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.One lousy percent.She did the math on a papernapkin as she talked on the phone to her lawyer.GEENA PHELAN STRONG was thirty and surviving what had evolved into atumultuous marriage with Cody, husband number two.His family was old moneyfrom up East, but so far the money had only been a rumor.She certainly hadn'tPage 20ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlseen any of it.Cody was beautifully educated-Taft and Dartmouth and an MBAfrom Columbia-and he considered himself a visionary in the world of commerce.No job could hold him.His talents could18not be constricted by the walls of an office.His dreams would not be crampedby the orders and whims of bosses.Cody would be a billionaire, self-made ofcourse, and probably the youngest in history.But after six years together, Cody had yet to find his niche.In fact, hislosses were staggering.There had been a bad gamble on copper futures in 1992that had taken over a million of Geena's money.And two years later, he wasscalded by naked options when the stock market dipped dramatically.Geena lefthim for four months, but returned after counseling.An idea for  Snow-PackedChickens turned sour, and Cody escaped with a loss of only a half a million.They spent a lot.Their counselor recommended traveling as a means of therapy,so they'd seen the world.Being young and rich soothed many of their problems,but the money was drying up.The five million Troy gave her on hertwenty-first birthday had shrunk to less than a million, and their debts weremounting.The pressure on their marriage had reached the breaking point whenTroy leaped from his terrace.And so they spent a busy morning looking for homes in Swinks Mill, the placeof their grandest dreams.Their dreams grew as the day progressed, and bylunch they were making inquiries into homes worth over two million.At twothey met an anxious real estate agent, a woman named Lee, with teased hair,gold rings, two cell phones, and a shiny Cadillac.Geena introduced herself as Geena Phelan, with the last name pronounced heavy and uncheated.Evidently,Lee did not read financial publications because the name missed its mark, andwell into the third showing Cody was forced to pull her aside and whisper thetruth about his father-in-law. That rich guy who jumped? Lee said, hand over mouth.Geena was inspecting ahallway closet with a small sauna tucked into it.Cody nodded sadly.By dusk they were looking at an empty home priced at four million five, andthe prospective buyers were seriously considering making an offer.Lee rarelysaw such wealthy clients, and they'd worked her into a frenzy.REX, AGE FORTY-FOUR, brother to TJ, was, at the time of Troy's death, the onlyone of his children under criminal investigation.His troubles stemmed from abank that failed, with various lawsuits and investigations spinning wildlyfrom it.Bank examiners and the FBI had been making rather fierce inquiriesfor three years.To fund his defense, and his expensive lifestyle, Rex had purchased from theestate of a man killed in a gunfight a string of topless bars and strip clubsin the Fort Lauderdale area.The skin business was lucrative; traffic wasalways good and cash was easy to skim.Without being overly greedy, hepocketed around twenty-four thousand a month in tax-free dollars, roughly fourthousand from each of his six clubs.The clubs were held in the name of Amber Rockwell, his wife and a formerstripper he'd first noticed lurching on a bar one night.In fact, all of hisassets were in her name, and this caused him no small amount of anxiety.Withthe addition of clothing and minus the makeup and kinky shoes, Amber passedherself off as respectable in theirWashington circles.Few people knew her past.But she was a whore at heart,and the fact that she owned everything caused poor Rex many sleepless nights.At the time of his father's death, Rex had lodged against him in excess ofseven million dollars' worth of liens and judgments from creditors, businesspartners, and investors in the bank.And the total was growing.The judgments,though, remained unsatisfied because there was nothing for the creditors toattach.Rex was asset-free; he owned nothing, not even his car.He and AmberPage 21ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]