Due Diligence

by Michael A. Kahn

  “What else do you need?” I asked.

  She shook her head and whistled. “You’re talking about a United States senator and a presidential candidate. I’ll never get this story into print without confirmation.”

  “I understand that,” I said calmly. “What else do you need?”

  Flo chuckled. “A witness would sure be nice.”

  “We’re running out of them,” I said. “Todorovich is dead.”

  “As for Fowler,” Flo said, “something tells me he’s not going to be on Team Tribune.”

  “What about the other two names I gave you on the phone last night?”

  Flo shook her head. “Nothing. Tuck works for the European division of Toyota. I wasn’t able to get through to him today, but he doesn’t seem like a good bet. I checked his employment history with Armstrong Bioproducts. He didn’t join the company until 1979. That was five years after these deaths. And he was only there for three years.”

  “How about Ronald McDonald?”

  Flo smiled. “Poor guy ought to legally change his name, eh? He lives near D.C. Works for a small munitions manufacturer in Arlington. I talked to him this morning. He claims he never knew a thing about the research and development side of the company, and I believe him. He joined the company in 1978 to head up their pharmaceutical production. His whole existence at Armstrong revolved around cutting costs and increasing production quotas. He was basically a glorified plant manager. Did it for seven years. Strike him from the list. Who’s left?”

  “Douglas Armstrong,” I said flatly.

  “Don’t forget his mouthpiece.”

  I gave a rueful laugh. “Sherman Ross? Forget it. He won’t talk.”

  “And he sure as hell won’t let Armstrong talk.”

  I pointed to the list. “Which brings us back to the medical records.”

  “If there are any left.”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out tomorrow morning,” I said. “Let’s hope Mrs. Jacobs has those files in her basement.”

  “It’s a long shot,” Flo said dubiously.

  “It’s just about our only shot.”

  We divided up our tasks for the following morning. I would concentrate on Mordecai Jacobs’ widow, and Flo would try to tie up the loose ends from today, which included obtaining the remaining thirteen death certificates and talking with someone at Mt. Sinai Hospital about any contractual arrangements it had with Beth Shalom or Labadie Gardens back in the mid-1970s.

  It was close to midnight when we finished, and we were both starving. Flo called down to room service and had them deliver a huge quantity of shrimp cocktail and fried calamari, along with a bottle of chilled white wine. I hid in the closet when room service arrived. Just in case.

  When the bottle was uncorked and the wine poured, Flo raised her glass in a toast. “To Colonel McCormick and his wonderful expense account. May that anti-Semitic, racist, right-wing prick rot in hell.”

  “Here, here,” I said as we touched glasses.

  We pigged out on the room-service goodies. Before long, the bottle of wine was empty and we were giggling like the school girls we once were. It was sheer bliss to be able to forget, even momentarily, David’s death and my predicament.

  It was nearly two in the morning when we started getting ready for bed. Flo was brushing her teeth over the bathroom sink. I stood next to her, staring at my face in the mirror.

  “Time for another change,” I said with a sigh.

  Flo rinsed her mouth. “Huh?”

  “They know my disguise.” I touched my hair. “It’s time to become a redhead.” I turned my head to the side. “I should shorten it, too.” I looked over at Flo. “Could you help cut it?”

  Flo wiped her mouth with a face towel and grinned. Sure.

  We brought a chair into the bathroom. I sat in front of the mirror with a towel draped over my shoulders while Flo intently snipped away.

  I looked at her in the mirror and grinned. “Remember that old guy you shocked at the job interview?” I said.

  Flo leaned back with a chuckle. “Oh, yeah. Macklind Moore. What a putz.”

  “Which firm was it?”

  “One of the Wall Street firms. Packard, Johnson and Marlin, I think. Moore was one of the partners they sent up for the on-campus interviews.”

  “Senior partner, right?”

  Flo nodded as she cut another lock of hair. “Oh, yeah. Part of the Harvard old boy network. Believe me, the guy richly deserved getting mind-fucked. It was a pleasure.”

  Flo’s interview incident quickly became a legend among the women at Harvard Law School. Ironically, it was the lawyer, and not Flo, who made the story public. Macklind “Mac” Moore filed a written complaint with the Placement Office about Flo’s “unladylike misconduct.” It blew up in his face. The Placement Office backed Flo and issued Moore’s firm a warning letter. A junior associate at the firm leaked the letter to the American Lawyer, which did a delicious hatchet job.

  “What exactly did Moore ask you?” I said. Although I knew the story by heart, I loved to hear her tell it.

  Flo snorted with amusement. “Well, we were about fifteen minutes into the interview. He’d already asked the usual ignorant, sexist questions, like whether I planned to get married and have children and how they could count on my dedication to the law. I’d decided by then that I wanted no part of him or his bullshit firm. ‘Young lady,’ he said, ‘do you type?’ I gave him a look like I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. ‘Pardon?’ I said. He gave me a stern frown. ‘I said, do you type?’ Well, I’d about had it with that old fart anyway, so I figured, what the hell? I stood up and very calmly said, ‘Yes, sir, as a matter of fact, I do type. I also fuck. But I don’t do either at the office.’ And then I walked out on him.”

  Laughing with delight, I held up my hand. Flo put the scissors in her other hand and slapped me five.

  After she finished snipping, I took a shower and shampooed my poor hair three times. I’d dye it red in the morning.

  There were two double beds, and we each took one.

  “Flo?” I said in the darkness a few minutes after shed clicked off the reading light.

  “Um-hm?”

  “Whatever happens tomorrow, you’re the best.”

  “You ain’t so bad yourself, Red.”

  “Goodnight, Flo.”

  “Goodnight, Rachel.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  By the time I arrived at Clara Jacobs’ apartment door the next morning at ten, I was a close-cropped redhead wearing heavy mascara and round glasses. I looked even less like myself than I had as a blonde.

  Although Clara Jacobs’ number was unlisted, I knew it wouldn’t take long to locate her. To the people who raise funds for charitable or nonprofit organizations, a wealthy widow is the equivalent of a beautiful woman in a singles bar. Before long, any self-respecting fundraiser knows her name and phone number. I had acquaintances at the Jewish Federation and the United Way. It took just two phone calls to find the telephone number and address for Clara Jacobs.

  The address was the first indication of a problem. To my dismay, Clara Jacobs no longer lived in an eight-bedroom home on the grounds of the Golden Bough Country Club. Instead, she lived on the seventh floor of an apartment building on Union Boulevard just north of Forest Park. As nice as her new address might be, it no longer included a giant basement where her husband could have stored records from his various business ventures, including the Beth Shalom Retirement Home. In fact, now I had to hope that he had never stored any documents at home, since I knew full well what she, or any reasonable widow, would have done with a basement full of moldy old records from her husband’s defunct businesses when it came time to move to a new residence.

  The wheelchair was the second indication of a problem. I had arranged the meeting over the telephone with her hou
sekeeper, who seemed quite reluctant to let me see Clara Jacobs and skeptical about my proffered reason, namely, that I was researching a biography on Mordecai Jacobs. She told me I’d be disappointed, but I assured her that I would be thrilled just to meet Mrs. Jacobs. The housekeeper met me at the door. She was a heavyset, stern black woman in a starched white uniform and thick-soled white shoes. She placed me in a dimly lit sitting room and returned five minutes later with Mrs. Jacobs, who was seated in the wheelchair and wrapped in an old gown. With her unkempt white hair, gnarled fingers, and milky brown eyes, Clara Jacobs reminded me of a fairy-tale crone.

  The lipstick was the third indication. Clara Jacobs had applied maroon lipstick at what appeared to be a thirty-degree angle from the actual line of her lips. As a result, the thick red smear started below her lips to the left, crossed her mouth at a diagonal, and ended above her lips to the right.

  The housekeeper stood directly behind her charge, her meaty arms crossed, an implacable look on her face. It soon became clear that Clara Jacobs no longer had all of her oars in the water. Indeed, after thirty minutes of watching in frustration as each of my questions about the whereabouts of her husband’s business records triggered another rambling and largely unintelligible response, it was apparent that all her oars were overboard and the rudder had broken off. Eventually, Mrs. Jacobs’ answers became briefer. Her words began to slur. Finally, right in the middle of her description of a delicious dinner she and her husband had once had at Smith & Wollensky in New York City, her head slumped forward.

  Dismayed, I watched until she started to snore, and then I looked up at the housekeeper. “How long have you been with Mrs. Jacobs?” I asked softly.

  The housekeeper stared at me for what seemed a long time before she answered. “Thirty-three years.”

  “Can you help?”

  Her stare turned to a frown. “You ain’t writing no biography.”

  I nodded. “I’m not. What I’m doing is trying to save my life. It’s a long story. Someone killed my boyfriend and killed another man and killed his secretary and now they’re trying to kill me. That’s why I need your help. I need to find the Beth Shalom records, and I need to find them fast. It’s my only hope.”

  Her arms still crossed over her chest, she said, “How’m I supposed to believe that?”

  I fumbled in my purse. “Look,” I said, pulling my driver’s license out of my wallet. I handed it to her.

  She studied my picture and then me. In the wheelchair beneath her, Mrs. Jacobs was snoring loudly.

  “That was me,” I said, “just three days ago. Look what I’ve done to my hair, to my face, to my clothes. I’m in hiding.” There was a catch in my voice. I struggled to control my emotions. “People are trying to kill me. Those records could save my life.”

  I fought back the tears, my lips quivering. I felt as if I was at the bottom of a deep, deep well. “Please help me. Please.”

  The housekeeper stared down at me as I wiped my nose with a tissue.

  “Please,” I repeated.

  After a moment, she uncrossed her arms. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  ***

  Flo and I met two hours later in a room at the Seven Gables Inn in Clayton. My level of paranoia was so high that I had insisted we switch hotels that morning. Tonight would be the Seven Gables. If there was a tomorrow, we’d be somewhere else.

  “Who goes first?” she asked as she poured herself a cup of room-service coffee. She was sitting on the bed near the nightstand.

  “You,” I said, taking the coffee pot from her. I was at the small table in the corner of the room. “What did you learn at the hospital?”

  Flo shook her head. “Not much. I talked to a woman in the administrative office at Mt. Sinai Hospital. She thinks the hospital had contracts to provide physicians to both Beth Shalom and Labadie Gardens back then, but she isn’t sure. Records that old are kept in off-site storage over in Illinois. She agreed to retrieve them for me, but they won’t be delivered to the hospital until the day after tomorrow.”

  I poured cream in my coffee. “Labadie Gardens, too?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  There was a knock at the door. We stared at each other. I carefully placed my coffee spoon onto the table and stood up.

  “Who is it?” Flo called as she signaled me to hide in the closet. She took a step toward the door.

  A male voice answered, “Special delivery for Miss Shenker.”

  Flo and I exchanged troubled glances. I shook my head. She frowned and turned toward the door. “What do you have for me?” she called.

  The male voice answered, “The man of your dreams.”

  “What?” Flo said.

  “Jesus, Flo,” he answered, “open the fucking door. It’s Benny. If that’s not enough, how about this? I’ve got something out here specially for you, and it’s thick and hot and juicy.”

  Flo peered through the peephole. “Son of a bitch,” she mumbled, a grin spreading on her face. She unlocked the door and pulled it open as I came around to see.

  In walked Benny Goldberg. He was carrying a large white bag with the Posh Nosh Deli logo on the side.

  “Ladies,” he said with a smiling bow as he put the bag down. The delicious smells of Jewish deli foods began to fill up the room.

  “Oh, Benny,” I said with a mixture of joy and concern. I gave him a hug.

  He leaned back and inspected me curiously. “Interesting new look, dahling. Love the hair. What’d you do? Trim it with a Weed Whacker?”

  I gestured toward Flo. “My personal hairdresser,” I said.

  Benny put his hand over his heart. “My apologies, mademoiselle.”

  “Accepted,” she answered with a good-natured smile.

  “How’s Ozzie?” I asked.

  “Ozzie’s fine,” Benny said. “But I’ve been a fucking wreck, thanks to you.” He turned to Flo. “Did you hear what she had me do?”

  Flo nodded.

  “How did you find us?” I asked him.

  “Hey,” he said with feigned irritation, “just because I look like a Chippendale dancer doesn’t mean I think like one, too.”

  “How?” I repeated.

  “I was motivated, that’s how. For chrissakes, Rachel, you call me on the run from a pay phone, have me send a bag of your sister’s clothes in a cab to the same goddam shopping mall where someone tried to kill you, leave your dog with some total douche bag in men’s suits, and then drop off the face of the fucking earth. I’ve been going ape shit ever since.”

  I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry, Benny, but they’re trying to kill me.”

  Flo was frowning. “How did you find us, Benny?”

  “Through your office,” he said. “When I couldn’t find Rachel, I tried to contact you at the Trib’s D.C. office. They told me you were in St. Louis.”

  “They told you that?” Flo asked, outraged.

  “Well,” Benny said with a sheepish smile, “I fibbed a little about who I was.”

  “Oh?” Flo said, her eyebrows raised.

  “Hey,” Benny said with a shrug, “you’d be amazed what people will tell to your gynecologist.”

  “Go on,” I said, secretly pleased that Benny was finally allowing Flo to see his crude side.

  “After that,” Benny said, “it was easy. I called around to the St. Louis hotels.” He turned to Flo. “I found out that you were registered at the Hyatt. I got there early this morning and followed you from there to here. And now, ladies.” He paused to lift the Posh Nosh bag by the handles. “Shall we dine?”

  Benny had outdone himself. The mouth-watering smells of corned beef and fresh rye bread and tangy brown mustard and dill pickles and vinegary coleslaw simultaneously lifted my spirits and reminded me of how ravenous I was. As promised, he did indeed have something thick and hot and juicy fo
r Flo—specifically, a hot pastrami sandwich on rye. He had a smoked turkey with lettuce on pumpernickel for me. For himself, a typically gluttonous extravaganza: a mammoth corned beef, chopped liver, and sliced Bermuda onion sandwich on rye, slathered with Thousand Island dressing. Benny had thought of everything, including cans of Dr. Brown’s cream soda to wash down the lunch, three large slices of apple strudel for dessert, and three large cups of fresh hot coffee from Starbucks.

  I filled Benny in as we ate. I was anxious to find out about the rest of Flo’s morning. “What about the Bureau of Vital Statistics?” I asked her as I spooned some more coleslaw onto my plate. “Were the death certificates ready?”

  “All thirteen.”

  “And?”

  Flo raised her eyebrows as she wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Very interesting.”

  “Tell me”

  “The immediate cause of death for all thirteen was respiratory failure. The underlying causes ran the gamut, but all within the pattern.” She looked over at her notes. “Three Guillain-Barré syndromes, two porphyrias, one diphtheritic polyneuropathy, two aspiration pneumonias, and the rest acute peripheral neuropathy.”

  “I love when you talk dirty,” Benny said.

  “Shush,” I said to him. Turning back to Flo, I asked, “Any more Peter Todoroviches?”

  She nodded. “He was listed as attending physician on three more Labadie Gardens residents.”

  I whistled. “Oh, brother.”

  “But,” Flo said with a triumphant grin, “I save the best for last.”

  I gave her a puzzled look. “What?”

  She glanced down at her notes. “Guess what Sarah Braunstein, Thelma Kaplansky, and Kay Silverman had in common?”

  “I give up,” I said.

  “The same person was listed as their attending physician.” Flo was grinning. “And it wasn’t Peter Todorovich.”

  I gave her a baffled frown. “Then who? Oh, no. Douglas Armstrong?”

  She nodded.

  “Douglas Armstrong?” Benny repeated.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said.