The Sheltering Palms

By Preston Howard

Renowned police labor lawyer, Preston Howard, reached a watershed in his life—a forced retirement from the firm he built from the ground up and a cancer diagnosis. These two events made him take a step back and reflect over a life that had at times been hilarious, irreverent, self-mocking, eerie and even a bit, make that, quite lewd.

            A family of unique characters guided the lawyer's formative years: a bourbon-swilling, brilliant yet flawed grandfather who mentored the young lad in matters of religion, politics and the quest for knowledge; a psychic mother; an oversexed nanny; an aunt and uncle who fought on the front lines of integration; and a fire-balling uncle who got his fifteen minutes of fame in The Show.

            Preston Howard first made his mark as a crime-fighting attorney representing the Tucson Police Department. Then he spent over forty illustrious years as a labor lawyer working with police officers and union leaders and handling the gamut of fascinating, high-profile cases across the country and even in other countries.

            His many tall yarns might be viewed by some with the greatest suspicion, but his story-telling is undeniably first-class, witty, and absorbing.

"The best book I've ever read about lawyers, cops, and unions." Bob Helpert, Tucson, Arizona

"In his debut novel, Preston Howard spins tales that are funny, sardonic, and often lecherous. Did I forget to say funny? A distinctive voice from an author who will hopefully write another book." Ed McClory Round Rock, Texas

• Language: English
• Publisher: Preston Howard
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386866190

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COPYRIGHT

Copyright © Preston Howard 2018

Cover layout design © One of a Kind Covers 2018

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Preston Howard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Please refer to the Author’s Note section for more details.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Preston Howard.

Print Edition © September 2018

Print ISBN: 978-0-692-04011-9

Contents

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

AUTHOR’S NOTE

1

Dark Clouds Looming

2

Lawyerin’ in East Tennessee

3

Buster Goes on the Lam to Hot Springs

4

Class Now in Session

5

Politics, Howard Baker, and a Most Peculiar Flying Machine

6

How I Became a Truly Ignorant Man

7

The Tazewell Long Drink, the Baby Grand Piano, and Political Sexcapades

8

Anne and Kathryn

9

Summertime Nanny

10

Yabba Dee Yabba Dee

11

Class Back in Session

12

Family Tragedy

13

John Kasper, Edward R. Murrow, a Mangled Body, and a Fateful Decision

14

Fire Ballin’ Lefty

15

Fork in the Road

16

Buster Pays a Visit to Tucson

17

Measuring Up to Buster’s Expectations

18

What the Union Is All About

19

The Boys from Berwyn

20

Lone Star Lawyer

21

Zack Ziemniak

22

Worse, Worser, and Worst

23

The Mediator

24

End of Watch

25

Spiraling Down…Down…Down

26

A Reprimand From Beyond the Grave

27

Journeys Across America

28

Diversions

29

The Country of Eleven Official Languages

30

David Takes Goliath Out to the Woodshed for a Whippin’

31

Laparoscopic Surgery, Catheters, and Other Subjects Pertinent to My Medical Condition

32

Chris

33

Family Reunited

34

Reflections of the Senior Citizen Formerly Known as the Internationally Famous Preston Howard

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

To the memory of Chris McGill and Tim Clark

AUTHOR’S NOTE

While certain portions of this book are based on real incidents, other portions are fictional. Other than Eloy Gonzales, a San Antonio cop who was sadly gunned down while on duty in 1978 in the chapter entitled End of Watch, all other police officers and most other characters in this story are either fictional or their names and/or locations have been changed for various reasons. The events in this book are drawn from a variety of sources, including published materials, newspaper archives and interviews, in conjunction with the author’s imagination...make that a great deal of the author's imagination. For dramatic and narrative purposes, the novel contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, and time compression. The views and opinions expressed in this novel are those of the fictional characters only and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by the real individuals, living or dead, on which those characters are based.

1

Dark Clouds Looming

I USED TO BE SOMEBODY—when Preston Howard walked down the street, kings and queens would move off to the curb. Okay, so that bit of paraphrased hyperbole, courtesy of George Thorogood, might qualify as excessive, but for sure, when I rode into town, mayors, city managers, and police chiefs became more than a little queasy over what kind of wrath I might bring down on their community.

As senior partner at the highly successful Austin labor law firm of Howard, Diamond, and McGowan, I was invariably the oldest person in any meeting. My partners and co-workers would refer to me as gramps or pappy; one of them commented that I surely must have been around to vote for Hoover in 1928. If I had actually been alive back then, my vote likely would have been for Al Smith, not that my ballot would have been of any benefit to the man.

I did have the satisfaction that sometimes when my colleagues were not trying to get my goat with the old man references, they would call me Obi-Wan. At least my long and productive career had earned me Alec Guinness status as an all-knowing legal Jedi knight.

A few years back, I began to acknowledge that the passage of time had worn me down. My work ethic started to diminish; my instincts, always on target before, sometimes failed me; and to their considerable annoyance, I became increasingly testy with colleagues. My partners urged—tactfully at first and then more impolitely—that I go out to pasture. What an irony: I hired this bunch of ungrateful bastards, and then they had the gall to start pushing me aside.

So as I began to seriously consider retirement two years back, The Fates turned my life upside down and made the decision easier to finish up my career. The cancer diagnosis and Social Security eligibility hit me in the gut less than two weeks apart.

***

My primary care physician referred me to a urology clinic when my PSA level on a routine physical appeared abnormally high. Before describing the events that took place in the urologist’s examination room and in the interest of full disclosure that I was in some, maybe many, respects a flawed man, understand that certain stereotypes floated around in my head that just wouldn’t go away. So when a fortyish, dark-skinned woman wearing a hijab entered the room and introduced herself as Doctor Chaudhry, my perception of urology as a male-dominated universe was shattered; then I had a fleeting vision of 9/11 and the Twin Towers tumbling down.

After some idle chit chat, I began a short inquisition.

Did you graduate last in your class?

"What?" Doctor Chaudhry said, giving me an incredulous stare.

Well, someone graduated last in your class, and I sure as hell don’t want that doctor sticking a finger up my ass.

I attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and I can assure you that those of us who went on to practice urology graduated nowhere even near to the bottom of our class. She became quite snippy at this point.

A brief moment of tension fell over the examination room. Then I asked, Where are you from?

I’m from Pakistan.

Are you a Muslim?

Yes.

Sunni or Shiite?

I’m a Sunni.

Well, okay, the short interrogation completed.

She gave me a curious look that lasted for at least a half minute, probably wondering what kind of oddball patient she had on her hands. Then she sat down on a backless roller chair and asked, Before we get started, is there something you want to talk about?

Well, I’m greatly relieved that you were not last in your class. It doesn’t bother me that you’re from Pakistan, that you’re a woman, and after I got over the initial shock of the hijab, that you’re a Muslim. But it’s a good thing that you’re a Sunni because there’s no way I would let a Shiite get anywhere near my prostate.

She put a hand over her mouth to suppress a laugh, I suppose to maintain some degree of professional decorum, and then said, I’m glad to see that my newest patient has a sense of humor. Now let’s get started—the first thing I want to do is check your prostate.

On went the obligatory rubber glove followed by her finger going up inside me to probe all around the prostate. Then she took off her glove, looked at me, and said, No growth there.

I have spent a lifetime putting my foot deep inside mouth and wasn’t about to stop then. I gave her a big grin and said, Hey, Doc, your finger up inside me felt damn good, so how ’bout a repeat performance—just something to remember you by until the next time we meet? Doctor Chaudhry frowned, wagged one finger at me, and ran the other one across her lips in the universal zip-it sign.

Doctor Chaudhry said I’d need a biopsy of my prostrate. After describing the procedure, I conjured up my inner Bartleby the Scrivener and told her I’d prefer not to. The good doctor responded that my Bartleby be damned, it had to be done.

A week later, she performed the biopsy. I can’t imagine a Spanish Inquisitor devising a torture device as vile as this procedure. The doctor stuck a spring-loaded tissue collection needle up my rectum to snip off tiny slices of the prostate. When Doctor Chaudhry first deadened the two nerves down by my rectum with a shot of lidocaine, I screamed "Fuck; then two more fucks" when the collection needle hit my prostate.

The good doctor fortunately had more compassion than the Spanish Inquisitor. She said that normally twelve snips were required, but since I seemed to be having an issue with the procedure—she likely thought that I was a total pussy—she would only take six. This reduction in my sentence didn’t in any way diminish the agony of the next four snips.

Dr. Chaudhry gave me the depressing test result a few days later. She tried the glass half full routine, saying that if you contract cancer, this one is the best—not exactly the reassuring words I was looking for.

As I began to tear up, she rolled her chair over next to me and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. It’s going to be okay, Preston. You will get through this, and I will be there with you every step of the way. I realized at that moment that my female, Pakistani, hijab-wearing, Sunni urologist was a keeper and that the finger-up-the-butt remark on my last visit went way beyond the edge of the envelope—she could have taken the twelve snips rather than six as a payback for the wisecrack but instead showed the utmost compassion.

***

Less than a week after Doctor Chaudhry’s bad news, I became eligible for full Social Security benefits, the yardstick that you had officially reached a transitional stage of life. The local Social Security office definitely fell in the Top Five Best Places in America to people watch—I had never seen such a pathetic gathering of family trees that didn’t fork, bad dental plans, and People Who Shop at Walmart.

I knew then, and understand even more fully today, that the sand had begun to run out of my hourglass, falling out more in a wild gush than a slow, measured flow. At some point in the not so distant future, I would go from the green to the brown side of the earth, or as Dandy Don Meredith used to sing every Monday night, Turn out the lights; the party’s over.

I found myself reading the newspaper obituaries every day, first to compare my age to those who had passed on to the Great Beyond. Then I checked whether the dead ones actually made their mark or instead, like Buster once said to me, sucked up the air and spent a lifetime just going through the motions of being on this earth.

When I looked in the mirror, only my large, slightly hooked nose and shining blue eyes reflected the younger version of me. The dark brown hair, once thick and bushy across my head, had lost the battle to gray and male-pattern baldness; a whitish gray overran my goatee. My cheekbones, while still high, showed the creases of advancing age; crow’s feet collected along the corners of my eyes.

Black spots floated across my eyes like annoying, miniscule gnats. My arthritic knees screamed at me for replacement surgery. Nighttime driving became hazardous to my health.

Other reminders that my time had become a depreciating commodity kept cropping up. A letter arrived a year ago from the fiftieth high school reunion committee, announcing a glorious fun-filled weekend next year to spend with people I had long since forgotten.

The reunion coordinator gave me the telephone number of my first girlfriend, and I phoned the residence located somewhere in Virginia. A man answered the phone, and I asked to speak to Patti.

Well, just who is this? he asked suspiciously.

I’m an old friend.

Exactly what kind of friend, he said, now getting a tad hostile.

Patti was my very first high school sweetheart. She was such a sweet girl, and we were good friends. Our mothers were also friends and did a lot of community work together. I decided against chronicling our hot and bothered fondling, genital touching, and grinding that went on in her basement at some point during every date.

First silence on the phone and then a dejected voice coming from the other end of the line, I am sorry to tell you that Patti died last year from lung cancer. She smoked during our entire marriage, and it caught up with her.

The slight long-distance buzz lasted in my ear for at least a half-minute, followed by stifled moans that became louder, and then out-and-out sobbing, as despairing a wail as I ever heard. For the next half hour, I wound up consoling this pitiful man, someone whose name I did not even know, over a woman I hadn’t seen in fifty years…very weird moment. Like Patti, other family, close friends, and work colleagues had passed on from tragic, untimely deaths—heart attacks, all kinds of fiendish cancers, even suicides.

***

So those two back-to-back events made the decision easier for me to call it a day but not before the obligatory retirement party at the Austin Club where my partners and other staff roasted me with tall tales about my idiosyncrasies and career high- and low-lights. The gold watch they presented to me with much fanfare lays buried somewhere in a cardboard box stored in my garage. The partners at least gave me two business class tickets to Australia and four more for my wife, two grandsons, and me to Disney World.

So I became a mere cipher, watching people make fools of themselves every weekday morning on Let’s Make a Deal and The Price is Right. Later in the day, I tried to beat contestants to the punch on Jeopardy by answering Alex Trebec’s questions first. That edifying television programming, of course, had to be missed for the many doctor appointments that my wife, not the Vexatious One from long ago, but instead the Good Wife (at least Good until recently) and I made as we entered our dotage, but there was always the DVR. I sometimes threw on my baggy sweat pants, a ratty t-shirt, and worn out tennis shoes, drove over to Walmart, and along with other senior citizens, looked for low-cost merchandise that would preserve my IRA. This life sometimes made me want to put a gun to my head.

Even worse, my wife and I were at each other’s throats. Too much time together, I suppose. We spent long, tense days with little conversation, and any time we spoke to each other, regret and acrimony crept into the discussion. It was like we both woke up one day and wondered who the hell that person was sitting across the room.

During my career, I always looked forward, never back—to the next goal, the next accomplishment, the next big challenge. My work brought me considerable fame in the legal profession and sustained my passion to make the lives of workers better. I consulted with unions in this country and across the globe and spoken before scores of rapt (or so I would have hoped) attendees at labor symposia; some years ago the New York Times even wrote a feature article in the Sunday magazine about my career.

I began to wonder how much in the big scheme of things any of this life really meant. Had I made a difference? Had I been a decent and honorable man? How did my family and friends view me? The questions went on forever.

So I stopped looking ahead and instead started reflecting back on the path I’d followed—to many great accomplishments, opportunities lost, relationships with my family and friends, and sadly, to a few—well, make that many—transgressions that had been committed over the course of my life.

And it was those moral lapses that caused me the greatest concern. I worried that Buster got it wrong and Saint Peter really did stand at the Pearly Gates, deciding whether to grant entrance to that wondrous place where the streets are paved with gold. I feared that Saint Peter would look unfavorably on my admission to the glorious hereafter and instead consign me to some demonic place, maybe to an eternity listening to Kenny G playing Love on the Rise over and over, surrounded by manic fans screaming, You rock, Kenny! Now that was something to keep me awake at night, and it still does today.

I began to take a walk down memory lane and even wrote down those recollections into a hopefully coherent narrative. This story has just a few kernels of truth, so I won’t be taking a lie detector test or swearing in court to the veracity of the events described herein; as the saying goes, take much of this story with a grain of salt.

Buster would be as good a place to start as any.

2

Lawyerin’ in East Tennessee

OUR ENGLISH, SCOTTISH-Irish clan’s arrival in East Tennessee predates the nineteenth century—one ancestor surfaced in Grainger around 1795. My Great-Great-Grandfather Jasper married a woman by the name of Melvina, whose genealogy ran all the way back to George Washington.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about this lineage that connected me to a slave-owning farmer whose motives for separating from England likely had less to do with those glorious words found in the Declaration of Independence and more to do with his personal financial interests and his prescience that the Brits already prohibited slavery inside their country.

And the Father of our Country’s generalship certainly was open to serious question: Batting .333 might have been good enough to make a major league All Star team, but winning three out of nine major battles didn’t sound like such a successful record to me. George could at least be thankful that the French Navy laid siege at Yorktown and Marshal Rochambeau’s troops lent a major assist in giving Cornwallis and his soldiers the coup de gras. 

My Great-Grandfather John P. was a Civil War baby and as a young adult began the family tradition of practicing law. John P. could have passed as Teddy Roosevelt’s twin—short, stocky frame, piercing eyes behind rimless spectacles, and a glorious auburn-tinted moustache. Buster told me that also like TR, John P. spoke in a high-pitched, squeaky voice, the words tumbling out in rapid fire succession.

Other than the rimless spectacles, his son Buster bore no resemblance to his father when he reached maturity.  At about five feet ten inches, my grandfather had a wiry frame, always stood perfectly erect, and walked with a purposeful stride. His deep-set eyes seemed at times almost aqua-blue, when he would tell a joke in his sonorous voice or want you to think about a point he was making, his mouth would break into a wide grin and those blue eyes would twinkle devilishly. He always appeared clean shaven in any public setting, even on weekends. His slightly jutting jaw gave the impression of serious purpose.

He dressed impeccably, wearing pleated pants held up by suspenders, light-colored, long sleeved cotton, heavily starched shirts, and fashionable shoes that matched his pants. I never once saw Buster in shorts, blue jeans, or tennis shoes.

Then there was that signature beige Panama hat with the red and blue band—he never went outside without putting the Panama on his head. I never understood why he always wore that hat outside because, as the late and great Molly Ivins often said about that inept Texas governor Rick Perry, Buster had a great head of hair although it was a rich brown and not the Texas Bumbler’s jet-black hair.

He spoke in a sonorous tone, carefully choosing just the right words or phrase to capture the subject at hand. Whenever Buster talked, people around him had the good sense to shut up and listen because something notable would likely be said.

Buster followed in John P.’s footsteps, as did his two sons Sidney and John, and then my cousin, Sid Junior, and I. Why four generations of men would devote themselves to this reviled profession was beyond my comprehension. Attorneys and members of Congress were the most despised human beings walking the face of the earth—the exceptions, of course, being my lawyer and my congressman.

And there were the lawyer jokes:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

The practice of law in my time became a specialized affair; attorneys just handled domestic relations, automobile injuries and death, class action litigation, social security disability, professional malpractice, or in my case, labor law. In John P. and Buster’s day, you took whatever walked in the door: divorces, wills, probates, real estate contracts, and the occasional criminal case.

Buster told me once about a criminal case he handled during Prohibition. The Claiborne County sheriff had it in for a local whiskey-maker who happened to be Buster’s friend and his personal bootlegger. After the bootlegger’s arrest, the case came to trial. The judge entered the courtroom, sat down, and asked what the case was about.

Buster stood up and said, Your honor, the sheriff caught my client red-handed. We have no defense. But I’d like to tell the court that he’s my good friend and the source of all my whiskey. I buy all my stuff only from him. And I have no idea where I’ll get my liquor if he’s convicted.

The judge considered Buster’s statements for a moment and, slapping his hand on the docket book, said, Shucks! Everyone’s entitled to at least one bootlegger. Case dismissed.

Claiborne County has always been a financially depressed area—hard scrabble agriculture was the primary economic engine, with a little light industry here and there. When the local radio newscaster gave the stock report, he wasn’t talking about Wall Street. So getting paid for professional services rendered could have been a dicey proposition for John P. and Buster. Barter quite often became the accepted method of payment.

Buster and I stood outside his law office in 1952 when a hunched-0ver, middle-aged man in ragged blue overalls—most likely a farmer—walked up holding two metal cages, one oversized cage stuffed with six live rabbits and the other smaller cage with two hissing rattlesnakes. One side of the man’s mouth bulged with an enormous wad of tobacco. Eyes lowered to