by Chris Knopf
“Sure. You see that out here all the time. But there’s enough to pay me, of course.”
The smile wavered.
“Of course.”
I pretended to think about that.
“So you haven’t talked to the bank yet,” I said.
“They’ll tell us when the accounts are released. It’s the usual routine.”
“But let’s just say things go better than planned and there’s a little bit left over. I’m assuming it reverts to Eunice as the sole surviving heir.”
He shook his head.
“It’s all outlined in the will. There are several charitable institutions listed, notably the East Hampton Library and the dog rescue in Water Mill. These ostensibly receive about twenty percent of the estate. The balance goes to the person specified.”
“Person specified? Sergey thought it all went to charity.”
“Well,” said Kalandro, “perhaps a review of the document will clear up that mystery.”
I could see that we were playing a little game. Let’s see if the dumb girl knows how to read a simple contract, which is all a will actually is. Okay, I thought, I can take the thing out of the envelope and read the answer. My dignity will survive.
And there it was, handwritten, with Betty’s signature indicating this was an alteration from the original, an answer freighted with a much bigger boatload of questions.
We hereby make, publish, and declare this to be our Last Will and Testament—etc, etc—after disbursements the charitable organizations listed above, and upon completion of federal tax proceedings—etc, etc—we bequeath remaining assets, all stocks, bonds, cash, investments, and like instruments, all property personal and real, to Oscar Hamilton Wolsonowicz.
Fuzzy?
13
My father didn’t go easily. He took his impending death as just another affront, perpetrated by forces indifferent to his personal dignity, not unlike his engineering clients or the clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
In addition to magazine articles about women living alone, I never read inspirational tales about people who fight fatal diseases with valiant determination, turning a two-month prognosis into ten bountiful years. Probably because my father turned a ten-year prognosis, at minimum, into two miserable years of abject surrender, nicely embellished by unrelenting self-pity and complaint.
It was a display of heroic proportions, if not exactly heroic.
Given this, it was unsurprising that something like a will, the ultimate recognition of the inevitable, was the last thing he’d think about, much less compose. I should have known this was the case, but, of course, I didn’t, assuming no intelligent, educated adult would be that selfish and uncaring.
I was only in my first year of law school at that point and couldn’t even spell intestate, much less deal with its consequences. But I learned fast, motivated by the prospect of my mother losing thousands of dollars working through the Kafka-designed theme park called New York State probate, known quaintly around here as Surrogate’s Court.
The period it took me to settle all the legal questions, negotiate the estate taxes of the state and federal governments, and lay the groundwork for the next inevitability was exactly, to the day, how long my mother lived beyond my father’s death.
Having worked side by side with me throughout the process, and too exhausted to celebrate with anything more than a half bottle of week-old Cabernet swiped off the kitchen counter, she thanked me for being the best daughter I knew how to be (not exactly unqualified praise) and went off to bed to die of a massive heart attack.
Real estate was nowhere near as costly in those days as it is now, but neither was law school. So I was able to pay it all off and have a little left over to squander on the transition from frantic, grief-stricken student to frantic, dysfunctional adult. Just to spite my old man’s reckless disregard.
It was that lively concoction of extreme emotion, cold-hearted reality, and sudden loss of childhood that taught me the beauty of the law. Until then, I was doing it just to prove to any doubters that I could. The only real doubter being my father, though his dying did nothing to stem my determination.
I learned it wasn’t just knowing how to gin the system, how to jigger the odds. There was a solid core of brilliance in the law, embedded in thousands of years of experiences far more desperate and ennobling than my own. That everyone had at least a chance, a shot at something akin to justice and fair play. Maybe that’s naïve, but you need something beyond habit to get you up in the morning. At least I do.
Thoughts like these were running wild as I walked out of Sandy Kalandro’s office with my briefcase stuffed with paperwork covered in authorizing signatures. The world was now different. I had the right to play around all I wanted in Sergey and Elizabeth’s most intimate affairs; I was empowered and emboldened, even employed, courtesy of Eunice’s abiding belief in my client’s impoverishment. Abiding and influential, since Sandy had apparently bought the same line of baloney.
As had I. In fact, that’s all I’d been doing—buying everybody’s bullshit. Or buying into my own assumptions. Whatever I thought I knew, I knew now that it probably wasn’t true. So right when I should have felt only triumph, frustration filled my brain.
“I don’t know anything,” I yelled at myself after climbing into my car.
But that wasn’t true, said another part of me. I knew Sergey Pontecello came to see me, then ended up dead. He was supposed to have died broke, but that wasn’t true. Eunice just thought it was true. Sergey surely knew better. So then why didn’t he pay off the mortgages and tell his imperious sister-in-law to go pound sand?
I couldn’t ask him, I thought with a slight twist in my gut. He couldn’t tell me what he knew or what he didn’t know. Wendy said he was deluded and oblivious. That seemed credible. He hadn’t even looked at their will when his wife died. That took some commitment to obliviousness. If he had, he would have known that Betty had gone in after the fact and earmarked the lion’s share of his little European fortune for his nasty jerk of a nephew, who had nothing but disdain for his apparent benefactors.
“Okay, maybe I know some things. I just don’t know what I know,” I said aloud, then silently pledged to never again assume anything, never conclude anything without a freight car full of corroboration, never believe in the obvious, never fall prey to supposition. To be only what Harry had said I was:
The girl who never gave up.
The next day Harry picked me up in a big truck. Big enough to have a clattery diesel engine and a cab you had to climb up into. He looked way too happy behind the wheel. That gave me insight into his love of logistics. It wasn’t just about moving stuff; it was how you moved it.
I’d called Eunice immediately after leaving Sandy Kalandro, and she was more than eager to have me retrieve Sergey and Betty’s things, as if they were emitting radiation and she was in dire fear for her life. I knew the type. My opposite. People who get physically ill looking at stacks of boxes, who only see a burden where I see a playground.
Harry loved boxes but hated clutter, which I knew was one of those ugly, bubbling issues left unresolved from when I tossed him out. But now was not the time to muck around with resolutions.
Instead, I focused on one of my favorite distractions, admiring the distance between Harry’s hip and knee, and subsequently from knee to ankle. Especially noticeable when he was wearing blue jeans, which he must have bought at the Gangly, Lean, and Ridiculously Tall Shop.
My blue jeans were actually green, which in the sunlight looked more sickly than I’d thought they would against the reddish flannel shirt. At least we were both dressed to schlep, which is all Eunice would care about–to completely and permanently scour Sergey’s residue from her ancestral home.
In addition to the big truck, Harry brought oversize cups of coffee and gooey pastries. Harry often did things like this, pleasing me by being thoughtful and aggravating me by making me feel I wasn’t.
The day was sha
ping up to be another bright blue East End wonder. People say the air and the sky aren’t only different in this part of the world, they’re also better. I haven’t traveled much–almost nowhere, in fact–but I’m happy to believe them.
As we pulled into the driveway, we had to work around a pair of pickup trucks that were pulled partway onto the grass. The confident signs on the doors said it was Ray Zander and crew. Harry drove the truck up to the front door, but before we announced ourselves, I walked across the lawn to where a third pickup, one I hadn’t seen before, was backed against the base of a huge old maple tree.
When I got there I didn’t see Ray, but there was a thick rope leading from a spool on the back of the pickup and into the dense foliage of the tree. I followed it with my eyes and called, “Yo, Ray. You up there?”
“Who’s askin’?” he yelled back
I told him.
“You keep callin’ on me my wife’s gonna get suspicious.”
“Not if you don’t tell her.”
“That’d be deceptive,” he called down. “The worser evil.”
I didn’t ask him worser than what.
“You mind just coming down here for a sec so we can talk?”
Almost instantaneously I heard a mechanical whir and the spool on the back of the truck started to spin. Ray Zander dropped like a stone, or more evocatively, like a swashbuckler with a long branch trimmer in lieu of a sword. He was sitting on some sort of webbed seat attached to the line, and as he fell toward me, he held his legs straight out, ankles locked, with one hand on the trimmer, the other resting in his lap. I jumped out of the way. When he abruptly stopped, I saw the other hand held a small black remote.
He was grinning.
“Nifty, huh?” he said.
“Yeah. Sure,” I said, noncommitally.
“Rigged it myself. Thinking of going for a patent. You’re a lawyer, what do you think?”
“Not my branch of the law,” I said.
“I’m lookin’ for investors. You could get in on the ground floor. Mr. Pontecello took quite an interest, but his wife put the kibosh on that one. Fella was on a tight leash.”
“No leash on me. I’ll spread the word.”
“Tell ’em it’s not only convenient, it’s fast,” he said, and then zipped back up into the tree, disappearing into the leaves. A few seconds later, he fell back out of the sky.
“I can see that,” I said.
“That’s the real innovation. The power takeoff was way too slow, so I regeared the whole thing. Integrated a grappling hook, a classic boson’s chair, a remote-controlled, high-torque electric motor, and bingo. Costs a fraction of a cherry picker, and I get to keep the money.”
He pointed out a few more pertinent features and benefits of the system before letting me convince him to hold still for a few questions. He stayed in the boson’s chair, so I climbed into the bed of the pickup to get on his eye level.
I told him I’d been out to the casino, as he suggested I should. I saw a glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes. People love it when you do what they suggest.
“I’m not asking you to reveal any confidences or denigrate the memory of Mrs. Pontecello,” I said, “but did you ever notice her in a state of, ah, you know … inebriation?”
“Schnockered? Yeah, all the time. The more schnockered, the worse she got. Yappin’ at the crew, sayin’ all this nonsense with the cigarette bouncin’ up and down between her lips. Kinda thing you expect to see back in Brooklyn, where I grew up, not out here. I can sure see her pissin’ off the wrong people, gettin’ her husband into trouble.”
“Must’ve been tough on him,” I said.
He looked into the sky, checking the weather or formulating a response. Hard to tell.
He looked back at me.
“Mr. Pontecello lived in his own little world, which suited him fine. Suited me, too. We had an understanding. I keep all this landscaping in perfect condition and he pays me. He ignores, I ignore. Square deal for everybody.”
“There was that much to ignore?” I asked.
“You’re serious, right?” he asked, before zipping back up into the maple canopy.
“I am,” I yelled.
Getting no response, I walked back to the front door of the house, where Harry was waiting not so patiently but pretending he was. I knew the look. I became oblivious, and ignored it, à la Sergey Pontecello.
“Have you rung the doorbell?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for? Come on, let’s move it.”
He liked that.
Eunice answered the door in a gray three-piece suit, supported by stubby sensible heels and a narrow, disapproving face.
“I can’t stay to administer all this,” she said. “You’ll have to make do on your own.”
“One of my specialties, ma’am,” I said.
She looked up at Harry, vaguely disturbed by the sight of him, though not enough to keep us out of her house.
“I’ve separated our family things from my sister’s and her husband’s things. I had to make judgments as to which was which. It wasn’t pleasant,” she added, as if to ward off a possible challenge to her decisions. “The boxes and furniture are in the east sitting room. Do I need to sign anything?” she said. She stood several paces away with her hands clenched anxiously to her abdomen.
“You already did when you made me coadministor,” I said. “I assume we’ll know which things to take.”
“Take everything in that room,” she said, pointing down the hall. “That’s why I put it there,” she said testily.
I was going to ease gradually into the tough stuff, but I’d about had it with that woman. I moved in close, invading her personal space, which she seemed poised to defend.
“Mrs. Wolsonowicz, are you aware your son has been named sole heir of the Pontecello estate?”
Up close, I could see her face grappling with emotions that went far beyond impatience and irritation.
“Of course,” she said.
“Shouldn’t he be deciding what to do with these belongings?”
She shook her head aggressively enough to wrench her neck. “He doesn’t want anything. Of that I’m certain.”
I nodded and moved in a half step closer. She stepped back the same distance.
“And the financial piece, same feelings?”
She scoffed.
“The debt?” she asked. “The house settles that.”
“So you haven’t looked into the remaining assets.”
She shook her head again, less violently.
“The bank won’t release anything until authorized by the courts. Some bureaucratic nonsense.”
“The murder investigation,” I said flatly.
“As I said, nonsense.”
She looked down at her watch, then looked at me, then looked back at her watch.
“I have an appointment,” she said.
I had the bad news of the Pontecellos’ unfortunate lack of insolvency on the tip of my tongue. Something more than her clipped dismissal kept it there.
“Of course,” I said.
She guided us to the east sitting room, which had a wide pair of French doors that opened out on the front lawn. Harry asked if he could back up the truck to the doors, which for some reason seemed to aggravate her even more.
“I suppose,” she said, turning to leave. Then she stopped, turned again, and forced herself to stand still. “Thank you for taking care of all this,” she said with all the sincerity of a sixth grader reciting lines in the Christmas pageant. “I appreciate it.”
Index cards with things I wanted to say started to flip in front of my mind’s eye, but before I could pick out something, Harry said, “It’s the least we could do. Losing a loved one is hard enough.”
She softened a little at that, though not enough to improve my opinion of her. Then she spun back around and left us to administer things on our own.
The east sitting room was about twenty feet square.
It was heaped almost floor to ceiling with boxes, lamps, tables and chairs, temporary clothing racks, rolled-up rugs, framed pictures, a pair of bicycles, and a lot of indescribables, such as palm fronds stuck in a gigantic blue vase and a wicker umbrella holder in the shape of an old-fashioned woman’s boot.
“Stuff,” he said.
“The staff of life. How do you want to tackle it?” I asked.
“We’ll work that out with the crew.”
“The crew?”
“You don’t think we’re moving all this crap, do you?”
About ten minutes later the crew showed up. Alejandro and Ismael. They high-fived Harry and instantly dug into the gigantic pile of personal belongings. By then Harry had backed up the truck and pulled a ramp directly into the east sitting room. Alejandro was apparently the lead guy, even though Ismael was almost twice his size.
I wasn’t just going to stand there while other human beings worked, so I joined the hauling frenzy. This naturally forced Harry into the fray, so in a startlingly short period of time we emptied the place of the Pontecellos’ belongings. I expressed my amazement to the crew.
“Ismael and myself are magicians,” said Alejandro. “Make objects disappear.”
“Abracadabra,” said Ismael, as if they’d rehearsed the act.
With that satisfying, sweaty feeling of accomplishment, I jumped into the truck and slammed the heavy passenger door. Harry started the engine, which almost drowned out the sound of my cell phone ringing on my hip. I answered.
“I did tell you about the car,” said Eunice.
“Not that I remember.”
“Well, the ridiculous thing is in one of the garages. It needs to be moved.”
“Ridiculous?”
“American.”
Latent love of country stirred in my breast.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll take care of it.”
“It’s a forty-year-old Chrysler, if you can imagine. Who would drive such a thing?”
