Carl Hiaasen – Lucky You

“But, Your Honor, we were preparing to settle.”

“That would be precipitous.”

“A hundred even was the offer.”

“You can do better, Lenny. Trust me.”

The attorney tried to stay cool. “But I’m not ready for a trial!”

“Put on a little show,” Arthur Battenkill said, needling. “That snotty bone guy you always use as an expert witness, the one with the ratty toupee. Or that lying dipshit of a so-called neurologist from Lauderdale. Surely you can manage.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” The attorney was beginning to get the picture.

The judge said, “Let me ask you something. Do you think Mr. LaGort would be satisfied with, say, $250,000?”

“Your Honor, Mr. LaGort would be fucking jubilant.” And I would, too, the attorney thought. Me and my thirty-five percent.

“All right, Lenny, then I’ll tell you what. Let’s see if we can save the taxpayers some dough. First thing tomorrow we’ll all meet in chambers, after which I anticipate the defendants will be motivated to settle.”

“For two fifty.”

“No, for half a million. Are you following me?” said Arthur Bat-tenkill.

There was an uncomfortable pause on the other end. The attorney said, “Maybe we should have this conversation in person.”

“The phones are clean, Lenny.”

“If you say so.”

“Five hundred is a smart number,” the judge continued, “because Save King’s insurance company can live with it. A trial is too risky, especially if you get a couple old geezers on the jury. Then you’re looking at seven figures, automatic.”

The attorney said, “Amen.”

“Next question: Can Mr. LaGort be persuaded that the court’s costs are unusually high in this case?”

“For the kind of money he’s getting, Your Honor, Mr. LaGort can be persuaded that cows shit gumdrops.”

“Good,” said Arthur Battenkill. “Then you know what to do with the other two fifty.”

“Do I?”

“Escrow, Lenny. You do have an escrow account?”

“Of course.”

“That’s the first place it goes. Then it’s wired overseas. I’ll give you the account number when I get one.”

“Oh.”

“What’s the matter now?”

The attorney said, “It’s just… I’ve never done it this way before.” Lenny, do I strike you as a brown-bag-in-the-alley sort of fellow? Do you see me as some kind of low-class bumpkin?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“I hope not,” Arthur Battenkill said. “By the way, next week there will be an announcement of my pending retirement, for unspecified health reasons. Tell Mr. LaGort not to he alarmed.”

The attorney endeavored to sound genuinely concerned. “I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know you’d been ill.”

The judge laughed acidulously. “Lenny, you’re not too swift, are you?”

“I guess not, Your Honor.”

Not for a moment did it occur to Mary Andrea Finley Krome that the newspapers might be wrong and that her husband was still alive. She departed Missoula on an upswelling of sympathy from Loretta (or was it Lorie?) and her other new acquaintances among the Menagerie cast, and with the director’s personal assurance that the role of Laura Wingfield would be waiting when she returned.

Which, of course, Mary Andrea had no intention of doing. She believed that being a famous widow would open new doors, careerwise.

The long flight to Florida gave Mary Andrea time to prepare for the bustle of attention that awaited. Knowing she’d be asked by interviewers, she tried to reconstruct the last time she’d seen Tom. Incredibly, she could not. Probably it was at the apartment in Brooklyn, probably in the kitchen over breakfast. That was usually when he’d tried to initiate the so-called serious discussions about their marriage. And probably she’d gotten up from the table and moseyed into the bathroom to pluck her eyebrows, her customary response to the subject of divorce.

All Mary Andrea could remember with certainty was that one morning, four years ago, he hadn’t been there. Poof.

The previous night, she’d come home from rehearsals very late and fallen asleep on the sofa. She expected to be awakened, as she had so many days, by the sound of Tom munching on his cereal. He was partial to Grape-Nuts, which had the consistency of blasted granite.

What Mary Andrea recalled most distinctly from that morning was the silence in the apartment. And of course the brief note, which (because it had been Scotch-taped to the cereal box) had been impossible to take seriously:

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