Sheer Gall

by Michael A. Kahn

  She nodded.

  I turned to my client. “Mr. Contini, could you bring over Exhibit I?”

  He walked back to the side wall and fetched the second wrapped poster. This one had EXHIBIT I printed in bold black letters on the brown paper.

  I turned to the witness. “Do you recall the article on the event in that Sunday’s Post-Dispatch?”

  Cissy glanced uncertainly at her attorney and then back at me.

  I sighed patiently. “Okay, let’s see if we can refresh that memory again.”

  I nodded at Vincent Contini. He tore off the wrapping paper, revealing the blowup of the society column from the Style Plus section of the Sunday, August 16, edition of the Post-Dispatch. This one Jacki had found for me. The blowup included the photograph of the two women standing in front of a carousel horse.

  I pointed to the caption beneath the photograph. “Do you see this photo credit down here?”

  Cissy leaned forward. “Yes,” she said cautiously.

  “Charles Morley,” I read. Turning to her, I said, “Do you remember Mr. Morley?”

  Uneasy, she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  I turned toward the gallery. “He’s out there. Charles,” I called, “hold up your hand.”

  Self-consciously, Charles Morley raised his hand.

  I turned back to Cissy. “Remember him? He was there that night. For over an hour. Walking around among the guests, taking photographs.” I paused. “Lots of photographs.”

  Her eyes flickered anxiously between the photographer and me. “I…I don’t remember.”

  I gave her a look of mild disbelief. “Really? You don’t remember him taking lots of photographs?”

  She looked at Brenner. I turned to look at him, too. He had a forced smile on his face that looked more like gas pains.

  “Well?” I repeated.

  “I…I don’t…I’m not sure.”

  I turned to Vincent Contini. “Well, I guess it’s time for Exhibit J.”

  Vincent walked over to the wall and brought back the final wrapped poster. This one had EXHIBIT J printed on the brown paper. As he set it on the easel, I said to him, “Just a moment.”

  Rubbing my chin thoughtfully, I turned toward the dress hanging from the hook. Then I looked over at the shoes and the purse resting on the ledge in front of Cissy Thompson. Her eyes were wide as her gaze kept shifting from me to the wrapped poster on the easel to her lawyer and back to me again.

  “Let me move these to a better position,” I said as I walked over to the dress and removed it from the hook. I carried it back to the easel and handed it to my client. “Vincent, could you stand with the dress on this side of the easel?” I steered him next to counsel’s table. “There. And hold the dress up.”

  “Certainly,” he said with a dignified smile.

  Then I walked over to Cissy, who leaned back as I approached, and I picked up the shoes and the handbag. I carried them over to counsel’s table and lined them up on the edge of the table near where Vincent was standing. Then I stepped back, like a set designer, to study the arrangement. As I did, I saw the clock on the back wall. Eleven minutes after twelve. Perfect.

  I turned back to the judge with an apologetic smile. “Your Honor, I wonder if we could take a break. Before I move to the next line of inquiry, I would like to ask Mrs. Thompson to put on the dress and the shoes.”

  Milt Brenner was up like a jack-in-the-box. “Actually, Your Honor, if we’re taking a break perhaps we could make it for lunch as well.”

  Judge Williams looked up at the clock and then back down at me. There was the hint of a smile on her face. “Very well, Mr. Brenner. The court will be in recess until two o’clock. That should give the plaintiff ample time to eat her lunch and put on the dress and the shoes before she returns to the witness stand.”

  With a bang of her gavel, Judge Williams left the bench. As soon as the door closed behind her, Vincent Contini came over and hugged me.

  “Oh, Rachel, you were truly magnificent.”

  “Wait,” I cautioned. “It’s not over yet.” I glanced nervously at the easel. “Excuse me a moment,” I told him and walked over to take down the wrapped poster board marked EXHIBIT J. I carried it over to the bailiff. “I need this locked up,” I told him.

  He was an elderly black man with a big paunch and a pleasant moon face. “Oh, that’s okay, Miss Gold. We lock the courtroom doors here during the lunch recess.”

  I leaned in close. “I can’t leave it in here,” I said quietly. “I have to get it somewhere safe.”

  He shrugged good-naturedly. “Okay, Miss Gold. We can put it in the vault. Follow me.”

  The vault was three floors down, inside the office of the circuit clerk. Once I got Exhibit J safely stowed, I stopped at a pay phone outside the clerk’s office to call Jacki, who was no doubt dying of curiosity.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, “tell me what’s happening.”

  I filled her in on the morning’s events.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, “what if it doesn’t work?”

  “I’ll improvise.”

  “Improvise?” She sounded apoplectic.

  “I’ll have her stand there in that outfit. I’ll make sure my witnesses get a good look at her. Maybe it’ll jog their memories about what she wore that night. Listen, Jacki, I gotta run. I’ll check in later.”

  “Rachel, Jonathan Wolf has called five times this morning. He says he has to talk to you.”

  I groaned. “Oh, God, I can’t deal with that now.”

  “Rachel, I promised him you’d call back at the lunch break.”

  “Tell him you haven’t heard from me.”

  “Rachel, just call him.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall. The whole Sally Wade mess came bubbling back to the surface like a sewage backup. “Okay,” I finally sighed. “Can you conference him onto this call?”

  “Hang on.” About a minute later, he came on the line. “Rachel, we need to talk.”

  “Please, Jonathan, I’m in the middle of a trial.”

  “Then tonight. I’ll come by your office after court.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. Actually, seeing him in person wasn’t such a bad idea in light of what I had to tell him. The one thing that last night’s adventure in the car trunk had convinced me to do was drop out of the Sally Wade investigation ASAP. I wasn’t a criminal lawyer, I wasn’t a private eye, and in light of my performance in the parking lot I definitely wasn’t a ninja warrior. Life was too short to try to run with that crowd.

  “Okay,” I said, “but not for long.”

  “What time?”

  Judge Williams was unlikely to keep us in court beyond five o’clock. At five-thirty I had my self-defense class. After last night, I said to myself, maybe Faith Comp-ton could teach me how to disarm a first-grader with a water pistol. “Seven-thirty,” I said.

  “Fine. At your office?”

  The class was only five minutes from my house, and I’d be hot and sweaty afterward. I could take a shower and grab a bite to eat before he got there. “No,” I said. “Come by my house.”

  “I’ll be there. I’ll see whether Neville can join us.”

  “Neville?” He was the last person I wanted to deal with tonight. “Why him?”

  Jonathan paused. “Because he got a call from Tammy this morning.”

  I grimaced. “Did he give her my name?”

  “He did,” Jonathan said. “And mine as well.”

  “Oh.” The case seemed to have a relentless gravitational field that kept yanking me back into its orbit.

  “I’ll fill you in tonight,” he said.

  I hung my head down.

  “Rachel?”

  “Fine,” I said indifferently.

  “Good luck.”
<
br />   “Pardon?”

  “In your trial. Good luck.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Thanks.”

  I was still in a funk when I got off the elevator on Judge Williams’s floor. I checked my watch. It was almost one o’clock. Although I didn’t have an appetite, I could hear my mother’s voice telling me I had to keep up my strength for the afternoon. Also, she would no doubt add, you have guests: your client, his wife, and their son.

  Yes, Mother.

  I headed back to the courtroom to gather the Contini clan and take them to lunch somewhere near the courthouse. As I approached the door I tried to get myself properly focused. The Sally Wade situation was tonight. This was now, and for Vincent Contini this was also one of the most important events in his life.

  He jumped to his feet as I came through the door. “Ah, Rachel, hurry. They’re waiting for you in the judge’s chambers.”

  I frowned. “Who’s waiting?”

  “Her lawyer and the judge. Her clerk told me to send you back there immediately. They need to see you right away.”

  Thirty minutes later I emerged from Judge Williams’s chambers and found Vincent pacing in the hallway while his wife and son watched from a bench. When he saw me he came dashing over.

  “Well?” he asked anxiously.

  I smiled. “I have a new settlement proposal from them.”

  He straightened, his expression wary. “What is it?”

  “Thirty thousand dollars.”

  His eyes widened in outrage. “I wouldn’t pay that woman a dime.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “I know that, Vincent. Their original proposal was to drop the lawsuit in exchange for your agreement to keep the settlement terms confidential. I told them you were willing to keep the terms confidential but you expected to be reimbursed for your time and your legal fees. They offered a thousand. I demanded fifty. The judge persuaded them to raise their offer to thirty thousand. I told them to wait while I sought your approval.”

  He stared at me in wonder. “She will pay me thirty thousand dollars?”

  I nodded.

  “Mama mia,” he mumbled. Then he stiffened, suspicious. “What exactly are these confidential settlement terms?”

  “Simple,” I said with a smile. “We have to destroy all photographs of her, and we can’t let anyone know that they paid you money to get rid of the lawsuit.”

  Vincent made me repeat the settlement proposal. He nodded slowly as I explained it. There were tears in his eyes when I finished. “Rachel,” he said, his voice filled with emotion, “I told you last Sunday that God smiles down upon you.” He placed his hands on my shoulders and kissed me lightly on each cheek. “And now,” he said, his voice almost a whisper, “I see that God has smiled down upon me as well. Thank you, my dear.”

  We drew up the settlement papers right there in the courtroom, and Vincent signed them before we left for a victory lunch at Kemoll’s in One Metropolitan Square. At Vincent’s insistence, I called Jacki to have her join us at the restaurant.

  Milt Brenner promised to deliver a fully executed copy of the settlement agreement to Kemoll’s along with a certified check for thirty thousand dollars. Both arrived during dessert. By then we were on our third bottle of Chianti, and I for one was feeling no pain.

  “Ah,” Vincent said with a wistful smile, “I have only regret.” He looked at me across the table. “I would have liked to see that woman’s expression when you unveiled Exhibit J.”

  I glanced over at Jacki, who was trying to keep a straight face. I looked back at Vincent. “Then you should have no regrets, Vincent. No one would ever have seen that exhibit.”

  Vincent frowned. “But it was the next one. It was up on the easel. I put it there myself.”

  “Remember I had the bailiff lock it away. If trial had resumed after lunch, the easel would have been empty.”

  Now he was baffled. “But, Rachel, wasn’t it a photograph of that horrid woman in my dress?”

  I leaned forward. “Can you keep a secret?” I whispered.

  He nodded. “Certainly.”

  I looked around the table with a conspiratorial smile. “The photographer checked the other roll of film. He didn’t have a single picture of her that night. Not one. Exhibit J was a blank piece of poster board.”

  Victor looked at his wife and then back at me. “I don’t understand.”

  “Have you ever played poker?” I asked.

  He stared at me for a moment, and then leaned back with an admiring smile. “You were bluffing?”

  I gave him a wink and pressed my index finger against my lips. “Shhhh.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Faith Compton adjusted my right arm. “Remember, Rachel, it’s a two-step move: out slow until the chain is fully extended, then up and around hard.”

  I nodded, trying to visualize the move. “Okay.”

  Faith had sensed something was awry during the self-defense class. When it ended, she pulled me over as the others gathered their stuff to leave. I was reluctant at first to tell her about the key-chain failure in the parking lot the night before. In fact, I was mortified at having performed so miserably. But she wouldn’t let go. She pulled the story out of me, and by the end, with tears welling in my eyes, I let all my frustration pour out. She let me vent, and when I was through she gave me a pep talk, her arms grasping my shoulders as her eyes bored into mine.

  “You are no one’s victim, Rachel,” she said fiercely. “You are not the prey.”

  She showed me the maneuver for getting the key chain cleanly out of a coat pocket without cutting down on the force of the swing. For the past fifteen minutes, she’d been drilling me in the move.

  “Are you ready?” Faith asked. She was standing directly behind me. To protect her hands she was wearing a pair of heavy-duty work gloves.

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “Let’s try it three-quarters speed. On the count of three. One…two…three.”

  I pulled the key chain clear of the pocket without a hitch. She caught the keys in mid-arc.

  “Good. Again. One…two…three.”

  We did it twenty times, and then ten more times at full speed.

  “Excellent,” she said after the last one. “That’s enough for tonight.”

  I turned toward her, my face flushed with exertion.

  She nodded, her jaw firmly set. “You’ll be fine.”

  “I feel so much better, Faith. Thank you.”

  “Practice that move, Rachel. Practice it every night. Over and over until you can do it in your sleep.” She paused, studying me. “You have great natural talent, but you mustn’t let it master you. You must strive to become the master of your talent.”

  ***

  First I had to strive to get home in time to shower and change before Jonathan Wolf arrived. I wasn’t planning on getting fancy for him, but I didn’t want to meet with him in my exercise outfit, which tonight consisted of a plain gray sweatshirt, black exercise tights, floppy white socks, and Nikes.

  I got home in time. The problem was that Benny got there five minutes later.

  “Oh, hi,” I said ambivalently when I opened the door. He had a large bag in his right hand and a six-pack of Rolling Rock in the other.

  “Hey, sexy,” he said with a big grin, “how about some Chinese takeout for the victorious trial stud? I hear you kicked major butt in court. Mazel tov!”

  I didn’t have the heart to do anything but feign gracious appreciation and invite him in. I followed him into the kitchen, padding behind in my socks.

  “I figured you’d be getting back from that judo class around now,” he said. “You must be starved.”

  “That’s sweet,” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. Actually, I was still stuffed from the victory lunch at Kemoll’s. As Benny started to unpack the bag, I glanced up at t
he clock. Jonathan would be here in less than twenty minutes.

  “Uh-oh,” Benny said, pausing with a white takeout carton in his hand. He’d caught me looking at the clock. “Do you have a date tonight?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, trying to make light of it. “It’s just a Sally Wade matter. Jonathan Wolf is dropping by at seven-thirty. Strictly business.”

  He chuckled. “Sure. Strictly business. Bet you’ve heard that line before.”

  “Don’t start,” I warned.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Just kidding.”

  “Anyway, he’s probably bringing Neville McBride along.” After a moment, I said, “It’s just that I hate to meet him dressed like this.”

  “What are you talking about? Black tights and those legs. Damn, girl, you look like a Rockette.”

  “I’m sweaty and disgusting.”

  “Trust me, Rachel. You look awesome.”

  I went over to the cabinet and got out two plates and some silverware.

  “Benny,” I said in disbelief as I watched him remove the sixth white carton from the takeout bag, “there’s only two of us.”

  “And Ozzie makes three.” He looked over at Ozzie and winked. “Right, big fella?”

  Ozzie wagged his tail joyously. Benny and Chinese takeout were two of Ozzie’s favorite things in the world.

  “I couldn’t make up my mind,” Benny explained to me. “Gotta go with the Kung Pao Squid, right? Same with Moo-Shu Pork. Hell, a Chinese meal without Moo-Shu Pork is like a day without a good shit.”

  I sighed. “You have such a winsome touch with the English language.”

  “Then you got your Mongolian Beef, just sitting there on the menu crying, ‘Eat me, Benny, eat me.’ And Ozzie loves it, don’t you, you Mongolian Maniac?”

  Ozzie barked twice, his tail whacking the refrigerator door.

  Benny opened one of the containers and peered in. “Ah, yes. Tonight’s special. Szechuan Crunchy Duck. Christ, the name alone gave me a woody.” He held it toward me. “Take a whiff of that, white girl.”

  “Smells delicious,” I conceded.

  “I almost stopped there, but Jesus, they have sixty-two entrees on the fucking menu, and I suddenly realized we didn’t have a chicken dish. Gotta go with General Tso’s Chicken, right? I was in a militaristic mood anyway. Guy must have been a trip. I mean, shit, how many army guys you know have a chicken dish named after them?”