Sheer Gall

by Michael A. Kahn

  “Oh, brother.” I shook my head good-naturedly. “Jonathan, you can spin out these alternative realities all day long, but we both know that the most likely story is the one I’ve alleged in the lawsuit.”

  “Unless you believe my client.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I believe my client.”

  “Why didn’t she file a police report?”

  That was, of course, the very question I’d been asking myself. “I don’t know,” I conceded.

  “But you told her to file one.”

  “True,” I acknowledged. “But it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a client failed to follow her lawyer’s advice.”

  He leaned forward. “Don’t you see, Rachel? It’s just like that photograph. Just as you can’t be absolutely sure that Sally Wade was the woman who hired you, you can’t be absolutely sure that my client’s version of the story isn’t the real one.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “You sound like someone trying to create some reasonable doubt.”

  He nodded. “Absolutely.”

  I shrugged. “You haven’t succeeded.”

  “I haven’t finished.”

  I groaned. “What now?”

  “I want you to talk to him.”

  “Neville McBride?”

  “Yes.”

  I tilted my head in surprise. “That’s a bit unusual.”

  “So?” he said, dead serious. “This whole case is a bit unusual, which is why I’d like you to meet with him. Ask him whatever you want. Listen to his answers. Watch him closely. Decide for yourself.”

  I studied Jonathan. “What if I talk to him and decide he’s a liar?”

  He shrugged. “I’m willing to take that risk.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand why.”

  “Because your testimony could be devastating, Rachel.” He leaned forward. “If the jury believes that Sally told you the truth, they’re that much more likely to return a guilty verdict. If those jurors believe that he regularly tied her up and masturbated onto her backside, they’re going to convict him.”

  I leaned back in my chair and shook my head. “Jonathan, you seem to overlook the fact that I represent Sally. I believed her when I filed that lawsuit. I have no reason to doubt her now. In addition, I’ve been retained by the trust company to help administer her estate. With all that against him, why would Neville risk talking to me?”

  “Two reasons. First, you have a reputation for fairness.”

  I laughed. “I’m no saint.”

  He didn’t smile. “Neither is Neville, as you will discover. He’s a womanizer, a bit of a racist, and probably not wild about Jews. But I don’t believe he’s a killer. Neville and I hope that if he gives you a reason to believe him, you’ll give him a fair hearing. Second, and just as important, you have a reputation for tenacity. That’s crucial here. I believe you were used—either by Sally or by someone else who hired an impersonator. I’m assuming that if you reach the same conclusion, namely, that you were used as part of a murder scheme, you’re not going to stop digging until you find out who that someone was.”

  I got up, walked over to the window, and peered through the blinds. I turned to him. “You’re asking a lot.”

  “I know I am.”

  “When would you want to have this meeting?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  He nodded. “Name the place. I’ll get him there.”

  I went back over to my desk and glanced down at my calendar. “Tonight isn’t good.”

  “Why not?” he said.

  “I have a class at five-thirty, and then I’m going to my mother’s house for dinner.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll bring him by after dinner. Just give me a time.”

  “Jonathan,” I said, leaning back against my credenza, slightly annoyed and slightly amused, “has anyone ever told you that you tend to be a little too pushy?”

  He smiled. “They’ve never said ‘a little.’” The smile faded. “Rachel, my client is charged with first-degree murder. That’s a compelling reason to be a little too pushy.” He pulled out his pocket calendar and fountain pen. “When’s good tonight?”

  I sighed. “Well, how’s eight o’clock?”

  “We’ll be there.”

  Chapter Six

  “Assume the position,” she ordered.

  I did.

  “Feet at shoulder width, knees flexed.”

  They were.

  “Grip the ground with your toes.”

  I tried.

  “Tonight we start with the palm-heel strike. Bend your elbows, gals. Hands palm-up at the sides of your ribs. Good. Now pull them back as far as you can.”

  I did.

  “Fingers together. Make sure those elbows are aligned directly behind your hands, just like pistons.”

  They were.

  “Hold that position. Concentrate on your power line.”

  I did, and as I did, Faith Compton moved slowly around and among us, studying our positions, occasionally pausing to adjust a stance.

  The front wall was mirrored. I followed her in the reflection. There were eleven of us in the women’s self-defense class, all lawyers, varying body types, all between the ages of twenty-five and fifty. Most of us, including me, were wearing sweatshirts, sweatpants, and sneakers. Two of the women, including the oldest in the class, were in leotards and tights.

  Faith Compton was our instructor. She was in her late thirties, stood just under five feet, and looked as if she lifted weights. She had short red hair, intense blue eyes, and an acne-scarred face. According to the class brochure, she held a third-degree black belt USA Goju Karate and a second-degree black belt Aiki Jitsu, whatever those were. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt over black tights and a pair of black leather exercise shoes.

  “We start with the palm-heel strike,” she announced after she returned to the front of the class. “Remember: strike forward along the power line, fingers up, heel of the palm pushed forward. Keep those shoulders back and still. We’ll do the right hand first. You know the move. You’ve practiced it every night since our last class.”

  She assumed the stance facing us, arms back, hands up, eyes calm and lethal.

  “Make sure your energies are flowing in a straight line,” she said, “directly forward from your solar plexus. Prepare yourself. Remember the yell of spirit. I want to hear you scream.”

  I took a cleansing breath, trying to maintain my focus.

  “He’s in front of you. Visualize him.”

  I concentrated, trying to conjure up an attacker. The best I could do was a wavery image of Jonathan Wolf in his thousand-dollar suit. There was a smirk on his face.

  “Visualize your palm heel driving through the center of his chest.”

  I did.

  “Ready?”

  Definitely.

  “Now!”

  My arm shot forward. Boom! He staggered backward and lost his balance. Yes!

  “Excellent, girls.”

  I was grinning, my heart racing. I was invincible.

  “Resume the chambered position. Good. This time, four hits. Right, left, right, left. Make it fast. Let me hear those screams. Ready? Visualize. Now!”

  Boom, boom, boom, boom!

  I was Wonder Woman, I was Bruce Lee, I was kicking major butt!

  Twenty minutes later, I was also totally exhausted. A little hoarse, too, as we prepared to end the class in the same way we opened it. I was kneeling in what Faith called the position of reflection: hands on my lap, ends of my thumbs touching gently, eyes closed. Together, we said the pledge of virtues that Faith said she had learned from her kung fu master, also a woman:

  “The martial arts are my secret,” I reci
ted with the group. “I bear no arms. I shall find my strength as a woman. I shall always be aware. I shall be quick to seize opportunity. Nothing is impossible.”

  I opened my eyes, smiling proudly.

  Faith caught my gaze and nodded. Then she bounced to her feet and clapped her hands once. “Dismissed.”

  ***

  “What’s one more piece?”

  “Mom,” I groaned, holding up my hands. “I’ve had three already. I’m plotzing.”

  She put down the plate of kamishbroit and shook her head. “Then you’ll take some home.”

  “It’s a deal. You know I’m crazy for them.”

  And I was. Kamishbroit is a deliciously crunchy Yiddish pastry, a long, narrow cookie, whose Italian cousin, biscotti, became fashionable in the early nineties. Well, my mother’s kamishbroit makes the finest biscotti taste like stale Wonder bread. I don’t say that just because I love my brilliant, eccentric, and often exasperating mother, which I dearly do. I say it because it’s true. Sarah Gold happens to be an extraordinary cook, and her mastery extends from traditional Jewish cuisine (including knishes to die for and a cholent that deserves the Irving Thalberg Award at the next Oscars) to the latest in organic vegetarian cookery (including a vegetable stew that’s become a winter special at a local health food restaurant, where the menu lists it as Sarah’s West African Groundnut Stew).

  “You’ll have some more compote, sweetie pie?”

  I smiled in surrender. “Okay, Mom, but just a little.”

  “So,” she said as she started spooning the fruit compote into my bowl, “when are they going to be here?”

  I glanced at the kitchen clock. “About ten minutes. Whoa, Mom, that’s plenty.”

  “I’ll make tea for them.”

  “Don’t bother. You’re not the hostess. I’m the one doing them a favor.”

  “It’s no big deal,” she said as she got up and walked over to the stove for the teakettle. “In my own house I can at least offer a person tea.” She paused for a moment, giving me a severe look. “Even if he murdered his wife and deserves to die in the sewer like a rat.”

  I held my tongue—as always, the incurably liberal daughter of a mother who believes in capital punishment for murderers, castration for rapists, and slow medieval torture for child molesters.

  My mother is the least sentimental woman I know. She has ample reason. She came to America from Lithuania at the age of three, having escaped with her mother and baby sister after the Nazis killed her father. Fate remained cruel. My mother, a woman who reveres books and learning, was forced to drop out of high school and go to work when her mother (after whom I am named) was diagnosed with cancer of the liver. Rachel Linowitz died a year later, leaving her two daughters, Sarah and Becky, orphans at the ages of seventeen and fifteen.

  Two years later, at the age of nineteen, my mother married a shy, cuddly bookkeeper ten years her senior named Seymour Gold. My father was totally smitten by his feisty wife and remained so until the day he died. He was the sentimental one, the one whose eyes quickly welled with tears whether he was listening in the den to one of his Italian operas or reading The Velveteen Rabbit to me in bed or saying a prayer of thanks at the beginning of our Friday-night Sabbath dinner.

  I remember bringing home The Great Gatsby during winter break of my sophomore year of college. He read it in one sitting, spellbound and deeply moved. With some hesitation, he offered it to my mother, a voracious reader of nonfiction who viewed novels with disdain. (“With all my real problems,” she says, “who’s got time to fret over pretend ones?”) She read as far as that wonderful scene where Jay Gatsby, taking Daisy on a tour of his Long Island mansion, throws open his large dressing bureaus to display a rainbow of custom-made shirts. As he tosses them onto the bed, the brightly colored pile of fabrics growing ever higher, Daisy is overcome. “It makes me sad,” she sobs, “because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.” At that point in the novel, my mother slammed it closed with a snort of disgust and stood up. “I’ve got no use,” she grumbled as she headed toward the kitchen, “for rich people who cry over shirts.”

  Like her mother before her, my mother had two daughters, me and my younger sister Ann. Although Ann was allowed to be the prissy girl of the family, my mother put me to bed every night with fairy tales about college and medical school. “Someday you’ll be somebody,” she would whisper fiercely as she kissed me good night, “and not a doormat like your poor father. ‘Dr. Gold,’ they’ll say. ‘Please help me, Dr. Gold.’” Those plans changed my junior year in a course called organic chemistry. So it goes.

  “Meanwhile,” my mother was saying as she came back to the kitchen table, “what are you doing for that trust company?”

  “Basically two things,” I explained. “First, I’m going to help wrap up her personal affairs. Second, I’ll wrap up her law practice.”

  “How do you wrap up a law practice?”

  “Sally was a solo practitioner. Her assistant’s name is Amy Chickering. Jacki called over there this afternoon to tell Amy to put together a status report on all of Sally’s cases. I’m assuming there are at least two hundred active cases that need to be transferred to new attorneys. I’ll meet with Amy tomorrow. The whole process may take two or three weeks. We’ve assured Amy that she’ll get paid her full salary for as long as it takes plus two months’ severance pay.”

  The teakettle started to whistle. As my mother got up to turn down the gas, she asked, “How do you wrap up her personal affairs?”

  “The police have her house sealed off. The trust company will take an inventory of the contents of the house. They’ve already assumed control of her bank accounts. They’ve also arranged to have all her bills sent directly to them for payment. Tomorrow morning I’m going down to her bank to have her safe deposit box drilled.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” I said as we both stood up. “I’ll talk to them in the living room.”

  Jonathan Wolf had obviously stopped by his house on the way over, perhaps to have dinner with his children. He had changed out of his courtroom costume and into a navy turtleneck made of heavy cotton, a pair of baggy tan corduroys, and brown leather moccasins.

  “Hello, Rachel,” he said, stepping into the foyer. “This is Neville McBride.”

  McBride was even dumpier in person than in his newspaper photo. His lower teeth were crooked, he was bald, and he wore thick wire-rim glasses. The nose pads of the glasses cut into the flesh on either side of his nose, which seemed even more bulbous up close. His gray hair and extra weight made him look at least a decade older than his fifty-five years. Although his glen-plaid suit had probably been made by a London tailor, it was rumpled and lumpy and overdue for a pressing.

  But as every lawyer learns early in her career, appearances can be deceiving. Indeed, Neville McBride’s rise to power within his law firm and the community was all the more impressive when you realized that he had obtained that success despite his nondescript, almost goofy appearance.

  There was nothing nondescript or goofy about his firm handshake and deep voice. “I am honored to meet you, Miss Gold,” he said in a subdued, self-possessed tone, “and quite grateful that you are willing to meet with me.”

  “This is my mother, Sarah,” I said, turning toward her. “Mom, this is Jonathan Wolf, and this is Neville McBride.”

  After everyone shook hands, my mother asked if they wanted tea.

  “None for me,” Neville said.

  “I’ll have a cup,” Jonathan told her.

  “Would you like lemon or sugar?” my mother asked.

  “I’ll come help you fix it,” he said.

  “No, you go with the others,” my mother said. “I’ll bring it to you.”

  Jonathan smiled and shook his head. “I’ll come with you, Mrs. Gold, if you don’t mind the company. Rachel and Mr. McB
ride should meet alone.” He glanced over at me. “Right?”

  I was a little surprised, having assumed that Jonathan was the sort of control freak who would insist on being present during my conversation with his client. I looked at McBride and then back at Jonathan.

  “Sure,” I said with a smile. “Let’s go to the living room, Mr. McBride. We can talk there.”

  ***

  “Not at all?” I asked him.

  He vigorously shook his head. “Never, Miss Gold. Not with Sally. Not with my first two wives, and you certainly don’t have to rely on my word for it. I’ll be happy to give you their names and telephone numbers. Talk to them directly. Confirm it for yourself.” He stood up and walked over to the fireplace. Turning to me with a serious expression, he said, “I absolutely, categorically deny the charge. I have never in my life struck a woman in anger.”

  “You say ‘never in anger,’” I responded, pressing on. “But you did engage in bondage fantasies with Sally, correct?”

  “Good Lord,” he mumbled, his face reddening. “Yes, but surely nothing like that. Moreover, it was only once, early in the marriage. She asked me to, uh, to tie her up. I did, and we, ahem, had relations. But that was it. Only that one time.”

  “Maybe with her, but she wasn’t the only one, correct?”

  He leaned back against the mantel and stared at the ceiling. I waited. After a moment, he took a deep breath, sighed, and looked at me. “I’ve been with other women, Rachel—do you mind if I call you Rachel? Many women. Before my marriage to Sally, after the marriage ended, and, well, during the marriage, too. Unhappily, our marital relationship soured quickly. All sexual relations had terminated by the end of the first six months of marriage.”

  He paused, studying the carpet at his feet. “As for other female companions,” he continued, still looking down, “occasionally one would express a desire to engage in, shall we say, an unconventional procedure. I will admit that I acquiesced in some such requests, but I can assure you that I am not a”—he paused, searching for the correct word—“a devotee of bondage.”

  It was, I had to admit, a credible performance. But then again, I reminded myself, lawyers are paid to sound credible. That’s what we do for a living. We manipulate judges, lawyers, people in general, clients—especially clients. The best lawyers are masters of manipulation, with skills more akin to those of sorcerers. Surely Neville McBride—managing partner of Tully, Crane & Leonard and a man who had parlayed his mastery of the intricacies of the Internal Revenue Code and his extraordinary contacts within the upper echelon of St. Louis into a flourishing limited partnerships practice—had to be included on any list of the best.