Fresh Disasters

23

Stone arrived at Bernie Finger’s office fifteen minutes late, just to annoy him. As he waited for the receptionist to announce him he looked around Finger’s waiting room. Everything was tasteful but with an extra coat of gloss, which pretty much described Bernard Finger, Esquire, Stone thought.

A shapely young woman materialized before him. “Mr. Barrington? Will you please come with me?”

Stone resisted the riposte and, with pleasure, followed the young woman. He was led to a large conference room, where Bernie Finger and a younger man awaited. The huge table was completely bare.

“Morning, Stone,” Finger said, as if they were just meeting for coffee. “Would you like something? Coffee? Tea?”

“Thanks, no; I’ve already had coffee this morning.” He set his briefcase on the table.

“Allow me to introduce my colleague, Samuel Teich,” Finger said, waving a hand at the man next to him.

The table was too wide for Stone to reach across and shake hands, so he just waved. “Hi, there.”

“Sam is one of our bright young men around here,” Finger said, “and, following your advice from last evening, he’s going to represent me.”

Stone regarded Sam Teich for a moment. He was on the small side, with thick, black, close-cropped hair and dark eyes under heavy eyebrows. Stone thought he could pass for either an Arab terrorist or a Mossad agent. He didn’t doubt that young Mr. Teich was bright, perhaps even brighter than advertised, and he was happy that Finger had come so well armed.

“All right, Mr. Barrington,” Teich said, “let’s get to it. What does Mrs. Finger want?”

“It’s very simple, Mr. Teich,” Stone replied evenly. “She wants the Fifth Avenue apartment and the house in the Hamptons. Bernie can have Park Avenue and Telluride. She also wants the six and a half million dollars from the sale of her company, plus interest at eight percent a year, and half of the rest of Bernie’s assets. Oh, and all her legal costs.”

Sam Teich permitted himself a tiny smile. “Oh, and is that all?”

Finger spoke up. “Not half my blood?”

Teich quieted his client with a raised hand. “Mr. Barrington, unless you can make a reasonable proposal, I’m afraid we’re going to have to see you in court, and then Mrs. Finger will have to see her personal life laid bare. I don’t expect she’s told you about her personal life, has she?”

“Mr. Teich…”

“Please…call me Sam.”

“Sam. My dear Sam. I think it might be helpful if I run down our court case for you, just to give you some idea of what you’ll be facing. We have a woman who gave up her career to marry Bernie and sold her business far too cheaply on Bernie’s advice, just to make him happy; we have a seven-year marriage, dare I say it?-the best years of Bernice’s life?-with a man who took her money, then committed flagrant adultery for years; a man who actually bought an expensive penthouse for his current paramour, though the deed remains in his name; a man whose net worth has appreciated from four million dollars to thirty-eight million dollars during the marriage, and that figure does not take into account the undervaluing of his assets on his financial statement or the large sum in his Cayman bank account-an account, incidentally, unknown to the Internal Revenue Service-on which no taxes have been paid. Finally, Mrs. Finger has had to endure the shame and humiliation of seeing her husband’s nude photographs with his lover in a gossip column, seen by everyone she knows, something every woman on the jury-and it will be a jury trial-will find disgusting in the extreme.”

“Are you finished?” Finger asked.

“No, Bernie, not quite. I should tell you that everything I have just mentioned can be substantiated with your own files, to which Bernice has legal and proper access, and of which she has availed herself.” Stone opened his briefcase and slid a handful of file folders across the table. “Of course, if we go to trial, there’s just no telling what my investigators will come up with when they start pawing through your law firm’s files and, of course, your personal life. I don’t think that will play very well with your firm’s clients, Bernie, particularly with those clients on the criminal side of your practice, when they start reading their names in the newspapers.” Stone snapped shut his briefcase. “And you and I both know that any court is very likely to give Bernice half of everything, even without Bernie’s outrageous adulterous behavior.” He stood up. “I think that about does it for now, Sam. Have a chat with your client and get back to me.” He turned and began walking toward the conference room door.

“Just a moment,” Teich said.

Stone turned and looked at him.

“Would you mind waiting outside for a few minutes while I confer with my client?”

Stone noticed that Finger had turned a peculiar shade of red. “Not at all, Sam. Take your time.” He walked outside, took a seat in the waiting room, picked up a copy of the Times, turned to the Arts section and started working on the crossword puzzle. He was a little more than halfway through when the conference room door opened and Sam Teich walked toward him, a sheet of paper in his hand. Stone stood to meet him.

Teich handed him the paper, on which there was a handwritten list. “Is this everything you asked for?”

Stone read the list carefully. “Everything except one hundred percent of Mrs. Finger’s legal costs,” he said.

“And what do you estimate those will be?”

“Thirty percent of her settlement.”

A tiny grimace of pain crossed Teich’s face. “She signed a contingency agreement? How did you get her to do that?”

“It was her expressed wish, with no suggestion from me.”

“We’ll give you everything on the list and ten percent. It’s not as though you’ll have put in a lot of hours.”

“Fifteen percent, if we have a signed agreement before the end of the business day.”

Teich sighed. “Done. Send me your draft.”

“It won’t be a draft,” Stone said, “it’ll be final, and it will include a provision for hidden assets that may be uncovered at some later date.”

“Bernie will sign an agreement for the real estate and half of the assets contained in the file you showed us,” Teich said.

“And half what’s in the Caymans account. I’ll want to see a bank statement.”

“It’s not the kind of account that produces a monthly statement, and for legal reasons, Bernie does not want any document to exist that mentions a balance. We’ll add a million dollars to the settlement to cover the Caymans account and any assets not mentioned in the files.”

“Oh, then there are unnamed assets?”

“All right, two million.”

“Five million.”

“Three million, and no more.”

“Bernie signs the agreement first.”

“All right. We have an agreement.” Teich offered his hand.

Stone shook it. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Sam; you gave Bernie good advice.”

“I know,” Teich said, then he turned and walked back into the conference room.

Stone left the law firm in a rosy daze of elation. He forced himself to breathe normally as he hailed a cab and went back to his own office.

“So?” Joan said, as he walked into the office.

“Come in and bring your pad,” Stone said. “I want to get this thing wrapped up today.”

He called Bernice Finger and gave her the news.

“He agreed to everything?” she asked incredulously.

“Everything, plus your legal costs. I cut my contingency from thirty to fifteen percent.”

“If he agreed so quickly, he must be hiding a lot of money,” she said. “We should ask for more.”

“I got you three million to cover any hidden assets.”

“Wow!” she said softly.

“It’s a good deal, Bernice, and without the pain of a trial. I’ll have it ready for your signature by the end of the day.”

“I’ll sign it,” she said.

Stone hung up with his heart pounding.

Joan came into the office. “What did you get for her?”

“The earth, sun and moon,” Stone said, hardly able to believe it himself. Bernie’s net worth was going to run to at least forty million dollars, and he was going to get fifteen percent of half of it. That was…he did the arithmetic…good God, three million dollars! Stone’s mind spun out of control; he started thinking about one of those new, very light jet airplanes.