friend and his partner. From that unhappy vantage I have looked into a soul as charred and blackened with grief as the fires of hell could themselves arrange. And now I must remind you that it is only your client, your client alone, who stands before the world as the author of this unspeakable tragedy.”
He paused again, allowing his turn at cornpone theatrics to have its effect-looking for an eye or two to roll.
“And I must also tell you in total candor that it’s gonna take a lot more money than you or the little pricks you work for have even thought about to begin to dissipate Leonard Martin’s sadness and put Carter Lawrence on the road to blessed recovery.”
“You know, $1.2 million dollars is a large amount of money, Mr. Stevenson.” The Boston lawyer, to Nick’s practiced ear, spoke uneasily. Nick watched his eyes, thinking that his gently flickering pupils signaled discomfort. “We’re not talking chump change here,” he said.
Nicholas Stevenson leaned back in his swivel armchair, clasping his hands behind his head. “Actually, $1.2 million dollars is less than the advance on an HBO movie,” he said. “It’s far, far less than what could be in the works from someone like Steven Spielberg or that fella Oliver Stone, about whom I do have my doubts in the ordinary context of things. I urge you to remember that Mr. Leonard Martin, and Mr. Carter Lawrence too, have suffered a greater loss than most any other survivor of this. Do you know what? I will tell you what. This does all sound like a movie. In the interest of a speedy and appropriate solution, we have kept the whole horrid business off the television, away from the press. Lord, everybody wants to talk. We’ve got newspapers from all over the United States, Europe, Japan, and all points east and west on our neck.
“We’ve got news magazines and TV programs- 60 Minutes and 20/20 -and all those folks at HBO who would make a movie out of God knows what if they had a way to, because they have no sense of shame in pursuing the almighty dollar-and, of course, the book publishers too. They call here all day long. Shall I get Ms. Betty Lee Washington in here to tell you how many calls she gets in a single day? How many agents and hangers-on would exploit my clients’ grief? Shall I call Ms. Betty in here this very minute?”
He paused again, now leaning forward, glaring at each by turn; focusing last on the junior partner’s light, uncertain eyes.
“Why, I could take a lunchtime break any day of the week and drive right down the highway here to visit with Mr. Larry King, or Mr. Ted Turner, as far as that goes. Or would you prefer Geraldo Rivera? And should my clients go public, your assumptions about eager, greedy lawyers might be a self-fulfilling nightmare. Would it please the misbegotten corporate criminals who pay for the gas in your Mercedes to see my clients sitting next to Oprah? I beg you now to think carefully; what is it you and your clients really want.”
“What exactly did you have in mind?” That came with a cough from the senior partner, a barrel-chested older man with a deep bass voice at the far end of the table-who’d been silent after initial words of condolence.
Agreements were signed the next morning. Six million dollars was wired into an account established for Leonard Martin, and the same was done for Carter Lawrence. Stevenson, Daniels, Martin took no fees.
None of it meant anything to Leonard. His parents had passed years ago. His sister was little more than a telephone call on holidays. His unspoken contract with Harvey was broken. They commiserated often, but that took more out of Leonard than he could give. Nicholas had done what he could. He remained a rock and offered himself for whatever service he might perform. But he faded into the background after settling the case-not because he wanted to, but only because it happened.
Leonard avoided his many other friends, and none of them seemed to mind. He and they knew that he carried the plague of grief. Only Carter Lawrence meant anything to him now.
Carter had youth on his side, and a large, supportive family. His life was not over, they told him, not by a long shot. But Carter dreaded the future, and he fled from it to the Martin house. The two of them sat together for scores of hours watching ballgames and movies in foreign languages they didn’t understand. Like Leonard, Carter stopped working regularly. He had very little appetite. He watched his father-in-law eat heavily, day and night, and drink. He watched him let himself go, stop shaving and bathing regularly. Carter told his mother he felt like the walking dead, and only Leonard Martin could walk by his side. He did not want to kill himself, and often wondered why. He took it for granted that Leonard also fought the demon, and Carter wondered which of them would prevail.
Boston
Most members will tell you that the sixth hole on the west course at Holcomb Woods County Club outside Boston is tougher than it looks. The green is only 387 yards from the members’ tees, but the hole runs straight uphill into the prevailing wind to a severely elevated plateau made all the more treacherous by a downright sadistic design that slopes the green sharply from back to front. Two bunkers bracket the entrance. You cannot hold back on your tee shot. No matter how well you hit your drive it’s a rare second shot that doesn’t call for a long iron, sometimes even a fairway wood to get you up that hill, over the traps, and safely home.
If you hit the front of the green your ball may roll whence it came, down and off the putting surface. Overshoot the green and you’ll probably wind up out-of-bounds, on the wrong side of a low fence that marks the western edge of the club’s property. Your ball will lose itself in the dense, fifteen-foot deep thicket of old oaks that separate the fence from a narrow outside road curving gently away from the course at just that point.
Christopher Hopman, Chairman of the Board of Alliance Inc., inhaled the sharp, early morning fragrance, bent from the waist, and pushed his wooden tee into soft grass still wet with miniature worlds of dew. On its tiny platform he placed a brand new Titlest ProVI high compression ball. He’d been playing golf forty years and still felt the adrenaline whenever he opened a sleeve of new golf balls to put one in play. The son of a New England Catholic banker, Hopman proudly typified the upper reaches of American management. After a parochial school and undergraduate education he went to Wharton for his MBA and continued on at the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania. He was nearly twenty-eight before taking his first real job. His business career was blessed by swift, untroubled advances.
Four years before, he’d replaced the CEO who brought him into the company a few years earlier. He promptly turned a medium-sized, cash-rich manufacturing outfit into a voracious, often hostile buyer of companies. He hunted in many fields, from textiles to auto parts, hard-money lending to publishing, processed foods to minor professional sports, even timber and windmills. And he succeeded dramatically most of the time. A childless widower, Christopher Hopman worked long hours day after day, for months on end. When he did relax it was with a new friend in a Ritz Carlton suite, or an old friend on the golf course.
He once stood six-four and played college hoops with his shoulders and elbows. At fifty-seven, he prided himself on being able to see his dick without bending forward. Hopman had his clothes custom made and did not check the prices. Today he wore dark gray slacks with a red pullover. His four-hundred-dollar golf shoes matched the sweater. He looked and felt impressive.
Hovering over his golf ball he dug both feet into the ground, swaying from his hips, moving his lower body side to side for maximum traction. His fingers gripped the Calloway Big Bertha driver. Its oversized titanium head barely touched the close-cut grass behind the ball. He breathed deeply through his nose to clear his mind of all thoughts. He glanced toward the distant green. His teeth touched as he centered his energy on the swing. “Smooooth,” he whispered to himself. His hands and arms took the club back in an easy motion. His shoulders turned to shift weight to his right side. He kept his left arm as straight as possible, locking the club at its zenith, pointing straight ahead nearly perpendicular to the ground.
At that instant his body jerked backward and both feet left the ground. He had, in fact, been cut almost in half at the waist. Bloody pieces splattered his playing partners, who were behind him and off to the side. Two froze. One sprinted. Later, none could recall seeing anything or hearing anything unusual. Perhaps, one told the police, there might have been a popping sound, like the noise of a beer can being squashed far away.
Christopher Hopman didn’t hear that sound or feel the bullet that entered the left side of his body to explode his upper chest and most of his back. He died instantly, torso flung backward and sideways, as if a very large, strong person had smacked him with two hands at once, on both shoulders. His lower body seemed to have died a death of its own, the pelvis and legs impossibly twisted, one foot turned into the ground, the other toward the fairway. Hopman’s ball still rested on its tee, now impertinently bright in a darkening scarlet sea. Moments later,
