some weed with a couple guys at work. He at least took responsibility for it and came across as seriously contrite.”

“You think he was?”

Marc thought about the question for a moment then said, “I’m kind ofnaïveabout these things. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. Then again, it’s like they say, if you can fake sincerity….”

“You can make it to Congress. Or, at least through law school,” Melanie said with a smile.

“It was a setback. He’s still in the program. The Drug Court people are not children, the ones who run the program. Most of them are recovering addicts themselves. There are people, junkies, who get in the program and think they’re smarter than the people who run it. They’ve been conning people for years and have convinced themselves that everyone buys their bullshit. The only one they’re fooling is themselves. Sooner or later, if he is gonna do that, it will catch up with him.

“I had a little chat with Dylan about all of this,” Marc said. “Was he listening? I don’t know.”

“Dylan’s like that,” Melanie said. “Conning people and getting away with it for years.”

“That’s what addicts do, and who they become. Until they stop doing that, well, they’ll never clean up. We’ll see.”

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