Writ of Execution Read online

  “The law. Sure,” she said. “Forget it.”

  “Why? Why haven’t you gone to the police?” Paul asked.

  “I tried that already, before I came here. Somehow, there’s never any evidence.”

  Paul started to ask another question, and Nina understood his curiosity, but they had already gone too far. She shook her head once, sharply, and he sat back in his chair.

  “Can’t you do anything to help me?” the girl said, turning back to Nina. “Tell me what to do! Is it hopeless? Do I have to just blow the money off?” She leaned back, as if exhausted with the effort of explaining.

  “I could put it in my trust account,” Nina said. “But I can’t just go in as your agent without you and keep you anonymous. It’s the IRS. They’ll insist on something from you. We could demand that your name not be provided to the press, but—”

  “Get real,” Paul interrupted.

  “What about my idea? Telling them I’m married? Giving them a name?” the girl said.

  “You’re saying, Kenny gets handed the check and he hands it over to me, right there at the casino. That would keep it safe and gain us time. But you’d still be lying about your name. It could void the jackpot. I’m sure that there will be some sort of rule providing that. They are just not going to let you get away with using a false name.”

  “Then I guess I can’t go back.”

  Kenny Leung’s alarm lifted him out of his slump. Paul looked exasperated.

  “Listen,” Nina said sharply to the girl. “Do you realize what you’re saying? You stand to lose a fortune simply by refusing to give your name. Give your name, take the money, hire lawyers and bodyguards, and live behind an electrified gate.”

  “He’ll find me within twenty-four hours. He’ll do worse than kill me.”

  Her chilling words ratcheted up the tension in the room. What could be worse than death? Nina asked herself. Was this person a sexual predator?

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Paul said, his voice crisp, professional. Nina had watched the way his body hardened before her eyes, tensing at the first whiff of violence. That was the trouble with both of them, Nina thought. They were always trying to fix everybody’s problems, even the impossible ones. Paul’s methods were very different from hers, though. She chased away that uncomfortable thought.

  The girl shook her head and closed her eyes. Against tears? When she opened them again, she looked dry-eyed and resolved. “It’s our only hope, pretending we’re married. Him getting the money and me getting it from him.”

  “No,” Nina said. “You’re not married and you can’t get away with pretending.” What had just occurred to her was too far out to say out loud, and certainly went beyond her charter as a legal adviser. Why, here they were smack in the middle of the land of easy marriage and divorce. . . . Just a few miles from an instant, prepackaged, lifetime commitment. “Pretending will just get you in trouble. Too bad you aren’t really married. That would make things easier.” She crossed her leg and examined her shoe, wondering who in the room would be first to reveal a mind as twisted as hers.

  A pause, while the words sank in. The girl picked up on it first. “What if—what if we don’t pretend. What if we actually got married?” She turned to face Kenny, who was shaking his head violently.

  “The normal world of love, marriage, and children is mine only in fantasy. There’s a church in the City of Gold, and a synagogue, and a mosque, and a Buddhist temple. Sanctuaries and celebrations everywhere . . . but not for me. I can’t marry you like this. I am not worthy. I can perpetrate a fraud, yes, certainly, I can die for you—would you like me to die for you? Just say the word—and my mother would be furious with me, how could I do it to her, Tan-Mo is never going to get married, I was supposed to carry on the family name . . .”

  They all stared at him. Was he still drunk? He went on in this vein for some time, spouting irrelevancies.

  “Well, that’s real useful,” said Paul. “But I am impressed that you’re turning down the money. As well you should.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Just not—not a real marriage. Use of my once-proud name, that’s what I signed up for—”

  “Got any more coffee around here?” the girl said, rising. Nina pointed toward the empty pot.

  The girl went into the next room and ground coffee, interrupting Kenny’s filibuster with the noise. “Look,” she said when she came back in. “Show some courage, Kenny. At least show some greed. I’m not paying you otherwise. I’ve decided. It’s our only chance. We could go right away. It’s only forty-five minutes to Reno.”

  “Are you proposing to me, Joya?” Kenny said, finally focusing. He stood up. “But your timing is so bad. I can’t get married now. I’m a dead man! And anyway, my mother would want to be there. . . .”

  “Not a real marriage,” the girl soothed him. “Just a formality, Kenny, a kind of fantasy. Like—like the City of Gold. Something beautiful but—temporary.”

  “Marry you right now? A virtual marriage?”

  “In name only, just until we get the money.” She lost patience. “You know, I’m offering to pay you extremely well. You haven’t earned anything yet, buddy.”

  Kenny folded his arms in front of him. “I don’t know. This is not as simple and direct as it first appeared. If it’s a sign, it should go down easy. Smoothly. It should interrupt the fatal flow and provide a convenient bend, not a lot of twists and turns.”

  “A million dollars,” the girl said.

  Kenny appeared to be computing something in his head. “It’s too neat. It’s very suspicious. It’s like a folktale, and you are the princess come to rescue me, but I don’t really believe—”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Paul interrupted. “Nina, how can we do this without him?”

  “No, no. I’ll do it. I always do it in the end. Lunge for that brass ring. Fall off the horse. I’ll do it.”

  He earned a brilliant smile. “I won’t let you back out.”

  “Now, listen here,” Paul said.

  The girl said, “Deal.”

  Kenny shuffled over to her and bent over her hand, planting a semisober, wet kiss. The Cary Grant effect he must have intended fell slightly short due to the pungency of his breath, which reached all the way to Nina several feet away.

  Paul gave a lopsided smile, the one that said, This is complete and total bullshit; what loony bin have I landed in?

  But Nina couldn’t resist. “Are you married now?” she asked the girl.

  “No.”

  Paul said. “Nina? Isn’t this illegal?”

  “Do I have this straight? Are you paying him to marry you?” she asked the girl.

  “You’re the lawyer. You tell me what to call it, if it’s illegal for him to marry me for the money. Isn’t there something called a prenuptial agreement?”

  “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that’s been done,” Paul said.

  Nina shook her head. “Kenny, what about you? Are you married?”

  “Never been married. I’ve been saving myself for Joya.” He raised his eyebrow to the girl. He reminded Nina of Mike Myers trying to be debonair, the smile that was a little too wide, the too-bright eyes.

  “Let me see your driver’s license.” Kenny reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet. He handed Nina his license. Nina passed it on to Paul. Kenneth Leung, aka Tan-Kwo Leung, street address in Mountain View, California. Born in 1972. Sixty-eight inches tall, one hundred eighty-four pounds. Must wear corrective lenses. The license was current. The photo had caught Leung with his eyes at half-mast.

  “I am not a crook,” Kenny said in a gruff voice, raising his hands and making V-signs with his fingers. He laughed. Nobody else did.

  “Could have fooled me,” Paul said. “What’s with the alternate name?”

  “I felt I needed an easier name for business,” he said. “A Caucasian one. It’s perfectly innocent and legal. Turns out I was wrong. Half the people I deal with speak Chinese or Japane
se.”

  Paul went into the front office and photocopied Kenny’s license, then handed it back.

  “Nina . . .” he said.

  “Just a minute, Paul. The good news is, marriage wouldn’t give Kenny any legal claim on the money, because the marriage took place after the jackpot.”

  “I just want my share,” Kenny offered.

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” Paul said. “It’s too much money.”

  “I’m not dishonest. She’s pulling me into this. I don’t have to live—I mean, do it.”

  “You don’t seem to be kicking and screaming,” Paul said, “which I seem to be the only one here to find surprising.” He pointed his eyes at Nina, then turned back to Kenny. “Marriage is not entirely a business decision, or haven’t any of you people thought about that? Holy matrimony ring a bell? And if that doesn’t give you pause, there’s the less morally questionable but vexing issue of logistics. License. Blood test. Ceremony.”

  Nina was probably the only one to appreciate the bafflement in Paul’s voice. He had tried marriage twice and failed at it both times. He clearly didn’t like what he took to be their cavalier approach to an old-fashioned institution.

  “This is not like picking up a ninety-nine-cent burger, you know,” he went on.

  “Speaking of which, have you got any snacks around?” Kenny said.

  “I think we have some Snickers bars from last Hallowe’en still in the freezer of the bar fridge in the conference room,” Nina said. Kenny got up and checked it out, finally pulling a candy bar out of the ice it was embedded in. He started pulling shreds of wrapper off, bit by bit, making a stack of trash on the table.

  Nina saw Paul’s mouth tighten.

  Tonight had been so frustrating for both of them. It was the first time they had been together as a couple in nearly a year, and along came these two young strangers, talking about getting married as if marriage were only a bizarre business deal. She and Paul had wobbled around with the marriage idea for ages, right up until she had married another man. She didn’t blame Paul for his mood, which had to be due at least in part to their own rocky history.

  But there was an irresistible simplicity to the notion. “They could go to Reno and do it in a couple of hours,” she said, wandering into the murky moral terrain, just following the logic of the thing, having to admire the legal possibilities. “The registry’s open twenty-four hours a day and so are the wedding chapels in the big casinos. Your casino could wait a few hours. We could think up some excuse. Of course, this is all theory.”

  Kenny and the girl stood beside each other without touching. Kenny looked over at the girl, offering a chopper-filled grin. Chocolate smears around his mouth detracted from the smile. The girl, having struck her deal, put her hands in her pockets and ignored his gaze.

  “It’s a terrible idea,” Paul said, his eyes stony. “Are you all nuts?”

  But the girl interrupted the sermon he was gearing up to deliver. “Let’s do it,” she said. “But this is just business, not a personal relationship. That has to be crystal clear.”

  Kenny winced as he absorbed that, and Nina thought, So he is interested in this young lady. She factored in that complication.

  She finished off the last of her latte, leaving enough solid precipitate at the bottom to tell a fortune. Staring at it, knowing that it was late at night and that she should think twice, she said, “This idea has aspects that might be called fraudulent by unfriendly parties. It’s a voidable marriage, because you don’t intend to live together as husband and wife. But it might get the check into our possession and we could straighten it out later and make sure the IRS got its due, and no one could claim any damages, so I don’t see who would bother to complain.”

  “Possession,” Kenny said. “Always get possession.”

  “Name changes are actually quite simple. You change your name by starting to use another name. No formalities are required. The sole requirements that I know of are that you must be older than eighteen and that you don’t do it to defraud anyone. You could change your name without Kenny—wait”—Nina raised her hand to prevent Kenny from interrupting—“but then you would still have the problem of having no ID to show these people. And even if you married Kenny and flashed his driver’s license at the casino, they may surprise you and still not pay out the money until they see your own ID.”

  “I’ll do it if he will,” the girl repeated.

  “With pleasure,” Kenny said.

  “Just a minute, pal,” Paul said.

  Leung folded his arms, a vision of obstinacy. He faced Paul, the supercilious look fading and his bleary eyes narrowed.

  “What’s your story?” Paul went on. “Let’s hear it now rather than later, when it might come as a rude shock.”

  “Anyone would do it for that kind of money.”

  “Maybe so. But you make me nervous. Packing a Glock, maybe that has something to do with it. Humor me.”

  “The money is for my parents. Payback on a loan. Business reverses.”

  Paul seemed to understand that—Nina knew he supported his parents in San Francisco—but the dubious look in his eye remained.

  Leung glanced toward the outer office where the gun was, and Nina thought, Holy smokes, was he thinking of using that thing on himself?

  “I’m also doing it for Joya,” Leung went on, as if that ought to clear the matter up.

  Paul turned to the girl. “Is that your name?”

  She shook her head.

  “Joya is all that’s left of beauty and love in this world,” Leung said with a lachrymose catch to his voice.

  “Oh, he’ll make a fine husband,” Paul told the girl. “You’re both chock full of secrets. The two of you belong together. Listen. Go back to Prize’s and tell them who you are. These kinds of complications, you never know where they may end.”

  “He’s right,” Nina said to the girl. “I know you’re afraid right now. But I believe, no matter what the problem is, that Paul and I could protect you.”

  “No. I can’t take a chance. I’m sorry.”

  “Paul, would you take Kenny into the outer office for a minute?” Nina asked.

  Paul got up and the two men went out, shutting the door. The girl squeezed her eyes shut again, as if she were experiencing severe emotional pain.

  The almost playful philosophical exercise had suddenly strayed into the realm of substantial possibility and Nina felt the need to backtrack. It was one thing to answer questions and offer legal information, but how could she, in good conscience, encourage such dealings? “I’m concerned and uneasy about this marriage idea,” Nina said as soon as the door closed. “It made sense to consider marriage as an option among other options, but Paul’s right. It could have unpleasant, unpredictable consequences.”

  Such as Kenny Leung deciding to make trouble about a divorce or pushing for more money at a later date. Such as the casino people finding out and withholding the jackpot indefinitely. Such as Kenny really being married to someone else, or even this girl really being married to someone else. “Let’s shelve this idea. You don’t know this young man. You could find yourself in bigger trouble than you are already in.”

  “Isn’t it better than just lying and saying we’re married?”

  Nina considered her answer. “Maybe. It’s technically better. If those are the only choices you have. But we can think some more about this. It’s shady.”

  “I’m trying to save my life! It’s not going to hurt anyone. This is my only chance. I’m going to do it, and I really need you. Will you help me? Will you meet me at Prize’s afterwards to get the check so that turkey in the outside office can’t just walk off with my money?”

  Nina heaved a sigh. She thought about it. Shady, but the intent wasn’t fraudulent. She could fix the problem in a few days, when the girl calmed down. Then she thought about logistics. Bob, home in bed, all alone. She’d have to draft up some sort of agreement to protect the money from Kenny and it would be three or
four o’clock in the morning before Kenny and the girl could get back from Reno.

  She could roust her brother, Matt, and ask him to go get Bob. She looked at her watch. It was almost one A.M. She made her mind veer away from what she and Paul could have been doing.

  “I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars out of the check for your help tonight,” the girl said.

  “Don’t throw away money you don’t have yet,” Nina said. “I charge two hundred an hour plus expenses and”— she rummaged in the top desk drawer for a retainer agreement—“and I’ll ask for a five-thousand-dollar retainer when and if the check clears, because part of this is that I’m going to try to help you with the other problem you have. And I’ll charge you for travel time tonight. Is that fair?”

  “More than fair. I may not be able to pay you all that if—if this is all for nothing.”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Thank you. Thank God Sandy knew you. What about—the blond man out there? The bodyguard?”

  “Paul van Wagoner’s my investigator. You hire me, you get him too.”

  Nina filled out the top portion of the retainer agreement and passed it on to the girl. She read it and signed it. “I’ll give you a copy at Prize’s,” Nina said. “And now I want your name. I can’t read this signature.”

  “But . . .”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Nina said. “It’s privileged now, because we are alone and you’re my client. But I have to know who my clients are. Who are you?”

  “No one? Because if you do—it won’t just be me . . .”

  “I promise.”

  “My name is Jessie. Jessie Potter.” She whispered it.

  Nina had half expected the name to be infamous. My name is Lizzie Borden, nice to meet ya. “Okay, Jessie Potter. Nice to meet you. Now, how do I reach you?”

  “Sandy. I don’t know my aunt’s number.”

  “Is she listed?”

  “Sandy will be able to reach me.”

  “You’re a member of the Washoe tribe?” Nina said then, because Sandy was a Washoe, a small tribe of Native Americans based around Tahoe and Northern Nevada.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a family member you could call for advice about this? Your aunt?”