Chapter Four
Maximillian Valerious was my lawyer. I mean, he’d helped me with some problems with the city zoning laws, and on the problems Tripp Gregory himself had caused several months before.
I couldn’t pay him what he was worth, but that didn’t seem to matter much to Max, as long as he thought I was on the side of the angels.
I trusted him.
It was a gloomy day, with fog from Lake Michigan hanging on grimly to the autumn air, and heavy, dark cloud cover that promised a good, long, soaking rain later in the afternoon—but it always looked like summer at the Valerious home.
Max and his wife, Heloise, lived in a yellow house with green shutters and trimming, and a fenced yard with chickens in it, guarded by a sturdy basset hound named Peppermint.
When Tripp and I pulled up in the Blue Beetle, Peppermint came trundling down to the fence, lifted his nose as I emerged from the car, and let out a caroling bay of greeting.
He walked back and forth by the gate, wagging his tail energetically.
“What’s wrong, Tripp?” I asked.
“Ah, you know. Lawyers,” he said. “I ain’t had the best luck with them. Public defender just told me to say I did it in court. You believe that?”
“When you got busted for selling drugs?”
“Yeah.”
“But you were selling drugs.”
“Well,” Tripp said. “I mean, yeah. But you can’t win if you don’t play the game, you know?”
“Could be this is just me,” I said, “but maybe you should, you know. Not break the law.”
“Everybody breaks the law,” Tripp said. “Not everybody gets caught. You broke the law when you busted into my house and threatened me.”
I frowned at him but … well. That much was true. Granted, I’d been doing it to protect someone he’d been going after, whereas he’d been doing it to benefit himself, but he was, strictly speaking, correct.
I wasn’t much good at toeing lines either.
One of the blinds at a window twitched, and from inside the house a woman shouted, “Max! It’s that Harry Dresden again! With some lowlife in a nice suit!”
Hell’s bells. Max’s wife was pretty sharp.
“Hey!” Tripp protested.
“To be fair,” I said, “you’ve spent seven of the last eight years in jail for a crime you absolutely did commit.”
“Yeah, but straights are supposed to have some what’s-it-called. Decorum. I’m tryin’, ain’t I?”
I grunted. “You bring your business records? The letters from the courts and the IRS?”
He hefted a briefcase. “Yeah, all here.”
“Be polite,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah. I can talk to straights.”
Maximillian Valerious came trotting out of his office door, past a number of signs meant to legally menace solicitors.
He was a small, spry elderly man with a spray of curly white hair and a receding hairline.
He wore glasses, khaki pants, a crisp white button-down shirt with a tweed waistcoat, and leather sandals.
He peered at us through his spectacles and then over them as he got closer, frowning at Tripp.
“Good God,” he murmured, looking from Tripp to me. “Isn’t this the man from last spring?”
“The one and only,” I said. “Tripp Gregory, Max Valerious.”
Max blew out a breath through pursed lips. “And you’re standing with him. How good a story is this?” he asked.
I waved a hand at Tripp. “I’ll let him tell you himself.”
“Well, then.” Max sighed. “I suppose you should come in.” He raised his voice. “Heloise! We’ll need three cups of warm cider!”
Twenty minutes (and three cups of excellent apple cinnamon cider) later, Tripp had finished telling Max his tale.
We sat in Max’s office. Peppermint had settled down at my feet, draped his sad face and droopy ears over my motorcycle boots, and gone to sleep. Max had listened to everything Tripp had to say, as attentive to him as a fox to an as-yet-unknown sound in its wood.
“So, you see, Mr. Valerious,” Tripp finished, “I’m sincerely attempting to change the direction of my life.
It seemed to me that the best way to do it was to turn my focus from serving my own interests to helping those in need.
I’m afraid I’m just going to need a little help in order to make it happen. ”
I’d been a little shocked at how earnest and … well, put simply, civilized Tripp sounded as he shared his tale with Max. He could have been a newscaster with that kind of presentation.
Max took a deep breath, his tone wry, but so lightly so that most would have missed it. “I think I understand,” he said. He looked at me. “Translation?”
“He’s afraid if he doesn’t make good, God’s going to make sure he gets that bullet and goes back in the river,” I said, “but it seems to be a genuine worry.”
Tripp gave me an exasperated look. But, surprisingly, he didn’t say anything.
“That sounds more like it,” Max said. He studied Tripp for a moment from behind his desk over steepled hands, bright eyes assessing. “May I see your documentation?”
“Absolutely,” Tripp said, opening the briefcase. He took out a manilla folder and passed it over to Max.
Max took several moments to go over bound pages behind a title page that featured the same Kid Power! logo as Tripp’s business card. Then he opened an envelope with a return address from the IRS and read the letter inside it. Then one from the courts.
He lifted his eyes, staring at nothing for a long moment. “Mr. Gregory,” he said mildly. “Would you mind if I spoke to Dresden alone for a moment?”
Tripp looked back and forth between us. “Sure,” he said, and got up to go outside, taking his cider with him.
Max waited until the door was closed before he said, “How much rehabilitative work have you done, Harry?”
I shrugged. “Not a lot. Apart from being subject to it from people who weren’t very nice about it.”
“Ah,” Max said, smiling faintly. “You identify.”
I glowered at him, rolled my eyes, and said, “Tripp’s an actual outlaw. It’s to everyone’s benefit if he becomes an upright citizen. I think society makes it harder than it should be for people who want to come back inside to get there.”
Max lifted a finger. “Without disagreeing with you, precisely, I can say that I’ve done considerable work with people who …
let us say, for a variety of reasons had a great deal of defiance for conventional law and order and ran into trouble with law enforcement and official structures because they did. ”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning,” Max said carefully, “that in my experience, it’s more likely than not that Mr. Gregory is simply retreating to civilized life because he’s realized that life as an outlaw means an unpleasant outcome for him personally.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t born yesterday,” I said. “I’m not saying he’s become Peter Parker all of a sudden. But maybe the first step toward becoming a better person is going from pure, selfish self-interest to … I don’t know. Call it a more enlightened self-interest.”
“Enlightened self-interest,” Max mused. He picked up a pen and fiddled with it thoughtfully.
“In my life, I’ve worked with several hundred such cases.
For some people, it’s simply very difficult to get them to understand that other people exist. That they’re real and have feelings and emotions.
It often takes them several run-ins with unpleasant consequences—legitimate authorities or otherwise—for them to begin to understand that they need to change who they are.
How they treat other people.” He shook his head.
“Perhaps one in three is capable. I’m not sure what makes it possible for them to change the direction of their lives.
But it begins with authenticity. Sincerity.
This friendly-weatherman act Mr. Gregory has going doesn’t strike me as that. ”
“No,” I said. “The fact is, he’s still an asshole. But he’s a terrified asshole. I think he’s in over his head—to the point that John Marcone asked me to help him go legitimate.”
Max’s head rocked back and he flattened his hands on his desk. “Good lord. That man is dangerous.”
“You could say that about someone else in this room too,” I said. “I owe him. He’s uncomfortable with it. He’s using this to square the books.”
“Using perhaps being the operative word?” Max suggested.
“Maybe,” I acknowledged. “I think maybe Tripp is serious in trying to turn things around, just clueless about how to do it. To figure out what I’m going to do, I need to know exactly how much and what kind of trouble Tripp has. For that, I need someone who is legally savvy.”
“I think I see the general shape of the problem, but I’m hardly an expert. I’ll have to have Heloise look at his books,” Max said.
“Heloise?”
“Forensic accountant, retired,” Max said. “She put a great many unscrupulous people behind bars in her day.” He held up the letter. “But I’ll tell you this much. This is a letter from the office of Constance Abernathy at the IRS.”
I shook my head. “What does that mean?”
“Ms. Abernathy is … something of a crusader. She has a visceral dislike for those who abuse charity laws for their own gain. If she’s set her sights on Mr. Tripp, and the man has been playing fast and loose with the law, legally speaking, his days are numbered.”
I frowned. “She’s legit?”
“After a fashion,” Max confirmed. “In my opinion, she can be overly judgmental and focused more upon the success of her operations than upon justice—or perhaps cannot always discern between the two. That said, she’s honest, makes an excellent ally and a truly terrible enemy, as two former governors have reason to know.
If your own books aren’t watertight, I would think very carefully before setting myself in opposition to her. ”
“Oh,” I said, thinking of my half-sock full of heist diamonds. “Good.”
Max gave me a look of sympathy and a pained smile. “You find yourself in a situation where you are unsure of the right thing to do—something that is often not easy to know. And if you decide that helping him is the proper course, you may find yourself in a world of trouble.”
“The trouble part has never been a problem for me,” I said wryly.