If I Should Die Before I Die (7 page)

Annette Costello had died on a Sunday, in Brooklyn, during the daylight hours. She was twenty-one.

Then the Killer had taken the summer off.

Then Rosemary Stevenson Sutter had died in September at night, in her bedroom above Riverside Drive, in Manhattan. Rosemary Sutter was blonde, thirty-seven, married. Her body had been discovered by her husband in the early morning hours, when he returned from a business trip. She too had died by suffocation, but unlike all the others except one she'd had sex that night, with either her killer or another man.

The Sutters, as portrayed by the media, had had a pretty open marriage. Alan Sutter had “business interests” outside the New York area, it was pointed out, and the papers invariably used the quotation marks. Friends of Rosemary Sutter had said that she was “estranged” from her husband (quotation marks again) and had taken solace from time to time with other men. Younger men, it seemed. Alan Sutter himself was in the clear: he'd been in transit at the time his wife was murdered. The media, picking up on the differences in this case, wondered out loud if it had been a copycat killing. The police, emphasizing the similarities, thought not.

In other words, sure, Carter McCloy
could have
killed the five women. But at that point you could have said the same thing about thousands of other people, and that was substantially what I told my “client” when she called in that day on my direct dial, at about 1:30
P.M
., while I was brown bagging it at my desk.

For the record, I was eating a Revere Special: Muenster cheese and sliced tomato, with mustard, on bagel, and a bottle of Moosehead. You can have the bagel toasted or plain. I normally go for plain. The office was in its usual midday lull, which is probably why she called then. The Counselor was off at La Gonzesse, the French bistro over on Lexington where he usually goes for lunch. He'd be back around 2:30 because we had Barger at three. Charlotte McCullough had taken a sick day. Ms. Shapiro was also eating at her desk because we ordered in from the same deli. Roger LeClerc was either out or upstairs, conning lunch in the kitchen from Althea, the Camelot's cook and housekeeper, because the front door was locked and all incoming calls were routing upstairs to Ms. Shapiro.

Normally at such times, Muffin, the Counselor's Wife's cocker bitch, makes her rounds. She knows not to cross my threshold, but she'll walk past anyway, wagging her tail if I look at her, and sometimes hunker down outside the door for a few minutes. Dogs never give up hope entirely, I guess. But Muffin didn't show up, and I realized then that I hadn't seen her since that morning on the street, when her owner was crying in the red slicker and the red fisherman's hat.

“These are your choices,” I told the Counselor's Wife on the phone, after summarizing for her what Bobby Derr had dug up. “We can let Derr go on, which will cost money, time, and probably end up nowhere. Or we can go to the police with what we have. Or we can drop it, at least for now.”

“I'm not worried about the money,” she said calmly. “We can't go to the police. You know why that is. But we can't drop it either, silly as that may sound to you. At least I can't.”

She was giving me an out, I guess, but I didn't take her up on it. I thought of asking her if she'd told the Counselor yet, but I now knew the answer to that one without asking.

“How's Muffin?” I said.

“Muff—? Oh, she's fine.”

“Well, and how are you?”

“Me?” A short laugh. “Oh, I'm okay. I'm fine too.”

“Where are the two of you living these days?”

Pause.

“Look, Phil, maybe someday I'll tell you all about it. Or maybe I won't. I'm in a state of flux right now about a lot of things.”

“Does that mean you've moved out of here permanently?”

“I don't know.”

“Well. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, but it's sweet of you to ask.”

“But suppose I have to find you over the weekend? About McCloy, I mean? Where can I reach you?”

“Just leave a message on my answering machine at the office. I'll be calling in regularly.”

For a woman who'd just walked out on her husband—after how many years of marriage?—she sounded remarkably cool. Also for a shrink who suspected one of her patients of homicide. But it sure explained the prevailing atmosphere in our office. I don't know if I was the last of the Counselor's staff to catch on or the first. Nobody had said anything, at least not to me. But it explained the tension, explained Ms. Shapiro's tears, even maybe Charlotte's absence. And of course it explained the Counselor himself.

Like I've said, he'd never exactly been a piece of cake to work for. But that week? Well, come to think of it, he'd acted exactly like a man whose wife had just walked out on him.

Against his will, I figured.

“No, I've never had the pleasure,” said Roy Barger, extending a plump hand toward me in the Counselor's office, “but I've surely heard of Phil Revere. Do you know what they call you around town, Phil? Charles Camelot's Secret Weapon. Not so secret at that. But listen, my friend, any time you're tired of playing slave to the Counselor here, you give me a call, will ya?”

I'd never met Barger either, though I'd have recognized him from his pictures in the papers. He was a bulky man, a little shorter than I'd have guessed, with a florid complexion, lively blue eyes set in a large head and wavy gray hair, a lock of which frequently wandered across his forehead. His clothes fit him well: gray worsted suit, blue-striped shirt with white collar, black tie with a blue polka-dot design, black tasseled loafers. He came originally from somewhere in the South, still had a trace of the accent and the speech cadence and the ingratiating manner. As an attorney, though, he had the streetfighter's reputation, also the headline-seeker's, based in part on several notorious criminal cases, and though his firm now had several names after his own, it was, make no mistake, Roy Barger's firm. An expensive one too, by reputation. He was also the first person I'd ever heard call my boss “Counselor” to his face.

“I'm here to try to cut through the tall grass,” Roy Barger began, once the niceties were over and he was seated across from the Counselor, I at my usual end of the desk. “Why for once, Counselor, can't we save our clients some money and ourselves some precious time?”

I watched the Counselor reach for a pipe.

“I think first we should define who our clients are,” he said. “I …”

“Right there,” Barger interrupted with a wave, “do you see what I mean? Why can't we dispense with all that, Charles? I know, I know, McClintock represents the estate, the Magister children have their own attorneys, and you're just a consultant to McClintock. Is that why you've got your own investigators climbing all over my client, trying to find out what she had for breakfast this morning?” He paused—good timing, I thought—but when the Counselor didn't answer, he turned to me with a broad smile: “If you really want to know what she's having for breakfast, Phil, why don't you just call me? Or call Margie? We'll be delighted to give you the menu.” Then, back to the Counselor: “The point is, Charles, for every forkful of dung you can fling at Margie Magister, we've got truckloads we can dump on the family. Even the numbers are on our side. You've only got one Magister. We've got five Magisters to start with, and not only do their closets have skeletons in them, but their skeletons have baby skeletons. You know that as well as I do. What's more, the will is going to stand up. Whatever you say, no court will overturn it. The man was competent when it was written; he was competent till the day he died. But that's self-evident. For once, I say let's not litigate. That's what I've recommended to my client, and she agrees. And that's why I'm here. I'm here to talk a deal. I'm here because I'm empowered to talk a deal, and I'm talking to you, Counselor, and nobody else because you alone have the intelligence to understand the elements.”

Ingratiating
, like I said.
Flattering
would be better, but flattery in such broad strokes as to put even the most naive on guard.

“One question first, Mr. Barger,” the Counselor said, holding a lighted match over his pipe bowl.

“Roy, please,” Barger said, brushing the stray lock of hair back off his forehead.

“Roy,” the Counselor repeated. He sucked flame from the match, puffed smoke clouds, then with a snap of the wrist extinguished the match. “What's your rush?”

“What's my rush?”

“That's right. You come barging in here—no pun intended—all full of the urgency to make a deal, or talk a deal. At the same time you're convinced your client is lily-white and simon-pure, and a sure winner in any legal contest with the Magisters, if there is such a legal contest. In that case, I can't but ask myself: Why is Roy Barger in such a hurry?”

Clearly the Counselor meant to throw him off guard, but it didn't work. Outwardly, anyway. Barger didn't bat an eyelash.

“I'm always in a hurry,” he answered smoothly. “And this time there's good reason. The stock market for one. Have you followed what's happened to Magister Companies lately? Down, down and down, even in a generally bullish climate. The stock's on everyone's sell list. You know what the analysts are saying as well as I do: that the company's in chaos. What's more, you know that it'll stay that way till the leadership question is resolved.”

“Which could be to somebody's advantage in a buy-out situation,” the Counselor said.

“From the buyer's point of view, yes. But is that what you're suggesting?”

“I'm not suggesting anything,” the Counselor said, blowing smoke. “I'm waiting to hear what deal you have to offer.”

“It's very simple,” Barger said, crossing his legs. “My client wants control of the company. She wants to run Magister. She believes it's what her husband would have wanted. She also believes it's to the company's best interest.”

He paused, glancing at me, then back at the Counselor, as though leaving room for comment. I watched the Counselor, trying to gauge what he was thinking. He drew on his pipe, one of those curved jobs with the silver ring at the joint, and puffed smoke, which eddied upward, wreathing his head. Then he took the pipe out of his mouth, stared at it briefly, then sucked on it again. I saw his jaws work, a sign usually that he was either thinking or angry, or both, but otherwise he simply stared at Barger, dark eyes set deep under shaggy graying brows.

“That's what your client desires,” he said at length. “But what's the deal?”

“It's very simple,” Barger repeated. “Essentially it's whatever the children want. If they want to stay in their current jobs, including their seats on the board, she would welcome them with open arms. She's totally ready to extend the olive branch.”

“And if that's not what they want?”

“Then she's prepared to buy them out, at a price to be negotiated but well above market. In fact we're ready to go beyond that. We're ready to make a tender offer, at the same price, for
all
the outstanding shares of Magister Companies.”

If I'd caught his shift from
she
to
we
, I knew the Counselor had too. I also guessed he'd be wondering: where would she—or “they”—get the money? The estate held approximately 25 percent of the outstanding shares. This would be enough, practically speaking, to block any “unfriendly” takeover attempt, because it was written into the company bylaws that any sale of the company had to be approved by 75 percent of the outstanding shares. Old Bob had set it up that way. But if his will stood up, and Margie and the children, each with half of Old Bob's 25 percent, ended up in a shoving match, then either side would be able to bring in outsiders.

“What makes you think she's competent to run Magister?” the Counselor asked. “I didn't know she had experience in business.”

“She doesn't,” Barger answered. “In fact she says it would be the greatest challenge of her life.”

“That's not what I asked,” the Counselor said. “I wanted to know why
you
thought she was competent.”

“Me?” Barger said. He thought about it a minute, uncrossing his legs, then recrossing them in the other direction. “I'm just a lawyer,” he said then, the Southern coming up in his voice. “A country lawyer at heart. But I think two things. If you look at the histories of family businesses, you'll find that the second generations mostly aren't up to it. Young Bob, they tell me, is one of the nicest fellows in the world, but that doesn't make him chairman of the board material. His sister, I understand, is something of a flake, and her … er … sexual predilections would make for difficulties. Mind you, Margie … Mrs. Magister … is very fond of all Bob's children. That's an important point. She wants nothing but good for them.

“But the other thing is this: Margie Magister is one of the most remarkable women I've ever met. I truly believe that anything she set her mind to she could accomplish. Yes, I'm truly convinced of that. She could have been a film star; she could run for political office; and, yes, she could manage a company.”

He paused, as though to let the strength of his convictions sink in on us. For my part, it occurred that “all Bob's children”—at least Young Bob and Sally—were in fact older than their stepmother, also that, as far as we knew, her only professional qualification was that she'd been trained as a nurse.

“I've a suggestion for the two of you,” Barger went on, his eyes now glistening with sincerity. “Suspend all judgment until you've met her yourselves. I'd be happy to arrange that, at your convenience. Or if you're too busy, Counselor, why don't you just sent Phil? And meanwhile,” looking from one to the other of us, “why don't you call off your dogs? Frankly it's a waste of your time and an annoyance to my client. There's nothing you'll find out that she wouldn't tell you herself. Yes, she's been leading the high life, yes, she's been spending rather freely, but hasn't she paid her dues? Of course she has.”