John Grisham

"Just a funeral," I say, staring blankly at these two men.

"How’s the family?" Deck asks.

"Doing all right, I guess." Butch quickly unscrews the cap from the phone receiver, and points inside.

"I guess the kid’s better off now, don’t you think?" Deck says as I look inside. Butch points closer, to a small, round, black device stuck to the inside cover. I can only stare at it.

"Don’t you think the kid’s better off?" Deck repeats himself loudly, and nudges me in the ribs.

"Sure, yeah, right. He certainly is better off. Really sad, though."

We watch as Butch expertly puts the phone back together, then shrugs at me as if I know precisely what to do next.

"Let’s walk down and get some coffee," Deck says.

"Good idea," I say, with a huge knot growing in my stomach.

On the sidewalk, I stop and look at them. "What the hell?"

"Let’s walk this way," Deck says, pointing down the street. There’s an artsy coffee bar a block and a half away, and we walk to it without another word. We hide in a corner as if we’re being stalked by gunmen.

The story quickly unfolds. Deck and I have been worried about the feds since Bruiser and Prince disappeared. We expected them to at least stop by and ask some questions. We’ve talked about the feds many times, but, unknown to me, he’s also been spilling his guts to Butch here. I wouldn’t trust Butch with much.

Butch stopped by the office an hour ago, and Deck asked him to take a peek at our phones. Butch confesses that he’s no expert on bugging devices, but he’s been around. They’re easy to spot. Identical devices in all three

phones. They were about to search for more bugs, but decided to wait for me.

"More bugs?" I ask.

"Yeah, like little mikes hidden around the office to pick up everything the phones don’t catch," Butch says. "It’s fairly easy. We just have to cover every inch of the place with a magnifying glass."

Deck’s hands are literally shaking. I wonder if he’s spoken to Bruiser on our phones.

"What if we find more?" I ask. We haven’t taken the first sip of our coffee.

"Legally, you can remove them," Butch explains. "Or, you can just be careful what you say. Sorta talk around them."

"What if we take them out?"

"Then the feds know you’ve found them. They’ll get even more suspicious, probably increase other forms of surveillance. Best thing to do, in my opinion, is act as if nothing has happened."

"That’s easy for you to say."

Deck wipes his brow and refuses to look at me. I’m very nervous about him. "Do you know Bruiser Stone?" I ask Butch.

"Of course. I’ve done some work for him."

I’m certainly not surprised. "Good," I say, then look at Deck. "Have you talked to Bruiser on our phones?"

"No," he says. "I haven’t talked to Bruiser since the day he disappeared."

In telling me this lie, he’s told me to shut up in front of Butch.

"I’d like to know if there are other bugs, you know," I say to Butch. "It’d be nice to know how much they’re hearing out there."

"We’ll have to comb the office."

"Let’s go."

"Fine with me. Start with the tables, desk and chairs. Look in garbage cans, books, clocks, staplers, everything. These bugs can be smaller than raisins."

"Can they tell we’re looking?’ Deck asks, scared to death.

"No. You two guys carry on the usual office chatter. I won’t say a word, and they won’t know I’m there. If you find something, use hand signals."

We take the coffee back to our offices, a place that’s suddenly spooky and forbidding. Deck and I begin a banal conversation about Derrick Dogan’s case while we gently overturn tables and chairs. Anyone with a brain listening would know that we’re out of step and trying to cover something.

We crawl around on all fours. We dig through wastebas-kets and pick through files. We examine heating vents and inspect baseboards. For the first time, I’m thankful we have so little furniture and furnishings.

We dig for four hours, and find nothing. Only our phones have been defiled. Deck and I buy Butch a spaghetti dinner at a bistro down the street.

AT MIDNIGHT, I’m lying in bed, the possibility of sleep long since forgotten. I’m reading the morning paper, and occasionally staring at my phone. Surely, I keep telling myself, surely they wouldn’t go to the trouble of bugging it. I’ve seen shadows and heard noises all afternoon and all evening. I’ve jumped at nonexistent sounds. My skin has crawled with goose bumps. I can’t eat. I’m being followed, I know, the question is, How close are they?

And how close do they intend to get?

With the exception of the classifieds, I read every word in the paper. Sara Plankmore Wilcox gave birth to a seven-pound girl yesterday. Good for her. I don’t hate her anymore. Since Donny Ray died, I’ve found myself being

easier on everybody. Except, of course, Drummond and his loathsome client.

PFX Freight is undefeated in WinterBall.

I wonder if he makes her go to all the games.

I check the record of vital statistics every day. I pay particular attention to the divorce filings, though I’m not optimistic. I also look at the arrests to see if Cliff Riker has been picked up for beating his wife again.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

THE DOCUMENTS COVER FOUR RENTED folding tables wedged side by side in the front room of our offices. They’re separated in neat stacks, in chronological order, all marked, numbered, indexed and even computerized.

And memorized. I’ve studied these pieces of paper so often that I now know everything on every sheet. The documents given to me by Dot total 221 pages. The policy, for instance, will be considered as only one document at trial, but it has 30 pages. The docximents produced so far by Great Benefit total 748 pages, some of them duplicates of the Blacks’.

Deck too has spent countless hours with the paperwork. He’s written a detailed analysis of the claim file. Most of the computer work fell on him. He’ll assist me during the depositions. It’s his job to keep the documents straight and quickly find the ones we need.

He’s not exactly thrilled with this type of work, but he’s anxious to keep me happy. He’s convinced we’ve caught Great Benefit holding the smoking gun, but he’s also con-

vinced the case is not worth the effort I’m putting into it. Deck, I’m afraid, has grave concerns about my trial abilities. He knows that any twelve we pick for the jury will view fifty thousand bucks as a fortune.

I sip a beer in the office late Sunday night, and walk through the tables again and again. Something is missing here. Deck is certain that Jackie Lemancyzk, the claims handler, would not have had the authority to deny the claim outright. She did her job, then shipped the file to underwriting. There’s some interplay between claims and underwriting, interoffice memos back and forth, and this is where the paper trail breaks down.

There was a scheme to deny Donny Ray’s claim, and probably thousands of others like it. We have to unravel it.

AFTER MUCH DELIBERATION and discussion with the members of my firm, I have decided to depose M. Wilfred Keeley, CEO, first. I figure I’ll start with the biggest ego and work my way down. He’s fifty-six years old, a real hale-and-hearty type with a warm smile, even for me. He actually thanks me for allowing him to go first. He desperately needs to get back to the home office.

I poke around the fringes for the first hour. I’m on my side of the table in a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, loafers and white socks. Thought it’d be a nice contrast to the severe shades of black so pervasive on the other side. Deck said I was being disrespectful.