He had wanted to start a full-blown lawn-mowing business. That'll have to wait.
In the interim, Schmidt is floating him some money to get by.
But why? What are Schmidt's motives? Isn't that the issue?
Maybe not, since the only man who needs to care about Schmidt's motivations doesn't.
"I don't know why he's doing all this," McGee says in his slow drawl. "Justice? Maybe the dude wants to see justice done. I don't know.
"The fact is, he helped me," McGee says. "Nobody else did. I needed help and he did it. So I don't care that much about all the whys and all that. I just care that he did it."
For McGee's next court appearance, Schmidt wants McGee to wear a rack of deer antlers. He was gutted like a deer, Schmidt says. He should look like a deer.
Late last week, Schmidt visited the downtown library to research books on deer hunting. Near the back of one book, he found a photo of two men posing by their freshly gutted prize buck.
Schmidt was elated. The two men show a delightful resemblance to the two backwoodsmen who pig-raped Ned Beatty in Deliverance.
Schmidt then ran to a print shop to create posters merging the hunters with pictures of his client. It's a poster depicting Arizona justice, he says.
"Brilliant, eh?"
McGee, considering the gutted deer analogy, nods his head in approval:
"Yeah," he says. "That would be pretty funny."
