The Dead Hand

by Michael A. Kahn

  I returned Danielle’s gaze. “You may answer, Mrs. Knight.”

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

  I let the silence lengthen, let her sit there scowling, knowing how that would appear on the videotape.

  Finally, I said, “Do you need the court reporter to read back my last question, Mrs. Knight?”

  “No.”

  “By ‘no’ do you mean you don’t need the court reporter to read the question?”

  “No. By ‘no’ I mean that Jerry never told me that.”

  “Do you see any problem with that behavior, Mrs. Knight?”

  “What behavior?”

  “Filing a petition to divorce your wife in which you accuse her of irreconcilable differences at the very same time that you’re cheating on her in your secret love nest. Does that seem hypocritical to you?”

  She leaned forward. “Hypocritical?” She was nearly shouting. “You want hypocritical?”

  “Now Danielle,” Sterling said, “no need to—”

  “How about screwing your own lawyer, lady? In your own goddamn home? While your teenage daughter’s bedroom is just down the hall?” She shook her head in disgust. “Your client has no shame. She deserves exactly what’s going to happen to her in this lawsuit.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “That my client was allegedly sleeping with her divorce lawyer?”

  “Sleeping?” She snorted. “You mean fucking like two rabbits in heat?”

  “Danielle…” Sterling warned.

  “I repeat my question? How do you know that?”

  “Objection,” Sterling said. “Counselor, I’m gonna have to instruct my client not to answer.”

  “Oh?” I said to him. “On what grounds?”

  Sterling paused, frowning. “Um, spousal privilege.”

  I shook my head. “Really, Tom?”

  “How do you think I know?” Danielle shouted.

  “Danielle,” Sterling warned.

  “Jerry told me! That’s how I know.”

  “Time out,” Sterling stood. “We’re taking ourselves a little break here. I’m going to need to have a word or two with my client out there in the hall.”

  Chapter Six

  I clicked the PAUSE button and turned to Marsha Knight.

  She was staring open-mouthed at the screen, at the frozen image of Danielle’s enraged face. The time clock on the lower right corner of the screen read 3:17 p.m.

  Marsha and I were seated on opposite sides of the table in my conference room, the video screen mounted on the wall.

  “Is that true?” I said.

  Marsha looked over at me, back at the screen, back at me, and then lowered her head.

  “Well?”

  She nodded, head down.

  “You heard her testimony, Marsha. She said your ex-husband told her. How did he know?

  She shook her head.

  “Look at me, Marsha.”

  She raised her head, tears in her eyes.

  “Did Jerry ever mention it to you?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “What about his lawyer? Irving Sliman. Did he ever say anything to you?”

  She shook her head.

  “And your own lawyer? Adam Fox? Did Adam ever mention it?”

  She shook her head.

  I leaned back in my chair. “When did it start?”

  She took a deep breath and sighed. “I’m not sure.”

  “Before or after you retained him as your attorney?”

  “Oh, after. Definitely after. Maybe a month or two after.”

  “Had you known him before that?”

  “No. I had a friend who got divorced. She’d hired the Cross Family Law Firm. Adam had represented her. She recommended them both to me—Norma and Adam.”

  “How long did your affair last?”

  “Maybe six months, maybe a little longer.”

  “Did it last beyond the divorce decree?”

  “No. We ended it before that.”

  “Who ended it?”

  She shrugged. “I guess we both sort of did.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure. It just seemed like it wasn’t such a great idea, him being my lawyer and all.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Maybe. We talked about it, though. I guess we both agreed.” She shrugged. “Maybe him more than me.”

  “And he never said anything about your husband—about Jerry knowing about your relationship?”

  “No. Never.”

  “And your husband never said anything to you?”

  “No. No one did. I had no idea anyone else knew.” She sighed again, her lips quivering. “I just felt so alone, Rachel. Just old and pathetic and alone. You have no idea. And there he was. Adam was so good to me, so protective.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “And so handsome. That first time…it was like magic. So much different than making love to Jerry, so much better. God, better than anything I’d ever experienced. I felt young again. Sexy, again. Jesus, listen to me. How pathetic. I’m a goddamn cliché.”

  “Did your daughter know?”

  She looked back at the screen for a moment and then turned to me. “I don’t know. Maybe. We never talked about it. Ever.” She shrugged. “But maybe.”

  “Did he ever spend the night at your house?”

  “Usually not. But sometimes he’d fall asleep after we made love and I wouldn’t wake him. I should have, of course. It was stupid of me. Selfish, too. But it was so nice to have him in the bed with me, to snuggle with him.”

  “You said you broke up before the divorce was final.”

  She nodded.

  “What about after?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you ever have contact with him after the divorce?”

  “No.” She sighed again. “I was hoping he’d call me. He never did. And four or five months later he was dead.”

  “Did you go to his funeral?”

  She nodded. “It was so sad, Rachel. His parents were there. His sister was there. All of his friends. He was so young. It was such a tragedy.”

  After a moment, I turned toward the video screen and clicked the OFF button. The screen went blank.

  “What does this mean for my lawsuit?” Marsha asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  An hour later I was going over my research notes on the relevant Missouri case law on the Rule Against Perpetuities when Dorian, my assistant, cleared her throat.

  “Rachel?”

  I looked up. Dorian stood in the doorway. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Mulligan is here.”

  “Please show her in, Dorian.”

  I sighed.

  Zombies.

  Two in one month.

  But this time I had the trophy widow.

  Section 2

  “As long as a man lives, the entire world is too small for him; after death, the grave is big enough.”

  —Yiddish proverb

  St. Louis Courthouse Report

  —New Lawsuits—

  ***

  St. Louis County Circuit Court

  Caption

  Description

  Attorney

  In re Estate of Bertram R. Mulligan

  Petitioner Bertram R. Grimsley (nee Mulligan) seeks order invalidating bequest to decedent’s widow’s child

  Milton Strauss

  Smilow & Wortz

  Chapter Seven

  Their lawyers call them “high-net-worth individuals
prepared to shoulder the responsibility for providing wealth for future generations and essential funding for important causes even after they are no longer with us.”

  Benny calls them zombies.

  And since zombies are already dead, they’re hard to kill. Especially Bert Mulligan. According to his obituary, the letters DFWB were tattooed on his right arm, and they were still there when they lowered his casket into the grave. The G-rated translation: Don’t Fool With Bert.

  But I’m getting ahead of my case notes.

  The first entry is dated October 19, the afternoon of the same day I showed Marsha Knight the videotape of Danielle Knight’s deposition.

  Although Cyndi Mulligan and I already knew one another, this was our first attorney-client meeting. We’d met a month earlier in our pediatrician’s waiting room. Sam and I were there for his five-year checkup. Cyndi and her daughter, Carson, were there for Carson’s six-month checkup. Only our doctor was missing. She was on an emergency call at the nearby hospital, which meant that Cyndi and I had the opportunity to become acquainted, especially since our only alternative was to learn the latest on the Kardashian sisters, whose images were on the covers of all four issues of People and US on the magazine rack.

  That was then. One month later, Cyndi was seated in the chair facing my desk, her eyes red, a tissue clutched in her hand, her voice quavering.

  “Please help me, Rachel.”

  Cyndi and I shared something else in common: we were both widows. Cyndi was the famous one, at least by St. Louis standards. Her husband had been Bert Mulligan, the founder and ruthless CEO of The Mulligan Group, a conglomerate headquartered in St. Louis that owned companies in various industries around the world. At the time of his death, Mulligan was number two hundred forty-seven on the Forbes Magazine list of the four hundred wealthiest Americans.

  Bert had referred to Cyndi as his personal “mulligan,” which the dictionary defines as a free shot given to a golfer when his previous one was poorly played. Bert’s first marriage had lasted three decades and produced one angry son and one bitter ex-wife. Several years after that divorce, Bert spotted the blond and blue-eyed Cyndi on the sidelines at a St. Louis Rams football game, where she was a Rams cheerleader. It was, at least according to their wedding invitation (still displayed on Cyndi’s Facebook page), “love at first sight.” Bert was seventy-two, and Cyndi was twenty-six.

  Nevertheless, they wowed their wedding party guests with their first dance as husband and wife. Disdaining the usual romantic slow dance, Bert took his bride onto the dance floor to his favorite Rolling Stones song, “Start Me Up.” The large crowd clapped and cheered as the newlyweds did an acrobatic swing dance through the song’s closing line, when Mick Jagger tells the object of his affection that “you’d make a dead man come.”

  It was, as I would learn, an eerie bit of prophecy.

  Cyndi shook her head in disgust. “He is such a hateful man.”

  “Bert Junior?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Did you know he changed his name?”

  “To what?”

  “Grimsley. His mother’s maiden name. He’s now Bert Grimsley.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Before I met his father. Right after they had that falling out at work.”

  Falling out at work.

  I had to smile. Like calling World War II a squabble.

  Nine years ago, the festering hostilities in the Mulligan family erupted onto the front page when Bert Junior tried to pull off a hostile takeover of his father’s company. The scheme collapsed in spectacular fashion when Junior’s supposed co-conspirators sold him out just before the key meeting of the board of directors. He strode into that meeting as General Counsel and Vice-President, confident he would emerge as CEO and Chairman of the Board. An hour later, he staggered out unemployed and holding court papers naming him as the defendant in the company’s multi-million-dollar breach-of-fiduciary-duty lawsuit. He literally had to beg the receptionist to call him a cab, since the company had already deactivated his cell phone and seized his Mercedes-Benz company car. He and his father never spoke again.

  DFWB.

  Cyndi dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. Though she was pretty in that classic Midwest cheerleader version of pretty, there was an almost childlike sweetness that you sensed the moment you met her. As with the other Rams cheerleaders, that role had been a weekend gig for her. Before marrying Bert, Cyndi had been a nursery school teacher.

  “So he’s now Bert Grimsley,” I said. “What’s his issue with you?”

  She twisted the handkerchief in her hands. “He claims Carson isn’t Bert’s daughter.”

  I chose my words carefully. “Why would that matter to him?”

  “Because of Bert’s will.”

  Oy, I said to myself as I settled back in my chair.

  The dead hand.

  Chapter Eight

  “…and into the night of his very own room,” I read, “where he found his supper waiting for him.” I turned the page. “And it was still hot.”

  I closed the book, leaned over, and gave Sam a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Goodnight, Smoochy.”

  I turned toward Yadi, who was in his usual bedtime position curled up on the comforter at the foot of Sam’s bed. Yadi was our collie-shepherd mix—one straight German shepherd ear, one floppy collie ear, and a gentle temperament unless you were a stranger approaching Sam or me, at which point he morphed into a junkyard attack guard.

  I scratched Yadi on the head. “Goodnight, buddy.”

  He flopped his tail three times and settled his head back down on the comforter.

  As I stood, Sam said, “Mommy, could Uncle Benny come say goodnight?”

  I smiled. “I’m sure he can. I’ll go tell him.”

  I came down the stairs to find Benny and my mother at the kitchen sink—my mother doing the washing, Benny the drying. They were talking about Benny’s appearance on CNN the night before—an appearance that I’d watched with my mother and Sam. Benny had been, as usual, brilliant and funny and unflappable.

  “That girl on the panel…” my mother was saying. “The cute one named Lauren from the chamber of commerce. Is she single?”

  “Give me a break, Sarah. Did you hear what she was saying? She’s makes Ayn Rand sound like a socialist.”

  “Don’t be so dismissive, Mr. Big Shot Professor. That girl is cute and she’s smart, and—with a last name of Becker—I’m pretty sure she’s Jewish. Talk to that man on the show. He must have her phone number.”

  “What man?”

  “The host. That Blintz guy.”

  Benny chuckled as he glanced over at me. “It’s Blitzer, Sarah, not blintz. He’s a talking head, not a pancake.”

  “Blitzer? He might be Jewish, too.”

  “Great. Wolf Blitzer as my yenta.”

  “Don’t laugh. Talk to him. She’s a nice Jewish girl.”

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  They both turned.

  “Uncle Benny, Sam wants to know if you could say goodnight.”

  He grinned. “Absolutely.”

  “Give me the dish towel,” I said. “I’ll dry.”

  ***

  We were having tea and my mom’s kamishbroit for dessert. Kamishbroit is a deliciously crunchy Yiddish cousin of the Italian biscotti. Benny had already consumed almost half the platter.

  I’d filled them in on Marsha Knight’s case—including Marsha’s affair with her divorce attorney and my prior delightful meeting with Norma Cross, including Norma’s charming send-off, which made my mother so angry that she was ready to drive to her office and slap her in the face—not a prudent idea, I had explained, when the target of your slap has won two tournaments in kickboxing. Moreover, I told her, she’d have to get in line behind Jacki Brand.

  As for my other “dead hand” case
—the one for Cyndi Mulligan—I’d brought the file home with me to work on later that night. After Benny had returned from Sam’s bedroom, he asked to see the Last Will and Testament of Bert Mulligan.

  He finished reading it, tossed the document onto the table, took a sip of tea, and shook his head in disgust. “Zombies.”

  He reached for another kamishbroit and raised it in respect toward my mother, who nodded and smiled. He consumed it in two big bites and turned to me. “What the fuck is a bloodline trust?”

  “We’d have known the term if we’d taken trusts-and-estates in law school.”

  “Thank God for that.” He took a sip of tea and reached for another kamishbroit. “So enlighten your mother and me, Gorgeous.”

  “A bloodline trust is a way to pass on wealth to your kids while protecting it from others outside the family.”

  My mother frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Let’s say Sugar Daddy establishes a million-dollar bloodline trust for Sonny Boy. Sonny Boy gets married, and five years later he gets divorced. No kids in the marriage. The ex-wife is entitled to half the marital assets, but those assets don’t include whatever is in the bloodline trust, which stays with Sonny Boy.”

  “Thus the pretentious phrasing.” Benny flipped back through the trust. “Here we are. Page four. ‘If my wife Cyndi Raimey Mulligan shall give birth to a child in my bloodline…’” He looked up with a grin. “A child in my bloodline? A tad high-faluting for the son of a lead miner.”

  I shrugged. “I’m just a simple trial lawyer.”

  “With a tush and legs to die for.” He turned to my mother. “Agreed?”

  She nodded. “She’s a real beauty, my Rachel.”

  Benny turned to me. “So what happens if your client gives birth to a child not in his bloodline?”

  I shook my head. “That’s the odd part.”

  “How so?’

  “There’s no provision for that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bert Mulligan’s estate plan—the will, the trusts, the other stuff—totals more than two hundred pages, but there’s nothing in all of those documents about what happens if Cyndi has a child outside his bloodline.”