Sheer Gall

by Michael A. Kahn

  Amy Chickering was right: this was a guy I’d never feel comfortable around. “Sally’s phone records show that she called you direct several times a month. I’d like to know why.”

  He grunted but said nothing. I waited, glancing from the glowering, weathered face in front of me to the younger, grinning face in the photograph behind him. The years and the work had taken their toll on Brady Kane. If ever there was a job with bad karma, this had to be it.

  “Well?” I finally said.

  He tried to stare me down. When that didn’t work, he said, “None of your goddamn business.”

  “Actually, Mr. Kane, it’s most definitely my business. As I explained, I’m here as counsel to Sally Wade’s personal representative.”

  “Yeah?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Big deal.”

  “That’s exactly what it is.” I tried to control my irritation. “At the time of her death, she was handling eight pending claims against your company.”

  “So?”

  “She was a lawyer, Mr. Kane, and your company had a lawyer in each of those cases. Still, she was calling you direct, both here and at your home. I have the phone records.” I paused to let that sink in. I saw no evidence that it had.

  “In other words,” I said, “whatever was going on between you two is definitely my business, Mr. Kane, and if you don’t want to tell me about it right now in the privacy of your own office, then I’ll have the sheriff arrange for you to tell the probate judge about it under oath in open court. Your choice.”

  Kane turned to the side and stared at the blank wall as he thought it over. “The company lawyers were morons,” he finally said.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  He turned to me with a scowl. “I’ve been running this plant for twelve years. They send them pudknockers down from Chicago who don’t know diddly about this business or the insurance or the damn claims.”

  “The workers’ compensation claims?” I asked, trying to follow him.

  He nodded. “I could move them faster and cheaper than all them fancy lawyers combined.” He gave me a defiant look. “So that’s what I did.”

  In response to my questions, he explained that before his promotion to management twelve years ago, he had been president of the local chapter of the meatpackers’ union, and thus was used to dealing with lawyers. According to him, Sally often called to get his estimate of what the company might be willing to pay to settle a particular matter. Other times she called for information about certain aspects of plant operations that were relevant to the cause of a specific injury.

  “I knew exactly what I could tell her,” he said, “and what wasn’t any of her goddamn business. I saved this company thousands of dollars in fees and payouts.”

  “Did the company lawyers know about these contacts?”

  He gave me a derisive look. “What are you, nuts? Sally told me to keep it secret. So long as I could keep those Chicago lawyers out of my goddamn operations, it was fine by me.”

  That was his story. I had my doubts, but he wouldn’t budge from it. His answers to my questions became more and more terse, until he was down to yes, no, or maybe. Eventually, he was delivering those one-word answers while glaring at the side wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Was Sally the only plaintiff’s lawyer you had these conversations with?” I asked.

  He answered with a silent nod.

  I checked my notes, crossed off the last topic, and stood to leave. As I did, he turned toward me and squinted, as if making an appraisal.

  “You ever done a slaughterhouse case?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He gave me a tight smile, revealing a yellowed set of lower teeth. “This ain’t Sesame Street, lady. Best bet for you is to get on over to your side of the river and don’t look back.”

  I stared at him for a moment, and he stared right back, his tight smile unwavering. Without a word, I turned and left his office, secretly relieved to be heading back to my side of the river.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Whoa!” Benny whistled when I described my encounter with Brady Kane. “I’m telling you, Rachel, you got the legs and you got the tush, and if I ever decide to make an exception for smart women with balls, you’re first in line for the title of Mrs. Benny Goldberg.”

  I put down my coffee mug and placed my hand on my chest. “Oh, be still my heart.”

  It was later that night, and we were having coffee at an espresso bar in the University City Loop, just down the block from the Tivoli Theater, where I had dragged Benny to a showing of one of my very favorite films, It Happened One Night. This was my eighth time, and it again confirmed my willingness to marry Clark Gable and have his babies and iron his boxer shorts, even if he refused to convert. Has there ever been an actor as manly and irresistibly sexy as Clark Gable in that movie? He’s even sexy giving Claudette Colbert a lesson in the proper way to dunk a doughnut.

  “Do you believe Brady Kane’s story?” Benny asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It could be a Brandywine scenario,” he mused.

  Back when Benny and I were junior associates at Abbott & Windsor in Chicago, Johnny Brandywine had been a hotshot young rainmaker at his own litigation boutique. Four years ago, however, a federal jury had convicted him and the assistant general counsel of Marlin Container Company on various charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, and criminal conspiracy, all arising out of a classic kickback scheme: the assistant general counsel sent Johnny lawsuits to handle, and at the end of each month Johnny sent Marlin Container a legal bill, which the same assistant general counsel promptly approved for payment. Unbeknownst to anyone else at Marlin Container, however, Johnny would then transfer 10 percent of his fee into a second account maintained in the name of the infant daughter of that very same assistant general counsel.

  I took a sip of my cappuccino and shook my head. “It doesn’t fit the pattern.”

  “Why not?” Benny asked.

  “Because Brady Kane wasn’t sending Sally the cases. She was getting them on her own.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Benny said. “You said yourself that you need a good union contact to get workers’ comp cases. Kane used to be president of the union. Maybe he was steering cases her way for a fee.”

  “Possibly,” I conceded. “That’s one of the reasons I’m going to go to the Douglas Beef headquarters in Chicago on Monday morning. I’ll see if I can persuade someone in their legal department to run the numbers on the workers’ comp cases. See whether those numbers back Kane’s story. See whether he really was getting lower settlements in East St. Louis than at their other slaughterhouses.”

  “And if he wasn’t, then maybe we’re talking kickbacks.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “If we’re talking kickbacks, maybe she got tired of paying him off and told him so. Maybe that got him pissed enough to kill her.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes.” I took a sip of coffee and sat back in my chair. “Oh, Benny,” I groaned.

  “What?”

  “My head is spinning.”

  He smiled and nodded his head. “Too many suspects?”

  “And not enough motives. Even worse, this whole thing could be a wild-goose chase. Maybe Sally really did hire me, and maybe Neville really did kill her. It’s still the most logical explanation.” I gave a weary sigh. “You know what I really need?”

  “A can of whipped cream and a studded dog collar?”

  “Benny, I’m serious.”

  He reached across and squeezed my shoulder. “Sorry, kiddo. What do you really need?”

  “A sign.”

  “A sign?”

  “Something to indicate that I’m on the right track.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. I’m not picky.”

  I should have
been picky.

  ***

  I awoke suddenly to the sound of Ozzie scrambling to his feet at the foot of my bed. With a growl, he ran to one of the bedroom windows.

  I sat up. “What is it, Oz?”

  He stood motionless, ears cocked, body tense. He was making a low, throaty growl.

  I glanced over at the clock radio: 2:53 a.m.

  Ozzie gave an anxious whine and dashed to the other window, then back to the first one. He tilted his head, his body rigid. Another low growl.

  I pulled back the covers. “What do you hear, Oz?”

  He started barking. Not a joyous bark or a treed-squirrel bark or a dog-to-dog bark. This was his ferocious guard-dog bark. It made me just a little jittery. I slid my feet into my slippers and came over to him. He was still barking.

  “What, Oz?”

  I peered through the blinds. My window looked out over the backyard and the garage, which was on the left. Everything was dark out there. I strained, trying to spot a sign of movement. Ozzie was still barking. I couldn’t see a thing.

  “Is it an animal?” I asked, as if expecting an answer.

  He paused, whining, and ran to the other window, where he growled and started barking again. I joined him at that window and peered through the blinds. It was the same view of the backyard and garage. The same view of nothing.

  I went over to my closet and pulled out my robe.

  “Come on, Oz,” I said as I tied the sash. “Downstairs.”

  At the sound of the word, he spun toward the bedroom door and charged out. I heard him thundering down the stairs and scrabbling along the kitchen floor.

  When I got to the kitchen, he was standing at the back door and barking fiercely. I stood in the doorway watching him, unsure of what to do. It was either an animal—perhaps a raccoon—or a prowler. Whichever it was, all this barking would likely scare it off. I could call the police, but by the time they got here Ozzie would no doubt be sleeping contentedly on the rug at the foot of my bed and I’d have two macho cops swaggering around my house and treating me like the helpless maiden.

  I thought of my palm-heel strikes and my groin stomps and my pledge of spirit. But mainly I thought of my powerful, fearless golden retriever. I went into the pantry and came out again with a high-powered flashlight and Ozzie’s leash.

  “Come here, Oz.”

  Reluctantly, he came over to let me fasten the leash, and then he dragged me back to the door, where he started whining. I pushed back the curtain covering the door window and clicked on the porch light. There was no one on the porch.

  With the flashlight in my right hand and Ozzie’s leash wrapped around the other, I unlocked the door and pulled it open. Ozzie immediately leaped against the storm door, whining impatiently.

  “Just a sec, Oz.”

  I unlocked the storm door and pushed it open. Ozzie charged onto the porch, straining against the leash. I clicked on the flashlight as I followed him down the three stairs and into the backyard.

  “Wait,” I said, trying to hold him back.

  I swung the flashlight in an arc around the backyard. There was nothing there, although it was clear that Ozzie had no interest in the backyard. He was lunging and pulling toward the garage, whining and growling. I let him drag me there, where he took up his position facing the door, barking savagely. The hair on his back was standing up.

  I stared at the closed garage door, immobilized, unsure. Trying to devise a plan of action, I swung the flashlight around. The beam of light made the bare tree branches leap and whirl in the shadows. I turned back to the garage and stared at the door handle, trying to decide.

  “What’s going on?”

  The voice made me jump. Stumbling backward, I whipped the flashlight around. It was just Mr. Decker, my elderly, somewhat irascible neighbor. He was standing on his side of the waist-high wooden fence. Ozzie had stopped barking.

  “What’s that dog so riled about?” he asked in his raspy voice. He was wearing a plaid robe over his pajamas.

  “I don’t know,” I said. My voice sounded an octave higher than normal. I took a deep breath, trying to get composed. “I think it’s something in the garage.”

  “Ha!” he said in disgust. “Damn rats is what that is. I had ’em a couple years back. Little bastards ate through the battery wires under the hood of my car. Got ’em with rat poison. Go get yourself some in the morning. Try Central Hardware.” He gestured impatiently toward the garage door. “Let the dog chase ’em out of there so the rest of us can get some shut-eye.”

  He turned back to go inside.

  “Thanks, Mr. Decker,” I called after him. “Sorry we woke you.”

  He grumbled something as he trudged up the stairs to his back porch. A moment later I heard his back door open and then close.

  I turned back to the garage door and trained the beam on the door handle. Rats? The idea made me shudder. I looked at Ozzie. He was standing vigilant at my side, silent now.

  “Did you hear rats?” I whispered.

  He glanced up at me and then back at the garage door.

  I leaned over to unfasten his leash. “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “You heard Mr. Decker. Chase ’em out of there.” I leaned down and looked at him. “Ready?” He wagged his tail and whined. I took that for a yes.

  I paused, my mind conjuring up a vision of bloated gray rats swarming under the hood of my car. Grasping the garage-door handle, I took a deep breath. Remembering my self-defense class, I closed my eyes and tried to focus my energies. It didn’t work. I yanked up hard and leaped backward to avoid the rat stampede, turning my head away.

  But there was no stampede. Or any noise at all. When I turned my head back, Ozzie hadn’t moved. He was still at attention, facing the garage. The door had slid up halfway, about chest high. Cautiously, I stepped forward, stopping at the entrance. With my left hand I pushed the door up while I used the other to sweep the flashlight beam around inside.

  At first I thought they were diamonds. Sparkling little gems, thousands of them, scattered on the garage floor, glittering in the flashlight beam.

  And then I realized what they were.

  “Oh, no.”

  I raised the beam. The rear window of my car was gone. So were the side windows. I stepped into the garage. So was the windshield, except for a jagged piece in the lower right corner. Someone had smashed in every window in the car. The garage floor was strewn with broken glass, as was the inside of the car.

  As I moved slowly around the car, the flashlight beam illuminated something white dangling from the inside rearview mirror. I approached warily. It appeared to be a small piece of paper taped to the mirror. I reached in through the empty passenger window and pulled it off.

  It was a sheet of bond paper that had been neatly folded to the size of a playing card. I started to unfold it and realized with a chill that it was a sheet of my law office stationery. There was writing on it, directly below the letterhead for The Law Offices of Rachel Gold. When I had it unfolded halfway, I could read the entire message, which was handprinted in red ink in capital letters:

  SEE HOW EASY IT WOULD BE?

  THINK ABOUT IT.

  The lower half of the stationery was still folded. Pressing my fingers around it, I could tell that there was something folded in there. My hands trembling, I unfolded it, and something dropped to the floor. Bending over, I aimed the flashlight beam at it.

  I caught my breath. There, resting face up in the glittering pieces of broken glass, was my Missouri driver’s license.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Of all the sundry things I thought might be in progress in the topless showgirls’ dressing room at Cherries on a Saturday afternoon, a baby shower was not one of them. But sure enough, I arrived to a chorus of oohs and aahs as an obviously pregnant Natasha Vladimitskov (a/k/a the Russian Minx) removed the gift wrap, opened th
e box, and held up an adorable one-piece outfit for a newborn.

  “Senk you, Mawta,” Natasha said with a warm smile.

  “Aw, honey, y’all are welcome,” Martha answered in a Southern drawl.

  Natasha was seated on the floor with her back against the wall. A dozen non-topless women were seated in a semicircle on the floor facing her. There was a small pile of gifts in front of her, a larger pile of used wrapping paper to the side. Jo-Jo Black was next to her with a notepad and a pen. She looked at the newborn outfit and jotted something down.

  “Who was that from?” Jo-Jo asked, apparently keeping the list for Natasha’s thank-you notes.

  Natasha pointed. “Mawta.”

  Jo-Jo poked her tongue out as she wrote down the name.

  I smiled and shook my head. Benny would never believe this. An hour inside the dressing room at Cherries ranked high on his fantasy Top Ten, right up there with his two perennial favorites: a vigorous game of topless water volleyball at the Playboy Mansion and a weekend on a choke chain as the love slave of rock singer Joan Jett.

  Well, this particular dressing-room scene had to be as far from Benny’s fantasyland as one could imagine. The Cherries showgirls were wearing jeans or sweatpants, baggy shirts or oversized sweatshirts. There wasn’t a bare patch of skin below the neck in sight anywhere. There were no high heels. Most had on sneakers. Their hair was pulled back, and I saw little sign of makeup and even less of lipstick. Instead of sultry strippers, these women looked like factory girls on a coffee break or attendees at an Ace Hardware seminar on furniture refinishing. Jo-Jo Black fit right in. With her faded Bud Light sweatshirt, her hair pulled back beneath a green scarf, and a cigarette dangling from her lips, she could have passed for the cashier at a gas-station minimart.

  The whole scene was such a contrast to my garage nightmare that it seemed surreal. Of course, part of the altered reality could have been due to my lack of sleep. I’d been up ever since Ozzie first woke me in the middle of the night, and the adrenaline buzz had long since worn off. The University City police were there until close to six in the morning. Then I had to go with St. Louis police to my office to let them inspect it for signs of entry, especially forced entry. They found none at my office, and the University City police found none at my home or my garage.