by John Grisham
“There are thousands of islands,” he explained. “And they’ll never find you if you move a lot.”
“Are they still looking for you?” Mitch asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t call and ask, you know. But I doubt it.”
“Where’s the safest place to hide?”
“On this boat. It’s a nice little yacht, and once you learn to sail it, it’ll be your home. Find you a little island somewhere, perhaps Little Cayman or Brac—they’re both still primitive—and build a house. Do as I’ve done. And spend most of your time on this boat.”
“When do you stop worrying about being chased?”
“Oh, I still think about it, you know. But I don’t worry about it. How much did you get away with?”
“Eight million, give or take,” Mitch said.
“That’s nice. You’ve got the money to do as you please, so forget about them. Just tour the islands for the rest of your life. There are worse things, you know.”
For days they sailed toward Cuba, then around it in the direction of Jamaica. They watched George and listened to his lectures. After twenty years of sailing through the Caribbean, he was a man of great knowledge and patience. Ray, the linguist, listened to and memorized words like spinnaker, mast, bow, stern, aft, tiller, halyard winches, masthead fittings, shrouds, lifelines, stanchions, sheet winch, bow pulpit, coamings, transom, clew outhaul, genoa sheets, mainsail, jib, jibstays, jib sheets, cam cleats and boom vangs. George lectured on heeling, luffing, running, blanketing, backwinding, heading up, trimming and pointing. Ray absorbed the language of sailing; Mitch studied the technique.
Abby stayed in the cabin, saying little and smiling only when necessary. Life on a boat was not something she dreamed about. She missed her house and wondered what would happen to it. Maybe Mr. Rice would cut the grass and pull the weeds. She missed the shady streets and neat lawns and the small gangs of children riding bicycles. She thought of her dog, and prayed that Mr. Rice would adopt it. She worried about her parents—their safety and their fear. When would she see them again? It would be years, she decided, and she could live with that if she knew they were safe.
Her thoughts could not escape the present. The future was inconceivable.
During the second day of the rest of her life, she began writing letters; letters to her parents, Kay Quin, Mr. Rice and a few friends. The letters would never be mailed, she knew, but it helped to put the words on paper.
Mitch watched her carefully, but left her alone. He had nothing to say, really. Maybe in a few days they could talk.
By the end of the fourth day, Wednesday, Grand Cayman was in sight. They circled it slowly once and anchored a mile from shore. After dark, Barry Abanks said goodbye. The McDeeres simply thanked him, and he eased away in the rubber raft. He would land three miles from Bodden Town at another dive lodge, then call one of his dive captains to come get him. He would know if anyone suspicious had been around. Abanks expected no trouble.
George’s compound on Little Cayman consisted of a small main house of white-painted wood and two smaller outbuildings. It was inland a quarter of a mile, on a tiny bay. The nearest house could not be seen. A native woman lived in the smallest building and maintained the place. Her name was Fay.
The McDeeres settled in the main house and tried to begin the process of starting over. Ray, the escapee, roamed the beaches for hours and kept to himself. He was euphoric, but could not show it. He and George took the boat out for several hours each day and drank scotch while exploring the islands. They usually returned drunk.
Abby spent the first days in a small room upstairs overlooking the bay. She wrote more letters and began a diary. She slept alone.
Twice a week, Fay drove the Volkswagen bus into town for supplies and mail. She returned one day with a package from Barry Abanks. George delivered it to Mitch. Inside the package was a parcel sent to Abanks from Doris Greenwood in Miami. Mitch ripped open the thick legal-sized envelope and found three newspapers, two from Atlanta and one from Miami.
The headlines told of the mass indicting of the Bendini law firm in Memphis. Fifty-one present and former members of the firm were indicted, along with thirty-one alleged members of the Morolto crime family in Chicago. More indictments were coming, promised the U.S. Attorney. Just the tip of the iceberg. Director F. Denton Voyles allowed himself to be quoted as saying it was a major blow to organized crime in America. It should be a dire warning, he said, to legitimate professionals and businessmen who are tempted to handle dirty money.
Mitch folded the newspapers and went for a long walk on the beach. Under a cluster of palms, he found some shade and sat down. The Atlanta paper listed the names of every Bendini lawyer indicted. He read them slowly. There was no joy in seeing the names. He almost felt sorry for Nathan Locke. Almost. Wally Hudson, Kendall Mahan, Jack Aldrich and, finally, Lamar Quin. He could see their faces. He knew their wives and their children. Mitch gazed across the brilliant ocean and thought about Lamar and Kay Quin. He loved them, and he hated them. They had helped seduce him into the firm, and they were not without blame. But they were his friends. What a waste! Maybe Lamar would only serve a couple of years and then be paroled. Maybe Kay and the kids could survive. Maybe.
“I love you, Mitch.” Abby was standing behind him. She held a plastic pitcher and two cups.
He smiled at her and waved to the sand next to him. “What’s in the pitcher?”
“Rum punch. Fay mixed it for us.”
“Is it strong?”
She sat next to him on the sand. “It’s mostly rum. I told Fay we needed to get drunk, and she agreed.”
He held her tightly and sipped the rum punch. They watched a small fishing boat inch through the sparkling water.
“Are you scared, Mitch?”
“Terrified.”
“Me too. This is crazy.”
“But we made it, Abby. We’re alive. We’re safe. We’re together.”
“But what about tomorrow? And the next day?”
“I don’t know, Abby. Things could be worse, you know. My name could be in the paper there with the other freshly indicted defendants. Or we could be dead. There are worse things than sailing around the Caribbean with eight million bucks in the bank.”
“Do you think my parents are safe?”
“I think so. What would Morolto have to gain by harming your parents? They’re safe, Abby.”
She refilled the cups with rum punch and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be okay, Mitch. As long as we’re together, I can handle anything.”
“Abby,” Mitch said slowly, staring at the water, “I have a confession to make.”
“I’m listening.”
“The truth is, I never wanted to be a lawyer anyway.”
“Oh, really.”
“Naw. Secretly, I’ve always wanted to be a sailor.”
“Is that so? Have you ever made love on the beach?”
Mitch hesitated for a slight second. “Uh, no.”
“Then drink up, sailor. Let’s get drunk and make a baby.”
THE APPEAL
A Dell Book
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Belfry Holdings, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007044905
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-57612-5
www.bantamdell.com
v3.0_r1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Part One - The Verdict
&nbs
p; Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Two - The Campaign
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part Three - The Opinion
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Dedication
Author’s Note
Copyright
P A R T O N E
______________________________________________________
T H E V E R D I C T
C H A P T E R 1
The jury was ready.
After forty-two hours of deliberations that followed seventy-one days of trial that included 530 hours of testimony from four dozen witnesses, and after a lifetime of sitting silently as the lawyers haggled and the judge lectured and the spectators watched like hawks for telltale signs, the jury was ready. Locked away in the jury room, secluded and secure, ten of them proudly signed their names to the verdict while the other two pouted in their corners, detached and miserable in their dissension. There were hugs and smiles and no small measure of self-congratulation because they had survived this little war and could now march proudly back into the arena with a decision they had rescued through sheer determination and the dogged pursuit of compromise. Their ordeal was over; their civic duty complete. They had served above and beyond. They were ready.
The foreman knocked on the door and rustled Uncle Joe from his slumbers. Uncle Joe, the ancient bailiff, had guarded them while he also arranged their meals, heard their complaints, and quietly slipped their messages to the judge. In his younger years, back when his hearing was better, Uncle Joe was rumored to also eavesdrop on his juries through a flimsy pine door he and he alone had selected and installed. But his listening days were over, and, as he had confided to no one but his wife, after the ordeal of this particular trial he might just hang up his old pistol once and for all. The strain of controlling justice was wearing him down.
He smiled and said, “That’s great. I’ll get the judge,” as if the judge were somewhere in the bowels of the courthouse just waiting for a call from Uncle Joe. Instead, by custom, he found a clerk and passed along the wonderful news. It was truly exciting. The old courthouse had never seen a trial so large and so long. To end it with no decision at all would have been a shame.
The clerk tapped lightly on the judge’s door, then took a step inside and proudly announced, “We have a verdict,” as if she had personally labored through the negotiations and now was presenting the result as a gift.
The judge closed his eyes and let loose a deep, satisfying sigh. He smiled a happy, nervous smile of enormous relief, almost disbelief, and finally said, “Round up the lawyers.”
After almost five days of deliberations, Judge Harrison had resigned himself to the likelihood of a hung jury, his worst nightmare. After four years of bare-knuckle litigation and four months of a hotly contested trial, the prospect of a draw made him ill. He couldn’t begin to imagine the prospect of doing it all again.
He stuck his feet into his old penny loafers, jumped from the chair grinning like a little boy, and reached for his robe. It was finally over, the longest trial of his extremely colorful career.
The clerk’s first call went to the firm of Payton & Payton, a local husband-and-wife team now operating out of an abandoned dime store in a lesser part of town. A paralegal picked up the phone, listened for a few seconds, hung up, then shouted, “The jury has a verdict!” His voice echoed through the cavernous maze of small, temporary workrooms and jolted his colleagues.
He shouted it again as he ran to The Pit, where the rest of the firm was frantically gathering. Wes Payton was already there, and when his wife, Mary Grace, rushed in, their eyes met in a split second of unbridled fear and bewilderment. Two paralegals, two secretaries, and a bookkeeper gathered at the long, cluttered work-table, where they suddenly froze and gawked at one another, all waiting for someone else to speak.
Could it really be over? After they had waited for an eternity, could it end so suddenly? So abruptly? With just a phone call?
“How about a moment of silent prayer,” Wes said, and they held hands in a tight circle and prayed as they had never prayed before. All manner of petitions were lifted up to God Almighty, but the common plea was for victory. Please, dear Lord, after all this time and effort and money and fear and doubt, please, oh please, grant us a divine victory. And deliver us from humiliation, ruin, bankruptcy, and a host of other evils that a bad verdict will bring.
The clerk’s second call was to the cell phone of Jared Kurtin, the architect of the defense. Mr. Kurtin was lounging peacefully on a rented leather sofa in his temporary office on Front Street in downtown Hattiesburg, three blocks from the courthouse. He was reading a biography and watching the hours pass at $750 per. He listened calmly, slapped the phone shut, and said, “Let’s go. The jury is ready.” His dark-suited soldiers snapped to attention and lined up to escort him down the street in the direction of another crushing victory. They marched away without comment, without prayer.
Other calls went to other lawyers, then to the reporters, and within minutes the word was on the street and spreading rapidly.
__________
Somewhere near the top of a tall building in lower Manhattan, a panic-stricken young man barged into a serious meeting and whispered the urgent news to Mr. Carl Trudeau, who immediately lost interest in the issues on the table, stood abruptly, and said, “Looks like the jury has reached a verdict.” He marched out of the room and down the hall to a vast corner suite, where he removed his jacket, loosened his tie, walked to a window, and gazed through the early darkness at the Hudson River in the distance. He waited, and as usual asked himself how, exactly, so much of his empire could rest upon the combined wisdom of twelve average people in backwater Mississippi.
For a man who knew so much, that answer was still elusive.
__________
People were hurrying into the courthouse from all directions when the Paytons parked on the street behind it. They stayed in the car for a moment, still holding hands. For four months they had tried not to touch each other anywhere near the courthouse. Someone was always watching. Maybe a juror or a reporter. It was important to be as professional as possible. The novelty of a married legal team surprised people, and the Paytons tried to treat each other as attorneys and not as spouses.
And, during the trial, there had been precious little touching away from the courthouse or anywhere else.
“What are you thinking?” Wes asked without looking at his wife. His heart was racing and his forehead was wet. He still gripped the wheel with his left hand, and he kept telling himself to relax.
Relax. What a joke.
“I have never been so afraid,” Mary Grace said.
“Neither have I.”
A long pause as they breathed deeply and watched a television van almost slaughter a pedestrian.
“Can we survive a loss?” she said. “That’s the question.”
“We have to survive; we have no choice. But we’re not going to lose.”
“Attaboy. Let’s go.”
They joined the rest of their little firm and entered the courthouse t
ogether. Waiting in her usual spot on the first floor by the soft drink machines was their client, the plaintiff, Jeannette Baker, and when she saw her lawyers, she immediately began to cry. Wes took one arm, Mary Grace the other, and they escorted Jeannette up the stairs to the main courtroom on the second floor. They could’ve carried her. She weighed less than a hundred pounds and had aged five years during the trial. She was depressed, at times delusional, and though not anorexic, she simply didn’t eat. At thirty-four, she had already buried a child and a husband and was now at the end of a horrible trial she secretly wished she had never pursued.
The courtroom was in a state of high alert, as if bombs were coming and the sirens were wailing. Dozens of people milled about, or looked for seats, or chatted nervously with their eyes darting around. When Jared Kurtin and the defense army entered from a side door, everyone gawked as if he might know something they didn’t. Day after day for the past four months he had proven that he could see around corners, but at that moment his face revealed nothing. He huddled gravely with his subordinates.
Across the room, just a few feet away, the Paytons and Jeannette settled into their chairs at the plaintiff’s table. Same chairs, same positions, same deliberate strategy to impress upon the jurors that this poor widow and her two lonely lawyers were taking on a giant corporation with unlimited resources. Wes Payton glanced at Jared Kurtin, their eyes met, and each offered a polite nod. The miracle of the trial was that the two men were still able to treat each other with a modest dose of civility, even converse when absolutely necessary. It had become a matter of pride. Regardless of how nasty the situation, and there had been so many nasty ones, each was determined to rise above the gutter and offer a hand.
