Chapter 104: Citation to Discover Assets
Victor called me at eleven forty on the night of the twenty-sixth of January.
He had never called me at night. He had never called me at all; it had always been the house line, or Marco, or nothing.
“Are you awake.”
“I am now.”
“I’m going to read you something,” he said. “Then I’m going to hang up, because I don’t want to discuss it tonight.”
I sat up and put the lamp on and got the green notebook off the floor.
It was two pages from Ashworth Grange & Bell, dated the nineteenth.
It was the most courteous document I have ever heard read aloud.
It noted the pendency of the criminal proceedings. It noted the attendant publicity. It observed that Mrs. Constance Blackwood, as settlor of the 2013 Descendants’ Trust, had a continuing interest in its prudent administration.
It requested that Mr. Blackwood consent to the appointment of an independent corporate co-trustee over his son’s trust.
It suggested, respectfully, that he consider executing a standby guardian designation.
And then, at the bottom, in a footnote in smaller type, it said this.
Mrs. Blackwood remains willing, should circumstances require it, to assume responsibility for Ethan’s day-to-day care.
Victor stopped reading. I did not say anything.
“Nineteen words,” he said.
“Yes.”
“She had them typed in eight point.”
“Yes.”
“She wants the boy,” he said, and hung up, exactly as he had said he would.
Harriet Doyle telephoned me on the twenty-eighth.
She is sixty-something, has a voice like a filing cabinet closing, and does nothing but probate. She had been Victor’s father’s lawyer and had never once worked for Constance, which I later understood was the whole reason she took it.
“Mr. Blackwood has instructed me. I am told you have a document.”
I told her what I had and where it came from and I did not hedge about Roz, because Doyle asked me directly and I had learned by then who you lie to and who you do not.
“Good,” she said. “Now stop touching it. From tonight you are a source and not a participant. Do you understand the difference?”
“No.”
“You will.”
On the second of February she filed a petition for letters of administration in the Estate of Ana Reyes-Blackwood, deceased, in the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Fifteen months after the funeral, nobody had ever opened Ana’s estate. Nobody had needed to. Everything was jointly held or in trust and the paperwork had simply gone quiet.
Victor was appointed administrator on the ninth of February.
That is the whole hinge of this book, and it is a form.
Doyle explained it to me once, standing in the corridor at the Daley Center, in about forty seconds.
“Section 16-1 of the Probate Act. Citation to discover assets. If I represent an estate and I have reason to believe somebody has information concerning property that belongs or belonged to the decedent, I can cite that person into court.”
“And they have to come.”
“They have to come. It is served by the sheriff. They sit in a witness chair and they answer, and they bring what the order says to bring, and if they don’t, the judge can hold them in contempt.”
“Anybody?”
“Anybody. A bank. An accountant. A grandmother.” She looked at me over her glasses. “It is the bluntest instrument in Illinois and nobody outside this building has ever heard of it.”
I asked her whether it would hold.
“Ashworth will move to quash and may win part of it. Constance Blackwood’s chequebook is not property of Ana’s estate and I do not pretend otherwise.” She shrugged. “That is not the point.”
“So it fails.”
“A motion to quash takes six weeks to brief,” Doyle said. “In six weeks a bank has already pulled the file, because banks comply on the day they are served. They are not litigants. They are custodians. They photocopy and go home.”
Citations issued on the twelfth of February. Four of them.
Halloway Kesten Family Office LLC, care of Dennis Pruitt, records custodian.
Lakeshore Merchants Bank, LaSalle Street.
Montigue Advisory LLC and Serena L. Montigue, individually.
Constance Fairbairn Blackwood.
Return date the twenty-sixth of February, courtroom 1804, before Judge Franklin Otto.
Roz called me on the sixteenth, at seven in the morning, from the pantry.
“A man came to the service door,” she said.
“Roz—”
“He asked me if I was Rosalind Achebe and he put it in my hand and he said have a good day.” She was breathing like someone who had run. “There is a line on it about a binder.”
“They asked for the binder.”
“They asked for the reconciliation binders, 2024 to 2026.” A long pause. “You said they would have to ask.”
“I did.”
“Well,” Roz said. “They asked.”
She hung up before I could say anything else, and I do not know to this day whether she was frightened or relieved, and I suspect she was both.
Doyle telephoned me on the evening of the twenty-fifth, the night before the return date.
“Halloway Kesten produced early,” she said. “Forty-one pages, by courier, at four this afternoon.”
“And?”
“Be in 1804 at nine,” she said. “There is an invoice.”