Firm Ambitions

by Michael A. Kahn

I got as far as and-to-the-republic before Mad Dog held up his hand. “I’m reading you loud and clear.” He frowned and held up the court papers. “What the hell is this goddam thing?”

  “It’s a petition to perpetuate testimony.”

  “I can see that, young lady. But what the hell is it?”

  I got as far as the connection to the Cayman Islands when he cut me off. “This is an outrage!”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I said uncertainly.

  “What are those dickless wonders at the FBI doing about it?”

  “I don’t believe they’re involved, yet, Your Honor.”

  “Well, goddammit, get on down there and tell those idiots to drop their cocks, grab their socks, and start pounding the pavement. Jesus Christ, they’re just sitting around and letting a pretty little girl like you do all their dirty work. Well, I say shit on that.” He gave me a big wink. “I’ll tell you one thing, darling: this goddam petition is denied.” Using the yellow marker pen, he scrawled the word DENIED across the first page and signed his name. “There,” he said proudly, sliding it across the table toward me.

  Obviously, I should have read my horoscope before venturing out of the house this morning. Leo, avoid encounters with older men in positions of authority. I was 0 for 2 so far today.

  “Are you married, young lady?” he snapped as I turned to leave.

  “No.”

  He pointed the yellow marker at me. “You’re not a dyke, are you?”

  Incredible. “No, Judge.” I remained stationary, fearing that any sudden movement could set off one of his legendary gay-bashing tirades.

  “Before long,” he snorted, “our goddam armed forces will go the way of the Romanians.” His eyes flashed behind the thick lenses. He jabbed me highlighter pen at me for emphasis. “You know about the Romanians, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure I do,” I said, aiming for a soothing tone.

  The tendons in his neck were taut, quivering, as if straining to keep his head from popping off. “The second lieutenants in the Romanian army had to wear lipstick and rouge. They were forced by their commanding officers to…to commit infamous crimes against nature!”

  I said nothing.

  He stood up, his eyes darting around the room. I waited, motionless. Eventually, he sat down. He looked puzzled. I tried a docile smile. He stared at me, confused, his eyes blinking rapidly.

  “Are you married, young lady?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I gently replied.

  He nodded. “Good, good.”

  His eyes seemed to lose focus. He looked down and spotted his comic book on the edge of his desk. He grabbed his yellow marker and pulled the comic book close to him. I waited a few moments and then, slowly, deliberately, backed out of the room.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Benny snorted in disbelief. “The fucking Romanian army?”

  “Just the second lieutenants,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you,” Benny said, shaking his head, “we had some spooky goddam federal judges back in Chicago, but Mad Dog is right up there with the worst.” He popped the tab on his can of beer. “Someone ought to do the right thing.”

  “Which is what?” I asked with a grin.

  “Haul that goofy motherfucker off to the dog pound and have him put down.”

  I heard the sound of my mother’s car pulling into the driveway. “My mom’s home.”

  “Good. Now where’s the pizza?”

  I checked my watch. “They have seven more minutes.”

  The pizza delivery guy arrived with two minutes to spare. The tangy smell of fresh hot pizza filled the kitchen. Is there any combination of scents more mouth-watering than tomato sauce, oregano, basil, garlic, and pepperoni? Benny had brought the beer, my mother had the pantry stocked with diet soda, and I had swung by the supermarket on my way home to pick up some dog treats for Ozzie and two pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—Heath Bar Crunch for Benny and Cherry Garcia for me. None for my mother, who had an entire pantry of Nutrisystem “desserts.” During dinner I filled her in on the events of the day.

  “So what can you do?” my mother asked when I finished.

  “The Cayman Islands angle is worth pursuing,” I said. “I’ll check my Rolodex tomorrow morning. This guy I used to date in law school became an investment banker at Bear Stearns. Last time we talked he was in one of their international divisions. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “Good,” my mother said.

  “There’s also another guy,” I said. “I ran into him back at my ten-year reunion. He was in my section first year. He’s a partner in the Paris office of one of the Wall Street firms. He might have a contact down in the Cayman Islands.”

  Benny turned to my mother. “Nu, Sarah. What have you and the judge found?”

  My mother wiped her lips with a paper napkin. “Plenty,” she said. “Starting with George McGee.”

  “Which one’s he?” Benny asked.

  “The head of the burglar alarm company?” I said.

  She nodded. “Arch Alarm Systems.”

  “What did you find out?” Benny asked.

  My mother raised her eyebrows and slowly shook her head. “That this was a man who definitely understood home security systems.” She looked around the table with a knowing smile. “Guess what Mr. McGee was before he was president of that company?”

  Benny laughed. “I love it. A burglar?”

  She nodded. “Three arrests, one conviction, each time for breaking and entering.”

  Benny looked at me with a delighted grin. “What a great country, eh?”

  “Homes?” I asked my mother.

  “Homes,” she confirmed.

  “But all before he started the alarm company, right?” I asked.

  “Right,” my mother said. “He was out of jail two years when he opened the company.”

  “And no arrests after that?” Benny asked.

  “Not a thing,” my mother said.

  “How ’bout the other dude?” Benny asked. “The one who killed himself?”

  “Laurence Coulter,” my mother said. “Another mensch. You know why he committed suicide? Because he was a real pervert.”

  “Now hold on, Sarah,” Benny said with a grin. “Given present company, you shouldn’t be throwing around phrases like ‘real pervert’ loosely.”

  “I’m not, believe me,” my mother said firmly. “The man was a big fan of child pornography. He got arrested twice. Maury found the records. The first time for taking naked photographs of two little boys. Disgusting.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  My mother shook her head in displeasure. “Suspended sentence.”

  “And the second time?”

  “Maury read the indictment and the court file. The government said that Coulter ordered a bunch of kiddie porn through the mail and they arrested him when the stuff arrived.”

  “What happened?” Benny asked.

  My mother crossed her arms and frowned. “The judge threw the case out on a technicality. Maury said the judge ruled that there was an unlawful trap or something.”

  Benny went over to the refrigerator and got himself another beer. “So,” he said to my mother when he returned to the kitchen table, “what’s the punch line?”

  “What punch line?” my mother said.

  “You said Coulter killed himself because he was a pervert. How do you know that?”

  “Ah, right. Maury got the police file on the suicide. There was a copy of his suicide note. In the note he said that he hated himself, that he couldn’t control himself anymore. He said that as long as he lived he’d be a danger to children, so he decided to kill himself.”

  “When was his second arrest?” I asked.

  She checked her notes and gave me the month and the year.

  I compared i
t to the other dates we knew. “So,” I mused as I idly drew a circle around the date on my notepad, “he was arrested about a year before he opened his own interior design company.”

  “Weird, huh?” Benny said. “Seems like a brush with the law is just what these two guys needed to get their entrepreneurial juices flowing.”

  After dessert, Benny cleared the table and I loaded the dishwasher while my mother went down to the basement to do the laundry. Ozzie was on the floor in the middle of the kitchen, his head resting on his paws. He watched Benny as he moved back and forth between the table and the sink. It was wonderful to have Ozzie back home.

  “What are you thinking about?” Benny asked as he handed me two plates to load into the dishwasher.

  I rinsed the plates under the faucet. “I’m thinking about coincidences,” I said.

  “What about them?”

  “About the difference between coincidence and design.”

  “What kind of coincidences are you talking about?”

  I slotted the plates in the dishwasher rack. “Common threads among the three companies owned by Capital Investments of Missouri,” I said.

  “Such as?”

  I looked at Benny. “Such as the heads of all three companies are dead.”

  He squinted in thought. “True,” he said, “but three very different deaths.”

  “None of natural causes.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What else?”

  I put the silverware into the dishwasher and straightened up. “All three men had criminal records—or at least all three had been arrested.”

  Benny handed me the ice cream bowls and spoons. “Which tells you what?” he said.

  “If it’s a coincidence, nothing. If it isn’t a coincidence, well, I’m not sure.”

  Benny took another beer out of the refrigerator. “It may not even be enough to qualify as a coincidence,” he said as he opened the beer. “After all, only one of those guys actually had a criminal record.”

  “True,” I conceded as I closed the dishwasher. I rinsed off my hands under the faucet and dried them on a dish towel. I filled the tea kettle with water. “But,” I told him, “there’s the one that really bothers me: what’s the one common thread for all three businesses?”

  He frowned. “I’m drawing a blank.”

  “Start with the fact that the customers for all three businesses are affluent.”

  Benny mulled that one over. “Okay. And?”

  I joined him at the kitchen table. “For all three businesses, an essential part of the operation requires that the main guy spend time inside the client’s home. A burglar alarm company, an interior decorator, and a physical fitness guru who makes house calls. Maybe it really is just a coincidence.”

  “But maybe not,” Benny said, getting more animated. “Take the burglar alarm company. Shit, what a great front for a burglar like McGee. You install the burglar alarm and case the joint at the same time. If the house is worth hitting, you already know everything you need to know about the security system.” He stopped with a frown. “But what about the other two?”

  “Think about it,” I said. “Andros was a foreigner who almost got deported on drug and sodomy charges.”

  “But he wasn’t a burglar. Neither was the other guy.”

  “But both had a weakness, right? Maybe someone could have used their weakness to get leverage over them. Or maybe they were recruited. Maybe they were just corrupt and got recruited by a real burglar.”

  Benny leaned back and took a big gulp of beer. He gave me a dubious look. “You really think Andros was breaking into people’s homes?”

  I shrugged. “I doubt it. But maybe he was connected to those break-ins.”

  “Well, it’s too late to find out now,” Benny said. “Even if you’re right about him, he sure ain’t going to be casing any other homes.”

  I smiled. “Not necessarily.”

  Benny paused in mid-sip and lowered his beer with a frown. “What do you mean, ‘not necessarily’?”

  “It didn’t all click until tonight,” I explained. “Yesterday Ann told me that her friend Holly Embry had her home burglarized the night before. I knew I’d seen her name somewhere else. I checked my printout of the Firm Ambitions appointment calendar. Guess who happened to be a personal fitness client of Andros?”

  Benny raised his eyebrows. “No shit?”

  I nodded. “Mondays and Thursdays, nine a.m., at her house.”

  “But I don’t get it,” Benny said with a frown. “You said her house was burglarized two nights ago.”

  “Don’t you see?” I said. “Andros didn’t have to be alive at the time of the break-in. If he was only the scouting party, if he didn’t personally do the breaking and entering, then Holly Embry’s burglary could have been set up before he died.”

  “Maybe,” Benny said with a defeated shrug. “But how in the hell are you ever going to be able to prove that?”

  The tea kettle started whistling. I turned off the gas and looked back at Benny. “How?” I repeated. “By doing a stakeout.”

  “A what?”

  I smiled sheepishly. “Just like in the movies.”

  “Wait a minute, Sam Spade. Just what the fuck are you going to stake out?”

  “Mound City Mini-Storage.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “C’mon, Benny. This isn’t nuclear physics. A burglar needs a fence, right? If you steal a bunch of different items, maybe you need a bunch of different fences—one for the art, one for the silver, one for the computers. If it takes a couple days to arrange to unload all the loot, you have to stash the goods somewhere, right?” I took out three mugs. “That’s where Mound City comes in,” I continued. “It sure seems the most likely candidate. Remember, we know someone was out there after my first visit, since they removed everything that was in there. But that was also before Holly Embry’s burglary. If that storage space is where they stashed the goods they stole from Holly’s house, some of them might still be there.”

  “Maybe,” Benny said with a shake of his head, “but that Pakistani douche bag’s never going to let you back in there.”

  “I know that. The police won’t help, either.” I smiled and shrugged. “Thus, a stakeout.”

  My mother closed the basement door as she stepped into the kitchen. “What’s this about a stakeout?”

  We sat down at the kitchen table for hot tea. Ozzie came over the put his head on my lap. I scratched his head and behind his ears as I explained my idea to my mother. When I finished I said, “All I need is some high-speed film. Dad’s camera equipment is still in the basement. He taught me how to use his telephoto lens.”

  My mother gave me her stern mother look. “And what are you supposed to do, Miss Rambo, if someone really shows up?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Snap his picture. Watch what he does. Try to follow him when he leaves.”

  My mother blew across the top of her mug to cool the tea. She shook her head at me. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Mom, as long as I just watch, I don’t need to know what I’m doing. I can get some film and start tonight. I might get lucky.”

  “We,” my mother corrected me. “We.”

  “Don’t be silly, Mom.”

  “Shah,” she said with an impatient wave of her hand. “This isn’t a Hollywood movie, young lady. We’ll do this together.”

  I turned to Benny with an embarrassed smile. “Going on a stakeout with your mother,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

  “Hold on, Sarah,” Benny said and looked at me. “You have that list of times that people entered the storage space. What are the key hours?”

  “Late at night,” I said. “From around ten at night until three or four in the morning.”

  “Look,” he said to my mother. “I’m a night owl any
way. As long as I’m up, I might as well keep your goofy daughter company out there.”

  “You?” I said to him.

  “Hey, if you’re dead set on doing a revival of The Amateur Hour, you’re going to need a Ted Mack.” He checked his watch. “Where’s the camera?”

  “In the basement,” I said.

  He followed me down the stairs and through the passageway to the back storeroom.

  “I’ll take the malpractice claim,” Benny said.

  “Against who?” I asked, only half listening as I poked around the shelves, looking for the telephoto lens.

  “Against the architect who designed this basement,” he said.

  I looked at him. “What?”

  “It’s a maze down here.”

  “Oh.” I took down another box and looked inside. It wasn’t the one with the telephoto lens. “It’s an old house,” I said as I put the box back and took down another. “There were three additions. They dug a new foundation each time.” I turned to him. “I don’t like the idea of my mother staying alone here tonight.”

  “Didn’t the police promise to send a car by the house every half hour?”

  “Still,” I said doubtfully, “it was really creepy here last night.”

  “You’ve got new deadbolt locks. And you’ve got Ozzie.”

  “I just don’t know. Ah, here it is.” I removed the telephoto lens from an old shoebox. “Come on.”

  As we started up the basement stairs I heard my mother laughing, and then I heard a familiar male voice.

  “Look who’s here,” my mother said when we stepped into the kitchen.

  It was Judge Maury “Tex” Bernstein. “Well, hello there, little lady,” he said to me. His drawl was just (jes’) a little thicker tonight, and he had dressed the part: a Western-style shirt, string tie, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. “Ah,” he said as Benny walked into the kitchen, “this feller must be Ben Goldberg.” He stuck out his hand toward Benny. “Put it there, pardner.”

  Benny grinned as they shook hands. “Just call me Slim, Judge.”

  Tex roared with laughter.

  My mother was beaming. “Maury came over to stay with us tonight.”

  Tex put up his hands assuringly. “Strictly on the up and up,” he said and winked at Benny. “I’ll sleep downstairs. Brought my own bedroll,” he said, gesturing toward the breakfast room, “and some firepower.”