The Street Lawyer Read Free

and shoot me.” I must’ve hesitated too long, because Mister shouted, “Do it now!” And he used the gun when he shouted.
    I called Rudolph, who also hesitated, and so I shouted at him. “Just fax them in here,” I demanded. “Last year’s only.”
    We stared at the fax machine in the corner for fifteen minutes, afraid Mister might start executing us if our 1040’s didn’t hurry along.

Two
    F RESHLY ANOINTED as scribe for the group, I sat where Mister pointed with the gun and clutched the faxes. My buddies had been standing for almost two hours, backs to the wall, still joined together, barely able to move, and they were beginning to slouch and slump and look miserable.
    But their level of discomfort was about to rise significantly.
    “You first,” he said to me. “What’s your name?”
    “Michael Brock,” I answered politely. Nice to meet you.
    “How much money did you make last year?”
    “I’ve already told you. A hundred and twenty thousand. Before taxes.”
    “How much did you give away?”
    I was certain I could lie. I was not a tax lawyer, but I was confident I could dance around his questions. I found my 1040 and took my time flipping through the pages. Claire had earned thirty-one thousand dollars as a second-year surgical resident, so our gross income looked quite handsome. But we paid fifty-three thousand in taxes—federal income and an amazing variety of others—and after repayment of student loans, Claire’s educational expenses, twenty-four hundred a month for a very nice apartment in Georgetown, two late-model cars with the obligatory mortgages, and a host of other costs naturally related to a comfortable lifestyle, we had invested only twenty-two thousand in mutual funds.
    Mister was waiting patiently. In fact, his patience was beginning to unnerve me. I assumed that the SWAT boys were crawling in the air vents, climbing nearby trees, scampering across the roofs of buildings next door, looking at blueprints of our offices, doing all the things you see on TV with the goal of somehow placing a bullet through his skull, and he seemed oblivious to it. He had accepted his fate and was ready to die. Not true for the rest of us.
    He continually toyed with the red wire, and that kept my heart rate over a hundred.
    “I gave a thousand dollars to Yale,” I said. “And two thousand to the local United Way.”
    “How much did you give to poor people?”
    I doubted if the Yale money went to feed needy students. “Well, the United Way spreads the money around the city, and I’m sure some of it went to help the poor.”
    “How much did you give to the hungry?”
    “I paid fifty-three thousand dollars in taxes, and a nice chunk of it went for welfare, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Children, stuff like that.”
    “And you did this voluntarily, with a giving spirit?”
    “I didn’t complain,” I said, lying like most of my countrymen.
    “Have you ever been hungry?”
    He liked simple answers, and my wit and sarcasm would not be productive. “No,” I said. “I have not.”
    “Have you ever slept in the snow?”
    “No.”
    “You make a lot of money, yet you’re too greedy to hand me some change on the sidewalk.” He waved the gun at the rest of them. “All of you. You walk right by me as I sit and beg. You spend more on fancy coffee than I do on meals. Why can’t you help the poor, the sick, the homeless? You have so much.”
    I caught myself looking at those greedy bastards along with Mister, and it was not a pretty sight. Most were staring at their feet. Only Rafter glared down the table, thinking the thoughts all of us had when we stepped over the Misters of D.C.: If I give you some change you’ll (1) run to the liquor store, (2) only beg more, (3) never leave the sidewalk.
    Silence again. A helicopter hovered nearby, and I could only imagine what they were planning in the parking lot. Pursuant to Mister’s instructions, the phone lines were on hold, so there was no communication.