surveyed and declared perfect for another night of 'camping out.'
'We'll see,' Wes said. There were three small bedrooms on the main level, and he planned to find a comfortable bed. Serious sleep was the goal for the weekend. Sleep and time with the kids.
As promised, the fishing gear was in a storage room under the porch. The boat was winched at the end of the pier, and the children watched with anticipation as Wes lowered it into the water. Mary Grace fiddled with the life jackets and made sure both kids were properly secured. An hour after they arrived, she was tucked away comfortably under a quilt in a lounge chair on the porch, book in hand, watching the rest of her family inch across the blue horizon of Lake Garland, three small silhouettes in search of bream and crappie.
It was mid-November, and red and yellow leaves were falling, twisting in the breeze, and covering the cabin, the pier, and the water around it. There were no sounds.
The small boat motor was too far away. The wind was too soft. The birds and wildlife were elsewhere for the moment. Perfect stillness, a rare event in any life but one that she especially treasured now. She closed the book, closed her eyes, and tried to think of something unrelated to the past few months.
Where would they be in five years? She concentrated on the future because the past was thoroughly consumed by the Baker case. They would certainly be in a house, though never again would they hock their future with a fat mortgage on a showy little castle in the suburbs. She wanted a home, nothing more.
She no longer cared about imported cars and an expensive office and all the other toys that once seemed so important. She wanted to be a mother to her children, and she wanted a home to raise them in.
Family and assets aside, she wanted more lawyers. Their firm would be larger and full of smart and talented lawyers who did nothing but pursue the creators of toxic dumps and bad drugs and defective products. One day Payton amp; Payton would be known not for the cases it won but for the crooks it hauled into court for judgment.
She was forty-one years old, and she was tired. But the fatigue would pass. The old dreams of full-time motherhood and a cushy retirement were forever forgotten. Krane Chemical had converted her into a radical and a crusader. After the last four months, she would never be the same.
Enough. Her eyes were wide open.
Every thought took her back to the case, to Jeannette Baker, the trial, Krane Chemical.
She would not spend this quiet and lovely weekend dwelling on such matters. She opened her book and started to read.
For dinner, they roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over a stone pit near the water, then sat on the pier in the darkness and watched the stars. The air was clear and cool, and they huddled together under a quilt. A distant light flickered on the horizon, and after some discussion it was agreed upon that it was just a boat.
'Dad, tell us a story,' Mack said. He was squeezed between his sister and his mother.
'What kind of story?'
'A ghost story. A scary one.'
His first thought was about the dogs of Bowmore. For years a pack of stray dogs had roamed the outskirts of the town. Often, in the dead of night, they shrieked and yelped and made more noise than a pack of coyotes.
Legend held that the dogs were rabid and had been driven crazy because they drank the water.
But he'd had enough of Bowmore. He remembered one about a ghost who walked on water in the night, looking for his beloved wife, who'd drowned. He began to tell it, and the children squeezed closer to their parents.
Chapter 8
A uniformed guard opened the gates to the mansion, then nodded smartly to the driver as the long black Mercedes rushed by, in a hurry as always. Mr. Carl Trudeau had the rear seat, alone, already lost in the morning's papers. It was 7:30 a.m., too early for golf or tennis and too early for Saturday morning traffic in Palm Beach.
Within minutes, the car was on Interstate 95, racing south.
Carl ignored the market reports. Thank God the week was finally over. Krane closed at $19.50 the day before and showed no signs of finding a permanent floor. Though he would be forever known as one of the very few men who'd lost a billion dollars in a day, he was already plotting his next legend. Give him a year and he'd have his billion back. In two years, he'd double all of it.
Forty minutes later he was in Boca Raton, crossing the waterway, headed for the clusters of high-rise condos and hotels packed along the beach. The office building was a shiny glass cylinder ten floors tall with a gate and a guard and not one word posted on a sign of any type. The Mercedes was waved through and stopped under a portico.
A stern-faced young man in a black suit opened the rear door and said, 'Good morning, Mr. Trudeau.'
'Good morning,' Carl said, climbing out.
'This way, sir.'
According to Carl's hasty research, the firm of Troy-Hogan worked very hard at not being seen. It had no Web site, brochure, advertisements, listed phone number, or anything else that might attract clients. It was not a law firm, because it was not registered with the State of Florida, or any other state for that matter. It had no registered lobbyists. It was a corporation, not a limited partnership or some other variety of association. It was unclear where the name originated because there was no record of anyone named Troy or Hogan. The firm was known to provide marketing and consulting services, but there was no clue as to the nature of this business.
It was domiciled in Bermuda and had been registered in Florida for eight years. Its domestic agent was a law firm in Miami. It was privately owned, and no one knew who owned it.
The less Carl learned about the firm, the more he admired it.
The principal was one Barry Rinehart, and here the trail grew somewhat warmer. According to friends and contacts in Washington, Rinehart had passed through D.C. twenty years earlier without leaving a fingerprint. He had worked for a congressman, the Pentagon, and a couple of midsized lobbying outfits-the typical resume of a million others.
He left town for no apparent reason in 1990 and surfaced in Minnesota, where he ran the successful campaign of a political unknown who got elected to Congress. Then he went to Oregon, where he worked his magic in a Senate race. As his reputation began to rise, he abruptly quit doing campaigns and disappeared altogether. End of trail.
Rinehart was forty-eight years old, married and divorced twice, no children, no criminal record, no professional associations, no civic clubs. He had a degree in political science from the University of Maryland and a law degree from the University of Nevada.
No one seemed to know what he was doing now, but he was certainly doing it well.
His suite on the top floor of the cylinder was beautifully decorated with minimalist contemporary art and furniture. Carl, who spared no expense with his own office, was impressed.
Barry was waiting at the door of his office. The two shook hands and exchanged the usual pleasantries as they took in the details of the other's suit, shirt, tie, shoes.
Nothing off-the-rack. No detail left undone, even though it was a Saturday morning in south Florida. Impressions were crucial, especially to Barry, who was thrilled at the prospect of snaring a new and substantial client.
Carl had half-expected a slick car salesman with a bad suit, but he was pleasantly surprised. Mr. Rinehart was dignified, soft-spoken, well-groomed, and very much at ease in the presence of such a powerful man. He was certainly not an equal, but he seemed to be comfortable with this.
A secretary asked about coffee as they stepped inside and met the ocean. From the tenth floor, beachside, the Atlantic stretched forever. Carl, who gazed at the Hudson River several times a day, was envious. 'Beautiful,' he said, staring from the row of ten-foot glass windows.
'Not a bad place to work,' Barry said.
They settled into beige leather chairs as the coffee arrived. The secretary closed the door behind her, giving the place a nice secure feel.
