Rough Trade

CHAPTER 1
     
    In my line of work you get used to other people’s distress the same way that doctors grow inured to other people’s pain. I know that sounds cold, but that distance is important. It’s what makes it possible to wade in and do what needs to be done. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pretending that what I do should be compared with easing suffering or saving lives. I am a deal lawyer, not a doctor. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a specialist. Believe me, when the bank has you by the balls, you don’t call a urologist. You call me.
    That still didn’t mean that Beau Rendell wanted me to be there. No one who fancies himself the master of his particular universe wants a woman less than half his age telling him how he’s screwed up. Even his son, Jeff, who’d practically begged me to come, now seemed miserable to find that I was actually here. Not that I blamed him. After all, my presence could mean only one thing. The situation with his father had finally deteriorated to the point where they both needed lawyers.
    For secrecy’s sake we were meeting at Beau Rendell’s house in River Hills, an exclusive suburb of Milwaukee. The two sides stared at each other across the glass and chrome travesty that passed for a dining room table, Jeff Rendell and I on one side; his father Beau, the owner of the Milwaukee Monarchs football team, and his longtime lawyer and drinking buddy, Harald Feiss, on the other. Outside it was raining. Cold, fat drops smeared the large plate-glass window that looked out over the sodden backyard. It had been coming down for days, and the ground had long ago exhausted its ability to absorb the water, which lay in frigid pools that filled the low spots in the grass. I could only imagine what it would be like at the stadium that afternoon when the Monarchs took the field against the Vikings. No doubt things would get ugly.
    Even though I usually don’t follow football, I knew that ugly was a word that had been getting a lot of use in connection with the Monarchs. So far, this season, like the several before it, had been a disaster. Plagued by losses on the field as well as off, Beau had surprised everyone by firing the team’s general manager and replacing him with his son, Jeff. Now, in addition to a string of humiliating defeats, discord reigned in the team’s front office—a situation that had been reported in embarrassing detail in the press.
    But what the media didn’t know—and what Beau was desperate that they not find out—was that the Monarchs were also on the verge of bankruptcy. With his seventieth birthday fast approaching and one heart attack already behind him, Beau Rendell had made one last desperate attempt to finally buy the championship that had so long eluded him. Using his shares of the team as collateral, he had borrowed heavily to sign a pair of franchise players. One had broken his back his first time in a Monarchs uniform and the other had ended up in jail for aggravated assault. However, both continued to collect their multimillion dollar salaries.
    Through it all, the Milwaukee fans had done what they do best—filled the stadium and steadfastly supported their team. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the bank. During the preseason Beau had defaulted on the loan. Under the terms of his agreement he then had ninety days to correct the default. As of today, he had ten days left to come up with the $18 million payment. If he couldn’t produce the cash, the bank would make the situation public, call the loan, and force the team into bankruptcy. In a country where toppling the mighty is second only to football as a form of public entertainment, I knew that the same press that had kept Beau Rendell on a pedestal for the last thirty years would be only too happy to report every detail of his fall.
    Still, I had to confess that sitting at the head of his own table Beau Rendell did not look like a desperate man facing an impossible situation. Actually, he just looked pissed. He might be on the ropes, but he was still very much a man who expected to get what he wanted. Normally I’m glad to see people like Beau finally get what’s coming to them, but not today. Beau’s son was married to one of my closest childhood friends, and I knew that whatever forces stood poised to flail her husband’s family would end up raining their blows down on Chrissy, too.
    I honestly don’t think I would have made the trip for anyone else. I was in the middle