Firm Ambitions

by Michael A. Kahn

  “So Tommy’s criminal lawyer is now representing Eileen?” I asked incredulously. “That’s outrageous. I want to see her immediately.”

  I pushed by him and walked up to the desk sergeant. Deb Fletcher strolled over as I demanded to see my client. I was infuriated by the presumptuousness of Fletcher and the Landau males.

  “There’s hardly anything sinister going on here, Rachel,” Fletcher said after the sergeant told me he would send someone to fetch Eileen. “The Landau family hires only the best.”

  “How humble of you.”

  “Now, now, Rachel,” he said with an avuncular chuckle, “I doubt whether even you would quibble with the qualifications of Charlie Kimball.”

  It made me pause a beat. “Charles Kimball is going to represent Eileen?”

  “If you and your client will allow me to, Miss Gold,” said a familiar gravelly voice from behind me. It was a voice I had last heard in a lecture hall at Harvard Law School.

  I turned to find Charles Kimball smiling at me. Next to him stood a flustered Eileen Landau.

  Kimball reached out to shake my hand. “Charles Kimball, Miss Gold. I am delighted to meet you at last.”

  I reached for his hand, trying to act like an adult, trying to mask my awe. Ever since I had heard him speak at a memorial service for Martin Luther King back when I was in sixth grade, Charles Kimball had been in the lawyers’ wing of my pantheon of heroes, right up there with Clarence Darrow, William Kunstler, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

  Now in his mid-sixties, he still had radiance and he still looked damned good. He had dark green eyes, that trademark dimple in the center of a strong chin, and the same unruly mane of hair. Back when I heard him speak at the Dr. King memorial service, the hair was black and hung down to his shoulders. He still wore it brushed straight back, but now it ended at his shirt collar, and now it was gray. The gold medallion was long gone, and—I noted by quickly glancing down—so were the cowboy boots, replaced by shiny cordovan Bass Weejuns.

  “Actually,” I said as I shook his hand, “we’ve met before.”

  “Good God,” he responded with mock dismay, “this must be the first sign of senility. While I may forget an occasional face or name, I take pride in my perfect recall of two things in life. One is the federal rules of evidence. The other is the face of every beautiful woman I have ever met.”

  I shook my head good-naturedly. “No wonder you do so well before women jurors.”

  He put his hand over his heart. “Do I detect a skeptic? Wait…” He studied my face for a moment, and then he smiled. “Harvard Law School, right?”

  “Right,” I said, still skeptical. After all, Deb Fletcher could have told him a little about me.

  He had his hand on his chin. “About ten years ago, I believe. You asked me a question after my lecture.”

  I was stunned. “That’s remarkable,” I said.

  His eyes twinkled. “I told you I don’t forget.”

  “Which reminds me,” I said, trying to get us back to the topic at hand, “I need to talk to Eileen.”

  Deb Fletcher, who had been observing our conversation, jumped in. “Charlie, I told Rachel that you’d be handling this matter for Mrs. Landau.”

  Kimball held up his hand to Deb. “Well, I think that’s a decision for Rachel and her client to make, Deb, not us.” He looked at me with a friendly smile. “There’s a small conference room down the hall on the right. Eileen and I were back there when you arrived.” He turned to Eileen. “Why don’t you and Rachel go on back and talk it over. I’ll wait out here.”

  Eileen and I walked back to the conference room. It was small and cramped, with three metal chairs and a metal table. “He’s a terrific lawyer,” I told her after I closed the door.

  She pulled a chair up to one side of the table and sat down. “Tommy thinks he walks on water.”

  I sat across from her. “How ’bout you?”

  She shrugged. “I like him. But I like you, too.”

  “Eileen, if you can get Charles Kimball to defend you, do it. He’s one of the finest criminal defense lawyers in the country. He can handle the criminal side, and I’ll take care of the divorce side.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Definitely. This isn’t a popularity contest. I’m not a criminal defense lawyer. Charles Kimball is. I can work with him. Now tell me what’s going on here.”

  “It’s horrible, Rachel,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “They know I was in that room with him.”

  “How’d they find out?”

  She shook her head in displeasure. “I’m so stupid. One of the hotel security guards remembered my car was in the parking lot.”

  “How did he remember it?”

  “He saw it there.”

  “There must be dozens of cars in mere.”

  “Not dozens of red Corvettes with my vanity plate?”

  “What’s your vanity plate say?”

  “‘EILEEN-L.’”

  I smiled. “Well, I guess that would tend to narrow it down.”

  “One of the girls at the front desk recognized me, too. A couple weeks ago my picture was in Jerry Berger’s column. She remembered.”

  “Have you talked to the police yet?”

  “No. I did exactly what you told me to do. And when Mr. Kimball arrived, he wouldn’t let me talk to them either. He met with the detective for a while, then he asked me some questions about the death, and then he went back to talk to the detective some more.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “So far. He said we should wait until you got here.”

  “Let me go talk to him. Wait here.” I looked at her and shook my head in puzzlement. “I can’t believe that they really think you’re a suspect.”

  She reached across and grabbed my arm. “Rachel, there’s some vile little man from the Post-Dispatch hanging around out there. Don’t let him find out why I’m here.”

  I gently patted her hand. “I’ll see what I can do.” She released her grip and I stood up.

  “And Rachel…”

  I turned at the door. “Yes?”

  She looked distressed. “They have more pictures.”

  “Of you?”

  She nodded, her lips quivering.

  ***

  As I walked through the lobby of the police station, I spotted Charles Kimball on the sidewalk outside. He was deep in conversation with Deb Fletcher, his arms crossed over his chest. Standing next to Fletcher was a heavyset man in tight gray slacks and a white crew-neck sweater. The sweater was snug enough around the chest to show the outline of a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket. He looked vaguely familiar.

  Kimball spotted me as I pushed open the glass door and stepped out into the glare of the midday sun. He waved me over. “Well?” he asked when I reached him.

  “We need to talk,” I said. “Alone.”

  “Of course.” Kimball turned to the other two. “Gentlemen.”

  The heavyset guy was staring at me. “This her lawyer?”

  “That’s her,” Deb Fletcher said.

  “I apologize,” Kimball said. “I didn’t realize you two hadn’t met. Tommy, this is Rachel Gold. Rachel, this is Tommy Landau.”

  Eileen was right. He’d really put on weight since I had last seen him. Indeed, he looked as if someone had inserted an air hose into his midriff and inflated him to about 30 percent over the recommended pressure. But there was nothing soft or cuddly about this Michelin Tire Man. Tommy Landau had a thick neck and meaty hands. He wore his straight brown hair combed at an angle across his forehead. He had dark, squinty eyes, a full walrus mustache, and a thick porcine nose. His eyebrows joined along the ridge at the bridge of his nose. If you dressed him in a white full-length apron, put a cleaver in his hand, and posed him stiffly behind a meat counter, Tommy Landau could
pass for a south St. Louis German butcher in one of those nineteenth-century daguerreotypes.

  “Hello, Tommy,” I said coolly.

  “Your client’s got a lot of nerve,” he said. His voice was flat and slightly hoarse.

  “Pardon?” I said with a touch of annoyance.

  He snorted as he shook his head. “She sues me for divorce, and all the while she’s fucking that scumbag camel jockey.”

  I turned to Fletcher. “Control your client, Deb.”

  Fletcher chuckled. “What can I say, Rachel? My client’s got feelings.”

  “Genital warts, too, according to his wife. Tell him to save his speeches for the witness stand.” I turned to Kimball, pointedly ignoring Tommy Landau. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

  He gave me a conspiratorial wink and turned to the other two. “Gentlemen, we’ll finish our discussion later.”

  Kimball moved through the police with the easy assurance of a man on familiar turf. He greeted clerks and officers by name as we passed them in the hallways, and each gave him a smile and a hello in return. He ushered me into an empty office. I sat behind the desk and he stood near the door as he filled me in on what he had learned about the status of the homicide investigation.

  “Cyanide?” I repeated when he finished.

  Kimball nodded. “I’ll have the police get you a copy of the autopsy report.”

  “How was he poisoned?”

  “Through his daily vitamins. Apparently, he carried around a big bottle of the damned things. A real potpourri of pills and capsules and tablets—megavitamins, calcium tablets, powdered seaweed, flower pollen, powdered egg protein, mineral supplements, amino acid capsules. He took several different ones each day.” He gave a bemused chuckle. “Supposed to keep him healthy, make him live longer. The police found the bottle in the hotel bathroom. It had fallen behind the toilet. According to the inventory, there were twenty-nine capsules in the bottle, along with various pills and tablets. The lab report showed that twenty-one of the twenty-nine capsules were filled with powdered sodium cyanide.”

  “How many did he swallow?”

  “Just one, but one was enough to kill five men.”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms. “Is Eileen really a suspect?”

  Kimball squinted and shook his head. “Not much of one. I spent twenty minutes with Detective Israel. He’s the homicide dick on the case. Frankly, I think the police are more peeved with Eileen than suspicious.”

  “Peeved?”

  “Based on the evidence, Andros clearly had a visitor in that hotel room. When the police figured out that Eileen was the one—indeed, that Eileen and Andros were having an affair—Poncho was furious that she hadn’t come forward on her own.”

  “Who’s Poncho?”

  “That’s Detective Israel. His first name is Bernard. But except when he’s on the witness stand, most folks call him Poncho. In any event, he’s cooled off. He’s been running down other leads.”

  “And Tommy’s a suspect, too?”

  “Again, not much of one. That’s my sense. Frankly,” he said with a wry shake of his head, “I am a little surprised. In a pill-tampering case, one would think Tommy would be more of a suspect than his wife, at least at the outset.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of Tommy’s prior experience—or, more precisely, his alleged prior experience—in the, shall we say, pharmacological area.”

  “But where’s his motive?”

  “The oldest in the book, Rachel: the jealous husband.”

  “Tommy knew?”

  Kimball raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Attorney-client privilege.”

  I nodded. “If you’re relying on that privilege, Charles, how can you represent Eileen when the police still suspect Tommy? You have a conflict of interest.”

  “I agree, Rachel. For that reason, I’ve given her no legal advice and have told her to confide nothing in me. I’ve merely shielded her until you arrived. Although I hope neither will be charged, I certainly cannot file an appearance on behalf of Eileen until, if, and when the police confirm that her husband is no longer a suspect.”

  “Fair enough. What made the police so sure she was having an affair with Andros?”

  “The autopsy report revealed that he had sex shortly before he died. In addition, the medical examiner recovered several pubic hairs from his body that were not his. Witnesses placed Eileen in the hotel, and probably in the room, at the time he died. For that reason, the police were already considering a warrant for a medical examination of Eileen. But that was before they searched his apartment last night.”

  “What did they find?”

  Kimball studied me. “Wait here, Rachel,” he said as he placed his hand on the doorknob. “Let me see if Poncho will let you see it.”

  Kimball returned a few minutes later with Detective Israel. I had assumed Detective Bernard Israel was Jewish, and perhaps he was. When I heard his nickname, I thought perhaps he was a Sephardic Jew, and perhaps he was. But he certainly didn’t look Jewish. Bernie “Poncho” Israel was black as coal and built like an offensive tackle. He seemed to fill up the doorway. He was holding what looked like a photo album.

  “Rachel, allow me to introduce Detective Israel.”

  “Hello, Detective,” I said as we shook hands. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Same here, Miss Gold.” He had a Fu Manchu mustache and sad eyes.

  “Call me Rachel.”

  He smiled. “And call me Poncho. Charlie said you’d like to see this.” He held out the photo album.

  I took it from him and set it on the table. “You found it in his apartment?”

  Poncho nodded. “We’ve already checked it for fingerprints. They all belong to Andros. As you will see, it’s clearly his album.”

  “It’s an album full of suspects,” Kimball said. “I should think it will keep Poncho and his posse busy for quite some time.”

  I looked down at the album cover. I knew what was inside, but was reluctant to open it with the two of them watching me. I looked up. They both got the hint.

  “I’m down the hall to the left,” Detective Israel said as he backed out of the room. “Just drop it off when you’re through.”

  I nodded.

  “If it’s okay with you,” Charles Kimball said to me, “I’ll go bring Eileen up to date while you look through the album. I think Poncho may let her go home after she answers a few questions. I’ll check back here before she talks to him.” He closed the door behind him.

  I opened the album.

  It was not the type that Mom, Dad, Junior, and Sis leafed through while seated before the fireplace in a Hallmark Christmas card scene. There were close to thirty pages of Polaroid photographs neatly mounted in the album. Eileen was the star of three pages near the front—ten color shots of her in total. The photos left absolutely no doubt about the nature of her relationship with Andros. She was naked in every shot but one, and in that one she was wearing black panties and a black pushup bra. In most of the shots she was alone and posed in classic homemade porno positions: on her hands and knees with her legs spread wide; looking over her shoulder; licking a nipple; squeezing her breasts; etc. In two pictures, she and Andros were together. The shots were off-center, as if he had placed the camera on a chair facing the scene, set the timer, and joined her for the pose. In one she was kneeling on the carpet in front of him and licking his semierect penis; in the other she was on top of him, her back arched as his hands squeezed her breasts. In both pictures Andros was staring dully into the camera, detached from the performance.

  I slowly flipped through the photo album. Page after page of women. Each posing for him the same ways Eileen had posed. I studied the faces. I recognized several women from the aerobics class. Here was one I had stood next to the night the aerobics class was canceled. I think someone had called her Jud
y. Or Julie. When the class was canceled, she had called home using a cellular phone she took out of her purse. I had heard her talk to one of her kids about piano lessons. Here she was in the album, leaning back in a chair, her legs wide apart and hooked over the chair arms, her fingers pulling herself even farther apart. I looked for Christine Maxwell but didn’t find any pictures of her.

  I grew more and more depressed as I slowly turned each page and saw yet another naked woman frozen in an explicit pose under the plastic covering. It reminded me of that musty room in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago—the room with display case after display case of dead butterflies skewered on pins. For the sake of these women, I just hoped Andros hadn’t shown his butterfly collection to anyone.

  I was so disheartened that I didn’t even recognize her pictures at first.

  “Oh, no,” I groaned when I realized who it was. “That bastard.”

  Chapter Six

  “Oh, no,” Ann groaned. “That bastard.”

  We were alone in my mother’s living room, just the two of us. I had tried to reach Ann when I got back to my office from the police station. I left a message on her machine that I needed to see her as soon as possible. Between her carpools and other commitments, Ann couldn’t come over until after her daughter’s dance class, which ended at 8:00 p.m.

  By the time Ann got to the house, however, I was even more disoriented. That was because she arrived twenty minutes after my mother left.

  With a state court judge.

  On a date.

  Her first since my father had died.

  My mother broke the news just a few minutes before her date arrived. I had been sitting alone in the den trying to decide how to break the news to Ann when my mother walked in, fastening one of her earrings.

  “Don’t sit in the dark, sweetie,” she said as she walked over to the lamp. She fastened the earring and turned on the light.