by John Grisham
hallway while his brother was roughed up by Nate O’Riley. Rex had been in enough lawsuits to know that litigation meant waiting: waiting for lawyers, judges, witnesses, experts, trial dates, and appeals courts, waiting in hallways for your turn to give testimony. When he raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth, he already despised Nate.
Both Hark and Troy Junior had warned him of what was to come. The lawyer could get under your skin and fester there like a boil.
Again, Nate started with inflammatory questions, and within ten minutes the room was tense. For three years, Rex had been the target of an FBI investigation. A bank had failed in 1990; Rex had been an investor and director. Depositors lost money. Borrowers lost their loans. Litigation had been raging for years with no end in sight. The president of the bank was in jail, and those close to the epicenter thought Rex would be next. There was enough dirt to keep Nate going for hours.
For fun, he continually reminded Rex that he was under oath. There was also a very good chance the FBI would see his deposition.
It was mid-afternoon before Nate worked his way to the strip bars. Rex owned six of them—held in his wife’s name—in the Fort Lauderdale area. He’d bought them from a man killed in a gunfight. They were simply irresistible as subjects of conversation. Nate took them one by one—Lady Luck, Lolita’s, Club Tiffany, et cetera—and asked a hundred questions. He asked about the girls, the strippers, where they came from, how much they earned, did they use drugs, what drugs, did they touch the customers, and on and on. He asked question after question about the economics of the skin business. After three hours of carefully painting a portrait of the sleaziest business in the world, Nate asked, “Didn’t your current wife work in one of the clubs?”
The answer was yes, but Rex couldn’t just blurt it out. His throat and neck flashed red and for a moment he appeared ready to lunge across the table.
“She was a bookkeeper,” he said with a clenched jaw.
“She ever do any dancing, on the tables?”
Another pause, as Rex squeezed the table with his fingers. “She certainly did not.” It was a lie, and everyone in the room knew it.
Nate flipped through some papers searching for the truth. They watched him carefully, half-expecting him to pull out a photo of Amber in a G-string and kinky heels.
They adjourned at six again, with the promise of more tomorrow. When the video camera was off and the court reporter was busy putting away her equipment, Rex stopped at the door, pointed at Nate, and said, “No more questions about my wife, okay?”
“That’s impossible, Rex. All assets are in her name.” Nate waved some papers at him, as if he had all their records. Hark shoved his client through the door.
Nate sat alone for an hour, skimming notes, flipping pages, wishing he were in St. Michaels sitting on the porch of the cottage with a view of the bay. He needed to call Phil.
This is your last case, he kept telling himself. And you’re doing it for Rachel.
By noon of the second day, the Phelan lawyers were openly discussing whether Rex’s deposition would take three days or four. He had over seven million dollars in liens and judgments filed against him, yet the creditors couldn’t execute because all assets were in the name of his wife, Amber, the ex-stripper. Nate took each judgment, laid it on the table, examined it from every conceivable angle and direction, then placed it back in the file where it might stay and it might not. The tedium was unnerving everyone but Nate, who somehow kept an earnest demeanor as he plodded ahead.
For the afternoon session he selected the topic of Troy’s leap and the events leading up to it. He followed the same line he’d used on Junior, and it was obvious Hark had prepped Rex. His answers to the questions about Dr. Zadel were rehearsed, but adequate. Rex hung with the party line—the three psychiatrists were simply wrong because Troy jumped minutes later.
More familiar territory was covered when Nate grilled him about his dismal employment career with The Phelan Group. Then they spent two painful hours wasting the five million Rex had received as his inheritance.
At five-thirty, Nate abruptly said he was finished, and walked out of the room.
Two witnesses in four days. Two men laid bare on video, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The Phelan lawyers went to their separate cars and drove away. Perhaps the worst was behind them, perhaps not.
Their clients had been spoiled as children, ignored by their father, cast into the world with fat checking accounts at an age when they were ill-equipped to handle money, and expected to prosper. They had made bad choices, but all blame ultimately went back to Troy. That was the considered judgment of the Phelan lawyers.
Libbigail was led in early Friday morning and placed in the seat of honor. Her hair was of a style quite similar to a crew cut, with the sides peeled to the skin and an inch of gray on top. Cheap jewelry hung from her neck and wrists so that when she raised her hand to be sworn there was a racket at her elbow.
She looked at Nate in horror. Her brothers had told her the worst.
But it was Friday, and Nate wanted out of the city more than he wanted food when he was hungry. He smiled at her and began with easy background questions. Kids, jobs, marriages. For thirty minutes, all was pleasant. Then he began to probe into her past. At one point, he asked, “How many times have you been through rehab for drugs and alcohol?”
The question shocked her, so Nate said, “I’ve done it four times myself, so don’t be ashamed.” His candor disarmed her.
“I really can’t remember,” she said. “But I’ve been clean for six years.”
“Wonderful,” said Nate. One addict to another. “Good for you.”
From that point on, the two talked about things as if they were alone. Nate had to pry, and he apologized for doing so. He asked about the five million, and with no small amount of humor she told tales of good drugs and bad men. Unlike her brothers, Libbigail had found stability. His name was Spike, the ex-biker who’d also been detoxed into submission. They lived in a small house in the suburbs of Baltimore.
“What would you do if you got one sixth of your father’s estate?” Nate asked.
“Buy lots of things,” she said. “Same as you. Same as anybody else. But I would be smart with the money this time. Real smart.”
“What’s the first thing you’d buy?”
“The biggest Harley in the world, for Spike. Then a nicer house, not a mansion though.” Her eyes danced as she spent the money.
Her deposition lasted less than two hours. Her sister, Mary Ross Phelan Jackman, followed her, and likewise looked at Nate as if he had fangs. Of the five adult Phelan heirs, Mary Ross was the only one still married to her first spouse, though he had a prior wife. He was an orthopedist. She was dressed tastefully, with nice jewelry.
The early questions revealed the standard prolonged college experience, but without arrests, addictions, or expulsions. She’d taken her money and lived in Tuscany for three years, then Nice for two. At twenty-eight, she married the doctor, had two girls, one now seven, the other five. It was unclear how much of the five million was left. The doctor handled their investments, so Nate figured they were practically broke. Wealthy, but heavily in debt. Josh’s background on Mary Ross showed a massive home with imported cars stacked in the driveway, a condo in Florida, and an estimated income by the doc of $750,000 a year. He was paying $20,000 a month to a bank, his part of the residual damage from a failed partnership that tried to corner the car wash business in northern Virginia.
The doctor also had an apartment in Alexandria where he kept a mistress. Mary Ross and her husband were rarely seen together. Nate decided not to discuss these matters. He was suddenly in a hurry, but careful not to show it.
Ramble slouched into the room after the lunch break, his lawyer Yancy leading and pointing and fussing over him, obviously terrified now that his client was expected to carry on an intelligent conversation. The kid’s hair was bright red now, and it sort of matched his zits. No portion of his
face had gone unmutilated—rings and studs littered and scarred his features. The collar of his black leather jacket was turned up, James Dean style, so that it touched the earrings dangling from his lobes.
After a few questions, it was obvious the kid was as stupid as he looked. Since he had not yet had the opportunity to squander his money, Nate left him alone. They established that he seldom went to school, lived alone in the basement, had never held a job for which he was paid, liked to play the guitar, and planned to be a serious rock star real soon. His new band was aptly called the Demon Monkeys, but he wasn’t sure they would record under that name. He played no sports, had never seen the inside of a church, spoke to his mother as little as possible, and preferred to watch MTV whenever he was awake and not playing his music.
It would take a billion dollars in therapy to straighten out this poor kid, Nate thought. He finished with him in less than an hour.
Geena was the last witness of the week. Four days after her father’s death, she and her husband Cody had signed a contract to purchase a home for $3.8 million. When Nate assaulted her with this information right after she was sworn, she began to stutter and stammer and look at her lawyer, Ms. Langhorne, who was equally surprised. Her client had not told her about the contract.
“How did you plan to pay for the home?” Nate asked.
The answer was obvious but she couldn’t confess it. “We have money,” she said defensively, and this opened a door that Nate went barging through.
“Let’s talk about your money,” he said with a smile. “You’re thirty years old. Nine years ago you received five million dollars, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“How much of it is left?”
She struggled with the answer for a long time. The answer was not so simple. Cody had made a lot of money. They had invested some, spent a lot, it was all co-mingled, so you couldn’t just look at their balance sheet and say there was X amount left from the five million. Nate gave her the rope, and she slowly hung herself.
“How much money do you and your husband have today in your checking accounts?” he asked.
“I’d have to look.”
“Guess, please. Just give me an estimate.”
“Sixty thousand dollars.”
“How much real estate do you own?”
“Just our home.”
“What is the value of your home?”
“I’d have to get it appraised.”
“Guess, please. Just a ballpark figure.”
“Three hundred thousand.”
“And how much is your mortgage?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“What is the approximate value of your portfolio?”
She scribbled some notes and closed her eyes. “Approximately two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Any other significant assets?”
“Not really.”
Nate did his own calculations. “So in nine years, your five million dollars has been reduced to something in the range of three hundred to four hundred thousand dollars. Am I correct?”
“Surely not. I mean, it seems so low.”
“So tell us again how you were going to pay for this new home?”
“Through Cody’s work.”
“What about your dead father’s estate? Ever think about that?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Now you’ve been sued by the seller of the house, haven’t you?”
“Yes, and we’ve countersued. There are a lot of issues.”
She was shifty and dishonest, glib and quick with the half-truth. Nate thought she might be the most dangerous Phelan yet. They walked through Cody’s ventures, and it was quickly apparent where the money had gone. He’d lost a million gambling on copper futures in 1992. He’d put half a million into “Snow-Packed Chickens,” and lost it all. An indoor worm farm in Georgia took six hundred thousand dollars when a heat wave cooked the bait.
They were two immature kids living a pampered life with someone else’s money, and dreaming of the big score.
Near the end of her deposition, with Nate still feeding her all the rope she wanted, she testified with a straight face that her involvement in the will contest had nothing to do with money. She loved her father deeply, and he loved her, and if he’d had his right mind he would have taken care of his children in his will. To give it all to a stranger was strong evidence of his illness. She was there fighting to protect the reputation of her father.
It was a well-rehearsed little oration, and it convinced no one. Nate let it slide. It was five o’clock, Friday afternoon, and he was tired of fighting.
As he left the city and fought the heavy traffic on Interstate 95 to Baltimore, his thoughts were on the Phelan heirs. He had pried into their lives, to the point of embarrassment. He felt sympathy for them, for the way they were raised, for the values they were never taught, for their hollow lives revolving around nothing but money.
But Nate was convinced that Troy knew exactly what he was doing when he scrawled his testament. Serious money in the hands of his children would cause unmitigated chaos and untold misery. He left his fortune to Rachel, who had no interest in it. He excluded the others, whose lives were consumed by it.
Nate was determined to uphold the validity of Troy’s last testament. But he was also very much aware that the final distribution of the estate would not be determined by anyone in the northern hemisphere.
It was late when he arrived in St. Michaels, and as he passed Trinity Church he wanted to stop, go inside, kneel and pray, and ask God to forgive him for the sins of the week. Confession and a hot bath were needed after five days of depositions.
FORTY-SIX
_____________
AS A harried big-city professional, Nate had never been introduced to the ritual of sitting. Phil, on the other hand, was an accomplished practitioner. When a parishioner was ill, he was expected to visit and sit with the family. If there was a death, he would sit with the widow. If a neighbor stopped by, regardless of the time, he and Laura would sit and chat. Sometimes they practiced the art by themselves, on the porch, in the swing, alone. Two elderly gentlemen in his congregation expected Phil to stop by once a week and simply sit for an hour while they dozed by the fire. Conversation was nice, but not required. It was perfectly fine to just sit and enjoy the stillness.
But Nate caught on quickly. He sat with Phil on the front steps of the Stafford cottage, both men wearing heavy sweaters and gloves, and sipping hot cocoa Nate had prepared in the microwave. They gazed at the bay before them, at the harbor and the choppy waters beyond. Conversation crept up occasionally, but there was a lot of silence. Phil knew his friend had suffered a bad week. By now, Nate had told him most of the details of the Phelan mess. Theirs was a confidential relationship.
“I’m planning a road trip,” Nate announced quietly. “Wanna come?”
“To where?”
“I need to see my kids. I have two younger ones, Austin and Angela, in Salem, Oregon. I’ll probably go there first. My older son is a grad student at Northwestern in Evanston, and I have a daughter in Pittsburgh. It’ll be a nice little tour.”
“How long?”
“There’s no rush. A couple of weeks. I’m driving.”
“When did you see them last?”
“It’s been over a year since I’ve seen Daniel and Kaitlin, the two from my first marriage. I took the two younger ones to an Orioles game last July. I got drunk and didn’t remember driving back to Arlington.”
“Do you miss them?”
“Sure, I guess. Truth is, I never spent much time with them. I know so little about them.”
“You were working hard.”
“I was, and I was drinking even harder. I was never at home. On those rare occasions when I could take off, I would go to Vegas with the boys, or golfing or deep-sea fishing in the Bahamas. I never took the kids.”
“You can’t change that.”
“No, I can’t. Why don’t you come with
me? We could talk for hours.”
“Thanks, but I can’t leave. I’ve finally built some momentum in the basement. I’d hate to lose it.”
Nate had seen the basement earlier in the day. There was evidence of momentum.
Phil’s only child was a twenty-something drifter who’d flunked out of college and fled to the West Coast. Laura had let it slip that they had no idea where the kid was. He hadn’t called home in over a year.
“Do you expect the trip to be successful?” Phil asked.
“I’m not sure what to expect. I want to hug my kids and apologize for being such a lousy father, but I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help them now.”
“I wouldn’t do that. They know you’ve been a lousy father. Flogging yourself won’t help. But it’s important to be there, to take the first step in building new relationships.”
“I was such a miserable failure for my kids.”
“You can’t beat yourself up, Nate. You’re allowed to forget the past. God certainly has. Paul murdered Christians before he became one, and he didn’t flail himself for what he’d been before. Everything is forgiven. Show your kids what you are now.”
A small fishing boat backed away from the harbor, and turned into the bay. It was the only blip on their screen, and they watched with rapt attention. Nate thought of Jevy and Welly, back on the river now, guiding a chalana loaded with produce and wares, the steady knock of the diesel pushing them deep into the Pantanal. Jevy would have the wheel, Welly would be strumming his guitar. All the world was at peace.
Later, long after Phil had gone home, Nate huddled by the fire and began another letter to Rachel. It was his third. He dated it, Saturday, February 22. “Dear Rachel,” he began. “I have just spent a very unpleasant week with your brothers and sisters.”
He talked about them, beginning with Troy Junior and ending three pages later with Ramble. He was honest about their shortcomings and the damage they would inflict on themselves and others if they got the money. And he was sympathetic too.
He was sending a check to World Tribes for five thousand dollars for a boat, a motor, and medical supplies. There was plenty more if she needed. The interest on her fortune was about two million dollars a day, he informed her, so a lot of good things could be done with the money.
________
HARK GETTYS and his conspirators at law blundered badly when they terminated the services of Drs. Flowe, Zadel, and Theishen. The lawyers had rebuked the doctors, and offended them, and caused irreparable damage.
The new batch of psychiatrists had the benefit of Snead’s newly fabricated testimony upon which to create their opinions. Flowe, Zadel, and Theishen did not. When Nate deposed them Monday, he followed the same script with all three. He began with Zadel, and showed him the video of the examination of Mr. Phelan. He asked him if he had any reason to alter his opinions. Zadel, as expected, said no. The video happened before the suicide. The eight-page affidavit was prepared just hours afterward, at the insistence of Hark and the other Phelan lawyers. Zadel was asked by Nate to read the affidavit to the court reporter.
“Do you have any reason to change any of the opinions set out in that affidavit?” Nate asked.
“I do not,” Zadel said, looking at Hark.
“Today is February twenty-fourth, more than two months after your examination of Mr. Phelan. Is it your opinion today that he had sufficient mental capacity to execute a valid will?”
“It is,” Zadel answered, smiling at Hark.
Flowe and Theishen smiled too, each genuinely happy to turn the screws on the lawyers who’d hired them and fired them. Nate showed each of them the video, asked them the same questions, and received the same answers. Each read his affidavit into the record. They adjourned at four, Monday afternoon.
At eight-thirty sharp, Tuesday morning, Snead was escorted into the room and placed in the chair of honor. He wore a dark suit with a bow tie which gave him a brainy aura that was undeserved. The lawyers had carefully selected his wardrobe. They’d been molding and programming Snead for weeks, and the poor man doubted if he could utter a spontaneous or honest word. Every syllable had to be right. He had to project an air of confidence, yet avoid even the slightest hint of arrogance. He and he alone defined reality, and it was crucial that his stories were believable.
Josh had known Snead for many years. He was a servant whom Mr. Phelan often talked of getting rid of. Of the eleven wills Josh had prepared for Troy Phelan, only one mentioned the name of Malcolm Snead. A gift of a million dollars had been designated for him, a gift revoked months later with yet another will. Mr. Phelan had removed Snead’s name precisely because Snead had inquired as to how much he might expect to receive.
Snead had been too preoccupied with the money to suit his master. His name on the witness list for the contestants meant only one thing—money. He was being paid to testify, and Josh knew it. Two weeks of simple surveillance had discovered a new Range Rover, a newly leased condo in a building where the prices started at eighteen hundred dollars a month, and a trip to Rome, first class.
Snead faced the video camera and was somewhat comfortable. He felt as though he’d been looking at one for a year. He’d spent all of Saturday and half of Sunday in Hark’s office, getting himself grilled again. He’d watched the videos of himself for hours. He’d written dozens of pages of fiction on the final days
