by Bill Rowe
“We’ll see about that, Rosie. And maybe I can make up for my stupidity back then. So, the obvious thing to do is to figure out a way to get the old guy to pass over, if not all, at least a substantial hunk of money now, before he dies, or to put you in the will.”
“The possibility of me in the will was raised crabwise months ago, but his daddy said no. It might be different if I’d given him a grandchild, but as it is, I’m nothing to him. Before they got back on half-decent terms, the old man wondered out loud why his son would leave a wife to marry damaged goods—Dr. Rothesay’s tart, he called me. If Brent wanted a strange piece, all he had to do was pay a high-class whore. He didn’t have to abandon the mother of his children to get a piece of tail. Brent practically had a big fist fight with him over it. In brief, the old bastard didn’t think much of me. Still doesn’t, except as a useful spousal appendage. Brent can share his inheritance with me, he said, and put me in his own will. Although, he warned, he’d watch out for going the will route if he were Brent, if Brent valued his life. He even hinted that if I knew I was going to get money in his will, the old man’s will, I might have him killed before his time was up.”
“Cute as a fox, the old bastard. I don’t know if he had you pegged right or not, but I know I would have him killed for his money if I had the chance.”
“I’m taking the fifth on that, myself. Anyway, Brent and I didn’t pursue it at the time. We’d get the money jointly in a year or two, we said, so no big deal. I even used to joke to Brent, ‘Don’t get hit by a bus before the old man croaks.’ A couple of weeks later, the recurring pain in Brent’s abdomen came, and then, right after we had clewed up our lives to the point of no return in New Mexico, the diagnosis of cancer.”
I got up and refilled Rosie’s glass and my own. “That’s the end of it,” I said. “Not much to a bottle of champagne.”
“Or to anything else, a realist might argue.”
We both tittered and shook our heads. I said, “You’re sure Gramps and the boys don’t suspect anything at all about Brent?”
“Yes, not yet, anyway. Brent looks fine, I think. You’d never say there’s anything wrong with him. But that may be just me. I may be too close. You’ll be able to see for yourself when you drop by.”
“Okay. You do stand to be left out in the cold unless we make some proper arrangements. So, until we decide what to do, we’ll keep everything quiet.”
“Right. We figure that if the boys ever find out Brent is dying and that they’ll get everything if he goes before Gramps, they’ll make sure their dear father gets enough heroin for his pain even if it does have the unfortunate side effect of hastening his death.”
“For sure. You guys have your own wills, I trust?”
“We do. Everything to each other.”
“So it all boils down to either Brent outliving his father or his father dying before Brent. That may sound like the same thing, but there’s a subtle difference, if you get my drift.”
“I do get your drift, Tom. Either way, it’s going to be a challenge. If you can do something to help—we intended to tell you this together, so pretend you didn’t hear it from me when you see him—we want you to have one-third of whatever you’re able to get from the old man for us, in any way possible, before I’m left a widow. I’m going to be blunt. We figure we’re lucky that your financial difficulty gives you a powerful incentive to help. This could be a win-win situation for you and me.” She leaned over and tapped my knee. “Hey, that’d be different.”
I gave the blandest of smiles and spoke calmly: “Yes, the timing is rather propitious.” But inside I was thinking: One-third of, say, thirteen million—holy shit, I might fend off bankruptcy yet. Plus, from the time she told me of Brent’s terminal condition, I’d been wickedly plotting a scenario involving her and me—after a decent period of mourning. I added, “No need of any talk about money, though, Rosie. If I can help relieve Brent’s mind and yours during his last days, and get back in your good books again, I’ll be happy. I would love for you and me to be good friends for the rest of our lives.”
Rosie stood with her glass in her hand and put it forward and clinked mine. “Count on that, Tommy, whichever way this goes.” I rose, and she put her free arm around me and hugged hard. “Close and devoted friends for life,” she said. Then her face combined a frown with her smile. “So I’ll tell him you’re interested?”
“I’ll go with you now this afternoon, if that’s okay, and tell him myself.”
“That would be great.”
“I’d better call a taxi after all that champagne. I’m only a lawyer, not a doctor.”
Rosie’s memory twigged immediately to what the drunk Rothesay had said to her thirty years ago before his last drive to Red Cliff. Without moving her face she turned her eyes to mine. “You’re just as bad as ever,” she said with that faint little grin of satisfaction.
BRENT GREETED US AT the front door of the big house in King William Estates before Rosie could put her key in. He was looking fit and cheerful. After shaking hands, we gave each other a man hug. As powerful as he was, and despite using both arms, his embrace was not as strong as Rosie’s one-armer fifteen minutes before. Pulling back from him, I noticed a slight sallowness of his face which I mightn’t have taken in if I hadn’t been looking for signs of his illness. He said, “Rosie told you everything?”
“I believe so. If there are any loose ends, we can tie them up now.”
Inside, in the hall, Rosie gave Brent a kiss on the lips and he returned a squeeze and a look of absolute love. I glanced around. “Is your father or anyone else here?” I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t risk being overheard by him or staff or nurses while we talked.
“No, he’s at The Pines. We’re all by ourselves here. Didn’t Rosie tell you? What could you guys have been talking about so long that you didn’t get to that?”
Rosie said, “We spent our time at Agnes Pratt home with Tom’s mother and then talking about our situation.” She turned to me. “After twenty years of faithful marriage, listen to old Mr. Jealous here. No wonder I still feel so wanted and desired.”
Brent laughed and added: “And enjoying an early afternoon wine as the, ah, conversation rolled on, judging by the delightful fragrance I’m getting.” I felt a little twinge of apprehension before Brent went on. “Don’t mind me, that is my jealousy coming out. The doctors said no alcohol with this liver. And I have to obey them. I don’t want to shorten the time we have to deal with this.”
“Champagne is what we had,” said Rosie. “And once we have this thing figured out to your satisfaction, or hit a wall, as the case may be, we’ll get you back on it. To hell with the doctors then.”
“The Pines?” I said. That was a luxurious retirement home, privately owned and run. Top dollar in rent. When Dad and I made inquiries about placing Mom there, we had discovered that a room with board and lodging and nursing care started at about eight thousand dollars a month. “Has your father’s condition deteriorated to that extent?”
“Unfortunately, no,” said Brent. “He doesn’t really need to be there at all. There are three or four levels of care provided there. He’s near the lower end at the moment. Oxygen when he needs it, and medication. He’ll need greater care as time goes on, but he’s there right now for the socializing. It’s pathetic, really. He could be here in his own home and get all the nursing care he needs till the end. But after he sold off and retired, not a goddamned soul would come to see him or accept his invitations to lunch. Then after the prognosis for the ‘emphysema’”—Brent made quote signs with his fingers— “was made, he heard that a couple of his old business competitors were at The Pines—his deadly enemies in the old days, in reality—and he decided to move there so that at least he’d have people he knew to criticize and taunt as a captive audience. He’s got a suite of rooms, and the staff and the owner tend on him hand and foot. It helps that he invested money in the place when it first started. So he’s over there living like a king.
”
“I’ll have to go and take a look.”
“I’ll bring you over whenever you’re free. The sooner the better. We really need your help, Tom. I will give you one-third of whatever I am able to salvage from his estate before I die.”
“I’d like it to be one half, Brent, not one-third,” Rosie said calmly. “If there’s no serious objection. Because, if Tom pulls this off, I think he’d be entitled to that.”
“What? But we agreed on…” He looked at Rosie. “Okay, sure, one half. It’ll be your money, anyway. I was letting my recessive gene from Father for greed and stinginess take over. I hope it wasn’t the cancer affecting the brain already. The doctors said the cells in the brain would be the slowest-acting. With any luck, the liver, pancreas, or heart will get me before I lose my mind.”
“The split is irrelevant, anyway, Brent,” I said. “I just want to help you and Rosie. The money is absolutely no consideration to me. The question is how to help. What can we do?”
“Whatever it takes,” said Brent. “Anything we say here is absolutely confidential amongst us three, all right? Agreed?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Even if someone were to propose an activity significantly criminal?”
I paused before replying. “Proposing and doing are two different things.”
“Well, either or? I’m asking.”
I looked at Rosie. A flash of her face as a teenager entered my mind when I’d been then proposing to her an activity significantly criminal. Her face had the same expectant expression now, lips slightly open. “Let me put it this way, Brent, whatever I hear proposed, or suspect might have been done by anyone in this room, it will never be disclosed to another soul. I fully understand how you feel in this desperate situation. That undertaking does not preclude me, however, from counselling you against doing anything not in keeping with your own welfare.”
“For my own welfare? I think we can agree that we need to concentrate on Rosie’s welfare. So let us not beat about the bush. We could try a legal approach with Father, but that would probably tip our hand about how sick I am and shag everything up, and I already know anyway that it will not work with him. Therefore, I am determined that he will die before me. If necessary, before I start to get too weak, I will physically do it myself.”
When I lowered my head and didn’t reply, Rosie stood. “Didn’t I tell you, Tom, no more Boy Scout Brent?” She walked over to him and kissed his forehead.
“You got that right, sweetheart,” said Brent.
Rosie hugged his head to her breasts and went to the door. “I’m going up for a power nap. Then I’ll get us all a nice cup of coffee. I’m sure everything will look better then.” She gave us a wry, lopsided smile. “You boys plot and scheme while I’m gone.”
As soon as she closed the door behind her, Brent started up again: “He told me he wants to be euthanized when the time comes, anyway, so it wouldn’t really be murder, at least not morally.”
“Brent, you need to make sure you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. If the old man dies naturally or accidentally before you do, you get the money under the will. But if it was ever determined that you were the cause or agent of his death, your benefits under the will would be null and void, and you would get nothing, because a person cannot profit or benefit under the law from his own wrongdoing. As a result, Rosie would also get nothing, and all the money would probably go to your sons. Forensic techniques can detect anything these days. You need to be very careful.”
Brent said, “That’s important to realize. I told Rosie we’d get the straight goods from Tom Sharpe. And Tommy, you can expect the same from me. So don’t give me that shit about the money meaning nothing to you. I know you got hit by the recession like the rest of us. I know your law partner fucked up and it’s going to cost you maybe half a million. You’ll be the rest of your life paying it off, that is, if you don’t have to face the professional disgrace of declaring bankruptcy. You’ll certainly be selling your nice house once you borrow or beg the cost of a coat of paint to tart it up a bit. In other words, you’re like me and Rosie, nearly broke after a half a lifetime of work.”
“What’s that rule for sucking in a patsy? Oh yeah, do your research. You guys have certainly dredged up a lot about me. Some of it even true.”
“All of it true, and more besides. Patsy? Yeah. They’ll have to start a new TV show called The Six Million Dollar Patsy. You want more true? She and I had originally agreed on one-third of the take for you, as I said, if we could straighten this fiasco up. In other words, a lawyer’s top contingency fee. She came up with that one half for you just then out of the blue. Fifty-fifty, that’s equal partners. That’s like a husband-and-wife thing.”
“Too bad we’re already married to someone else.”
“Yeah, till you convert your legal separation into a divorce and I kick the bucket. Listen, Tom. Rosie is…”
Brent’s hand went to his face and covered his eyes. Slowly, he bent forward. I had been expecting something like this. For all his cheerful show, I knew he had to be devastated by the prospect of leaving life, especially the thought of leaving Rosie. I knew I would have been. I got up to go to his side, but he took his hand from his face and waved me away. His eyes were red and moist as he settled back in his chair again and went on.
“Rosie is the best thing that ever happened to me. She has made my life livable over the years. When I die, it’ll be without too many regrets, simply because I had her for twenty years. It rots my goddamned socks that prick-face over there in The Pines doesn’t respect and admire her in the way she deserves. And you know why I was able to have her, how I got her? Because you were stupid enough to let her go.”
“The brutal honesty of a best friend.”
“It’s only what you yourself told me at the time.”
“I did everything to get her back, Brent. What I didn’t know at the time was that you had been hankering after her so badly.”
“Yes, and long before that and long after. But you still wouldn’t know that if you and she had stayed together or gotten back together again. I didn’t stand a chance, I knew that. But luckily for me, she had too much respect for herself to give in to you and go back with you. And that was in spite of the fact that she still wanted you. It was years after you and she broke up, and long after I had left my wife, that she finally said yes to me. And we had a great life together.”
“Why didn’t you and she have any children?”
“You mean, like you did? She would not be responsible, she told me, for any more like her coming into this world. And she a bloody saint. Go figure. In fact, I do know, though, just as you do. She told me everything that happened to her with that English fucker. And her stupid egotism in not watching out for Pagan. And everything you and she did after the trial. I mean everything.”
“Jesus. Now I’ll have to marry you to keep you quiet.”
“Same-sex marriage and polygamy at the same time—I’m game. That ought to get us in Guinness. There was only one thing, Tom, that she didn’t actually tell me but which I knew anyway: she wouldn’t even come back here for a visit because of you. And I’m sure that one of the reasons she put me off so long was that, judging by all the sappy letters you wrote her, she was half-expecting you to come and find her.”
“No, Brent, she was absolutely definite, and Suzy told me it was a lost cause.”
“Suzy? You must have forgotten or didn’t know—Suzy always liked me more than you. Anyway, whatever. Rosie was loyal and loving to me throughout, and I will die in everlasting gratitude to her for that. But when I am dead, I hope you and she get together again. I seriously suspect she will want to. And you are nuts if you don’t.”
“That does not arise as a factor in all this, Brent. I’m hoping you will outlive us all.”
“Right. And when you get together it will be better to be rich than poor. Just don’t get into a game of tennis or squash with her, if you value your dignity. She�
��ll whup your ass worse than she’s been whupping mine for twenty years. But whether you two get together or not is your own business, and immaterial to me. I won’t know anyway. Whatever she chooses to do, I do want to die knowing Rosie will be living in carefree comfort, and independent. So we need to plan out properly how we are going to get rid of the old fuck within the next couple of weeks, before I start to look sick. My boys will be dropping in here any day now. I’ll do anything you and Rosie want, but I will need to follow your lead.” He beamed at me the grin of one boyish conspirator to another arriving at the terms of their mischief. “You two have had more practice at this than me.”
“You’re a fucking riot, Brent. I take it that Rosie is in on all your thoughts on this and agrees completely.”
“She is and she does. It wasn’t easy at first, though. She was all ‘I don’t care what he’s like. He’s your father. I don’t care how shitty he’s been to you. Or to me. You’re his son.’ So I had to tell her something I never expected to have to say to her in my lifetime. Before my mother died, she confessed to me in her last days of agony that she thought Father knew Rothesay was— molesting is the word she used—Pagan O’Dell at the time it was happening. She didn’t realize it at the time; she only put two and two together after Pagan died and Rosie went to court, from bits and pieces of conversation she’d overheard during their investment meetings. She even thought from what she’d heard that they had looked at some film Rothesay had taken of Pagan. Mother seemed pretty sure about it all in retrospect. No film ever turned up, though.”
“If it existed, he would have destroyed it after Pagan died,” I said as I had a flash of Anstey and Rothesay at Pagan’s wake. “I can see the both of them now over by Pagan’s coffin. Your father said something to Rothesay, and they both laughed before they caught themselves. It seemed completely incongruous.”
“I missed that. But it figures. Father probably congratulated him on his good fortune at everything ending so conveniently for him. Anyway, I told Mother’s story to Rosie after I was diagnosed as terminal and said I believed it, and that as far as I was concerned he was an accessory in Pagan’s death.”