Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  I wasn’t frightened exactly, but I remembered his morose talk at Jack’s birthday party and wondered if I shouldn’t try to contact his daughter, who lived in New Jersey somewhere, or the police. I’d never met her, and I thought how overprotective I would sound, so I decided to let it go for a couple of days. After that I would start calling the hospitals.

  On Wednesday, Ronnie Sanchez, our paralegal, came into my office with a sheaf of papers. “Can I run something by you?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said encouragingly. I felt like adding, my child. She looked so absurdly young. “What’s up?”

  “Mind if I close the door?”

  I gestured: Go ahead.

  She sat in the client chair, still clutching the papers. “This is embarrassing,” she said. “I hope I’m not out of line.”

  I smiled. “I doubt that very much,” I said. I waited.

  “Well,” she said, still hesitant, “Brooke asked me to send in some paperwork to the INS for her, some work she was doing for Harrison, you know?”

  I nodded.

  She cleared her throat. “I noticed … I just thought … there’s something … unusual about some of them. Brooke said it was okay and that I shouldn’t bother you, but …”

  Someone more devious might have been making a rather clever attempt at backstabbing, but Ronnie was straight-shooting and rather shy. I would have preferred one of her to ten Brookes, despite her inexperience.

  “You did the right thing,” I told her. “It’s the integrity of the work that matters, nothing else. Don’t ever hesitate to come to me or to Harrison with any question you might have, even if you think it’s silly.” I looked at the papers she was holding. “Are those what you had a question about?”

  She handed them to me, her jaw tightening slightly as she watched my face.

  I looked through them for something anomalous. There were several “approval notices” (technically an INS Notice of Action) for labor-certification I-140s, to be attached to the applications for adjustment of status (from temporary to permanent resident). I didn’t see anything unusual. I looked at Ronnie.

  “Look closer at Mehra and Govitsky,” she suggested.

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly seeing what she meant. “They both have the same bar code, don’t they? How odd. How old are these?” The INS had started putting bar codes on its Notices of Action a year or two before. I checked the dates. “Nope. Fairly recent. How odd,” I said again.

  “Also,” she said, looking down at her hands for a moment, “also … the paperwork for the original labor-cert filings is not in the client files.”

  “Maybe the files are in Harrison’s office?”

  “I asked Brooke to check. She says they’re not.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say. Clearly we need to check with Harrison before we act on any of these, so hold off on sending them in. In the meantime I’ll talk to Brooke.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “It’s probably just a misfiling or something like that, but you made the right call. Good work.”

  She smiled.

  BROOKE WAS SLOUCHING BEHIND HARRISON’S DESK, her feet up on it in spirit, if not in fact. She straightened quickly as soon as I walked in, as if her ass had found its way into Harrison’s chair purely by accident. “Hi,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  I wondered why every phrase out of her mouth irritated me so much. Probably she was just no more than normally obnoxious, the effect of overdeveloped ambition and underdeveloped sincerity. Still, I found myself analyzing her every utterance for hidden malice. Once I realized it, I sometimes compensated by treating her with more friendliness than she probably deserved.

  “I thought I’d check out these approval notices,” I told her. “Ronnie says she can’t find the original documentation in the client files.”

  “I told her it wasn’t important,” she said dismissively. “Harrison probably has them at home.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I spoke. “Possibly,” I said, “although I can’t see why he would. But as long as we aren’t certain about the documents, it doesn’t make sense to file them, does it?” I sounded annoyed even to myself, but I couldn’t help it.

  She shrugged. “I guess not,” she said. “If you think it’s that important.”

  “I don’t know how important it is,” I said evenly. “That’s the point. You know what the INS is like—if the documents are wrong somehow, they’ll send them back. In the meantime someone’s visa could have expired. Dates and accuracy are very, very important.”

  “Very important,” she agreed, nodding. She looked as if she were only half listening. “I wonder…,” she began.

  “What?”

  “Well, Harrison’s been getting these calls from the INS all week. I wonder if it could be connected.”

  I blinked. “From whom?” I said.

  “I wrote it down, Lynn. It’s right here.” She handed me three telephone memo slips.

  I glanced at them, but since as a rule immigration lawyers rarely get called by anyone at the INS, it was not a name I recognized. “I’ll check it out,” I said. “It might be urgent.”

  “Would you like me to call?” she asked. Then, catching my look, she added, “I mean, since Harrison asked me to handle things while he was out …”

  “No thank you,” I said, with formal patience. “But if you could get me all the files for these clients, I’d like to look them over in my office.”

  “No problem,” she said. Perkily.

  AN HOUR LATER I LEFT A MESSAGE on Harrison’s home voice mail. “Call me,” I said. “You have to call me. No matter what. It’s urgent.” I hung up quickly, checking to see that the door to my office was still tightly closed. I felt dizzy and a little sick. Despite my lack of affinity for premonitions, I had a big one now. The shit was going to hit the fan.

  “There must be some mistake,” I’d kept telling the INS legal officer when she told me that the Notices of Action were apparently counterfeit.

  “They’re not genuine,” she insisted. “You can tell because they repeat the bar code. In some cases there’s no code at all. Also …”

  Also, the labor certifications and the H-1Bs for which the apparent approvals had been issued had never been filed.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. I mean, it’s not as if the INS hadn’t been known to lose things, although of course I didn’t bring that up.

  “As sure as I can be,” she said. “We do occasionally lose documents, but there’s not even anything logged in to the computer.”

  “There must be some mistake,” I said, realizing I sounded like a parrot with a chip on its shoulder, but unable to think, for the moment, of any other reply.

  “I’m sure you’ll want to check your own records,” she said coolly.

  “Yes, of course. Of course. It’s just that I—”

  “You understand that we will be following up on this, don’t you?”

  Boy, did I ever. “You’ll have my—our—full cooperation,” I told her.

  “I certainly hope so,” she said.

  “I’M GOING TO BE LATE,” I told Jack, when I reached him at his office. “I’m not sure how late. Something’s come up.” I didn’t want to go into it on the phone, at least not until I knew for certain what had really happened. The parameters of disaster. “Um … I’m expecting a call from Harrison,” I said. “I think he’ll call me here, but just in case he calls the house, could you please tell him where I am and ask him—tell him—it’s really important that I speak to him?”

  “Okay. Sure,” he said. He sounded just a little bit annoyed.

  “Bad time?” I said.

  “No, it’s okay. I was hoping you’d be home for dinner tonight, that’s all.”

  I smiled. “Did you have something special in mind?”

  “Always,” he said. “But actually this is Patrick’s first night back in the house, remember?”

  I hadn’t. I s
topped smiling. “Oh …”

  “And I just thought it might make him feel more welcome if we were both there for dinner.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack, I really can’t make it. We’ll do it tomorrow—Oh, no, I can’t tomorrow night either. Well, we’ll work it out. I’m sure he doesn’t mind. Get takeout.”

  “It’s not the food, Lynn. If you can’t make it, you can’t.”

  I could hear in his voice that he thought I had concocted some excuse to keep from coming home. Although I was not guilty in fact, I might have been in principle, since I wasn’t completely persuaded that I wouldn’t have stooped to doing exactly that, if only I’d thought of it in time. Besides, how welcome did I really want Patrick to feel?

  “Sorry,” I said again, feeling guilty over my own ungenerous thoughts.

  “We’ll see you when we see you, then,” Jack said curtly.

  “Fine,” I said. “Great.”

  IN THE END I DIDN’T GO HOME until well past midnight. I didn’t want to go through the files while the others were still there—it was far too early for that sort of explanation—so I waited till after hours to start my sleuthing. Besides the documents flagged by the INS, I wasn’t sure what I was really looking for. What I feared I might find was more of the same.

  The problem with finding counterfeit documents for clients who were also missing genuine documentation is that it strongly suggested that the original applications were never filed. You might actually get away with it as long as the INS didn’t notice. For example, you could file a bogus labor-certification approval with the INS with form I-140 requesting permanent resident status. INS approves the I-140. So you’re home free. Or maybe you manufacture the I-140 approval, too, and attach it to the adjustment of status, and you get away with that. The clients wouldn’t know the difference, as long as their visas or permanent residency was apparently approved.

  The question was, why? And who?

  Why is easy if it happened only once or twice. You forgot to file something, so you tell the client you’ve filed it, hoping to get it filed immediately to cover your tracks. If you can’t file it on time, you get more desperate. Then you’re stuck manufacturing the documents and hoping that the INS won’t realize they’re fake. The problem—in addition to the fact that what you’re doing is fraudulent, illegal, and immoral—is that you have a lot of clients who have paid a lot of money to secure their immigration status, and now they’re in this country illegally. Depending on the circumstances, they can be sent home immediately, have to pay a big fine, and/or forfeit the right to return for years. This was not a situation likely to make anyone very happy.

  I prayed it was just the one or two cases, but after only a couple of hours’ search, I turned up three more client files with suspicious-looking documents. All of them worked for Kojima Bank, one of our biggest and most important clients. There were also some older files predating the bar codes that looked fishy, too.

  I was speechless with dread.

  By midnight I was so upset and distracted I decided to postpone further investigations. I had no illusions about getting a good night’s sleep, but I was just spinning my wheels, and until I got to Harrison, I couldn’t know exactly how to proceed. I had my keys out and was locking the door to the office when I heard a phone ringing inside. I opened the door again, thinking it must be Jack.

  Sure enough, my private line was ringing. I grabbed for the phone. “Hello?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Hello?” I repeated. “Harrison?”

  A long sigh, and then nothing. Did I hear a clink in the background?

  “Harrison, is that you? Answer me, damn it!” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “I’m your partner, Harrison. Don’t—”

  Before I could say Don’t hang up, the line went dead.

  I dialed his cell phone, which was still off. I called his home number.

  The phone rang and rang.

  8

  The porch light was off when I got home. I pulled into the driveway, but when the garage door rolled up, Patrick’s Miata was parked next to Jack’s Lexus, which left zero space for me. I lowered the garage door again, locked the car door, and walked up the path to the front door.

  I almost stepped on Brewer, who responded with an aggrieved meow. I bent over and picked him up, putting his front legs over my shoulder in the “fireman’s carry,” which he loved. “What are you doing out, Brewer Man?” Okay, so I’m one of those people who talk baby talk to their pets. But he was twelve years old, it had been just the two of us for a long time, and on the whole he’d been a good sport about moving, so he probably deserved a little coddling.

  I moved closer to the front door, fumbling with my keys. It was dark, and I recoiled jerkily when my foot touched something huge and soft on the porch. I bent over, still clutching the cat and my purse and the keys. It was Brewer’s foam bed, the one he slept on in the utility room.

  I pushed open the door and set the cat down in the hall. I could hear the TV on in the family room. It was jarring, particularly so late. I knew it couldn’t be Jack.

  Patrick was sitting on the couch watching a Seinfeld rerun. An empty glass and an apple core, without benefit of plate, were sitting on the coffee table in front of him. He lifted his eyes. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said. “Welcome.” I hoped I sounded wonderfully sincere. “Um … did you put the cat out?”

  He nodded, his eyes drifting back to the set.

  “Well, don’t, please. We don’t let him out at night. Probably it’s better if you don’t let him out at all.”

  “The thing is,” he said, looking at me with a mixture of malice and triumph, “I can’t sleep in the house with a cat. My eyes swell shut, and I sneeze. Dad said it would be okay if I put it out.”

  I noticed that “it.” I also noticed that he had never sneezed once in the house in the entire year-plus his father and I had been married, though he’d been around the cat on many occasions. If he was allergic, this was the first I’d heard of it. After the day I’d had—my practice possibly in ruins, my partner acting suspiciously—I was not, to say the least, in a conciliatory mood. “Well, it’s not okay,” I said fiercely. “It’s January, it’s freezing at night, and he’s a senior cat. Plus, there are”—I tried to think of the appropriate menace. Coyotes?—“predators,” I emphasized. “Keep your bedroom door closed.”

  He looked at me blankly, his jaw dropping open a little. Then he shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. His gaze returned pointedly to the screen.

  “Good night,” I said.

  He didn’t answer me.

  I was going to put the cat in the utility room, but I wasn’t sure I could trust Patrick not to put him out again after I’d gone to bed. I gathered up Brewer and the cat bed and took them into our bedroom. I considered the litter box, but it was already so late I thought I could leave it till morning. I didn’t want to risk stepping in it in bare feet in the darkness.

  Jack was asleep, but he woke up a little when I came in bearing burdens. “Hi,” he mumbled. “What time is it?”

  “Late,” I said.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  Ha. “We’ll talk in the morning,” I said. “Listen, be careful if you get up in the night. Brewer’s bed is on the floor at the foot of the bed.”

  “He snores,” Jack remarked sleepily.

  “I know, but it’s nonnegotiable,” I told him.

  He made a sound that might have been a snort or a laugh, and went back to sleep.

  I lay awake a long time, staring into the darkness. Even with the door closed, I could hear the television in the family room far into the night.

  9

  I’d intended to get up early and get to the office before everyone else, but after an entire night of not sleeping, I finally drifted off around five and reawoke in a sort of stupor around eight-thirty. I could remember a time when I could shake off sleeplessness (and worse) wi
th a hot shower, but I’d squandered my youthful energy on all-night bull sessions and other frivolities (and once I read ten Shakespeare plays in a single night for a final). Those days were gone with the bell-bottoms and Birkenstocks. I hauled myself out of bed, dreading the day. Jack had already left, and Patrick would sleep for hours yet, so there was nothing to distract me from the expectation of imminent disaster I dragged around like a soggy blanket.

  RONNIE SANCHEZ WAS WAITING in my office when I got in. She looked pale. “Hi,” she said softly.

  “Hi,” I said “What’s up?”

  She looked down at her notes. “Well, a Dr. Strela called. He’s Russian. He works at Stanford. He’d like to see you, right away.”

  “Good, a potential client.” I needed—would need—every one I could get if word got out that the firm had falsified INS documents. “Have Adam pencil him in tomorrow, or whenever he can make it. Also,” I said carefully, “we need to have a firm meeting. Today. The sooner the better.” I was going to have to ask, in the most diplomatic possible terms, whether anyone had noticed anything odd about Harrison’s behavior or legal work.

  “Okay,” she said. “But shouldn’t we wait until—”

  I cut her off. “It can’t wait,” I said.

  Her eyes filled. Since she wasn’t the type who got weepy over a curt answer, I realized that something was up. I looked around. “What’s wrong? Where is Adam?” I asked. “And where’s Brooke, for that matter?”

  “Um … they went to the hospital.” She looked away.

  “Who’s in the hospital?” I asked carefully.

  “Harrison,” she said, in the same quiet voice. She sounded almost embarrassed to confess it, which made me a little ashamed. Did they think I wouldn’t care?