it for nothing but I can’t afford to. I see retirement looming in the near future, although I will hate to stop doing what I love.”
At that moment, Jack knew that this man possessed what he had been striving for all his life, especially these past few years. Jack now took cases for nothing but only because he didn’t need money anymore. Tom Wylie had taken cases for nothing all his life, even when he didn’t have any money to speak of. Thus began one of the strangest negotiations ever between a lawyer and his client.
“I’ll pay you seventy,” Jack said.
“Fifty plus expenses, and that’s my final offer—take it or leave it,” Tom replied.
Jack laughed. “I guess I’m going to have to take it, Tom. You drive a hard bargain.”
Tom laughed with him. “I do, indeed. Now let’s call Henry and your friend the bar owner and start mapping out a strategy.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
It took Henry and Ron all of ten minutes to drive from The Swamp to the condo. The storm had passed, but The Swamp was still empty when they left.
“Once people go back to their caves to get out of the weather, they don’t come out again,” Ron told Henry on the drive over.
Ron was the only one who didn’t know Tom Wylie, so Jack made the introduction when the two men arrived.
“I’ve heard of the legendary Swamp,” Tom said as he shook Ron’s hand.
Ron still couldn’t let the bad day go. He was a businessman to his core.
“Yeah, well, today it should be called The Morgue because it’s a dead zone.”
Tom smiled. “I take it the storm killed your business.”
“They fled like rats from a sinking ship.”
“They’ll be back tomorrow when it clears up. While you have some time, though, Jack and I would like to discuss his case with you and Henry.”
“Are you on board?” Henry asked.
“I am,” Tom replied. “Jack drove a hard bargain, but I wore him down eventually.”
Tom stole a glance at Jack, who was smiling. The four men moved to the dining room table and sat down.
“I still don’t know why I’m here,” Ron said. “I can feed you guys and house you, but that’s about it.”
“Actually, you can be very helpful,” Tom continued. “Jack says you know everything that’s happening in this town. We want to get this case out of Oakville, and the only way we can do that is if we can produce some evidence to show that he can’t get a fair trial here. We can look for editorials and letters to the editor and that kind of stuff, but we need to dig deeper.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Ron said.
“This case is going to heat up real fast. The national press and the foreign press are going to be falling all over each other trying to get stories. The people in this town are going to get caught up in that. They won’t be able to stay out of the way. We believe the public sentiment is going to be overwhelmingly against Jack. Any time you hear about a group scheduling a protest or talking to a reporter, any reporter, we need to know about that so we can get the information and present it to the judge.”
“I can definitely do that,” Ron said. “I thought I’d be hearing things already, but I haven’t. It’s almost like people are being told not to say anything through some underground channel or something.”
“How would that work?” Tom asked.
“This is a small town and it’s run by a small group of people. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I can tell you who the people are, though, and it’s not the mayor and the city council. It’s the people who get them elected. Sam Jeffries is one of them. You can’t discount Sam’s influence in this community. Ever since his wife was killed ten years ago, he pretty much walks on water. Then you’ve got people like the state attorney, although this fellow Merton is fairly new, and it looks like he’s following Sam’s lead. There’s Art Grumman, the editor of the paper, Jim Bentley who runs the chamber of commerce, the local ministers—people like that who control the money and the flow of information.”
“I’ll bet Jeffries has already met with these people and put the fix in,” Jack said.
Tom agreed. “I think you’re right. And if you are, we’re going to be trying this case right here in Oakville where those same people control the message