The Partner: A Novel by John Grisham

Author:John Grisham [Grisham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780307576163
Google: Al1yWGCkmLQC
Amazon: B003B02O14
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2010-03-16T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four

Underhill was back. Fresh from eight hours of watching videos and reviewing notes in another room. He walked in, gave a generic hello in the general direction of Stephano and his lawyer, then got to work. “If we could pick up where you left off yesterday, Mr. Stephano.”

“Where might that be?”

“Your invasion of Brazil.”

“Right. Well, let’s see. It’s a big country. A hundred and sixty million people, more square miles than the lower forty-eight, and a history of being a marvelous place to hide, especially if you’re on the run. Nazis favored it for years. We put together a dossier on Lanigan, had it translated into Portuguese. We had a police artist work with some computer people to develop a series of color-enhanced renderings of what Lanigan looked like now. We spent hours with the sailboat charter captain in Orange Beach, as well as with the bankers in Nassau, and together they helped us develop a series of detailed sketches of Lanigan. We even met with the partners in the firm and went over the sketches. They, in turn, showed them to the secretaries. One of the partners, Mr. Bogan, even took the best rendering to the widow Lanigan for her opinion.

“Now that you’ve caught him, were your photos close?”

“Fairly close. The chin and the nose threw us off a bit.”

“Please continue.”

“We hurried to Brazil, and found three of the best private investigative firms in the country. One in Rio, one in São Paulo, and one in Recife, in the northeast. We were paying top dollar, so we hired the very best. We put them together as a team, and gathered them in São Paulo for a week. We listened to them. They developed the story that Patrick should be an American fugitive wanted for the kidnap and murder of the daughter of a wealthy family, a family now offering a reward for information about his whereabouts. The murder of a child was, of course, designed to arouse more sympathy than stealing money from a bunch of lawyers.

“We went straight to the language schools, flashing pictures of Lanigan and offering cash. The reputable schools slammed their doors. Others looked at the pictures but couldn’t help. By this time, we had a lot of respect for Lanigan, and we didn’t think he’d run the risk of studying in a place where questions were asked and records were kept. So we targeted the private tutors, of which there are only about a million in Brazil. It was tedious work.”

“Did you offer cash up front?”

“We did what our Brazilian agents wanted to do, which was to show the pictures, tell the story of the murdered child, then wait for a reaction. If there was a nibble, then we’d gently drop the hint about some reward money.”

“Any nibbles?”

“A few, here and there. But we never paid any money, at least not to language tutors.”

“To others?”

Stephano nodded as he glanced at a sheet of paper. “In April of ’94, we found a plastic surgeon in Rio who showed some interest in Lanigan’s pictures.

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