Firm Ambitions Read Free Page A

minute.”
    â€œWhat about you? Are you seeing someone special?”
    She smiled with undisguised carnal pleasure. “Definitely.”
    â€œTell me about him.”
    â€œHe’s thirty years old and he’s gorgeous. He’s totally different from Tommy.” She leaned forward and raised her eyebrows in a lascivious manner. “Especially in the bedroom.”
    â€œOh?” I said with a smile.
    â€œLet me tell you, Rachel, that man is hung like a bull, and he can last as long as I need. I’ve had more orgasms in an hour with Andros than I’ve had in a year with my husband.”
    â€œAndros?” I asked with surprise. “You mean the aerobics guy?”
    Eileen nodded proudly.
    I’d been hearing about Andros for months from my sister Ann. He was the crown prince of St. Louis exercise instructors. He had a place called Firm Ambitions in the Plaza Frontenac shopping mall, where he conducted aerobics and exercise classes a few hours each day. He also did personal workout sessions at the homes of dozens of clients, who were, for the most part, wealthy women between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five.
    I was especially intrigued because I would be seeing Eileen’s lover in action for the first time that night. Ann was an Andros fanatic. After dinner she was taking me to his high-impact aerobics class at Firm Ambitions.
    â€œDo you think your husband suspects anything?” I asked.
    â€œNo. Andros and I are very careful about the whens and the wheres.”
    â€œWhat if he found out?”
    She laughed bitterly. “He’d kill me. He’d view it as a breach of our understanding.”
    â€œWhich is what?”
    â€œI get the furs and the designer clothes and the Jag and two weeks at LaCosta every February. He gets the safaris and the gambling and the sport fucking. Meanwhile, I stay pure and raise the kids. Screwing Andros isn’t part of that deal.”
    I asked her some questions about Tommy Landau’s finances. As I expected, she knew very little beyond what Tommy told her, and Tommy told her very little. Over the past couple years she had glanced at a few of their financial statements when his lawyers had her sign various documents in connection with refinancings of some of his shopping centers. As she recalled, the assets on the financial statements included numerous limited partnerships, and the liabilities included millions of dollars in loans. From various overheard phone conversations at home, she had the sense that some of his shopping centers were having financial problems.
    I explained that we would need to hire a good forensic accountant to help make sense of her husband’s real estate holdings in order to be sure that she got her fair share of the property division. I concluded the meeting by describing the sequence of events from the filing of the petition to the date the judge issued the final order of dissolution.
    â€œWho’s Tommy likely to hire?” I asked.
    â€œHard to say. Maybe his father, if that firm does divorce work. If not, maybe Charles Kimball.”
    â€œThe Charles Kimball?” I asked, impressed.
    She nodded. “They go way back. All the way to when Tommy got kicked out of college.”
    â€œDid Kimball represent him in the rape trial?”
    She nodded. “And in the cocaine case. Got him off both times. Tommy’s pretty loyal to him.”
    â€œWith good reason,” I said as I walked her to the door. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Drop those documents off tomorrow, if you can. Especially the tax returns. We’ll plan to meet next week before I file the petition.”
    After Eileen left I dictated the notes of our meeting and asked my secretary to set up a new divorce file. Your last divorce file , I told myself as I took a sip of coffee. The property issues were going to be dull and complex, especially the valuation of Tommy Landau’s equity positions in each