Джон Гришэм: The Testament

The second reason was to make the meeting as brief as possible.

It took about fifteen minutes to figure this out.

“How’s your mother?” he asked.

Daniel attempted to smile. “She’s fine. I saw her Christmas. You were gone.”

“I was in Brazil.”

A co-ed in tight jeans walked by. Stef inspected her from top to bottom, her eyes finally showing some life. The girl was even skinnier than Stef. How did emaciation become so cool?

“What’s in Brazil?” Daniel asked.

“A client.” Nate was tired of the stories from his adventure.

“Mom says you’re in some kind of trouble with the IRS.”

“I’m sure that pleases your mother.”

“I guess. She didn’t seem bothered by it. You going to jail?”

“No. Could we talk about something else?”

“That’s the problem, Dad. There is nothing else, nothing but the past and we can’t go there.”

Stef, the referee, rolled her eyes at Daniel, as if to say, “That’s enough.”

“Why did you drop out of school?” Nate asked, anxious to get it over with.

“Several reasons. It got boring.”

“He ran out of money,” Stef said helpfully. She gave Nate her best blank look.

“Is that true?” Nate asked.

“That’s one reason.”

Nate’s first instinct was to pull out his checkbook and solve the kid’s problems. That’s what he’d always done. Parenting for him had been one long shopping trip. If you can’t be there, send money. But Daniel was now twenty-three, a college grad, hanging around with the likes of Ms. Bulimia over there, and it was time for him to sink or swim on his own.

And the checkbook wasn’t what it used to be.

“It’s good for you,” Nate said. “Work for a while. It’ll make you appreciate school.”

Stef disagreed. She had two friends who’d dropped out and pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. As she prattled on, Daniel withdrew to his corner of the booth. He drained his third bottle. Nate had all sorts of lectures about alcohol, but he knew how phony they’d sound.

After four beers, Stef was bombed and Nate had nothing else to say. He scribbled his phone number in St. Michaels on a napkin and gave it to Daniel. “This is where I’ll be for the next couple of months. Call me if you need me.”

“See you, Pop,” Daniel said.

“Take care.”

Nate stepped into the frigid air and walked toward Lake Michigan.

Two days later he was in Pittsburgh for his third and final reunion, one that did not occur. He’d spoken twice to Kaitlin, his daughter from marriage number one, and the details were clear. She was to meet him for dinner at 7:30 P.M., in front of the restaurant in the lobby of his hotel. Her apartment was twenty minutes away. She paged him at 8:30 with the news that a friend had been involved in an auto accident, and that she was at the hospital, where things looked bad.

Nate suggested they have lunch the following day. Kaitlin said that wouldn’t work because the friend had a head injury, was on life support, and she planned to stay with her there until she was stable. With his daughter in full retreat, Nate asked where the hospital was located. At first she didn’t know, then she wasn’t sure, then upon further thought a visit was not a good idea because she couldn’t leave the bedside.

He ate in his room, at a small table next to the window, with a view of downtown. He picked at his food and thought of all the possible reasons his daughter didn’t want to see him. A ring in her nose? A tattoo on her forehead? Had she joined a cult and shaved her head? Had she gained a hundred pounds or lost fifty? Was she pregnant?

He tried to blame her so he wouldn’t be forced to face the obvious. Did she hate him that much?

In the loneliness of the hotel room, in a city where he knew no one, it was easy to pity himself, to suffer once again through the mistakes of his past.

He grabbed the phone and got busy. He called Father Phil to check on things in St. Michaels. Phil had been bothered by the flu, and since it was chilly in the church basement Laura wouldn’t let him work there. How wonderful, thought Nate. Though many uncertainties lay in his path, the one constant, at least for the near future, would be the promise of steady work in the basement of Trinity Church.

He called Sergio for their weekly pep session. The demons were well in hand, and he felt surprisingly under control. His hotel room had a mini-bar, and he had not been near it.

He called Salem and had a pleasant chat with Angela and Austin. Odd how the younger kids wanted to talk while the older ones did not.

He called Josh, who was in his basement office, thinking about the Phelan mess. “You need to come home, Nate,” he said. “I have a plan.”

Nate wasn’t invited to the first round of peace talks. There were a couple of reasons for his absence. First, Josh arranged the summit, so it was therefore held on his turf. Nate had thus far avoided his old office and wanted this to continue. Second, the Phelan lawyers viewed Josh and Nate as allies, and rightfully so. Josh wanted the role of peacemaker, the intermediary. To gain trust from one side, he had to ignore the other, if only for a short while. His plan was to meet with Hark et al., then with Nate, then back and forth for a few days if necessary until a deal was struck.

After a lengthy session of pleasantries and chitchat, Josh asked for their attention. They had lots of territory to cover. The Phelan lawyers were anxious to get started.

A settlement can happen in seconds, during a recess in a heated trial when a witness stumbles, or when a new CEO wants to start fresh and unload nagging litigation. And a settlement can take months, as the lawsuit inches toward a trial date. As a whole, the Phelan lawyers dreamed of a quickie, and the meeting in Josh’s suite was the first step. They truly believed they were about to become millionaires.

Josh began by diplomatically offering his opinion that their case was rather flimsy. He knew nothing about his client’s plans to whip out a holographic will and create chaos, but it was a valid will nonetheless. He had spent two hours with Mr. Phelan the previous day finishing the other new will, and he was prepared to testify that he knew exactly what he was doing. He would also testify, if necessary, that Snead was nowhere in the picture when they met.

The three psychiatrists who examined Mr. Phelan had been carefully chosen by Phelan’s children and ex-wives, and their lawyers, and had impeccable credentials. The four now on retainer were flaky. Their résumés were thin. The battle of the experts would be won by the original three, in his opinion.

Wally Bright had on his best suit, which wasn’t saying much. He took this criticism with a clenched jaw, bottom lip between his teeth so he wouldn’t say something stupid, and he took useless notes on a legal pad because that’s what everybody else was doing. It was not his nature to sit back and accept such disparagement, even from a renowned lawyer like Josh Stafford. But he would do anything for the money. The month before, February, his little office generated twenty-six hundred dollars in fees, and consumed the usual four thousand in overhead. Wally took home nothing. Of course, most of his time had been spent on the Phelan matter.

Josh skated onto thin ice when he summarized the testimony of their clients. “I’ve watched the videos of their depositions,” he said sadly. “Frankly, with the exception of Mary Ross, I think they will make terrible witnesses at trial.”

Their lawyers took this in stride. This was a settlement conference, not a trial.

He didn’t dwell on the heirs. The less said the better. Their lawyers knew they would get butchered before the jury.