Paydirt

21

Monday, January 30-Miami

Why not ask your ex-father-in-law for the money?" Angelica Suarez asked. Bobby Gallagher jerked the wheel and nearly drove the limo off the bridge and into the Miami River. "You're kidding, right? I mean, after all I've told you, you can't be serious."

"Sure I am." Angelica was Bobby's client, and he was hers. Which is to say she was Bobby's limo customer and was also his divorce lawyer. "I'll bet he'd give you the money."

"He hates my guts. Just yesterday, he tried to give me pneumonia."

" Ay, Dios Mio! Bobby, where are your lawyerly instincts. Liking you or hating you is irrelevant. Martin Kingsley would probably want to pay you off as part of a global settlement."

The Lincoln rattled across the bridge, headed into Little Havana. Bobby pulled over to the curb where a man in a filthy white guayaberra tried to sell him coco frio, an ice-cold coconut out of a cooler. For two bucks, he'd clip one end with a machete and jam a straw inside.

Bobby was irritated and tense, his nerves tight as baling twine. He should be spending the day either trying to scrape up a million bucks or packing his bags for Bora Bora. Jeez, how much farther could he fall?

Just how far was it from LaBarca's penthouse balcony to the pool deck below?

Bobby wondered whether he should spend the day trying to collect the money, which was impossible, or fabricating excuses, which were implausible? As it turned out, he couldn't do either one. The early phone call from Angelica Suarez reminded him that he was due in court. Now, after the hearing, his lawyer's suggestion of a "global settlement" with Kingsley baffled him. The court appearance was only round one in Christine's motion to send Scott to boarding school in Vermont. No decision yet, with more hearings to come. The notion that Scott could be so far away terrified Bobby.

Stopped at the curb, Bobby slipped the gear shift into park, then turned around and faced Angelica, who leaned back with her legs crossed, sipping a Perrier in the old limo's spacious but shabby passenger compartment. She gave Bobby the impression that she wouldn't mind being waited on for the indefinite future.

"What are you saying, Angie? Settle what? I'm not in litigation with Kingsley."

"Really? Then what just happened no more than fifteen minutes ago when the Honorable Seymour Gerstein gave you a week to show cause why he shouldn't honor a Texas order compelling Scott to pack his bags for Berkshire Prep for the start of second semester?"

"Just like I told the judge, Scott should be with his parents. If Chrissy wants him one semester in Dallas, that's fine because I'll get him one semester here. But to ship the kid off to New England for nine months is cruel and unusual punishment."

"For you or for him?"

"For both of us! Jeez, Angie, you don't have any kids, so you can't relate."

"That condition can be remedied," she said, her tone flirtatious.

He chose to let that comment drift on the tide without netting it. "Like I also told the judge, Scott's my life."

Angelica was silent a moment, as if testing the weight of her words before dropping them. "Bobby, please don't take this the wrong way, but maybe it's time you got a different life."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're thinking of Scott in egocentric terms. It's your loss if he goes off to this fancy prep school. Sure, you'd miss him, but maybe the prep school is the best thing for him."

"Jeez, I can't believe you said that. Even Chrissy was reluctant at first about boarding school."

"Which means her father's fingerprints are all over the plan."

"Maybe so, but the case is still between Chrissy and me."

"No, it's not. And neither is the Bar proceeding. You may have slept with Christine, but you were married to her father. He's the one who wants to skin your hide."

"Even if you're right, I still don't get it. How do I settle anything by asking for a seven-figure loan? What do I have to give?"

She didn't answer, and he thought about it a moment. A Metro bus wheezed to a stop next to them, its brakes squealing, black noxious exhaust rolling over the limo. Another street peddler appeared alongside, this one hawking roses with a life expectancy equal to your drive-time home. Bobby tried to focus on his lawyer's advice and his unanswered question.

"What do I have to give?" Only one thing. No, she couldn't mean that!

Angelica Suarez was biting her full lower lip when Bobby glared at her in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were a dark brown so deep as to almost be black. Her skin was burnished bronze from weekends on the boat in Biscayne Bay. Her black hair was pulled straight back and held with a silver barrette. He had seen that hair loosened and flowing over her bare shoulders. It had been an evening of paella and too many mojitos, and they had ended up in bed. In the morning, he had awakened, dreaming of Christine.

"Counselor, you're not telling me to give up Scott."

"You wouldn't be giving him up. You'd be setting new primary custody provisions and visitation guidelines."

"That's lawyer double talk. You mean Chrissy would have him full time, except she'd send him off to school in New England, and I'd get him on alternate holidays."

"Maybe it's for the best."

"Bullshit!"

He started up the limo and pulled into traffic. Her office was three blocks away.

"I'm just asking you to consider it," she said. "Kingsley can use his connections to get the Texas Bar to reinstate you. If that happened, Florida would follow suit. You'd have options you don't have now."

"I wouldn't have Scott!"

"Face facts, Bobby. You won't have him anyway."

Each word, spoken ever so softly, exploded like a grenade. "What are you saying, that we're going to lose?"

"Would you rather I kept the truth from you? We're losing big time. You're in violation of a direct court order from Texas. You've been disbarred. Unless the complaining party, who happens to be your ex-father-in-law, pulls some strings to get you reinstated, it's a lost cause. If you were paying me, I'd say you're wasting your money."

The anger smoldered inside Bobby. He was furious at all of them, at Christine for divorcing him, at Martin Kingsley for impoverishing him, at his own lawyer for forsaking him.

"We're here," Bobby said, double parking on General Maximo Gomez Boulevard, just outside Angelica's office, which occupied the ground floor of a two-story building that also housed a palm reader, a medico clinica, and a farmacia. He got out and went around to the back, opening the door and avoiding her gaze as if he were the hired help.

"Bobby. I wish it were different. I wish I could do something for you." She put her hand over his, but still, he refused to meet her eyes. "Jesus, I even wish you didn't still love your ex-wife, but that's the way it is. Call me when you have a chance to think it over."

But he'd already thought it over. He used the old strategy of putting himself in his adversary's shoes. What would Martin Kingsley do if the situation were reversed? What had he said yesterday in Green Bay?

"Sometimes a man has to throw into double coverage."

The old bastard was right. Never give up, regardless of the odds. Bobby would battle to the end, with or without Angelica's help. He'd try the case himself if he had to, appeal if he lost, and appeal again after that. He'd file every motion known to the legal system and a few he'd make up. The thoughts of fighting the good fight seemed to invigorate him.

Five minutes after dropping Angelica off at her office, Bobby was driving east on Coral Way when the cellular rang. Now what? What could possibly go wrong today that already hasn't?

"Be at my apartment tonight," LaBarca said. "Seven o'clock,"

"With the money?"

"No, with a bouquet of roses. Of course with the money, dickwad!"