The Loan Wolf

I was sitting in docket, reviewing whatever case file I was going to be arguing in a few minutes in the last docket in this division before Christmas.  The courtroom was still bustling, even though it was getting close to the end of the morning.   I was just one of half a dozen attorneys sitting in front of the bar -- the prosecutors on one side and the Public Defenders on the other, with the private attorneys milling around in the middle.  The gallery seats behind us were still full, as was the bench along the side of the courtroom behind the defense table with a row of orange jumpsuit clad prisoners, their hands cuffed behind their backs, which made a scratching and jingling sound when they moved, which reminded me, given the upcoming holiday, of the rattlings of the ghost of Jacob Marley in a Christmas Carol.

I wasn’t really listening to the prisoner at the lectern.  His counsel was standing between him and the prosecutors’ table, so I couldn’t even really see him.  He spoke in a soft, matter of fact tone of voice, answering politely “yes, Your Honor,” and “no, Your Honor,” to the judges questions, which made sense, as he was pleading guilty to some low level felony offense to an agreed upon probation term.

I heard the judge run through the scripted and well-worn advisement of his rights and the potential penalties for the crime he was about to admit to, something I have heard at least a thousand times.  But one can never truly tune out what’s going on in court.  Just at that moment you do zone off, that’s when the judge stops what he’s doing and asks you some random question about your case.

So I was tuned out, but still listening when the judge asked the defendant standing before him the same question he asks everyone who pleads guilty, “What is it you did that makes you think you’re guilty of the crime of Providing False Information to a Pawnbroker?”

“Well,” the defendant said, “this all started because of my wolf, Shaggy --”

The line DA sitting in front of me shot me a look.  He scribbled on a Post-It noted and handed it to me: “Did he just say, his ‘wolf’?”

The judge caught it, too.  “I don’t need to hear the reason that you did it.  I just need to know what you did, in your own words, that makes you guilty.”

“I knowingly provided false information to a pawnbroker, your honor,” he said.

The sentencing continued, but the DA closest to the defendant gave the same note he’d given me to defense counsel.  Defense counsel looked down for a second, smiled, and whispered, “I’ll tell you about it later.”

The defendant was silent for the rest of the sentencing, and, as expected, the judge granted him probation.  

The steady stream of cases continued without much excitement for the rest of the morning.   When the last defendant was finally called and the docket and courtroom were finally cleared, the only ones left were me and three other prosecutors, waiting to hear how a shaggy wolf was responsible.

“So what’s the story?” we asked.

And defense counsel explained:

“The guy had been living with his girlfriend for the last couple of weeks.  She’d just moved in with him.  He was head over heels for her, but it turns out she’d met some new guy online, and was leaving the state to be with him.  But she didn’t have a car.  So she bought a car from one of the really small dealerships downtown, the one next to that hotel I know you know I’m talking about, for a couple hundred dollars.  She disappeared the same day -- cleared out all her things and just took off. Didn’t even tell the old boyfriend she was leaving.  

“A couple of days later someone knocks on his door, one of those big, burly, tattoo-sleaved enforcers from the dealership.  A repo man.  The repo man tells him that the check his girlfriend wrote for the car bounced, and he was there to collect the cash.  Which he didn’t have.  So the guy wanted the collateral she put down -- this guy’s pet wolf.

“Well, there is a legal way to own a wolf.  But you’ve got to have proof of vaccinations and trainings and papers and things.  None of which he had, for reasons I’ll let you guess.  So he calls up a couple of veterinarians until he finds one willing to vaccinate and document the wolf so the repo man could take possession.  Problem was, the vet was asking for a couple of hundred dollars in cash.  A couple hundred dollars my guy didn’t have.

That’s why he walked to the nearest Rent-a-Center and took out a Playstation and some games.  He took the Playstation and the games to the nearest pawn shop, where he hocked them for cash.  He took the cash to the vet, who signed the papers for the wolf, so he could give the wolf to the dealership.

A couple of days later, Rent-A-Center wants its Playstation back, and here we are.”

“So it really was a wolf?”  I asked.  “Not just a big dog?”

“No, he really had a wolf.”

“How shaggy was it?”

“I’ve seen pictures,” defense counsel said, “it wasn’t that shaggy.”

Comments

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story

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  2. Replies
    1. Still working out some kinks in this section...
      Susan Chadderdon's comment: "So wait what happened to Shaggy? Wonder if he ate the Repo man's face in an act of poetic justice."

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