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doing.
    Curtis was a small, thin man, about five foot six. His body was almost bird-like and his head seemed disproportionately large in comparison to his slight frame. The little hair he had left was white and wispy, his eyes were watery and pale blue. He had hearing aids in both ears. He almost always wore suits but instead of a dress shirt he usually wore polo shirts or golf shirts under the suit jacket. He’d been born and raised in Texas—his home and headquarters were in Houston—but he didn’t have a Texas accent and didn’t wear a Stetson or cowboy boots. His shoes were soft, black Dr. Scholl’s.
    His first name was Leonard and they imagined his wife must call him Leonard or Len or Lenny or something, but the only thing they ever called him was Mr. Curtis. Most often when they met him he was alone but sometimes he was accompanied by a couple of lawyers—and the lawyers always called him Mr. Curtis, too. He was a miserable, miserly, sour old son of a bitch but he paid Bill and Marjorie so damn much that he could have beaten them with a hickory stick and they wouldn’t have cared.
    Curtis sipped his coffee, made a face as if it didn’t taste right, and got down to business. “So what’s happening with Morris?”
    Walter Morris was a circuit court judge representing the second judicial district in South Dakota. Circuit court judges in South Dakota ran for election every eight years but Morris was planning to retire when his term was up. This meant that Marjorie and Bill couldn’t use campaign contributions to sway him. Morris also made a decent salary—he wasn’t rich but he was comfortable—and didn’t have any debt.
    Nor did Morris have any vices that they had been able to find, such as cross-dressing or philandering. Marjorie even had Gordy look at his Internet history; if Morris had been looking at child pornography, they would have owned the judge for life—but no such luck.
    The problem with Morris was a pending case having to do with sales tax. One of the many businesses Curtis owned was a company involved in the transportation of refined petroleum products—a pipeline, in other words—that covered thirteen states, including South Dakota. It was a complicated case and the laws governing pipeline taxes were poorly written, but the bottom line was that the company hadn’t been charging sales tax for some of its services and the state treasurer said they should have—meaning the company now owed back taxes. Curtis, naturally, didn’t want to pay the back taxes—Curtis didn’t want to pay taxes on anything —and he and two other pipeline companies filed a lawsuit. The next stop for the lawsuit was Judge Morris’s bench. Win or lose, the case would go to the South Dakota Supreme Court, but Curtis wanted a win in Morris’s court because he was confident the state Supreme Court wouldn’t reverse Morris.
    â€œHe’s been taken care of,” Marjorie said.
    â€œHow?” Curtis asked.
    â€œThe judge,” Marjorie said, “has been looking online at condos in Palm Springs.” Gordy had discovered this while examining the judge’s Internet history. “Apparently he and the missus have a hankering to go south in the winter.”
    â€œHow much will it cost me?” Curtis said.
    â€œFifty-two,” Marjorie said.
    â€œShit, is that all?” Curtis said.
    It had actually been pretty easy to deal with Morris, a lot easier than Marjorie had expected. She simply sent him an email. In the email, she said she’d heard that he was looking for a California condo, she included a link showing a condo that was much nicer than the ones he’d been looking at on the Internet, and said the owner might be willing to sell for fifteen percent less than the listed price. Curtis would pay the fifteen percent—which was about fifty-two thousand on a