Clamour of Crows

by Ray Merritt

  “Viggie, I’m sorry for your troubles. I know a little how you are feeling.”

  “Grazie, Mr. T. I know what happened to your family. Mama Terry, she told me. When they killed my family, I was pazzo—nuts—for a long time. Only my nonno, he kept me from doing something real crazy. I learned a lot from him. It was good living with him.”

  “Tell me what it was like there.”

  Once Viggie started, there was no stopping him. He gave me a verbal tour of both Sicily and Tuscany. He became particularly animated, almost eloquent, when he talked about the hills, the mountains, and the trees. I let him talk.

  As we rounded a path, we came upon the bronze statue of the dog Balto. Viggie came up short.

  “This is where Mr. Baum and I came with Argos. It’s the cane coraggioso! Mr. Ben loved this place. That dog saved many children in the snow.”

  “Yes, I know the story.”

  Balto indeed was the canine hero of the twenties, having led a pack of huskies on a three-week trek to deliver antitoxins to some remote ice-bound village to prevent the diphtheria epidemic from claiming more lives.

  The feat was considered miraculous. It really wasn’t. Unlike humans, sled dogs are virtually fatigue-proof. Their metabolic makeup permits them to run one hundred miles a day and then get up and do it again. Scientists are trying to determine why humans can’t do the same.

  “I cani rendono la vita migliore! . . . Scusi . . . Dogs, they make life better, I think.”

  “So do I, Viggie . . . So do I.”

  “Mr. T, can we go back around the boat pond to the fungo gigante and grande coniglio? That was Mr. Ben’s favorite place.”

  That wasn’t hard to translate—the de Creeft bronze sculpture of Alice perched on an enormous mushroom talking to the White Rabbit.

  Every New Yorker has been there at least once. Every child that visits is drawn into climbing on it. Its gilded patina was proof of that.

  I must admit it was a favorite of ours. When we would come with JJ and Lilli, I would have them close their eyes and listen very carefully to hear the tinkle from a cloud of imaginary bats that perpetually hover above. They said they could hear them.

  I know I could.

  19

  The next morning, we had a third in the car. Nip joined the team. Ben’s place would suit her well and Viggie would attend to her needs during the day. Terry, already alerted, had snacks, water, and the late Argos’s leash in place.

  Dixie was there when we arrived. Seems he now preferred to walk. His place was thirty minutes away and he liked the exercise.

  “Good morning . . . and THIS, I assume, is the fabulous Miss Nip.”

  Nip was loving all the attention, but after she engaged in some brief nuzzling with Dixie, I sent her off with Terry. She did not protest. She had already scouted the place and knew where the food was. She would have no problem making the kitchen her home base.

  “Drew’s going to be late. She’s meeting with Charlotte Williams this morning,” Dixie announced.

  “Let’s start anyway. You can fill her in later. What did you find out about belladonna?”

  “Well, I checked it out. It’s fascinating. The proper name is Atropa belladonna, but it is often referred to as ‘deadly nightshade.’ Both of those terms are in the Tolkienese portion of the prec letter. That has to be more than a coincidence. The herb belladonna has quite a gory history. It’s probably what Shakespeare’s Juliet ingested. Plutarch reported that it was used to poison Marc Antony’s troops during the Parthian Wars. According to one legend, belladonna plants belong to the devil, who is obsessive in caring for them. He takes only one night a year off from tending to their needs. He must be quite anal. I guess that’s how he made senior partner in Hades so soon.”

  He paused, perhaps wishing he could take that flippancy back.

  “And there is also a legend that belladonna often takes the form of a beautiful but deadly enchantress. In fact, the famous Roman poisoner, Locusta, killed Claudius by slipping him a mickey of belladonna. She was sentenced to death for that. It’s grown primarily in Eastern Europe, particularly Croatia and Serbia. Apparently it is a quick-working poison. After ingesting a lethal dose, a person loses his voice, gets convulsive, and his eyes dilate. You might remember, it was used by Sandra Bullock to knock out Nicole Kidman’s bad-news boyfriend in Practical Magic, except she overdid it and he died. And in Perfect Stranger—a great movie with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis—a character was poisoned by it.

  “Now it also has more positive uses. It can be medically beneficial and it’s a popular aphrodisiac with certain hippie types. Do you know the British group Queen? Their hit song ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ boasted that they ‘loved a million women in a belladonic haze.’

  “It is also said to put more viva in your Viagra. Unfortunately, OD’ing on it can make you hot as Hades, red as a beet, dry as a bone, blind as a bat, mad as a hatter . . . and dead.”

  I interjected as an aside, “Bilbo Baggins’s mother’s name is Belladonna Took. I think she is one of the few female characters in all of Tolkien’s stories.”

  Dixie continued, “Oh, and that heart symbol. It’s the classic sign for polyamory.”

  “Polyamory?”

  “That’s a romantic bond among three people having a loving and intimate relationship, with the consent of everyone involved. The symbol consists of a red heart for love interwoven with a blue infinity sign. It’s not to be confused with a ménage à trois or a pajama party and certainly not with consensual group gropes. Those are simply sexercises. Polyamory is considered in some circles as respectable as monogamy, although others view poly couples as ethical sluts.

  “In history there are a lot of respectable poly people. Voltaire, Rousseau, Lord Byron, Dumas, Sartre, Dali—not to mention Simone de Beauvoir, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Kinsey, and Warren Buffett.”

  “You’re a veritable Cliffie this morning, Dixie,” I quipped, showing my age.

  Drew burst into the study and, without any salutations, threw down the files she was cradling, cast off her coat, and breathlessly began.

  “I have some late-breaking news! As you know, Tremaine’s lawyer filed a lawsuit in the State Supreme Court seeking to invalidate Ben’s last Will. His position is that Evan used his influence over Ben to insert himself in place of Mrs. Baum as executor and that Ben’s mind and body were not sound enough to make an informed judgment. If he succeeds, he will then make a motion to have Ben’s previous Will, which was attached to their moving papers, filed in the Probate Court. Hard to figure out de Vil’s moves. The estate department thinks it’s simply to put the issue in the New York Supreme Court. As you two know, that’s the lowest court in New York—just a few notches above Traffic Court. The judges there are your least sophisticated but most political judges around. The case was assigned to Judge Babcock. De Vil was a big fund-raiser for her judicial campaign a few years ago. That’s the bad news. The good news is it gives us time to complete our investigation as the litigators argue about what is the proper forum. And that will keep the prec letter private at least for a while.

  “By the way, the differences in the Wills are dramatic. Under the prior one—the one they proposed should be probated—wifey would get all the real estate outright, except the townhouse. That’s probably worth $125 million and would be tax-free to her.

  “And that Will also provided for her to get $10 million outright and all Ben’s art, except for the art here in the hobbit house—also tax-free. I haven’t seen an inventory of that yet.

  “Since she would be the executrix, she might be able to control the foundation and influence the vote of the foundation’s shares of Ozone. That’s a nice percentage of Ozone’s outstanding shares.

  “And there’s more! The real zinger is—hold onto your seats—m’lady is pregnant! And it’s a boy, we are advised.”

  “Wow!” mouthed Dixie.

  “Yes, and that could mean another heir. I’m pretty sure that a child conceived prior to death bu
t born after a person dies is deemed his heir for inheritance purposes. Assuming I’m right, the children’s share of the Ozone stock in the Family Trust will get divided into thirds—with Dorothy and Leo getting two-thirds and the new baby boy one-third. Lady Tremaine, of course, would be his guardian. She is naming him Bentley Lyman Baum. Bentley is Tremaine’s maiden name—no relation to the car people. Lyman is Ben’s first name. When you parse all this out, the merry widow and her little Lord Bentley end up with a lot of shekels, as my dear mother would say. And probably effective control of Ozone, assuming she gets to vote little Bentley’s shares in the Trust.”

  There was a momentary silence until finally I spoke.

  “That IS big news. And it makes our job even more difficult. “Interesting question: Does the Firm have to turn over the Precatory Letter to de Vil? It was not addressed to ‘my executor,’ but to Evan personally. I’ll need help here.”

  Drew responded with some authority. “I expect so. The Firm will eventually have to turn it over. It was, after all, attached to the Will in which he named Evan executor.”

  “Potentially, that’s a real bummer for the Firm,” Dixie volunteered. “If the judge buys de Vil’s arguments, the probate work would slide over to de Vil’s firm, and even the Ozone work would be up for grabs, unless Mr. Trombley makes some pact with Tremaine or perhaps Luc.”

  I was thinking along the same lines.

  It has always amused me how oddly prioritized lawyers’ minds are. My first thoughts were not about the baby, not about the family, but about the Firm’s business . . . and I would not even be affected by it. The Firm, however, would be. The loss of the Firm’s largest estate as well as its biggest corporate client would alter the Firm’s economics dramatically.

  Dixie and Drew were animatedly speculating on the effects of all of this, almost oblivious to my presence. Events like this are hot spices in the world of associates.

  “Let’s get back to work!” I said, cutting off their chatter. “And let’s see how this affects our job.”

  “Well, for one thing, I don’t think we’ll be able to interview the widow at this point. We might be conflicted, even though technically Dixie and I are on leave from the Firm for three months.”

  I agreed and added, “One way to look at our task is that we are not practicing law, but rather doing investigative fact gathering. It may be at some point advantageous to view it as that. In any case, that doesn’t preclude us from interviewing the others. Evan told me that Dorothy, Luc, Leo, Abelard, Eloise, and Kati met with Ben in his suite the day he died. I’m afraid that we are going to have to ratchet up. I suggest that both of you leave immediately for London. I’ll have Terry make reservations for you. We’ll see if she can get the same suite that Ben used, if that’s all right with you two.”

  No objection was forthcoming, but I did notice a sudden pallor appear on Drew’s face.

  “Drew, I think you should contact the investigators who were retained by the Firm’s London office and see if they have had any success in finding Kati.

  “Dixie, you should work with Patricia Stewart. She’s in charge of the London office. See if she can get you into the coroner’s office. Her brother’s a constable in London. See how we go about getting the medical reports and what it would take to do an autopsy quickly. Also, talk to the doctor who attended to Ben in the hotel. Hopefully, you can get all this done in a week.

  “Take an evening flight. You’re both young and we can’t afford to lose a day. In fact, would leaving tonight work for you? Viggie will take you to the airport. Meanwhile I’ll work the stateside witnesses as best I can.”

  I took their lack of protest as acquiescence.

  20

  I had forgotten how imposing the Addison Racquet Club was.

  Its massive granite edifice, unchanged for a century, straddled almost a whole city block. It was a Florentine palace staring down with evident disdain at the hectic hubbub of city life.

  When I called Evan, he suggested we meet “off campus”—meaning outside the Firm—for, as he put it, “delicacy reasons,” and suggested the “Club,” which he felt needed no further identification. It’s a stodgy, fraternal—read men only—club, located on Fifth Avenue.

  It was there that Evan felt most at home. If he had any social failings, one could ascribe them to time warp. He seemed stuck in the eighties, the time when Madonna first hit the charts and Ronald Reagan was president. That was when Evan became a senior partner and a member of the Executive Committee.

  The only change in those thirty years at the Addison was the flowers.

  Evan was waiting on the second floor, indifferently leafing through the Wall Street Journal. He rose and greeted me with his signature firm-gripped handshake, left hand massaging my shoulder.

  The “old boy” salutation and salute. No bear hugs here.

  The club’s main reception hall was pure Masterpiece Theater—twin functioning fireplaces, paneled walls boasting foxhunting scenes in ornate frames, and antique tables showcasing well-polished trophies that testified to long-forgotten athletic prowess.

  The room’s ceiling was supported by twenty-foot Tuscan columns, painted mottled black with gilded details and illuminated by four great coach lamps.

  Warm brown leather chairs and sofas populated the dark interior of the great room where Evan was holding court. Fortunately the arched ceiling-high windows ushered in enough sunlight to ensure that the mildew of the past was kept at bay, at least until the seasons changed and the walk-in fireplaces could do that job.

  Evan offered me tea from a nearby sterling silver urn. Muffins and jam could accompany it. I demurred.

  “It’s quiet and uneventful here . . . not like the Firm,” he volunteered, with a self-satisfied grin. “Everything here is based on tradition: Monday night, bridge; Wednesday, billiards; and Saturday, a classic movie in the study. And the menu never changes. Cream of chicken on toast is my favorite. It’s like an oasis—no iPhones, iPads, iPods. And the members are . . . ,” he paused, searching for the most politic words, “. . . so much like me. They leave their attitudes and agendas at the door.”

  Peering over his glasses, which had settled at the base of his very patrician nose, he allowed, “You would love it here!”

  “I’m sure I would.”

  We both knew I was lying.

  He was clearly in no hurry to discuss my concerns for he launched into a reverie about the Club, his sanctuary he confessed, from the demands of Big Law—the twenty-first-century term for white shoe Wall Street large-firm practice. That was a more appropriate handle.

  Large law firms were no longer on Wall Street, having moved uptown, and they no longer exclusively employed those white-shoed ivy school boys who honed their writing skills editing their prep schools’ literary journals, the ones that J. D. Salinger so cunningly maligned.

  No firm today could compete—or even survive—if it were populated predominantly by WASP male ivy-educated effetes.

  Today’s big firms are, in fact, exceedingly efficient legal factories that employ—or more aptly consume—the most accomplished and the most eager associates they can find, regardless of family, school ties, gender, or ethnicity. These beaver kits are promised professionalism at the pinnacle and, to seal the deal, they receive annual salaries and bonuses that range from an entry-level law school graduate at $180,000 to more than $300,000 for a senior associate.

  So as not to make them feel too guilty for this largesse, ample pro bono and indigent legal-aid assignments are always available for them in their spare time.

  Of course, there is no such time, unless they can learn not to sleep during the week.

  No matter how mercenary these institutions have become, they are still able to ingest the best and the brightest, the silver-spooners and the overachievers, and turn them into pantry maids and foot soldiers, spitting out 90 percent of them within ten years—older and more weary than their biological ages.

  Law firms were spoiled by the bab
y boomers, who had an inexhaustible appetite for hard work. The millennials and the whatevers, albeit just as hungry, seem to want to pursue their personal passions at the same time they work. And today’s associates want to be included. Many of the older partners resent that. Doesn’t augur well for billable statistics and subservience.

  “You know the history of the club, don’t you, Jonathan?”

  “No, sir.”

  I knew that was the response and excuse he needed.

  “Well, let me share it with you,” he began, as he poured himself another cup of Earl Grey, savoring its orange fragrance.

  “It’s a rather regal monument to the art and pleasure of racquet sports. Tennis is truly the game of nobles. Those tennis terms, you know, all find their origin in the royal courts of Europe. In fact, the word ‘tennis’ derives from the French word ‘tenez.’ Roughly translated, it means ‘May I have your attention?’ You used to call that out before serving to put your opponent on alert.”

  He droned on, much more donnish than I remembered him.

  “Here at the club they play tennis the old way. We call it ‘court tennis.’ Unfortunately my playing days are over—too many herniated disks.”

  That, I knew, was a nose-extending canard.

  Evan has never been a competitive athlete. I suspect he found losing unacceptable and didn’t like to sweat.

  “I’ve always recommended that young lawyers take up the sport. It requires not only a practiced skill, but also guile, a considered strategy, and the strong will to win. All the qualities one needs to survive at the Firm.”

  He looked up to see if I was still enraptured.

  In fact, I had tuned out on his soliloquy awhile back.

  I found it more amusing to observe the depleted gene pool of Binkys, Dickies, Barclays, and Alistairs scurrying off for a shower or a massage. I suspect they were still wearing their prep school ties.

  No dress-down here.

  “If you’d like, I’d be delighted to sponsor you for membership,” he offered disingenuously, privately praying for my demur, which I quickly gave to him. I saw no need to make him uneasy.