Chapter 46
“Swyteck, get over here,” said Demetri.
Jack was sitting alone on the floor in front of the news desk. Shannon had talked Demetri into letting her use the nearest bathroom, which was just off the back of the set. Two untied hostages-the anchor woman and the cameraman-were clearly making Demetri edgy, not to mention the constant threat of SWAT bursting into the newsroom at any moment. He stood by the weather-forecast green screen, where he could keep one eye on the barricaded entrance to the newsroom and the other on the bathroom door behind the set.
“What do you want?” said Jack.
“I said come here.”
Jack climbed to his feet and walked to the back of the set. Demetri had been extremely quiet since his last performance in front of the camera, and as 2:00 A.M. approached, he was looking tired. He’d been mumbling about his back hurting until he found a first-aid kit with some pain reliever inside. The red box was sitting on the news desk. Jack wondered if there was a pair of scissors or maybe a knife inside.
“What now?” said Jack.
Demetri turned off his wireless microphone. Whatever he was going to say, it wouldn’t be for the television audience.
“I need your help,” he said.
“My help?” said Jack, almost smiling at the absurdity of the situation. “Look, you’ve got three guns by my count, which clearly puts you in the driver’s seat. But I’m not interested in helping you do anything that could get someone killed. Especially me.”
“This isn’t going to hurt anyone. I just need you to help me draft something.”
“You mean like a demand letter?”
“No,” he said, pausing for a moment. “It’s something legal.”
“A confession?”
“No-hell no. I need a will.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
Jack studied those dark, piercing eyes. Being held hostage was bad enough. Getting stuck with a hostage taker who was so prepared to die that he seriously wanted a will was enough to ruin your whole damn day.
“I’d have to say you look pretty serious to me.”
“You’re a lawyer. I assume you do wills, right?”
“Well, not really. I’m a trial lawyer.”
“Are you trying to tell that me you’ve never helped anyone with a will?”
Jack could have told him about the time he’d represented Theo’s older brother Tatum-a reformed hit man who had stood to inherit millions in a six-way battle of survival of the greediest-but that probably wouldn’t have helped matters.
“I could do a will if I had to,” said Jack.
“You have to,” he said, pointing the gun at Jack’s forehead. Demetri called down the hall to the bathroom. “Hey, hurry it up in there, princess.”
The toilet flushed. A minute later, the door opened, and Shannon emerged.
Demetri said, “Hands up over your head where I can see them.”
She complied, walked straight to Demetri, and stopped.
“Facedown on the floor,” he said.
She did as he told her. Demetri quickly retied her hands behind her back, and then he directed both her and Jack back toward the news desk.
“You,” he told Shannon, “get on the floor.”
Jack remained behind the news desk. Demetri found a pad and paper in the drawer.
“Here’s the deal,” said Demetri. “When I get this five hundred thousand dollars in cash, I want it all to go to Sofia. I have some other personal things I want to leave to her, too.”
“It’s a nice sentiment,” said Jack. “But that’s not going to work.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t steal money and leave it to your heirs.”
“I have friends who do it all the time. Hell, how else do you expect an entire generation of baby boomers to leave something to their kids?”
Jack glanced toward the camera. “The problem is, you’re trying to do it on television.”
“Just tell me what to write. I promise I won’t sue you for malpractice.”
Jack suddenly had visions of Body Heat and Kathleen Turner saying that she liked him because he was “not too smart.”
“It would be a lot easier if you just untied me and let me write it for you.”
Demetri gave it some thought, and to Jack’s surprise he called the cameraman over, whose hands were free.
“Untie Swyteck,” said Demetri.
He did so at gunpoint, and then Demetri ordered him back behind the camera. Jack took the chair at the news desk, pen and paper before him. Demetri stood off to the side, where he could keep the gun trained on Jack and still read what he was writing. Jack took a deep breath. He’d become a trial lawyer for many reasons, and disdain for drafting legal documents of any kind was one of them.
“I need your last name,” said Jack.
“Pappas.”
Jack inked out some language he recalled from law school. It was probably archaic, but clients expected that kind of stuff.
I, Demetri Pappas, being of sound mind and body…
“What’s Sofia’s last name?” said Jack.
He started to answer, then checked his words. “Pappas,” he said.
“You understand that Sofia remarried, right?”
Demetri’s eyes narrowed. “Her name is Sofia Pappas.”
Jack sensed another opening, an emotional point of leverage that could shift the balance of power. It was a skill he had honed on death row, where careful navigation through his clients’ personal demons could spark connections with men who were beyond reach.
Jack put down the pen and said, “Why are you doing this?”
“Keep writing.”
“You’re doing this for Sofia? Is that it?”
He looked angry for a second, but if Jack was reading his expression correctly, it seemed to be morphing into something more complicated.
“I’m not mocking you,” said Jack. “I’d just really like to know.”
On the desk was a cup of water left over from the evening news, and Demetri drank it, as if his throat suddenly needed oiling.
“Right before I let Sofia out of your car tonight, do you remember what she said to me?”
“Not really,” said Jack.
“She said ‘I don’t deserve this.’”
“That meant something to you,” said Jack. It was an observation, not a question.
Demetri nodded. “I know she wasn’t trying to hurt me or blame me, but it opened up old wounds. Things that I had hoped were healed. She was talking about a night a long time ago in Cyprus, when we were young. It began as pure pleasure.”
Plezoor. A nostalgic moment seemed to trigger the accent.
“Until you got thrown off the building,” said Jack.
“She told you about that?”
“Yes.”
He seemed surprised, then tentative. “Did she tell you what those bastards did after they thought I was dead?”
“She told me what happened.”
“Everything?” said Demetri. “She told you everything?”
“Yes.”
Demetri breathed in and out. “I suppose it’s healthy that she can talk to people about it now. That wasn’t always the case. She wouldn’t even report it to the police. We tried to work through it, but it was too much. We lasted less than a year. Nine months.”
“Do you mean exactly nine months?”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“Nine months from that night, or nine months after you got out of the hospital?”
“From that night.”
“Are you saying that Sofia was-”
“Just write the damn will, Swyteck.”
Jack took a moment to read the man’s eyes, his body language, his voice-trying to gauge whether the opening was still there. On death row, if you pushed the wrong emotional button, you called for the guard. The gun in Demetri’s hand made the risk of error prohibitive.
Jack picked up the pen, explaining aloud as he wrote.
“I’m drafting this so that everything you have when you die-whether it’s five hundred thousand dollars or five cents-goes to Sofia.”
“That’s the way I want it,” said Demetri.