Death Benefits

by Michael A. Kahn

  I nodded weakly.

  “Will Mr. Goldberg be joining us?”

  “No, but another person will. I’ve been trying to reschedule my dinner with him, but I haven’t been able to reach him. He left a message with the name of the restaurant where I’m—we’re supposed to meet him. I have the address, but I’m not exactly sure where it is.”

  “That should pose no problem, Miss Gold. I have a map of the city in my briefcase. I am quite certain I can navigate us to our destination. Shall we?”

  I forced myself to stand. Numbly, I followed Melvin to the elevator. All he needed was a huge gold pendant and a gold felt top hat. I couldn’t believe I was going out to dinner with this man. Worse yet, I couldn’t believe I was bringing him with me to have dinner with Rafe Salazar.

  “Rafael is going to be surprised to see you,” I said as we stepped into the elevator.

  “Rafael, eh?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t tell you to meet him in the sewer for Domino’s pizza.” He gave me one of his lopsided, demented grins.

  “What?”

  “The turtles, Miss Gold. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

  “Huh?”

  “One of them is named Rafael. They reside in sewers. They consume pizza in large quantities. It was a joke, Miss Gold.” To prove it, he gave two barks of laughter.

  As the elevator began its plunge to ground level, I muttered a silent prayer for courage.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Aha, here’s another one!” he said, squinting at his map of St. Louis. “How do you pronounce it?”

  “Melvin, can’t we just drive?”

  “C’mon, Miss Gold. One more time.”

  He held up the map and jabbed at it with his mechanical pencil. I glanced over quickly, long enough to see where he was pointing, and turned back to the traffic. This time he had selected a street: Courtois Avenue.

  “Okay,” I said, wearily. “Coat-a-way.”

  “Hah! Incredible.” He let out one of his demented snorts. “Half the streets and landmarks of St. Louis have French names, and the natives mispronounce them all.”

  We were driving to a restaurant called Chaco Charlie’s, which was where we were to meet Rafe Salazar. The restaurant was located in south St. Louis, somewhere near Kingshighway. Melvin had found it on his map while we were still in the parking garage, announcing that the restaurant was about three blocks south of “Grahv-wah.”

  “Three blocks south of what?” I had replied as I pulled out of the parking garage and turned south on Broadway.

  “Grahv-wah.”

  “Let me see that map.”

  He pointed to the street on the map. Gravois.

  “Not Grahv-wah, Melvin. Gra-voyz,” I said, pronouncing the second syllable to rhyme with noise.

  “But the word is French, Miss Gold.”

  “Not when it’s in south St. Louis.”

  His Gravois discovery set him off on a manic search through the map of St. Louis for every street, park, and suburb with a French name so that he could hear me give it the St. Louis pronunciation. Bellefontaine Road is Bell-Fountain Road, Debaliviere Boulevard is De-bolliver, and the town of Creve Coeur rhymes with Leave Door.

  Although Melvin’s French pronunciation riff was a typically bizarre diversion for him, it did at least get my mind off our imminent arrival at the restaurant, where I was sure Rafe Salazar was already waiting. Waiting for me, that is. And soon to learn he was also going to be dining with a man dressed to audition for The Gong Show.

  “Here’s another one, Miss Gold,” he barked, poking at the map. “The river we shall soon be traversing on our way to this eating establishment.”

  He was referring to the River Des Peres.

  “Allow me, Miss Gold.” He made a big show of clearing his throat. “The River Dez Perez.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Wrong. We call it the River Des Peres,” I said, pronouncing Des Peres “dah pear.”

  “But—but that’s the correct pronunciation,” he protested.

  “Of course it is. It’s our sewer.”

  “Sewer?”

  “The River Des Peres, aka the River da Stink. Back in the old days, the river channel used to carry raw sewage. Now I think there’s a sewer line buried directly under the river. All the city’s raw sewage flows through it to the treatment plants. The river channel carries storm water.”

  He studied the map. “This is most perplexing. According to this map, the entire river vanishes north of Forest Park.”

  Forest Park is the St. Louis version of New York’s Central Park or San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park—a huge municipal park with woods, ball fields, golf course, playgrounds, picnic areas, tennis courts, jogging paths, a zoo, museums, and midnight muggers.

  “The river goes underground just north of Forest Park,” I explained. “Into a tunnel, I guess. I think it surfaces somewhere south of the park.”

  Melvin searched the map and then grunted in satisfaction. “You are correct, Miss Gold. Quite fascinating.” He folded the map and leaned back in the passenger seat, his arms crossed over his chest. “Query: Who were these fathers?”

  “What fathers?”

  “The River Des Peres, Miss Gold. Des Peres.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s French for ‘the fathers.’ My question is thus: Whose fathers?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It does make one speculate, does it not? If the fathers were the founding fathers of your city, Miss Gold, shall we say the St. Louis version of Romulus and Remus, then I should think one might fairly contend that the christening of a sewage line in their honor is, at the very least, passing strange. If, however, these fathers were Roman Catholic fathers—i.e., members of the clergy ranking below a bishop and above a deacon—one hopes that the river’s appellation does not reflect anti-Papist sentiments.”

  I looked over at Melvin with a puzzled frown. “What?”

  “The point being, Miss Gold, that the River Des Peres is apparently nothing more than an estuary of excreta, a torrent of turds, as it were. I was simply stating that if ‘the fathers’ after whom this stream of sewage has been named were Catholic priests, one would hope that the name references specific priests—in particular, the clerics who discovered it—rather than the generic category priest.”

  “What in the world are you jabbering about?” I asked, having trouble concentrating on both Melvin’s ramblings and the street traffic.

  “By way of analogy, Miss Gold, I should think that you, as a Jewess, might take offense if you found yourself in a city whose main sewage line was known as the River of the Rabbis and, upon further inquiry, discovered that it was named not in honor of two talmud-toting trailblazer rebbes but instead as an anti-Semitic smear against your people.”

  I slowed the car to a stop and turned to Melvin. “Jewess?” I said.

  His eyes were blinking rapidly behind the smudged lenses. “A woman of the Jewish persuasion. I prefer it to the harsher-sounding, albeit gender-neutral, ‘Jew.’”

  I stared at him, thinking, Why me, Lord? And why tonight? In his purple zoot suit, with a manic grin on his face, Melvin seemed a character right out of a lost chapter of Alice in Wonderland.

  “Listen, Melvin, you said your deposition is over at noon. Tomorrow afternoon you can go over to the Missouri Historical Society. Ask them how the River Des Peres got its name. Okay? That’s for tomorrow. For tonight, though, you and I are going to eat with a friend of mine. We’re going to be at that restaurant in five minutes. That means you have five minutes to think of something—anything—besides that damn sewer line to talk about at dinner. When I pull up to the restaurant, Melvin, I’m going to ask you if you’ve thought of something else. If you haven’t, you’re going to stay in this car until you do. Okay?”

&nbs
p; He nodded his head rapidly.

  ***

  Chaco, it turned out, was the name of a canyon in New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was not far from the home of Charlie Sierra-Ruiz, who was the owner and head chef of Chaco Charlie’s New Mexico Restaurant.

  All things considered, it could have been far worse. Rafe was already seated in the booth when we arrived. He saw me approach from across the room, Melvin in tow, and stood to greet us.

  “Hello, Rachel,” he said, covering my hand with his. He had a warm smile of welcome—not a trace of surprise or irritation over the unexpected presence of another male.

  He turned to Melvin, extending his hand. “I’m Rafe Salazar.”

  I had a confused flood of explanation ready to spill out, but Melvin, bless his soul, took care of it all—and with a touch of class I would have assumed was beyond him:

  “Mr. Salazar, I am Melvin Needlebaum, a former associate of Miss Gold at her prior law firm, to wit, the Chicago offices of Abbott & Windsor. Miss Gold was good enough to obtain my release from jail early this morning after I had been unjustly incarcerated for the crimes and misdemeanors of the airline industry. In addition to ensuring that she is properly remunerated by my law firm for her fine representation, I insisted upon purchasing her dinner this evening as an additional show of personal gratitude. When she advised me of a potential scheduling conflict involving yourself, I insisted that you be allowed to join us as well, with the express proviso that I also be permitted to purchase your meal—including, of course, any beverages that you may elect to consume during the meal.”

  I could have kissed Melvin.

  “Thank you,” Rafe said, “that’s very kind.” He snuck me a good-natured wink as Melvin, oblivious, settled into the booth with a harumph.

  We received the royal treatment from Charlie: a booth in a darkened corner, red candlelight, guitar music gently piped in. It was a truly romantic setting: Rafe on one side of the table, the candle flame sparkling in his dark eyes, and Melvin and me on the other.

  Rafe had ordered the entire meal in advance. A brief exchange in Spanish with Charlie Sierra-Ruiz took care of expanding the portions from two to three.

  Dinner was superb. We began with a bowl of posole (a hominy soup) and Indian fry bread dipped in honey—neither of which I had ever even heard of before. After that came blue corn tortillas stuffed with a spicy and spectacular New Mexico sausage, chicken sopapillas with a hot green sauce, and a thick, dark, spicy stew Rafe said was called carne adovade. All washed down with icy cold bottles of Dos Equis. Charlie served us himself, waiting with hound-dog eyes as we sampled each new course, beaming and clapping his hands together when we told him it was delicious.

  Melvin lived up to his promise of finding a topic of conversation other than the River Des Peres. Armed with the knowledge that Rafe had once been in the tax department of Sullivan & Cromwell, Melvin launched into a monologue—which eventually became a quasi-dialogue—over Section 168 (f) (8) of the Internal Revenue Code, an unusual and short-lived provision added by the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (which Melvin—like most tax lawyers—calls ERTA). This ERTA provision created something called a Safe Harbor Lease, which apparently enabled owners of certain business property to sell the tax benefits in that property while still owning the property itself, or something like that—one of those bizarre Internal Revenue Service versions of reality where actions get severed from consequences, where Taxpayer A eats the chocolate sundae but Taxpayer B gets all the calories.

  Nevertheless, and incredibly enough, the two of them had something in common. Rafe, it turned out, had worked on a deal where Pan Am bought an L-1011 and sold the tax benefits (i.e., depreciation and investment tax credits) to a hotel chain. At least I think that’s what Pan Am did.

  Their conversation provided a total contrast in styles. Rafe would listen politely, nod occasionally, and add a comment during a rare break when Melvin surfaced for air. Melvin, by contrast, grew increasingly strident as the conversation moved forward. His hands punched the air in emphasis of points of tax law. Flecks of food and salvos of saliva exploded from his mouth as he delivered a rapid-fire diatribe against the Internal Revenue Service. His speech got louder and louder and faster and faster. You could have filmed the conversation between the two of them and used it for one of those this-is-your-brain/this-is-your-brain-on-drugs commercials.

  And then, like a sudden summer squall, it was over. Just like that.

  In midsentence Melvin abruptly checked his watch and stood up. “Good grief. You will have to excuse me. I have a deposition that reconvenes tomorrow morning at precisely eight a.m., and I must prepare for it. Moreover, as Miss Gold can attest, I have not been to sleep for thirty-six hours. Please continue without me. I will handle payment of all meal charges up at the cashier, along with an appropriate gratuity.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said half-heartedly, experiencing a rush of pure ambivalence. “You don’t have a car.”

  “Not to worry, Miss Gold. I am quite confident that the proprietor of this fine establishment can arrange for my transportation via a taxicab.” He raised his hand as I started to protest. “Please, Miss Gold. You forget that I am down here on an expense account. This is a Bottles and Cans deposition. The clients will certainly not object to a cab fare. Mr. Salazar, I thank you for joining us, and I thank you for a most stimulating discussion of the laws of federal taxation. Now, if you will both excuse me, I shall take my leave.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Well, now you’ve met Melvin Needlebaum.”

  Rafe smiled and shook his head. “We had one just like him at Sullivan and Cromwell.”

  “So does every big firm,” I said. “You were awfully nice to him.”

  “I assumed he was a friend of yours. That meant he was entitled to my respect.”

  “You hardly know me,” I said.

  “I know enough about you to know that Melvin Needlebaum was entitled to my respect.”

  A few minutes later Charlie arrived with dessert: fried ice cream. A New Mexico treat, Rafe told me. It was wonderful. Charlie assured us that Melvin had left safely in a cab a few minutes ago. We both ordered espresso.

  When Charlie left the table, Rafe leaned back and studied me. “Tell me about yourself, Rachel,” he said.

  “What’s to tell?” I felt light-headed, perhaps from all the beers.

  “Tell me about the real Rachel Gold.”

  “You’re looking at her. I fired my body double. I do all my own stunts.”

  He smiled. “Most of the lawyers I know wish they had chosen another career.”

  “Do you wish you’d picked another career?” I asked.

  “Do you?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Never?”

  “Not really. As corny as it sounds, I think it’s an honor to be allowed to do what we do—representing people in courts of law, advocating the rights of our clients. Being a lawyer has always seemed a worthwhile job to me.”

  There was an amused smile on his lips. “Fair enough, Rachel Gold. You love your job. But a job is hardly a life.”

  “True.”

  “Do you like to read?”

  “I love to read.”

  “Who’s your favorite author?”

  “Jane Austen. I love her.”

  “Jane Austen,” he mused. His dark eyes sparkled with delight. “Do you ever dream of writing a novel?”

  “Me? No. I don’t have the talent.”

  “But how do you know? How do you know there isn’t a novel somewhere inside you?”

  “I think that’s just gas.”

  “I couldn’t be more serious, Rachel.”

  “Nor could I.” I sat back in the booth. “There are already too many lawyers writing too many novels. When it comes to fiction, lawyers should sti
ck to their time sheets.”

  “Okay,” he said, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “Not a novelist then. How about a trapeze artist?”

  I laughed. “Novelists are just like trapeze artists—they’re performers. But don’t forget: All performers need spectators. I’m a spectator.”

  “A mere spectator? That’s far too passive for someone like you.”

  “Oh, but there’s nothing passive about it. At least not if you put your heart into it. I’m a fan of movies and baseball and novels. I certainly can’t write like Jane Austen or play shortstop like Ozzie Smith, but I can sure enjoy watching them in action. I can read Pride and Prejudice the way you can ride a rollercoaster, the way you can eat a bucket of steamed clams, with the juice on your chin and the melted butter on your fingers.”

  I paused as Charlie delivered our espresso.

  “You make reading sound like making love,” Rafe said, his dark eyes twinkling.

  Blushing, I took a sip of coffee. “I get carried away.”

  “I understand what you’re saying.” He paused. “We animate what we see, we see only what we animate.”

  I looked up in wonder. “Yes. That’s—that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” he said.

  And he quotes Emerson, I marveled.

  “Tell me about movies,” he said.

  “Moments, mostly. I collect scenes.”

  “Tell me one.”

  I leaned back in the booth with a smile. “Katharine Hepburn, in The African Queen.”

  “Which scene?”

  “Near the end, when she and Charlie Allnut are prisoners on that German ship, with that fat German admiral interrogating them.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Her hair’s mussed, her dress is torn, and—oh—she’s so beautiful in that scene, Rafe. So beautiful. That horrible German asks how she and Charlie got there and she tells him, ‘We came down the Yulanga River.’ ‘That’s impossible,’ he sputters. She pauses one beat, gives him her proud look, and says, ‘Nevah…theless.’ Oh, it’s so perfect.”