The Little Death (11 page)

Stephan
Abrams’s office was on the fifth floor of a highrise on Montgomery Street.
Having called him earlier, I followed his directions and got to his office a
few minutes before I was expected. His secretary told me he was on the phone
and asked me to sit and wait. I took a look around the office.
Chrome-and-leather furniture, off-white walls, industrial gray carpeting, an
unnumbered Miró lithograph; all the indicia of unspectacular success. He
entered the room and confirmed my image of him.

Abrams
was bulky but not fat. He had sharply etched features, a receding hairline he
made no attempt to disguise, and eyes that shone from deep within their
sockets. He wore a dark gray suit, a white shirt, red silk tie. He looked
solid, not one to start a fight but not one to run from a fight either. The
perfect all-purpose family lawyer. We shook hands. His grip, predictably, was
firm.

“Mr.
Rios?” he said. “I’m sorry to make you come up so late in the day but I was
booked solid.” “That’s fine. I have another appointment a little later.”

“Oh?
Well, then, there’s no problem, is there? You said something over the phone
about a client we had in common.”

“Yes,
Hugh Paris.”

“Maggie,”
he said to his secretary, “why don’t you go on home, now. I’ll close up here.
Step into my office Mr. Rios.’’

I
went into his office and he followed me in, closing the door behind him. There
were the usual framed degrees on the wall, one from Berkeley and another from
Hastings Law School, full of seals and flourishes; a little vulgar, I thought.
Abrams stepped over to a small roll-top desk against a wall, fiddled with the
lock and opened it to reveal a bar. He motioned me to one of the two armchairs
in front of a large plain desk in the center of the room. Without asking, he
poured two glasses of scotch, Chivas Regal, and carried them over. He sat down
in the other chair and handed me a glass.

“So,”
he said, “Hugh Paris. At what point did you represent him?”

“I
didn’t, actually. I offered but he turned me down. Then you picked up the case
and got the charges dismissed.”

“It
wasn’t hard, considering the lab report. Your cops have itchy fingers down
there, but then that’s true of cops in most college towns when it comes to
drugs.”

“The
voice of experience?”

“I
was a P.D. too, in Berkeley, back in the ‘sixties.” He took a healthy swallow
of his drink. I swilled mine around in my glass, to be sociable. I hate scotch.
“But the fires burn out.”

“You’re
doing well.”

“I
have no complaints,” he said. “So, what’s on your mind, Mr. — look, do you have
a first name? Mine’s Steve.” He smiled engagingly. I was beginning to dislike
him.

“Henry,”
I said. “Did Hugh hire you?”

“I
was retained on his behalf.”

“By
whom? Robert Paris? Aaron Gold?”

“I
have to claim the privilege, counsel. But if you speak frankly, then perhaps I
can, too.”

“Hugh
was murdered,” I said. “That’s to the point, isn’t it?”

“Brutally,”
he replied, smiling. “Do you have any evidence to support your assertion?”

“None
that I can share with you.” His eyebrows shot up. “But it seems to me that
someone who cared enough to hire a lawyer on his behalf might also care enough
to assist me in finding his murderer.”

“Anything
you say to me, Henry, I assure you will reach the right ears.”

“I
don’t deal with middlemen,” I said, tasting the scotch.

“Then
why did you come here? To insult me?”

“To
give your client a message,” I said.

“A
message, Henry?” he asked softly. “If you want to deliver a message, I suggest
UPS. Their rates are lower than mine.”

“Tell
your client I know who killed Hugh Paris. The police are cooperating and it’s
just a matter of time before we nail him. He’s not safe. And neither are you.
You may not answer my questions but you’ll answer to a subpoena and, if you’re
helping to cover up a crime, I’ll have you brought up before the Bar.”

“Get
out of here, Henry, before I throw you out,” he said, rising. “Now.”

I
stood up. “All right. Thank you for your time — Steve. And here’s my card.” I
flicked it on the desk.

I
shut the door behind me, and stood outside waiting to see if he picked up the
phone. He didn’t. I went out into the street. I’d blown it. My purpose in
coming to Abrams was to find out for whom he worked and the extent of his
relationship to Hugh. Instead, I’d implied misconduct on his part and
threatened him. Those were courtroom tactics, not the way to handle an investigation.
But then, I’d been thrown out of a number of offices during this investigation.
I seemed to be making people uncomfortable. That was some progress. Now, if I
could only get them to talk. I set off in the darkness to find Grant Hancock.

*
* * * *

Grant
lived in a twenty-eighth floor condominium in a building that rose above
Embarcadero Plaza. I walked there from Abrams’s office through the early
evening. Seagulls squawked overhead as I approached the blue awning that marked
the en trance. A doorman stood just outside the double glass doors. He wore a
blue blazer over gray flannel trousers. I noted the bulge beneath his jacket
where he strapped his holster. It was an odd neighborhood for a luxury
high-rise, but there were spectacular views of the bay from the condos and, at
night, it was as quiet in the streets as a graveyard. In the noisy, cramped
city in which new construction was constantly obliterating someone’s view,
peace and a vista of Sausalito from the living room were reason enough to pay
the toney prices for a few hundred square feet of condo.

I
identified myself to the doorman and he called up to Grant’s apartment. A
moment later I boarded a dimly-lit elevator that carried me to the
twenty-eighth floor.

I
rang the bell and he opened the door. Behind him, in the darkness, candles were
burning, and his window framed the bridge and the lights of Marin blazing
across the bay. He still wore the slacks from his suit and a button-down shirt
the shade of pearl; purchased, no doubt, from one of those men’s shops that
sell to you only if your great-grandfather had an account with them. The three
top buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing a patch of tanned and
expensively maintained flesh. His sandy hair was clipped short above his ears
and the handsome, expressionless face was as mysterious and self-contained as
ever. He smelled of bay rum, and his clear blue eyes took me in with a long
detached look. I could see myself in that look; disheveled, thin, dark beneath
the eyes and getting grayer, liquor on my breath. I heard, for the first time,
music playing softly in the room, guitar and flute.

“Come
in, Henry,” he said stepping back. I took it all in and smiled. The room was a
joke. The candles were set in a pair of silver candlesticks atop an orange
crate. There were some pillows stacked against the wall and an elaborate stereo
system but no other furnishings. There was, I remembered, a mattress on a box
spring in the bedroom and a butcher block table and two chairs in the kitchen.
The refrigerator was apt to be stocked with wine, fruit juices, vitamins, some
apples and cheese. The kitchen shelves contained a few mismatched plates of heirloom
china and beautiful old wine glasses. He was holding one in his hand. The years
had faded for a moment and all my feeling for him came back with an intensity
that made my heart pound. And then he took a step and the feeling passed as
quickly as it had come.

“I
see the decorator hasn’t been in yet,” I said, more edgily than I’d intended.

Grant
shrugged. “When I get lonely for furniture I go to my father’s house. A glass
of wine? Or do you want to stick to whiskey?”

“Wine,”
I said. “I was drinking scotch with a lawyer.”

“A
seemingly innocent pursuit,” he observed drily, pressing a glass into my hand. “You’re
awfully thin, Henry. Still forgetting to eat?”

“As
always. You look — very well, Grant.”

Aloud
he said, “Thank you,” but he was thinking something else. Bad feelings have a
life of their own.

I
wanted desperately to say something that would wipe away the stain from our
last, angry conversation four years earlier but for me that was all history. I
had lost the scent of the emotions that led to the breakup. I had almost
forgotten that I was the one who stopped returning calls. I could only think of
how well he looked and how it was good to see him.

He
sat on the floor, cross-legged. Candlelight blazed through his hair.
Theatrical, I thought, but effective. I lowered myself to the floor until we
were face to face. “I wanted to ask you about Hugh,” I began, tentatively.

“Yes,
of course.”

“What
did you know about him?”

He
shrugged. “The Paris family is peninsula and seldom ventures up to the city. I
didn’t really know Hugh until we were undergrads at Yale. He was younger than I
by a couple of years and I took him under my wing.” He looked into his wine glass.
“I was in love with him,” he added simply.

“What
happened?”

“Hugh
was eighteen and not out of the closet. Neither was I, for that matter. He was
tactful enough to overlook my infatuation. We behaved toward each other,” he
said, suddenly bitter, “like perfect young gentlemen. And at night I lay in bed
praying to God to make me different or kill me or, preferable to either, put
Hugh beside me.”

“You
never told me any of this.”

“It
was ancient history by the time I met you and, besides, I hadn’t seen or heard
from Hugh in years. Not until about six months ago when I ran into him on the
streets. He saw me and tried to slip by but I stopped him. He wasn’t
particularly friendly but he agreed to have a drink with me that night.”

“And
did you?”

“Yes,
and he spent the night here.” A twinge of jealousy constricted my chest for a
second. “It was nothing like I’d imagined it would be when I was nineteen,”
Grant added. “It wasn’t memorable and yet—” he poured wine into his glass from
the bottle beside him — “I’ve thought of him almost every day since then. He’s
one of those people who live less in your memory than your imagination. Like a
symbol.”

“Of
what?” I asked.

“I
suppose it’s different for everyone who knew him,” Grant replied. “For me, he
was a symbol of being young and unknowing.”

“I’ve
never thought that was an enviable state.”

“No?
Then maybe life has spared you some of the things I know about.”

“I
don’t think I’ve been spared much of life’s nastiness,” I said, “but I don’t
take it personally. And as for Hugh, I preferred the flesh-and-blood human to
the symbol. Tell me, what do you know about the judge?”

“What
does anyone know about Robert Paris? The poor boy who made good by marrying
into the right family. My father thinks he’s the ultimate nouveau riche, but no
one denies that he’s a brilliant and ruthless man. Of course, that was before
the stroke. Now I hear he’s half-dead but he hasn’t actually been seen in town
for months.”

“What
stroke?”

“He
had a series of strokes about a year ago. Since then, he’s stayed up on the
Linden estate in Portola Valley. He sees no one, and no one sees him.”

“What
about a man named John Smith?” I asked.

“Are
we going to explore every branch of the Linden family tree?” Grant asked
mockingly.

“Hugh
saw him the day he was killed.”

“Well,
he is Hugh’s great-uncle,” Grant replied. “So surely there’s nothing unusual
about Hugh having seen him.”

“I
don’t know. Is there? What kind of man is John Smith?”

“He’s
a stuffy old zillionaire,” Grant said, “nominally a banker but only in the
sense that he owns banks. He’s Robert Paris’s brother-in-law and controls the
other half of the Linden fortune. He and the judge don’t get along.”

“Really?
Do you know that as a fact?”

“Good
Lord, Henry, half of the city knows that as a fact.”

“Then
he’s someone Hugh might have gone to for help.”

“Help
for what?”