The Colorful Case of A Well-Named Lawyer

"I'm a big boy, I can take it," Sibley says of the criticism so many have leveled at him. "The Lord never gives you more than you can carry. I've got big shoulders."

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Blair Sibley is tall, trim, soft-spoken. He likes to play bagpipes and indoor soccer. He's friendly and personable.

With all the scandal and ruckus of the past week, it seems sensible to talk to him in quiet, in person. His letterhead lists a K Street address, the 1600 block, just up from the White House.

It's in a big office building of the type that his father, Harper Sibley Jr., one of the richer and more powerful developers in Florida, builds in Miami. You punch the elevator button, and when it stops, you expect the glory wall and the fresh-cut flowers and the attractive-but-not-too receptionist with the Scandinavian accent and the dawning realization that the Persian rug beneath your feet retails at more than your net salary for last year.

Instead, you find that the K Street offices for Montgomery Blair Sibley, Chartered, are in what amounts to a broom closet in the landlord's office.

It's next to the mailroom and the women running the building's switchboard. The one who tells you that Sibley's not in wears a T-shirt that appears to read, "Where's my SUGAR DADDY?"

So you go out to Rockville, to a building close to the courthouse. Sibley's other letterhead identifies this address as the Center for Forfeiture Law, which he heads.

This turns out to be more confusing: It's a room in a basement with his name on a locked door. A note taped below his name asks delivery drivers to leave packages with a mental health counseling service upstairs. A note on an adjacent door reads: "NO UNAUTHORIZED STORAGE. PER BLDG MANAGEMENT." The receptionist at the counseling service says she hasn't seen Sibley in a while.

It turns out there's a third address for Sibley, too -- the packing-crate company in Gaithersburg, the one where he's being sued for nonpayment of rent.

A call to the Florida Bar to ask for his law office address in the Sunshine State turns up the information that he doesn't have one listed -- only that basement office in Rockville.

Something is very amiss here. You do a computerized database news search for Sibley, and what you get is information on his representation of Arthur Vanmoor, better known as the aforementioned "Big Pimping Pappy."