Death Benefits (8 page)

“Rhonda Jaffe. She was a year behind us.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. I didn't remember her.

“She's lost some weight since that picture. She really ballooned up with the second pregnancy.”

“What's your area?” I asked.

“Corporate tax.” He gave me a sheepish smile. “Planet of the nebbishes.” He shrugged. “Once a nerd, always a nerd. It's the curse of high school.”

“Don't say that, Sandy. I can't get over how good you look.”

“Me? Look at you.”

“Please.”

“I gotta tell you, Rachel, I had a terrible crush on you back in high school. When you used to walk into homeroom in your cheerleader outfit with that micro-miniskirt I would practically swoon.”

“Don't start,” I said, embarrassed.

“You should have been homecoming queen,” he said. “I voted for you.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, Sandy.”

He waved his hand in dismissal. “It was all those Jewish boys voting for that blond bomber.” He shook his head in wonderment. “High school. It's amazing the way it stays with you, isn't it? So tell me, are you married?”

“No. Not yet.”

“You're kidding.”

“No,” I said, deciding to change the subject. “Is your middle initial ‘A'?”

He sat back with a puzzled look. “Yes,” he finally answered.

I had recalled several “Office Conference w/SAF” entries on Anderson's time sheets from last January and February. “How much did you work with Stoddard Anderson?” I asked him.

“Not much. I did a few things for him over the last six months or so.”

“On what?”

Sandy tugged on his beard in thought. “Mostly run-of-the-mill tax stuff. You know, structuring a merger or acquisition to take advantage of some tax angle.”

“How about last January and February? Did you have any unusual projects from him?”

“January and February,” he mused. “Well, I had one weird assignment from him sometime last winter. Maybe it was then.”

“What was it?”

“Anderson had me do a big research memo on importing art objects.”

“Anything specific?”

“Yeah. I had to look at Mexico's law on—what's it called—on cultural patrimony.”

“Which is what?”

“The kind of artifacts that all those nineteenth-century British dudes hauled back to England from Egypt and Greece and places like that. Mummies, ancient Greek statues, that kind of stuff.”

“What was the issue Anderson wanted you to look at?”

“It was a good one. That Mexican law prohibits the export from Mexico of anything that could be considered part of its cultural patrimony. If someone breaks that law, other countries, including the U.S., have agreed, by law or treaty, to help Mexico retrieve the property. Problem is, the Mexican law isn't all that old. I think it got enacted back in the 1960s.”

“Why's that a problem?”

Sandy leaned forward, warming to the story. “The issue Stoddard asked me to check out was whether that law would apply to an art object that had been taken out of Mexico a long, long time ago, like back a couple hundred years, but which had somehow briefly returned to native soil.”

“I'm not following you.”

“Say some guy back in 1885 visits Mexico, finds some sort of a pre-Columbian artifact—an Aztec pot. Maybe buys it off an Indian. He brings it home to New York with him. Then, a hundred years later, someone brings that same pot back into Mexico, maybe to get it appraised. Assume that if that pot had
never
left Mexico in the first place it would be considered part of the cultural patrimony of the country. In other words, if it had always been in Mexico, it would be illegal to take it out of Mexico.”

“So the issue is whether the law applies to something that returns to Mexico?”

“Exactly,” he said. “As long as it stays in the United States, it's legal. But if you bring it back to Mexico, even for just an hour, and then go back home, can the Mexican government legally ask U.S. Customs to seize it and return it?”

“Can they?”

Sandy shrugged. “The Mexicans think they can. So do their courts. It's not entirely clear what Customs would do if asked.”

“What kind of artifact did Anderson have in mind?”

“I have no idea.”

“Really?”

“Really. He never told me.”

“Who was the client?”

“I don't know that either. He handled the whole thing in a strange way. Anderson told me to bill my time to the office rather than to a client. When I was done with the project, he told me I had to give him all of my drafts. I wasn't even allowed to keep my notes after I finished the project.”

“Why not?”

“He didn't say.”

“What did he do with it?”

“I don't know. He never talked to me about the project after it was over.”

I thought it over. “Do you have a copy of the memo you gave him?”

“No, he told me not to keep any copies.” But then Sandy smiled. “Ah, but there has to be a copy. I did it on word processing. It'll be in the word processing department's computer. C'mon,” he said as he stood up. “We can have them print out a copy.”

But we couldn't. As the head computer operator on the night crew told us after she had completed her search through the computer files and back-up disks, there was no record of Sandy Feldman's memorandum. Stoddard Anderson, or someone else, must have issued instructions to delete all copies of the memorandum from the computer records.

Sandy followed me back to my office, where I was gathering my notes and papers and stuffing them in a large trial bag. It was close to nine o'clock. He still had several hours of work on an SEC filing. I was done for the day.

“Have you ever heard of ParaLex?” I asked him as I flicked off the light in my office.

He frowned. “No. Why?”

“I saw it in Stoddard Anderson's calendar. I thought it might be a client.”

“We can check on your way out. Follow me.”

Lugging the trial bag, I followed him down and around several corridors to a small room with a bank of facsimile machines. He reached under the counter and pulled out a bound client and matter list. It was several hundred pages long and arranged alphabetically. I found the right page and ran my finger down the column of client names:

Paradigm Incorporated

Paraform Manufacturing Corporation

Paragon Investment Research Co.

Paramount Pictures, Inc.

Paraquest Limited Partnership, Ltd.

“Is this a current list?” I asked.

“Give or take a couple weeks,” Sandy said. “You can have them run the name through the computer tomorrow if you think it might be a brand-new client.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Hey, let me show you something on your way out,” Sandy said. “You're going to get a kick out of it.”

I followed him down the hall to the darkened employee lunchroom. He flipped on the lights and walked over to the support staff's bulletin board.

“You're famous down here,” he said, pointing to a photocopy of the article from the
National Law Journal
on the sexual harassment jury trial I had won, the same article Nancy Winslow had mentioned earlier. Someone had circled my name in red ink and written in the margin:
She will be here next week!!

“It's a great article, Rachel.”

I shrugged. “The reporter got a little carried away. I wasn't crazy about the cowboy metaphors.”

“Really? I loved that part. That Stanford Blaine sounds like he deserved it. Did he really act like he was a cowboy?”

“He had some cowboy stuff in his office,” I said. Stanford Blaine had been the defendant in the lawsuit. At the time he had been chairman of a mid-sized Chicago law firm. He was now “of counsel” at a smaller firm. “He was born in Wyoming,” I added.

“But he prepped at Choate and earned his law degree from NYU. Some cowboy.” He squinted at the text on the bulletin board. “Here's my favorite part: ‘But it was on the morning of the third day of cross-examination that the Marshall Dillon facade began to crumble,'” he read. “‘Firing questions like bullets, Rachel Gold stalked Stanford Blaine across the sagebrush, methodically cutting off every avenue of escape. That afternoon she lured him into a testimonial box canyon, and then backed him into a corner no larger than the witness stand. Finally, at twenty minutes to four, with a rapt judge and crowded courtroom looking on like witnesses to a hanging, she moved in for the kill.'” He paused, shaking his head in admiration. “Oh, yeah, the next part I love.”

“Enough,” I said as he was about to start reading aloud again.

He turned to me with a grin. It was as if we were back in homeroom again. “I love it,” he said. “Did you really make him turn to the jury and admit that he lied?”

I nodded, unsmiling.

“Great stuff.”

“It generated a lot of hate mail.”

“Really?”

“A lot of male attorneys—
anonymous
male attorneys—didn't think it was so great.”

“Well, they're pathetic. I wouldn't worry about them.”

I nodded again, unsmiling.

***

I thought about that hate mail as I rode the elevator down to the lobby. The letter writers called me everything from “a castrating cunt” to a “miserable dyke.” One Neanderthal sent me a rubber dildo wrapped with barbed wire; the note told me to “shove this up your twat, bitch.”

What upset me most was that the hate mail authors succeeded. I was devastated by their horrible letters, by the curses they hurled at me from their anonymous rat holes. I couldn't sleep at night, I dreaded venturing out of my office during the day. When I rode an elevator in the courthouse or sat in a courtroom, I scanned each male face, trying to make eye contact, trying to determine whether I was staring at one of my correspondents. If a strange lawyer smiled at me, I stiffened. It took months before it passed, before I was able to be around unfamiliar male attorneys without flinching.

And the irony was that it had all stemmed from representing a woman I didn't particularly like or trust in a lawsuit against a man I didn't particularly dislike or distrust. Brandy Holmen was the former secretary of Stanford Blaine, the senior partner whose reputation she ruined—I ruined, we ruined—through the trial. In her occasional unguarded moments around me during the trial, I saw her use on other men the seductive, manipulative charm that she must have used on her boss over the years, that must have led him to believe she was sexually available. Now I'm sure that up there in the rarefied atmosphere of the Pure Sisterhood, Brandy Holmen's secretarial fan dance is just further proof of her status as victim of a male culture. But down in that courtroom after the jury returned its verdict—after Brandy let out a war whoop and jumped into her new boyfriend's arms while Stanford Blaine buried his head in his hands—things didn't seem quite that black and white.

I ran into Stanford Blaine earlier this summer in the cafeteria line at the Chicago Bar Association. The jury verdict had just been affirmed on appeal. He shook my hand, no hostility apparent. Blaine is a trial lawyer. He understands. Better than I do.

Chapter Eight

As I drove my car out of the parking garage and onto Highway 40 heading west, I realized that I hadn't eaten since breakfast. No wonder I was so hungry. I decided to have dinner at one of my favorite high school hangouts: the Steak ‘N Shake on Olive Boulevard in University City.

Back in high school I used to go there after football games on Saturday nights with my boyfriend, who was the quarterback. On Friday nights I'd go there with my girlfriends, with our hairbrushes and Juicy Fruit gum and packs of Marlboros. There would be dozens of parked cars on the lot, each filled with high school kids, while an endless parade of cars cruised through, checking out the scene. Horns would honk, there'd be shouts from one car to another, and above all the sounds of rock music blaring from car radios. The delicious smells of french fries and catsup would drift into your car windows as you turned off the ignition. Carhops weaved between the cruising cars to deliver food on trays that hooked onto the car windows.

But times had changed at Steak ‘N Shake. There was no curb service, and the drive-through lane at the McDonald's across the street had more cars in it than the entire parking lot at Steak ‘N Shake. Fortunately, not everything had changed, as I discovered when the waitress placed my favorite Steak ‘N Shake meal on the table in front of me: a double cheeseburger with thousand island dressing, extra pickles, regular fries, and a chocolate malt. I must have eaten that combination more than a hundred times during high school, and it tasted just as delicious as it had back then.

“Rachel?”

During the time it took to chew and swallow a bite of cheeseburger I was able to put a name with the face.

“Timmy O'Donohue,” I said.

“Been a long time, Rachel.”

“It sure has. I didn't know you were a cop.”

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “I been on the U. City force going on ten years now.”

The waitress came over with a white carry-out bag. “Here's your fries and Coke, Tim.”

He thanked her and paid the bill. He turned back to me, a hesitant look on his face.

“You on break?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Don't be such a snob,” I said. “Sit down.”

“Sure,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Don't mind if I do.”

We spent a fun ten minutes reminiscing about high school days and sharing the latest intelligence on our classmates. He had married Sherry McGuire, whom I remembered from my Spanish class. They had four kids, two still in diapers.

I tilted my malt and sipped the last part through the straw until it made that gurgling noise.

“So you're not married?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said, glancing at my watch.

He checked his own watch. “Well, my break's almost over.”

We both stood up. Timmy walked with me out of the restaurant.

“Maybe you can help me, Timmy,” I said as we walked toward our cars. “I have to talk to some people over the next day or so. Maybe you've heard of them.”

“Who are they?”

“Salvatore Donalli. He's the head of his own construction company.”

“Sure. He's got a crew doing some work on the River Des Peres over by Hemen Park. Donalli's a hothead. He got into a shoving match with some sewer district inspector about a month ago.”

“Over what?”

“Some sort of dispute over cement. Something about the specs. No one filed charges.”

“How about Albert Weidemeir? He works for the sewer district.”

“Don't know him. Of course, that River Des Peres project, the one Donalli Construction is working on, that's a sewer district project. I don't know any Albert Weidemeir.”

We had reached my car. “How about a guy named Remy Panzer?” I asked.

Timmy raised his eyebrows. “He the guy with the art gallery in the Central West End?”

I nodded.

“I've heard some of the guys in vice talk about him. It's all hearsay. He's supposed to be one of the chickenhawks who sometimes cruise the Loop. I don't think we've ever busted him.”

“He likes young boys?”

“So I hear. He likes them around thirteen. A real sicko, if that's the guy I'm thinking of. Watch out for him.”

“Do you know anyone on the Bridgeton police force?”

“I know a few of those guys.”

“How about a detective named Mario Aloni. I'm meeting him first thing tomorrow.”

“Mouse? Sure, I know him.”

“They call him Mouse?”

“Yeah. Mouse Aloni. He's a good man. Tell Mouse I said hi.”

“I will. Thanks, Timmy. Give my best to Sherry.”

“Sure. It's real good to see you, Rachel. See you around.”

As I got in my car Timmy called out my name.

“What?”

He had his car door open, his hand on the hood. “You have any problems, things get a little dicey, you give me a call, you hear?”

“Thanks, Timmy.”

***

By the time I pulled into my sister's driveway it was almost eleven o'clock. The house was dark except for the den on the first floor, where I could hear the sounds of a television show.

I stopped at the doorway to the den. Ann's husband-the-orthodontist Richie was seated on the couch, staring slackjawed at a Cubs-Dodgers game on the big-screen television. An empty bag of Doritos and two cans of Diet Coke were on the coffee table.

“Hi, Richie,” I said.

Richie snapped out of his TV daze. He was startled at first, but then flashed me one of those 50,000-watt orthodontist smiles—all those even white-capped teeth.

“Hey, Rachel. Good to see you, babe. Looking super.”

Richie started toward me. I stuck out my hand. He looked down at it.

Five years ago, just after Richie and Ann had moved into their brand-new English Tudor in Ladue, they threw a big New Year's Eve party. I was in St. Louis for the holidays and went to their party. Around one in the morning I had walked into the kitchen for a refill. Richie sneaked up as I reached into their Sub-Zero for a beer. He grabbed me by the hips as I straightened, pressing his crotch against my rear. I was so startled I thought he was joking. But then he turned me around and backed me up against the built-in Amana microwave oven. “God, you have magnificent incisors,” he groaned as he tried to stab his thick tongue into my mouth. I had to conk him on the head three times with the beer can, splattering foam on the hardwood floor, before he loosened his grip enough for me to shove him away.

That was five years ago. We had reached an awkward truce since then, although I tried to avoid situations where we were alone together.

“Good to see you, Richie,” I said, shaking hands. “Ann asleep?”

“Sure is. You know her. Early to bed, early to rise.” He smiled and shrugged.

Studying him, I suddenly realized that Richie was sliding into middle age. He'd put on enough weight to have a double chin and paunch. His black hair was thinning, and he had started combing it over the top to cover the balding area. Camouflage hair. Before long he would have to eliminate rides in convertibles. (Why do bald men go the camouflage route? And what happens when they turn in their sleep so that their heads rest on the same side as their parts? Do those eight-inch hanks of camouflage hair gradually slide off the bald spots and unfurl on the pillows?)

Although I had never been crazy about him, Richie was on his best behavior tonight, playing his own version of Robert Young on
Father Knows Best
. He took me up to the guest bedroom, showed me the fresh towels Ann had left on the bed, brought in his travel alarm clock, and gave me a note from Ann.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, pausing at the door. “You got a phone call from a guy named St. Something-or-other.”

“St. Germain?”

“Yeah, that's it. He said to be sure to call him when you got in.”

Richie ran downstairs and came back up with the message slip and the portable phone. I dialed the number after he left. Reed St. Germain answered on the second ring.

“Rachel, I just wanted to make sure you've been getting the cooperation and help you need from our people.”

“Everyone's been great, Reed.”

“Terrific. I'm pleased. Tell me, Rachel, how is the investigation going?”

“I'm making progress, but it's still kind of early.”

“Sure. I can understand that. Any questions I can help answer?”

“Not really. I just have to work my way down the list of people. Oh, there is one thing. Do you know whether Mr. Anderson had a new client named ParaLex?”

There was a pause. “A client named ParaLex? No. Why, Rachel?”

“Just curious.”

“How did that come up?”

“Just a name jotted down in his calendar. A dinner meeting, I think. I thought maybe it was a new client. If so, it might be someone I could talk to about Mr. Anderson's mental condition.”

“I don't think it's a client, Rachel, but you might want to check our list of new clients tomorrow to be sure. Sorry I can't help you there. Anything else?”

“No.”

“You be sure to call me if there is, Rachel. And you be sure to tell me if you need any help whatsoever. Understand?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

As I hung up I thought to myself that if St. Germain had used my name one more time in that conversation I would have screamed. Maybe clients responded to his programmed sincerity, but I sure didn't. He reminded me of the boys from my sixth-grade dance class: the ones who looked like little Fred Astaires from across the room. When you were up close, holding their sweaty hands, staring over their heads, you could hear them counting to four over and over again.

Before turning off the light, I read Ann's note, written in her familiar, childish scrawl:

Hi Rachie!

I know you're probably real, real busy tomorrow, but like Mom always says, a girl has to eat! My girlfriends are just dying to meet you. I told them to meet us for lunch at Briarcliff. We'll all be there at noon. Hope you can join us.

Love ya,
Ann

I groaned at the thought of lunch at Briarcliff, but Ann wanted me to be there and I would be. Firstborns are saps for those requests.