Trophy Widow: A Rachel Gold Novel (Rachel Gold Novels)

402 Pages·2002·1.08 MB·English

by  Michael A. Kahn

TROPHY WIDOW
By
Michael A. Kahn
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35

Trophy Widow
A Rachel Gold Novel
Michael A. Kahn
A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York
www.eBookYes.com
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel
are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
TROPHY WIDOW: A RACHEL GOLD NOVEL
Copyright 2002 by Michael A. Kahn
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York
NY 10010
www.tor.com
Forge is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 0-312-70732-0
For my son Josh,
who laughs with me and cries with me
Also By Michael A. Kahn
Sheer Gall
Due Diligence
Grave Designs
Firm Ambitions
Death Benefits
Bearing Witness
A special acknowledgment to Mike and Martha Hogan
and all of the other wonderful
men, women, and families of the
Small World Adoption Foundation
Chapter 1

You'd have thought this was my first time.

Not even close.

I don't specialize in celebrities, but I've had my share. The list includes a
member of the Chicago Bulls, two major-league baseball players, and the
entire
morning drive-time crew for one of the highest-rated FM stations in St.
Louis.
And that only covers contract negotiations and endorsement deals. I've sued
Riverport on behalf of an Atlanta rap group in a gate-receipts dispute. When
the
case ended, the group's manager offered me a walk-on in their next music
video.
I told him I'd prefer to have my fees paid in full. I've represented a
Hollywood
star accused of trashing his hotel suite while on location here for a shoot and
we're not talking just any star. He made Entertainment Weekly's "20 Sexiest
Men"
two years running. Alas, he's also two inches shorter than me and as I learned
while defending him in a four-hour deposition in a small conference room
afflicted with rhino breath.
But the odd thing is that I never felt the tiniest tingle before meeting any of
them not even a hint of that magical frisson that's supposed to radiate from
real celebrities like, well, steam from a baked potato. And lest you get the
wrong idea, I'm not one of those snooty types who professes to be above all
that
fawning. Far from it. I once was rendered dumbstruck on an elevator in the
Met
Square building when I realized that the tall man standing next to me was
none
other than number 45 himself Hall of Famer Bob Gibson. For a diehard
Cardinals
fan, that's the equivalent of coming around the bend on Mount Sinai and
finding
yourself face to face with a Charlton Heston look-alike in flowing robes and
sandals carrying two stone tablets. I rode several floors in flustered silence
until I worked up the nerve to ask Mr. Gibson for his autograph, which he
graciously signed on a sheet from my legal pad that I have since had
laminated.
And that gaga response isn't limited to baseball gods. I would kill to spend an
afternoon with Jane Austen. I would swoon like a schoolgirl before Clark
Gable
especially the Clark Gable of It Happened One Night. And if Marvin Gaye
were
alive and well, I might just follow him from concert to concert like a
Motown
version of a Deadhead. With those folks we're talking frisson.
Cosmic frisson.
But not for my celebrity clients. For whatever reason, with them it always seems
to be business as usual. Attorney-client. Strictly professional.
Until today.
Today I was driving halfway across the state of Missouri to meet my newest
client.
A housewife.
More precisely, a former housewife. Probably the most famous former
housewife in
America, and surely the only one serving thirty-to-forty in Chillicothe
Correctional Center.
Today I was definitely in the grip of that old black magic.
That's because today I was going to see Angela Green.
Yes, the Angela Green.
The same one whose murder trial came in at number 3 on People magazine's
"Top
Ten Murder Trials of the 1990s," just behind O. J. Simpson (no. 1) and the
Menendez brothers (no. 2), but ahead of Timothy McVeigh (no. 4) and
Jeffrey
Dahmer (no. 5). The same one whose prime-time jailhouse interview with
Oprah
Winfrey drew a 41 share and ended with that shot reprinted in newspapers
and
magazines around the country the one of Oprah, tears streaming down her
cheeks,
her head resting on Angela's shoulder as Angela gently patted her on the
back.
The same Angela Green who had Anita Hill deliver her acceptance speech in
absentia at the Ms. magazine "Women of the Year" banquet, who caused a
rift
within the NAACP when she was named one of its "Women of Valor," and
who was the
subject of Connie Chung's Emmy-nominated profile, which included those
extraordinary testimonials from the prisoners who'd earned their high school
equivalencies through the special tutoring program Angela helped establish
at
Chillicothe Correctional Center.
Yes, that Angela Green.
And this coming year her seventh since entering prison promised to be her
biggest yet. The publication date for her long-awaited autobiography was
just
six months off. A major Hollywood studio had already snagged the film
rights.
According to a blurb in Vanity Fair, Whoopi Goldberg and Angela Bassett
were
vying for the lead role while Warren Beatty, Tommy Lee Jones, and Michael
Douglas were in the running for the role of Michael Green. Vanity Fair
picked
Bassett and Douglas as the favorites, since "it would be almost too delicious
for an Angela and a Michael to play the Angela and the Michael."
Meanwhile,
Angela's criminal defense attorney, Maria Fallaci, had her own book coming
out
late in October.
All of which translated into megabucks.
And where there are megabucks, there is usually a lawsuit. That's where I fit
in. My name is Rachel Gold Cardinals fan, daughter of Sarah, big sister of
Ann,
and, possibly, blushing bride and mother, assuming that a thirty-three-year-
old
bride isn't too old to blush or too young to become the instant stepmother of
two adorable girls. But for the here and now, the only relevant role was
lawyer,
which is why I was driving through rural Missouri on this lovely Sunday
morning
in late June. I was somewhere in the northwest quadrant of the state, heading
north on Highway 65 through a portion of Missouri I'd never been in before.
According to a highway marker on the right, I'd just passed over the Grand
River, although it didn't look too grand to me. Of course, when you grow up
in
St. Louis, it takes a whole lot of grand before any river can claim that label.
Chillicothe was the next exit.
Two hours ago I'd dropped Benny Goldberg off at the University of Missouri in
Columbia, where he was delivering a paper on antitrust law at a law school
symposium. After my prison meeting with Angela Green, I was going to
swing back
down to Columbia to pick him up. On our way back to St. Louis we were
planning
to stop at a farm near Warrenton where Benny would introduce me to two
new
clients, Maggie Lane and Sara Freed, who were enmeshed in a dispute so
outlandish that it had to be true. No one could make up such a story. Not
even
someone with a mind as warped as Benny's and Benny's is as warped as it
gets.
But Maggie and Sara could wait, I told myself as I pulled off the exit and drove
into town. Chillicothe was a typical Midwestern village chiefly frame
houses,
most built before World War II, a main street of redbrick buildings, including
a
bank and a pharmacy and a diner and a dry goods store. I turned down Third
Street and slowed halfway down the block, peering out the window.
Surprised, I
rechecked the address.
I'd been to prisons before in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana but never one
for women. Men's prisons are geographically isolated drab fortresses built on
the outskirts of town, far from the women and children, grimly asserting to
the
world, Here there be pariahs. In this architecture of exile, Alcatraz is the
quintessential model: a gray fortress on an island, cut off from civilization by
frigid water, killer currents, and hungry sharks.
Chillicothe Correctional Center didn't fit that mold. Built in the 1880s as a
home for wayward girls, the facility was located in the middle of a pleasant
town in the gentle countryside. Its founders envisioned a pastoral haven
where
lost girls could find Christian salvation far from the wicked temptations of
St.
Louis and Kansas City. That vision produced a campus reminiscent of a New
England women's college with several two-story redbrick buildings arranged
like
dormitories around a quadrangle.
Times change, though, and the home for wayward girls was now Missouri's main
prison for women, housing nearly six hundred inmates. The prisoners ranged
from
minimum security residents on work-release programs to death row convicts,
of
which there were presently three. Fortunately, Angela Green wasn't one of
them.
Nevertheless, when you enter prison at the age of forty-nine, a forty-year
sentence might as well be life.
I pulled my car into the administration center parking lot and got out.
Stretching, I turned toward the prison buildings across the street. There were
several female inmates outside the buildings some working on gardens,
others
strolling around the grounds. The only indication that this wasn't the
Missouri
branch of Mount Holyoke College were the gray work shirts and slacks worn
by the
women and the security fence topped with coiled razor-wire ringing the