Toe-to-Tow: John Grisham V. Piedmont Virginia Parking

Picture this: One of the world's best-selling authors, his lunch interrupted, high-stepping it out of the upscale Main Street Market here one recent Saturday, intent on rescuing his snazzy ride, a dark red Porsche Carrera, from the claws of Captain Hook.

These are trying times, so why not have a good-natured laugh and moment of levity at the expense of someone who can afford it, who found himself in a predicament that has befallen most of us at one time or another? After all, John Grisham was illegally parked in a lot that had four signs indicating that violators will be towed, a lot with a quaint, refreshingly small-town "Honor Box" -- an honor box -- requiring $5 to be put in an envelope and allowing you, if you wish, to stay there all day.

"You would have to be legally blind not to see the signs," said Tom Woodson of Piedmont Virginia Parking, which oversees the lot. "If this had been New York City, where could you park for $5 an hour, let alone $5 a day?" Where indeed. But this, in some respects, is about more than the near-towing of a fancy car and its famous owner.

Despite Grisham forking over $95 and having the extreme good fortune of his car being unhooked before it was taken off and locked behind a chain-link fence somewhere, often with a menacing dog at the ready, the former lawyer in him was not about -- or able -- to let the matter drop.

In the more than 10 years since the 51-year-old author and his family moved to this increasingly rarefied community where thousand-acre horse farms are not uncommon and citizens genuflect to all things Jeffersonian and are polite to a fault ("After you," "No, after you " is frequently heard as call-and-response), Grisham has been a model of good citizenry. He financed the building of a state-of-the-art Little League complex on his estate south of town (and serves as its commissioner), generously donated to the local Legal Aid Justice Center, spent $5 million to establish the Rebuild the Coast Fund in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and recently gave a reading (along with Stephen King) to raise money for the Senate candidacy of James Webb. A self-proclaimed "moderate Baptist," he attends church every Sunday (incidentally, the only day he shaves) and is so involved in the private school his two children attended that he continues as chairman of its board and even acts (along with another local celebrity, Howie Long) as a groundskeeper of sorts, painting the lines on the football field for no fee.

So, perhaps partly out of some feeling of entitlement and in keeping with a track record as someone who seeks to achieve social justice wherever he can, whose writing template often pits good (Little Guy) vs. evil (Big Guy), Grisham wrote a rather churlish letter two weeks after the incident to one Allan H. Cadgene in San Francisco, owner of both the Market (where Grisham and his wife were having lunch with friends) and the "crummy little parking lot" in question.

In the letter, he informed Cadgene that he spent $300 a week on a variety of things at the Market (a consortium of refined establishments that offers its patrons handmade chocolates and hand-rolled Mennonite butter, more cheeses than the law allows, organic meat, LavAzza coffee, fine cookery, Italian tables, exotic flowers and the freshest in seafood and baked goods); he complained that the main (and free) parking lot "has not expanded in proportion to the increase in retail activity"; he questioned Cadgene's sanity in "shaking down his own customers for a few bucks a day to park" at the adjacent lot; and he threatened to stop shopping there altogether. "I refuse to pay to park when I'm either stopping by for coffee or spending $300 a week on food."

Cadgene, a lawyer himself, was cool in his response, reminding Grisham that "neither land in Charlottesville, Porsches or books are free" and informing him that the lot in question was under a long-term lease to Adelphia, the cable company, when the Market first opened. When that lease ended, though, "we offered to lease all or part of the 'crummy little parking lot' to our Main Street tenants at less than Adelphia was paying, and in fact less than our cost," Cadgene wrote, adding that "neither Gabe nor I felt that it was unreasonable for our tenants to contribute to costs which will benefit their business."

While Cadgene agreed with Grisham that sanity might be at issue here, in his view it was the "business judgment of our tenants that should be questioned." (In fact, two weeks before the incident, two of the tenants were prepared to take over 11 of the 25 parking spaces, but never concluded the deal.) Seeking the last word, it would seem, Cadgene not only circulated both Grisham's letter and his response to all concerned parties, he also reimbursed Grisham "for your inconvenience" -- in the event the tenants "didn't have the good business sense" to do so.

When the tenants received copies of the correspondence, they were not pleased. One wanted to distance himself, another pleaded ignorance, a third complained about employees who park in the free lot when they are supposed to park elsewhere, and yet another, Kate Collier, the owner of Feast, could not recall seeing Grisham or his wife around the Market since that day, clearly worried that they might not be back.

No one was more bemused about the whole affair than Cadgene's partner, Gabe Silverman. "Bubbie," he said early one morning, sipping his coffee and looking across at the lot that had been so maligned and had stirred so much emotion, "if John Grisham were living in New York City, he would know better than to expect anything to be for free, especially parking. Even a lawyer, you would think, wouldn't argue with that."

That particular lawyer, as it turns out, had more he wanted to say. As someone who had once gone after Hollywood and Oliver Stone in particular (for "moral blindness"), not only did he not regret sending the letter -- "Absolutely not," he boomed over the phone -- but the version he sent was mild, frankly, compared with earlier drafts that he said were "libelous" and "defamatory." Grisham sends about two or three letters of this nature a year, but usually lets his wife read them and "suggest ways for me to tone it down." It's a form of therapy, he confesses, a way of "getting things out of my system." He had, he admitted, parked in that same lot a number of times before without incident, "didn't notice any new warning signs" -- a quiet confession of guilt in itself -- and was startled by how quickly the tow truck showed up. "A friend of mine happened to look up and the car was already being raised," Grisham said. "Somebody must have phoned" -- subtly implying someone out to get him, or wreak havoc with his day -- "because the wrecker was there within 10 minutes. The only reason I was able to stop it was because the driver had stopped to check something."

"Prickly" is how he characterized the letter he received from Cadgene. "You see this kind of thing in New York all the time -- furious tenants and a landlord who is out of town and out of touch with reality." He underscored what he said in his original letter: Much as he enjoys his double macchiatos, "I am not going to pay to park there."

And what about the $95 check Cadgene sent? Was he planning to cash it?

No, he wasn't, but he was planning to fire a letter back. "This will probably turn into a [bleeping] contest," he predicted with a laugh, "that will last a year."

While that would no doubt continue to be a form of welcome comic relief, doing simple math might be the more rational (albeit less democratic) way of resolving the matter. If John Grisham, whom Charlottesvillians appear to either genuinely like or, at least, like having in their midst (other than one woman who wildly claimed a few years back that he and a friend were part of a conspiracy "to inflict emotional distress" and defame her good name, the basis for an $11 million nuisance suit that was unsuccessful), indeed spends more than $15,000 a year at the Main Street Market, perhaps the tenants, who fuss with each other (and Cadgene and Silverman) about all sorts of issues, could somehow find a way to celebrate his new offering -- "The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town" -- by giving him his own parking space.

Stay posted.

In the spirit of full disclosure: In August 2004, I was towed from a separate parking lot by a different towing company (Lethal Wrecker) from the one that was attempting to tow John Grisham's car. In my situation, there was no Honor Box. But when I discovered that I was being overcharged by $55, I decided, on principle, to sue. I not only won the case but also became known, for a period of time around these parts, as a citizen's hero, as the Guy Who Took on Lethal . . . and Won.