Read Online A King's Ransom by James Grippando - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Grippando
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mother looking over my shoulder. I was at once proud of my old man for thinking of it and excited as hell that he'd actually followed through and bought it. Hot damn! Dad was insured.
This is good, right? said Mom.
It's fantastic.
So I read it correctly? The insurance company pays the ransom?
Up to three million dollars.
Her eyes brightened, and she actually smiled. It was the most upbeat I'd seen her. I wish your father had told me he had insurance. Why was he so secretive with the safe-deposit box?
It says right here in the policy that if the insured tells anyone that he has kidnap-and-ransom insurance, the policy is void. Apparently Dad took that pretty literally. He wouldn't even tell you.
What happens now?
I'll call the insurance company and give them notice. If I read the policy right, they select the negotiator who will handle Dad's case.
Is that better than using the FBI?
I hesitated to tell her about the disastrous meeting with Agent Huitt. Her spirits were too high. My guess is that these private consultants are former FBI hostage negotiators and the like. How can it get better than that? We'll have a skilled negotiator who doesn't have to work within the box created by bureaucrats and diplomats.
If only I'd gone to the bank sooner. But when your father told me to check the safe-deposit box if anything ever happened to him, I thought he meant if he crashed in one of those little airplanes they fly into Puerto Cabezas or was lost at sea in a leaky old shrimp boat. I was so afraid to find something in the box that I wasn't ready to see, a last will and testament or -
I understand.
Please be firm with this insurance company. You know how slow they can be.
I could hear the concern in her voice, her fear that she'd needlessly delayed things by not finding the policy sooner. Mom, I don't care what it takes. Before the day's over, I'll speak to our negotiator. I promise.
As it turned out, keeping that promise proved almost too easy. Dad was insured with Quality Insurance Company, a Bermuda-based subsidiary of a worldwide underwriting group. More important, I quickly learned that Quality was a client of Coolidge, Harding and Cash. The connection wasn't surprising. While scores of companies offered kidnap-and-ransom insurance, the leaders in the industry - and the ones who had pioneered the concept - were the largest insurers in the world. Companies like that were the mainstay of the Cool Cash client roster.
The Miami office had never done work for Quality Insurance, but a woman in our New York office was their go-to lawyer in the United States. She was only too glad to help, which underscored the wisdom of my earlier decision to run a conflict check at my firm before placing a phone call to Quality. Having represented insurance companies myself, I'd anticipated needing to be aggressive, perhaps even a little nasty, to make the elephant jump. However, I recalled a fellow associate in our office who, on a purely personal matter, had written an ugly letter to an appliance discount store on Cool Cash letterhead. The scathing missive eventually landed on the desk of the partner in our Atlanta office who happened to represent that sleazebag, bait-and-switch, two-bit operation. Two weeks later my friend was working in the county attorney's office. I learned from his mistake. Instead of being in the defensive posture of explaining to a New York partner why I was beating up on her client, I had the partner working for me from the get-go. She personally followed through to make sure the case was assigned immediately to a Miami consulting firm, and Duncan Fitz offered to sit through our first meeting in his office, just to make sure that Quality Insurance understood that this law firm had a keen interest in the case.
Thank God for small favors. Twice for big ones. This was huge.
Alex Cabrera is here, Duncan's secretary announced over the intercom.
Send him in, said Duncan.
Duncan and I rose as the door opened, both
This is good, right? said Mom.
It's fantastic.
So I read it correctly? The insurance company pays the ransom?
Up to three million dollars.
Her eyes brightened, and she actually smiled. It was the most upbeat I'd seen her. I wish your father had told me he had insurance. Why was he so secretive with the safe-deposit box?
It says right here in the policy that if the insured tells anyone that he has kidnap-and-ransom insurance, the policy is void. Apparently Dad took that pretty literally. He wouldn't even tell you.
What happens now?
I'll call the insurance company and give them notice. If I read the policy right, they select the negotiator who will handle Dad's case.
Is that better than using the FBI?
I hesitated to tell her about the disastrous meeting with Agent Huitt. Her spirits were too high. My guess is that these private consultants are former FBI hostage negotiators and the like. How can it get better than that? We'll have a skilled negotiator who doesn't have to work within the box created by bureaucrats and diplomats.
If only I'd gone to the bank sooner. But when your father told me to check the safe-deposit box if anything ever happened to him, I thought he meant if he crashed in one of those little airplanes they fly into Puerto Cabezas or was lost at sea in a leaky old shrimp boat. I was so afraid to find something in the box that I wasn't ready to see, a last will and testament or -
I understand.
Please be firm with this insurance company. You know how slow they can be.
I could hear the concern in her voice, her fear that she'd needlessly delayed things by not finding the policy sooner. Mom, I don't care what it takes. Before the day's over, I'll speak to our negotiator. I promise.
As it turned out, keeping that promise proved almost too easy. Dad was insured with Quality Insurance Company, a Bermuda-based subsidiary of a worldwide underwriting group. More important, I quickly learned that Quality was a client of Coolidge, Harding and Cash. The connection wasn't surprising. While scores of companies offered kidnap-and-ransom insurance, the leaders in the industry - and the ones who had pioneered the concept - were the largest insurers in the world. Companies like that were the mainstay of the Cool Cash client roster.
The Miami office had never done work for Quality Insurance, but a woman in our New York office was their go-to lawyer in the United States. She was only too glad to help, which underscored the wisdom of my earlier decision to run a conflict check at my firm before placing a phone call to Quality. Having represented insurance companies myself, I'd anticipated needing to be aggressive, perhaps even a little nasty, to make the elephant jump. However, I recalled a fellow associate in our office who, on a purely personal matter, had written an ugly letter to an appliance discount store on Cool Cash letterhead. The scathing missive eventually landed on the desk of the partner in our Atlanta office who happened to represent that sleazebag, bait-and-switch, two-bit operation. Two weeks later my friend was working in the county attorney's office. I learned from his mistake. Instead of being in the defensive posture of explaining to a New York partner why I was beating up on her client, I had the partner working for me from the get-go. She personally followed through to make sure the case was assigned immediately to a Miami consulting firm, and Duncan Fitz offered to sit through our first meeting in his office, just to make sure that Quality Insurance understood that this law firm had a keen interest in the case.
Thank God for small favors. Twice for big ones. This was huge.
Alex Cabrera is here, Duncan's secretary announced over the intercom.
Send him in, said Duncan.
Duncan and I rose as the door opened, both
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