The Amber Room Part 2

"You have pet.i.tioned this court for a change of name. Why do you wish to be known as Karol Borya?"

"It is my birth name. My father named me Karol. It means 'strong-willed.' I was youngest of six children and almost die at birth. When I immigrate to this country, I thought, must protect ident.i.ty. I work for government commissions while in Soviet Union. I hated Communists. They ruin my homeland, and I speak out. Stalin sent many countrymen to Siberian camps. I thought harm would come to my family. Very few could leave then. But before my death, I want my heritage returned."

"Are you ill?"

"No. But I wonder how long this tired body will hold out."

She looked at the old man standing before her, his frame shrunken with age but still distinguished. The eyes were inscrutable and deep-set, hair stark white, voice gravelly and enigmatic. "You look marvelous for a man your age."

He smiled.

"Do you seek this change to defraud, evade prosecution, or hide from a creditor?"

"Never."

"Then I grant your pet.i.tion. You shall be Karol Borya once again."

She signed the order attached to the pet.i.tion and handed the file to the clerk. Stepping from the bench, she approached the old man. Tears slipped down his stubbled cheeks. Her eyes had reddened, as well. She hugged him and softly said, "I love you, Daddy."

THREE.

4:50 p.m.

Paul Cutler stood from the oak armchair and addressed the court, his lawyerly patience wearing thin. "Your Honor, the estate does not contest movant's services. Instead, we merely challenge the amount he's attempting to charge. Twelve thousand three hundred dollars is a lot of money to paint a house."

"It was a big house," the creditor's lawyer said.

"I would hope," the probate judge added.

Paul said, "The house is two thousand square feet. Not a thing unusual about it. The paint job was routine. Movant is not ent.i.tled to the amount charged."

"Judge, the decedent contracted with my client for a complete house painting, which my client did."

"What the movant did, Judge, was take advantage of a seventy-three-year-old man. He did not render twelve thousand three hundred dollars' worth of services."

"The decedent promised my client a bonus if he finished within a week, and he did."

He couldn't believe the other lawyer was pressing the point with a straight face. "That's convenient, considering the only other person to contradict that promise is dead. The bottom line is that our firm is the named executor on the estate, and we cannot in good conscience pay this bill."

"You want a trial on it?" the crinkly judge asked the other side.

The creditor's lawyer bent down and whispered with the housepainter, a younger man noticeably uncomfortable in a tan polyester suit and tie. "No, sir. Perhaps a compromise. Seven thousand five hundred."

Paul never flinched. "One thousand two hundred and fifty. Not a dime more. We employed another painter to view the work. From what I've been told, we have a good suit for shoddy workmanship. The paint also appears to have been watered down. As far as I'm concerned, we'll let the jury decide." He looked at the other lawyer. "I get two hundred and twenty dollars an hour while we fight. So take your time, counselor."

The other lawyer never even consulted his client. "We don't have the resources to litigate this matter, so we have no choice but to accept the estate's offer."

"I bet. b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.n extortionist," Paul muttered, just loud enough for the other lawyer to hear, as he gathered his file.

"Draw an order, Mr. Cutler," the judge said.

Paul quickly left the hearing room and marched down the corridors of the Fulton County probate division. It was three floors down from the melange of Superior Court and a world apart. No sensational murders, high-profile litigation, or contested divorces. Wills, trusts, and guardianships formed the extent of its limited jurisdiction--mundane, boring, with evidence usually amounting to diluted memories and tales of alliances both real and imagined. A recent state statute Paul helped draft allowed jury trials in certain instances, and occasionally a litigant would demand one. But, by and large, business was tended to by a stable of elder judges, themselves once advocates who roamed the same halls in search of letters testamentary.

Ever since the University of Georgia sent him out into the world with a juris doctorate, probate work had been Paul's specialty. He'd not gone right to law school from college, summarily rejected by the twenty-two schools he'd applied to. His father was devastated. For three years he labored at the Georgia Citizens Bank in the probate and trust department as a glorified clerk, the experience enough motivation for him to retake the law school admission exam and reapply. Three schools ultimately accepted him, and a third-year clerkship resulted in a job at Pridgen & Woodworth after graduation. Now, thirteen years later, he was a sharing-partner in the firm, senior enough in the probate and trust department to be next in line for full partnership and the department's managerial reins.

He turned a corner and zeroed in on double doors at the far end.

Today had been hectic. The painter's motion had been scheduled for over a week, but right after lunch his office received a call from another creditor's lawyer to hear a hastily arranged motion. Originally it was set for 4:30, but the lawyer on the other side failed to show. So he'd shot over to an adjacent hearing room and taken care of the house painter's attempted thievery. He yanked open the wooden doors and stalked down the center aisle of the deserted courtroom. "Heard from Marcus Nettles yet?" he asked the clerk at the far end.

A smile creased the woman's face. "Sure did."

"It's nearly five. Where is he?"

"He's a guest of the sheriff's department. Last I heard, they've got him in a holding cell."

He dropped his briefcase on the oak table. "You're kidding."

"Nope. Your ex put him in this morning."

"Rachel?"

The clerk nodded. "Word is he got smart with her in chambers. Paid her three hundred dollars then told her to F off three times."

The courtroom doors swung open and T. Marcus Nettles waddled in. His beige Neiman Marcus suit was wrinkled, Gucci tie out of place, the Italian loafers scuffed and dirty.

"About time, Marcus. What happened?"

"That b.i.t.c.h you once called your wife threw me in jail and left me there since this mornin'." The baritone voice carried a strain. "Tell me, Paul. Is she really a woman or some hybrid with nuts between those long legs?"

He started to say something, then decided to let it go.

"She climbs my a.s.s in front of a jury because I called her sir sir--"

"Four times, I heard," the clerk said.

"Yeah. Probably was. After I move for a mistrial, which she should have granted, she gives my guy twenty years without a presentence hearin'. Then she wants to give me an ethics lesson. I don't need that s.h.i.t. Particularly from some smart-a.s.s b.i.t.c.h. I can tell you now, I'll be pumpin' money to both her opponents. Lots of money. I'm going to rid myself of that problem the second Tuesday in July."

He'd heard enough. "You ready to argue this motion?"

Nettles laid his briefcase on the table. "Why not? I figured I'd be in that cell all night. Guess the wh.o.r.e has a heart, after all."

"That's enough, Marcus," he said, his voice a bit firmer than he intended.

Nettles's eyes tightened, a penetrating feral stare that seemed to read his thoughts. "The s.h.i.t you care? You've been divorced--what?--three years? She must gouge a chunk out of your paycheck every month in child support."

He said nothing.

"I'll be f.u.c.kin' d.a.m.ned," Nettles said. "You still got a thing for her, don't you?"

"Can we get on with it?"

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h, you do." Nettles shook his bulbous head.

He headed for the other table to get ready for the hearing. The clerk popped from her chair and walked back to fetch the judge. He was glad she'd left. Courthouse gossip blew from ear to ear like a wildfire.

Nettles settled his portly frame into the armchair. "Paul, my boy, take it from a five-time loser. Once you get rid of 'em, be rid of 'em."

FOUR.

5:45 p.m.

Karol Borya cruised into his driveway and parked the Oldsmobile. At eighty-one, he was happy to still be driving. His eyesight was amazingly good, and his coordination, though slow, seemed adequate enough for the state to renew his license. He didn't drive much, or far. To the grocery store, occasionally to the mall, and over to Rachel's house at least twice a week. Today he'd ventured only four miles to the MARTA station, where he'd caught a train downtown to the courthouse for the name-change hearing.

He'd lived in northeast Fulton County nearly forty years, long before the explosion of Atlanta northward. The once forested hills of red clay, whose runoff had tracked into the nearby Chattahoochee River, were now covered in commercial development, high-end residential subdivisions, apartments, and roads. Millions lived and worked around him, Atlanta along the way having acquired the designations of metropolitan metropolitan and "Olympic host." and "Olympic host."

He ambled out to the street and checked the curbside mailbox. The evening was unusually warm for May, good for his arthritic joints, which seemed to sense the approach of fall and downright hated winter. He walked back toward the house and noticed that the wooden eaves needed painting.

He sold his original acreage twenty-four years ago, garnering enough to pay cash for a new house. The subdivision then was one of the newer developments, the street now evolved into a pleasant nook under a canopy of quarter-century timber. His cherished wife, Maya, died two years after the house was completed. Cancer claimed her fast. Too fast. He hardly had time to say good-bye. Rachel was fourteen and brave, he was fifty-seven and scared to death. The prospect of growing old alone had frightened him. But Rachel had always stayed nearby. He was lucky to have such a good daughter. His only child.

He trudged into the house, and was there only a few minutes when the back door burst open and his two grandchildren rushed into the kitchen. They never knocked and he never locked the door. Brent was seven, Marla six. Both hugged him. Rachel followed them inside.

"Grandpa, Grandpa, where's Lucy?" Marla asked.

"Asleep in the den. Where else?" The stray had wandered into the backyard four years ago and never left.

The children bolted to the front of the house.

Rachel yanked open the refrigerator and found a pitcher of tea. "You got a little emotional in court."

"I know I say too much. But I thought of papa. I wish you knew him. He work the fields every day. A Tsarist. Loyal to end. Hated Communists." He paused. "I was thinking, I have no photo of him."

"But you have his name again."

"And for that I thank you, my darling. Did you learn where was Paul?"

"My clerk checked. He was tied up in probate court and couldn't make it."

"How is he doing?"

She sipped her tea. "Okay, I guess."

He studied his daughter. She was so much like her mother. Pearl white skin, frilly auburn hair, perceptive brown eyes that cast the prepossessing look of a woman in charge. And smart. Maybe too smart for her own good.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I get by. I always do."

"You sure, daughter?" He'd noticed changes lately. Some drifting, a bit more distance and fragility. A hesitancy toward life that he found disturbing.

"Don't worry about me, Daddy. I'll be fine."

"Still no suitors?" He knew of no men in the three years since the divorce.

"Like I have time. All I do is work and tend those two in there. Not to mention you."

He had to say it. "I worry about you."

"No need."

But she looked away while answering. Perhaps she wasn't quite so certain of herself. "Not good to be old alone."

She seemed to get the message. "You're not."

"I'm not speaking of me, and you know it."

She moved to the sink and rinsed her gla.s.s. He decided not to press and reached over and flicked on the counter television. The station was still set to CNN Headline News from the morning. He turned down the volume and felt he had to say, "Divorce is wrong."

She cut him one of her looks. "You going to start with the lecture?"

"Swallow that pride. You should try again."

"Paul doesn't want to."

His gaze held hers. "You both too proud. Think of my grandchildren."

"I did when I divorced. All we did was fight. You know that."

He shook his head. "Stubborn, like your mother." Or was she like him? Hard to tell.

Rachel dried her hands with the dish towel. "Paul will be by about seven to get the kids. He'll bring them home."

"Where you going?"