The Testament (48 page)

“This is Stef,” Daniel said, introducing the girl. “She’s a model,” he added quickly, proving to his old man that he was chasing a high caliber of woman.

For some reason, Nate had hoped they could spend a few hours alone. It was not going to happen.

The first thing he noticed about Stef was her gray lipstick, applied heavily to the thick and pouty lips, lips that scarcely cracked when she gave him the obligatory half-smile. She was certainly plain and gaunt enough to be a model. Her arms were as skinny as broom handles. Though Nate couldn’t see them, he knew her bony legs ran to her armpits, and without a doubt there were at least two tattoos burned into the flesh around her ankles.

Nate disliked her immediately, and got the impression the feeling was mutual. No telling what Daniel had told her.

Daniel had finished college at Grinnell a year earlier, then spent the summer in India. Nate had not seen him in thirteen months. He had not gone to his commencement, had not sent a card or a gift, had not bothered to call with congratulations. There was enough tension at the table without the mannequin puffing smoke and looking at Nate with a completely blank stare.

“You wanna beer?” Daniel asked when a waiter got close. It was a cruel question, a quick little shot designed to inflict pain.

“No, just water,” Nate said. Daniel yelled at the waiter, then said, “Still on the wagon, huh?”

“Always,” Nate said with a smile, trying to deflect the arrows.

“Have you fallen off since last summer?”

“No. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Dan tells me you’ve been through rehab,” Stef said, smoke drifting from her nostrils. Nate was surprised she was able to start and finish a sentence. Her words were slow, her voice as hollow as her eye sockets.

“I have, several times. What else has he told you?”

“I’ve done rehab,” she said. “But only once.” She seemed proud of her accomplishment, yet saddened by her lack of experience. The two beer bottles in front of her were empty.

“That’s nice,” Nate said, dismissing her. He couldn’t pretend to like her, and in a month or two she’d have another serious love.

“How’s school?” he asked Daniel.

“What school?”

“Grad school.”

“I dropped out.” His words were edgy and strained. There was pressure behind them. Nate was involved in the dropping out; he just wasn’t exactly sure how and why. His water arrived. “Have you guys eaten?” he asked.

Stef avoided food and Daniel wasn’t hungry. Nate was starving but didn’t want to eat alone. He glanced around the pub. Pot was being smoked somewhere in another corner. It was a rowdy little dump, the kind of place he’d loved in a not too distant life.

Daniel lit another cigarette, a Camel with no filter, the worst cancer sticks on the market, and he blasted a cloud of thick smoke at the cheap beer chandelier hanging above them. He was angry and tense.

The girl was there for two reasons. She would prevent harsh words and maybe a fight. Nate suspected his son was broke, that he wanted to lash out at his father for his lack of support, but that he was afraid to do so because the old man was fragile and had been prone to crack and go off the deep end. Stef would throttle his anger and his language.

The second reason was to make the meeting as brief as possible.

It took about fifteen minutes to figure this out.

“How’s your mother?” he asked.

Daniel attempted to smile. “She’s fine. I saw her Christmas. You were gone.”

“I was in Brazil.”

A co-ed in tight jeans walked by. Stef inspected her from top to bottom, her eyes finally showing some life. The girl was even skinnier than Stef. How did emaciation become so cool?

“What’s in Brazil?” Daniel asked.

“A client.” Nate was tired of the stories from his adventure.

“Mom says you’re in some kind of trouble with the IRS.”

“I’m sure that pleases your mother.”

“I guess. She didn’t seem bothered by it. You going to jail?”

“No. Could we talk about something else?”

“That’s the problem, Dad. There is nothing else, nothing but the past and we can’t go there.”

Stef, the referee, rolled her eyes at Daniel, as if to say, “That’s enough.”

“Why did you drop out of school?” Nate asked, anxious to get it over with.

“Several reasons. It got boring.”

“He ran out of money,” Stef said helpfully. She gave Nate her best blank look.

“Is that true?” Nate asked.

“That’s one reason.”

Nate’s first instinct was to pull out his checkbook and solve the kid’s problems. That’s what he’d always done. Parenting for him had been one long shopping trip. If you can’t be there, send money. But Daniel was now twenty-three, a college grad, hanging around with the likes of Ms. Bulimia over there, and it was time for him to sink or swim on his own.

And the checkbook wasn’t what it used to be.

“It’s good for you,” Nate said. “Work for a while. It’ll make you appreciate school.”

Stef disagreed. She had two friends who’d dropped out and pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. As she prattled on, Daniel withdrew to his corner of the booth. He drained his third bottle. Nate had all sorts of lectures about alcohol, but he knew how phony they’d sound.

After four beers, Stef was bombed and Nate had nothing else to say. He scribbled his phone number in St. Michaels on a napkin and gave it to Daniel. “This is where I’ll be for the next couple of months. Call me if you need me.”

“See you, Pop,” Daniel said.

“Take care.”

Nate stepped into the frigid air and walked toward Lake Michigan.

________

TWO DAYS later he was in Pittsburgh for his third and final reunion, one that did not occur. He’d spoken twice to Kaitlin, his daughter from marriage number one, and the details were clear. She was to meet him for dinner at 7:30 P.M., in front of the restaurant in the lobby of his hotel. Her apartment was twenty minutes away. She paged him at 8:30 with the news that a friend had been involved in an auto accident, and that she was at the hospital, where things looked bad.

Nate suggested they have lunch the following day. Kaitlin said that wouldn’t work because the friend had a head injury, was on life support, and she planned to stay with her there until she was stable. With his daughter in full retreat, Nate asked where the hospital was located. At first she didn’t know, then she wasn’t sure, then upon further thought a visit was not a good idea because she couldn’t leave the bedside.

He ate in his room, at a small table next to the window, with a view of downtown. He picked at his food and thought of all the possible reasons his daughter didn’t want to see him. A ring in her nose? A tattoo on her forehead? Had she joined a cult and shaved her head? Had she gained a hundred pounds or lost fifty? Was she pregnant?

He tried to blame her so he wouldn’t be forced to face the obvious. Did she hate him that much?

In the loneliness of the hotel room, in a city where he knew no one, it was easy to pity himself, to suffer once again through the mistakes of his past.

He grabbed the phone and got busy. He called Father Phil to check on things in St. Michaels. Phil had been bothered by the flu, and since it was chilly in the church basement Laura wouldn’t
let him work there. How wonderful, thought Nate. Though many uncertainties lay in his path, the one constant, at least for the near future, would be the promise of steady work in the basement of Trinity Church.

He called Sergio for their weekly pep session. The demons were well in hand, and he felt surprisingly under control. His hotel room had a mini-bar, and he had not been near it.

He called Salem and had a pleasant chat with Angela and Austin. Odd how the younger kids wanted to talk while the older ones did not.

He called Josh, who was in his basement office, thinking about the Phelan mess. “You need to come home, Nate,” he said. “I have a plan.”

FORTY-NINE
_____________

N
ate wasn’t invited to the first round of peace talks. There were a couple of reasons for his absence. First, Josh arranged the summit, so it was therefore held on his turf. Nate had thus far avoided his old office and wanted this to continue. Second, the Phelan lawyers viewed Josh and Nate as allies, and rightfully so. Josh wanted the role of peacemaker, the intermediary. To gain trust from one side, he had to ignore the other, if only for a short while. His plan was to meet with Hark et al., then with Nate, then back and forth for a few days if necessary until a deal was struck.

After a lengthy session of pleasantries and chitchat, Josh asked for their attention. They had lots of territory to cover. The Phelan lawyers were anxious to get started.

A settlement can happen in seconds, during a recess in a heated trial when a witness stumbles, or when a new CEO wants to start fresh and unload nagging litigation. And a settlement can
take months, as the lawsuit inches toward a trial date. As a whole, the Phelan lawyers dreamed of a quickie, and the meeting in Josh’s suite was the first step. They truly believed they were about to become millionaires.

Josh began by diplomatically offering his opinion that their case was rather flimsy. He knew nothing about his client’s plans to whip out a holographic will and create chaos, but it was a valid will nonetheless. He had spent two hours with Mr. Phelan the previous day finishing the other new will, and he was prepared to testify that he knew exactly what he was doing. He would also testify, if necessary, that Snead was nowhere in the picture when they met.

The three psychiatrists who examined Mr. Phelan had been carefully chosen by Phelan’s children and ex-wives, and their lawyers, and had impeccable credentials. The four now on retainer were flaky. Their résumés were thin. The battle of the experts would be won by the original three, in his opinion.

Wally Bright had on his best suit, which wasn’t saying much. He took this criticism with a clenched jaw, bottom lip between his teeth so he wouldn’t say something stupid, and he took useless notes on a legal pad because that’s what everybody else was doing. It was not his nature to sit back and accept such disparagement, even from a renowned lawyer like Josh Stafford. But he would do anything for the money. The month before, February, his little office generated twenty-six hundred dollars in fees, and consumed the usual four thousand in overhead. Wally took home nothing. Of course, most of his time had been spent on the Phelan matter.

Josh skated onto thin ice when he summarized the testimony of their clients. “I’ve watched the videos of their depositions,” he said sadly. “Frankly, with the exception of Mary Ross, I think they will make terrible witnesses at trial.”

Their lawyers took this in stride. This was a settlement conference, not a trial.

He didn’t dwell on the heirs. The less said the better. Their lawyers knew they would get butchered before the jury.

“That brings us to Snead,” he said. “I’ve watched his deposition too, and, frankly, if you call him as a witness at trial it will be a terrible mistake. In my opinion, in fact, it will border on legal malpractice.”

Bright, Hark, Langhorne, and Yancy huddled even closer over their legal pads. Snead was a dirty word among them. They’d fought over who was to blame for botching it so badly. They’d lost sleep fretting over the man. They were half a million down, and as a witness he was worthless.

“I’ve known Snead for almost twenty years,” Josh said, then spent fifteen minutes effectively portraying him as a butler of marginal talents, a gofer who was not always reliable, a servant Mr. Phelan often talked of firing. They believed every word of it.

So much for Snead. Josh managed to gut their star witness without even mentioning the fact that he’d been bribed with five hundred thousand dollars to tell his story.

And so much for Nicolette too. She was lying along with her buddy Snead.

They had been unable to locate other witnesses. There were some disgruntled employees, but they wanted no part of a trial. Their testimony was tainted anyway. There were two rivals from the business world who’d been wiped out trying to compete with Troy. But they knew nothing about his mental capacity.

Their case was not very strong, Josh concluded. But everything’s risky with a jury.

He talked about Rachel Lane as if he’d known her for years. Not too many specifics, but enough generalizations to convey the impression that Josh knew her well. She was a lovely lady who lived a very simple life, in another country, and was not the type of person who understood litigation. She ran from controversy. She despised confrontation. And she’d been closer to old Troy than most people knew.

Hark wanted to ask if Josh had ever met her. Ever seen her? Ever heard her name before he read the will? But it was neither the time nor the place for discord. Money was about to be laid upon the table, and Hark’s percentage was seventeen point five.

Ms. Langhorne had researched the town of Corumbá, and was wondering again what an American woman, age forty-two, could possibly be doing in such a place. She and Hark, behind the backs of Bright and Yancy, had quietly become confidants. They had talked at length about leaking the whereabouts of Rachel Lane to certain reporters. The press would certainly find her down there, in Corumbá. They’d smoke her out, and in the process the world would learn what she planned to do with the money. If, as they hoped and dreamed, she didn’t want it, then their clients could press for all the money.

It was a risk, and they were still talking about it.

“What does Rachel Lane plan to do with all this money?” Yancy asked.

“I’m not sure,” Josh said, as if he and Rachel discussed it every day. “She’ll probably keep a little, and give most of it to charity. In my opinion, that’s why Troy did what he did. He figured that if your clients got the money, it wouldn’t last ninety days. By leaving it to Rachel, he knew it would be passed on to those in need.”

There was a long pause in the conversation when Josh finished with this. Dreams slowly crumbled. Rachel Lane indeed existed, and she was not going to decline the money.