Paula Priamos

The Shyster's Daughter


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      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Acknowledgments

       PROLOGUE:

       PRISON WITHOUT WALLS

       THE FIRST SOUNDS OF FAMILY

       WHAT THEY TOLD ME AFTER HE DIED

       THE INSANITY DEFENSE

       RIDE

       WHAT THEY TOLD ME AFTER HE DIED

       SAY UNCLE

       WHITE ELEPHANT

       WHAT THEY TOLD ME AFTER HE DIED

       RED EYE

       FAMISHED FRAT BOYS

       WHAT THEY TOLD ME AFTER HE DIED

       BIG BIRD AND OTHER FOUL TYPES

       CLOSING ARGUMENTS

       STUN

       WHAT THEY TOLD ME AFTER HE DIED

       STRUCK

       THE OPENING

       WEIGHT AND MATTER

       WHAT THEY TOLD ME AFTER HE DIED

       CONDUCT UNBECOMING

       LIKE MARROW

       LATE SHOWING

       CASELOAD

       EPILOGUE

       About Paula Priamos

       Books from Etruscan Press

       Etruscan Press Is Proud of Support Received From

       Copyright Page

      For my father

       S’agapo

      Shyster (U.S. slang.)

      1. A lawyer who practices in an unprofessional or tricky manner; especially, one who haunts the prisons and lower courts to prey on petty criminals.

      —Oxford English Dictionary

       Acknowledgments

      I would like to express my gratitude to Philip Brady, Robert Lunday, Starr Troup, Julianne Popovec, and Jim Cihlar at Etruscan Press. For their friendship, wit, and humor, I would like to thank Annica Jin-Hendel, Mary Ann Brown, Michelle Seward, Naoko Kato, and Betty Pires. Special thanks goes to my teaching colleague Jackie Rhodes. With much love, I would like to thank my family—my mother, sister, and brother Nick who lived many of these stories with me along with my stepsons. This show of thanks also includes my niece and my sister-in-law Jennifer Priamos. And lastly, with deep appreciation to my husband Jim Brown for his affection and unyielding support at all the right times.

      An excerpt of The Shyster’s Daughter has appeared in ZYZZYVA and in the Los Angeles Times Magazine in different form.

       PROLOGUE:

       A LESSON IN MORAL TURPITUDE

      The last time my father calls is shortly before the anniversary of his disbarment to tell me he’s just cheated death. On his end, there’s background noise—a restaurant, a bar or somewhere far sleazier. Since the divorce he licks his wounds at a topless strip club in Garden Grove called the Kat Nip.

      “This malaka in a ski mask tried to carjack me. He had a gun to the window and told me to get out of my own goddamn car.” My father slows down, hanging on to the moment as if speaking to a jury. “But I gave him the finger and backed the hell out of there.”

      Considering my father’s Greek temper, it doesn’t surprise me that he flipped off a gunman before thinking of the possible consequences. Carjacking a middle-aged man for his old diesel Mercedes seems beyond desperate, more like a junkie looking for an easy mark. The days when my father tipped big from a money clip of C-notes in his pocket are gone, along with his law license.

      Now he carries ones and fives to slip under the g-strings of his favorite girls at the Kat Nip.

      “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,” I say. If death didn’t get him in the form of an actual bullet, it could’ve gotten him from shock. Priamos men are known for strong minds and weak hearts. My grandfather died at fifty-nine, my father’s age. I hear it in his voice. For once, my father sounds scared.

      As his daughter, the one child out of three who stuck around, I stay on the line. I listen. It’s what I’ve always done.

      “Where were you?” I ask. From my Uncle Dimitri I’ve learned my father is seeing “a burlesque dancer” known as Sugar Brown. She lives in Compton, the neighboring city of Lynwood where my father grew up.

      “In the parking lot at the Bicycle Club.”

      With the card casino’s security cameras and well-lit lots, the evidence is stacked against him. He’s lying. After more than two decades spent as a defense attorney heatedly releasing himself and his clients of any wrong doing, my father is cool to the truth. I doubt he’d even know how to recognize it.

      “Look,” he starts. “That isn’t why I called, Paula Girl.”

      “It isn’t?”

      “I