The Partner (46 page)
He called her every day between 4 and 6 P.M., a coded call with different names.
And then his calls stopped.
They had found him.
The train from Nice arrived in Aix on time, a few minutes after noon, Sunday. He stepped onto the platform, and looked for her in the crowd. He didn’t really expect to see her. He was only hoping, almost praying. Carrying his new bag with his new clothes, he found a taxi for the short ride across town to the Villa Gallici, on the edge of the city.
She had reserved a room in both names, Eva Miranda and Patrick Lanigan. How nice to be in from the cold, to travel as real people without the cloak and dagger of false names and passports. She had not checked in yet, the clerk informed him, and his spirits sank. He had dreamed of finding her in the room, adorned in soft lingerie, ready for intimacy. He could almost feel her.
“When was the reservation made?” he asked the clerk, irritated.
“Yesterday. She called from London, and said she would arrive this morning. We haven’t seen her.”
He went to the room and showered. He unpacked his bag, and ordered tea and pastries. He fell asleep amid dreams of hearing her knock on the door, of pulling her into the room.
He left a message for her at the front desk, and went for a long walk through the lovely Renaissance city. The air was brisk and clear. Provence in early November was delightful. Perhaps they would live there. He looked at quaint apartments above the ancient, narrow streets and thought, yes, this would be a nice place to live. It was a university town where the arts were revered. Her French was very good and he wanted to become proficient. Yes, French would be his next language. They would stay here for a week or so, then go back to Rio awhile, but maybe Rio wouldn’t be home. Flush with freedom, Patrick wanted to live everywhere, to absorb different cultures, to learn different languages.
He was set upon by a pack of young Mormon missionaries, but shook them off and walked along the Cours Mirabeau. He sipped espresso at the same sidewalk café where they had held hands and watched the students a year earlier.
He refused to panic. It was a simple matter of a late connecting flight. He forced himself to wait until dark, then strolled as casually as possible back to the hotel.
She wasn’t there, nor was there a message. Nothing. He called the hotel in London, and was informed that she had left yesterday, Saturday, around mid-morning.
He went to the terrace garden next to the dining room, and found a chair in a corner which he turned so he could watch the front desk through a window.
He ordered two double cognacs to fight the chill. He would see her when she arrived.
If she’d missed a flight, she would’ve called by now. If she’d been stopped by customs again, she would’ve called by now. Any problems with passports, visas, tickets, and she would’ve called by now.
No one was chasing her. All the bad guys had been either locked up or bought off.
More cognac on an empty stomach, and before long he was drunk. He switched to strong coffee to stay awake.
When the bar closed, Patrick went to his room. It was 8 A.M. in Rio, and he reluctantly called her father, whom he’d met twice. She had introduced him as a friend and a Canadian client. The poor man had been through enough, but Patrick had no choice. He said he was in France, and needed to discuss a legal matter with his Brazilian lawyer. Apologies for disturbing him at home so early, but he couldn’t seem to locate her. It was an important matter, even urgent. Paulo didn’t want to talk, but the man on the phone seemed to know a lot about his daughter.
She was in London, Paulo said. He had talked to her on Saturday. He would say nothing more.
Patrick waited two agonizing hours, then called Sandy. “She’s missing,” he said, now very much in a panic. Sandy had not heard a word from her.
Patrick roamed the streets of Aix for two days, taking long aimless walks, napping at odd hours, eating nothing, drinking cognac and strong coffee, calling Sandy and scaring poor Paulo with repeated calls.
The city lost its romance. Alone in his room, he wept from a broken heart, and alone on the streets he cursed the woman he still madly loved.
The hotel clerks watched him come and go. At first he was anxious as he asked for his messages, but as the hours and days passed, he barely nodded at them. He didn’t shave and he looked tired. He drank too much.
He checked out after the third day, said he was going back to America. He asked his favorite clerk to keep a sealed envelope at the desk in case Madame Miranda appeared.
Patrick flew to Rio. Why, he wasn’t sure. As much as she loved Rio, it would be the last place she would be seen. She was much too smart to go to Rio. She knew where to hide, and how to disappear, and how to change identities, and how to move money instantly, and how to spend it without drawing attention.
She had learned from a master. Patrick had taught her all too well the art of vanishing. No one would find Eva, unless, of course, she wanted them to.
He had a painful meeting with Paulo, in which he told the entire story, every detail. The poor man crumbled before his eyes, crying and cursing him for corrupting his precious daughter. The meeting was an act of desperation, and utterly fruitless.
He stayed in small hotels close to her apartment, walking the streets, once again looking at every face, but for different reasons. No longer the prey, he was now the hunter, and such a desperate one at that.
Her face would not be seen, because he’d taught her how to hide it.
His money dwindled, and he was eventually reduced to calling Sandy and asking for a five-thousand-dollar
loan. Sandy quickly agreed, and even offered more.
He gave up after a month, and traveled by bus across the country to Ponta Porã.
He could sell his house there, and maybe his car. Together, both would net thirty thousand U.S. dollars. Or maybe he would keep them and get a job. He could live in a country he loved, in a pleasant little town he adored. He could work perhaps as an English tutor, live peacefully on Rua Tiradentes, where the shadows were gone now but the barefoot boys still dribbled soccer balls along the hot street.
Where else could he go? His journey was over. His past was finally closed.
Surely, some day she would find him.
For David Gernert
friend, editor, agent
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
__________
As always, I relied on the knowledge of friends while writing this book, and here I’d like to thank them. Steve Holland, Gene McDade, Mark Lee, Buster Hale, and R. Warren Moak lent their experience and/or went chasing after esoteric little facts. Will Denton again read the manuscript, and again kept it legally accurate.
In Brazil, I was assisted by Paulo Rocco, my publisher and friend. He and his charming wife Angela shared with me their beloved Rio, the most beautiful city in the world.
When asked, these friends gave me the truth. As usual, the mistakes are all mine.
Books by John Grisham
A TIME TO KILL
THE FIRM
THE PELICAN BRIEF
THE CLIENT
THE CHAMBER
THE RAINMAKER
THE RUNAWAY JURY
THE PARTNER
THE STREET LAWYER
THE TESTAMENT
THE BRETHREN
A PAINTED HOUSE
SKIPPING CHRISTMAS
THE SUMMONS
THE KING OF TORTS
BLEACHERS
THE LAST JUROR
THE BROKER
THE INNOCENT MAN
PLAYING FOR PIZZA
THE APPEAL
THE ASSOCIATE
FORD COUNTY: STORIES
JOHN GRISHAM has written twenty-one novels, including the recent #1
New York Times
bestsellers
The Associate
and
The Appeal
, as well as one work of nonfiction,
The Innocent Man
. He lives in Virginia and Mississippi. His new book from Doubleday is
Ford County: Stories
.
Read on for an excerpt of
The
Litigators
A Novel
by John Grisham
Published by Bantam Books
CHAPTER 1
The law firm of Finley & Figg referred to itself as a “boutique firm.” This misnomer was inserted as often as possible into routine conversations, and it even appeared in print in some of the various schemes hatched by the partners to solicit business. When used properly, it implied that Finley & Figg was something above your average two-bit operation. Boutique, as in small, gifted, and expert in one specialized area. Boutique, as in pretty cool and chic, right down to the Frenchness of the word itself. Boutique, as in thoroughly happy to be small, selective, and prosperous.
Except for its size, it was none of these things. Finley & Figg’s scam was hustling injury cases, a daily grind that required little skill or creativity and would never be considered cool or sexy. Profits were as elusive as status. The firm was small because it couldn’t afford to grow. It was selective only because no one wanted to work there, including the two men who owned it. Even its location suggested a monotonous life out in the bush leagues. With a Vietnamese massage parlor to its left and a lawn mower repair shop to its right, it was clear at a casual glance that Finley & Figg was not prospering. There was another boutique firm directly across the street—hated rivals—and more lawyers around the corner. In fact, the neighborhood was teeming with lawyers, some working alone, others in small firms, others still in versions of their own little boutiques.
F&F’s address was on Preston Avenue, a busy street filled with old bungalows now converted and used for all manner of commercial activity. There was retail (liquor, cleaners, massages) and professional (legal, dental, lawn mower repair) and culinary (enchiladas, baklava, and pizza to go). Oscar Finley had won the building in a lawsuit twenty years earlier. What the address lacked in prestige it sort of made up for in location. Two doors away was the intersection of Preston, Beech, and Thirty-eighth, a chaotic convergence of asphalt and traffic that guaranteed at least one good car wreck a week, and often more. F&F’s annual overhead was covered by collisions that happened less than one hundred yards away. Other law firms, boutique and otherwise, were often prowling the area in hopes of finding an available, cheap bungalow from which their hungry lawyers could hear the actual squeal of tires and crunching of metal.
With only two attorneys/partners, it was of course mandatory that one be declared the senior and the other the junior. The senior partner was Oscar Finley, age sixty-two, a thirty-year survivor of the bareknuckle brand of law found on the tough streets of southwest Chicago. Oscar had once been a beat cop but got himself terminated for cracking skulls. He almost went to jail but instead had an awakening and went to college, then law school. When no firms would hire him, he hung out his own little shingle and started suing anyone who came near. Thirty-two years later, he found it hard to believe that for thirty-two years he’d wasted his career suing for past-due accounts receivable, fender benders, slip-and-falls, and quickie divorces. He was still married to his first wife, a terrifying woman he wanted to sue every day for his own divorce. But he couldn’t afford it. After thirty-two years of lawyering, Oscar Finley couldn’t afford much of anything.
His junior partner—and Oscar was prone to say things like, “I’ll get my junior partner to handle it,” when trying to impress judges and other lawyers and especially prospective clients—was Wally Figg, age forty-five. Wally fancied himself a hardball litigator, and his blustery ads promised all kinds of aggressive behavior. “We Fight for Your Rights!” and “Insurance Companies Fear Us!” and “We Mean Business!” Such ads could be seen on park benches, city transit buses, cabs, high school football programs, even telephone poles, though this violated several ordinances. The ads were not seen in two crucial markets—television and billboards. Wally and Oscar were still fighting over these. Oscar refused to spend the money—both types were horribly expensive—and Wally was still scheming. His dream was to see his smiling face and slick head on television saying dreadful things about insurance companies while promising huge settlements to injured folks wise enough to call his toll-free number.
But Oscar wouldn’t even pay for a billboard. Wally had one picked out. Six blocks from the office, at the corner of Beech and Thirty-second, high above the swarming traffic, on top of a four-story tenement house, there was the most perfect billboard in all of metropolitan Chicago. Currently hawking cheap lingerie (with a comely ad, Wally had to admit), the billboard had his name and face written all over it. But Oscar still refused.
Wally’s law degree came from the prestigious University of Chicago School of Law. Oscar picked his up at a now-defunct place that once offered courses at night. Both took the bar exam three times. Wally had four divorces under his belt; Oscar could only dream. Wally wanted the big case, the big score with millions of dollars in fees. Oscar wanted only two things—divorce and retirement.
How the two men came to be partners in a converted house on Preston Avenue was another story. How they survived without choking each other was a daily mystery.