Shake the Trees Read Online Free PDF Page B

unpardonable sin - the sin of mediocrity.  God and genetics had given Jimmy neither the physical athleticism of his father nor the mental horsepower to meet his expectations.  Throughout his childhood, little Jimmy strived to be like his father.  The inevitable failures eventually caused him to resent the man he admired most and had repeatedly tried to imitate. 
    College was a struggle, with Jimmy essentially majoring in his fraternity at a small but exclusive private institution.  James spoke at the graduation ceremony; Jimmy was drunk.  He did eventually graduate from an unaccredited law school in South Carolina, but failed the Florida Bar Exam on his first three attempts.  Lorna swore everyone to secrecy, but Jimmy didn’t take his oath seriously and the word got out.  As usual, Lorna was horrified.
    Jimmy passed the exam on his fourth attempt, and was hired and let go by several small and medium sized Miami firms with a federal trial practice.  All were trying to curry favor with his father, and all decided the potential damage to their reputation outweighed any possible benefit.  Then he became assistant general counsel to a small insurance company writing term life policies. 
    The company was headquartered in Tampa, but primarily serviced the rural areas of the Southeast.  Jimmy seemed to come into his own and began calling himself “Marc”.  He eventually became general counsel, and had recently been named President and Chief Executive Officer.  He immediately took the enterprise in an entirely new direction, and renamed the company American Senior Security.
    James broke off his mental stroll down memory lane, and decided to get the most distasteful task of the day out of the way.  He had Elizabeth place the call.
    “Hello Stanley.  I only have a few minutes.  What do you have for me?”
    “I received the settlement proposal from Jason Sloan.  The guy is a shark.  Order the clowns, because this mediation is going to be circus.  I think…”
    “What does she want, Stanley?”
    “The house. The condo in the Keys.  Half your federal pension.  More than half.  Half of the stocks, bonds, and money in the bank.  Oh, and the best part.  Five thousand a month in alimony until you reach age 70.  You get to keep the boat and your Caddy.”
    “I’m retiring in less than two years, Stanley.  I’m retiring come hell or high water.  There can’t be any alimony.  Nothing else matters, but there can’t be any alimony.”
    Several seconds of silence passed.  Stanley Rosen didn’t have a reply.  Magistrate Mason wouldn’t be making the decisions in this case.
    “Set the case for mediation, Stanley.”
    “Whatever you say, Your Honor.”
    “Oh, and Stanley.”
    “Yeah, Judge.”
    “Do you still have a couple of discreet friends in the press?”
    “Of course.”
    “Have them give Lorna a call and ask for a comment about the settlement proposal.”
    Stanley snickered.  “You want this thing in the papers?”
    “No.  And neither does Lorna.”
     
    Elizabeth saw the red light blink off on James’ private line, and slipped back into his office and closed the door.
    When Elizabeth Hayes came to work for him two years earlier, James never imagined how things would develop.  He was a star athlete in his college days, and with regular exercise had remained fit and trim.  But Elizabeth was younger than his oldest daughter, and their trysts felt incestuous at first. 
    When James learned that her father had committed suicide when she was still a teenager, he’d become more than a little concerned about the psychological implications of their spring/winter relationship.  It didn’t take Dr. Freud to put that one together, and James had an undergraduate degree in psychology, so he understood the potential pitfalls in their relationship better than most.  Yet time had proven Elizabeth to be strong, and he’d come to rely upon her.
    “Is everything okay, baby?”
    “Oh, it’s just