Trophy Widow

by Michael A. Kahn

  But all four corporations had one thing in common: Percy Trotter. He was the lawyer on all four sets of incorporation papers.

  Percy Trotter?

  “Son of Scam,” I mumbled, reaching for the phone.

  Benny answered on the second ring. “Talk to me.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “You busy?”

  “Hell, yes, woman. I’m busy waiting for goddamn ESPN to give me the goddamn Mets score. My boys had an afternoon game against the Giants and I’m sitting here listening to these two douche bags talking about a fucking golf tournament. What’s up?”

  “I need a man.”

  “Then this is your lucky day.”

  Chapter Thirty

  At six-thirty that evening, Percy Trotter and I were in a booth near the back of the Summit, a downtown restaurant that was a shrine to Frank Sinatra—from the menus made out of his record albums to the framed glossies of him on the wall to the sound system that had him crooning “I Get a Kick Out of You.” I could safely assume that the lyrics did not echo Percy Trotter’s sentiments toward me. It was also accurate to say that a more appropriate Sinatra tune for my state of mind was “How Little We Know.”

  Percy Trotter was an African-American attorney in his early forties—a plump, light-skinned man with a round bald head, thick eyebrows, and a pencil-thin mustache. Although he started off as the son of a city factory worker, he was now a prominent member of the Missouri Republican Party who lived in a gated community in the suburbs, drove a Range Rover, sent his two children to an exclusive private school, owned a summer home on Nantucket, and had a wardrobe of elegant double-breasted suits from his London tailor. Today’s was navy blue with maroon chalk stripes.

  Trotter and his wife Lucinda were avid social climbers who’d started on ground level and managed so far to reach the lower rungs of the St. Louis corporate elite. His legal practice, however, had not kept pace. Although he had a big enough book of business to become a partner at one of the larger firms in town, his clients were hardly silk stocking, consisting instead of minor-league banks and second-tier entrepreneurs at whose glitzy country clubs he played golf and in whose private jets he traveled to Super Bowls and Las Vegas trade shows.

  Percy Trotter had all the traits of a successful phony—the hearty laugh, the warm handshake, the soulful gaze, the photographic memory for names, the affable grin. He was what we used to call a “show partner” in my days at Abbott & Windsor—long on form, short on substance, a superb salesman who could lure the clients into his lair while concealing the fact that he wouldn’t actually be doing any of their legal work. It wasn’t that Trotter was a poor lawyer; he simply had no interest in reviewing a twenty-five page stock purchase agreement or drafting a set of corporate resolutions, especially if he could be out hustling a prospective client on the links or schmoozing one of his client contacts at the Rams game.

  In short, I didn’t like him.

  I’d been astounded to see him listed as the attorney for the four corporations that appeared, at least from the docket sheets, to be engaged in the same type of real estate scam Michael Green ran. Not because Trotter was a saint—or even close. The scent of sin trailed from him like cheap cologne. No, I was astonished when I realized that this flamboyant Republican must have had a key connection within that ultimate bastion of Democratic politics, St. Louis City Hall.

  That realization made me call Benny. We’d originally planned to confront one of the other twenty-three tonight—perhaps Jack Foley, before whom Benny had already given his demented performance as the art critic Benito. But Foley was a long shot, since he probably knew nothing of the City Hall side of the details. Michael Green had been savvy enough to understand that whatever his clients didn’t know couldn’t come back to hurt him.

  From the loan records, Percy Trotter appeared to have occupied the same role as Michael Green in a subsequent but smaller version of the same scam—four deals versus twenty-three. If so, then he would know what Jack Foley and Don Goddard and the other twenty-one Green clients might not, namely, the identity and the role of each of the coconspirators.

  Although Benny had wanted to join me in the booth, I figured that my chances were better if I met Trotter alone. I’d run into him at enough professional and charitable functions over the past two years to know that he’d recognize my name and probably recall that I was single. Marital status was an important piece of information for Percy Trotter. According to what I’d heard from a female partner at his firm, he had a special room arrangement at the Marriott for his noontime trysts. All of which meant that he might be more susceptible without Benny there.

  Not that Benny wasn’t near. The good professor was, in fact, seated on a stool in the bar area, ostensibly keeping an eye on me while directing the rest of his attention and all of his charm and energy toward the flashy blonde in the black cocktail dress and pearls seated on the stool to his left.

  Percy Trotter and I zipped through the small talk. By the time the waitress brought us our drinks, he’d realized that this was not a conversation likely to end with the uncorking of a room service bottle of champagne.

  “Michael Green?” Percy Trotter frowned. “I am not in the least bit following you, Rachel.”

  “Here’s how he worked it,” I said, and took him through a quick version of the scam.

  He listened, his expression neutral.

  “Assuming that Green pocketed the full legal fee,” I said, “he was paying up to eight thousand dollars per painting as a bribe to someone connected to City Hall. I assume your numbers are similar.”

  “Numbers?” Trotter tugged on his earlobe, looking bewildered. “Rachel, you must be confused if you believe that I have any idea what you are talking about or attempting to suggest.”

  “Look, Percy, I’m here to give you an opportunity. I have twenty-three names connected to Michael Green, including some big fish in this town. That’s more than enough to convince an ambitious U.S. attorney to launch a criminal investigation. I don’t need to give her your name, and I don’t need to give her the names of your clients. That’s why I asked you to meet me here. You give me the City Hall connection and I forget we ever had this conversation.”

  Percy leaned forward. “Rachel, I can assure you that I have no idea what Michael Green may have been doing, if anything. Although I never met the gentleman, I have no reason to believe that he was involved in any illicit activity. Now that he has passed, and tragically at that, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to besmirch his reputation.” He took a sip of his Glenfiddich. Lowering his voice, he fixed me with a severe look. “As for my clients, Rachel, despite the fact that I am offended by your insinuation that any of them could have been involved in such questionable activity, I will nevertheless look into the four transactions you have identified. Although I am not generally involved in the preparation of the legal documents for my clients’ deals, I shall try to determine whether there was anything even colorably amiss in those transactions. I must emphasize, though, that I seriously doubt that I will find anything wrong.” He paused, his face somber. “I can sense that you are under great strain, Rachel. I only hope that in your zeal to uncover some irregularity involving your client’s former husband you will not stain the reputations of innocent men and women with no connection to those matters.”

  I had to concede that it was a superb performance—the concern for my mental health coupled with the lawyer’s professional obligation to protect his clients, the voice perfectly modulated to mingle confusion over my accusation and innocence on his part. I’d underestimated Percy Trotter. He was not going to give up a thing.

  Unless he had nothing to give up.

  Maybe his façade of bewildered innocence wasn’t a façade. I’d made several key assumptions in building my case against Michael Green. Although every piece seemed to fit logically, I had to concede that each one was circu
mstantial. Were there alternative hypotheses out there, especially for Percy Trotter? While twenty-three defective loans might be enough to incriminate Green, were just four such loans enough to incriminate Trotter?

  He finished his glass of Scotch and signaled the waitress. She came over all smiles and giggles. “Yes, Mr. Trotter?”

  Percy glanced at me. “Another, Rachel?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Well, Suzie,” he said to her with a chuckle, “guess it’s time for this ol’ cowboy to saddle up and hit the trail.” Before I could reach for my purse he’d slipped a pair of twenties off his gold money clip and placed them on the table.

  After she left, he turned to me. “Rachel, I assure you that I will personally review those files—if not tomorrow, then early next week. Should I detect anything of a questionable nature, I will find a way to notify you, within the bounds, of course, of my professional obligations under the attorney-client privilege. All I ask from you is time enough to complete my investigation. Is that fair?”

  I stood, gathering my purse and briefcase. “I don’t know what’s fair here, Percy. You do what you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do.”

  “Come on, Rachel,” he said, a trace of annoyance in his voice now. “A few days is surely not much to ask, especially if it turns out that my clients have done nothing wrong.” He leaned in close. “Why put their reputations at risk, and in the process put yourself at serious risk of liability for defamation, when the prudent course is to first determine the facts? Mr. Green has been dead for several years now. A few more days won’t matter one way or the other.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that.”

  “No promises.”

  ***

  “What a load of crap,” Benny said in disgust.

  “But effectively delivered,” I said. “I’ll give Percy that much.”

  We were standing by my car, which was parked just down the block from the Summit. I’d gone into the rest room to avoid leaving with Trotter. I stayed in there for ten minutes, and then waited outside of the restaurant for Benny to join me. He did—but only for a few minutes. Benny had high hopes for the flashy blonde, whose name was Sabrina.

  After her second martini, Sabrina had told him that she liked a big man. “I like ’em built for comfort, not for speed,” she’d said, borrowing a line from Howlin’ Wolf.

  After her third martini, she confided that her husband had divorced her because he claimed she was “too kinky.”

  Benny was, to put it mildly, anxious to return to his perch alongside Sabrina. But God bless him, raging lust hadn’t shut down the cognitive region of his brain.

  “He’s going to examine his clients’ files to see whether anything’s wrong?” Benny snorted. “That’s like a husband telling his wife that he’s going to examine his appointment calendar to see whether he was shtupping his secretary over the lunch hour last Friday. That slick bastard either is or isn’t up to his asshole in this cesspool, and he surely doesn’t need to look at any goddamn files to figure that out. Right?”

  “I guess so.

  “All of which means that Mr. Clean is dirty. Examine his files?” Benny snorted. “Guy is jerking you around, Rachel—just trying to buy time.”

  “But for what?”

  “To cover his fat ass.”

  We stood there in silence.

  “So what’s your next move?” he asked.

  “I’m going to see Sebastian Curry’s minister, and I’m going to talk to Ron Blitz. He’s the Blitz of the Blitz detective agency.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “No, the day after. I’ve got a hearing down in Crawford County tomorrow.”

  “What case is that?”

  I groaned. “That’s the creepy family that’s been battling over their grandmother’s estate for four years. I represent the younger sister. I’ll be there the whole day.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Benny glanced toward the restaurant. “Well, my dear, ordinarily I’d love to shoot the shit out here with you, but we must not forget that I have an extremely attractive lady waiting back there who claims she likes a full-figured man and says her husband divorced her because he thought she was too kinky. Think of that.” He shook his head in wonder. “A good-looking chick who’s kinky and has the hots for me.” He placed his hand over his heart and gazed heavenward. “Forgive me, Lord. You have finally sent this humble servant irrefutable proof of Your existence.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The sun was setting the following evening as I pulled into my garage after the drive back from the Crawford County courthouse, where the Bensinger family had fought Round 8 of their version of Dysfunctional Family Feud. We’d spent several hours proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a courtroom is no place to look for moral closure, especially in a trust-and-estate battle among adult siblings who hated one another. On the upside, my client and her husband walked out of the courthouse with $175,000 more than they had when she walked in—and $100,000 more than the other side’s final settlement offer. On the downside, she walked out of the courthouse with just half of what she’d sought in the case. Even more galling for her was that the court had awarded her detested older brother the same amount it awarded her. All of which meant that we were headed for Round 9 in the Missouri Court of Appeals.

  But that was behind me, at least for now. I’d driven back with the top down and my Rolling Stones greatest hits tape on full blast—a good combo to get the ya-yas out. Though I don’t normally turn to Mick Jagger for spiritual guidance, he could have reminded my Crawford County client that you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.

  It was a beautiful late summer evening—warm breeze, the scent of honeysuckle in the air, a clear sky, a quarter moon already visible low on the horizon. I got out of my car and stretched. I was feeling antsy after the drive.

  Ozzie was waiting at the door inside, his tail wagging.

  “How ’bout some exercise, Oz?” I patted him on the head. “We can eat afterward.”

  He barked twice. I took that as a yes.

  He followed me upstairs to my bedroom and sat at attention on the rug as I changed into my jogging outfit: a red Cardinals T-shirt, gray running shorts, white socks, and my Nike running shoes. I checked myself in the bathroom mirror. My hair was on the verge of unruly—way overdue for a cut. I shook my head side to side and the curls brushed against my eyes. Forty minutes of that would drive me crazy. I found my St. Louis Browns baseball cap in the closet downstairs and put it on to help control my hair. I opened the door and looked back at Ozzie, who had the leash in his mouth.

  “Ready?”

  He dashed through the door and turned at the edge of the porch to wait. I locked the front door, put the key in my pocket, and bent down to fasten the leash to his collar. “Let’s go.”

  We took the long route, which included the pathway through the Ruth Park golf course. The fairways were empty as dusk edged into darkness. During the early part of the run, I replayed my conversation with Percy Trotter from the night before, but gradually my thoughts turned to tomorrow. After morning services at my synagogue, I had an early afternoon meeting with Sebastian Curry’s minister followed by a late afternoon meeting with Ron Blitz. I’d called him from the courthouse today during a break, hoping that he’d turn out to be one of those gallant knights errant from one of my favorite mystery novels—a Spenser or a Lew Harper. Our five-minute phone conversation was sufficient to remind me that this was no mystery novel. Blitz grudgingly relented only after I agreed to pay him for his time.

  “Seventy-five bucks an hour, lady. We’re talking cash, and we’re talking cash in advance.”

  Oh, Travis McGee, we hardly knew ye.

  I finished the jog with a sprint down my st
reet, arms pumping, as Ozzie scampered alongside. Both of us were panting as we came into the kitchen. I filled his water bowl with fresh water and filled his dinner bowl with dry dog food. I poured myself a tall glass of water and drank it leaning back against the counter as I watched Ozzie lap up his water.

  “I’m going to shower,” I said, placing my empty glass in the sink.

  Ozzie turned to follow me up the stairs. “That’s okay,” I said, kneeling beside him and scratching behind his ear. “Stay here and eat. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I stripped down to my bra and undies and had just turned on the shower when the phone rang. I briefly debated letting the answering machine pick up, but I turned off the shower and dashed back into the bedroom to pick up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  There was static on the other end.

  “Hello?” I repeated.

  “Did you have a good run?” The voice was scratchy and hollow, as if it were being electronically scrambled and reassembled.

  “Who is this?”

  “You are prying into matters that don’t concern you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I was gripping the phone. “Who is this?”

  “Your meddling has already caused one man to die.”

  “What?”

  “Now you’ve endangered your loved ones.”

  “Who are you?”

  “When this calls ends, go to your dresser and open the top drawer. Under your white panties, you’ll find your black satin ones. Take a peek inside them, Miss Gold. And when you do, remember that this is your final warning.”

  Click.

  I was seated on the edge of my bed. I stared at the receiver in my hand and slowly replaced it.