The Hidden Law Read Online Free PDF Page A

than a drying out sanatorium. Its residents signed up for a three-month program, the purpose of which was to integrate them back into society. There was no medical staff, just lay counselors, many of them former residents themselves. From what I knew about the place, talking to Chuck and to people who had been through it, sobriety was enforced by a set of rules that covered every aspect of the residents’ lives, constant group meetings, and periodic drug and alcohol testing.
    All of this was consistent with its motto, “A tough place for tough people,” and reflected the personality of its founder. Chuck Sweeny was manipulative, inflexible, egotistical and extremely effective.
    A high brick wall surrounded the front of the house. I parked on the street and walked up the driveway. The house was a three-story circus of a building, all gables, dormers, chimneys, conical roofed towers, bay windows, and a wraparound veranda supported by Corinthian columns; one expected to catch a glimpse of Morticia Addams at an upstairs window. A young man was mowing the lawn, his thin arms streaked with track marks. The sign on the door said, “You are home.”
    Inside, in the foyer, a young black woman sat at a desk reading the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. She peered up at me and said, in practiced cadences, “Welcome to SafeHouse, sir. May I help you?”
    “I’d like to see Edith Rosen,” I replied.
    She glanced down at a log. “Ms. Rosen’s not in yet. Would you care to wait?” She smiled haplessly, clearly a resident practicing at being an ordinary human being. I knew the feeling.
    “Is Chuck around?”
    “Yes, sir, Chuck’s here, but you need an appointment.”
    I handed her a business card. “Maybe he’ll see me for a minute if you tell him who I am.”
    She read the card and picked up the phone, dialing an extension. “There’s a Mr. Henry Rios here who would like to see you.” She smiled at me, nervously. “Oh, OK, I’ll send him in.” She hung up. “Just go straight back down the hall, past the dining room and you’ll see his office.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
    “Thank you ,” she replied cheerily.
    Straight down the hall proved to be a considerable distance. The house’s rococo facade was belied by the shabbiness of its furnishings. The walls were all painted the same yellowing shade of cream and posted on them were long hand-written lists of the house’s rules, along with inspirational messages along the lines of “One Day At A Time,” and “Don’t Leave Five Minutes Before the Miracle,” in Gothic script on parchment paper. The place reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Its many rooms all seemed to be occupied by people urgently, if mysteriously, engaged. In the dining room a middle-aged man looked up from the table he was polishing and gazed at me blankly. A girl sat in a phone booth whispering and giggling into the phone. From behind a closed door came shouting and then weeping.
    I pushed open a door marked “Administration” and stepped into a big room where several people sat at desks, hovered around file cabinets or fielded calls. Past them was an open door through which I saw Chuck Sweeny sitting at a beat-up desk, reading.
    “Hi, Chuck,” I said.
    He looked up from his reading, and peered at me over the top of his glasses. A shock of gray hair swept over a red, drinker’s face. Long thin arms stained with age poked out of rolled-up shirt sleeves. His shirt was unbuttoned and a thatch of white chest hair spilled over a yellowed T-shirt. Chuck looked the part of someone who had once slept in the streets of every skid row from Seattle to San Diego.
    “Henry R.,” he said, quickly demoting me from lawyer to fellow drunk. “Come in, come in, come in.”
    I sat down. “This is quite a place you’ve got here.”
    “This your first time?” he asked incredulously. I thought guiltily of my promise to have visited sooner.
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Never as