Sparring Partners(72)
A handler from Kansas City seemed particularly enthralled with the king and finally asked, “He sure looks familiar. Mind if I ask where you got him?”
“Found him in a cabin on an ER call.”
“He sure looks like Thurman.”
“Who’s Thurman?”
“Thurman’s a king I bought from a dealer in Knoxville when he was only a foot long. He kept growing and growing, never seen a speckled king eight feet long before. You?”
“No, not even close. Five feet is about the longest. How long did you raise him?”
“Three years. Got pretty attached to him. Guy stopped by the shop last year and just had to have Thurman. I said what the heck, shot him a big price, and he paid me six hundred dollars.”
“Six hundred dollars? Never heard of that much.”
“Guy had plenty of money. Drove a big German car. I think he was from St. Louis.”
“Don’t remember his name, do you?”
“No. You said the snake was in the cabin.”
“Yeah, all the doors were open, nobody at home. There was a 911 call and by the time we got there the place was empty. Thurman here was coiled up in the kitchen like it was home. I’m just sort of babysitting him.”
“So you wouldn’t want to sell him?”
“Not now. Maybe in a year if he’s not claimed.”
“Why would anybody abandon Thurman?”
“Hell if I know.”
The handler left and the unit chief forgot about him. Thirty minutes later he was back. “Say, you asked me the name of the guy who bought Thurman. I called the shop and my son checked the records. Guy’s name was Malloy. Ring a bell?”
“Yep, that’s him. He owns a cabin on Jack’s Fork River.”
In due course, the investigators for the insurance company made it to Eminence and checked the 911 logs and recordings. They bumped into the unit chief who told them all about Thurman. He invited them to his farm out in the country where he kept his snakes, but they politely declined. Just send some photos, if you don’t mind, they asked.
They sped off to Kansas City and tracked down the handler, who identified a photo of Bolton Malloy as the customer and also provided them with a copy of the sales receipt.
The insurance company then sent its lawyers to meet with the Missouri Attorney General, a longtime political hack who was not a fan of Mr. Malloy. The lawyers laid out a purely circumstantial case claiming that, while Bolton may not have actually killed his wife, he was certainly complicit in her death. Murder could never be proven, but they had a good chance with manslaughter. In addition, Bolton may have possibly committed insurance fraud by filing a claim after her death.
The investigation, as well as the actions by the Attorney General, were kept secret and Bolton had no clue what was happening. The insurance company continued to stall with the strategy of forcing Bolton to file suit. He finally took the bait and sued, and was immediately bombarded with an avalanche of discovery requests. The insurance lawyers couldn’t wait to get him in a big conference room for an all-day deposition.
Before that happened, though, Bolton was ambushed early one morning in the reception foyer of his beloved law firm when a gang of policemen surrounded him. As they walked him outside in handcuffs, the cameras were waiting. The scandal erupted with a media explosion and for days the legal community talked of nothing else. Front page, six o’clock breaking news, the works. He bonded out quickly and fled to his cabin where he holed up with a shotgun and tried in vain to sleep amid nightmares of snakes crawling under the covers.
His lawyers proclaimed innocence but said little else and stayed busy behind the scenes. The tabloids pounded the story for weeks but it eventually grew old. The State pushed hard for a twenty-year sentence, the max, but Bolton quietly insisted on a trial. When the date was a month away, his lawyers convinced him to plead guilty to manslaughter and take ten years. Otherwise, he might die in prison.
His lawyers painted a grim picture of what would happen when Thurman made his appearance at the trial. Imagine an experienced snake handler, maybe even the unit chief himself, removing the snake from his crate and holding him up in front of a mortified jury. This is the snake, ladies and gentlemen, that Bolton Malloy purchased for $600, took to his cabin by the river, kept him there for four months, for the right moment when he could show him to his wife, Tillie, a woman with a bad heart, a woman who, like virtually everyone, was deathly afraid of snakes.
Can you imagine, his lawyers went on, what the world would think when large color photos of Thurman got splashed across front pages from coast to coast? And what if the judge allowed cameras in the courtroom? There would never be a snake as famous as Thurman.
He took the ten-year offer.
Disgraced, humiliated, convicted, banished to a prison like a common criminal, he went away. Two months after he began serving his time, the first installment of the tobacco money landed in a foreign bank account Old Stu was guarding. Its arrival softened the harshness of prison and gave new meaning to his life.
(24)
It is three days after her trip to the prison. Diantha sits in a deep, well-worn leather chair with her stocking feet resting comfortably on a low, padded ottoman. The chair and the ottoman are expensive, as is everything else in the office. She appreciates the fine things because she’s certainly paid for them. Mimi is now at $250 an hour, certainly less than what Diantha bills, but on the high side for therapists in the Midwest. When they met fifteen years earlier, they were beginning their careers and their rates were much lower. They have grown up together, succeeded in their careers, and could almost be close friends but for the fact that Mimi is the therapist and Diantha is the patient. Years earlier they decided it was more important to stick with the professional relationship than to jettison it and become pals.