CHAPTER 6
Rochelle was secretly reading a romance novel when she heard footsteps on the front porch. She deftly stuffed the paperback into a drawer and moved her fingertips to the keyboard so she seemed to be hard at work when the door opened. A man and a woman entered timidly, their eyes darting around, almost in fear. This was not unusual. Rochelle had seen a thousand come and go, and they almost always entered with grim and suspecting faces. And why not? They wouldn’t be there if they were not in trouble, and for most it was their first visit to a law office.
“Good afternoon,” she said professionally.
“We’re looking for a lawyer,” the man said.
“Divorce lawyer,” the woman corrected. It was immediately obvious to Rochelle that she had been correcting him for some time, and he was probably fed up. They were in their sixties, though, a bit too old for a divorce.
Rochelle managed a smile and said, “Please have a seat.” She pointed to two nearby chairs. “I’ll need to take down some basic information.”
“Can we see a lawyer without an appointment?” the man asked.
“I think so,” Rochelle said. They backed into the chairs and sat down, then both managed to scoot the chairs farther away from each other. This could get ugly, Rochelle thought. She pulled out a questionnaire and found a pen. “Your names, please. Full names.”
“Calvin A. Flander,” he said, beating her to the punch.
“Barbara Marie Scarbro Flander,” she said. “Scarbro’s the maiden name, and I might take it up again, haven’t decided yet, but everything else has been worked out, and we’ve even signed a property settlement agreement, one I found online, and it’s all right here.” She was holding a large sealed envelope.
“She just asked for your name,” Mr. Flander said.
“I got that.”
“Can she take her old name back? I mean, you know, it’s been forty-two years since she’s used it, and I keep telling her that no one will know who she is if she starts going by Scarbro again.”
“It’s a helluva lot better than Flander,” Barbara shot back. “Flander sounds like someplace in Europe or somebody who sleeps around—fi-lander or fi-lander-er. Don’t you think so?”
Both were staring at Rochelle, who calmly asked, “Any minor children under the age of eighteen?”
Both shook their heads. “Two grown,” Mrs. Flander said. “Six grandkids.”
“She didn’t ask about grandkids,” Mr. Flander said.
“Well, I damn sure told her, didn’t I?”
Rochelle managed to guide them through birth dates, address, Social Security numbers, and employment histories without serious conflict. “And you say you’ve been married for forty-two years?”
Both nodded defiantly.
She was tempted to ask why, and what went wrong, and couldn’t this be salvaged? But she knew better than to start that conversation. Let the lawyers deal with it. “You mentioned a property settlement. I assume what you have in mind is a no-fault divorce, on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Flander said. And the sooner the better.
“It’s all right here,” Mrs. Flander said, clutching the envelope.
“House, cars, bank accounts, retirement accounts, credit cards, debts, even furniture and appliances?” Rochelle asked.
“Everything,” he said.
“It’s all right here,” Mrs. Flander said again.
“And you’re both satisfied with the agreement?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “We’ve done all the work, all we need is for a lawyer to draw up the papers and go to court with us. No hassle whatsoever.”
“That’s the only way to do it,” Rochelle said, the voice of experience. “I’ll get one of our lawyers to meet with you and go into more detail. Our firm charges $750 for a no-fault divorce, and we require half of that to be paid at the initial conference. The other half is due on the day you go to court.”
The Flanders reacted differently. Her jaw dropped in disbelief, as if Rochelle had demanded $10,000 in cash. His eyes narrowed and his forehead wrinkled, as if this was exactly what he expected—a first-class shaft job by a bunch of slimy lawyers. Not a word, until Rochelle asked, “Is something wrong?”
Mr. Flander growled, “What is this, the old bait and switch? This firm advertises no-fault divorces for $399, then you get us in the door and double the price.”
Rochelle’s immediate reaction was to ask herself, What has Wally done now? He advertised so much, in so many ways, and in so many odd places that it was impossible to keep up with him.
Mr. Flander stood abruptly, yanked something from his pocket, and tossed it on Rochelle’s desk. “Look at this,” he said. It was a bingo card from VFW Post 178, McKinley Park. Across the bottom was a bright yellow ad announcing: “Finley & Figg, Attorneys, No-Fault Divorces as Easy as Pie, $399. Call 773-718-JUSTICE.”
Rochelle had been surprised so many times that she should have been immune. But bingo cards? She had watched as prospective clients rifled through purses, and bags, and pockets to pull out church bulletins, football programs, Rotary Club raffles, coupons, and a hundred other little pieces of propaganda that Attorney Figg littered around Greater Chicago in his ceaseless quest to drum up business. And now he’d done it again. She had to admit that she was indeed surprised.
The firm’s fee schedule was always a moving target, with the costs of representation subject to change on the fly depending on the client and the situation. A nicely dressed couple driving a late-model car might get a quote of $1,000 for a no-fault from one lawyer, and an hour later a working stiff and his haggard wife could negotiate half that much from the other lawyer. Part of Rochelle’s daily grind was ironing out fee disputes and discrepancies.
Bingo cards? Easy as pie for $399? Oscar would blow a gasket.
“Okay,” she said calmly, as if bingo card advertising were a long tradition at their firm. “I need to see your property settlement.”
Mrs. Flander handed it over. Rochelle scanned it quickly, then gave it back.
“Let me see if Mr. Finley is in,” she said. She took the bingo card with her.
Oscar’s door was closed, as always. The firm had a rigid closed-door policy that kept the lawyers shielded from each other and from the street traffic and riffraff that ventured in. From Rochelle’s perch near the front, she could see every door—Oscar’s, Wally’s, the kitchen, the downstairs restroom, the copy room, and a small junk room used for storage. She also knew the lawyers had a tendency to listen quietly through their closed doors when she was grilling a prospective client. Wally had a side door he often used to escape from a client who promised trouble, but Oscar did not. She knew he was at his desk, and since Wally was hitting the funeral homes, she had no choice.
She closed his door behind her and placed the bingo card in front of Mr. Finley. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said.
“What’s he done now?” Oscar asked as he scanned the card. “Three hundred and ninety-nine dollars?”
“Yep.”
“I thought we agreed that $500 was the minimum for a no-fault?”
“No, we agreed on $750, then $600, then $1,000, then $500. Next week I’m sure we’ll agree on something else.”