Dead Ringer

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Mr. Freminet will see you,” the receptionist said. She turned from her desk with a jowly frown, like a body double for Queen Victoria. Either she was your basic sourpuss, or she’d heard that Bennie was a diamond thief. “His office is down the hall and on the right, in the corner.”

  “Thanks,” Bennie said, and hurried down the hall. She passed row after row of secretaries typing away on computer keyboards, plugged into Dictaphone earphones, and she wanted to rescue them all. Except that she couldn’t pay them. She went to the end of the hall and opened the door of the corner office.

  “Bennie!” Sam Freminet was a compact, freckled lawyer with a supershort red haircut, in a neat navy blazer and a Looney Tunes tie, and he leapt delightedly from behind his polished glass desk. He met her at the door with a warm, if slightly bony, hug that smelled too strongly of Calvin Klein. “What’s up, doc?”

  “Everything, Sam.” Bennie broke the clinch after a moment and flopped into one of the leather Eames chairs in front of Sam’s desk. The chairs coordinated perfectly with the modern glass desk, the sleek Danish bookshelves and credenza, and a brown leather couch containing a plush Pepé Le Pew, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny with a stuffed carrot, and Elmer Fudd in wabbit season. Sam was a Looney Tunes freak, and Bennie’s oldest friend in the world. But she still didn’t know how to tell him her news. “You’d better close the door.”

  “Ooh, good dish, huh? I love it!” Sam closed the door and rubbed slim hands together. “As Bugs would say, ‘Better start scheming.’ That was in ‘Now Hare This,’ by the way.”

  Bennie was trying to think of a way to explain. She and Sam had both started at Grun together after graduating from law school, but Sam had survived and become a partner in the bankruptcy department. Now she needed him, personally and professionally. “Well, this isn’t dish, it’s bad news, and I don’t know where to start.”

  “Aw, mon petit corned beef,” Sam purred in his best Pepé Le Pew, sliding into the sling chair next to her. He took her hand, and his forget-me-not blue eyes melted with genuine warmth behind hip rimless glasses. “Don’t worry, whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Yes we can. We girls can do anything!”

  “Wait, that’s not Bugs Bunny, that’s Barbie.”

  “I know. I’m mixing icons, but I do love that girl!” Sam waved a small hand. “I had the pink car, the dream house, the whole complex. How do you think I turned out the way I did?”

  “Gay?”

  “No, a lawyer.”

  Bennie laughed, feeling a rush of affection. She stalled in telling him the bad news, not wanting to leave the comfort of the moment. “Sammy, do you look especially good today, or am I just happy to see you?”

  “Well, I am positively caliente today. Check me out.” Sam swiveled his skinny shoulders. “Hugo jacket, Versace shirt, Ralph pants. Now that I’m out of the closet, I’m fierce. I’m flaming. I’m Bankruptcy Queen.”

  Bennie smiled. “I remember when you had to hide your love away.”

  “The dark ages. I couldn’t believe they fell for my straight act. I thought only the army had that kind of denial. Or Liza Minnelli.”

  They both laughed, and Bennie felt her tension ebb away. The only good thing about getting older was that you got to have old friends.

  “Now, what’s going on, honey?” Sam inched forward on his chair. “What’s the matter?”

  “Alice is in town.”

  “The bitch is back?” Sam’s tiny eyes blinked behind his tiny glasses, and Bennie began the story, telling about the missing wallet, the double packages, and the diamond earrings, while Sam grew more and more upset, reddening under his freckles. He barely waited for her to finish before he exploded. “Why the fuck is she doing this to you? You didn’t do anything to deserve this! All you ever did was help her! Why, for fuck’s sake?” Sam was never on a curse diet. “She came out of nowhere, charged with murder, and you proved she was innocent!”

  “I agree, but God knows how she sees it, or me. She’s a mess. She’s a damaged person.”

  “Damaged, what does she have to be damaged about?”

  “Maybe being put up for adoption instead of me?” Bennie had wondered about it. Their mother, alone with limited emotional and financial resources, couldn’t handle raising both of the children she had borne, and had kept Bennie. It had to hurt. “Maybe she felt abandoned. After all, my mother chose me over her.”

  “Don’t even tell me you feel guilty about that.”

  “I do, a little. Sure.”

  “What? Why? Let’s review. You got the family with the sick mom—God rest her soul, but she was very sick—and the father who splits at birth. You raised yourself, put yourself through college and law school, and managed to take care of your mother, too. On the other hand, Alice got the nuclear family in north Jersey, with the Eldorado.”

  “I don’t know about the Eldorado.” Bennie couldn’t laugh, but it was partly true. Alice had told Bennie that her adoptive parents had been wonderful to her, but she just never felt that she belonged with them.

  “Okay, I’ll betcha. Now, who got the good childhood?”

  “I did. I knew my mother, and Alice didn’t,” Bennie answered, and Sam fell uncharacteristically silent. “She was a loving, wonderful mother before she became completely depressed. It was like watching the sun set on someone, and part of her depression had to be the pain of giving up Alice, and the guilt. Nobody gives up a child without losing something.” Bennie wished away the weight on her chest, even as she knew it wouldn’t leave. “Anyway, enough. I’ll deal with Alice. You tell me what to do about my business. Frankly, I’m going broke.”

  “It’s about time you told me.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Please, I’m a bankruptcy lawyer, you think I don’t know?” Sam’s phone started ringing but he let his secretary pick up. “Small business is in big trouble in this economy. I read that Caveson and Maytel filed, and I knew they were your house clients. Also, you haven’t called for two months, so I know you’re in trouble. You’re the only friend who calls when she doesn’t need anything, and avoids me when she needs help.”

  Bennie found a smile. “Well, here I am. I have to stay open for business, plus I have to ante up thirty grand to buy into a class action.”

  “You doing class-action work?”

  “I am now. Or I was. This representation will save my ass, if I can keep it. So I guess I need bankruptcy advice.”

  “No, you need cash, and lots of it. Fast. That’s easy.” Sam reached inside his Hugo/Versace/Ralph jacket and extracted his checkbook. “I’ll give it to you.”

  “No, put your money away.” Bennie had known he’d offer, but she wouldn’t mooch from her best friend. “I won’t take it.”

  “Don’t be silly!” Sam leaned forward on his glass desk and started to scribble out a check. “How much do you need? Fifty grand will do it, to start. That will cover the thirty grand you need for the class action, plus your office rent and overhead for the next few months.”

  “Try years, but it’s out of the question.”

  “Tarnation, Bennie! I won’t miss it. The economy goes in the tank, and bankruptcy lawyers get flush.” Sam threw his hands up in the air. “I just bought the new 500S, the one with the all-wood package, and the second condo is paid off. I’m having one of the best years I’ve ever had, and I owe you. You stuck by me when I wasn’t sticking by myself. You got me back on the straight and narrow, remember? Well, the narrow anyway.”

  Bennie remembered. “I didn’t do it for payback, and I won’t take your money. I won’t cash the check.”

  “I’m not listening.” Sam was about to tear the completed check out when Bennie snatched the checkbook and chucked it across the room. It bounced off of Daffy Duck, knocked him into the furry lap of Foghorn Leghorn, and landed on the handmade Heriz rug.

  “Oops! ‘Ah say, Ah say, Widow Brown,’” Bennie said, doing a lousy Foghorn Leghorn, and Sam
shushed her.

  “I don’t see why you don’t just take my money.” He was hurrying across the rug to the windowsill, where he righted Daffy and retrieved his checkbook from the rug. “You can pay it back if it makes you feel better.”

  “No thanks. Now, are you gonna give me some free legal advice or do I have to find myself another bankruptcy duck?”

  “You mean, treat you like a client?” Sam went to his desk, tossed his checkbook on the desk, and flopped into his black leather chair. “That’s why you came to me?”

  “Yes. I have to stay in business until this class action settles. I have a house, an old Saab, and a golden retriever. I need only the golden.”

  “God knows why.” Sam shuddered. “Dog sheds like a mother.”

  “It’s part of his charm.”

  “Before we begin, what did your accountant say about all this?” Sam slid out of his jacket, hung it around the back of his chair, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. A fashionably oversized watch looked like a weight on his wrist. “You hired an accountant, didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t afford one. It’s a catch-22.”

  “You need an accountant. You can hardly add.”

  “It’s all subtracting anyway.” Bennie edged forward on the chair. “So, be my lawyer. I’m going to my last resort. What do you think?”

  Sam’s eyes flared in alarm. “Don’t be insane. There has to be money in the business.”

  “There isn’t. And no bank will give me another business loan, with my payment record. I’ve gone from slow pay to crack addict.”

  Sam frowned. “You know, you’re a great lawyer, but you don’t have a head for this. How much money do you need to get through the next month? How much do you pay in salary, legal and support staff? Are you current on your taxes? On withholding payments? Status on credit cards, business and personal? What are your accounts receivable?”

  Bennie’s mind reeled.

  “Have you gotten all the bills out you should have? Can you offer a discount for payment in seven days? Can you make commitments to work on fee arrangements which may not be attractive for the long term? Do you have a lender? Can we offer the lender a security interest in the fixtures of the office? The receivables? Well?” Sam took a breath. “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”

  “I don’t know the answers off the top of my head.”

  “You should. Grow up. Find out. Call your office.” Sam grabbed his desk phone by the receiver and pushed it at Bennie. “I need the paper. Tax returns, account statements, check registers. You should have that together already, it’s tax time. Get everything else sent over. Messenger it all here. We’ll work all night if we have to, but we won’t have to.”

  “Do you have time, now?”

  “If I didn’t, what kind of girlfriend would I be?” Sam asked, and Bennie gathered the question was rhetorical.

  An hour later, the glass surface of Sam’s desk was cluttered with all of Bennie’s financial records. Slippery stacks of smooth canceled checks, piles of trifold bank statements, thin rent bills, and time records on Rosato & Associates stationery. Sam sat behind the debris, ignoring the near-constant ringing of his telephones and expertly hitting keys on his adding machine. He frowned at the numbers on the white tape, which curled onto the rug. Styrofoam cups of coffee dotted the mess, and Bennie drained the cold brew from the closest cup just as Sam looked up from the tape, his eyes reddish from strain.

  Bennie knew it was bad news. “How bad is it?”

  “It could be worse.”

  “How?”

  Sam thought a minute.

  “Told you.”

  “You were right. You can’t get another cent out of this business. You have old receivables that total at most two hundred eighty-three dollars and thirty-four cents. You missed three quarterly tax payments, which you have to get current immediately, the interest and penalties will kill you. Your firm is overextended, heavily leveraged.” Sam was shaking his head, looking as forlorn as if it had been his own business. “Frankly, if you file, you can reorganize. Start over. Get back in business. Viable business.”

  “You want me to file for bankruptcy?” Bennie felt a pang. “Absolutely not.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s failing.”

  “It is not!”

  “Then it’s cheating.”

  “It’s not that either.” Sam’s eyes softened, their corners tilting down. “Honey, your business was in trouble before Finalil stiffed you, and now you have nothing. The bankruptcy laws were enacted for people like you.”

  “I never understood the bankruptcy laws. What about my creditors? I leave everybody in the lurch? We wave a financial magic wand and presto? I don’t pay what I owe?”

  “No, especially not with these new changes in the law. In simplest terms, your creditors get parked, in a way. You give them payout schedules. They settle or they wait for the full amount is all. Life goes on. It’s not personal, it’s just business.”

  “Business is personal.”

  “No it isn’t. You always confuse the two.”

  “It’s easy to do when your name is on the front door.”

  “You have no other choice!” Sam flushed with frustration. “Your office fixtures won’t secure another line of commercial credit. Nobody will lend you another nickel with the business as collateral.”

  “What about my house? I can put it up, can’t I?”

  “For a business debt? Why would you? You don’t want to do that.”

  “Looks like I have to.” Bennie shuffled though the papers on Sam’s desk and found her mortgage note. “This is my mortgage, what does it tell you?”

  Sam looked it over. “You should have refinanced when the rates went down.”

  “Can I borrow against it?”

  “Okay, there is equity in the house.”

  “Equity is good, equitable and all. I bought the house as a shell, what, seven years ago?”

  Sam glanced at the paper. “Six, it says here.”

  “Okay, and I renovated it completely, increased its value. And the neighborhood, which wasn’t that hot when I bought in, is trendy now. A house down the street went for sixty grand more than I paid.”

  “I don’t think you should even consider doing this, Bennie. It’s deadly to commingle your assets, to use personal funds to pay business debts.” Sam set the mortgage aside. “You’ve been doing it for months now, buying office supplies on personal credit cards. Paying your associates out of personal savings. You’re eating your seed corn. Robbing Peter to pay Ramon.”

  Bennie smiled. “You’re seeing him again?”

  “No, usually it’s dark. Can’t see a damn thing.”

  Bennie laughed, which felt momentarily good. “Now. How much can I get if I hock the house?”

  “Ballpark?” Sam punched some numbers into the adding machine, then checked the tape. “I bet you can raise forty-five grand in a hurry, maybe fifty.”

  “Fifty grand!” Bennie felt happy and sad, at once. She was pretty sure the word for this was “ambivalent,” but that didn’t begin to convey her internal conflict. “That would be enough to solve my cash-flow problems and keep me in business until the class action settles.”

  “Don’t do it. It’s too risky.” Sam was shaking his neat little head. Behind him, outside his large office window, the sun was dropping in the sky, singeing the top of the skyscrapers and making fuzzy silhouettes of the Looney Tunes on the windowsill. Sam leaned forward. “This is a business debt, Bennie. Fold the business and start a new one. Keep your house. You love your house, and for Christ’s sake, you have to live somewhere. Are you even making the payments now?”

  Barely. “Yes. And if I have the equity, why not use it?”

  “Because if you don’t make the payments on the new loan, which will be higher, your business folds and you’re out on the street. There will always be another business, another job. They come and go.” Sam paused, searching for the words to persuade her. “But your house is your home. Yo
u never put that up. You practically built the damn thing yourself.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “The bank will take it as soon as you go into default. They’ll demand full payment and foreclose. Don’t think they won’t. You’ll lose everything.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. I won’t lose everything. I won’t lose you,” Bennie said, and Sam managed a smile

  “True. You can’t lose me. Not ever.”

  Bennie thanked him, but couldn’t feel the sentiment now. She couldn’t feel anything. She could only act, and suddenly the last resort had become the only course.

  “Make it happen, Sam,” she said.

  11

  Bennie walked home from Grun & Chase, moving faster than the businesspeople who hadn’t been charged with felonies. She couldn’t wait to get home and see what her house looked like after the cops had tossed the place. She felt anxious. Disoriented. She kept looking behind her for Alice. The twin had to have been following her at least some of the time. She knew what Bennie wore. Alice could be somewhere in the crowd right now, or someone working with her. And it was almost dark.

  Bennie checked behind her again. The same young man with spiky black hair, plugged into an MP3 player, with a JanSport backpack slung on one shoulder. Next to him a middle-aged man strode along, carrying his suit jacket over the handle of his briefcase, and a young woman walked behind him in spongy Nikes. Alice was nowhere in sight.

  Bennie turned onto the Ben Franklin Parkway into a cool wind whipping down the boulevard from the Schuylkill River, which flowed behind the art museum. The giant multicolored flags of all nations flapped from stainless-steel poles lining the parkway, billowing in the gusts. She put down her head and braced herself against the wind. She’d get back on her feet when she mortgaged the house, and even have some room to breathe. Before she’d left Sam’s office, he’d called a gay banker he knew to get her house appraised and draw up the loan papers. With his connection and a little luck, she’d have the money in three weeks, and she could stall Linette that long. She was back in business, at least temporarily.