The last time I had the crap kicked out of me was in college. I don’t remember exactly what precipitated the altercation that night, but I do recall being a tad drunk outside a convenience store, holding a bag full of greasy potato logs and shoving a finger in the guy’s face. The only difference between then and right now is that I’m not drunk, I don’t have any logs and I’m standing inside a county courthouse.
It’s midsummer and I’ve been trying for a month to get my hands on one court file. I’ve had enough. Government offices, whether local, state or federal, can be difficult to navigate. If you’re lucky you can just walk in and ask for the information. In other cases you have to fill out forms and come back a day or two later. In some instances you have to write letters, officially requesting the information under the state and federal open records laws that allow for its release. Sometimes, however, no matter what route you take, nothing works.
The file I’m seeking, which I’ve been told holds information about an infidelity committed by the candidate we’re researching, is supposed to be stored in the county clerk’s office along with every other court file. The case has long since been resolved, but this particular file has been “checked out” by the attorney who handled it. Why? Because he wants to protect his client from the damage it could cause. Over the past four weeks I’ve called and sent letters to no avail. The clerks don’t know when the file will be returned and have so far not been inclined to retrieve it themselves. Even my phone calls to the attorney’s office have proved fruitless. So, on this morning, I tell Alan I have no option but to drive to the courthouse and confront the bureaucracy in person.
“I’m going to spend an entire day on this bullshit,” I grumble.
“Remember to smile,” Alan says as I walk out the door.
It’s a painstaking drive down rural highways and one-lane back roads to the small-town courthouse that is the source of my irritation. When I enter the clerk’s office, I introduce myself as the guy who’s been phoning and writing about the file that’s not there.
“Still hasn’t been returned,” one of the clerk’s says quickly.
“Tell me,” I say. “If it were here, where would it be?”
She leads me back to a records room, points at rows and rows of shelves crammed with folders stuffed with legal papers, and tells me that what I’m seeking would be there, if it were there, which it’s not. She asks if I need the case number to search for the missing document. I already have it, I tell her, and she leaves. I thumb through the files one by one in sequence until I get to the spot where it should be. There, in its place, is a small note card indicating that, indeed, the candidate’s attorney removed the file some months earlier. I take it out, walk back to the clerk and set it in front of her.
“Exactly how long can someone ‘hijack’ a court file?” I ask. “I mean, it’s county property, right? Do you have any interest in getting it back?”
The clerk starts to formulate a response when she looks over my shoulder through the door of an adjacent courtroom, points and says, “Ask him. He’s the one who has it.”
There, standing among a roomful of court personnel wrapping up some hearing, is an average-looking man in a dark suit packing up his briefcase.
“That’s this guy?” I ask with my finger on the name scrawled on the note card. “That’s the attorney?” She nods.
The object of my ire is preparing to leave, or so he thinks.
Housed directly behind the forehead of every human are chunks of brain called the frontal lobes. These lobes are chock-full of dopamine-sensitive neurons that help control our emotions. Their functions, according to medical books, are to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad conduct and to override and suppress unacceptable social responses. In humans, the frontal lobes reach full development in our twenties as we reach the cognitive maturity associated with adulthood. I can only assume, however, that sometimes, on some days, the frontal lobes simply decide to take a snooze.
Our conversation begins nicely enough. I introduce myself to the attorney, describe my problem and ask if I might see the court file that he possesses. He says nothing for several moments, goes back to his briefcase and then asks, “Why do you want it?”
My frontal lobes are apparently sound asleep. “First, it’s none of your business why I want it. Second, it’s not your file to keep. Third, as far as I’m concerned, you stole it,” I tell him.
The others in the courtroom, including the judge, are now listening. The rage I’m directing at this attorney is surprisingly fulfilling after a month of being stonewalled. He tells me he’s not sure he even has the file. I show him the card with his name on it and he just smiles. This guy is a classic dick and all I want to do is keep going. I also realize that I’m in unfamiliar territory and, on one level, I understand the perils that can arise from starting trouble in a place where you know no one.
In the movie Chinatown there’s a scene in which Jack Nicholson’s character, Jake Gittes, a private detective, is tailing a man on behalf of his supposed wife, to see if he is having an affair, not knowing that he’s been tricked. At one point in his investigation, which includes researching land and water rights records in the county courthouse, Gittes realizes that he may be bumping up against something bigger than one man’s infidelity—something that involves political corruption, the swindling of farmers and a conspiracy to control the flow of water to the thirsty, growing city of Los Angeles. If there were any doubt about it, his suspicions are confirmed when a thug slices his nose with a knife for being “a very nosy kitty.”
Neither Alan nor I had ever been subjected to physical assault, but we’ve received our share of threats, and we take note of episodes involving others who encounter trouble on similar quests. You’ve probably never heard of Ajay Kumar, but he lives in New Delhi, India, and, like me, was just asking questions and digging for the truth. In India, any citizen is entitled to ask for information from any level of government under the nation’s Right to Information Act, adopted in 2005. So when Kumar (not to be confused with Ajay Kumar, the world’s smallest actor) discovered that private buildings were encroaching on government land under the protection of a local politician, he asked the Municipal Corporation of Delhi why these homes and shops were allowed to be built on property not zoned for private construction. At first he was denied, ignored by the public information officer. But he persisted and took his questions to a higher-level public information officer and then to the federal government’s central information commission. Success at last, Kumar must have thought, when the commission ordered the local government and the police to inspect the property about which he had inquired. He must have felt a sense of vindication and pride that he had taken on the powers that be and won a victory, not only for himself, but also for his neighbors and the citizens of his city. He must have believed that the system had worked.
Unfortunately for Kumar, when he returned to the property a few months later, he was savagely attacked and beaten bloody with an iron rod by an angry mob of two dozen people who backed the politician he had crossed.
“Neither the police nor the people helped me,” said poor Kumar in a Time magazine article.
Miles from home, I wonder who’s going to help me if this thing goes south. I don’t know how many friends this attorney has or who they are. Maybe the sheriff? Maybe the judge? Here I am, standing in a courtroom, half shouting at a man I’ve never met before, all because he has a file I want to see. Is it worth it?
“I’ll bring it back when I’m ready,” he tells me.
It’s worth it.
“No, here’s what you’re going to do.” My right index finger is now about two inches in front of his face. “You’re going to go to your office, get the file and bring it back to the clerk where it belongs. You don’t own it and your client doesn’t own it. It belongs to the county. So go get it.”
In poker, when players make mistakes because something has upset them emotionally, it’s called “being on a tilt.” A player becomes so upset that he begins to make poor decisions. A player can sometimes go on a tilt simply because his opponent is obnoxious or rude. And a player on a tilt may begin betting with weaker hands than usual. While it’s important to recognize when your opponent is on a tilt, it’s even more vital to understand when you may be going on a tilt and figure out how not to let your emotions get the best of you. I’m definitely on a tilt, but it’s too late. I’ve already laid down my bet and called his hand.
The attorney looks away and glances briefly at the judge, who, I’m relieved to see, has a hint of a grin on his face and a look that says, “Hey, don’t ask me to help you.” It’s just me and the attorney—no angry mob. Everyone still in the courtroom knows he’s purposely hiding information he is not entitled to keep.
With few options except to continue ignoring me or hit me on the head with an iron rod, he finally agrees to have someone from his office return it and tells me I can get it from the clerk. A few days later I do, and it contains the information I am seeking. Though it was never used in the campaign, it was nonetheless a victory, the payoff for a well-played hand.
Things don’t always end that well. Sometimes you meet assholes along the way. But fortunately it’s rare for anyone to be killed or beaten in the United States today for merely asking questions, for seeking information to which we are entitled. Whether it stays that way in these volatile political times is anyone’s guess.