Although Michael had invited her to the wedding and she had reluctantly planned to attend, her relationship with her boss had long since cooled into a strictly professional one. She’d met Samantha, of course. Once the divorce proceedings started and Michael’s affair became public, Samantha used to call the office and occasionally drop by, either at lunch or the end of the day.
“I admit she was a friendly little thing,” Beverly sniffed. “You know the type—very perky, very sweet, very young.”
“But you never met her son?”
“No.”
“Or saw Michael around him?”
She sighed. “I wish I could help you, honey. I really do. But he never even talked to me about the boy. He must have known how disappointed I was in him. I typed the draft of the new will, of course. Mr. Green dictated it himself. But he never said anything about it to me. The will was just one of several documents on a dictation tape in my in box.”
“What about Samantha? Did she ever ask you about the will?”
Beverly thought about it and shook her head. “No.”
“When she came around, what did you two talk about?”
“Sometimes her son—how he was doing in nursery school, that sort of thing. Sometimes her art gallery. Mr. Green did some legal work for the gallery, you know.” She paused. “Come to think of it, you should talk to Stanley Brod.”
Stanley Brod was a partner in the small accounting firm where Beverly now worked. I remembered from the police file that he’d been Michael Green’s personal accountant.
“Why Stanley Brod?” I asked.
“Mr. Green had him do the accounting for her art gallery. Stanley’s people spent a lot of time with her. His firm continued handling her books and records until the gallery closed down. I can talk to Stanley when I get back to the office. He’s a very sweet man. I’m sure he’ll meet with you.”
The waiter brought our meals. We made small talk for a while as I tried to find the best way to broach the other subject I wanted to discuss. I finally decided that the best way was the direct way.
“During the murder investigation,” I said, “did the police ask you about other possible suspects?”
Beverly frowned. “What do you mean?”
“When a lawyer gets killed,” I explained, “any list of suspects ought to include his disgruntled clients.”
Beverly leaned back in the booth, her eyebrows arched. “Interesting. They never even asked.”
“What if they had?”
She gave me a knowing look. “Oh, I’d have told them a few things.”
“Such as?”
Beverly studied me. “Why do you want to know this? What does it have to do with your case?”
I shrugged. “Maybe nothing. According to the criminal file, Angela became the sole suspect by the end of the second day. No one bothered with other possible suspects, including any enemies Michael Green might have had.” I paused and shook my head. “I just can’t believe she did it.”
She nodded. “Neither can I.”
“If they hadn’t arrested Angela, would you have suspected any client?”
“Sure.”
Beverly told me that from the moment she learned of the murder she’d had her own list of suspects. Number one on that list was Billy Berger, the founder, chairman, and majority shareholder of Gateway Trust Company and a notoriously slick wheeler-dealer. Michael had thousands of trust accounts at Gateway Trust Company, one for each of the children he’d represented in a personal-injury class action against a pharmaceutical company. As such, Michael was not merely an important customer but a force within the trust company through his control of a significant percentage of the assets under management. Three weeks before his death, Michael announced his intention to move the trust accounts to Guaranty Trust. According to Beverly, the two men got into a shouting match in Michael’s office three days before the murder.
“I don’t think he’d be the one to pull the trigger, of course,” Beverly said. “But Mr. Berger would certainly know how to hire one. He was that type.”
“What did they argue about?”
“I don’t know, and Mr. Green refused to tell me. He said it wasn’t any of my business. But they were angry, believe you me. You should have heard the words they called each other.” She fanned herself with her hand. “Such language.”
Number two on Beverly’s list was Millie Robinson, ex-wife of former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Larry Robinson. Millie was a recovering cocaine addict who’d lost custody of her children in a postdivorce battle in which Michael had represented her ex-husband. When the court awarded full custody to Larry Robinson, he promptly moved to Detroit with the children. That was one month before Michael died.
“Millie called Mr. Green day and night, screaming obscenities and death threats. I was the one who answered the daytime calls.” Beverly shuddered. “It was awful.”
“Did you report her to the police?”
“Mr. Green said not to. He said she’d get over it.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know. The calls tapered off. I didn’t receive one from her that last week.”
“How about Michael? Was he still getting calls at home?”
“He didn’t mention it.”
Number three was Jerry Feckler.
“You’re kidding. The Dingdong Man?” I was grinning.
Beverly gave me a weary smile. “The very same.”
“Good grief, I’d forgotten Michael represented him.”
Jerry Feckler, aka the Dingdong Man, became Michael Green’s client about a year after undergoing an experimental surgical procedure on his penis. The poor man was hoping that longer and thicker would equal more and better luck with women. Alas, more equaled less and worse. Although he did gain approximately an inch in length, the fat liposuctioned from his love handles and injected into his penis for added girth gradually migrated south, leaving him with a weird appendage about as useful in bed as a bell clapper, which it happened to resemble. Unfortunately for Jerry, a nationally syndicated columnist got wind of the lawsuit, flew down for the medical malpractice trial, and wrote a funny column that got wide distribution during a slow news week. The headline said it all: LONG DONG DREAM BECOMES DINGDONG NIGHTMARE.
When his medical malpractice suit ended in a defense verdict, Jerry’s odds of getting laid got a whole lot longer. He blamed it all on his lawyer, whom he then sued for legal malpractice. Two months before Michael Green died, the judge dismissed Feckler’s malpractice case against him, inspiring the Post-Dispatch’s headline writer once again: JUDGE RINGS FINAL BELL FOR DINGDONG MAN; RULES FECKLER’S CLAIM FECKLESS.
Feckler’s final communication with Michael was a enraged message left the next night on the office phone-mail warning Michael that “misery loves company, especially miserable dicks, you sleazy bastard.”
***
Visions of malformed penises were dancing in my head, though not quite like sugar plums, when I returned to the office and discovered that the afternoon’s mail had brought me the petition in Blackwell Breeders LLC and Charlie Blackwell v. Maggie Lane and Sara Freed.
The crazy ostrich case.
I read the petition with a skeptic’s eye. Charlie Blackwell alleged that my clients “acquired sole custody and control of said ostrich at an especially sensitive stage in its development.” He claimed that “if said ostrich has any alleged defect, then the proximate cause of said defect is the negligent animal husbandry procedures, general incompetence, and degenerate lifestyles of said defendants.”
But he saved the best—or rather, the worst—for last. When I reached the final page, I stared at the signature block: “MackReynold Armour, Attorney for Plaintiffs.”
“Oh, great,” I groaned aloud.
Mack Armour, aka Mack the Knife, was the kind of litigator who made opponents conside
r career changes—that is, when they weren’t considering ethics complaints and contract hits. Although I’d never faced him before, I knew his reputation. He was belligerent, devious, and brazen—and to top it off, an unabashed male chauvinist pig. He was always looking for the sly angle in his lawsuits, and this case was a perfect example. Blackwell Breeders should have been the defendant in the case, but Armour jumped the starting gun and filed first, seeking a declaratory judgment that his client didn’t have to refund a penny. As an added bargaining chip, he tacked on Charlie Blackwell’s ludicrous claim for mental anguish. His goal: scare off my clients.
They didn’t scare.
“We’re not backing down,” Maggie told me over the phone after I’d described Mack the Knife.
“He’ll drag your personal lives into it, Maggie. He’ll try to turn the case into a freak show.”
“We understand,” she said calmly. “This is a matter of principle, Rachel. Mr. Blackwell cheated us. When he learned of the problem we had with his ostrich, he should have done the right thing on his own, but he refused. So now we’ll ask a judge to make him do it. We’re not looking for sympathy, Rachel, and we’re not looking for favors. We’re looking for justice.”
“You won’t always find it in a courtroom.”
“We understand that. If we lose, we lose. We can deal with it, Rachel. We’re big girls. Just get us our day in court.”
***
Beverly called around five to tell me that Stanley Brod could meet me tomorrow morning at nine. I’d planned on spending the morning getting ready for a deposition that afternoon in a copyright case, but I thanked Beverly and told her to let Stanley know I’d be at his office at nine. Then I canceled my dinner plans, called Domino’s Pizza, and settled down to do tomorrow’s deposition preparation tonight. I didn’t get home until almost ten o’clock. I was feeling crabby and antsy and tired. I knew the cure.
“Hey, Oz,” I said, kneeling next to the greatest golden retriever in the universe. “Wanna go for a jog?”
Ozzie wagged his tail and padded off to the kitchen, returning a moment later with his leash in his mouth.
“Let me change first, cutie.” I patted him on the head. “I can’t run in these heels.”
He followed me to my bedroom, where I slipped off my attorney clothes and put on my jogging outfit. As I tied my Nikes, he sat on the rug at the foot of my bed, the leash on the rug between his front paws. He listened attentively as I filled him in on my day.
“So I’ll meet with his accountant tomorrow morning,” I told him as I stood up. “We’ll see what he can tell me.” Ozzie seemed to think that was a good idea, since he wagged his tail, barked once, and picked up the leash.
We took the five-mile route. I spent most of the run trying to figure out what I was doing and where I was going with Angela’s case. I supposed that Stanley Brod might be able to shed some light on the equitable adoption issue in the lawsuit, and he’d eventually get to repeat it under oath when the clown patrol representing the other defendants fired up their discovery juggernaut. But I knew that my real interest in Stanley, like my real interest in Beverly Toft, was the possibility of finding a new angle on the crime at the heart of the Son of Sam case. I could rationalize it as part of the defense—after all, the Son of Sam claim would vanish if Angela were exonerated—but that was nothing more than a rationalization. I hadn’t been retained to clear her of the murder charge.
Angela had seemed intrigued during our prison meeting when I pointed out the holes in the homicide investigation, but she’d by no means evinced a determination to clear herself of the criminal conviction. Perhaps she’d become reconciled to what she deemed to be immutable. And perhaps there was something more subtle afoot. Seeing what had happened to her since the murder trial, I could understand if she felt a tinge of ambivalence at the prospect of reopening the criminal case. She’d truly become, in the words of her estranged son, a trophy widow. Her role as celebrity martyr for various women’s and minority organizations depended upon her image as the abused and spurned first wife who’d finally turned on her tormentor. Her life behind bars had invested her with an esteem and dignity that had eluded her during marriage. Within the controlled and cloistered world of a women’s prison, Angela had become a saint—adored by the inmates that she tutored and counseled, honored by the prison administrators who bragged about her at national conventions, and fawned over by visiting members of the press. If it turned out she’d been innocent from the start, that she’d been framed, a mere pawn in someone else’s deadly game, how much of her new persona would she lose?
But that was ultimately her decision, not mine. And it was purely conjectural at this point, I reminded myself. Angela had no decision to make—her appeals had run out and it would be years before she was eligible for parole. Talk of freedom was purely academic. But if she hadn’t killed Michael Green—if she’d been unjustly convicted—then I owed it to her to try to make an academic choice a real one.
So I’d meet with Stanley Brod in the morning, and I’d give the names of Beverly’s three suspects to one of my investigators for a quick background check. If that uncovered anything, I’d follow the leads. And if not, then I’d worry about my other cases and wait for the circus train to arrive with Hefty Harvey, the Silver Fox, Hammerin’ Hank, and the rest of the clown patrol.
Chapter Nine
None of them,” I repeated, shaking my head in outrage. “Not even a telephone interview.”
“Can you blame them?” Benny took a long pull on his beer and reached for another handful of Welsh chips. “Would you want to spend time around a guy with a dick that looks like a Tootsie Roll pop on steroids?”
“No, but I’m not a cop investigating a homicide, Benny. These were people with serious grudges against Michael Green. No one talked to them.”
It was two days after my night jog with Ozzie. Benny and I were at Llywelyn’s Pub in the Central West End, where we’d met for drinks after work. I was headed to a dinner meeting at the Jewish Federation and he was going downtown for a date with a woman lawyer from L.A. named Sheila who was in town for a closing. They’d met at a Practicing Law Institute program last summer, where Benny was supposed to participate in a panel discussion on recent developments in antitrust law. He claimed the two of them remained in his hotel room for all but one of the next thirty-six hours—the lone hour away being for his panel discussion. Of course, Benny claimed a lot of things, especially in the realm of his amatory abilities.
“Hey, Rachel, there are people out there with serious grudges against me, but no cops are talking to them.”
“That’s because you aren’t dead.”
“I guess that’s a good point. So what’s your investigator found on Beverly’s three suspects?”
“Not much yet.” I watched as he grabbed another enormous handful of Welsh chips and stuffed them in his mouth. “Benny, aren’t you supposed to be taking this woman to dinner first?”
“And your point is?”
“This is your second basket. Save a little room, boychik.”
He washed the chips down with a drink of beer. “Just stoking the old furnace.”
He was dressed to kill, Benny style: red Converse high-tops, baggy chinos, and a black T-shirt with the legend I Am an Endomorph—Please Help Me. He gave me a wink. “I’m going to need endurance tonight.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Sheila may hail from L.A.,” he said, “but inside a hotel room that woman becomes the Boston Marathon of Love.”
“The Boston Marathon of Love?” I rolled my eyes. “Who writes your material? Barry White?”
He grabbed some more chips, pausing to ask, “What about his accountant? Cops talk to him?”
“Nope.”
“You met him, right? Stanley something-or-other.”
“Brod. Stanley Brod. We met yesterday. I went back to his office
this morning to look through some boxes of records he retrieved from the storage warehouse.”
“What’s the story with him?”
“Seems like a decent guy. Decent enough to get embarrassed and admit ignorance when I asked him about an odd overlap in the records that he’d never spotted before.”
“What do you mean?”
“After Michael Green started dating Samantha Cummings, he had Stanley handle the books and records for her art gallery.”
“Is that place still around?”
“No, it closed less than a year after Michael died. From the records, it looks like the gallery’s revenues dried up almost immediately after his murder. She ran it at a loss for several months before her creditors finally forced her to close it down and liquidate the assets.”
“What’s she do these days?”
“She works in that fancy jewelry store at Plaza Frontenac.”
“Have you met her?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure we’ll be taking her deposition before long. Why? You don’t know her, do you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, but she looks awfully familiar for some reason.”
“Were you ever in her gallery?”
“No.”
“She was on TV during the trial.”
“She looked familiar back then, too. She’s a babe.”
I took a sip of my ale and nodded.
Benny said, “So you mentioned an odd overlap in the records. What is it?”
“I spent two hours looking through the files for the art gallery,” I explained. “I’m going to spend some more time next week, too. The records I reviewed showed that she paid six thousand dollars to an outfit called Millennium Management Services for every painting sold by an artist named Sebastian Curry. The payments were listed as ‘agency commissions.’”
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