Rosie O'Dell (59 page)

Rosie muttered, “He was half right.” This made me and Brent, and
Rosie, too, when she couldn’t resist looking at us, struggle in embarrassment
for sombreness in front of the clergyman.

Neal and Duke didn’t laugh. One said to the other with the clergyman walking
next to them, “I hope to fuck he wasn’t only half right about all the bread he
said he had.”

After the burial, the boys stayed on at the hotel in St. John’s. They told
Brent they expected, in accordance with their grandsire’s wishes, that their
bills would be paid for out of the estate. Every day they telephoned my office
to harass me about speeding up the probate of the will. Brent surmised to Rosie
and me that they were afraid to go back without the money to meet their
underworld debts, and that they found this remote island thousands of miles away
from their own theatre of dim activities an ideal place to hole up in.

AT THE READING OF
the will in my office, only Brent
and the two boys were there. The old man’s wife’s sister couldn’t make it, or,
as she said when I called to say I hadn’t received an answer to my invitation to
hear the will: “It was good enough, really, when I heard he was dead. If he left
me something, that’ll be icing on the cake.” When I told her, she said, “A
million. God love the old bastard. But it will never make up for what he put me
and my sister through. Just send me the cheque.”

The two boys hadn’t seen their father for over a week when they arrived to hear
the will. They’d been driving around sightseeing during the day, going down to
the George Street clubs at night, fornicating in their hotel rooms through the
early hours, and sleeping till noon or later. When they saw Brent, they asked
him if he was all right. They said he looked really sick, like he had the yellow
fever. He should see a doctor, pronto. Brent said he would. It was probably a
flare-up of his old gallstone problem, which was causing jaundice.

When I was finished reading, Duke or Neal asked me anxiously, “Is there really
enough in his estate to pay out the four million? Who gets fucked if there’s
not? Grandma’s sister? She’s not even related to him.”

“There’s enough,” I said.

Neal or Duke said to Brent, “So that’s why your O’Dell woman wasn’t here.
Granddad didn’t leave her a cent. The old guy wasn’t all bad.”

“Don’t get too happy. I’ll be looking after Rosie out of my share.”

“Why, how much did you get? What does that mean, ‘all the rest and
residue’?”

“It means everything that’s not yours is mine. You have the
inventory and valuation of the estate in your documents there.”

The boys looked at the figures on the form. “Holy shit, is that right? Over
eighteen million? Does that mean, Dad, that you get… what? Fourteen
million?”

“Approximately, yes. Give or take a million or two.”

One of them turned to me. “What that says in the will there, ‘If my son Brent
predeceases me… ’ did that mean that if Dad died before Granddad, me and Duke
would have gotten that extra fourteen million?”

I said, “I can’t deal in hypotheticals. All I can tell you is what the legal
situation is now, and it is as I have described it. You will be receiving
quickly what you are entitled to.”

After the meeting was over, the boys walked out briskly together, muttering
inaudibly. My secretary, Mary, sitting behind the piles of books that
permanently rested upon filing cabinets around her, was not visible to anyone in
the lobby. The receptionist was farther away by the exit. Mary served me well in
overhearing what people leaving my office, other lawyers, for example, might be
blurting out to each other in whispers as they went.

“What were the lads saying, Mary?” I asked.

“One young gentleman said to the other, ‘I think we did this
assfuckingbackwards’ or he might have said, ‘backfuckingasswards.’ It was
certainly one or the other. And the young gentleman with him said, in a rather
accusatory tone, ‘Who the fuck’s big idea was that?’ Then the first gentleman
responded, ‘I think that motherfucking lawyer fast-talked our cocksucking balls
off, that’s what I think.’ The rest was regrettably out of range.”

“Thank you, Mary.”

Inside, I recounted their conversation to Brent and said, “Sounds like they’re
sorry they made the mistake of not killing you first. You’re darn lucky to be
alive.”

“They seem to be zeroing in, all right. It’ll be interesting to see how long
you outlive me when they find out I would have croaked before Dad.”

Duke and Neal started making noises about hanging around St. John’s a little
bit longer. They liked it here, they said. The place must be in their genes. And
how come, they wondered, the girls around here were so hot? Their legs were
something else.

“You walk home up over Burst Heart Hill every day and you’d be hot too,” said
Brent. “And remember to tell me how much you like it here when there’s a
northeast gale blowing with freezing horizontal rain for weeks in
March. I want you guys out of here right now. Go back and see to your mother
and pay your debts and keep your snotty noses clean for a few days. I’ll
transfer your money to your bank accounts when your plane, with you two on it,
lands in Las Vegas”

The boys flew back home to their flush bank accounts, and weeks went by without
Brent hearing from them. “Maybe when I die,” said Brent, “they won’t even know
about it. We don’t even have to put a notice in the paper. We can just let it
pass unnoticed.”

Rosie made it clear to me that she wasn’t concerned with a confrontation with
the two louts when the time came. Her biggest problem these days, she said, was
hiding her tears from Brent whenever he included himself in her actions after
his own death: “
We’ll
do this and
we
won’t do that, he says.” Her
eyes moistened. “He’s so sweet that he sees himself as helping out even after
he’s not around.”

I visited Brent every day, and no matter what hour I came, Rosie was with him.
He deteriorated extremely fast. The first month they were still going on walks;
a week after that he found it hard to get out of his recliner; and the next week
he started spending half his waking hours in bed. Once, when I stayed in his
bedroom while Rosie went out, he began to cry. “I’m really scared, Tommy,” he
sobbed. When he regained control, he said, “Please don’t tell Rosie.”

Rosie made plans for the medical people to provide his palliative care at home,
where she could be present all the time.

Brent said he wanted to act fast on clewing up everything regarding his
father’s estate. For appearances’ sake we agreed that I would send him an
invoice as executor for a normal legal fee for acting on the probate of his
father’s will. Because of the size of the estate, it came to a hefty amount that
any lawyer would be delighted to get. But it didn’t go near to covering my
contingent liability for my partner’s fraud.

I never mentioned to Brent our informal financial deal. I spent some nights
waking up at three o’clock in a sweat—what if Brent dies tonight? What if Rosie
tells me to go to hell? What if they simply say I’ve already got all that I
deserve? What if Brent gives Rosie all the money right now and tells her to
abruptly disappear to parts unknown, away from everyone’s reach, especially that
of his thuggish sons? I had no remedies and no power to enforce anything if
either or both of them reneged on me. It was a gift they could bestow or
withhold as they saw fit. I lay in bed exhausted but wide awake for the latter
half of four nights.

“Are you getting enough sleep, Tom?” Rosie asked during one of
my visits.

“You know he’s not,” Brent croaked from his La-Z-Boy. “He’s scared shitless
about not getting his money.”

“I’m certainly worried,” I said. “I’m worried that I don’t deserve it. I don’t
think I deserve anything, I did so little.”

Rosie took on a thoughtful look. “I’m not entirely certain that the word
‘deserve, ’ or any of its roots going back five thousand years to the
proto-In-do-European, would apply to anyone in this room on that matter.” I
could almost see her in front of a lectern at the university. Then she gave me a
resigned, lopsided smile. “So, Tom, I’d say chill out on that.”

“We should listen to the little woman, Tom. She’s always been smarter than us,
anyway. Deserved, earned, entitled? We’re all out of that realm. We were just
slick as three snots, that’s all. This week you are getting half of the estate,
as you and Rosie agreed. I had to get a lawyer without your knowledge—wouldn’t
want anyone trying to overturn the deal on grounds of your undue influence—to
make out a binding deed of gift to you. She’s doing that now.”

“It should only be for one-third, Brent, at most. I think you should call the
lawyer and tell her.”

“Well, I certainly agree. That’s what it was at the beginning. And, Rosie, I’ll
tell her to pass over one-third to you now too, instead of waiting for all of it
in my will.”

“I’m not in a rush, sweetie. I’m no stickler for appearances, but I don’t think
that would look very good.”

“My sweetheart, it goes beyond appearances. I could go bonkers in the next
couple of weeks with this cancer of the brain and leave everything to that nurse
who’s starting to give my balls and pecker such a good bed-bath.”

“Jesus, what are you like?” said Rosie, leaning over and kissing him on the
forehead.

Brent was right. Rosie and I would be wise to get our shares right now. God
knew what mad nightmares his mind might be concocting about her or me or the
pair of us in another week. He must have been halfway to insanity when I pitched
my proposal to make his sons our hit men. What sane father would have agreed to
that? Rosie must have come to the same conclusion herself, because, on my way
out of the house, when I suggested to her that she get Brent’s lawyer on the
phone right away to change his instructions on the split, she nodded. I was so
eager to lay my hands on the
money that I simply didn’t care
what the transaction might look like to an inquiring mind.

The transfer of funds would take place in two or three days. I could scarcely
believe it. I forced myself not to think about the four million and change
coming into my bank account, because the thought was always accompanied by the
fear that such good fortune could not last. There had to be a ticking grenade in
it somewhere, about to blast it all to smithereens. I concentrated on a plan,
quickly and without further dispute or demur with the Law Society, to pay off
the half-million-dollar claim against my firm from my partner’s fraud. At least
that much would be done if—when—the explosion came. I made a mental note to pay
it off without admission of liability, just in case the half-million got
reclaimed by someone judged in the future to be more entitled to the old man’s
money than I was, for example the Department of Justice under the proceeds of
crime section of the Criminal Code.

TWO UNSETTLING EVENTS NOW
took place. The first
happened the day the money was to be transferred to my account. That morning,
Rosie phoned me to say that a police constable by the name of Jack Hoover had
just called upon Brent at the house unannounced. It was a purely routine visit,
the constable said, spurred by a report that Brent’s dad had claimed, just a few
days before his death, that Tom Sharpe the lawyer had tried to suffocate him
with a pillow. That claim, the police agreed, was on the face of it ridiculous.
But then, immediately preceding the old gentleman’s death, his grandsons were in
his room, and a health care worker at the home was frankly concerned. She did
not believe for one second, was the way she put it, that Mr. Anstey’s heart was
weak enough to give out from the excitement of the grandsons’ visit. Except for
his deteriorating lungs, the man was as healthy as a horse, she said, which was
proved the day before his death when he gave her a hug that nearly crushed the
life out of her. The police constable Hoover wondered if Brent could shed light
on any of this.

Brent said he couldn’t. He only knew what the attending doctor had said
regarding heart failure and that the doctor had assured him there was no need
for an autopsy. Well, said the constable, the police department might have to
revisit the need for an autopsy. Too late for that, Brent said, the body had
been cremated. That didn’t make much difference, the constable said, since the
health care worker had had the presence of mind to place the pillow, sheets, and
Mr. Anstey’s clothes from that day in a sealed
plastic hamper.
As Rosie ushered him out of the house, Constable Hoover said, “My supervisor on
this case sends his regards to you, Ms. O’Dell, and to Mr. Sharpe. You may
remember him. Deputy Chief Locksley Holmes? One of his very first cases as a
young recruit was the investigation into the death of a Dr. Rothesay. He said he
was stymied in those days by a shortage of funds and the lack of modern forensic
tools. Nowadays we have better evidence-gathering equipment and techniques and a
lot more money and personnel.”

“Rosie,” I said, “I’ll be there to see you and Brent in fifteen minutes.”
There was no way I was going to say anything over the phone, lawyer-client
privilege or not.

At the house, I told Brent to instruct his other lawyer to stop the transfer of
funds to my account and Rosie’s right away. The movement of such large gifts of
money from him to us would only send suspicions rocketing up. He and Rosie got
on the telephone immediately and used cryptic language to cancel the
transactions. Then we sat and looked at each other for a few minutes.