The Will

by Reed Arvin

  “Are you telling me you’re prepared to just let me walk out of the bank with these records?”

  Walters closed and locked the door to the basement. “Hell,” he said, “that’s no problem.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Thing is, my wife will kill me if I stay around here while you worked. Been gone most of the week as it is.” He glanced at the bulging boxes. “You can drop them by my house tomorrow. I live over on Brantley.”

  Walters was doing everything in his power to help. The question was why. Henry decided to try a small test. “I’m a little surprised to find you so accommodating,” he said.

  Walters looked up. “That so?”

  “Ellen told me you ran a tight ship around here, which I interpreted as a compliment, by the way.”

  Walters looked genuinely surprised. “Me? A tight ship?” He laughed. “She must have been pulling your leg. If I played by the rules, you think I’d be in this godforsaken town? I’d be the damn vice president in charge of something or other somewhere, instead of just a branch manager in these boondocks. But I like it in these little places where things are looser.” He paused a moment, giving Henry a penetrating look. “But look,” he added, “don’t get me wrong on this. You can see the records, but that doesn’t mean I have any feelings for that kook out at the park.”

  “Mr. Boyd, you mean.”

  “That his name?”

  “That’s right. Raymond Boyd.”

  “He’s just been ‘the Birdman’ as long as I’ve known about him. But whatever his name is, he doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Given the size of Crandall’s deposits, I figured you’d naturally be inclined in the family’s direction.”

  Walters leaned against Ellen’s desk, relaxing. “Son, we got somethin’ in common, you and me. You know that?”

  Henry smiled. “What would that be?”

  “Bankers, lawyers, and preachers. We’re all the same. We’re in what’s called the learned professions. We see everything and tell nobody. Preacher knows who’s cheatin’ on his wife, and he don’t tell a soul. Lawyer knows who’s about to get sued. Don’t say a word. Banker knows who’s about to go broke and drivin’ a new car like they didn’t have a care in the world. See, the first priority in the learned professions is discretion. You got to know how to keep a secret. You know how to keep a secret, don’t you, boy?”

  Henry nodded. “Certainly.”

  Walters gave him a final, appraising look. “Well then, I’ll let you in on a little personal matter here. I’m not sayin’ I’m for Boyd. Did I say I was?”

  “You did not.”

  “Damn right I didn’t. But I got a bone to pick with the Crandalls.”

  “I’d be curious to know what it is.”

  Walters ran a hand through already thinning hair. “I don’t give a damn about his deposits. It ain’t my money. Fact is, Crandall screwed up my plan for a life of ease in small-town America. Pissed me off. Fidelity Savings moved me here ’bout four years ago. They thought it was punishment, but I worked it that way from the start. Figured it’d be a sleepy town, loose, no one lookin’ over your shoulder. Low corporate expectations.” He flicked an errant scrap of paper off the top of one of the boxes. “But of course I hadn’t heard the name of Ty Crandall at that point. It didn’t take long to find out that the situation was a little different than I had hoped.”

  “In what way?”

  “The man was a leaner.”

  “A leaner?”

  “Right,” Walters said. “He leaned. He had a lotta plans, all of ’em good for Tyler Crandall. He had the idea you had to see things his way.”

  “And if you didn’t?”

  Walters shrugged. “He leaned.” His manner was increasingly confidential. “Like I say, I don’t care nothin’ for Boyd, if that’s his name. But I figure it this way. If the crazy guy gets everything he’d be rich, so we couldn’t have him livin’ like an animal anymore. Hell, the world’s full of poor crazy people, but get one rich and he’s nothin’ but a feed trough, money just sittin’ there waitin’ for hospitals and doctors and lawyers to feed on. Present company excepted.” Henry nodded silently for him to continue. “So in two shakes the court’s gonna appoint somebody to handle things,” Walters went on. “A reasonable man, hell, maybe the man I’m talkin’ to.” He grinned. “Seems to me if that happened, then there’s no more Birdman and no more Crandalls.” Walters gave a wide, lazy smile. “Sounds good to me,” he said. “I can finally get my town back, and settle down to the under-achieving life I desire.”

  Henry shook his head; if the man had worked as hard at his job as he did scheming a life of leisure, he would probably be retired by now. But he had to admit the scenario Walters had painted wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. The main thing was that Walters was a pure busybody, something a lawyer can always use. He reached over and picked up the boxes from the desk. “Maybe things will work out that way,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  “You take the records, son. Good hunting.”

  Early that evening Henry called Elaine, studiously avoiding the subject of the will. For once, she let him off the hook, not pressing him. Instead, she described a dress that she had bought for the awards party at her boss’s house.

  “It’s Badgley Mishka, Henry,” she said. “I know it was too expensive, but I wanted to reward myself.”

  “Sleek?”

  “Like a glove.”

  “Sexy?”

  “Heart-stopping.”

  “How much?”

  “Four thousand.”

  Henry whistled. “God, do they throw in the little Filipino family who sewed it?”

  “Not funny. And anyway, quality always costs, Henry. And it’s always worth it.”

  Henry thought of Ellen and wondered what she would do for a dress like the one Elaine was describing. Kill, probably. “Glad you told me what it costs,” Henry said. “Now I’ll know what I’m spending when I rip it off you.”

  She laughed, a light, relaxed sound. “You will be there, right, Henry?”

  That was the question. He didn’t want to leave, that was certain. Without his help, Henry gave Boyd’s chances for a fair disposition of Crandell’s assets as something less than zero. With so little time he could hardly lose the day and a half a quick flight back to Chicago would cost him. “I still don’t know, Elaine,” he answered cautiously. “I’m on a wicked time line here.”

  There was silence on the phone, broken by Elaine’s suddenly detached voice.

  “Oh, listen, that reminds me. I invited Sheldon Parker.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sheldon. I invited him.”

  “Why were you even talking to him?”

  “I didn’t say he called me?”

  “Sheldon? What for?”

  She laughed again. “To invest money, of course. Thanks to you, he knows how good I am at it. God, Henry, I had no idea the kind of money he made.”

  “Don’t tell me. I don’t need any more reasons to detest him.”

  “I can’t tell you, sweetheart. You know that. Anyway, I invited him to the party.”

  “I thought it was a private affair.”

  “Sort of. Nothing’s really private, darling, not to the right people. But think of it, Henry. There I’ll be, getting my award. It’ll be a huge confidence booster for Sheldon. By the end of the night I’ll have everything he owns.”

  Henry had no doubt she was right. But the idea of having his boss prowling the party without him there grated. On the other hand, Parker was no dummy. “How do you know he’s not coming on his own fishing expedition?” he asked. “Maybe he’s hoping to land a few clients of his own.”

  There was a silence, and Henry instantly regretted the statement. It was bad form, popping her little balloon. But he recognized the game she was playing, the little jealousy manipulations, and it was getting on his nerves. When she got like that, it was hard to resist sending out his own li
ttle reality check from time to time. But once again, he had underestimated her. “Let him,” she said after a moment. “Why shouldn’t it work both ways? Anyway, we got along famously. We were chatting like old friends in no time. Sheldon’s such a sensible man. So focused.”

  “Make him a lot of money, because that way he’ll be a lot more fun around the office.”

  “Since you won’t be there Sunday, I’ll have to tell you all about it. Or maybe I’ll just let Sheldon do it.”

  Henry hung up the phone and pondered. Parker called Elaine. And while I was out of town. “I always lose some fine muscle control when I think about that adorable creature,” he had said. Of course, Elaine was a good broker, and Parker’s enormous pay package needed somewhere to land. And he had told Parker about the party, in an offhanded way. But it wasn’t, Henry decided, that Parker had called while he was gone that bothered him most. It was the sneaking realization that the two of them were made for each other, two clones in appetite and ambition. “The thing I don’t like about this trip is that you don’t know where it will lead,” Elaine had said. She had already been proved right about that; the will had actually turned into a rift between them, which he had certainly not anticipated. And it wasn’t, he had to admit, a rift that would have happened if Sheldon were in his shoes. Parker would have taken one look at the situation and been on the next plane home, if he had bothered to come in the first place. Much more like Elaine. Of course, Elaine had never been unfaithful. She was merely working him over, making him pay. Henry looked across the room at the boxes sitting on the table. Maybe it was for the best if he didn’t find anything in them. That way, he would be home sooner. A night in bed was what they needed, a night of more sweating and less analyzing. A night to make her forget about middle-aged partners with roving eyes.

  Henry thought about room service, remembered it didn’t exist, and started to rummage through the first box. He resolved to stay up all night, if necessary. It felt good, testing his endurance like he was back in law school. He had been broke then, barely scraping by. He looked around the sparse motel room; it could have passed for his old apartment.

  As before, paper after mundane paper revealed itself, numbing him into a kind of trance. The records were disorganized, and it took considerable effort to create even an approximate chronology of the Crandall estate. Within the piles were the scattered remains of Crandall acquisitions going back over two decades. Henry pored over them, working backward, the story of Crandall’s growing wealth revealing itself page by page. Crandall had apparently borrowed freely over the years, and loan after loan appeared in the records. Most bore the immaculate signature of Gustaf Schiller, Walters’ predecessor. It was Schiller’s name on the mortgages for the rental houses, and on a variety of property and business loans as well. Each acquisition was financed by the payments received by the previous property, so that Crandall had built an intricate house of debt. Some of the businesses had actually lost money, to Henry’s surprise. But underneath the entire structure was the pillar of oil revenue, and that pillar had held firm. Each note was marked paid in full. The biggest notes were for the Feed and Farm Supply: in all, Crandall had borrowed almost six hundred thousand dollars to build the structure and finance the business. Inventory had taken the greatest share; the huge tractors and combines ate up large chunks of money just sitting on the lot. The recent declines in farm prices had slowed business, and the notes had been held over, in many cases, for a disturbingly long time. But like all the others, these short-term notes had been paid on time, as had a large balloon note in the tenth year.

  Around two-thirty in the morning Henry turned on the little coffeemaker in the room and made some coffee. Rubbing his eyes, he sat back down at the papers. He had nearly worked his way to the very beginning, but still wondered about something: how had Crandall managed to buy the very first piece of real estate, the one that oil was first discovered on? It was a large piece of ground, and it was the key to the entire financial puzzle. Crandall had opened his initial account with only thirteen hundred dollars; decent enough in 1973 for someone just getting started, but still a long way from what he needed to buy an entire section of prime farmland. The bank had gone out on a thin limb to loan that kind of money to a young GI just back from Vietnam. And what brilliant luck that oil was found on that land. Those first few years had been drought-stricken, and depending on crops alone would have put a quick end to Crandall’s plans. The oil money had pushed him through.

  Henry sorted through paper after paper, looking for the mortgage on the property. Time passed, and ultimately, he sensed a pale, growing light at the window; the sun would be up soon. He stretched and rubbed his eyes, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He was on the last box, and it was hard to go on with no sleep and little hope. He picked up a page and scanned down it—absently at first, then with more interest—and realized he had at last found the very document he needed. This was the beginning of the Crandall fortune; the loan was for a full section located at the corner of Route 12 and Council Grove Road. The oil land. Henry read slowly, a part of him not wanting to finish the page. If nothing unusual turned up he was back at square one, returning to Chicago with nothing. He spread the faded paper out on the table, carefully reading the standardized language of the loan, looking for anything out of the ordinary. But when he reached the bottom of the page, he stared blankly. Crandall’s name was neatly signed, as always. But the name of the bank officer approving the loan wasn’t Schiller.

  It was Raymond Boyd.

  Rory Zachariah did not shoot Amanda Ashton. He did not shoot because, as he stared down the perfectly oiled barrel of his twelve-gauge Remington, he knew several important things that Amanda did not: he knew, through Carl Durand, chairman of the oil and gas committee of the Kansas Senate and close personal friend, that his land was the center of her investigation. He knew, in fact, that she would be on his land before she had known it herself. A crack marksman, he also knew that she wouldn’t be hit when he sent the buckshot into her vehicle as she drove off in embarrassment.

  Amanda Ashton found a world of hurt began at the end of Rory Zachariah’s shotgun. The recriminations had been immediate, bitter, and personal. Durand reconvened his committee the very next day with the idea of drafting legislation to defund the entire state department of environment immediately. Amanda was the government agent run amok; this was the kind of Gestapo tactic Durand had been sent to the capitol to stop. He failed by one vote, thanks to a heroic rally by Sam Coulton.

  Amanda returned to work the next day to a reception of lethal coldness. The career bureaucrats at the agency did not, it appeared, appreciate hotshot antics that threatened the existence of their jobs. She spent the rest of the morning in isolation in her office. When she emerged for lunch the few people gathered in the break room rose together and walked out the door.

  At three-thirty a memo appeared on Amanda’s fax machine. When she read the cover page and learned that it had originated from within her own office, her sense of isolation was complete. The memo was from her department head, and rather than walk down the hall and speak to Amanda directly, she had elected to send her instructions with the utter impersonality of a machine. The message directed that, in view of her recent problems with agency procedure, Amanda was from now on under special instructions: not only must she elicit permission to enter any landowner’s property, but said permission must be in writing and filed in the office before any trip commenced. Further, she must not enter any property without being accompanied at all times by the landowner himself. Finally, and most insultingly, she was not to use agency vehicles under any circumstances. In view of the damage incurred by buckshot to the truck, any request for an official vehicle would be refused.

  Now the recriminations were her own. She had blown it. The biggest opportunity in her career and, more important, a chance to do what she had always dreamed of: make a difference. All lost, because of her own impatience and bravura. Amanda went home and spent the rest of the a
fternoon with a six-pack of beer, a blanket, and her dog, telling herself how stupid she was. She had ignored the rules once again, just as she had in graduate school, just as she had climbing the ranks of the agency. She had refused to learn; she was egotistical; she had delusions of grandeur. She flicked through TV stations aimlessly, feeling worthless. After the third beer she fell asleep.

  The phone rang about six, jarring her back to reality. She licked her lips; her mouth felt like cotton. She picked up the receiver and muttered something barely intelligible into it. A voice answered, “Sam Coulton.”

  Amanda tried to fix on the sound through the beers and sleep. “Sam Coulton,” she repeated numbly.

  “No, Ms. Ashton. I’m Sam Coulton.”

  Amanda sat up, shaking off numbness. “Senator Sam Coulton?”

  “That’s right. That was some stunt you pulled.”

  Amanda forced her head to clear while her heart sank. Her only strong ally on the committee, now calling to heap more abuse. “I’m sorry, sir,” she began softly. “I realize that . . .”

  Coulton interrupted her with the last sound she expected: a deep, earthy laugh. “God, you won’t believe what we had to go through to shut Durand up,” he said. “What are you trying to do, get the guy elected governor?”

  The sound of the voice on the phone made Amanda feel cautiously better. He sounded almost . . . friendly. Maybe she wasn’t a complete outcast after all. “I’m terribly sorry to have put you in such an awful position, Senator,” she offered. “I got ahead of myself a little bit.”

  “Ms. Ashton, does the word ‘setup’ mean anything to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me ask you something first,” Coulton said. “Where did you grow up?”

  “Connecticut.”

  “Thought so. Northeasterner. Graduated from . . .?”

  “Georgetown.”

  Coulton laughed again. “Perfect. So you came to Kansas only for the job, obviously? I mean you weren’t exactly drawn by the beauty of the plains?”