Partners In Crime (5 page)

T.S. gritted his teeth. He hated sarcasm in
others. "It was about the knife, I believe."

"You know about the knife?" The lieutenant
was gazing just above T.S.'s head now, nodding as he spoke.

"The young woman who discovered the body
told me. I think I know where it came from."

The lieutenant's acerbic demeanor crumpled
as he wearied of his game. He tucked his clipboard back under one
arm, shrugged, and gestured for T.S. to follow.

"What do I care?" he said with a sigh. "Be
my guest."

It was just as Sheila had described it.
Robert Cheswick lay splayed back in his chair, jostling slightly as
forensic specialists brushed past. One knelt at the base of the
desk, scraping carpet fragments into a plastic bag. Another
carefully printed labels and affixed them to a pile of plastic bags
containing various objects piled on another desk nearby. A woman
dressed in gray slacks and a navy blazer lifted a wilted
boutonniere off the desk with small tongs and dropped it into a
small plastic bag. A cameraman was noisily breaking down
lights.

"Look familiar?" Abromowitz asked.

"I beg your pardon?" T.S. stared at the
body. Cheswick's head was thrown back, the neck exposed. T.S.
noticed with a start how old the dead man looked. His crepe-paper
skin stretched tightly over brittle bones and small wattles hung
from his chin. The grin Sheila had described looked more like a
grimace, the fleshy lips pulled back over his trademark prominent
teeth.

"The corsage," Abromowitz said impatiently.
"Why's the guy wearing dead flowers to your retirement party? Was
that his idea of some kind of a joke?"

T.S. stared at the brown and shriveled
flowers closely. "That's a boutonniere,'' he corrected the
lieutenant. "I don't remember his wearing flowers at all to my
party."

The lieutenant rubbed his chin and looked
away.

Cheswick's eyes were open as he gazed up at
the huge chandelier inset into the room's dome. His pupils were
gray and lifeless and tiny pinpoints of light were reflected in his
flat irises. His jacket was neatly folded in the visitor's chair by
the side of his desk.

"That's the same suit he had on last night,"
T.S. remarked. The lieutenant nodded as if he already knew
this.

Just above the center of his chest, angling
up with an incongruous delicacy, was the intricately carved ivory
handle of a knife. It was yellowed with age and glowed in the
chandelier's glare. A dark stain spread across the front of
Cheswick's impeccably tailored shirt, the color curiously echoed in
the delicate burgundy stripes that continued through the fabric.
The victim's hands dangled at his side and T.S. noticed the age
spots studding the clawlike flesh. How had death been able to make
him instantly so much older?

Sheila was right. The partner's fly was
unzipped and the whimsically patterned boxer shorts peeked out,
drawing attention to his crotch area. T.S. sighed. He had not liked
Robert Cheswick but no one deserved to die like this. It was
undignified and an affront to the pride with which he had occupied
his desk while living.

"So? Look familiar?" The lieutenant asked
again, standing to his right and drinking in the scene as if seeing
it for the first time. "The weapon, I mean."

"Yes." T.S. leaned forward and studied the
handle carefully. His first suspicion was correct. "There's only
one like it in the world to my knowledge. It was given to the firm
in 1823 by a grateful African king. We had made it possible to
bring trade to his Ivory Coast kingdom. He was an unusual man by
all accounts. Ahead of his time."

"You're a wealth of historical info, aren't
you?" The lieutenant spoke without much enthusiasm. He seemed
preoccupied, lost in the scene at hand, as if looking at it long
enough would bring the solution. "Where was it usually kept?"

"In the first conference room down that
small hallway." T.S. indicated a smaller set of double doors
opening out from the side rear of the Partners' Room. "The one with
the ivory and blue drapes. It's usually kept in a case. There were
some gold coins and other antiques with it. On velvet. It made a
nice display for visitors."

"Where?" the lieutenant barked, startled.
Before waiting for a reply, he screamed for the skinny cop who had
broken the news about Anne Marie's husband. The kid skidded
immediately to a hasty arrival at the lieutenant's elbow.

"Where's the secretary who found the body?"
Abromowitz demanded.

"I think she's in a conference room
somewhere," the cop whispered back, gulping for air and darting his
eyes nervously to the side. A number of bystanders had slowed their
work to keep an eye on the evolving scene. The lieutenant's eyes
narrowed dangerously. He looked like a bad-tempered wart hog about
to charge. Even T.S. felt the urge to step back.

"Not the first one down that hallway?" the
lieutenant asked in a dangerously sarcastic and calm voice. "Get
her the hell out of there now," he suddenly bellowed, startling the
room into its second immediate halt of the hour. "Charlie! Dennis!
Jack!" Abromowitz screamed each name like an accusation and a trio
of detectives leapt to attention from their impertinent perches on
the partners' desks lining the far row. They stared at him
nervously.

"Charlie," the lieutenant attempted to say
calmly, but immediately abandoned the cool approach in favor of
rage. "Someone has invited a witness to sit her fat ass down right
in the middle of a room crucial to evidence. This guy says the
knife came from a showcase in there. Get her the hell out of there
now. Find out who showed her in there in the first place and why no
one noticed the joint was ransacked. I want to know whose
responsibility it was. Jack, you go with Charlie. See what you can
lift off the case and take her prints while you're at it. Dennis,
you stand by."

The lieutenant turned his back on the men
and clumsily changed the subject, hoping, in vain, that T.S. had
not noticed that a monumental gaffe had just been made. He took in
the Partners' Room again slowly, moving his eyes carefully down the
double row of rolltop desks. "What I can't figure out is why all
the partners sit in here. You'd think a firm like this could afford
to give everyone his own office."

T.S. wasn't fooled by his changing of the
subject or his apparent ignorance. It was a technique many
executives tried at meetings when they were setting a rival up for
a fall. "Most of them do have their own offices elsewhere in the
bank. This arrangement is just tradition. It goes back two hundred
years."

"Where's his office?" Abromowitz nodded
toward Robert Cheswick.

"On the second floor. In Private
Investments. He has a small office where he keeps some files and a
desk. He liked it down here on the Main Floor, though. Kept his
secretary down here with him, too."

"He doesn't look like he likes it too much
now." Abromowitz motioned over Dennis, who had lapsed into his
familiar pose of boredom. "Dennis—hit the victim's office on the
second floor. Ask that guy in the monkey suit to show you the way.
Make sure Jack gets the prints from there when he's through down
here."

The detective left silently and T.S. stared
at the body. As he took in the open fly and the spreading dark
stain, he felt the lieutenant's arm across his shoulders.

"I want to talk to you some more, Mr.
Hubbert," Abromowitz said, giving T.S. a squeeze. "Some more about
tradition, eh? Give me half an hour to question the broad, then
I'll meet you in your office. Don't worry. I'll find it."

The broad? Anne Marie was many things. A
broad was not one of them. T.S. left the Partners' Room, shaking
his head. He doubted the lieutenant would be able to find his
office, much less the murderer.

Their talk lasted more than an hour. It
consisted of the lieutenant barking perfunctory questions at T.S.
about his retirement party as well as exhaustive inquiries
concerning financial arrangements at Sterling & Sterling. T.S.
sat calmly at his desk while Abromowitz paced the floor, fiddled
with the blinds, chomped on gum and scribbled an occasional
note.

T.S. had long ago regretted having answered
the phone that morning when Abromowitz started to go around
again.

"You say that new partners are picked each
November?"

"That's correct," T.S. replied. "If any new
partners are selected."

"Who chooses new partners?"

"The existing partners do. I do not know the
process. I doubt they vote. It's probably obvious and something
that emerges over the year."

The lieutenant considered this information
thoughtfully. "So there may be some disappointed honchos here?
Someone who wanted to make partner and didn't?"

T.S. allowed himself a brief smile. "There
may be. Probably about a dozen or two people a year think they
should have been made partner. Maybe two or three of them seriously
had a chance and didn't make it. The number grows each year."

"Why's that?"

"The partners at Sterling & Sterling
tend to be much older than the partners you might find elsewhere on
Wall Street. They tend to stay partners longer, take much longer to
retire and, if I may say so, are extremely reluctant to relinquish
the power they have spent a lifetime building."

"Yeah," the lieutenant agreed. "I saw a
couple of them pass by. They looked old enough to me."

"Old enough to murder?" T.S. asked. The
thought of another partner at Sterling & Sterling waiting for
Cheswick behind the drapes struck him as slightly absurd.

Abromowitz had stopped pacing and stared
thoughtfully at his clipboard. "Could be. Or maybe a younger
honcho. Someone passed over for partner." He looked up.

"Then how do you explain the open fly?"

"Stranger things have happened." The
lieutenant shrugged. "Maybe some young hotshot was trying to show
the old guy it would be worth his while to back him but something
went wrong." He ignored T. S.'s incredulous stare and changed the
subject. "Tell me about Robert Cheswick."

"Truthfully?" T.S. began. "I'd say that not
too many people liked him. Although I wouldn't really call any of
the partners likable, with one or two notable exceptions. These are
men who are almost solely concerned with making money, lieutenant.
That's why they're partners and we're not. And it has been my
experience that a sole preoccupation with making money doesn't
leave much time for such mundane pursuits as making friends or
maintaining warm employee relations."

"And Robert Cheswick in particular?"

"I suspect that most people thought he was a
horse's ass."

The detective stared at T.S. "Is that on the
record?"

T.S. sighed. "You seem to think I believe
this is some kind of a joke. I assure you, I do not. He may not
have been the warmest man in the world, but he didn't deserve to
die like that."

"I'm glad to see such a sense of public
spirit in a public relations flak."

"I'm the Personnel Manager," T.S. said yet
again, wearily. "Retired."

The lieutenant turned back to staring at the
heavy green drapes. "Go on. I'm interested in your perceptions of
him. Not many people liked him, huh?"

"No. Not even the other partners, I don't
think."

"Why is that?"

"Why didn't they like him? Same reason the
rest of us didn't. He was pompous, overbearing and
incompetent."

"How'd he get to be a partner?"

T.S. gave a short laugh. "The old-fashioned
way. Family. His father was a partner here before he left to go
into politics. His great-great-grandfather was the founder's right
hand man."

"Silver spoon, huh?"

"Sterling," T.S. said. The lieutenant did
not smile.

"What about his private life?"

"It was private, so far as I know." T.S.
shrugged. "I'm not being facetious. He didn't have any close
friends among the other partners. Most of them tend to bunch
together in groups of two or three. I believe he belonged to the
same Connecticut country club as several of the other partners, but
I never heard of his taking part in the usual activities. He didn't
play golf. He didn't play tennis."

"What about playing around?"

"Pardon?" For a fleeting second T.S. thought
he'd been propositioned.

"Did Cheswick play around?"

T.S. stared at him for a moment before
answering. "You'd have to ask his wife. As far as I know, sex was
pretty far from his mind."

"What about that secretary of his? For an
old dame, she isn't bad looking."

First she was a broad. Now she was an old
dame. He'd better set the lieutenant straight before he started
calling her "Toots."

"Anne Marie Shaunessy has been his secretary
for nearly thirty-five years," T.S. told him with as much dignity
as he could muster. "She is a devout Irish Catholic and would be
absolutely the last person at Sterling & Sterling to have an
extramarital affair."

"That's just your opinion," the lieutenant
pointed out. "Her old man's playing around. Maybe she wanted a
little revenge. Tit for tat." He guffawed offensively.

"And that's just your opinion. You have no
proof her husband is playing around and it isn't relevant anyway.
Besides, if Anne Marie and Robert Cheswick were having an affair, I
assure you I would have gotten wind of it. I hear just about
everything that goes around," T.S. admitted.

"Really. Then what exactly did get around
about Robert Cheswick?"

T.S. sighed and gave up. It was now nearly
2:00 in the afternoon and he wanted a chance to talk to some
employees before he left. "The word on Robert Cheswick was that he
wasn't very smart, that he was exceptionally stingy with employee
bonuses, that he intensely disliked younger executives who were in
any way threats to his power, and that he was something of a wimp,
I guess. He had no outside interest that established his
masculinity. He didn't own racehorses. He didn't play golf or
tennis. He wasn't into sailing. That sort of thing. Most of the
other partners had one hobby they could brag about. These are
competitive men."