The Jackpot Read online

  Samantha first met Pasquale Paoli late one night about two weeks into her first semester, just as she was starting to wonder if she could drop out and still get her tuition back. She had been tucked in her study carrel, immersed in the fascinating tale of Pennoyer v. Neff, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case addressing the extremely sexy issue of personal jurisdiction. It was taught to first-year law students nationwide, nearly all of whom failed to understand the Court's ruling but still managed to remember the name of the case for the rest of their lives.

  Samantha had successfully navigated the first four sentences of the court's opinion before her eyes began to droop. Unable to move on to the fifth sentence, she drifted down to the student lounge for a soft drink. Clearly, caffeine was going to become a good friend over the next three years. She couldn't do this alone. The lounge was deserted at that hour but for the stout young man holding each side of the soda machine, his forehead pressed against its glowing façade, as if it were about to topple over. Sporting a shaved head, he was wearing a pair of blue shorts and a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase: THE INTERNET IS FOREVER.

  "Dr Pepper or Cherry Coke?" he asked, after noticing her waiting for the machine.

  "Excuse me?" she asked.

  "Should I get a Dr Pepper or Cherry Coke?"

  "Dr Pepper," she said.

  "Fair enough." He slid in three quarters and pressed the corresponding button.

  "Why?" he asked. He cracked the can open and took a long swig.

  "Because I want Cherry Coke, and I don't want you buying what could be the last one."

  He sprayed Dr Pepper across the room.

  "You're gonna fit in real good here," he said after he stopped coughing.

  They sat at a table and drank their sodas. An hour later, they were at the Sidewalk Cafe, a Fan bar popular with law and medical students, throwing back tequila shots. Two hours after the soda affair, they were in his apartment, where Samantha consciously decided to make what she expected would be a gigantic mistake. Only the strangest thing happened. When she woke up the next morning, wearing nothing but his t-shirt, she didn't feel awkward. He didn't act weird or seem anxious to rush her out the door. Oh, and she had been there before – both as rusher and rushee. He made her scrambled eggs and they watched Live! With Regis and Kelly, and it felt like they had been doing it for years.

  They kept things under wrap at first, because Samantha found nothing more annoying than young law students in love. There were already two confirmed couplings in her class, one of which involved a pair that obviously had no problem with public displays of affection, often sitting together in a single oversized chair in the student lounge. Samantha found it nauseating, and so she all but ignored Pasquale on campus. He didn't care either way, so he returned the favor.

  By the end of the semester, they were virtually living together. Samantha studied hard and earned a 3.6 GPA, which put her near the top of the class. Pasquale, who graduated a semester early, had lined up a job with a small general practice firm, which he started after the New Year. It was then that Samantha first saw whispers of a fundamental change in Pasquale. For him, the practice of law proved far different than the study. It became angry and personal and had little to do with the law.

  He represented slum landlords, wife beaters, and companies that violated employment laws. He was called a liar and a crook, and that was by his own clients. The clients rarely, if ever, returned his phone calls, but if he didn't return their calls within a day, they threatened to report him to the state bar. Several actually did. Each of the complaints was dismissed as unfounded, but those clients used the complaint as a convenient excuse to stiff him on the bill.

  As Samantha sailed through law school, entrenching herself in the top ten percent of her class, Pasquale slowly unraveled. He worked long hours, becoming obsessed with nothing short of total victory. He lost any interest in solving problems or in negotiating settlements that might benefit both sides. Each case became a war, and he worked tirelessly to destroy his opponents. Each night, he sat in the living room and drank scotch, working while Samantha studied. They ate takeout in silence. As she neared graduation, she begged him to quit, tried to convince him that he didn't need this, that he could retire, that he could volunteer for Legal Aid. He refused to listen.

  Pasquale Paoli's legal career ended on a warm Friday afternoon, the day before Samantha graduated from law school. He had been representing Tar Heel Sprinklers, a small company that installed commercial sprinkler systems and had been the subcontractor on a new Wal-Mart distribution center going up in Fairfax County. After the sprinkler system failed to activate during a small warehouse fire, which quickly erupted into a big warehouse fire, inspectors determined that the system had fallen victim to a sprinkler disease called microbiologically induced corrosion. In essence, the system had contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Wal-Mart sued everyone, from the architect who designed the building to Tar Heel Sprinklers. The sprinkler company's insurer retained Pasquale's firm to handle the defense.

  On that fateful day, Pasquale traveled to Vienna, Virginia, where he was scheduled to take the deposition of the general contractor's president. He had been up all night, reviewing the project documents and preparing his examination of the witness, and he was just a bit cranky. The attorneys for the other defendants trickled in as the hour drew closer to 9:00 a.m. At 9:00, the shining face of Syd Lehane, the general contractor's attorney, poked into the conference room and announced that he was not producing his client for the deposition, and that everyone could go home.

  Police interviews with the ten witnesses and a choppy twelve-second cell phone video revealed that Pasquale responded to this development by pouring a pot of coffee on the large and custom-made conference table. As the steaming coffee trickled over the edges, Pasquale jumped on the table, stripped to his boxers and invited any interested parties to a wrestling match, Greco-Roman style. When no one accepted his offer, he declared himself President of the Republic of Zebulon, jumped off the table and disappeared into the hallway, humming the 1812 Overture. At this point, a secretary had summoned firm security, and three beefy guards tackled Pasquale just outside Syd Lehane's office.

  The responding police officers decided to commit him to the psychiatric ward at a Vienna hospital under a temporary detention order. The mental health staff evaluated Pasquale and diagnosed him with extreme exhaustion and clinical depression. After thirty-six hours under mild sedation, the staff discharged him. Samantha took him home, where he lay on the couch and watched old movies. He refused to see a therapist or take his medication. He took his meals alone on the back porch. Samantha watched him drift away as she crammed thousands of rules of law into her brain.

  On the last Monday of that July, Samantha drove to Roanoke to sit for the two-day-long Virginia bar examination. When she returned two nights later, Pasquale was gone, his chest of drawers emptied out. He left a note (and she couldn't believe he left a note, she didn't think people really did that) announcing that he still loved her but that he was lost. Devastated, she threw herself into her new job, which, of course, made quite an impression on her employer. She worked sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day in an effort to flush Pasquale Paoli from her system.

  Four months later, he sent her a postcard from Paraguay, where he'd been living and working on a soybean farm. She cried all night. Four more months went by, and she got a postcard from Kenya, where he'd hooked up as an aid worker. She cried for a couple of hours and then got back to work. Another four months, another postcard, this one from Baden-Baden, Germany, where he'd joined a group of neo-Nazi hunters. That night, she barely cried at all. She felt an ache of nostalgia for the times that they had together, before things went bad. She reminded herself that things had gone bad, and there were bad times, times that she wanted to rip his eyeballs out of his sockets because he'd gotten so good at feeling sorry for himself.

  Six months ago, he had called and left her a message, saying he was back in the United
States. He told her he still loved her and that he was sorry. He left her his number and told her to call him if she ever needed anything.

  * * *

  She wasn't sure why she felt surprised, lying here, curled up under her comforter. So they had slept together. They had finished dinner about an hour ago and ridden to her apartment in silence. She was starting to feel a bit better, although she figured that was, in part, a psychological byproduct of having started her medication rather than because of the medication itself. And she had been the moving party, all but jumping him as soon as they had gotten in the door. Being a guy, Pasquale, of course, had not thrown up much in the way of resistance, even knowing she had the flu.

  What was the big deal? People had sex every day. All over the world, people were having sex right now. Besides, they were always really good at it, and who was she kidding, anyway? It had been a while. One year, three months, and eleven days, to be exact. Not that she was counting, of course. She looked over and saw Pasquale on his side, eyeing her carefully, his head propped up on his hand.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Nothing," he said.

  "This doesn't mean we're getting back together," she said.

  "God forbid."

  "We're just good at this."

  "Right. How are the folks?"

  "Trying to set me up with a good Lebanese man."

  "Nice to see things haven't changed."

  "You're hilarious." She smacked him with a pillow.

  "I'm serious," he said. "It's nice to know that there are things in this world that you can count on."

  "You're an idiot."

  "How's business at the store?" he asked. "Maybe we should swing by tomorrow. You know how long it's been since I've had good grape leaves?"

  She rolled back onto her back, her arm cradling the same pillow she'd smacked Pasquale with. She chewed a ragged thumbnail absently. Despite their desire to see her marry Lebanese, her parents had always liked Pasquale. For one, he was Italian, and that made him Mediterranean, which was close enough. For another, he understood the importance of family, also a big part of the Khouri administration's domestic policy. Finally, and not insignificantly, he had charmed their pants off. He was just that kind of guy.

  "Okay, let's talk about something else," he said. "How about your little lottery ticket there? A lot of money."

  "Indeed it is," she said.

  "Aren't you the least bit tempted?" he asked. "Show up at lottery headquarters and say, 'hey! Look what I found!"

  "No."

  "Then why'd you call me?"

  "I needed a friend."

  They lay quietly for a few minutes. Samantha was thirsty, but she didn't feel like getting up. She studied his body, the body that she had once known so well. He was built like a box truck, a solid 170 pounds gripping the small frame. A large scar she'd never seen before twisted around his thick left bicep. A knot the size of an acorn poked out from the center of his right collarbone. She reached out and rubbed her thumb against the calcified bone.

  "Where'd you get this?"

  "Fell off a pickup truck in the Ivory Coast," he said, flinching slightly at her touch. "Didn't see a doctor for a month. By then it had healed this way. Kinda cool, huh?"

  Her throat clenched. There were moments that she desperately missed this man.

  "You're sure no one knows you have it?" he asked.

  She pictured the two bodies laid out like sportfish at Todd Matheson's cabin. She thought about Carter regaining consciousness, looking stupidly around the room. No need to worry Pasquale any more than she had to.

  "I'm sure."

  "I'm still glad you called."

  "Why?"

  "You ever wonder how many maniacs might be out there looking for this thing? It ever got out you had this ticket, we'd have big trouble."

  "I hadn't thought about that."

  "It's because you don't share my dim view of humanity."

  "Right."

  "So where does this kid live?"

  "Somewhere in Ravenwood Court."

  Pasquale showed her a pair of skyward-pointing thumbs. Ravenwood Court wasn't quite as lawless as the Tree, but it was plenty dangerous in its own right.

  "Awesome."

  "Yeah."

  "We'll head over in the morning," he said. "Sam?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I love you."

  "I know."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Saturday, December 22

  6:31 p.m.

  "Where's Julius?" asked Charles Flagg.

  Mark Jenks, the subject of this particular interview and Julius' former CleanSweep supervisor, was still in shock from having been shoved into a supply closet and hog-tied with fifty yards of dental floss. It was cutting into his wrists like fishing wire. Flagg had found him stealing change and knick-knacks from a lawyer's office. Understandably, the man was paralyzed with fear and appeared unable to comprehend Flagg's question.

  "Thought you were alone in here, didn't you?" Flagg asked, changing the subject. He needed to get the guy back to reality. Maybe he was having a psychotic break, a nervous breakdown, whatever. Flagg needed the guy to realize that, yes, this really was happening. "Have your run of the place?"

  Jenks nodded his head vigorously.

  "Good, very good," Flagg said. "Now we're getting somewhere. Look, we're just going to have a little conversation now, OK?"

  Jenks nodded again.

  "If you try and call out for help, I'll kill everyone in your family," Flagg promised. "I'll kill all your neighbors. I'll kill everyone you work with. And, of course, I will kill you."

  Flagg's sincerity was underscored by the hypodermic needle that he'd plunged into Jenks' left arm. The attached syringe contained five milliliters of electric blue drain cleaner, which, if Flagg elected to depress the plunger, would kill Jenks within a minute.

  "Where is he?"

  "I don't know."

  "When did you see him last?"

  "Friday night," Jenks said. "Last night."

  "Did he work every night?"

  "Weeknights."

  Flagg did the math. Julius had come to work the day after the SuperLotto drawing. Two possible reasons for that. Either he didn't know he had won yet, or he knew he had won, and he didn't know what else to do.

  "Notice anything out of the ordinary?"

  "No," Jenks said. "Wait! Yeah! I did notice! He didn't finish cleaning his floor!" He said it with the verve of a man who'd cracked the Nazi code machine at the peak of the war.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "He's got the twenty-ninth floor," he said. "Thirty-some offices. At the end of the night, I do a quick sweep of each floor and I noticed that he had left six, seven offices untouched. It was weird. He always starts with the office near the stairwell and finishes at the elevators. "

  "Did you see him before he left?"

  "No."

  "Why do you think he did that?"

  "I don't know," Jenks said. "I've had guys quit during a shift. This ain't brain surgery. If he didn't quit, I'm firing his ass after Christmas."

  Flagg pondered this for a moment. Something had stopped Julius. Had it occurred to him after a couple dozen offices that he didn't need to empty out trash cans anymore? That seemed a little odd. Why almost finish the shift and then bail out? Another thought bloomed. Maybe it wasn't that something had stopped him. Maybe someone had stopped him. Big law firm. A lot of important downtown lawyers, working late. Maybe Julius had hired one of these lawyers to help him with his newfound fortune.

  "Which was the first office he skipped?"

  "I don't remember," Jenks said.

  Flagg reached over to the plunger.

  "OK, OK! It was the sixth one down from the elevators."

  "You sure?"

  "Yes! I'm sure, I swear to God."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Because the chick works in that office is a piece of ass."

  Flagg shook his head again.

  "
Have you ever even heard of evolution?" he asked.

  "What?"

  Flagg depressed the plunger. The drain cleaner scorched through Jenks' veins like a comet, and he was dead sixty miserable seconds later.

  * * *

  Flagg took the steps two at a time to the twenty-ninth floor, where he found an identical cube farm, ringed by the little lawyer fiefdoms. It was late, and the floor was devoid of any sound other than the low hum of electricity. Emergency track lighting illuminated the corridors but left much of the floor in shadow. Every office on the floor was dark. Quickly, Flagg zigzagged through the cube maze toward the elevators and counted off six offices. He checked the nameplate affixed to the door of office number six: SAMANTHA KHOURI.

  The door was slightly ajar, but like the other offices on the floor, it was dark. He checked behind the door, his gun drawn. He hated to admit even to himself that the cloak-and-dagger shit still gave him a thrill.

  Satisfied that the office was empty, he started his search on her desk. The thin laptop computer perched in the corner was in a low-power mode, a three-dimensional clock spinning wildly across the black void of the screen. Samantha Khouri kept her desk immaculate, every piece of paper stacked precisely and at ninety-degree angles. Using a small flashlight, he scanned each pile of pages, coming to rest on a manila folder on the center of the desk. In it was a stack of papers. He leaned in closer for a look.

  Across the top of the first page in the stack, the author had scratched out: Mtg w/J. Wheeler (12/21).

  Underneath that was what appeared to be a laundry list of someone's financial wet dream. Cars, houses, boats, trips. At the bottom, Samantha had written: CLP, JW to Marriott until Wednesday. Underneath that, she had imprisoned the word Ravenwood in a solid box of ink.

  The initials JW were easy enough to figure out, but who was CLP? Another attorney, maybe? He removed a small notepad from his pocket and copied all the useful information from Samantha's memo. Samantha's phone caught his eye, and it gave him an idea. He picked up the receiver and pressed REDIAL. A few moments later, he heard the low, soothing electronic ring of a corporate phone elsewhere on the floor. On the phone's information screen, he saw the extension he had dialed, 4676, and the name the extension belonged to: PIERCE, CARTER L.