Trudy was dressed to the nines-tight short skirt, tasteful red blouse, full complement of makeup and jewelry. She crossed her shapely legs to get the lawyer's attention. She patted Lance on the arm as he massaged her knee.
The lawyer ignored her legs as he ignored their groping.
She had to file for divorce, she declared, though she had already given the short version on the phone. She was mad and bitter. How could he do this to her? And to Ashley Nicole, their precious daughter? She had loved him dearly. Their lives together had been good. Now this.
"The divorce is no problem," the lawyer said, more than once. His name was J. Murray Riddleton, an accomplished divorce practitioner with many clients. "It's an easy case of abandonment. Under Alabama law, you'll get the divorce, full custody, all assets, everything."
"I want to file as fast as possible," she said, looking at the Ego Wall behind the lawyer.
"I'll do it first thing in the morning."
"How long will it take?"
"Ninety days. Piece of cake."
This did nothing to relieve her anxiety. "I just don't see how a person could do this to someone he loved. I feel like a fool." Lance's hand moved slightly upward, still massaging.
The divorce was the least of her worries. The lawyer knew it. She could try to fake a broken heart, but it wasn't working.
"How much did you get in life insurance?" he asked, flipping through the file.
She looked absolutely shocked at the mention of her life insurance. "Why is that relevant?" she snapped.
"Because they're gonna sue you to get it back. He isn't dead, Trudy. No death, no life insurance."
"You must be kidding."
"Nope."
"They can't do that. Can they? Surely not."
"Oh yes. In fact, they'll do it quickly."
Lance withdrew his hand and slumped in his chair. Trudy's mouth opened and her eyes watered. "They just can't."
He took a fresh legal pad and uncapped his pen. "Let's make a list," he said.
She paid a hundred and thirty thousand dollars for the Rolls, and still owned it. Lance drove a Porsche, which she'd bought for eighty-five thousand. The house had been purchased for nine hundred thousand, cash, no mortgage, and it was in Lance's name. Sixty thousand for his dope boat. A hundred thousand for her jewelry. They figured and pondered and pulled numbers from the air. The list stopped at about a million and a half. The lawyer didn't have the heart to tell them that these precious assets would be the first to go.
Like pulling teeth without Novocain, he made Trudy estimate their monthly living expenses. She reckoned it was around ten grand a month, for the past four years. They had taken some fabulous trips, money spilled down the drain that no life insurance company could ever recover.
She was unemployed, or retired, as she preferred to call it. Lance was not about to mention his narcotics business. Nor did they dare reveal, even to their own lawyer, that they had hidden three hundred thousand in a bank in Florida.
"When do you think they'll sue?" she asked.
"Before the week is out," said the lawyer.
IT WAS, in fact, much faster. In the middle of the press conference, when the news of Patrick's resurrection was being made, attorneys for Northern Case Mutual quietly entered the clerk's office downstairs and sued. Trudy Lanigan for the full two and a half million dollars, plus interest and attorneys' fees. The lawsuit also included a petition for a temporary restraining order to prevent Trudy from moving assets now that she was no longer a widow.
The attorneys carried their petition down the hall to the chambers of an accommodating judge, one they had spoken to hours earlier, and.in an emergency and perfectly proper closed hearing, the judge granted the restraining order. As an established member of the legal community, the judge was very familiar with the saga of Patrick Lanigan. His wife had been snubbed by Trudy shortly after she took delivery of the red Rolls.
As Trudy and Lance pawed each other and schemed with their lawyer, a copy of the restraining order was driven to Mobile and enrolled with the county clerk. Two hours later, as they sipped their first drink on their patio and gazed forlornly across Mobile Bay, a process server intruded long enough to hand Trudy a copy of the lawsuit filed by Northern Case Mutual, a summons to appear in court in Biloxi, and a certified copy of the restraining order. Among its list of prohibitions was an order for her not to write another check until the judge said so.
Chapter 7
ATTORNEY ETHAN RAPLEY left his dark attic, XXshowered and shaved and poured eyedrops into his bloodshot retinas, and sipped strong coffee as he found a semiclean navy blazer to wear downtown. He hadn't been to the office in sixteen days. Not that he was missed, and he certainly didn't miss anyone there. They faxed him when they needed him, and he faxed them back. He wrote the briefs and memos and motions the firm needed to survive, and he did the research for people he despised. He was occasionally forced to put on a tie and meet a client or attend some hideous conference with his fellow partners. He hated his office; he hated the people, even the ones he barely knew; he hated every book on every shelf and every file on every desk. He hated the photos on his wall, and the smell of everything-the stale coffee in the hall, the chemicals near the copier, the perfume of the secretaries. Everything.
Yet, he caught himself almost smiling as he eased through the late afternoon traffic along the Coast. He nodded at an old acquaintance as he walked rather briskly down the Vieux Marche. He actually spoke to the receptionist, a woman he helped pay but whose last name he couldn't recall.
In the conference room, a crowd mingled; mostly lawyers from nearby offices, a judge or two, some courthouse types. It was after five, and the mood was loud and festive. Cigar smoke filled the air.
Rapley found the liquor on a table at one end of the room, and spoke to Vitrano as he poured a Scotch and tried to appear pleased. At the other end, a variety of bottled waters and soft drinks was being ignored.
"It's been like this all afternoon," Vitrano said as they looked at the crowd and listened to the happy talk. "Soon as word got out, this place started hopping."
The Patrick news raced through the legal community along the Coast in a matter of minutes. Lawyers thrive on gossip, tend even to embellish it, and repeat it with amazing rapidity. Rumors were heard, collected, invented. He weighs a hundred and thirty pounds and speaks five languages. The money was found. The money is gone forever. He lived in near poverty. Or was it a mansion? He lived alone. He has a new wife and three kids. They know where the money is. They haven't a clue.
All rumors eventually got back to the money. As the friends and the curious gathered in the conference room and chatted about this and that, everything drifted back to the money. Secrets were scarce among this crowd. For years now everyone knew the firm lost one third of ninety million. And the remotest chance of collecting that money brought in the friends and the curious for a drink or two and a story or a rumor and an update and the inevitable, "Damn, I hope they find the money."
Rapley disappeared into the crowd with his second drink. Bogan slugged down sparkling water and chatted with a judge. Vitrano worked the crowd and confirmed or denied as much as possible. Havarac huddled in a corner with an aging court reporter who suddenly found him cute.
The liquor flowed as night fell. Hopes were raised and raised as the gossip got recycled.
PATRICK essentially was the evening news on the Coast station. It reported little else. There were Mast and Parrish staring grimly at the bank of microphones as if they'd been whipped and dragged there against their wills. There was a close-up of the front door of the law office, with no comments from anyone inside. There was a drippy little chronicle from Patrick's gravesite, complete with brooding possibilities of what may have happened to the poor soul whose ashes were buried down there. There was a flashback to the fiery crash four years earlier, with shots of the site and the burned hulk of Mr. Patrick Lanigan's Chevy Blazer. No comments from the wife, the FBI, the Sheriff. No comments from the players, but lots of wild speculation from the reporters.