“You have every reason to be angry.”
“You bet I do.”
“But in your anger, you don’t want to hurt yourself,” I tell her.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve received a copy of the policy?”
“Yes.”
“And you know your name is on it as the beneficiary?”
“I do.”
“You’re also aware that there was a property settlement agreement at the time of the divorce?”
She looks at me but doesn’t respond. She knows this is the issue.
“I take it you’re represented by a lawyer in this matter?”
“Why should I have to tell you that?”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. If you are, represented by a lawyer I mean, that’s good. If so, I should be talking to him.”
“It’s a woman.” She says it in a tone that makes me think male lawyers are not to be trusted.
“If you’ll give me her name, I’ll take it up with her and she can communicate with you.”
“Her name is Susan Glendenin.”
“She works for the Petersen law firm downtown?”
“That’s right.”
“I know her.” A stroke of good luck. Susan Glendenin is a good lawyer; more important, she is a voice of reason in a bar increasingly peopled by lawyers who pride themselves on taking no prisoners and who operate on the maxim “screw reason, let’s go to war.”
“What’s important is to understand that this is a threshold legal issue, the question of who is to be paid under the insurance policy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the way it’s structured, the insurance company has to pay somebody. They don’t particularly care who it is, just as long as they’re out from under when it’s all over.”
“And?”
“There may be a way for both of you to win.”
“What was your name again?”
“Paul Madriani.” I reach into the breast pocket of my suit coat, find the small stash of business cards, pull one out, and hand it to her.
“Let me tell you, Mr. Madriani, so that you understand. I will take two million dollars and not a dime less,” she says. “You can go back to your client, that harlot, home wrecker,” she says, “and tell her that as far as I’m concerned she can go to hell. Fuck her, fuck you, and fuck the horse you rode in on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things I have to take care of.” She gets up out of the chair.
“I have one question,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“Do you mean it when you say you’ll only release your claim to the insurance policy in return for two million dollars?”
She looks at me through mean little slits, the anger of a lifetime welled up in her eyes, bitterness and betrayal. “You can bet your life on it,” she says.
CHAPTER TEN
This morning Dana is wearing a pair of silk pajamas, black and slinky, bare-footed, sitting up straight on the edge of a wingback chair in her living room, one leg curled under her, trying to explain how she found Nick’s copy of the insurance policy but forgot to call and tell me.
“I swear to you, Mr. Madriani. I got busy. It slipped my mind.”
“Call me Paul,” I tell her.
“All right. Paul. I found it after we talked. It was up in his safe, in the study.” Dana looks at me over a haggard smile, desperate to be believed, innocent, beseeching, sitting next to the fireplace.
“You do believe me?” She flashes her long lashes in my direction. The body language is good, the shiver in her voice authentic, so if I didn’t know her better, I might even buy this. She sent me on a goose chase to the law firm to get a copy of the policy when she already knew what was in it.
“Please believe me,” she says.
I stop looking at her. Instead, seated on the couch, I turn my attention to one of those kinetic toys that Nick had strewn around his office. This one is on the coffee table, the kind with five shiny steel spheres on strings, clicking against one another as they transfer energy through a cycle. I let her listen to this for a second or two before I ask: “How did you get the safe open?”
“I found the combination.”
“Where was it?”
“It was in one of the drawers. In Nick’s desk upstairs.”
“Maybe we should look and see what else is inside the safe. There could be other important documents.” I start to get up off the couch.
“No. That’s not necessary,” she says. “I’ve checked everything that was there. There’s nothing else.”
I look at her. She refuses to return my gaze. “You know, you’re pretty good. You’re not the best, but then you haven’t had a lot of practice. At least I hope you haven’t.”
“Practice at what?”
“Lying.”
“What do you mean?”
“You expect me to believe that Nick would go to all the trouble of locking his private papers in a safe and then leave the combination in his desk drawer where any after-school roustabout teen who broke into his house could find it? Maybe you were married to a different Nick Rush than the one I knew.” I start to get up off the couch like I am going to leave.
“All right.” Now the pleading tone is gone from her voice, replaced by an edge. Her posture sags in the chair, as she looks down, smoothing the soft wrinkles from the silk fabric on one thigh. “Fine. I had the insurance policy all the time.” Then in a softer, weaker voice, the kind she uses for feminine persuasion, she says, looking up at me, “But I didn’t know what to do. I saw her name on it and I panicked. I was desperate, broke. I had no one to turn to. You do understand? You don’t know what it’s like not having someone… Well you know. Someone to rely on.”
“Someone like Nick?” I say.
“Well, yes. He handled everything. Our finances, taxes, the investments. I had no idea. I thought we were secure. I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
“Then how do you know you’re broke?”
She takes a deep breath, sighs, looks away from me at a blank wall. “I, I had Nathan look at our finances. After Nick died.”
“Fittipaldi?”
She nods.
“It’s good to know you weren’t entirely alone,” I tell her.
She doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “I had to turn to someone. What did you expect me to do?”
“Why didn’t you turn over the insurance policy to Mr. Fittipaldi?”
“We talked about it. He didn’t know what to do either.”
“Ahh-uhh.”
“I figured you were a friend of Nick’s. I thought… I thought that since you’d known Nick before we were married, that perhaps…”
“You thought I’d go over to the firm, find out that your name wasn’t on the policy, that I might feel sorry for you, and that maybe I would go over and talk to Margaret Rush, is that it?”
