d.: This is the sister chapter to the one I ran yesterday.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE BROTHERS G.O.A.T.
Alice perused the information that Linda had given her with piqued interest. The dream she had after her conversation with her husband disturbed her greatly. To add to this feeling, her dad, a fellow cop (and her favorite person), disliked her choice of a husband intensely. It was for this reason that Alice Magruder considered hiring her mentor’s husband as a divorce attorney after her second child was to be born. She quickly nixed this idea, though. It was not what she was raised to believe. Even though Ben had been left with two small children, he still believed that the marriage vow was a sacred one. He did his best to instill that belief in his two daughters.
Alice procured the website address for the Texas Law Review board from the card that Linda had supplied her with. The information that Alice found on the internet after dialing up the connection that was supplied to Jay by HPD so that he could do some paperwork from home was too interesting to ignore.
The web page from the Texas Law Review that rated lawyers in different cities was of the most interest to her. The title,“THE Best Lawyer in Greater Houston” was a descriptive one. Alice read the web page while she waited for Jay to come home. She could wait to have the conversation about his family until then, she decided.
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THE TEXAS LAW REVIEW: THE BEST LAWYER IN GREATER HOUSTON
To say that Jack Moore was the best lawyer in greater Houston is akin to saying one was the best player on the 1927 New York Yankees major league baseball team. (The debate still rages almost a century later whether that honor belonged to Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig, both first-ballot Hall of Famers. In fact, the Yankees’ 1927 roster, a.k.a. “Murderer’s Row,” boasted seven future Hall of Famers. This team is still regarded by many as the definition of greatness when discussing professional baseball diamond deity. The team won more than seventy percent of their baseball games, propelling the Yankees to win the World Series in a four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates. That was the first time that a National League team had been swept by one from the junior circuit.)
It is a high honor to be given the distinction of “Houston’s best lawyer.” The largest city in the American South is filled with high-powered attorneys. Jack Moore had been the undisputed holder of the title of the best attorney that Houston had to offer when he had decided to retire, suddenly and without warning. He had his reasons for doing this, job-induced burnout being only one of them. However, this was the only answer he would give whenever he was asked the question for his sudden retirement. Now, though, he saw a need to return to the courtroom. The decision was not made on a financial basis. He had saved enough money during his stellar career for him and his wife, Linda, to retire on and be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Still, Linda insisted on working at her job as an RN on the eighth floor at M.D. Anderson. She insisted that Jack find something, anything to do with his newfound free time. He had found a distraction for a while, but that was over now. Being a foster parent in the state of Texas now required more training than Jack or his wife had time to commit.
As a result, Jack took up playing golf; again. He had been on the all-conference freshman team during his first year at the University of Houston. A tear in the labrum of his right rotator cuff, along with muscle tears in that shoulder’s rotator cuff, however, curtailed that promising career.
Linda teased that her husband was trying to join the PGA senior tour. Jack just wanted to relax. However, as with everything else in which Jack Moore took part, he became obsessed with the game; again. Linda finally persuaded him to return to the courtroom when she noticed a case in the newspaper that seemed to be an unfair verdict for an underprivileged teen. Jack’s shoulder had already developed tendinitis because he played golf so much; so the pain that the condition caused, along with the article in the local newspaper, persuaded Jack Moore to return to the courtroom.
It took a few days for Jack to get back into the swing of doing his research. Although he had been a member of one of the best and most successful law firms in the Greater Houston area before his retirement, he was not employed by this large firm with seemingly unlimited resources anymore.
Jack did not have access to a bevy of bright young lawyers who were eager to impress the most successful partner in the firm, or the paralegals who did the majority of the “grunt work.” He found that, for this case, he must do his own research. There were no talented young men or women who had just recently passed the bar exam and were willing to sit second chair to THE best lawyer in Greater Houston. These young graduates of prestigious law schools were anxious to learn the “tricks of the trade” from the Greatest of All Time, according to some. Nor were there any seasoned paralegals to do the majority of the research on cases that may have set a precedent for this particular case.
Jack was alone in this endeavor, because he did not want to use his own resources, which he had set aside for his and his wife’s retirement, to hire people he knew would charge a high price for their services. Nor did he desire to use unproven talent in this case. It was too risky. The young man’s life may be in jeopardy if he did not procure an “innocent” verdict from the jury.
Many “cartels” (i.e. gangs) operate in and outside of prison. Drug dealers are very competitive when it comes to customer loyalty. Repeat business is the best kind of business to acquire for a drug dealer, because it will take more and more of the drug for the addict to satiate his or her desire for the drug. For this reason, many seek to eliminate the competition.
Ridding oneself of a rival drug dealer is sometimes easier to do in a prison setting, where the officers are, at times, outnumbered forty to one; than in the free world, where a cop may be watching the drug dealer’s habits intensely. The cop may have been watching this individual for months, waiting for him or her to make the mistake that will put him/her in prison. Many correctional officers are not nearly as noble as the “boys in blue” on the outside.
It was for this reason that Jack Moore poured over his information, night after night, trying to find the right answer that would keep his client out of prison, Being placed in the wrong one may inadvertently result in the death penalty for his client, he knew. So, Jack Moore did all he could to persuade the jury to exonerate his client. He also sought to have the record of the arrest expunged, so that the young man could avoid being placed on probation in the future.
Jack was successful in defending his client, finding a precedent in one of the cases in which he had been involved as a young attorney. He had been the second chair in that case, and the firm did not want to exhaust its resources on a case the partners felt was indefensible. As a result, Jack had done most of the research for the original case. When his memory was jogged, Jack remembered that he had suggested that the lead attorney challenge the chain of custody of the evidence. In both cases, the local police had failed to follow proper protocol, resulting in the District Attorney dropping the charges in both cases. He did this before the verdict could be read to avoid further embarrassment to both his and the local police offices.
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Jack entered his house and found that he would experience another victory that day, if only vicariously. He received a text from his brother saying that all was well with him. It was the one text his brother was allowed to send for the month. Jack would have no way of knowing what would happen to him the rest of the month; nor could he call or text back the number from which his brother had called him. The burner phone had been destroyed by now, he knew. That was the way his brother did business. It was not something with which Jack agreed, but he had no choice but to accept it. His brother was an adult who could make his own decisions.
Jack poured a stiff drink and raised his glass as a salute to his brother. He looked forward to the message his brother would send him the next month, even if it was only the requisite four words long. Anything longer was in danger of being traced. That could be detrimental to his brother, as well as the only civilian on the face of the Earth he was allowed to contact on a monthly basis.
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As Jack was receiving his text, Jay Magruder received the same text from the same phone. He was glad that Jose` was safe, but he still wondered how ANYONE could overcome the situation that Jose` had been subjected to. Not only had he been outmanned and outgunned by a rival gang that was trying to collect the bounty that the Leal Cartel put on his head, but he was also sans protection, since he refused to carry a weapon. Whoever was helping Jose`, Jay decided, was a formidable foe, even if he could only use four words to describe his predicament. Jay read the text again before destroying his burner phone and throwing it away. It read: Code X; situation resolved.
What Jay Magruder did not know was that Jose’s bodyguard, like his brother, was considered to be the greatest of all time at HIS job, just like his older brother. The Moore brothers were, indeed, The Brothers G.O.A.T.
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