Sheer Gall

by Michael A. Kahn

  “Do you realize,” I said as I took out two beer mugs, “that if General Tso ever invaded Kentucky, he could have fought Colonel Sanders?”

  Benny gave me an appreciative grin. “That is one weird concept.”

  Just then the doorbell rang. We exchanged looks.

  “Hey,” Benny said with a shrug, “maybe the Wolf Man likes Chinese.”

  Ozzie came with me to the door. It was Jonathan, looking as if he had just come back from court in his dark suit, white shirt, and striped tie. It was an unseasonably warm November evening, and he had his suit jacket slung over his shoulder.

  “I’m early,” he said with an apologetic smile. “When we talked earlier I forgot that this is the housekeeper’s night off. I have to leave here in thirty minutes.” He leaned over to scratch Ozzie behind the ear. “Neville’s still at his firm,” he explained. “He’s stuck in negotiations over some acquisition, but we can reach him by phone if we need to.”

  I took Jonathan into the kitchen and introduced him to Benny. They seemed cordial enough as they shook hands, though it was obvious to me that Benny was sizing him up, assuming the role of my big brother. As for Jonathan, if he was wondering about my outfit or what Benny was doing in my kitchen with enough Chinese takeout to feed the St. Louis Rams, he gave no indication. He politely declined Benny’s offer of food and glanced at his watch.

  “Tell me about Tammy’s call,” I said. “You can talk in front of Benny. He knows all about the case.”

  Jonathan loosened his tie and filled us in. Tammy had called Neville at his office that morning. The call lasted twelve minutes and twenty-two seconds. (Neville has a timer device on his phone.) They exchanged pleasantries. She said that she hadn’t heard or read anything about the case for a few days and hoped that that was a good sign. Neville explained that the lack of news didn’t signify anything. He told her that his attorney was preparing for trial, which was still about a month away. She expressed her concern. He asked if they could meet somewhere. That question seemed to agitate her. She rambled on about her privacy and her fear of the media and the police. Neville asked if she would at least consider talking to Jonathan or, in the alternative, to the attorney for Sally’s estate. She was unwilling to make any commitment on the issue, but took down our names and phone numbers, office and home.

  “You think she has a criminal record?” I asked.

  “Or maybe an outstanding arrest warrant,” Benny mused.

  Jonathan shrugged. “Possibly. Or perhaps there was an embarrassing episode in her past that she’s afraid will be exposed if she comes forward.”

  “You really think she can help Neville?” Benny asked him.

  Jonathan scratched his beard pensively. “She’s acting as if she knows something critical.” He turned to me. “If she calls one of us, it’s likely to be you.”

  “Oh, brother,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll talk to her if she calls, but that’s it. I’ve got to get out of this case.”

  Jonathan nodded. “I understand.”

  I shook my head. “No, you don’t.” I paused, looking at both of them. “I got another threat last night.”

  “What?” Benny said, appalled.

  I told them about the incident in the Schnuck’s parking lot.

  Benny went ballistic. “This is a fucking outrage,” he said, slamming his fist onto the table.

  Jonathan was visibly upset. “Have you talked to the police yet?” he asked.

  I gave him a helpless shrug. “No. I was so upset I went right home. And then I ran out of time. I had the trial today, all kinds of catching up this afternoon, and then my self-defense class. The time got away from me.”

  “I bet it’s that fucking Junior Dice,” Benny said angrily.

  I shook my head. “He’s still in jail.”

  Jonathan had me describe the incident one more time so that he could give the police and the FBI all the relevant facts. He was going to call his contacts at both places when he got home. “As far as Tammy goes,” he said, “if she should call you, just tell her to call me.”

  “Oh, I can talk to her,” I said to him. “I don’t mind that part. I just want to tie up the other loose ends, turn it over to you, and get on with my life.” I looked over at Benny. “For example, I’ve got Amy putting some slaughterhouse files together for me tomorrow.”

  “Slaughterhouse files?” Jonathan asked.

  I gave him a rueful smile. “I’m looking for gallstones.”

  He frowned. “Pardon?”

  I explained the gallstone angle, including the trip to Chicago and my discovery of the Bruce Napoli twist.

  The Napoli connection surprised him. “Interesting,” he mused.

  “It could be just a coincidence,” I cautioned. “After all, Napoli’s probably near the top of most lists of St. Louis environmental lawyers.”

  “How many matters is he handling for them?” Jonathan asked me.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if he’s ever handled any matters for them. In fact, you should talk to Neville McBride about that. See whether he can access the firm’s files on Douglas Beef without Napoli’s knowledge.”

  Jonathan checked his watch and went over to the phone. “I’ll ask him now.”

  He reached Neville, quickly described the situation, and listened to his response, which he relayed to me. Although Neville could obtain copies of the firm’s client/ matter listings, a request for anything more specific might get back to Bruce. All of the environmental practice group files were centrally maintained by a filing clerk who reported directly to Bruce.

  “Is she loyal to him?” I asked Jonathan.

  He nodded grimly. “She’s his niece.”

  I mulled it over. I’d worked for five years at a big corporate firm and was used to those client/matter listings; by contrast, Jonathan had only worked as a government prosecutor or in a two-man criminal defense firm.

  I said, “See if Neville can drop off a copy of the lists at my office tomorrow. I’ll take a look at them. If Douglas Beef shows up, you can move to phase two.”

  “Which is?” Jonathan asked.

  I grinned sheepishly. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  ***

  “Come on, Rachel,” Benny said. “I’ve got a squid in here with your name on it.”

  “No way,” I groaned. “I’m plotzing.”

  Benny turned to Ozzie, who was sprawled on the floor in the corner. Tilting the container toward him, Benny said, “Nu?”

  Ozzie gazed at him but didn’t move.

  Benny shook his head with pity. “A pair of short hitters.”

  Jonathan had left for home an hour ago, and shortly afterward Benny had announced his unsolicited approval of the match. He had proceeded to consume the entire carton of Kung Pao Squid while lecturing me on the reasons I should drag Jonathan Wolf up to my bedroom and “knock his yarmulke off.” Now that he was finished (the squid and the lecture), he took a swig of beer and reached for a fortune cookie and popped it in his mouth whole. I watched in amusement as he devoured the cookie without bothering to crack it open.

  “By the way, Miss Manners,” I said, “you just ate your fortune.”

  “Huh? Eh, fuck it. They’re a rip-off anyway. You get aphorisms instead of fortunes. You know the world is going to hell in a handbasket when you get your world-view from your dessert.” He paused, as it fully dawned on him. “Jeez, I really ate my fortune?”

  I cracked mine open, pulled out the little slip of paper, read it, and shook my head.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “‘Smile and the world smiles with you.’”

  “Nope. It says, ‘Large male friend just consumed winning number in Missouri Lottery.’”

  “You’re a regular comedian, Rachel.” He got up and went to the fridge. “Another brew?”

  I shook my head. “Not f
or me.” I peered into the bag. “There’s another fortune cookie in there.”

  “It’s all yours,” he said as he pulled out a beer.

  I cracked it open and pulled out the slip of paper.

  “What’s it say?” he asked as he returned to the table.

  I looked up with a smile. “‘Smile and the world smiles with you.’”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I held out the fortune. He read it, and looked up with a triumphant smile. “Need I say more? The prosecution rests.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I knocked.

  “Rachel?” Amy called.

  “It’s me.”

  “Door’s open.”

  I turned the handle and stepped into the reception area of what had once been Sally Wade & Associates. Amy was seated on the carpet, her back propped against the front of the receptionist’s desk. She was wearing a Chicago Bears jersey, faded jeans, and tennis shoes, and she was surrounded by storage boxes. Literally. Boxes on the floor, boxes on the reception desk, boxes on the couch. She had an open box on the carpet between her legs.

  “Oy,” I said.

  Amy uttered an exhausted sigh. “Believe me, this is one job I definitely will not miss.”

  I looked around. “Wow. I had no idea she had so many Douglas Beef files.”

  “Hah,” Amy snorted. “I had no idea she was so disorganized back then. Every one of these boxes is a mishmash of files. From what I can tell, she’d wait until she had a box worth of closed files and then ship them off to storage. Take this one,” she said, gesturing at the box in front of her. She pulled out a file folder and opened it. “What do we have here? Ah, yes, a personal injury case. Auto accident. Settled for, let’s see, four grand.”

  She stuffed the file back in the box and pulled out another. “Let’s see…this looks like a slip-and-fall. In a National supermarket.” She put that one back and started paging slowly through the rest of the folders in the box. “Here we’ve got a medical-mal case…followed by, let’s see, another fender-bender. Both closed in August six years ago. Same as the others in the box.” She flipped through two more files. “Ah, here we go. Finally.” She pulled out a folder and held it up triumphantly.

  “Douglas Beef?” I asked.

  “Yep.” She studied the label on the file. “Workers’ comp claim.” She opened the folder on her lap and started leafing through the pages. “What do we have here? Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Oh, my. Bad times on the loading dock. Looks like someone backed over poor Howie Goodman’s left foot with a forklift.” She looked up at me and uttered an exaggerated groan. “Explain this again. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

  “A needle in a haystack. More precisely, a gallstone in a haystack.”

  She looked perplexed. “Why just the older Douglas Beef files?”

  “According to Sally’s passport,” I explained, “she made her first trip to Hong Kong four years ago. Assuming she went over there to sell cattle gallstones, she must have made her contact at Douglas Beef before then. There might be a clue in one of the older files.”

  She nodded. “Makes sense.”

  I set my purse and briefcase onto the floor and walked over to the couch. “I’ll help.” I sat down next to a box.

  When we called it quits three hours later, I was in a state of total information overload. Between us, we’d found eighteen Douglas Beef files—all workers’ comp claims—and we still had half the boxes to go. The files we’d found consisted of dozens and dozens of pages of seemingly irrelevant material. Brady Kane had been a witness in a few of the cases, but there was no indication of any direct contact between him and Sally. Nor was there mention in any of the files of gallstones, organ sales, Hong Kong, or anything remotely connected to the criminal case of People of the State of Missouri v. Neville McBride.

  When I returned to my office around two o’clock, there was a manila envelope from Tully, Crane & Leonard waiting for me. The envelope contained a handwritten note from Neville McBride paperclipped to two pages photocopied from the firm’s Client/Matter Report and two from the firm’s Closed File Log.

  The Client/Matter Report was arranged alphabetically by client, with separate matters listed beneath each client and the initials of the billing attorney shown at the far right. The first of the two pages of the report were from the B’s and had been copied, according to Neville McBride’s handwritten note, to show that Bennett Industries (parent company of Douglas Beef) was not currently a client of the firm:

  The second page from the Client/Matter List was from the D’s. Neville had highlighted the entries for Douglas Beef:

  The document showed three current matters for Douglas Beef, all identified in the most generic possible way. The BRN stood for Bruce R. Napoli, which meant he was the partner in charge of the client.

  The second two pages in the packet had been copied from the Closed File Log. The first page showed two matters for Bennett Industries—“Opinion Letter re Drabble” and “Missouri Franchise Tax re Drabble.” Both had been closed for more than five years. The initials of the billing attorney were HLD (Harrison L. Dawber, according to my Tully, Crane telephone directory). Neville McBride had scribbled in the margin: “Spoke to Harry re Bennett—says our firm retained for limited purposes re sale of Drabble Plastiform Co. to Condesco Inc.—Harry and 1 associate did all work on both matters.” The second photocopied page was from the D’s and showed that there were no closed matters for Douglas Beef.

  I called McBride. “Can you get a billing and collections report on Douglas Beef?” I asked.

  “I have it in front of me.”

  “What’s it show?”

  “Year to date, we’ve billed Douglas Beef $56,750. Last year, we billed them $83,500. The year before, $64,355.”

  “What are Bruce’s origination numbers?”

  “Just a moment.” I heard him rustling through papers.

  Law firms track various numbers for each partner: hours billed, realization rate on those hours, and the like. But for a rainmaker like Bruce Napoli, the most important numbers are the origination numbers, which represent the dollars his clients pay the firm for services rendered. The bigger the origination numbers, the larger the compensation and the greater the power.

  “Here we go. Year to date, Bruce has three point eight million dollars. Last year, four point five million dollars. The year before three point nine.”

  I jotted the numbers down. Douglas Beef was not a significant client of his, at least from a dollars angle.

  I rapped the eraser end of my pencil on the legal pad as I studied the photocopied materials. “Tell me about your computer system.”

  He chortled. “You are asking the wrong person, Rachel. My level of expertise in modern office technology extends no further than my portable dictation machine, which I started using for the first time this summer when my secretary was on vacation and the temp didn’t know shorthand.”

  “Are your computers networked?”

  “Yes, although I’m not quite sure what it means other than that people can send e-mail messages to each other. I get the damn things all day long.”

  “The firm has a D.C. office, right?”

  “Indeed we do. We also have offices in Orlando and West Palm Beach.”

  “I assume all of your offices are on the network?”

  “Oh, yes. That was a big selling point for the system.”

  I smiled. “Excellent.”

  “Really?”

  “Trust me.”

  I said good-bye and placed a call to Henderson Consulting in Chicago.

  “Mr. Henderson, please,” I told the breathy receptionist.

  Next to answer was his secretary, sounding even more sensual than the receptionist.

  I had to smile. “Can I talk to him?” I asked.

  “For whom shall I tell Mr. Henderson i
s calling?”

  I paused long enough to decide her sentence didn’t parse. “Tell him it’s Rachel Gold.”

  “Just a moment, Ms. Gold.”

  Another delay, and then a familiar voice. “Yo, Rachel. What’s up, girl?”

  “Who you calling ‘girl,’ Ty? That’s ‘woman’ to you.”

  “I’ll call you woman, girl, when you finally acknowledge reality and become my woman.”

  “You know the rules, Ty. Mom says it has to be a nice Jewish boy. Until you join my religion, I can’t become your woman.”

  “Hey, baby, you ain’t talking to no Sammy Davis, Jr.”

  “And you ain’t talking to no honky bimbo. Speaking of which, Mr. Henderson, who is that phone sex brigade answering your phones?”

  “Ain’t they something? Those girls give good phone, and don’t my clients love it, heh, heh.”

  Tyrone Henderson was one of my favorite people, and his success over the years had been marvelous to observe. We had joined Abbott & Windsor the same year: he fresh out of high school as a minimum-wage messenger, I fresh out of Harvard Law School as a litigation associate at the going rate back then of forty-eight thousand a year plus bonus. Tyrone spent his days delivering draft contracts and court papers to other firms in the Loop and his nights taking courses in computer programming. When he earned his certificate from night school, he applied for an opening on the firm’s In re Bottles & Cans computer team. By the time I left the firm, Tyrone was the head programmer for the national Bottles & Cans defense steering committee. Over the years he helped design many of Abbott & Windsor’s computer systems, including the network linkup with all of its branch offices. Two years before, he’d left Abbott & Windsor to start his own consulting firm specializing in the design of computer systems for law firms.

  “By the way,” I said, “I finally got your picture framed.”