Chương 10
“I signed this.”
“Do you remember it?”
“No.”
“Look carefully.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Look.”
He did.
His face lost color.
“I was drinking then.”
Dana closed her eyes.
Lily had known her father did not drink anymore.
She had not known there was a before.
Owen sat down.
“My mother brought papers to my apartment. I was twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two.”
“You were twenty-one on this date.”
“I was a disaster.”
Rebecca asked, “Did you have a lawyer?”
He laughed.
“No.”
“Did anyone explain what you were releasing?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Were you paid five thousand dollars?”
“I don’t remember.”
Dana said quietly, “You bought a motorcycle.”
Owen turned.
She looked at the table.
“You had it that summer.”
Owen stared at her.
“I thought Maria gave you the money.”
“She might have.”
“You told us you got paid from a restoration job.”
“I lied about a lot of things then.”
Lily looked at him.
He saw it.
That was worse than the document.
“Lil.”
She stood.
“I need the bathroom.”
She left.
There was no bathroom connected to the conference room, but nobody corrected her.
She walked down the hallway and sat on the floor near a vending machine.
Five minutes later, Dana came.
She did not sit beside her immediately.
She bought a bottle of water.
The machine took the money and failed to release it.
Dana stared through the glass.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
She hit the side.
Nothing.
Lily laughed.
She did not want to.
It came out anyway.
Dana hit it again.
The bottle dropped.
“Justice.”
She sat beside Lily.
“Did Dad lie to Mom?”
“Yes.”
“A lot?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
Dana twisted the bottle cap.
“Money. Drinking. Where he was. Whether he was drinking. How much he was drinking.”
“Was he bad?”
“He was sick.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Dana looked at her.
“No. He wasn’t bad. He did bad things.”
Lily picked at a loose thread on her skirt.
“Why did Mom marry him?”
“Because he was funny.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Extremely.”
Lily smiled.
Dana nudged her shoulder.
“He was also kind. And annoying. And talented. And when your mom got cancer, he learned every medication schedule better than the nurses.”
Lily looked down.
“I don’t remember that.”
“You were three.”
“Did he stop drinking for her?”
“He stopped before she got sick.”
“Why?”
Dana took a sip of water.
“One night your mother locked him out.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What did he do?”
“Slept in the hallway.”
Lily imagined her father, younger, drunk, curled on the carpet outside an apartment door.
She hated the image.
She also believed it.
Dana said, “People don’t become one thing because you learn something ugly about them.”
Lily leaned her head back against the wall.
“Dad does that.”
“What?”
“Makes Grandpa good and everybody else bad.”
Dana looked toward the conference room.
“Yeah.”
They went back inside.
Owen had not moved.
The release sat in front of him.
He looked at Lily.
“I signed it.”
She nodded.
“I don’t remember doing it, but I signed it.”
“Okay.”
“I should have told you I used to drink.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re old enough.”
“That’s not a reason.”
He smiled sadly.
“You sound like Rebecca.”
“Is that bad?”
“Terrifying.”
Rebecca cleared her throat.
“There is one issue.”
They looked at her.
“The signature may be Owen’s. The notarization is not valid.”
Owen frowned.
“How do you know?”
“The notary commission number belongs to someone whose commission expired eighteen months before this date.”
Dana stared.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I want an expert before I tell you what it means.”
Owen leaned forward.
Rebecca pointed at the document.
“And there’s another problem. The witness signature is Raymond Vale.”
Arthur had told them Raymond Vale left Rosen, Bell & Wexler in 2003.
The release was dated 2004.
Raymond Vale had died in January of that year.
That did not automatically make the document fake.
The date might be wrong.
The notarization might have been added later.
The release might have been re-created from an earlier original.
The lawyers spent another month arguing about which possibility was least damaging.
Then Daniel found Maya Torres.
He had officially been fired by then.
Harcourt called it a restructuring.
Daniel called it unemployment.
Maya still worked there.
She agreed to meet him at a coffee shop in Queens and spent the first ten minutes saying she had nothing to say.
Daniel drank coffee.
Maya folded and unfolded her receipt.
“You need to stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like security.”
“I’m unemployed.”
“You’re still doing it.”
He looked out the window.
A delivery truck blocked traffic.
Someone honked continuously even though there was nowhere for the truck to go.
Maya said, “I processed the Carter file before the auction.”
Daniel looked back.
She immediately regretted saying it.
“Who gave it to you?”
“Evelyn.”
“What were you told?”
“To upload provenance supplements.”
“For which lots?”
“Nine through seventeen.”
“The Carter works.”
“She didn’t call them that.”
“What did she call them?”
Maya rubbed the receipt between her fingers.
“Legacy title noise.”
Daniel waited.
“She said it had been cleared years ago.”
“Did you see the 2004 release?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see the trust memorandum?”
“A scan of the cover page.”
“Schedules?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
Maya looked embarrassed.
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“That they were missing and therefore irrelevant.”
Daniel sat back.
“Anything else?”
Maya stared at the coffee.
“There was an email.”
“From whom?”
“Outside counsel.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Don’t guess.”
She nodded.
“It said the release was broad but document history was imperfect.”
Daniel’s pulse changed.
“What does imperfect mean?”
“They were trying to locate the original.”
“Did they?”
“Not before the auction.”
“Did Evelyn know?”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked out the window again.
Maya whispered, “I should have said something.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the problem with that sentence.”
She looked at him.
May you like
He softened.
“You were an auction assistant, not general counsel.”
