Thaddeus closed it in sixty one hours. A cash buyer out of Singapore, no financing contingency, no inspection period, and the wire cleared Wednesday evening. Fifteen percent under market on a six million dollar property is an expensive sentence to write, and I have never once regretted the price of it. By Thursday morning the holding company had been dissolved, the proceeds sat in Zurich, and I was in a rented house outside Lisbon with the shutters open and no telephone number he possessed.

What I had not expected was the second folder. Thaddeus, being thorough, ran a routine encumbrance search before listing, and found that Dorian had twice attempted to record a lien against the unit, in November and again in March, each time using a spousal interest claim he had no standing to file.