The Testament (52 page)
That’s the last thing she would want. Jevy and the chief were out of sight, so Nate hurried ahead.
They made it to the river without infecting anyone. The chief grunted something at Jevy as they got in the boat. “He says for us not to come back,” Jevy said.
“Tell him he has nothing to worry about.”
Jevy said nothing, but instead started the engine and backed away from the bank.
The chief was already walking away, toward his village. Nate wondered if he missed Rachel. She’d been there for eleven years. She seemed to have considerable influence over him, but she had not been able to convert him. Did he mourn her passing, or was he relieved that his gods and his spirits now had free rein? What would happen to the Ipicas who had become Christians, now that she was gone?
He remembered the
shalyuns
, the witch doctors in the villages who hounded Rachel. They were celebrating her death. And assailing her converts. She had fought a good fight, now she was resting in peace.
Jevy stopped the motor and guided the boat with a paddle. The current was slow, the water smooth. Nate carefully opened the SatFone and arranged it on a bench. The sky was clear, the signal strong, and within two minutes he had Josh’s secretary scurrying to find her boss.
“Tell me she signed that damned trust, Nate,” were his first words. He was yelling into the phone.
“You don’t have to yell, Josh. I can hear you.”
“Sorry. Tell me she signed it.”
“She signed a trust, but not ours. She’s dead, Josh.”
“No!”
“Yes. She died two weeks ago. Malaria. She left a holographic will, just like her father.”
“Do you have it!?”
“Yes. It’s safe. Everything goes into a trust. I’m the trustee and executor.”
“Is it valid?”
“I think so. It’s written entirely in her hand, signed, dated, witnessed by a lawyer in Corumbá and his secretary.”
“Sounds valid to me.”
“What happens now?” Nate asked. He could see Josh standing behind his desk, eyes closed in concentration, one hand holding the phone, the other patting his hair. He could almost hear him plotting over the phone.
“Nothing happens. His will is valid. Its bequests are carried out.”
“But she’s dead.”
“His estate is transferred to hers. Happens all the time in car wrecks when one spouse dies one day, then the other dies the next. The bequests go from estate to estate.”
“What about the other heirs?”
“The settlement stands. They get their money, or what’s left of it after the lawyers take their cuts. The heirs are the happiest people on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of their lawyers. There’s nothing for them to attack. You have two valid wills. Looks like you’ve just become a career trustee.”
“I have broad discretionary powers.”
“You have a lot more than that. Read it to me.”
Nate found it deep in his satchel, and read it, very slowly, word for word.
“Hurry home,” Josh said.
Jevy absorbed every word too, though he appeared to be watching the river. When Nate hung up and put the phone away, Jevy asked, “The money is yours?”
“No. The money goes into a trust.”
“What is a trust?”
“Think of it as a big bank account. It sits in the bank, protected, earning interest. The trustee decides where the interest goes.”
Jevy still wasn’t convinced. He had many questions, and Nate sensed his confusion. It was not the time for a primer on the Anglo version of wills, estates, and trusts.
“Let’s go,” Nate said.
The motor started again, and they flew across the water, roaring around curves, a wide wake spraying behind them.
________
THEY FOUND the
chalana
late in the afternoon. Welly was fishing. The pilots were playing cards on the back of the boat. Nate called Josh again, and told him to retrieve the jet from Corumbá. He wouldn’t be needing it. He would take his time coming home.
Josh objected, but that was all he could do. The Phelan mess had been settled. There was no real rush.
Nate told the pilots to contact Valdir when they returned, then sent them on their way.
The crew of the
chalana
watched the chopper disappear like an insect, then cast off. Jevy was at the wheel. Welly sat below, at the front of the boat, his feet dangling inches above the water. Nate found a bunk and tried to nap. But the diesel was next door. Its steady knock prevented sleep.
The vessel was a third the size of the
Santa Loura
, even the bunks were shorter. Nate lay on his side and watched the riverbanks go by.
Somehow she’d known he wasn’t a drunk anymore, that his addictions were gone, that the demons who’d controlled his life had been forever locked away. She had seen something good in him. Somehow she knew he was searching. She’d found his calling for him. God told her.
Jevy woke him after dark. “We have a moon,” he said. They sat on the front of the boat, Welly at the wheel just behind them, following the light of a full moon as the Xeco snaked its way toward the Paraguay.
“The boat is slow,” Jevy said. “Two days to Corumbá.”
Nate smiled. He didn’t care if it took a month.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
_________________________
T
he Pantanal region of Brazil, in the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, is a land of great natural beauty and a fascinating place to visit. I hope I haven’t portrayed it as one big swamp, fraught with danger. It is not. It’s an ecological gem that attracts many tourists, most of whom survive. I’ve been there twice, and look forward to going back.
Carl King, my friend and a Baptist missionary in Campo Grande, took me deep into the Pantanal. I’m not sure how much of his information was accurate, but we had a wonderful time for four days counting alligators, photographing wildlife, looking for anacondas, eating black beans and rice, telling stories, all from a boat that somehow grew smaller. Many thanks to Carl for the adventure.
Thanks also to Rick Carter, Gene McDade, Penny Pynkala, Jonathan Hamilton, Fernando Catta-Preta, Bruce Sanford, Marc Smirnoff, and Estelle Laurence. And thanks, as always, to David Gernert for poring over the manuscript and making the book better.
Books by John Grisham
A TIME TO KILL
THE FIRM
THE PELICAN BRIEF
THE CLIENT
THE CHAMBER
THE RAINMAKER
THE RUNAWAY JURY
THE PARTNER
THE STREET LAWYER
THE TESTAMENT
THE BRETHREN
A PAINTED HOUSE
SKIPPING CHRISTMAS
THE SUMMONS
THE KING OF TORTS
BLEACHERS
THE LAST JUROR
THE BROKER
THE INNOCENT MAN
PLAYING FOR PIZZA
THE APPEAL
THE ASSOCIATE
FORD COUNTY: STORIES
JOHN GRISHAM has written twenty-one novels, including the recent #1
New York Times
bestsellers
The Associate
and
The Appeal
, as well as one work of nonfiction,
The Innocent Man
. He lives in Virginia and Mississippi. His new book from Doubleday is
Ford County: Stories
.
Read on for an excerpt of
The
Litigators
A Novel
by John Grisham
Published by Bantam Books
CHAPTER 1
The law firm of Finley & Figg referred to itself as a “boutique firm.” This misnomer was inserted as often as possible into routine conversations, and it even appeared in print in some of the various schemes hatched by the partners to solicit business. When used properly, it implied that Finley & Figg was something above your average two-bit operation. Boutique, as in small, gifted, and expert in one specialized area. Boutique, as in pretty cool and chic, right down to the Frenchness of the word itself. Boutique, as in thoroughly happy to be small, selective, and prosperous.
Except for its size, it was none of these things. Finley & Figg’s scam was hustling injury cases, a daily grind that required little skill or creativity and would never be considered cool or sexy. Profits were as elusive as status. The firm was small because it couldn’t afford to grow. It was selective only because no one wanted to work there, including the two men who owned it. Even its location suggested a monotonous life out in the bush leagues. With a Vietnamese massage parlor to its left and a lawn mower repair shop to its right, it was clear at a casual glance that Finley & Figg was not prospering. There was another boutique firm directly across the street—hated rivals—and more lawyers around the corner. In fact, the neighborhood was teeming with lawyers, some working alone, others in small firms, others still in versions of their own little boutiques.
F&F’s address was on Preston Avenue, a busy street filled with old bungalows now converted and used for all manner of commercial activity. There was retail (liquor, cleaners, massages) and professional (legal, dental, lawn mower repair) and culinary (enchiladas, baklava, and pizza to go). Oscar Finley had won the building in a lawsuit twenty years earlier. What the address lacked in prestige it sort of made up for in location. Two doors away was the intersection of Preston, Beech, and Thirty-eighth, a chaotic convergence of asphalt and traffic that guaranteed at least one good car wreck a week, and often more. F&F’s annual overhead was covered by collisions that happened less than one hundred yards away. Other law firms, boutique and otherwise, were often prowling the area in hopes of finding an available, cheap bungalow from which their hungry lawyers could hear the actual squeal of tires and crunching of metal.
With only two attorneys/partners, it was of course mandatory that one be declared the senior and the other the junior. The senior partner was Oscar Finley, age sixty-two, a thirty-year survivor of the bareknuckle brand of law found on the tough streets of southwest Chicago. Oscar had once been a beat cop but got himself terminated for cracking skulls. He almost went to jail but instead had an awakening and went to college, then law school. When no firms would hire him, he hung out his own little shingle and started suing anyone who came near. Thirty-two years later, he found it hard to believe that for thirty-two years he’d wasted his career suing for past-due accounts receivable, fender benders, slip-and-falls, and quickie divorces. He was still married to his first wife, a terrifying woman he wanted to sue every day for his own divorce. But he couldn’t afford it. After thirty-two years of lawyering, Oscar Finley couldn’t afford much of anything.
His junior partner—and Oscar was prone to say things like, “I’ll get my junior partner to handle it,” when trying to impress judges and other lawyers and especially prospective clients—was Wally Figg, age forty-five. Wally fancied himself a hardball litigator, and his blustery ads promised all kinds of aggressive behavior. “We Fight for Your Rights!” and “Insurance Companies Fear Us!” and “We Mean Business!” Such ads could be seen on park benches, city transit buses, cabs, high school football programs, even telephone poles, though this violated several ordinances. The ads were not seen in two crucial markets—television and billboards. Wally and Oscar were still fighting over these. Oscar refused to spend the money—both types were horribly expensive—and Wally was still scheming. His dream was to see his smiling face and slick head on television saying dreadful things about insurance companies while promising huge settlements to injured folks wise enough to call his toll-free number.
But Oscar wouldn’t even pay for a billboard. Wally had one picked out. Six blocks from the office, at the corner of Beech and Thirty-second, high above the swarming traffic, on top of a four-story tenement house, there was the most perfect billboard in all of metropolitan Chicago. Currently hawking cheap lingerie (with a comely ad, Wally had to admit), the billboard had his name and face written all over it. But Oscar still refused.
Wally’s law degree came from the prestigious University of Chicago School of Law. Oscar picked his up at a now-defunct place that once offered courses at night. Both took the bar exam three times. Wally had four divorces under his belt; Oscar could only dream. Wally wanted the big case, the big score with millions of dollars in fees. Oscar wanted only two things—divorce and retirement.
How the two men came to be partners in a converted house on Preston Avenue was another story. How they survived without choking each other was a daily mystery.
Their referee was Rochelle Gibson, a robust black woman with attitude and savvy earned on the streets from which she came. Ms. Gibson handled the front—the phone, the reception, the prospective clients arriving with hope and the disgruntled ones leaving in anger, the occasional typing (though her bosses had learned if they needed something typed, it was far simpler to do it themselves), the firm dog, and, most important, the constant bickering between Oscar and Wally.
Years earlier, Ms. Gibson had been injured in a car wreck that was not her fault. She then compounded her troubles by hiring the law firm of Finley & Figg, though not by choice. Twenty-four hours after the crash, bombed on Percocet and laden with splints and plaster casts, Ms. Gibson had awakened to the grinning, fleshy face of Attorney Wallis Figg hovering over her hospital bed. He was wearing a set of aquamarine scrubs, had a stethoscope around his neck, and was doing a good job of impersonating a physician. Wally tricked her into signing a contract for legal representation, promised her the moon, sneaked out of the room as quietly as he’d sneaked in, then proceeded to butcher her case. She netted $40,000, which her husband drank and gambled away in a matter of weeks, which led to a divorce action filed by Oscar Finley. He also handled her bankruptcy. Ms. Gibson was not impressed with either lawyer and threatened to sue both for malpractice. This got their attention—they had been hit with similar lawsuits—and they worked hard to placate her. As her troubles multiplied, she became a fixture at the office, and with time the three became comfortable with one another.
Finley & Figg was a tough place for secretaries. The pay was low, the clients were generally unpleasant, the other lawyers on the phone were rude, the hours were long, but the worst part was dealing with the two partners. Oscar and Wally had tried the mature route, but the older gals couldn’t handle the pressure. They had tried youth but got themselves sued for sexual harassment when Wally couldn’t keep his paws off a busty young thing. (They settled out of court for $50,000 and got their names in the newspaper.) Rochelle Gibson happened to be at the office one morning when the then-current secretary quit and stormed out. With the phone ringing and partners yelling, Ms. Gibson moved over to the front desk and calmed things down. Then she made a pot of coffee. She was back the next day, and the next. Eight years later, she was still running the place.