Part 3: One Year Later
I was woken up by a phone call.
“Jim, its Bobby, where the hell are you? The cop didn’t show. If you were here this would be all over. The judge called for a recess until after lunch you need to get down here now!”
“Fuuuuck…I’m on my way.” I felt like I’d been hit by a truck that was made out of burning dog crap. I had been drinking peacefully at O’Sullivan’s the night before, minding my own business, thinking about court the next day when one of the regulars randomly asked me if I wanted to do a bump.
“Sure,” I thought, “what could it hurt?” said the guy to himself that doesn’t do cocaine. To this day I don’t know why I did it. Whatever fun I may have thought I was having wasn’t worth the result. 12 hours later and I was still wrecked. I felt like someone had pumped garbage into my veins. My head was pounding, I wanted to throw up, I couldn’t see straight…I remembered Megan and Lexie trying to pour me into the back of a car so they could take me home…yelling at me that I had to be in court in the morning and that I was an idiot. Not wrong. I had dragged myself to the bathroom and lay draped over the end of the tub feeling the water with my fingers, waiting for it to get hot enough to get in and then I pulled myself over the edge and laid there like a corpse. This was stupid. I needed to pull myself together.
I somehow managed to get dressed without throwing up but I looked like shit; ashen and clammy and there was no way that tie was going all the way up. I looked like I was going to throw up at any given moment but I had to muscle up and do this. I drove to the courthouse, the breeze feeling good against my skin and once inside I found Bobby.
“Jesus, you look like shit, come on, we’ll be going up in a few minutes, the cop is here but I think it will be ok. If you had been here this morning though…” he smirked. Bobby Howlett was kind of the family attorney to a widespread community in the area. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone. Amiable, forthright, connected. He was a good man to have on your side.
Once in court the officer presented her case. She tried to point out that my passenger was sitting on the floorboard with no seatbelt and the judge asked if she had cited the passenger during the stop and she said no. I kind of perked up at that point. Then she said I had refused the breathalyzer but had done reasonably well on the field test. The judge asked why she had pulled me over and she said it was because I had no headlights on and when she told me I responded with slurred speech.
It was Bobby’s turn and the next few minutes were like magic.
“Mr. Wade, on the night in question you were working in the employ of the City of Norfolk doing official work for Festevents all night, correct?”
I nodded my head.
Bobby continued “And in this capacity you were changing kegs all night and were covered in beer at the time you were pulled over, correct?”
Again I nodded.
“And is it true that you have a congenital hearing defect in your left ear that has resulted in a speech impediment that can sometimes be construed as slurred speech?” he asked almost theatrically.
I nodded. Bobby had taken good notes.
The judge looked at me “Is this true?”
There it was. My lisp. The one I spent years as a child taking Speech Pathology classes to fix. The one I felt so self-conscious of I switched from James to Jim to avoid the S. The one that was about to get me out of a DUI.
“Well speak up son, is this true about your hearing defect?” the judge asked again
I looked up at him and heard the voice of Sylvester the Cat in my head answer “Yeth Thir!”
The judge looked back at the papers and said “I don’t see any evidence here to support the arrest, I’m going to dismiss the DUI.” I leaned into Bobby and said “Did that just happen?”
“Shh!” He grabbed my arm. He wasn’t done. “Your honor, the charge of refusing the breathalyzer carries with it an automatic one year suspended license. My client thought that began immediately at the time of arrest and hasn’t been driving for the past year. I’d ask the court to make that license suspension retroactive to the time of the arrest and call it served.”
“I have no problem with that.” Said Judge My New Best Friend.
The cop was dumbfounded… almost as much as I was. Bobby gave me the all clear and I hugged the shit out of him. I then offered my hand to the officer as a worthy adversary. We would meet again, but today the victory was mine. Bobby and I met up at O’Sullivans a few hours later and from across the bar he called out “Hey Jim! Who’s the best lawyer in Norfolk?”
Bobby Howlett. No question about it.
