Rally on Two

By Scott I. Zucker

In Rally on Two, Hank Bennett was happily married with a young child until he loses everything in a devastating accident. While trying to cope with the realities of his new life, Hank is also trying to manage an ongoing law practice. While struggling to make it day to day, he is assigned a pro bono criminal case where a young boy is fighting to prove his innocence, and he takes on a whistle-blower case that may finally provide the answers to explain a familys untimely death. Hanks chance at recovery is strengthened when he is asked to coach a local little league team. In many ways, his time working with his young baseball players becomes a metaphor for Hanks life. Hank begins to understand that just like in baseball, there are wins and losses in everyones life. At the end of the day, when Hank is facing two outs in his own life, he has the chance to give up or fight for his own redemption. He has the chance to rally on two.
The question is - can he do it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546224815

Scott I. Zucker

Scott I. Zucker is an attorney and mediator based out of Atlanta, Georgia. He has previously published two fiction novels, Chain of Custody (2012) and Rally on Two (2018) and presented a TEDx talk on the topic of Ethical Wills. Scott is married and has two grown sons and two labradoodles.

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© 2018 Scott I. Zucker. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/22/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2482-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2481-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018900527

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

To Melanie, Drew and Jack.

My love and greatest treasure, my family

Acknowledgements

T HIS PROJECT HAS been a labor of love, and one that has taken me years to finish, just like my last adventure with Chain of Custody. But this story was different, because it’s a story of redemption that applies to each of us and I had to tell. Throughout it all, I have received tremendous support from my wonderful and amazing wife Melanie and many, many friends who read the drafts and gave me great insight and encouragement along the way. I’m so appreciative to everyone that allows me to share the stories that spill from my head and heart onto the page and most importantly, lets me pretend that what I write are stories they like to read.

Chapter 1

H ANK’S FEET JERKED underneath the sweat soaked sheets, and the sudden movement forced him away from his dream. He quickly opened his blood-shot eyes, and, as it often did now, his mind raced to determine whether he was waking from a dream or whether he was still asleep. But it wasn’t really a dream; it was more like a nightmare that played over and over again. The one where he is running to save Charlie. Where he trips, and his feet move apart involuntarily. He can’t sleep past that part. But in that dream, or nightmare or whatever it was, Charlie was still with him. Every time he woke up, he held on to that instant hope that what happened wasn’t real, but only a bad dream.

As the fog lifted from his brain, Hank raised his head from the mattress and rolled his feet to the floor. He surveyed the bedroom. The clock read five twenty-two a.m. Although it was still dark outside, the street light cloaked the house with a faint glow, and he could see the TV and the dresser with the framed pictures sitting atop it. He realized again, as he had almost every morning that he awoke from that dream, that it was only that: a dream. This was his real life. And Charlie wasn’t with him anymore.

Chapter 2

H ANK’S CORE SETTLED, and he fell back with his head to the mattress, his feet still on the floor. He was in a quandary of deciding whether to get out of bed or to try to fall back to sleep. It took a moment for him to realize, as he was staring straight to the ceiling, that it would be impossible for him to go back to bed. He was still shaking a bit from his dream, and, like the many other nights that had preceded this one, he realized that sleep would not come to him easily, not without a few more shots of Jack. He was also of enough sound mind to accept the fact that drinking right now wasn’t what he needed, especially if he was going to try to keep his job. He recognized that his bosses were losing patience with him. He had already rolled into work enough times in the last year with a hangover, so they could have fired him without hesitation, but they were too concerned about how it would look, especially after everything that had happened. They had just been carrying him. He had grown used to being carried. He wasn’t sure that he even cared about it, as long as he could still deposit the paychecks that were covering the mortgage and the drinks.

He leaned to one side and pushed off the mattress to a sitting position. His eye level matched the mirror on the dresser. He saw his reflection. He didn’t like what he saw, but that was true every morning that he faced the man he had turned out to be. He had gotten use to ignoring the reflection as best as he could, instead grabbing the remote and turning on the TV. It didn’t matter what was on. He just needed the noise.

As the local news played in the background, he stood up, took a deep breath and began to make his way into the bathroom. As was his routine, he flipped on the hot water in the shower, and, while it was heating up, he went to his closet to find clothes to wear for the day. He hadn’t taken any of his suits or sport coats to the cleaners since Maggie had moved out. Instead, he found he had grown attached to a particular black blazer that he threw on with some tan khakis and a white dress shirt. Ties were not required in the office, so Hank had stopped even considering the prospect of picking out one to wear.

That hadn’t always been true. It hadn’t been that long ago that Hank would take the time to carefully select a tie to match his shirt and coat, knowing that if they didn’t work, Maggie would give him the not-so-subtle comment of, That’s what you’re wearing? which was the death knell of fashion. She would then go back upstairs to find the right tie, and, depending on her mood and Charlie’s particular distraction with Barney, Teletubbies or whatever was on TV, she would knot Hank’s tie while he stood there, a human mannequin. And she would finish with a that’s so much better and a kiss, as if to send him off to school with his lunch pail. Maybe that’s why he stopped wearing ties. They reminded him too much of Maggie.

Hank was summoned back to the moment as the steam rose from the shower and beckoned him to get his morning dousing. He had only had two or three drinks while he was home last night watching the basketball game. That had been far less than he had been used to drinking, and it seemed to do the trick last night before he finally fell asleep. He was trying to remember who had been playing. It used to be important to him to keep up with all the games, but not anymore. One more thing that brought memories back. He was trying to forget, not remember.

The hot shower felt perfect, as always, like a baptism of water that washed the grime from him every day. He had to admit that the mornings had finally started to get easier. The long hot shower, the occasional shave. The fresh start to the mornings. But it also depended on what the weather was doing. When it rained or the cold settled in, it made him ache, and his mood would be dark. When the sun was shining and there was a cool breeze, he felt energized. For Hank, right now, everything had to come together the right way to give him a chance to make it through the day.

Hank finished getting ready and turned the TV off on his way toward the kitchen. He had not shopped in any substantial way for months. Most of his eating was at the diner on 4th Street, unless he ordered in. He had gone out recently with a few of his law school buddies who were in town, but he had faked his way through the night by knocking back at least four shots of vodka in the first twenty minutes of dinner and making a lot of don’t worry about me comments. They knew well enough to leave it alone when Hank had raised his voice once with fucking mind your own business. That had pretty much ended the conversation right there. Hank didn’t really care that he had pissed them off— at least at the time. He had thought about it a few times since and had moments of remorse.

So, Hank passed on breakfast and walked out the front door of the one-story bungalow he still owned, at least for now. The monthly paycheck from the job had covered the mortgage and taxes, and Hank really wasn’t spending much on anything else, except the booze. He had accepted the fact about a month ago that the job wasn’t going to last forever, and he was smart enough to call his realtor, the same one who had sold him and Maggie the house only five years earlier, to list it. He had gotten a few bites, but he assumed the fact that he hadn’t had the house cleaned in almost six months was slowing sales. He had told the realtor a few times already that he would have it cleaned so there could be an open house. The realtor had even offered to do it herself. But Hank just wasn’t in the mood to have it cleaned. If he did, he would have had to go into Charlie’s room. And he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Hank walked past the For Sale sign on his way to the bus stop. He noticed that the grass needed to be cut and the bushes trimmed. He said out loud to himself, I’ll do it this weekend, as if he were creating a mental to do list. But the weekends had come and gone for a while. It was more likely that the realtor would get someone to mow the grass if she wanted to sell the house.

Chapter 3

H ANK COULD DRIVE to work. It was not even seven o’clock yet, and the roads didn’t start piling up until seven thirty or eight. The office was just ten miles or so away from the house, but he hadn’t driven his car in a while. The car was fine; it just sat in the garage. He drove it sparingly, only when he had to these days, which wasn’t much. He was an anxious driver. He worried when he drove that he might hit someone. Accidents happen. Shit happens.

Hank much preferred to take the bus, which stopped a couple blocks away from the house. He could sit and close his eyes while the bus made its way down to his stop near his office. He usually counted seven stops along the way, sometimes more depending on the assorted passengers who rode along with him. Generally, it was just a few regulars making their way from the suburbs into downtown Birmingham.

Others on the bus read the paper or had earplugs with wires stretching to their iPods or other music gizmos, while others were immersed in checking their e-mail or Facebook on their iPhones. Just a few years ago, Hank was a proud owner of one of the first updated iPhones on the market, constantly looking and checking his messages, his sense of importance based on the number of his connections to those far away rather than those closest to him. Now he didn’t carry a cell phone at all. People didn’t understand why he chose not to have a phone and the folks in his office didn’t appreciate his lack of connection. After the accident, Hank realized that he didn’t want to be connected to any of those people. The only ones he wanted to hear from wouldn’t be contacting him.

Chapter 4

W HEN HE GOT off the bus downtown, Hank’s movements were pretty routine. He stopped by the Starbucks in the bottom of his office building to grab a grande black coffee. It helped him shake off his cobwebs from the night before. Then he took the elevator up fifteen floors to the main lobby of Nelson Bridges and Stanford where he worked.

The law firm took up two floors of the downtown high rise building with fifty-five lawyers and thirty-plus staffers. The firm was established in 1950 after Nelson and Bridges came back from World War II, finished college and law school, and opened the office. Stanford joined the firm in 1963. It had a few other names over the years, but these three guys had ruled the roost for a long time. Nelson died last year at eighty-eight; Bridges had died a few years earlier. Stanford was still going strong at seventy-three.

The firm had a general practice but specialized in litigation. Nelson and Bridges had been some of the first lawyers to litigate mass tort cases in the early seventies, which had made the firm financially secure and both of them personally rich. Stanford was a politico, due primarily to family connections, and represented many of the rich and famous in Birmingham and across the South.

Hank had joined the firm after a year working at Dempsey and Baker, one of the largest firms in Birmingham. Originally, he had gotten the job at Dempsey because he had good grades and one of the firm’s partners represented an owner of the baseball team that Hank had played on when he was in the minors. But Hank soon realized that the Dempsey firm wasn’t the right place for him and found his way to Nelson Bridges. He had a friend already working at the firm after law school who had let him know about the opening. It didn’t hurt that he was once a major leaguer, at least for the short time that he had made it to the show. It seemed like everyone wanted to know someone who had played in the majors.

Hank got off the elevator and walked through the glass doors into the nicely appointed marble and glass office lobby. Sandy was at the receptionist’s desk and said, Good morning. Sandy was extremely nice to him. She had lost her husband last year and thought she understood what he was going through. She didn’t.

He walked down the hall from the main lobby to his office, which was about two-thirds the way down the corridor. He stopped at his secretary’s station, which was mis-named since Carla was a registered paralegal. But the firm was old school and had designed itself with the staff needed to cover the administrative tasks while the lawyers billed the hours. So, Carla was still considered a secretary. Hank knew the truth, though. Carla was as close to being a lawyer as anyone could be without going to law school. She had saved his bacon more than once already in potentially missed court deadlines. Hank had dropped a lot of balls, too many to remember, but Carla had saved him, and the senior lawyers never found out. If they had, they would have had the reasons they needed to let him go. He owed Carla big.

Hank’s office was what they called a two-window, compared to the larger number of panes awarded to more senior lawyers. The three named partners each had five. The firm had turned Bridge’s office into an extra conference room when he passed away, leaving some of his pictures and collections in the room for history’s sake. When Nelson died, the new managing partner, Steve Taft, had moved in. Taft had been with the firm for almost forty years. He ran a tight ship but was fair. Steve liked Hank – again, enough to cover him for a while. But Hank knew they wouldn’t keep him forever unless he started billing the hours again.

Hank sat down in his faux leather chair behind his medium sized wooden desk. It was covered with scattered papers and files shuffled together in the corner. That was Hank’s filing system these days. If he needed to find something, it was likely in that pile.

On the walls hung his two diplomas, the first from Auburn, the second from Cumberland Law School. He also had a framed picture of the Auburn team winning the national baseball championship and a copy of the article about the College World Series from the Birmingham Ledger below it. There were no photos of Maggie or Charlie. There had been a lot of them, but they were all now placed in the drawer in the credenza that sat next to his desk. Otherwise, he had found himself staring at the pictures. Sometimes memories were good. These days, they were mostly bad.

In the corner sat two wooden bats, both signed. One was from homerun hitter Albert Pujols; the other was from shortstop Ozzie Smith. Those were from his limited playing days for the Cardinals.

In the middle of his desk, paper clipped to a group of news files, was a handwritten memo from Grayson Chip Taylor. These were all bank default collections that Hank would organize and assign the pleadings to Carla. Hank worked primarily with Chip, head of the litigation group and a Vanderbilt