The Partner (7 page)

The pain was intense, and so his doctors, all four of them, had made the simple decision to keep him sedated for the time being. There was no rush to move him. He was a wanted man, but it would take a few days to determine who got him first.

They kept the room dark, the music low, the IV full of delightful narcotics, and poor Patrick snored away the hours dreaming of nothing and oblivious to the storm brewing back home.

In August of 1992, five months after the money vanished, a federal grand jury in Biloxi indicted Patrick for the theft. There was sufficient evidence that he had pulled the heist, and there was not the slightest hint that anyone else might be a suspect. It occurred internationally, thus the feds had jurisdiction.

The Harrison County Sheriff’s Department and the
local District Attorney had started a joint investigation into the murder, but had long since moved on to other, more pressing matters. Suddenly they were back in business.

The noon press conference was delayed while the authorities met in Cutter’s office in downtown Biloxi to sort things out. It was a tense meeting, attended by people with competing interests. On one side of the table sat Cutter and the FBI, who took their orders from Maurice Mast, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Mississippi, who had driven in from Jackson. On the other side sat Raymond Sweeney, the Sheriff of Harrison County, and his right-hand man, Grimshaw, both of whom despised the FBI. Their spokesman was T.L. Parrish, the District Attorney for Harrison and surrounding counties.

It was federal versus state, big budgets versus low, with serious egos around the room and everyone wanting most of the Patrick show.

“The death penalty is crucial here,” D.A. Parrish said.

“We can use the federal death penalty,” U.S. Attorney Mast said, a little timid, if that was possible.

Parrish smiled and cast his eyes down. The federal death penalty had just recently been passed by a Congress with little clue of how to implement it. It certainly sounded good when the President signed it into law, but the kinks were enormous.

The state, on the other hand, had a rich and proven history of legal executions. “Ours is better,” Parrish said. “And we all know it.” Parrish had sent eight men to death row. Mast had yet to indict one for capital murder.

“And then there is the issue of prison,” Parrish continued. “We send him to Parchman, where he’s locked down twenty-three hours a day in a steam room with bad food served twice a day, two showers a week, lots of roaches and rapists. If you get him, he gets a country club for the rest of his life while the federal courts pamper him and find a thousand ways to keep him alive.”

“It won’t be a picnic,” Mast said, on the ropes and covering badly.

“A day at the beach maybe. Come on, Maurice. The issue is leverage. We have two big mysteries, two questions that must be answered before Lanigan is put to rest. The big one is money. Where is it? What did he do with it? Can it be recovered and given to its owners? The second is just exactly who is buried out there. I gotta hunch that only Lanigan can tell us, and he won’t unless he’s forced to. He’s gotta be scared, Maurice. Parchman is terrifying. I promise you, he’s praying for a federal indictment.”

Mast was convinced but he couldn’t agree. The case was simply too big to hand over to the locals. Cameras were arriving at the moment.

“There are other charges, you know,” he said. “The theft happened offshore, a long way from here.”

“Yeah, but the victim was a resident of this county at the time,” Parrish said.

“It’s not a simple case.”

“What are you proposing?”

“Perhaps we should do it jointly,” Mast said, and the ice melted considerably. The feds could preempt at any time, and the fact that the U.S. Attorney was offering to share was the best Parrish could hope for.

Parchman was the key, and everyone in the room knew it. Lanigan the lawyer had to know what awaited him there, and the prospect of ten years in hell prior to death could loosen his tongue.

A plan was devised to divide the pie, with both men, Parrish and Mast, tacitly agreeing to share the spotlight. The FBI would continue its search for the money. The locals would concentrate on the murder. Parrish would hastily summon his grand jury. A united front would be presented to the public. Such sticky matters as the trial and its subsequent appeals were glossed over with a hasty promise to address them later. It was important now to reach a truce so that one side wouldn’t be worrying about the other.

Because a trial was in progress in the federal building, the press was herded directly across the street into the Biloxi courthouse, where the main courtroom on the second floor was available. There were dozens of reporters. Most were wild-eyed locals, but others were from Jackson, New Orleans, and Mobile. They pressed forward and bunched together like children at a parade.

Mast and Parrish walked grim-faced to a podium laden with microphones and wires. Cutter and the rest of the cops made a wall behind them. Lights came on and cameras flashed.

Mast cleared his throat and said, “We are pleased to announce the capture of Mr. Patrick S. Lanigan, formerly of Biloxi. He is indeed alive and well, and now in our custody.” He paused for dramatic effect, savoring his moment in the sun, listening as a ripple of excitement played through the throng of vultures. He then gave a few details of the capture—Brazil, two
days ago, assumed identity—without giving the slightest hint that neither he nor the FBI had had anything to do with the actual locating of Patrick. Next, some useless details about the arrival of the prisoner, the pending charges, the swift and sure hand of federal justice.

Parrish was not as dramatic. He promised a quick indictment for capital murder, and for any other charge he might think of.

The questions came in torrents. Mast and Parrish declined comment on just about everything, and managed to do so for an hour and a half.

She insisted that Lance be allowed to sit through the appointment with her. She needed him, she said. He was quite cute in his tight denim shorts. His muscular legs were hairy and brown. The lawyer was scornful, but then, he’d seen everything.

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.

Seven

Attorney Ethan Rapley left his dark attic, showered 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.