“The estate collects revenue and royalties from the continuing licensing and replaying of Mr. Crowley's films.” Jane Chung blinked, as if listening to her own dictation. “That's the income. The outgo includes disbursements for the maintenance of business activities, for his father's nursing home costs, for the monthly payments to you, Caroline, for the apartment fees, and so on.”
Caroline was flipping through the long printout. She seemed distracted, even dazed. I wondered if she was even seeing the figures and words. “This is complicated,” she finally said.
“What about the physical contents of the estate?” I asked. “Is there mention of anything in Simon's will?”
“No,” said Jane Chung. “His will only established an estate. No specific objects were mentioned.”
I nodded. “We're back to the accounting printout, then.”
Caroline sighed. “I guess.”
Jane Chung watched Caroline impatiently. “Indeed. Now then, do you have any particular questions?”
Caroline was staring at the printout.
“Caroline?” I asked.
“Well, it seems to be all here,” she said, with some resignation.
I turned to Jane Chung. “We're looking for something, Jane, that's why we're here. We're looking for some indication of certain of Simon's activities while he was alive.”
“Perhaps we canâmay I ask what they might have been, or whom they might have been with?”
“Uh, no,” I said.
She looked at Caroline.
“I don't understand.”
Caroline sat up. “I'm just going to let Porter talk for me here. This whole thing is pretty exhausting, frankly.”
Jane turned back to me. “Mr. Wren, I really can't say that I understand
what
â”
“Jane, just listen to me. I'm going to explain it as best I can. WeâCaroline and Iâare looking for some information relating to Simon. We need this information pretty badly. We're not going to tell you why. That's personal business. Be assured that our inquiry in no way reflects poorly upon or creates a liability for your law firm, although it occurs to me that if we are not successful, it
could
create a liability for the estate. Now then, our method is somewhat scattershot here. We don't even know if looking further into these records would be useful or not. But we have nowhere else to start. What we would like to do, today,
now,
is have a look at the individual invoices received by your firm for each of these zillion expenses, just flip through each one of them and try to thinkâ”
She was already shaking her head. “I'm sorry, that is
highly
unusual. Those records are probably in storage, and it
could take quite a bit of time to assemble them. This summary accounting of the expenses would certainly seem sufficient to determineâ”
“Why not just let us look at the actual paper?”
“Because it's notâ”
“Not what?”
She blinked in suppressed irritation. “This is most unusual.”
“So?”
“So, Mr. Wren, we have certain
procedures
here that we have developed over time for maximum efficiency. I'm sure you understand that.”
“It's all billable time to the estate, so what's the problem?”
“Well, frankly, I have appointments throughout the day, and I would be unable to superviseâ”
“There's no reason to supervise. We're all grown adults. Just stick us in a room with the boxes and we'll have a look.”
“I'm sorry, but a request of this unusual nature really needs to proceed through the Estate Division Oversight Committee, which meets only monthly.” She shrugged and smiled. “It's a matter of firm procedure.”
“Is it because I'm a reporter?”
“No.”
I looked at Caroline. “I'm going to speak plainly now, on your behalf, Caroline. Is that okay?”
She nodded. I turned back to Jane Chung.
“Jane, let us agree that the estate of Simon Crowley is not a typical estate. It is âmost unusual,' to use your words.
It makes money
. It makes money for itself and for its creditors and for Caroline here, and, particular to my point, it makes it for your firm, for
you.
When you buy your toothpaste, Jane, some of that money has come from the estate of Simon Crowley. I find it
unfathomable
that you would not accommodate Simon Crowley's widow.”
“Mr. Wren, these kinds of threats are useless.”
I bent close to whisper into Caroline's ear. “Remember that incredibly tough bitch you told me about last night?”
“Who?” she answered, eyes large.
“You,” I said. “I need her to show up here.”
Her blue eyes blinked in amusement. Then her face went cold as she turned toward the attorney.
“Jane, help us, or I'll move the estate to another firm.”
Jane gave a dry little laugh. “I don't think you appreciate how complicated that is. It takes years, you have to petition theâ”
“No I don't,” Caroline interrupted in a voice of great bitchy irritation. “All I do is call up the people I know at the studio and tell them that there's an irregularity at the
fucking
law firm and would they please send the
fucking
check to me directly so I can pay my
fucking
bills.”
Â
Â
A few minutes later I was in a small book-lined conference room on another floor. Caroline had begged off after her outburst, and I said I would meet her in a coffee shop outside in an hour. The door opened and a pimply kid with red hair pushed in an office cart stacked with boxes.
“Howdy, esteemed client of our venerable firm,” he said, bowing with his hands pressed together. “My name is Bob Dole. Oh, I guess it's not. Actually it's Raoul McCarthy.”
“What's a guy with red hair doing with a name like Raoul?” I asked.
“Well, my mother lived on the Upper West Side in the seventies, if you really want to know.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, here they are. The last year's worth.”
“Where were they?” I asked.
“Oh God, they were way back in theâ” He rolled his eyes. “We call it the hell room. Way back there.”
“You're a paralegal?”
“Para
slave
, you mean. Jane has
three
paraslaves.” He started to stack the boxes on the table. “I just move around paper. Lots of paper in a place like this. I mean, the hell room, they could shoot a Freddy Krueger movie in there. We had some boxes fall on a guy last week, almost killed him practically. The lawyers never go in there.”
“Never?” I asked.
“What are you, kidding me? It's the
hell
room.”
“What about computers and document scanners and stuff like that?” I asked. “It's practically the millennium.”
He looked at me. “Surely you jest.”
I shrugged.
“You got to realize that all those computer files, all the important ones, get backed up on paper. And all the letters and motions and depositions and discovery documents and all that stuff is still on paper. And a lot of these files go back. We've got active files that are forty years old in there. But the problem is that stuff gets lost. We had a little problem last month where the cleaning guy accidentally took something like nine boxes of an active file and threw them out.” Raoul permitted himself a sly grin. “They had to find the truck and the landfill and then a bunch of paraslaves went out to Staten Island to look for the paper. We had to have disentery shots. They had a guy with a front loader and everythingâ”
“Did you find them?”
Raoul hitched up his pants. “Yeah, under about ten million used diapers.”
“Jane Chung seemed pretty nervous about these papers.”
“Like I said, we've been having a lot of problems lately. The stuff doesn't usually get
really
lost, it just gets
sort of
lost. See, we have a filing room and a
refiling
room, and things can get stuck in there for a few weeksâ”
I waved him off the topic. “Okay, let me know what's here.”
“Well, speaking as your basic para-enslaved employee, I would say what you got here is a bunch of bills. They're in chronological order, but that's it.”
“Who actually pays the bills?” I asked.
“I do.”
“You write the check?”
“I write the requisition order for the check.”
“Jane looks over everything?”
He glanced at the door, lowered his voice a bit. “Nah, not really.”
“Would rather be elsewhere in the firm?”
“I think she'd rather be
anywhere
, actually.”
“So you're the guy handling the payments made by the estate of Simon Crowley.”
Raoul shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You.”
“You got it. As a paraslave I bill at fifty-five dollars an hour, but the firm can write that up as an associate's time at three hundred and ten an hour.”
“Very beautiful.”
He nodded, then opened the first box. “You're going to go through all of these?”
“I guess so.”
“Why don't you just ask me what you're looking for?”
“Wellâ”
“I mean, I can tell you everything in these boxes.”
“You can?”
“Sure.”
“Tell me about Sally Giroux.”
“Movie public-relations firm,” he recited. “There's a domestic company and a European one, based in London. Sheâor it, whateverâhandles any kind of media inquiries, handles re-release PR, like getting video clips to the TV tabloid shows, stuff like that. She once worked for the studio, but she became a consultant a couple of years ago. She bills on a quarterly cycle, and every year she adds to her fee. My guess is it's a waste of money. I mean, nobody ever checks on these people or anything.”
“You just pay the bills.”
“Every one. Shoot them through.”
I opened my briefcase. “I'm going to take some notes on this.”
From there we went into which bills were personal and which were business. “We pay for Mrs. Crowley's apartment,” explained Raoul. The mortgage on it, plus the maintenance and all the related expenses. Actually I know what's going on in her life, sort of. If she gets a new sink put in, then I see the bill. In fact, I remember she had a new shower
put in last year. Nine thousand dollars, for
a shower
.” He shook his head while I remembered just how wonderful that shower was.”We pay everything. Her telephone bills, her electricity, her credit cards, everything.”
There was an odd helplessness in this, which I didn't understand. “Seems like a crazy way to run your life. You can't really keep track of anything.”
“I guess.”
“Does she even have a checking account?”
“Maybe technically.”
“Butâ”
“But the bank statements come here, and I have to reconcile them, so I see what she's doing.”
“Which is?”
“Just taking cash out at the cash machine.”
“How much a month?”
“Maybe a couple of thousand a month.”
“What's the trend line on the income?”
“Going down.”
“Gross income last year?”
“Maybe eight hundred thousand.”
“This year?”
“Six hundred and twenty, more or less. It's because of payout schedules ending, royalties dropping off. The big money with movies is in the first few years, and it's been a while since Crowley's last movieâ”
I nodded that I understood. “Next year? You have an income number for that?”
He pulled out a pen and made a column of numbers, then added it up.
“Maybe four hundred and ten thousand.”
“It'll keep going down?”
“Yes.”
“What about the net worth of the estate?”
“Going down.”
“The estate is running out of money.”
“It would seem so.”