Firm Ambitions

by Michael A. Kahn

  A pair of schoolteachers—both middle-aged women— ushered twenty or so elementary school children into the Bird Cage through the east entrance. The children dashed ahead, laughing and shouting, running down the walkway, pointing at the birds.

  A rhythmic grunting noise caught my attention. Below me in a shallow pond were nine flamingos, standing in a row. Their heads were bobbing slowly in time, nine pairs of beady eyes fixed on me. A hot-pink chorus line. As I watched, the bobbing motions began to accelerate and the grunts grew louder, everything still synchronized. Faster and louder, faster and louder. It peaked in a surreal flamingo climax, and then the tight pattern broke apart as the bobbing slowed and stopped. One by one, the flamingos dunked their heads in the pond water.

  “Symbols of the modern world,” a familiar voice said at my side.

  I turned. Charles Kimball gestured at the flamingos. “They feed upside down.”

  I looked back at the flamingos. They were standing in shallow water. One swung its head down to water level. Sure enough, its head dipped into the water upside down, the beak pointing toward its feet, its eyes underwater. The anatomical upper beak was underwater, moving up and down against the anatomical lower, which was stationary. The flamingo standing to the right of the feeding one had its head in the air, peering around. I stared at it. The upper jaw—small and narrow—looked like the lower bill of a typical bird. The lower bill was massive and deep and stationary, more like the typical upper jaw.

  “Perfectly adapted through evolution,” Kimball continued, “and unique among vertebrates. A topsy-turvy animal dressed in Day-Glo colors. Very striking. Very L.A., wouldn’t you say?”

  “Now that you mention it.”

  “And speaking of unique, Rachel, this is an unusual meeting place. I assume you have invited me here to discuss more than flamingos.”

  “I have,” I said as I unzipped my briefcase. “But first I want you to listen to something.” I removed a Leuwenhaupt microcassette player with lightweight headphones. I handed him the headphones. “The tape is a copy,” I explained. “The original is in a safe deposit box.”

  I waited until he had put on the headphones, then pressed the PLAY button.

  “Listen carefully,” I said.

  The sound of Andros’s voice coming through the headphones was faintly audible to me: “This is number five uh click number five Asbury Way. click This house is in Frontenac. click There’s a door sensor on the front door, with a Telsor combination panel to the right when you come in. click.”

  I was studying Kimball’s face. When the tape first started, with Andros describing the front entrance to 5 Asbury Way, Kimball had glanced at me. As the tape droned on, he frowned in concentration and pursed his lips. I turned it off about halfway through.

  “Curious,” he said as he removed the headphones and handed it to me. “Where did you find it?”

  “With some of his other stuff. It’s all in the safe deposit box.”

  “I fear I may be missing the point of all this.”

  I gave him a skeptical smile. “I very much doubt that, Charles.”

  “What’s this about a safe deposit box?”

  “I call it my key-woman life insurance policy.”

  “I am still not following you, Rachel.”

  “The safe deposit box is located inside a major St. Louis financial institution. A trust officer there has a signed and notarized letter from me, witnessed by two other trust officers.” I spoke slowly and deliberately. It was important that he understand exactly what I had done. “That letter instructs the trust officer to immediately notify the FBI and give them the contents of that safe deposit box if for any reason whatsoever I should die.” I paused. “Any reason, Charles, any cause of death, no matter how innocent.”

  He nodded gravely. “That must be quite a safe deposit box.”

  “It is.”

  “What else is in there besides the audiotape?”

  “For starters, the negatives of these prints.” I removed the photographs I had taken during our stakeout of Mound City Mini-Storage. “Along with the rap sheet for this upstanding member of the community.” I pointed to the picture of Pete Ricketts removing a shrouded painting from the back of his van at the Beaumont Art Gallery. “According to court records, you have had the pleasure of representing Mr. Ricketts on two criminal matters, both involving burglaries.”

  He nodded his head thoughtfully. “And you have more?”

  “Much more.”

  I laid out the whole scheme. The correlation between personal fitness sessions Andros conducted in certain homes and subsequent burglaries of those homes. The use of Mound City Mini-Storage as a place to store the stolen goods until they could be fenced. The correlation between the dates of certain burglaries and the use of the Firm Ambitions computerized cardkeys at Mound City.

  “The conclusion is obvious,” I said. “Firm Ambitions was a front for a fully integrated burglary operation. It ran like an assembly line. Andros was the advance scout at the front end, and guys like Leo Beaumont moved the stolen goods at the back end. I assume everyone got their cut along the way.”

  “Fascinating,” Kimball said in a totally noncommittal way. I had assumed at the outset that I would be dealing cards to a grandmaster, so I wasn’t surprised by his perfect poker face.

  “That kind of operation needs a ringleader,” I continued. “It obviously wasn’t Andros.”

  “Why is that obvious?”

  “First of all, the burglaries and the rest of the activities continued after he was dead. I took those pictures last week. Second, Andros was strictly small-time before Firm Ambitions. He didn’t have a history of that kind of crime. He didn’t even have much history in this country. But what he did have was an arrest for criminal conduct that, had he been convicted, would have resulted in deportation to Saudi Arabia. How do they punish homosexuals over there? What’s the sentence for cocaine users in Saudi Arabia? He must have been desperate after the arrest. When you got those charges dropped, you literally saved his life, at least in the short term. But it also gave you enormous leverage over him.”

  He chuckled. “Rachel, this is beginning to sound like a made-for-TV movie plot. Are you suggesting that I somehow forced that young man into a life of crime?”

  “No. All I am suggesting is that Andros was someone who could have been forced to take part in the scheme but that he wasn’t the ringleader.”

  He gave me a good-naturedly skeptical look. “And you seriously think I was?”

  “I want to be clear on this point, Charles. I am not accusing you of anything. I think of you more as the Hollywood agent of this operation—the guy who could put the right people in touch with each other, keep things rolling.”

  He gave me an avuncular smile. “All because I’ve represented a few of these chaps in the past?”

  “No. All because of that tape you just heard.”

  The smile remained, but it was just a little tighter. “I am afraid that you have lost me again.”

  “Andros didn’t break into those homes. Those were professional jobs. All he did was scout each target home. You heard the tape. That was his role. Identify the security system, find the valuables, describe their location. He made those tapes for the pros. The pros came in for the actual burglaries.”

  “An interesting hypothesis.”

  “An overwhelmingly likely hypothesis. Otherwise, Charles, why make the tapes? Not for himself. He made them for others.”

  “Continue.”

  “But the others had to be able to listen to the tapes, or at least read a transcript of them, right?”

  “Go on.”

  “The tape you listened to was recorded on a unique microcassette size. You have to have a special recorder or transcriber to listen to it. That’s the key, Charles. There aren’t many of those machines in St. Louis. I’ve seen the man
ufacturer’s records. I even have a photocopy of a key page of those records in the safe deposit box. You own several of those machines, Charles—recorders and transcribers.”

  “Along with dozens of others in St. Louis, no doubt.”

  “True. A few of them might even make it onto an initial list of suspects. But you and I both know that all of them will be scratched once the police start investigating. Your name jumps out from the list, Charles. You are the obvious one. You are the only one.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Rachel, this is marvelously entertaining—”

  “And true,” I interrupted.

  He chuckled as he turned toward the flamingos. “Let’s leave cosmic questions like truth to the philosophers.” He inhaled and slowly exhaled as he studied the pink birds below. “I assume you’ve called me here to talk about your sister’s predicament. How does this intricate scheme you claim to have divined bear on the death of Andros?”

  “Life insurance.”

  He turned to me with what passed for a look of confusion. “I beg pardon.”

  “Key-man life insurance. There was a million-dollar policy on his head. Use him in this scheme for three or four years, then kill him off, and collect the money.”

  He widened his eyes and smiled. “You are not suggesting that I am the beneficiary of his life insurance policy?”

  I pressed on. “The nominal beneficiary is a company down in the Cayman Islands. Someone owns that company—or maybe several someones. Maybe you’re one of them.” I shrugged indifferently. “Or one of your nominees. Charles, I’m not here to make you prove your innocence. However, I know—and you know—that this key-man insurance scam isn’t the first one, or even the second. Andros is victim number four.”

  He frowned. “Now I am totally lost.”

  “Charles,” I said with a patient smile, “I don’t believe you’ve ever been lost.”

  “Indulge an older man, Rachel. Tell me about the other three.”

  And so I did. I told him about the two predecessor companies owned by Capital Investments and how their presidents had died. I explained that I had already confirmed a key-man life insurance policy on one and I assumed that the police would be able to find a policy on the other man as well.

  Kimball looked fascinated. “And the fourth?”

  “Another one of your clients, Charles. Arthur Brandt. Remember? I assume that’s where you got the original idea. If a clumsy, greedy fool like Brandt could get away with it, how much easier for someone clever enough to establish a corporate veil between himself and the insurance money.”

  He smiled appreciatively. “You have a vivid imagination, Rachel.”

  “I also have copies of everything I’ve just described. They’re in that safe deposit box, along with a videotape of me explaining the evidence against you, Charles. And just for added precaution, I’m having this meeting videotaped.” I pointed to the parked car where my mother was filming us. “That’s going into a different safe deposit box at another financial institution.”

  Kimball nodded his head. There was more than a hint of tightness at the corners of his smile. “And the point of all this?”

  “The point of all this is cut the crap, Charles.”

  “Okay.” The smile faded, the voice grew more assertive. “Why don’t you tell me the purpose of your presentation?”

  “My sister.”

  “Explain.”

  “Simple. You either had my sister set up or you know who did. Un-set her up. I want all charges against my sister dropped. Period.”

  “And?”

  “No ‘and.’ That’s all.”

  His confusion seemed genuine this time. “And what about us?” he asked.

  I couldn’t resist. “We’ll always have Paris.”

  “I am serious, Rachel,” he snapped.

  “So am I, Charles. When the charges are dropped, our business is concluded.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, clearly off balance.

  I let him teeter for a moment. “You don’t understand what, Charles?”

  “What about all that garbage in the safe deposit box?”

  “When all the charges against my sister are dropped, I won’t need it anymore.”

  He squinted at me skeptically. “And that’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  “But what about the person who killed Andros?”

  I leaned against the railing and looked down at the flamingos. “A wise attorney told me back in law school that only an incompetent defense lawyer tries to solve the crime.” I turned to him. “I assume that’s still good advice?”

  Kimball pursed his lips. “It is.”

  “I’m not Marshal Dillon, Charles, and I’m not Philip Marlowe. Someone stole jewelry and fancy toys from some very rich people who no doubt had plenty of insurance coverage for their losses. Let the police catch the burglars if they can. It’s their job. Someone killed Andros. He was a slimy, despicable man who exploited a lot of women. Let the police catch his killer if they can. That’s their job. Mine is to get the charges against my sister dropped and, in the process, to get whoever has been trying to terrorize my mother and me to back off for good. I know you can make that happen, Charles. But it has to happen fast. I’ll give you forty-eight hours. If it hasn’t happened by then, I go to the police with what I have, which includes everything in the safe deposit box.” I turned to look down at the flamingos, a few of whom were starting to bob their heads again. “I won’t ask if we have a deal,” I continued in a lower voice, “because I know you won’t acknowledge that there’s anything to make a deal over.” I turned to him and spoke firmly. “But I will ask you if you understand my proposal.”

  Charles Kimball scratched his neck as he studied the flamingos. He nodded silently, a frown on his face.

  The meeting was over, but there was another mystery that had been bothering me. As he started to leave I said, “Charles.”

  He turned to face me, and I was surprised by his transformation. He had become an old man. Even his shoulders slumped.

  “You were one of the reasons I became a lawyer,” I said.

  He looked at me with weary eyes.

  “You were one of my heroes.” I shook my head in disbelief. “I even had a photograph of you in my college dorm room.”

  He leaned against the rail with both hands and peered into the trees near the walkway inside the Bird Cage. An orange-and-black bird fluttered out of the branch directly in front of him and flew past at eye level. He glanced over at me with a wistful expression. “I had three heroes when I was a young man. They all turned out to be charlatans. Heroes are rarely what they appear to be.”

  “But how did you change from what you once were to what you are now?”

  He gestured toward the flamingos with a sad smile. “Just the way Darwin predicted: gradually, and over time.”

  “But why?” I persisted.

  “Why not?”

  “That’s no answer,” I said angrily.

  He stared at me. “Why do you believe you are entitled to an answer?”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Because you were once my hero, Charles Kimball.”

  He sighed and shook his head ruefully. “You expect your world to make sense, Rachel. It’s one of the fallacies of youth. Let me assure you that the world makes no sense. You expect people’s actions to fit into some coherent grand plan, like one of those nineteenth-century English novels. Let me assure you, Rachel, life is not a novel.” He leaned against the railing. “Have you read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography?”

  “Back in college.”

  “He became a complete vegetarian in his youth for strictly moral reasons. He believed it was wrong to kill animals for food. Admirable sentiments, I suppose. But young Franklin had a slight problem: he craved seafood. Well, one day, while walk
ing through the city, he found himself overcome by the smell of a fillet of fried cod. As his mouth watered, as his desire for a piece of fish nearly overwhelmed him, he suddenly recalled that when he had seen cod cleaned in the fish market, smaller fish spilled out of their bellies. Ah ha, he reasoned, if fish eat one another, then it isn’t immoral for people to eat fish. From that day, Franklin started eating fish again. Just as important,” he said as he looked at me with a smile, “he claims that experience taught him an important lesson of life.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is, as Franklin wryly observes, that it’s convenient to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to come up with a reason for anything one decides to do.” He ended the story with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

  “So what’s yours?”

  Kimball shook his head. “Rachel, you are assuming several facts not in evidence.”

  He was right, of course. Kimball was not prepared to admit to any wrongdoing. Accordingly, special rules governed my line of questioning. To violate those rules would terminate our discussion.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “What do you think could be a reason for someone to get involved in this kind of scheme?”

  “Hypothetically speaking?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, perhaps this person needed money. That’s always a powerful motivator.”

  “Not enough of a motivator.”

  He gave me a look of admonition. “Never underestimate the power of greed, Rachel. It is the single greatest motivator in the history of man. But let us assume that greed wasn’t enough in this case. Or, taking a lesson from Ben Franklin, let us assume that greed was not an acceptable ‘reason.’ Perhaps this person, especially if he was a criminal defense lawyer, saw his involvement as a chance to play Robin Hood— especially if he could use his cut to help fund the defense of indigent clients. That’s certainly a better reason than greed.”

  “What’s the real reason?” I said persistently. I wasn’t going to allow him to wiggle out that easily.

  He rubbed his chin. “Hard to say. Perhaps our hypothetical man doesn’t even care about reasons anymore. Perhaps he realizes, as Franklin did, that reasons are little fictions we use to sanitize our actions. Maybe he just plain enjoys the risk. Addiction to risk is a common enough personality flaw in trial lawyers. You have a touch of it yourself, Rachel.” He seemed to think it over. “Makes sense, eh?” he said with a nod. “After all, the burglary scheme you described is basically a high-stakes rolling crap game with the government as the house.”