by Bill Rowe
“No, he didn’t make a mistake. We are thankful for the info.”
“I even told your father of the old saying that applies to such cases: ‘He who waits and waits to inherit money earns every damn cent of it, if in fact he receives anything at all.’ What that means is—”
“Yeah, we get it. Listen, thank you very much for everything. We have to meet Dad and go visit Gramps this afternoon.”
“Well, as the doctors said, he could go any time,” I said. “You’ll get a good sense of how powerful he still is, though, when you shake hands or hug him or if he decides to grapple with you as he did with me. Don’t be surprised by his strength. I wish you all the best with it.”
Going out the door, both the boys gave me a thumbs-up.
“Hold on.” I called them back and got up from my desk to whisper conspiratorially, “By the way, it might be a good idea not to ask the old man for any financial help just yet. I don’t get the idea he’s in the giving vein these days. Seems to think everyone is trying to take advantage of him and exploit him. You wouldn’t want to anger him and give him any incentive to make the changes we talked about.”
I phoned Brent and gave him a report. “They have all the information they need to plan their future actions. I hope they don’t do something stupid and blow it.”
“If they shag anything up, I’ll take full responsibility. But I don’t think they will. I get the idea they have lots of experience in doing some basic things right. My bigger concern is what they may try to do to Rosie if they ever conclude they were conned.”
“Rosie has always been pretty good at taking care of herself.”
“Tommy, I’m counting on that and I’m hoping I can count on you to help her, too.”
Rest easy on that one, old buddy.
WHEN HE AND HIS boys went into his father’s suite during the afternoon with the nurse, Brent told me that night, the old man was elated to see his grandsons. The nurse and Brent hoped as they walked out of the room and back to the desk that this wasn’t too much excitement for his father. Brent stayed at the desk writing out cheques for pharmaceuticals and other knick-knacks and chatting with staff members until the boys came out again. At the door, one called in, “See you tomorrow, Granddad.” Coming down the corridor, the other said to Brent, “He’s feeling fatigued by all the action and wanted to have a nap.” Brent went up to the room to say goodbye, looked in, came back to the desk, and told them that his father was already asleep. They’d be back tomorrow. Brent dropped the boys off at their hotel and drove home. He was met by Rosie with a message from the nursing home that he was to call them immediately.
The head nurse told him his father’s heart had given out. The house doctor who pronounced him dead said the heart failure had been brought on by the stress and strain of his laboured breathing plus the stimulation of the grandsons’ visit. However, the doctor didn’t want the boys to hear that and feel guilty about their grandfather’s death. It was simply a case of natural causes. It could have happened any time, and Mr. Anstey was fortunate that it didn’t happen before the grandsons’ visit. But the doctor was wondering if Brent wanted an autopsy conducted to confirm the exact cause. Only, said Brent, if the doctor thought it advisable. No, said the nurse, the doctor didn’t consider it necessary. Brent could proceed with immediate funeral arrangements.
When Brent conveyed the sad tidings to the boys at the hotel that night, they were torn by two conflicting emotions—distress at the possibility that their presence may have aggravated Granddad’s condition, and gratification that they had arrived here before it was too late. Brent told the boys that there was no need for them to stay on beyond the funeral. When the probate of the will was completed, he would send them copies of all the documentation and the proceeds of their inheritance. He didn’t want them around, Brent told me, to see his declining health.
The funeral itself was a dismal affair. Hardly anyone beyond the immediate family came to the funeral home or the church or the cemetery. Duke said to Brent, walking back from the grave to the car, “I thought Granddad was king shit in these parts. He always said he was.”
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.
Brent broke the silence: “Thank God I’ll be dead before the shit hits the fan.” The three of us had to laugh. Then he asked, “But do you figure you two and the boys are up to your asses in alligators here?”
“They haven’t got anything except some vague concerns from someone,” I said. “But can you give me the boys’ numbers? I’ll have to alert them that they may get a call from the local police and to say nothing without their lawyer’s advice.”
“I get the feeling they’re used to following that advice to a tee.” Brent reached for his notepad and scribbled. “This is from memory. The old brain is still perkin’ so far.” I took the paper and, glancing down, nodded to hide my shock at what I saw.