Death Benefits

by Michael A. Kahn

  “It could have been put in his PO box by mistake,” I said.

  Benny shook his head. “It came in this.” He pulled a brown wrapper out of the grocery bag and handed it to me. “See that?”

  The mailing label had Anderson’s post office box number on it.

  I put the wrapper down and reached for the other publication, which turned out to be a catalog from some mail order house called The New Greek Isles. Anderson’s post office box number was on this mailing label, too.

  “Oh, God,” I mumbled as I opened to page one, which featured rows of dildos and leather restraining devices. There were pages of ads for hardcore gay kiddie porn videotapes, ads for sets of hardcore kiddie porn photographs, sexual devices, varieties of lubricants, a rainbow of condoms. Much of the ad copy was clearly geared toward pederasts and chickenhawks. There was even a page of kinky outfits for boys, including crotchless lederhosen.

  I pushed both publications away from me and turned toward the window. Benny unpacked our lunch behind me.

  Each piece of evidence clicked into place, one after another. His sexual “impotence” with his wife. The opened twelve-pack of condoms the police found in his desk drawer. The unaccounted-for activities after work. The absence of any rumors about sexual affairs.

  The public Stoddard Anderson—family man, conservative Republican, member of Civic Progress, St. Louis establishment, gay basher—was a facade, carefully constructed around a private life of pick-up sex with preteen boys.

  “That son of a bitch,” I muttered.

  “Anderson?” Benny said, gnawing on a barbecued rib.

  “No. Remy Panzer.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Come, come, Rachel.”

  “You were blackmailing him, weren’t you?” The anger made my ears ring.

  “Blackmail?” Remy Panzer repeated, swiveling his chair so that he was facing me. Slowly, calmly, he placed his arms flat on his desk. “Such a vulgar word.” He gave me a frigid stare. “It conjures such crude images.”

  “Crude images?” I said, outraged. “From what I hear, you’re the expert in crude images.” I paced over to the antique globe in the corner of his office. “You supplied him with boys, didn’t you?”

  His eyes were cold, dead.

  “Of course you did,” I said. “Stoddard Anderson wasn’t the type to cruise the streets and parks for boys.”

  “I detect disdain in your voice.”

  “Disgust is more like it.”

  “Such a disappointment, Rachel. It suggests such a conventional—such a provincial set of values in what I had hoped was neither a conventional nor a provincial woman. Look to history. Take the grand view. What puritan America outlaws, Plato celebrated.”

  “Come on, Remy. The gay part doesn’t bother me.”

  “You’re needlessly overwrought, Rachel. Try to understand, not all of us are breeders.”

  “Stoddard Anderson pretended he was until the end. He had to. And you used that. Like a noose around his neck.”

  “Stoddard wore a mask. A mask of convention for a conventional world. I was honored to know the real Stoddard Anderson.”

  “You were honored to know him? Honored to know someone who got his jollies screwing eleven-year-old boys in the butt? Don’t BS me, Remy. Of the many words you could use to describe your relationship with Stoddard, honor wasn’t one of them. What was the evidence you used to blackmail him? Photos? Videotapes?”

  He averted his eyes momentarily when I said “videotape.” Just a fraction of a second, and then he forced himself to meet my stare. “Come, come, Rachel. This isn’t an episode of Police Woman.”

  “No wonder he agreed to help you get the Executor. If he didn’t do your bidding, you could destroy him. Ruin his career, ruin his future.” I paused to catch my breath. “I just knew it had to be something besides the money.”

  He gave a world-weary sigh. “Money? It hardly matters now, does it?”

  I said nothing. Benny was out in the gallery, waiting for me.

  “Rachel, let us assume, arguendo, this overheated hypothesis of yours. Let us assume I blackmailed him. I forced him to do my bidding. Okay? Let’s assume it all. Nevertheless, how in the world could a dead Stoddard Anderson further my goals? Indeed, how could a dead Stoddard Anderson do anything other than threaten to completely vitiate my quest? And just at my moment of triumph. How, Rachel? Explain that.”

  I paused. “I can’t,” I admitted.

  “Nor can I. Now listen to me. Somewhere in St. Louis, even as we speak, is the most remarkable treasure of the Aztec empire. It’s there. I know it. You know it. Stoddard Anderson is dead. I can’t change that. You can’t change that. He’s dead. Forever. We’re still alive. But not forever. You can’t simply walk away from this, Rachel. This is history. You’ve become one of the links reaching back in time to the Emperor Montezuma himself.”

  He paused to remove a cigarette from his gold case. He tapped it on the case to pack the tobacco and then he lit it. Leaning back in his chair, he blew a stream of smoke toward the chandelier overhead. As the smoke dissipated, he turned to me.

  “You don’t like me, Rachel.”

  “That’s irrelevant,” I answered.

  “Precisely my point. Like a doctor and his patients, a lawyer does not select clients based on whether the lawyer happens to like them. Liking a client, admiring a client—completely irrelevant.” He leaned forward, pointing the cigarette at me. “I’m just another client, Rachel,” he said slowly, forcefully. Then he leaned back. “Actually,” he mused, “not just another client. I happen to be a client willing to pay your client a handsome fee for the return of what belongs to me. I bought it, Rachel. It’s mine. You may not like me. But surely that is not a disqualification under your professional code. Correct?”

  I quelled my disgust with thoughts of Ferd Fingersh leading Remy Panzer away in handcuffs, shoving him into the back of a blue government sedan. I obviously couldn’t bring down Remy Panzer alone. If there ever had been a videotape of Stoddard Anderson, it was long gone. Panzer was no fool. The police would never find evidence of blackmail, and even if they did, so what? Any decent criminal lawyer could throw enough reasonable doubt onto the blackmail scenario to get an acquittal. And meanwhile, the resulting hoopla could seriously sidetrack, or even fatally undermine, the Mexican government’s quest for Montezuma’s Executor. I thought of Rafe Salazar. Play along, Rachel, play along. Stoddard Anderson’s dead. You’re not going to bring him back to life. Getting mad won’t help. Get even.

  I softened my look and tried an abashed shrug. “Correct,” I said, trying to sound submissive.

  “Good.” He smiled. “If the money is insufficient…” He let it linger out there.

  I shook my head. “A deal is a deal,” I said. “The money’s fine.”

  “Then find it, Rachel. Bring it to me. It’s more than just a quarter of a million dollars. It’s your moment in history. It’s the adventure of a lifetime.”

  Ten minutes later, on the way to the car, I turned to Benny. “So help me God, whatever else happens, I want to make sure we nail that creep.”

  From Panzer’s gallery we drove west. I had four box-seat tickets to the Cardinals’ game against the Mets that night. Benny and I got back to my sister’s house with enough time for me to change into the red clothing that all true Cardinal fans must wear to the stadium. For me, that meant an oversized red cotton mock turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up, matching red cotton canvas espadrilles, and a pair of baggy khaki shorts with double front pleats. My niece and nephew were literally jumping with excitement about the game. On my way out the door I had time to skim the telephone message my sister had taken from Melvin Needlebaum:

  Melvin Needlebum (sp?) called from airport. On his way back to Chicago. Said he found answer to question. The fathers were Jesuit priests. Father Gabriel Marest and Fath
er Francois Pinet. Built Indian mission around 1700 at mouth of river. Indians part of Cahokia empire. Largest Indian empire since pre-Columbus (sp?) Aztecs.

  “What fathers?” Benny asked when he read the message.

  “It’s a long story,” I said as I ushered my niece and nephew into the car.

  ***

  At quarter after twelve that night, after the baseball game (Cards won), after the postgame Ted Drewes’ custard concretes for the four of us, after tucking the kids in bed, after saying goodnight to my sister and Richie—after all that, as we sat in the kitchen, Benny had a thought.

  “I have a thought,” he said. He was staring at the draft suicide note, the one headlined “Equation for ME” “The RS doesn’t have to be Reed St. Germain. The real suicide note says it’s safe underground. Another draft mentioned the River Styx. Maybe the RS is the River Styx. Maybe Anderson hid it near some underground river. It says RS equals ROTF. You know any underground river or cave with those initials?”

  “The only river I know of that runs underground is the River Des Peres.”

  “RDP. Nope.”

  “Caves?” I mused. “Meramec Caverns. Onondaga Cave. There are supposed to be hundreds of little caves in south St. Louis. The Mississippi carved them out of the limestone. I guess it could be in any of them. I sure can’t think of one that starts with an R.”

  “If it’s a cave,” Benny mused, “then RS doesn’t stand for River Styx. He’d have used some other code name.”

  “You’re probably right. Unless there was a river in the cave.”

  “River on…” Benny tried, letting it hang there. “River over…river of…River onto…”

  “Melvin!” I said. “God bless him. It is the River Des Peres. Remember that crazy message from Melvin? The names of the fathers. Well, last night he told me Des Peres is French for ‘of the fathers.’ River Des Peres means River of the Fathers. He had called to give me the names of the two fathers.”

  “God damn, that’s it. RS equals ROTF. So the River Styx is the River Des Peres.”

  “And the C,” I nearly shouted, “the C has to be Charon, ferryman of the River Styx.”

  “C equals MSD slash AW,” Benny read. “You think the AW is that guy on vacation. The one with the Metropolitan Sewer District.”

  “Due back in the office on Monday. I hope he’s back from vacation tomorrow. He’s got to be our man. I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “Maybe he’s home now.”

  I checked my watch. “Now?”

  “You tried him before the ballgame, back around dinner. What was that? Six hours ago? Maybe he’s home now. Call him now, we might catch him off guard.”

  Five minutes later I was dialing Albert Weidemeir’s telephone number. Benny was in the den by the extension, waiting for my signal that the call was going through.

  “Okay,” I shouted softly. I heard Benny lift his receiver. “You ready?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said.

  “You’ve got to do the talking if his wife answers. I don’t want her to think I’m some girlfriend.”

  “Don’t worry, Rachel.” There was the clicking noise on the line that signaled the phone was about to start ringing on the other end. “They don’t call me Cool Hand Luke for nothing.”

  “I’ve never heard anyone call you Cool Hand Luke.” It started to ring. “Okay,” I whispered.

  A woman answered on the fourth ring. Hello? She sounded flustered.

  “Howdy, Miz Weidemeir,” Benny said in a deep, friendly voice. “This here’s Jenner Block down at the Sewer District. We got ourselves a little problem up at the Backwash Station. One of them Kirkland Ellis screws went out on us, ma’am. I just wanted to ask your husband a couple questions about it, seeing it’s in his territory, so to speak. Be much obliged, ma’am.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Block. Let me put him on.” I could hear her in the background waking him up.

  “Jenner Block?” I whispered to Benny. “Backwash Station? Kirkland Ellis screws?”

  “Yes’m,” Benny said, still in the role. “You have one of your Kirkland Ellis screws lock up on you and might as well bend over and kiss your sorry ass good-bye.”

  There was a fumbling with the phone on the other end, and muffled voices.

  “Hello?” said a male voice.

  “Mr. Weidemeir,” I said, my voice level but insistent, “just listen to me and nod your head every once in a while so that your wife won’t get nervous. My name is Rachel Gold. I’m investigating Stoddard Anderson’s death. You had an important meeting with him that the police don’t know about. Yet. I’d like to keep it that way, Mr. Weidemeir. Now, why don’t you say something like—like, ‘Yep, you’ll need to clear the pipeline.’ It’ll make your wife think you’re talking to someone from the Sewer District. Go ahead.”

  He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah, you’ll, uh, need to clear, uh, clear the, uh, pipeline.”

  “Good,” I said. Sir Laurence Olivier he wasn’t. Nervous, though, he was, and that was just fine for my purposes.

  “Mr. Weidemeir,” I continued, “I’d especially like to make sure we can help you avoid legal problems with some of the activities that Mr. Anderson was involved in during the last weeks of his life. Some of those activities may have violated the law, Mr. Weidemeir. Now I don’t presently believe that you did anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t,” he blurted out before catching himself. “Uh, right,” he stammered, “uh, you’ll need to, uh, clear the pipeline.”

  “As I say, I don’t have any reason to think you did anything wrong, but the police might not see it that way. Neither might the FBI.”

  “The FBI?”

  “Exactly. Which is why you need to meet with me. Tomorrow. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does noon sound?”

  “Okay.”

  “Somewhere public. How about the Dinosaur Park behind the Science Center in Forest Park. By the triceratops. At noon?”

  “Okay.”

  “Very good. Now, why don’t you end this call like I’m from the Sewer District. For your wife.”

  There was a pause. He cleared his throat. “Okay. Uh, well, right, uh, just remember that, uh, you’ll need to, uh, clear out the, uh, pipeline. So long.”

  Click. Followed by Benny’s click.

  A moment later Benny walked into the kitchen.

  “Well?” I asked.

  He grinned. “I think our buddy Albert Weidemeir may be dunking his pajama bottoms in the toilet about now.”

  “I wanted to make sure he’d be nervous.”

  “I think you made sure of that. That boy just had himself a fiber optics enema compliments of Southwestern Bell.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I was leaning against the left front leg of the triceratops with my arms crossed over my chest. I stared up at the tyrannosaurus that towered overhead. Its open mouth revealed a menacing set of teeth—dozens and dozens of long white daggers. Kids had thrown five, six, seven tennis balls into its mouth. The yellow balls rested against the bottom row of teeth like a mouthful of lemon drops.

  I was in Dinosaur Park, a small hollow in the southeast part of Forest Park that was screened from view by a circle of trees. Dinosaur Park is just below and behind the Science Center, which is perched on a hill overlooking Highway 40. It has two permanent residents: a triceratops and a tyrannosaurus rex, both full scale. They face each other in classic battle pose—the gray triceratops with its horn tilted up toward the exposed brown belly of the tyrannosaurus, which is turning for the attack, its tiny forelegs clutched, its huge tail about to swing around, its head frozen in a silent roar.

  At the moment, Dinosaur Park had one visitor. Me. I was alone, wearing a cinnamon polo shirt, long pleated twill shorts, aviator sunglasses, and a stone-colored canvas islander hat. I didn’t have a .
357 Magnum in my purse, but I did have good running shoes on my feet and Benny Goldberg standing watch up at the Science Center.

  I didn’t hear him approach.

  “Are you Miss Gold?”

  I turned.

  He was pure-bred civil servant, right down to the small details: wire-rim glasses; a brown, pencil-width mustache; four Bic pens in the plastic pocket protector of his white, short-sleeve Dacron shirt. He was bald on top, with close-trimmed sidewalls, the hair a mixture of brown and gray, no sideburns. His stomach bulged below the high waistline of his brown Sansabeit slacks. He was wearing gray Hush Puppies.

  “Albert Weidemeir?”

  He glanced around, nervously scratching the back of his neck, and then he nodded.

  “Are you alone?” I asked.

  He glanced around again and nodded. “Are you?” He had a nasal voice.

  “No.”

  He started.

  “I have a colleague nearby,” I explained. “He’s here to make sure we aren’t being followed. We don’t want to be followed.”

  He nodded.

  “I represent Mrs. Anderson,” I said. “Did you know her?”

  He began with a shake of his head but ended with a nod. “I met her once. No, twice.”

  “The property belongs to Mrs. Anderson, Albert.”

  He shoved the fingertips of both hands into the waistband of his brown pants. “I don’t know where it is.”

  “I can help you, Albert. I don’t want you to get hurt. Your best bet is to tell me what you know.”

  I waited.

  He avoided eye contact, glancing down.

  “Don’t you see?” I continued. “You tell me all about it, and then it’s my problem, not yours. If the FBI knocks at your door, you just tell them to talk to me.”