The Dead Hand

by Michael A. Kahn

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Benny frowned. “Sounds like the lawyer screwed up.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “I talked to him today. He told me Bert made him take that provision out of the papers.”

  “No way.”

  “Way. He showed me the draft. There are almost two pages of provisions dealing with what happens if a child is born outside the bloodline. They’re all X’ed out. The lawyer was so nervous, he made Bert put his initials next to each deleted provision”

  “Did Bert say why he wanted those provisions removed?”

  “Not according to his lawyer.”

  “When did he do his estate plan?”

  “His lawyer said he drafted the original documents shortly after the wedding. Bert came back about a year before he died to have him create the bloodline trust.”

  “Did he give a reason?”

  “Sort of. The lawyer said that Bert mentioned that he’d recently seen his cardiologist, who was worried that he was at high risk for another heart attack. He’d had two prior ones.”

  “That’s how he died, right? While schtupping his cheerleader wife?”

  “My goodness,” my mother said. “Is that true?”

  I smiled. “He did die of a heart attack, Mom. I looked up the obituary in the Post-Dispatch this afternoon. It said, quote—‘according to his widow, Mr. Mulligan died in her arms in bed’—close quote.” I turned back to Benny. “I haven’t asked Cyndi about the details.”

  “Wonder if that was the night she got pregnant?” Benny grinned. “That’s what I’d call going out with a bang.” He took a sip of tea. “So what happens if her kid doesn’t qualify under that trust?”

  “Cyndi’s part stays the same. She has her own trust that takes good care of her for the rest of her life. But the bloodline trust is where all the assets go, including the stock in The Mulligan Group. According to the lawyer, if Bert Junior can break that trust, then Junior and his mother inherit everything, including the stock in The Mulligan Group.”

  Benny raised his eyebrows. “Damn, girl, you may have a real shit storm on the horizon. What’s next?”

  “I’ll find out tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh? What’s tomorrow morning?”

  “That’s when I meet with Junior.”

  Benny left after dessert, and my mother and I cleaned up. Fortunately, my mother lives about twenty steps from my back door. More precisely, she lives in the renovated coach house behind my house. After my husband, Jonathan, died, my mother sold her condo and, God bless her, moved in to help me raise Sam and my two stepdaughters, Leah and Sarah. Leah is now in her senior year at Brandeis University, and Sarah is a freshman at Johns Hopkins University.

  “I talked to Sarah this afternoon, Mom.”

  “How’s my doll baby doing?”

  “She sounds good. She’s made friends, she likes her classes, she likes her roommate, she even likes Baltimore.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.”

  Three weeks ago, I’d gone up to Baltimore with my stepdaughter to move her into her freshman dorm at Hopkins. During the move-in, I’d met her roommate, Chelsea, who seemed nice, and I’d watched with pleasure as Sarah ran into three freshmen girls on campus who she’d already connected with on Facebook. The two of us had a delicious seafood dinner in the Fell’s Point area that night and a tearful goodbye the next morning. We’d talked or texted every day since then.

  “Parents Weekend is next month,” I said. “The weekend of the fifteenth.”

  “I hope you’re going.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Good. You should.”

  I shut off the faucet and turned to my mother. “She wants you to come, too.”

  “Me?”

  I nodded. “She said to me, ‘Could Baba come?’ I told her I’d ask.”

  My mother’s eyes watered. “She wants me there. She said that?”

  I smiled. “Yes, she did. And you’re coming.”

  I gave her a hug.

  Although my two stepdaughters call me Rachel, they call my mother Baba, which is Yiddish for grandmother. Their Baba is hardheaded and opinionated and sets high standards for her grandchildren. Don’t ask the two girls how many times their redheaded Baba made them rewrite their college application essays. Though she can exasperate me like no other human on the face of the Earth, we all adore her.

  My mother came to America from Lithuania at the age of three, having escaped with her mother and baby sister after the Nazis killed her father, the rest of his family, and whatever semblance of religious faith my mother might ever have had. Fate remained cruel. My mother—a woman who reveres books and learning—was forced to drop out of high school and go to work as a waitress when her mother (after whom I’m named) was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. My Grandmother Rachel died six months later, leaving her two daughters, Sarah and Becky, orphans at the ages of seventeen and fifteen. Two years later, my mother married Seymour Gold, a gentle, shy, devoutly Jewish bookkeeper ten years her senior. My sweet father was totally smitten by his beautiful, spirited wife and remained so until his death from a heart attack almost ten years ago on the morning after Thanksgiving.

  Still hugging her, I said, “So put it on your calendar, Mom.”

  She nodded, squeezing me even harder.

  Chapter Nine

  “The one thing I did learn from my father, Miss Gold, is that when you have the upper hand, you don’t ease up until you’ve crushed your opponent.”

  Bert Grimsley (née Mulligan) gave me a smile that looked more like a sneer. “Welcome to my father’s rules.”

  We were seated in a conference room at Smilow & Wortz, a bottom-feeder collections law firm where Bert Grimsley had landed after (1) the $8 million verdict against him in The Mulligan Group lawsuit, and (2) the related hearing before the Missouri Attorney Disciplinary Commission, which suspended his law license.

  Grimsley was seated directly across from me. To his left (my right) sat his mother, Dorothy, to his right was a lawyer named Milton Strauss. Strauss was in his sixties, a hefty man in a wrinkled gray suit and a bright orange tie with a brown gravy stain. He sported a thick white goatee and a smile like a satyr’s leer. In contrast, Grimsley’s mother was thin, dour, and stiff in her designer outfit and heavy gold jewelry. She sat with her head tilted back on a long neck, peering down her nose, eyes blinking, like some exotic bird. She may have once been beautiful, but too many years in the sun had left deep wrinkles in her face and splotches on her leathery neck.

  Bert Grimsley said, “Word is that your client actually fucked him to death.” He glanced to his left. “Pardon my French, Mother.”

  His mother fluttered her eyelids, pursed her lips, and leaned back even further.

  Bert Grimsley turned to me. “If that’s true, then the bastard got a better exit than he deserved.”

  I didn’t reply.

  Bert Grimsley squinted at Strauss. “Milton will give you a courtesy copy of the petition. We filed it under seal in the hope, perhaps naïvely, that the gold digger might prefer to settle this ugly matter quietly.”

  Strauss slid a court-stamped copy of the petition across the table. “Here you go, kiddo.”

  I kept my eyes on Grimsley. “What ugly matter?”

  Grimsley gave me a tight smile. “The child, of course. And the consequences flowing therefrom, as we lawyers like to say.”

  “We lawyers? Has your law license been restored?”

  His smile vanished. “Yes, Miss Gold. We lawyers.”

  Bert Grimsley resembled photos I’d seen of his father. With their bald heads, bulbous noses, and tendency to squint, they seemed haughty versions of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo. Unlike Mr. Magoo, however, father and son were tall and athletic. Indeed, both had played college basketball—Bert Sr. at Southeast Miss
ouri State, Bert Jr. at Tufts.

  I glanced at the cover page of the petition. “So you claim the child isn’t his?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Leaving to one side the merits of that claim, what if you are correct?”

  “The trust is void, and—voila!—I inherit everything. Mother and I do, to be precise.”

  He turned to his mother with a smile. She peered over at him, unsmiling, and blinked.

  I said, “You mentioned a settlement proposal. What is it?”

  “We’ll let the bitch keep the trust he set up for her.”

  “How does Mrs. Mulligan’s trust have anything to do with this dispute?”

  He gestured toward the petition. “My father had the gall to accuse me of breach of fiduciary duty.” He forced what sounded like a snicker. “Turnabout’s fair play. Isn’t that right, Milton?”

  Milton gave me a smirk. “It’s all laid out right there in that court filing, young lady. Every last dirty detail.”

  I put the petition into my briefcase, snapped it shut, and stood.

  “One final question.” I said. “You claim that Mr. Mulligan is not the biological father of the girl, correct?”

  “Bingo.”

  “What is the basis for your contention?”

  Bert grinned. “Simple math.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning my father died on April first. The child was born the following February fourteenth. Last time I checked, Miss Gold, the gestation period for a human is nine months. The child was born almost eleven months after April first.”

  He leaned forward, his grin now a smirk.

  “To put it in plain English, girl, I ain’t no April fool.”

  I stared down at him as I picked up my purse. “I bet you’ve been practicing that silly line all morning. It still sounds lame.”

  I turned and left.

  Chapter Ten

  Cyndi shuddered. “He is such a nasty man.”

  I had just filled her in on my meeting with Bert Junior, his mother, and their attorney, Milton Strauss.

  “It gets even nastier,” I said. “He’s also trying to invalidate the trust that your husband set up for you. There’s no merit to that claim, Cyndi, I promise. It’s just a pretext to include a lot of nasty allegations about you.”

  “What kind of allegations?”

  “Undue influence. False pretenses. Sexual enticement. That sort of thing.”

  I could see the anger flare in her eyes.

  “Rachel, I don’t care about that stuff. That creep can say whatever he wants about me. I’ll be just fine. This is about my daughter.” She leaned forward. “Our daughter.”

  “I agree.” I uncapped my fountain pen and pulled over a legal pad. “Let’s talk about your daughter. Let’s talk about those eleven months.”

  She nodded. “She’s Bert’s child. I had sex with no one else back then, and I haven’t had sex with anyone since Bert died. I loved that man, Rachel. I loved him. And I adore our daughter. She’s my dear husband’s legacy.”

  “So tell me about the lag time.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay.”

  ***

  “Really?” Benny laughed. “Sounds like Mr. Grim Reaper is in for a surprise.”

  “I hope so.”

  Benny had dropped by my house around seven-fifteen, as he did most Wednesday nights after teaching his advanced antitrust seminar. I’d already fed Sam, given him a bath, and gotten him ready for bed. Sam looked forward to these Wednesday nights even more than I did because that’s when his Uncle Benny arrived just in time to read him a book and put him to bed. As usual, Benny showed up with a ridiculous amount of takeout—this time from one of our favorite Thai restaurants—plus a six-pack of Urban Chestnut’s Winged Nut Ale.

  After Benny put Sam to bed, I filled him in on the latest developments as he virtually inhaled an order of fish cakes.

  “Assuming that douchebag doesn’t drop his suit,” he said, “how will you prove that Bert Senior is the kid’s father?”

  “I’m going to serve a subpoena on the sperm bank. I’ll ask for a copy of all their records. Seems the quickest way to end this.”

  Benny scarfed down a forkful of pad thai. “So when did old Bert tell her about the frozen treat?”

  “About a year before he died. They’d been trying to get pregnant since the wedding. Nothing. She really wanted a baby, and so did he. He went to his urologist. They did some tests. Results showed he had a low sperm count. Not hopelessly low, but low enough to seriously reduce his odds of ever getting her pregnant.”

  Benny cracked open another bottle of beer. “So when did the old guy make those, uh, deposits?”

  “He told her he did it ten years earlier.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t go into detail with her, and she doesn’t actually know. He would have been in his early sixties. She thinks maybe he was worried that if he ever remarried he might be too old to father a child.”

  “Makes sense,” Benny said. “Powerful rich guys are obsessed with sowing their seed. Think of how many of those alter kockers become fathers again in their seventies.”

  “I did a little research online. Assuming Cyndi has the dates right, Mulligan would have made his sperm deposits about a year after The Mulligan Group acquired Unisource Laboratories.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “One of Unisource’s divisions is Procreative Cryogenics. Sperm banks are a big part of their operations. Who knows? Maybe that acquisition gave him the idea to store some of his own, just in case. Whatever the reason, he told Cyndi about the sperm bank. He told her how she could obtain his specimens. He made her promise that if he died and she wasn’t pregnant, that she would get herself artificially inseminated. He told her there should be enough for at least two tries. She got pregnant the second time.”

  I opened the container of red curry with shrimp. “Great choice. I love their curry.”

  “That’s why I got it, woman.” He took a gulp of beer. “So Bert Junior was right about the timing, though. She definitely got pregnant after he died. Does that still qualify under that crazy trust?”

  “Absolutely. The trust doesn’t specify any time period. Remember the language: ‘If my wife, Cyndi, shall give birth to a child in my bloodline…’ That’s all that’s required.”

  Benny laughed. “She could have really messed with Junior’s head. Hell, she could have waited a few years before getting a shot of the old fart’s jizz.”

  “You’re such a romantic. Actually, Cyndi said that Bert made her promise to do it right away. I’m sure he didn’t want her stuck in the middle of some freak show.”

  “Which she is anyway.”

  I sighed. “What a mess.”

  That, I would soon discover, was an understatement.

  Section 3

  “Empty barrels make the most noise.”

  —Yiddish proverb

  Chapter Eleven

  One explanation for the judge’s temperament was his most unfortunate combination of height (barely five feet) and name. It did seem a plausible explanation. After all, little Harry Ballsack must have suffered plenty of teasing on the middle school playground and in the high school locker room. But now, three decades later, perched high above the lawyers on his judicial bench, clad in a black robe, and clasping a gavel in his little hand, every day was payback time for the Honorable Judge Ballsack.

  He sneered down at the young lawyer.

  “Are you serious, Counsel?” he demanded in his high-pitched, nasal voice.

  The young lawyer looked down at his notes, frowned, and then looked back up at Judge Ballsack. “Yes, Your Honor. We are serious.”

  “Did you take torts in law school?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And you
passed?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Well, you might want to call that professor and ask for a tuition refund because you certainly flunked today.” He banged the gavel. “Motion denied! Next.”

  Down below, his courtroom clerk, a plump black woman named Josephine, ran her finger down the docket calendar and called out, “Knight versus Knight. Defendant’s motion to compel.”

  The three of us—me in the middle, Tom Sterling to my left, Norma Cross to my right—approached the podium. Judge Ballsack scowled at Tom, who was the judge’s physical opposite. The judge was short and Tom was tall. The judge was pudgy with a double chin and Tom was lanky with a lantern jaw. The judge was bald, had beady little eyes, a big nose, and a pencil-thin black mustache. Tom had thick silver hair, a matching goatee, and the facial structure of a cowpoke from an old Western movie. He was even wearing a bolo tie—a rare fashion accessory in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County.

  Still scowling at Tom, the judge said, “What do you want, Sterling?”

  Tom chuckled and raised his hands, palms facing the judge. “Your Honor, I’m just spectating today. Don’t have a dog in this fight.”

  I cleared my throat. “Rachel Gold, Your Honor, for the defendant. This is my motion.”

  The judge frowned at me and then glanced to my right. “Ms. Cross? Why are you here?”

  Norma gave him a friendly smile. “Against my will, Your Honor.”

  She took a step to the side of the podium, having dressed for the occasion and, apparently, for this judge, whose glare faded as his eyes moved down from her face. Her sweater top was cut low, her skirt was hemmed short, and her heels were high.

  “Ms. Cross is here,” I said, pausing until Ballsack shifted his gaze back to me, “because we have served her firm with a subpoena to produce my client’s file. Ms. Cross has failed to produce that file, and she has failed to respond to several written requests I sent her, each of which is attached to my motion as an exhibit. There are four such requests. Accordingly, we seek an order from the Court compelling her to produce that file.”