Larry Lawrence's right-hand woman, Rebecca Wood, will collect more than $3.38 million

Two one-time staffers of M. Larry Lawrence, the late owner of the Hotel del Coronado and Bill Clinton's ambassador to Switzerland, are claiming rich rewards for years of loyal service. According to documents filed in San Diego County probate court, Lawrence's right-hand woman, Rebecca Wood, will collect more than $3.38 million from an assortment of consulting agreements, some lasting through 2006. For each of five years she also collects two first-class round-trip airline tickets, valued at $15,000. Another ex-Lawrence aide, Allen Aiello, is getting $1,095,000 in two annuities, also through 2006, the documents say. Wood and Aiello made headlines in 1989 during Dick Silberman's money-laundering scandal when both were described as being "close confederates of -- and controlled by -- Silberman and his close friend and business associate, M. Larry Lawrence." The claim was made by irate investors suing Silberman's Yuba Resources in connection with charges that Silberman, one-time husband of San Diego mayor Susan Golding, had collected "hush money" from the company after he was busted in an fbi money-laundering sting. Aiello and Wood were Yuba directors at the time. In 1994, Wood also served as president of the tax-exempt Lawrence Family Foundation, which ran into a buzzsaw of controversy after it began collecting donations to improve the Lawrences' living conditions at the U.S. Embassy in Bern ... Shelia Lawrence, Larry's widow, gave more than $50,000 of so-called soft money to the Democratic Party in 1996, according to congressional investigators looking into campaign-financing matters.

Thanks, Bill

San Diegan Luann Linquist is happily surfing the national airwaves again thanks to Bill Clinton and Monica-gate. Linquist's book, Secret Lovers -- Affairs Happen...How to Cope, a tepid seller when it first came out during the Bush administration in 1989, is being rushed back into print by publisher Simon and Schuster, which hopes that upbeat advice for cheaters stands a better chance in the Clinton era. Among Linquist's bits of wisdom, according to the Dallas Morning News: lots of people have "successful, satisfying" affairs and "an affair doesn't have to ruin a good marriage" and "Get comfortable living in separate worlds, so you're not jealous or lonely when your partner spends time with his or her family." As for Bill and Hillary, Linquist told the News that "Hillary is handling this beautifully." Of the future, Linquist says she hopes "Hillary would be saying, 'Thank you, Bill, for having an affair, so that we can help show the world we don't have to tear things apart for someone's indiscretions.' "

Still ringing

Roy Bell, that San Diego lawyer married to Union-Tribune columnist Diane Bell, is still battling it out in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, courtroom over whether his client, America's Cup billionaire Bill Koch, can squeeze any more money out of two of Koch's even richer brothers. The defending brothers have just asked the judge to dismiss the case, a move that Bell last week told a wire service reporter was "an 11th-hour effort on their part to avoid facing the jury."