Firm Ambitions

by Michael A. Kahn

  My mother frowned in concentration. “You really think so?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Mom. The fat man at the art gallery said that the tapes were the key. These are the only tapes I’ve been able to find.”

  “Did you learn anything from that woman on the phone?”

  I shrugged in frustration. “I’m not sure. She took his dictation in shorthand. She said she never saw him use a dictaphone. If he had, she would have needed one of those transcribers, anyway.” I gestured toward the printout. “A hundred and twenty-five dollars might be enough for a portable recorder and some microcassettes, but it sure isn’t enough for a recorder and a transcriber.”

  My mother shook her head angrily. “Have the police arrest that fat man. Maybe they can make him talk.”

  “Not after he calls his lawyer. You saw the pictures I took. At best, they’re circumstantial evidence of a fencing operation. What do I have so far? Pictures of Pete Ricketts going into the storage space at Mound City and then coming back out with three things shrouded in sheets. Pictures of him carrying those things into Leo Beaumont’s gallery at two in the morning. At most, we can say that one of the three things looked like a painting, at least from the corner of it that was visible when Beaumont lifted the sheet. But what paintings? Which paintings? Whose paintings? Those pictures don’t even prove that the three things in sheets that Ricketts removed from the Firm Ambitions storage space are the same three things in sheets that he brought into the art gallery. Assuming that we could ever convince the police and the prosecuter to file charges in the first place, a good lawyer could get them dismissed.” I stood up and walked over to the window. I stared out at the backyard. “We don’t have anywhere near enough, yet.” I turned to face her. “That’s why I’m so obsessed about these tapes.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Good morning, Miss Gold.” He had a gravelly, high-pitched voice that sounded remarkably like Walter Brennan’s in The Real McCoys. “I’m calling on behalf of Christine Maxwell and Mrs. Maxwell’s company.”

  I was seated at my desk. “Who is this?”

  “This is Harry Raven, Miss Gold,” he wheezed.

  Harry Raven? I repeated to myself. The name was familiar. “What is it you want, Mr. Raven?”

  “Welllll,” he drawled, “that just happens to be the very question I was hoping to put to you, Miss Gold. I understand you showed up at my client’s offices the other day, sort of out of the blue. I understand you started demanding to see any files Mrs. Maxwell might have on that dead exercise fella, threatening to slap subpoenas on that poor widow if she didn’t get them files to you lickety-split. I guess that’s where I come in.” He chuckled and wheezed. “When they been threatened with legal action, most folks, God bless them, hire themselves a lawyer. Welllll, I told Christine maybe it was just a misunderstanding on her part. I told her maybe you were just having one of them bad days. Had a few myself over the years, Miss Gold. I told her I’d give you a call first, see if maybe we could sort of separate the wheat from the chaff. No need to start wrasslin’ in the mud if we can work it out, eh?”

  “That’s fine with me,” I said, trying to place his name.

  “Which brings me back to my question, Miss Gold: Why do you want them files?”

  “I think it’s pretty obvious, Harry,” I said with a trace of irritation. And suddenly the Harry Raven connection clicked: Nick the Greek. Charles Kimball had said that Nick Kazankis was represented by a Belleville lawyer named Harry Raven.

  “Welllll,” he said, “maybe what’s purty obvious to a Harvard lawyer is still a little fuzzy to a U of I lawyer.”

  What was a southern Illinois lawyer doing representing a suburban St. Louis woman? I realized Raven had stopped talking. “Pardon?” I said.

  “I said maybe you could help me understand what seemed so obvious to you. Why do you want them files?”

  “She sold his company a policy insuring his life.”

  “Okay,” he said patiently. “But that don’t tell me why you want them files.”

  “Now he’s dead,” I said warily, trying to gauge how much I should reveal to Nick Kazankis’s attorney.

  “Sure can’t dispute you there,” he said with a wheezy chuckle. “Deader than a doornail, from what I understand. Matter of fact, I’d say it’s a purty good thing he had life insurance. Seems to me his beneficiary ought to be purty happy. Seems to me that someone ought to be purty durn grateful to Mrs. Maxwell for selling him that policy. But that still don’t answer my question, Miss Gold. That still don’t tell me why you want them files.”

  I’d heard enough to know that this was a one-way street. Harry Raven would pump me for whatever he could get, and when I ran dry he’d give a wheeze and make a puzzled noise and say that he still didn’t understand why I wanted them files. I was in no mood to get jerked around.

  “Look,” I said to him, “I’m just trying to shorten my list of suspects. It’s like the song, Harry: I’m making my list, and I’m checking it twice, and I guarantee I’m going to find out who’s been naughty or nice.” I paused. “If Christine wants to be nice, fine. If not, she stays on the list. Talk it over with her, or with Nick, or with whoever it is you represent this time.”

  “Welllll, Miss Gold—”

  “Goodbye, Harry.”

  I hung up and stared at the phone, daring him to try to call back. Twenty seconds later, the phone started ringing. I grabbed it before my secretary could answer.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Uh, Miss Gold?” It wasn’t Harry Raven.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Bruce Billings up at Leuwenhaupt.”

  “Oh, excuse me,” I said, shifting mental gears. “I thought you were someone else.”

  I had called Leuwenhaupt’s Chicago office first thing that morning, and the operator had connected me with someone named Bruce Billings. I told him I was acting on behalf of a group of small law firms who were in the market for dictation equipment. Bruce told me he’d send down some literature by overnight mail and would love to schedule me for lunch next time he was in St. Louis. That was fine, I told him, but in the meantime I needed to try out some of his dictation products right away because the Sony rep was coming to town the following week. I explained that I was particularly interested in portable equipment, especially recorders that used the Model 5400 microcassettes. Bruce had promised to find someone near my office who was willing to let me try their equipment and call me back with their name and address.

  “Any luck?” I asked him.

  “You bet,” he said. “The Hendin Group. It’s a small advertising agency on Euclid.” He gave me the street address. It was just three blocks away from my office.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Ask for Sheila. They have a portable recorder, a transcriber, and some extra microcassettes. Believe me, you’re going to love it.”

  Before ending the conversation, I found out where his Chicago office was located. Unfortunately, it was out in Naperville, which was an hour’s drive from the Loop. Benny had left for Chicago that morning, but it would be tough for him to get out to the boonies during business hours. In his role as expert witness, he’d be spending each day in the Loop, either in the law firm’s offices getting prepared to testify or in a federal courtroom playing the role.

  Sheila was in when I called the Hendin Group. “No problem, honey. Come on over around one o’clock and you can try them out. We just love the dang things.”

  My mother arrived at my office around noon with a large takeout bag from the St. Louis Bread Company. Inside were smoked-turkey-on-sourdough sandwiches, potato salad, pickles, two Diet Cokes, two large cups of hot Kona coffee, and—of course—French pastries. For my mother and me, all that comes before French pastries is mere prelude.

  While we ate lunch, I brought her up to date, ending with Sheila’s invitation. “Yo
u want to come hear the tapes?” I said while we were eating the pastries and sipping the Kona coffee.

  She checked her watch. “I’ve got forty-five minutes,” she said. “Can we go now?”

  I stood up and dropped the empty coffee cup in the bag. “Come on.”

  ***

  I started with “Low-Impact Workout.” Nothing. I pressed the FAST FORWARD button for a few seconds and then pressed PLAY again. Nothing. FAST FORWARD again, then PLAY. Nothing.

  “Does it work?” my mother asked.

  I nodded my head and turned up the volume until we could hear the background hiss. We were in a conference room at the Hendin Group’s offices, just my mother and me.

  I pressed FAST FORWARD again, held it for the count of five, then PLAY. Still nothing. I kept doing that until we reached the end of Side A. I flipped it over and pressed PLAY. Nothing. Nothing all the way through to the end of Side B. A blank tape.

  I removed the microcassette and set it on the table next to the other two, labeled “Dance Routine” and “High-Impact Routine w/Jazz Steps.” I picked “High-Impact,” slotted it into the portable recorder, and pressed PLAY.

  “THIS IS NUMBER—”

  The noise was so loud I almost dropped the recorder. I pressed STOP, rewound it, lowered the volume, and pressed PLAY again:

  “This is number five uh click number five Asbury Way. click This house is in Frontenac. click.”

  I stopped it. “That’s him,” I said. The accent was unmistakable.

  “Andros?”

  “Definitely.”

  “What’s that clicking noise?”

  “When you’re dictating, every time you stop or pause the machine it makes that noise when you start up again.” I pushed PLAY again:

  “There’s a door sensor on the front door, with a Telsor combination panel to the right when you come in. click There’s one in the back. click There’s one on the side porch, too. All with a Telsor panel on the wall to the right of the door. click Ground-floor windows have, uh, click magnetic contacts, surface-mounted.” Off in the distance a woman’s voice called, “Andros.” Her voice was followed by a click.

  “What is he talking about?” my mother asked.

  I shrugged. “Sounds like he’s describing the home security system.”

  I pressed the PLAY button.

  “The master bedroom is up the stairs and down the hall to the right. click Aha. A motion detector. Infrared. Just outside the master bedroom. click.”

  There was background noise on the tape. The sound of water. A shower?

  “Jewelry in top drawer of the vanity. click Lots of diamonds. click.” There was the sound of a door opening. “Furs in the closet. click A study off the master bedroom. click A desk. A notebook computer on the desk. Toshiba T4400SXC. Looks new. click A printer on the side table. Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Series II. A little scratched.” Then the woman’s voice: “Andros, darling. click.”

  I looked at my mother and shook my head in amazement.

  “Brilliant.”

  She nodded. “He’s doing an inventory.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “He gets in their houses for his personal workout sessions and his hot little affairs and he brings along his portable recorder. While the lady of the house is distracted—perhaps taking a shower after a workout or after they make love—he pokes around the house and records what he sees, including the security system.”

  We listened to the rest of the tape. Andros found a stamp collection and a Nikon camera in the study, a Macintosh SE computer with printer in the children’s room, silver in the dining room. In the living room he described a Sony stereo system that sounded like it was worth more than my car. He also described several framed paintings in sufficient detail (including artist’s name) for someone like Leo Beaumont to determine whether they were worth stealing. Three or four times during the tape we heard that same woman’s voice. Once she asked him who he was talking to. We didn’t hear the answer.

  I looked with amazement at my mother when we reached the end of the tape. “Not bad.”

  She nodded. “Not bad at all.”

  The third tape—”Dance Routine”—was blank.

  ***

  “Jewelry in top drawer of the vanity click Lots of diamonds. click.” There was the sound of a door opening. “Furs in the closet. click A study off the master bedroom. click A desk. A notebook computer on the desk. Toshiba T4400SXC. Looks new. click A printer on the side table. Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Series II. A little scratched.” Then the woman’s voice: “Andros, darling, click.”

  I turned off the recorder.

  “That bastard.” Brenda Roberts stood up, hands on her hips. “That son of a bitch.” She stormed out of the room.

  I was seated at the breakfast table in the huge country kitchen of 5 Asbury Way. It was the home of Dr. and Mrs. Louis Roberts. According to the appointment calendar I had printed off the computer at Firm Ambitions, Andros had had a personal fitness session with Brenda Roberts at 5 Asbury Way at 10:00 a.m. two days before he died. It was his third session at her home that month.

  I had called Brenda from my office and arranged to meet with her at four-thirty that afternoon. The people at the Hendin Group had been nice enough to let me borrow the portable recorder for the rest of the afternoon. Brenda met me at the door dressed in heels and a fluorescent exercise outfit. She had frosted hair, a dark tan with sun freckles on her chest and upper arms, and an extra fifteen pounds bunched mostly in her stomach, hips, and thighs. When she opened the front door, I immediately recognized her from Andros’s X-rated photo album.

  For a moment I had hesitated, realizing that if I was right this woman would have to deal with the additional humiliation of knowing not only that he had used her sexually but that the sexual part was purely incidental to his principal objective. However, I reminded myself, my sister was facing far more than just the bitter knowledge that her lover had betrayed her.

  I looked up from my musings as Brenda Roberts returned to the kitchen with her eye makeup smeared. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Roberts,” I said gently. “I needed to confirm what was on the tape. I’m sorry about the pain.”

  She waved her hand dismissively as she wiped her nose with a tissue.

  “He was a despicable person,” I told her, trying to find words to help cushion her suffering. “He did the same thing to my sister and to many others. It’s how con men operate. He conned a lot of good, decent women.”

  She sat down across the table and looked at me, her eyes blinking back tears. “I went to his funeral. I cried at his funeral. Do you understand what that means? I cried at that bastard’s funeral. That fucking goddam piece of shit bastard!” She dropped her head and covered her face with her right hand. Her other hand was still on the table, the fist clenching and unclenching. “Please leave,” she said. “Now.”

  ***

  When I turned on the office lights, the first thing I saw was the in-box. It had increasingly come to dominate the landscape of my office. I’d been neglecting my practice ever since Ann’s arrest, and the pile of unanswered correspondence and court filings had become an ominous mound. I checked my watch. Six thirty-five. No one but Ozzie was waiting for me at home. My mother was having dinner at Aunt Becky’s, Tex Bernstein was in Kansas City for a three-day judicial conference, and Benny was in Chicago. My mother would have fed Ozzie before she left. I glanced again at my in-box. No excuses.

  ***

  The house was dark when I pulled up the driveway at nine-thirty. As I got out of the car a police cruiser slowly drove past. Turning to watch it go by, I recalled that Tex Bernstein had told me that morning that he had arranged for the police to send a squad car by our house at least twice an hour for the nights he was gone. The officer waved at me as he drove on.

  There was a folded note taped to the front door. Absent-mindedly, I removed it as I u
nlocked the door. Ozzie was there to greet me. I gave him a hug and rubbed his head and kissed his nose. He followed me into the kitchen. I clicked on the light and dropped my purse and briefcase onto the kitchen table. The red message light on the telephone answering machine was blinking. I pressed the play button on the answering machine and walked back to the breakfast room to check Ozzie’s food and water bowls.

  The first message was from my mother. “Rachel, I’m calling from Becky’s. I fed Ozzie before I left. If you’re hungry, there’s chicken salad in the fridge and fresh bread in the bread box. I’ll be home by nine, sweetie.”

  There was a beep, and then the second message began:

  “Howdy, Sarah. Maury here, calling from the conference. Jes’ checking in to see how things are going.” He left his hotel telephone number and said he’d be up until eleven.

  “Rachel, this is your Aunt Becky. It’s about a quarter after nine. Your mother had an accident on her way home after dinner. She’s a little banged up, but she’ll be fine, darling. We’re in the emergency room at Missouri Baptist.” She ended the message with the telephone number for the emergency room.

  As I grabbed the phone to call the emergency room, I realized I still had the note in my hand. I dialed the number and unfolded the note. It was a four-line poem, printed in red block letters:

  ROSES ARE RED,

  VIOLETS ARE BLUE,

  YOUR PUSSY WAS ONE,

  WHO’LL BE NUMBER TWO?

  It was close to midnight when the hospital released my mother. She had a hairline fracture in her left wrist, which the doctors set and immobilized in a cast that ended below her elbow. She also had a red knob on her forehead and the beginnings of two black eyes.

  As for the accident, all she knew for sure, and thus all she could tell the police, was that a large van had suddenly swerved in front of her on the highway. She had slammed on the brakes and turned hard to the right. The car skidded off the highway and slid down the embankment. Had it flipped over, my mother would have been in much worse shape.