Firm Ambitions

by Michael A. Kahn

  I browsed through the accounts payable data base. It included the past three years. There were all the usual payables: the electric company, Southwestern Bell, the landlord, the cleaning service, the water company, the copier machine service. Then there were the oddball vendors: magazine subscriptions, an after-hours telephone answering service, several athletic apparel suppliers, something called Mound City Mini-Storage. Mound City Mini-Storage? I called up the file onto the screen. Firm Ambitions had paid a quarterly fee to Mound City Mini-Storage for the entire three-year period covered by the computer files. The mailing address for Mound City Mini-Storage was in the North County area out near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. I printed off the page showing the payment history, account number, and address. I looked for a Maxwell Associates accounts payable file and didn’t find one. I printed off a list of the names of all accounts payable for the last two years and scanned through the rest of the files on the computer.

  Satisfied that there was nothing else that seemed worth investigating, I turned off the computer and swiveled my chair toward the filing cabinets. As in every case I had ever worked on, there were lots of documents to review. And as in every such case, the key evidence was buried somewhere in those documents.

  Two hours later I closed the last file drawer and stretched my sore back. I had several pages of notes and at least as many pages of photocopies from the file drawers. I carried the materials into Andros’s office and sat down on his couch to review them. As I leafed through the notes and photocopies, I made a list of items that might be worth a deeper look. My list included:

  1. Capital Investments of Missouri, Inc.;

  2. Landau, Mitchell & McCray;

  3. Mound City Mini-Storage; and

  4. Southwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Texas.

  I checked my watch. Three-twenty. Benny was supposed to meet me at my office at four-thirty. That gave me enough time to call around for an investigator before he got there, which was good, because Benny and I had a lot to talk about.

  Chapter Nine

  “Just as well,” Benny said as I hung up. “Guy sounds like a dork.”

  “How can you say that? You’ve never even met him.”

  “Nudger? Alo Nudger? What kind of guy has a name like that?” He turned to Ozzie and rubbed his head. “Am I right, boychik?”

  Ozzie whacked his tail against the side of my desk. He was clearly loving his time with Benny. It almost made me jealous.

  “Nudger has a good reputation,” I said.

  “Unlike most of my girlfriends.”

  “Look, if we were still in Chicago, I’d hire Vic. But we’re not in Chicago, and she’s not going to be effective down here. I talked to three criminal lawyers this morning, and Nudger was on each one’s short list.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said reluctantly. “How long is this noble paladin going to be out of town?”

  “The doughnut guy said two more weeks.”

  Benny gave me a dubious look. “Doughnut guy? What the fuck is a doughnut guy?”

  I grinned sheepishly. “I think his office is above a doughnut shop. The guy who runs the shop answers the phone when Nudger’s out. His name is Danny.”

  “Above a doughnut shop, eh? And this is the shmegegge you’re going to hire to save your sister?”

  I looked down at my list of names. “Damn,” I sighed as I crossed off Nudger’s name. “I’m meeting with Ann tomorrow morning. I wanted to at least have a name for her. Something to pick up her spirits some.”

  We were in my office—Benny, Ozzie, and me. Benny lived within walking distance of my office. Even back before this craziness with Andros, it was not unusual for him to drop by around dinnertime, often with Ozzie, to drag me off to eat at some new restaurant he’d discovered.

  “What do you need an investigator to do?” Benny asked.

  “Look at records.”

  “What kind?”

  “All kinds. The case against Ann is entirely circumstantial, right?”

  “Right,” he said with a nod.

  “If they can accuse her with that kind of evidence, maybe we can find someone else to accuse with other circumstantial evidence. I’ve got some of my own leads to run down, but I can’t do that and dig through the records. Mom wants to help, and that’s fine. I’ll give her copies of some of the stuff I printed off the computer at Firm Ambitions. She can try to match up names and dates, maybe even run down some items on microfilm at the library. But there are limits to what she can do, especially with legal records and court filings. That’s why I need an investigator, especially one who’s good with documents.”

  “Such as?”

  “Court records, for example. Did Andros have any legal problems? Did he ever get sued? Did he have financial problems? Was he ever married? Is there a vindictive former wife? Are there any angry ex-husbands out there who blame him for wrecking a marriage? I need someone who knows how to dig through court files for answers to those questions. And then there’s his company.”

  “That aerobics place?”

  I nodded. “Peculiar stuff. I found some of the corporate records in the files out there. According to what I saw, the sole shareholder of Firm Ambitions is something called Capital Investments of Missouri, Inc. What is it? Who owns it? Who are the officers? Who’s the registered agent? The Missouri secretary of state’s office ought to have some of that information.” I shrugged. “Things like that. I need someone good to poke around in court files, corporate files, real estate records—browse around, look for leads, run them down.”

  “Hey,” Benny said with a grin, “you remember Bottles & Cans boot camp?”

  I smiled. “Sure.”

  Benny and I had both worked on In re Bottles & Cans when we were associates at Abbott & Windsor in Chicago. It was—and remains—the largest civil lawsuit in American legal history. At last count, there are eighty-seven plaintiffs and 102 defendants. The plaintiffs’ documents are stored in three warehouses in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; the defendants’ documents are in two warehouses out near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. As junior associates assigned to the case, Benny and I had each spent the mandatory four months at one of those warehouses, seated in a cubicle reviewing documents, twelve hours a day, six days a week. It was known as the Bottles & Cans boot camp.

  “Shit,” Benny said with a wave of his hand. “If I can survive the boot camp, I can handle these records.”

  He was right, of course. Back when we were both young associates at Abbott & Windsor, many of the firm’s nonlitigators viewed Benny as an obnoxious Jew whose continued survival at their staid WASP firm seemed inexplicable unless one presumed that he possessed negatives featuring members of the firm’s management committee and several docile sheep. But that was most definitely not the view of the litigation partners on the Bottles & Cans team, who considered Benny one of their MVPs. Not only could Benny put together a brilliant research memorandum on a labyrinthine procedural issue in under twenty-four hours, he could then board a plane, fly to Cedar Rapids, and spend sixteen hours the next day seated in a warehouse cubicle reviewing, evaluating, and digesting thousands and thousands of documents. I personally witnessed him inspect documents for nine solid hours without anything other than two bathroom breaks. It earned him the nickname Iron Butt. In short, if anyone had the patience and fortitude to search for an evidentiary needle in a haystack of documents, it was Benny.

  “It could take days,” I warned.

  “So? I’ve got plenty of time. I’m a law school professor, for chrissakes. It’s not like I have a real job.”

  “I don’t know, Benny. I just can’t ask you to do all that.”

  “You don’t have to. I’m volunteering. You’d be doing me a favor. I desperately need an excuse.”

  “Excuse for what?”

  “Ray Hellman is out for at least another month.”

 
Raymond Hellman was a professor of law at Washington University. A week ago he’d had open-heart surgery.

  “So?”

  “Someone has to cover his courses. The dean’s looking for volunteers. He approached me yesterday.” Benny rolled his eyes. “You know what he wants me to teach?”

  “What?”

  “How about a Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood hint?” He gave me a saccharine smile and gently said, “Rachel, can you say ‘couch’?”

  I frowned. “Couch?” And then it clicked. “Oh, God, are you serious?”

  Benny nodded bleakly.

  Many years ago, a law school professor named George J. Couch wrote a twenty-six-volume treatise called Cyclopedia of Insurance Law. Long considered the Talmud of insurance law, it is known within the legal community as Couch on Insurance—a title almost as weird as Beard on Bread and one that makes you wish that sociologist Gustav Hamm had published a monograph on the New York town of Rye.

  Benny and I loathed insurance cases.

  “It’s even worse than you think,” Benny said. “He wants me to teach a third-year seminar on advanced insurance law. Can you imagine the dorks and weenies who’d spend the last semester of law school in a seminar on advanced insurance law?”

  I made a gagging noise. “What did you tell the dean?”

  “I told him that, all things considered, I’d rather give circus bears blow jobs.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, Benny, you didn’t.”

  “I sure as hell did. But I also told him I thought I might have some other significant time commitments. So far, all I have is my expert-witness gig, which, by the way, looks like it’s going forward.”

  “Really,” I said, pleased for him. Benny had been retained as an expert witness on certain antitrust issues by the plaintiffs in a major trial scheduled to begin in Chicago in a week or so.

  “Yep,” he said. “But that’s still seven to ten days off. I need other time commitments. So how about giving me one?”

  “Well,” I said, feigning reluctance, “there’s going to be some broken hearts over at the Barnum & Bailey bear cage.”

  “C’est le cirque,” he said with a shrug. “Where do I start, boss?”

  “With Andros, I guess. See what you can find in the criminal records.”

  He reached for a fresh legal pad. “Okay. And what was the name of the shareholder of Firm Ambitions?”

  I checked my notes. “Capital Investments of Missouri, Inc. Here’s some others for you. Landau, Mitchell & McCray. The Landau is Harris Landau, Tommy’s father. They represented Firm Ambitions in the negotiations over the lease.”

  “No kidding?”

  “There’s a whole file on the lease. I don’t think Tommy’s father is personally involved in the representation, though. At least I didn’t see any correspondence or phone message slips in the file with his name. But keep an eye out for the firm.”

  “I will.”

  “See what you can find out about Southwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Texas.” I waited until Benny finished writing down the name. “This one’s more of a hunch. Firm Ambitions had a $75,000 line of credit with the First State Bank of Hazelwood. I looked through the loan file. There are copies of financial statements in there for Firm Ambitions, along with its tax returns for the last couple years. As far as I can tell, Firm Ambitions is showing a life insurance policy as an asset on its books.”

  Benny looked up with a puzzled expression. “A life insurance policy?” I nodded. “It was definitely deducting the premiums as a business expense. I’ll bet it was a policy on Andros.”

  “Ah, one of those key-man policies?”

  “That’s my thought. And if it is, maybe you can find out who the beneficiary is. It would sure give us another person to talk to.”

  Benny looked at his notes. “The policy was issued by this Southwestern Mutual Life Insurance outfit?”

  “That’s my guess. The accounts payable files listed two insurance companies: Southwestern Mutual Life and Omaha Fire and Casualty Company. I assume the latter wrote the general liability policy for the business.”

  Benny nodded. “Any other leads?”

  I skimmed through my notes. I looked at Benny while I pondered the two 8x10 pictures I had seen in Andros’s office.

  “What?” Benny asked.

  “Well, when you’re poking around in the court files,” I said, “keep your eyes open for anything having to do with gambling or gambling debts.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

  I shrugged. “Just a wild guess. Let me show you something.” I found my photocopy of the 8x10 glossy. “Take a look at this.”

  He took it from me. “Mike Tyson, eh?” he said with surprise. He leaned closer to study the picture. “Hey, isn’t that the guy from the funeral?”

  “It is. Andros had two framed pictures in his office. This is a copy of one. The other has Donald Trump in it. Both pictures were taken in casinos. See?” I pointed to the MGM Grand insignia. “Las Vegas. The one with Trump was taken in the Trump Palace. I don’t know much about casino life, but what kind of guy gets Donald Trump to pose with him in Trump’s casino?”

  Benny leaned back and crossed his arms. “You think Andros was a high roller?”

  I shrugged. “It sure seems possible.”

  “Interesting.” Benny scratched his neck. “Very interesting. You start running up big gambling debts and all of a sudden you’re going to start running into a whole different breed of debt collectors.”

  I nodded. “That was my thought, too. It’s another lead.”

  “I’ll start in on the court records first thing tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.”

  He waved his hand in dismissal. “No problem.”

  “I mean it, Benny. Thanks.”

  “Hey, thank you and thank Ann. You two have rescued me from a semester of insurance law.”

  “Our pleasure,” I said as I stood up. On the way out of my office I kissed him on the cheek. “I’m buying tonight.”

  He grunted his acquiescence.

  I knew, and he knew I knew, that his volunteering to be an investigator had very little to do with wanting to avoid teaching an insurance law seminar and very much to do with wanting to help my sister out, but—like most guys—he’d just get uncomfortable if I made a mushy scene over it.

  “Guys don’t emote,” he had once explained when I tried to get him to share his feelings about a girlfriend who had just dumped him.

  “Then what do guys do?” I had asked.

  “When something like this happens, we go to a Bulls game and shout a lot and get shit-faced.” As luck would have it, the Bulls had been in town that night, so Benny and I went to the Bulls game and we shouted a lot and we got shit-faced. Benny threw up in the parking lot and I drove him home and fell asleep in his easy chair and woke up the next morning with an awful hangover and felt ineffably sad, and Benny woke up with a mild hangover and felt great, and that’s when I concluded that men and women are actually members of two separate species.

  The phone started ringing as I was closing the office door. I paused, my hand on the doorknob, as the answering machine clicked on after the third ring and the tape recording of my secretary’s voice told the caller to leave a message after the beep.

  Beep.

  “Hello, Rachel,” a familiar, hearty voice said. “Deb Fletcher here.”

  I looked over my shoulder at Benny and rolled my eyes.

  “It’s, uh, quarter to seven,” Fletcher continued. “I’ve been meaning to call you ever since we ran into one another down at the police station. I thought it might be worthwhile to toss around some ways to resolve this divorce thing without any, well, without any adverse publicity. Of course, back then I thought Eileen was the only gal we’d be concerned about whose pictures were in that A-rab’s photo albu
m. Well, I just heard about your sister. Understand she’d got her pictures in there too.”

  “How did he find that out?” I said in outrage.

  “Hell,” Fletcher continued, “I sure hope you’re not in that album, too. Wouldn’t that be something?” He chuckled. “Anyway, in light of your client’s, shall we say, compromising positions, I think we’ve got ourselves a bit more of a level playing field here. As you know, a court can consider the conduct of the parties during the marriage when deciding how to divide up the marital property, if you get my drift. Anyway, I think this might be a real good time to get the property settlement wrapped up, before Tommy and I have to amend our answer and start airing your gal’s dirty linen. You file something like that, it becomes a public document. One of those nosy reporters gets ahold of it, and shit, it’s in the damn papers. So run this by your client. See if she’s in a mood to settle this thing. By the way, Tommy tells me Eileen has a big charitable do in a couple of weeks. I understand she’s been working on it the whole year. I’d just hate for the damn media to ruin that special day for her. I’ll be in New York tomorrow, but I’ll be back in the office on Monday. Let’s talk.”

  There was a click and then a dial tone and then silence.

  “That bastard,” I muttered.

  Benny walked over to the answering machine, pushed the eject button, and removed the tape cassette. “Where does she keep the fresh ones?” he asked, holding the cassette.

  “In the top desk drawer.”

  Benny found one and put it into the machine.

  “He is truly a despicable human being,” I said.

  “And a moron, too. Here,” he said as he tossed the cassette to me.

  I caught it and gave him a puzzled look.

  Benny shook his head in anger. “If you’re going to blackmail someone, you don’t do it into a fucking tape recorder. That dumb fuck doesn’t realize he just stepped on his own dick. Level playing field? Shit,” he said with another shake of his head. “Hang on to that cassette. If that miserable sack of shit starts giving you any trouble, you just play that tape for him. And then you know what you do?”