Collar Robber (4 page)

Chapter Eight

Jay Davidovich

“My name is Proxeine Violet Shifcos, I'm at the Omni Hotel in Pittsburgh, and about half an hour ago I got mugged in my own room.”

Holding a blue coldpack against the top-back of her head, Proxy said this to the hotel's staff nurse. Along with the coldpack, the nurse had just given her an Advil and the standard verbal concussion test: tell me who you are, where you are, and what's happening. I'd gotten that oral exam a couple of times during high school basketball games. The next step is to tell you to count backwards from a hundred by threes. When the trainer had tried that one on me, one of my teammates had said, “Oh come on! He couldn't do
that
before the game started!” The nurse here didn't bother with the backward-counting stuff.

“Nasty bump,” she told Proxy instead. “I recommend going to the hospital for an EEG and observation.”

“Noted—but I'd rather have a comp upgrade.”

Proxy accompanied that remark with a mini-smile. The security guard picked up the crack but not the smile.

“Working on it,” he said solemnly. “Cops are headed up, by the way.”

A brief frown creased Proxy's face. She wanted a copy of a police report on the incident, because heaven forbid any manila folder in her file on Pitt MCM Potential Claim should stay empty. At the same time, chatting up a cop right now had to be way down her priority list. I handed her the piece of hotel stationery where I'd written down descriptions of the Corolla and the two guys I'd scrapped with, along with the car's license number.

“He'll talk to you before he talks to me,” I said. “Maybe you can get him to call in the license number right away.”

“Check.” All business again—good sign. “Meanwhile, call what'shername, the lawyer, and tell her what happened.”

It was pushing seven by now, so I figured I'd end up leaving a two-minute voice-message. Wrong. Still beavering away diligently at her desk, the shysterette answered on the first ring.

“Jakubek.”

“Jay Davidovich from Transoxana.”

“You have a counteroffer for me?”

“No. Transoxana counteroffers don't come from muscle. Your client was right: someone in a Corolla
was
following him, just like he said.”

“Not a complete surprise. He called me not long ago and said he'd for sure spotted the guy tailing him again on his way home tonight.”

“He nailed it. Now I'll up the ante. That panhandler you and I ran into this afternoon tried to steal my colleague's attaché case.”

“Holy shit.” Alarm and interest now colored Jakubek's voice. “Was there any dope about Willy in that case?”

“Doesn't matter. The thief stumbled over some muscle and left the attaché case behind while making his getaway—which he did in the Corolla that had been following your client.”

I was kind of expecting a “thank you” right about then. I got one, but Jakubek didn't exactly linger over it.

“Thanks. You got my attention with that ‘stumbled over some muscle' line. Are we talking physical violence here?”

“Yep.”

“Weapons?”

“Only if the attaché case counts.”

“Hmm.” I imagined Jakubek drumming her pen on her desk blotter during the six seconds or so that followed this syllable. “Okay. This really helps. But it sheds some new light on that one-week delay, doesn't it?”

“You saying you want to back out of that?”

“Nope. A deal's a deal. You bought a week and you've got a week. The sooner the better, though—from both our standpoints.”

“I expect Proxy will see it the same way.”

“Good. Thanks again. Anything else?”

Not that I could think of. We exchanged goodbyes and hung up.

The cop was still talking to Proxy, so I busied myself with getting her some bottled water over ice. She thanked me with a flash of perfect teeth without missing a syllable in her cop-chat. By the time I'd checked my Droid, the cop and Proxy were wrapping up. He made me part of the wrap-up.

“How sure are you about that license number?”

“Hundred percent.”

“The plate is assigned to a 2012 VW.”

“So it's stolen.”

“Stolen,” he said, nodding gravely, “or you were wrong.”

“Stolen.” My turn to nod. “Any chance of spotting the Corolla just based on the description of the car?”

“Long shot. Probably in a chop-shop by now.”

“So we're dealing with real pros,” I said.

“Well,” Proxy said after sipping some water, “you've dealt with pros before. And at least you won the first round.”

“And I'm kind of looking forward to the second one.”

“I don't want a second round,” she said. “I'm going to push the folks in Hartford for a quick response to Szulz's offer. ‘Quick' as in ‘yesterday.'”

“I'd say that's a unanimous view.”

The cop stood up and replaced his pen in a little side-slit beside the left front pocket on his blue uniform shirt.

“I'll let you know if we come up with anything,” he said.

“Right.” Proxy gave him her patented earnest gaze. “Can you leave me a copy of your report?”

He did. Exit cop. That left Proxy and me alone. I wanted to tell her it was okay to tremble with rage or fear and not be sure which it was; okay to cry just to wash the nervous tension out of her system; okay to puke; okay to have me fetch some brandy; okay to bark at me just because there weren't any other candidates around. I'd been in combat and I'd seen damn good soldiers—soldiers better than I claimed to be—do all those things. As she gazed up at me and smilingly got ready to speak, I could tell she read me like an Excel spreadsheet.

“How soon can I get back to my unit, doc?”

The First Monday in April

Chapter Nine

Cynthia Jakubek

“One veggie wrap, please.”

“You got it. Chips or drink?”

“Nope, I'm good.”

I pulled toasted dough wrapped with origami-esque elegance around grilled rabbit food from the shiny aluminum counter of the Woodshed Meal Wagon parked outside the McCallister Building in downtown Pittsburgh. I gave a five to my client, Sean McGeoghan, got a one and change in return, and dumped the coins into a plastic cup serving as tip-jar. I have a little zinger about how, at three-fifty a pop, these must be the finest veggie-wraps in the world, but Sean had heard that one so I skipped it.

This was early afternoon on the Monday after the three-way negotiation with Transoxana and Pitt MCM. I hadn't heard from Shifcos yet, and I'd halfway expected to by now. I
had
heard from Rand, but he'd been calling about another matter—which was why I was now investing in slightly overpriced fast food.

Sean pronounces McGeoghan “McGuffin.” Don't ask me why. My genes are Slavic. My ancestors were as far from Celts as you can get and still be on the same continent. Sean takes the McGuffin pronunciation pretty seriously. He gets a little testy the third or fourth time someone tries to turn his name into MICK-GO-
HEE
-GAN or MICK-
GO
-AGAIN.

“If I step out for a talk with you does that mean the cost of the sandwich goes on my bill?” Sean flashed me a grin under twinkling blue eyes. Maybe I should have used the zinger after all.

“No, I'll take it as a business expense. That way if I have a good year Uncle Sam will pick up thirty-seven-and-a-half percent of it.”

“I'm on my way, then. Helping people pay lower taxes is the reason God put me on Earth.”

I chanced a nibble on the veggie-wrap while Sean was getting his coat, bidding farewell to Tommy Andreopolous, the guy who actually owns the Woodshed, and extricating himself from the lunch-wagon. I'd call the wrap good but not great. Tomatoes, lettuce, and so forth aren't really the Woodshed's point. Specialty of the house is roast beef on warm rolls, grilled over a real wood-chip fire. Hence the lunch-wagon's clever name. Veggie-wraps are a grudging sop to my end of the downtown gender-demographic, so that couples hooking up over the noon hour can get lunch-on-the-run at the same place. Sean didn't get to an eight-figure net worth by being dumb. Adding meat-free entrées to the Woodshed's menu was his idea.

Sporting a black cashmere overcoat and Greek fisherman's cap, Sean pulled on sleek black leather gloves as he came around the wagon's near end to join me on the sidewalk. Sean's is the middle name in Werther-McGeoghan-Warburg Group. WMW puts small cliques of investors together for ventures that Sean thinks have a lot of upside potential but could never get past the loan committee at your average bank. The Woodshed is a good example: you can't outsource curbside meal service to China; the real-wood-chip-cooking thing is a marketing hook; and if you could franchise the concept across the South and Midwest, in three years you'd need lawn and garden bags to haul your money to the bank. That's Sean's vision, anyway, and he's right a lot more often than he's wrong. One of the reasons is that before he invests penny-one he dives in and does hands-on stuff in the business until he feels like he really knows it. That's why he was helping out behind the counter today.

Sean plays bigger than he looks, as basketball coaches sometimes say about small forwards. He's an inch or so under six feet, and packs less than a hundred seventy pounds on a compact frame. Somehow, though, he takes up more space than that. I've never seen him strut, but he doesn't just walk, either. He strides or paces or does something damn close to marching. He treats conversation almost as a contact sport—I think that tying his hands would strike him mute. Even when he stands in still silence his eyes sweep the area around him in a measured, curious way. Under a generous mane of gray and white hair bespeaking his fifty-plus years, his face cycles through puckish, intrigued, skeptical, welcoming, and jovial expressions, all over a smile that gives away absolutely nothing. Radiating positive energy, he generally seems to be the center of any group that includes him.

The prominent Wall Street law firm of Calder & Bull, which spent three years paying me more money than anyone my age who can't dribble has any business getting, accused me of stealing Sean when I left to set up a solo practice here in Pittsburgh. Calder & Bull got things exactly wrong. Sean stole me from C&B—and it was C&B's own damn fault. But that's another story.

“Did you get a chance to talk with Abbey while I was trying to shake euros out of Germans across the pond?”

“I spent most of Sunday before last with her. A very together lady. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Did you get anywhere on our little canon law adventure?”

Sean's light-hearted tone didn't fool me. I knew that in his mind, our “little canon law adventure” ranked well ahead of the potential investment group for the Woodshed and whatever he had going in Europe.

In calling the forty-seven-year-old package of brains, energy, and common sense named Abigail Northanger “together,” I wasn't just stroking an important client; I meant it. On the Sunday I'd referred to I'd watched her absorb a solemn explanation of Purgatory at a class for future Catholic converts in the morning and then heard her laugh her head off at a
Fifty Shades of Grey
parody during a matinee that afternoon.

Sean wanted to marry Abbey. He wanted to marry her in the Roman Catholic Church, in front of a priest who would bless their rings and formally witness their sacramental union during a proper wedding Mass with all the bells and smells the Church provides. And he wanted to marry her before sexual intimacy between them. A lot of people I know would have called that quaint or even morbidly repressed; it struck me as kind of sweet.

Unfortunately, twenty-six years earlier an Elvis impersonator had pronounced Tally Rand and Abigail Northanger man and wife in the 24/7 Chapel O' Love on Fashion Center Boulevard just off the Strip in Las Vegas. A Nevada judge had dissolved their union less than a year later, but the Church gives zero weight to a secular jurist's opinion on the bonds of matrimony. That meant that Abbey needed to get this so-called “marriage” formally annulled before she and Sean could tie the knot.

“I made some progress,” I told Sean in answer to his question, “but Tally Rand has been your basic brick wall—at least up until this morning.”

“First things first. Does Abbey have grounds for annulment?”

“For sure. She told me she was sky-high on primo grass when she and Tally exchanged vows.
Ergo
lack of capacity for informed consent,
ergo
invalid marriage in the eyes of the Church.”

I gave this answer pretty confidently for an attorney who knows literally nothing about canon law. Trust me, you won't find a class on
that
at Harvard Law School. Fortunately, one of my brothers is a priest, and he knew at least one thing about canon law: the telephone number for the archdiocesan chancery. The helpful young woman I tracked down there was happy to share.

“Tally denies that Abbey was baked at the wedding?” Sean asked.

“Tally is keeping his cards close to his vest. His official position is that the marriage was a genuine union of committed love
et cetera
, and as a proud non-believer he doesn't intend to play along with what he calls ‘the hypocritical charade of Catholic divorce.'”

“A ‘union of love' that didn't last much longer than a politician's campaign promise and ended in a quickie divorce?” Sean seemed genuinely indignant as he put his gesticulating right hand gently on my elbow. “That's unmitigated…nonsense.”

“I agree.” I smiled at Sean's hasty substitution of “nonsense” for the more colorful term we'd both had in mind. Old-school gentlemen don't use words like “bullshit” in front of ladies.

“So whoever makes the decision will believe Abbey instead of him, right?”

“I expect so. Not really the point, though.”

“What is the point, then?”

“With Tally's cooperation, the annulment process will take six months, maybe eight. If he chooses to contest it, the annulment could take six
years
to get through, complete with appeals to Rome, whether his position has merit or not.”

“Ouch,” Sean said. “Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.”

“Yeah.” I finished the veggie-wrap and slowed my pace long enough to stow deli paper in a proper receptacle.

“Any chance of a making a crack in that brick wall?”

“Until this morning I would have said no.” I stopped, which made Sean stop, and I caught both of his eyes in my gaze so that he'd know my next words were important. “But at nine sharp Tally called me and said he wanted to talk to you personally about an unrelated matter.”

“Namely?”

“He didn't say.”

Sean looked to his right and his left, which is one of his ways of thinking, then started walking again. I fell into pace beside him.

“How do you feel about the direct contact idea?” he asked.

“I don't have any problem with it. You eat guys like him for breakfast. You don't need a lawyer running interference for you. Besides, I'm dealing with Tally on an unrelated case. If I demand that he go through me on anything relating to you, he might think he could get me to take my eye off the ball by playing one case off against the other ”

“Probably right about both of those.”

“Nine to one, though, this is a shakedown.”

“It won't be the first one I've ever dealt with if it is.”

“I know,” I said. “But if he does put extortion on the table, we might be able to turn it around and use it against him.”

“Bite him in the fanny with his own blessed teeth!” Sean flashed me a mega-watt beam. “I love that idea! I'll call you as soon as I've talked to him.”

We both stopped now, because we were about to head in opposite directions. The twenty-thousand-a-year retainer that Sean pays me helps cover my rent, but in Pittsburgh solo start-up law practices have offices in a very different part of downtown than successful investment groups.

“How's the Woodshed project coming along?” I asked.

“Not sure.” Sean shook his head, in a rare display of a mood short of unbridled optimism about a potential deal. “The woodchip-fire hook is cute but my gut says we need something beyond that—something with a little more pizzazz.”

“If I think of something I'll let you know.”

“I'll take anything I can get.” He doffed his cap and swept it over his head in elegant farewell. Just like that, the optimist was back.

Sean didn't let any grass grow under his feet. Less than ninety minutes after I emailed him Tally's contact information, Sean called me.

“Nailed it on the shakedown,” he said. “He wants me to give him a four hundred thousand-dollar interest in a pending investment package of his choice as compensation for ‘strategic consulting' services he'll supposedly perform. In exchange he'll cooperate on the annulment.”

“Did he really make it as explicit as that? He could get himself disbarred.”

“No, he put the
quid pro quo
between the lines and talked about making a presentation about his services so that I could decide if they'd be useful. European contacts, experience in major transactions, German language skills—that kinda stuff.”

“As if you'd have to throw six figures at a graduate of New Mexico Law School to get that.”

“That's where he went?” Sean asked. “New Mexico?”

“That's what his online profile says. The chatter about European smarts might be halfway legitimate, though. He did some undergraduate stuff at a place in central Europe that I can't pronounce.”

“My gut says to string him along for awhile. I'd write a big check to get Abbey and me our stained-glass wedding without thinking twice about it—but I hate being treated like a wimp who'll roll over just because he tells me to.”

“Your gut is as good as gold. Maybe if he stews in his own juice for a couple of days he'll come back to me with something we can use against him.”

“We have a plan. I can use heading back overseas as an excuse to put him off for a bit. White lie in pursuit of a greater good.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll let you know as soon as I hear something.”

All that left, aside from the kinds of cats-and-dogs work that keeps the lights on during a new law office's early going, was waiting to hear from Shifcos. With serious bad guys in the picture and my client in the cross-hairs, we were way past posturing. Every instinct I had told me Shifcos was going to call.

At four-thirty she did. But she didn't say what I wanted to hear.

“We need another week.”

“Ten thousand.” I said that out loud, after saying “shit” under my breath.

“Same proviso? Full credit against the final price?”

“Same proviso.”

“We've got a deal. I'll send you a confirming email before I leave the office.”

We hung up.
Then
I said “shit” out loud. Then I called Willy.