Foreclosure: A Novel Read online

  “Hi, Alton,” David said.

  She turned to Alton Holloway, towering in the doorway. “Happy holidays, Mr. Holloway.” She glanced back at David, mouthed a quick good-bye, and ducked out of the room, leaving Alton and his hulking frame in the doorway. At six foot four, Alton was built like a buff professional golfer, the buffness being a relatively recent attribute. Rumor had it that following a drunken outing on the links, Alton admitted to a few of the partners that he was so impressed with the biceps of NFL referee Ed Hochuli, he had begun doing chin-ups every morning. Rumor also had it he’d worked his way up to twenty chins a day.

  “I wanted to follow up on our meeting today,” Alton said too matter-of-factly. He paused and listened to the blues blaring from David’s CD player. David realized it was Johnny Copeland joining Stevie Ray for the solo in “Cold Shot.” He leaned over and turned the volume up a notch. Alton paid no attention. “What you take away from today should be positive, David, very positive. We fully expect to be naming you partner this time next year.” Alton paused. David knew the ball was in his court now. But the guitar sounded so damn good. Alton continued. “And I want to reassure you that what Mackenzie and I said today was sincere. We’re not going to leave you to this alone. In fact, we already have a few pitches in mind we’d like to get you involved with.”

  David crossed his arms. “I’ll tell you what I told Terry—”

  Alton cut him off with a raise of the hand. “Don’t make any rash decisions now. Take some time off if you need to. Then let’s all of us get to work in the new year. We’ve got a tough road ahead, David, and we need you on board.” He extended his hand. “Now, how about I pour you a drink in my office? I’m about to open something special for the holidays.” Alton feigned a warm smile.

  David imagined all the partners huddled around the bar in the managing partner’s office, drinking from Alton’s collection of vintage liquors and laughing at each other’s insipid jokes; celebrating earning a fat profit in 2007 despite the economic downturn, which was possible, in part, because they’d screwed David over for partnership this year, among only God knew what else.

  As Alton found David’s hand and shook it firmly, David eyed the Google search page on his computer monitor: O’Reilly’s gruff grin and buzz cut, daring him to come over.

  He turned back to his boss and squeezed his hand. “Actually, Alton, I’ve got somewhere to be tonight. And I’m already running late.”

  And that’s a cold shot, baby …

  CHAPTER TWO

  David killed the engine and waited. Over the crescendo of approaching rain and the half-muted CD playing “The Sky is Crying,” the Saab’s motor hummed an annoying reminder of the worn serpentine belt and past-due oil change and all the countless other things he couldn’t find time to do because he’d billed more than fifty hours a week since the day he bought this car with his signing bonus in 2000. Back when he’d some semblance of a life, before he had seen the inside of a courtroom. He listened to the song that gave him the spins one perfectly bleak Newark evening when he first heard his dad play it on the hi-fi. The song that made him want to follow in his dad’s footsteps and make the guitar cry the way his dad could. He looked out the Saab’s window; the rain fluttered outside, and thunder moaned somewhere over the Gulf. The sky is crying indeed.

  Across the street, the dimly illuminated Gaspar Towers jutted into the evening sky. David stopped the CD, and the engine fan slowed enough that he heard only rain tapping on the sunroof. He couldn’t see through the clouded windshield. It was muggy for December, even for this part of Florida—one of the muggiest winters he could remember since moving here. He wiped the windshield with his sleeve, revealing a lingering drizzle outside and the headlights of a bulky SUV parallel parking across the street. A few breaths later, fresh fog obscured his view. So, he took a final deep breath and stepped out of the Saab into a warm, energetic breeze. A few lights shone inside the office below the Towers. He figured that would be the sales office—probably not where O’Reilly worked, but a good place at least to find out what he liked to drink.

  The SUV that had parked a moment ago, a silver GMC Yukon, rumbled with its headlights on, close enough that David could smell its exhaust mingled with an aroma of the Gulf, a distinct whiff of dead crustaceans he could smell only when it rained. Just as he realized the SUV looked familiar, he turned into an explosive blow that jerked his feet off the ground and instantaneously planted his backside against the damp pavement. Without warning, he found himself looking up at low clouds whirling by in the gray sky.

  David remembered who owned the Yukon when he saw the lanky frame leaning over him, shaking off the sting of a right hook. Ed Savage.

  “That’s for making her cry, you son of a bitch.”

  “I can’t talk to you without your lawyer present.” David struggled to focus. It hurt to talk.

  “You’re worried about ethics now, you two-bit shyster?”

  “Go home, Ed,” he muttered as he pulled himself up on his right knee. “I tried to do everything I could to help you before trial. You just wouldn’t listen.”

  “They lied to me. And you know it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who lied to you about what. You got your shot and you lost. You should have taken our offer.”

  Ed squinted through the drizzle. “What about the truth?”

  “The truth is whatever the jury believed.”

  Ed leered down as though he were staring at a criminal, waiting for an answer to a question that didn’t need to be asked. “You take my house, I’ll kill you. You hear me?” He glanced toward the Towers, and then something in the distance caused him to take a few steps back, turn around, and scurry away. A moment later, the Yukon sped off.

  “You okay?” someone called out to David. He rolled over and saw the outline of a woman shielding her head with a newspaper. “I saw that man assault you. Should I call the police?”

  As soon as David stood upright, he felt himself swaying in the wind. Something about Ed’s sucker punch had aggravated all the nausea of the past twelve hours. No, the past seven years. David almost found his balance but his feet couldn’t stay put.

  She grabbed him by the shoulders. “Easy does it. Your nose is bleeding.”

  He wiped his face and saw blood.

  “Do you live here?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Then come with me.”

  “Who the hell was that guy?” she asked, and handed David another roll of paper towels. Under the fluorescent lighting, her bleached hair showed streaks of rusty brown that matched her suntanned skin.

  “Just someone I have a case with.”

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  He nodded. “Don’t hold it against me.” He started to reach for a business card, but doubted he had one in his wallet. “David Friedman.”

  “Katherine. Katherine Hawkins.” Her thin lips held a perfect smile—a smile that said she was paid in sales commissions. “What kind of law do you practice?”

  “Commercial litigation.”

  Still holding her smile: “We have a few lawyers living here. Were you interested in seeing a unit?”

  David scanned the office. Four desks out of an Office Depot catalogue, with a desktop computer on each. Three of the workstations appeared abandoned, if they’d ever been staffed. Katherine’s desk would too but for her nameplate and a small snow globe.

  “I guess you could say that,” he said. He pulled the towel from his face. Still red but drying.

  “I think we have a first-aid kit somewhere around here.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “How are sales?”

  “The north tower is almost fully occupied, but we still have a few units available overhead in the south tower. You in the market?”

  David, like anyone who read the Gaspar Herald, knew well that the south tower remained vacant. He chalked it up to puffery and tested his nose with another wipe of a clean towel. It stayed clean.

  “What ca
n I do with this?” He raised the bloodied towels even with his shoulders.

  “Here.” She lifted the trashcan next to her desk, and he dropped the wad of towels into it.

  “I imagine you have a lot of buyers here trying to back out of their contracts.”

  She frowned and dropped the can. “Listen, if you represent any of our buyers, you need to call our attorney, you hear me?”

  He tried reassuring her with a casual grin that felt goofier than he intended. “I don’t represent anyone. I’m just a bit awkward at small talk.”

  Her face relaxed, just south of a smile. “I guess you are. But we can’t be too careful these days.” She checked her watch. “Would you like to make an appointment for me to show you around next week? I was just about to close up for New Year’s. We’ll be closed the rest of the week.”

  He sensed a nervous energy, the window of opportunity closing. “If you’re not in too much of a rush, what do you say I buy you a drink, just to say thanks?”

  She bit her lip for a moment. “I need to catch an early flight tomorrow, and I still need to pack. But it is New Year’s Eve.” She studied him for a moment. “How about we skip the drinks and go right to dinner?”

  David twirled his third glass of a Meritage fruit bomb, doing his best to sip and not gulp. “No, of course I was nervous out of my mind. This was my first jury trial. I really had no idea what the jury would find.”

  “What did they say?” Katherine nursed her second Bellini, which David had learned was her drink of choice after the waiter had decanted the wine.

  “They ruled against the Savages. They said their reliance was unreasonable in light of the terms of their loan agreement.”

  “An agreement is an agreement,” she said.

  “I’m glad someone can appreciate that. Now it seems Ed Savage wants to kill me.”

  “I’m sure you could have taken him if he hadn’t jumped you.” She stared at something floating in her drink, probably the flesh of the pear garnish she’d slid off the rim of her glass. “But was it true?”

  “What?”

  “Did the bank promise him he could refinance?”

  He set his glass down and ran his finger over a drop of wine caught on the rim. “You live a case for two years, it’s easy to forget what the truth is. I know what the mortgage said, and that’s good enough for me.” Distracted by silence, he realized she was scanning every inch of him from across the table like some hungry animal.

  “You look really familiar,” she said, her voice growing raspy.

  “Ryan Gosling? I hear that all the time.”

  She missed the levity, and focused her eyes intently. “Maybe if he had darker hair and stopped working out. And sat at a desk all day. And honestly, your face is a little fuller. But yeah, I guess I can see the resemblance in this bad lighting.” Nodding, she was taking this way too seriously. “But you do have his sexy vulnerability.” His chest tightened as he waited for her to render her verdict. “So yeah, I guess you could pass for his less genetically gifted brother.”

  “But I’m taller too, don’t forget that.”

  “You are tall, too.” And that realization seemed to strike an erotic nerve. She shook it off and laughed. “Isn’t it amazing how short people in Hollywood are? I heard that Tom Cruise is like four feet tall.”

  “Four feet?”

  She leaned forward carefully. “Don’t laugh too loud, or the scientologists will get you.” She paused, as if to prepare him for some grave truth. “I had a girlfriend up in Clearwater and you would not believe what they put her through.”

  “I guess I wouldn’t.”

  She glanced around the restaurant before continuing. “Do you believe in destiny?”

  “Destiny?”

  She nodded. “You know, like fate?”

  David started to try and distinguish his understanding of destiny from fate, but decided to save that discussion for another day. “Is this about the scientologists?”

  “I’m being honest with you. You don’t seem like most guys I know, always putting on a front. And I, well, I think it was destiny that you visited my office today.”

  “Maybe I had my reasons.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t beat around the bush. I like you. I might be a few years too old for you, but I can see myself liking you. But you’re hiding something.” She stared ahead for a moment, and David didn’t flinch. “So tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Your happiest memory?”

  “Adult or childhood?”

  “Adult.”

  Too easy. “Finally having the money to buy a ’67 Stratocaster.”

  She reached across the table and took his left hand. He gripped the glass with his right. “You play?” She studied his fingers.

  “I’m impressed you know where to look for the callouses.”

  She smiled back. “I used to date a guitarist.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “I know guitarists.”

  She nodded, enough said. “You still play much?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What kind of music?”

  “Before, mainly the blues.”

  Her brow rose with surprise. “Really? You don’t seem like a bluesman.”

  He cleared his throat and belted out his best Buddy Guy: “Why can’t you see I got the blues, baby, why can’t you see what’s going on?”

  Her eyes bulged as she squeezed his hand. “Well, I never imagined that voice coming from the likes of you.”

  “Me neither,” he mumbled.

  She was almost in a trance now. “And as a child?”

  “What?”

  “Your happiest memory as a child?”

  As he carefully navigated those murky waters, another easy answer came to mind. “When I was about twelve, my dad took me into a bar in Newark where his band was playing. He couldn’t get a sitter—probably couldn’t afford one. A waitress set me up at a table all by myself, fed me Shirley Temples all night. And I watched them play a three-hour set, on a school night. And I knew that one day I wanted to be up there jamming out like that.”

  “So your dad’s a musician too?”

  “Was. He was a musician. And a damn good one. Better than I ever could be.” He took his hand back and returned it to his lap.

  “So what happened to you?”

  David smiled, shook his head, and pointed to his tie. “Life happened.”

  “Those are nice memories.” She stared into space, as if she were considering how she would have answered had someone asked her. Then she turned her gaze back to him. “Funny, I thought you’d say winning your first case.”

  “Well, given the fallout of winning my first jury trial, I don’t think I’ll put that one very high on the list.”

  She was still nodding, taking inventory of the progress she was making with her young prey. “So you’re a lawyer and a guitarist, and you just won your first jury trial. But you’re still hiding something.”

  He turned the nearly empty decanter upside down and captured the last pour of wine. “Aren’t we all? What else do you want to know?”

  “You can start by telling me why you walked into my office today.”

  “I thought it was fate. Or destiny?”

  “Maybe so. But you still had your reasons.”

  Here goes nothing. “Frank O’Reilly,” he said with the intonation of a question.

  “Oh my goodness.” She grimaced. “Buzz kill.”

  “You work with him?”

  “How do you know Frank?”

  “I don’t. That’s why—”

  “So you wanted to meet Frank, maybe pitch some work to him?”

  He nodded. “I guess you could say that.”

  “And you seem like such a nice boy.”

  “You don’t think I’m up for it?”

  “I sure hope not.”

  Katherine sat back in her seat and crossed her arms.

/>   “I’m sorry if I brought up a sore subject.” He wished he could find a magic button to rewind the night by about sixty seconds. “You said you have a flight in the morning. Where to?”

  “The Bahamas. Tickets are half off on New Year’s. Which is why I’m here with you on New Year’s Eve.”

  But a rewind button would do him no good. “You going with Frank?”

  “You guessed it. He’s down there fishing now with a few buddies. We’re all getting together for the holiday. To celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “Two thousand seven.” She chugged the rest of her drink, rolled her eyes, and shook her head.

  “Like I said, I’m awkward in conversation.”

  She nodded, ever so slowly, cleared her throat, and then moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “Well, are you awkward in bed?”

  David hit send on an email to Blake Hubert that attached a bullshit report no one would ever read. He had to give Blake some credit: his email reminding David that Blake needed the year-end litigation reports tonight could not have been more providentially timed. Five glasses of wine and a highball chaser following today’s events were nearly enough for David to indulge in his first one-night stand since he’d met Lana. But he knew he wasn’t ready for that. Not to mention how sleeping with Katherine might implicate his pursuit of O’Reilly. After reading Blake’s email on his BlackBerry, David told Katherine he was sorry, he had to go. Telling her he was getting over a difficult relationship didn’t help matters, but asking if he could call her when she returned from the Bahamas may have salvaged something. So did assuring her he just needed another week “to sort things out.”

  As Stevie Ray broke into the solo to “Life Without You,” David realized that dinner with Katherine, like most of his ventures outside the courtroom, in the end only reminded him that Lana was gone. And if he was honest with himself, he would admit that it hurt. Badly. But, he told himself, not as bad as it hurt last week, which was a little less than the week before. By the time the ache in his diaphragm had deepened, he realized he had lost himself in the song and was fighting a mild case of the spins. He reminded himself again that he was never honest with himself, and if he was, he’d also admit that this place was his prison. Which was just enough to remind him he needed another drink. And he had just the drink in mind.