I pushed the sleeves of my thermal Henley up past my elbows, baring forearms covered in the ends of my full-sleeve tattoos. “Okay, well, that’s fuckin’ weird. What’s the damn thing say, then? Let me guess: I’m broke, he was broke, the bar is forfeit, and I owe a bunch of money I didn’t know Dad owed.”
“Lord knows that’s exactly what one would expect, a filthy place like this,” Richard said, plucking a folder from his briefcase. “But I think you’ll be rather surprised.”
I lowered my stool onto all fours, set my scotch down, and stood up to tower over the slimy pencil-dick lawyer. “Listen to me, pissant: you come in here talkin’ shit about my fuckin’ bar, I’ll crush you like a goddamn cockroach.” I crossed my arms and flexed to prove a point: my arms were thicker than his legs. “So how about you say what you came here to say and I won’t knock your fuckin’ Ivy League white teeth down your skinny little chicken neck.”
I was coming across a little…aggressive, maybe, but he creeped me out and made me feel like he thought he was better than me, and that pissed me off.
He paled, stumbled backward a few steps. “No need for threats, Mr. Badd, I simply—this isn’t—ahem. As you say, I’ll get to the particulars of the will.” He opened the folder, shuffled papers, adjusted his spectacles, read in silence for a few minutes, then replaced the papers in the folder but didn’t close the folder. “Your father managed to save quite a large sum of money, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
I blinked at him. “He…what?”
“Your father owned this building outright and lived above it, so he had very little by way of bills except the overhead of the bar, which he kept to a minimum and, for many years, it seems this bar was quite successful. He was parsimonious, and used only small amounts of the profits. He spent remarkably little, as a matter of fact.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. So how much did he leave, and who to?”
“To whom, you mean,” Richard said.
“Don’t correct my fuckin’ grammar, you fuckin’ dork,” I snarled. “How much, and to whom?”
Richard blinked at me for a moment, and then he cleared his throat again. “Ahem. Um…he left a sum total of two hundred and ninety thousand dollars to be split even between the eight of you Badd brothers. Not a fortune, but a sizable sum. Plus the deed to the bar, but that’s not part of the two-ninety being distributed per the will. As for the distribution itself, well, that’s where it gets a little more complicated.”
I growled. “Complicated? What’s that mean? What’s complicated about who Dad left his money to?”
“Well, usually in circumstances such as these, the monies are distributed equally amongst all parties, or in favor of one or another of the deceased’s issue, which usually leads to arguments and lawsuits, but that’s neither here nor there, in this case.”
I twirled my hand in a circle. “Get on with it, Dick. What’s the short version for us poor uneducated folks?”
He sighed. “It means your father left specific instructions which must be completed before any of the funds can be released.”
“Instructions?”
Richard nodded. “Caveats is the legal term applicable here. It means neither you nor any of your brothers get any money from your father’s estate until the terms are fulfilled.”
“So? What are the terms?”
He quoted from the will: “‘Before anyone gets a cent of my money, all seven of my wayward sons must return to Ketchikan, Alaska for a minimum of one calendar year, and spend that year living within reasonable proximity to Badd’s Bar and Grill, and they must contribute a minimum of two thousand working hours in Badd’s Bar and Grill during that time.’”
I had to sit down, then. “The fuck?”
“It means your brothers have to come back to Ketchikan to live and work here for one year. The two thousand hours figure is based on a forty-hour work week in a calendar year of fifty-two weeks.”
I tried to get my brain going. “So…what else does it say?”
“It names each of your brothers and their likely locations of residence. It awards you sole ownership of the bar, upon signature of the deed, and awards you—and only you—ten thousand dollars. The rest of the money will be split evenly between the eight of you, which comes to…thirty-six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars each.”
“So the ten grand to me…”
Richard consulted the will. “‘To my oldest son Sebastian, I leave ten thousand dollars outside the parameters of the execution of the will’s preceding terms, as a minor reward for his faithfulness over the years to me and to Badd’s Bar and Grill.’”